lower, that is, than those purely spiritual beings that rank above man because they are not linked with matter, and are yet far below God since they, like man, are creatures, and owe their existence to God, the almighty Creator of all things visible and invisible. But if man is "lower than the angels," he is evidently placed above all the other forms of created being. God has made man lower than the angels, only that He may "crown him with glory and worship" upon the earth. "Thou makest him to have dominion of the works of Thy hands, and Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet: all sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field; the fowls of the air, and the fishes of the sea, and whatsoever walketh through the paths of the seas." This excellence of man is implied by the fact that he not only sums up all the lower degrees of life in his own being, but has faculties that are peculiarly his own, and that far transcend the powers of the brute creation.

By his material body man is united with the inanimate earth on which he walks; by the possession of life he is linked with the vegetable kingdom; and by his sensitive soul he shares in the life of the brutes. But over and above these lower forms of life man has mental endowments of a very high order; his soul is not only sensitive, but also rational. Now the question is naturally suggested, Has man by his reason and memory and other mental phenomena something in common with a form of being that is

purely spiritual, and with God, the "Father of spirits "?1

Whom shall we ask to answer such a question? If we listen to the enlightened reason of mankind, from the dawn of history down to the present day, we shall be told that in man there is somethingcall it soul, spirit, or what name we will—that lifts him above all other forms of being of which we have any experimental knowledge, and places him in relationship with pure Intelligences of a spirit world, and with God Who is Spirit.

If we turn to the religious beliefs of mankind we find that, speaking generally, everywhere and at all times all religions have taught that man is composed of a material body and of some "inscrutable entity" that is called the soul or spirit. In the following pages, however, it is taken for granted that God has made known certain truths by revelation, and that this revelation is embedded in Holy Scripture, summed up in the Creeds, and harmonised and systematised in that body of theology that is held in common throughout the Catholic Church.

It is not of course implied that God has not revealed Himself and made known many truths in other ways. By the order of Nature, by reason, by experience, as well as by the voice of prophets and by the sending of His Son, God has throughout the ages spoken to those who have ears to hear. God cannot contradict

1 Heb. xii. 9.

Himself, and therefore the less certain voice of human speculation must be prepared to revise its conclusions if at any time they are clearly contrary to some truth declared by a more sure witness. We turn then to the Bible, and ask if it contains any answer to the question, What exactly are we to understand by the human soul? In reply, we are obliged to acknowledge that the Bible does not give us any strict definition of the soul. Its existence is usually taken for granted in Holy Writ, but now and again we come across passages1 that would, if they stood alone, imply that the soul is merely the principle of bodily life, and therefore entirely dependent upon the body. By far the greater part, however, of the teaching of the Bible speaks of the soul as the spiritual personality of man.2 The soul or spirit of man is spoken of as the real self, and it is because man is a personal spirit that the Bible represents him as having dominion over all the lower forms of life. The Bible seems to take for granted that the "Ego "—the real self in man-is a spiritual entity that "informs" the physical organism.

This we shall have to touch upon when we come to the consideration of the teaching of the Bible as to the life of the spirit after the death of the body. At present it is enough to say that the holy Scriptures plainly assert the existence of a spiritual soul in man,

1

e.g. "They are dead which sought the young child's life, i.e. soul" (Thν Yʊжǹv). St. Matt. ii. 20.

2 St. Matt. x. 28; xi. 29; xii. 18; xvi. 25, etc.

but do not give a scientific definition of the nature of the soul.

It would therefore be possible, while firmly believing in the existence of a personal spirit in man, to offer no definition of its nature. But we may not forget that what we call revelation does not make the use of our reason superfluous. The truths of revelation are to be expressed—imperfectly, no doubt—in human language, and the intellect is never better employed than when it is occupied with the effort to place the sublime mysteries of God as clearly as may be before the minds of men. Hence we may well believe that God delayed His final message by Jesus Christ until the intellect of Greece had so ripened that it became possible to express the deepest truths-such as the Trinity and Unity of God, and the Incarnation of the Eternal Word-in something like adequate language. What the subtlety of Greek thought thus expressed in language, the universal empire of imperial Rome proclaimed throughout the world. God never employs miracle to do that which may be done by man through the use of those gifts that we speak of as belonging to the natural order, and yet are as truly gifts from God as any that we call supernatural.

It was, then, when "the fulness of the time was come" that God "sent forth His Son."1 Jesus Christ taught men the truth, but He left it to them to harmonise the truth and to express it in the best language at their command. Bearing this in mind, we are not surprised

1 Gal. iv. 4.

that the Church has from the very first made use of the stores of learning that were placed at her feet by the conversion of the Gentile world. The prophecy of Isaiah received a new fulfilment: "The forces-the wealth of the Gentiles shall come unto thee," "ye shall eat the riches of the Gentiles, and in their glory shall ye boast yourselves."1 St. Augustine says: "If those who are called philosophers, and especially the Platonists, have said aught that is true and in harmony with our faith, we ought not to shrink from it, but to claim it for our own use."

When, then, we ask for a definition of the soul, we find that from the beginning the Christian psychologists have adopted the definitions of Aristotle, and have borrowed much from Plato. We note this not only in the Scholastic theologians, but in those early writers of whom Melito of Sardis and Tertullian are examples. Thus the soul is defined to be "the first principle of life," and "the first actualising principle of a physical organised body, having life potentially." Or again, the soul is said to be the "substantial form," or "act" of the body, which brings life to every part of its material subject, constituting one person, which we call self—that which we mean when we say "I."

The soul is spiritual, because it is the seat of such

1 Is. lx. 5; lxi. 6.

2 "Primum principium vitæ," ST. THOMAS AQUINAS, Summa Theo., pars. i. q. 75, a. 1.

* Η ψυχή ἐστιν ἐντελέχεια ἡ πρώτη σώματος φυσικοῦ ζωὴν ἔχοντος δυνάμει, and, ἡ πρώτη εντελέχεια σώματος φυσικοῦ ὀργανικοῦ.—ARISTOTLE.