But if Soul (in man) and Essential Soul are one and the same, then the Soul will be an Ideal-Form unreceptive of all those activities which it imparts to another Kind but possessing within itself that native Act of its own which Reason manifests.
If this be so, then, indeed, we may think of the Soul as an immortal — if the immortal, the imperishable, must be impassive, giving out something of itself but itself taking nothing from without except for what it receives from the Existents prior to itself from which Existents, in that they are the nobler, it cannot be sundered.
Now what could bring fear to a nature thus unreceptive of all the outer ? Fear demands feeling. Nor is there place for courage : courage implies the presence of danger. And such desires as are satisfied by the filling or voiding of the body, must be proper to something very difierent from the Soul, to that only which admits of replenishment and void- ance.
And how could the Soul lend itself to any admixture ? An essential is not mixed. Or of the intrusion of anything ahen ? If it did, it would be seeking the destruction of its own nature. Pain must be equally far from it. And Grief — how or for what could it grieve ? Whatever possesses Existence is supremely free, dwelling, unchangeable, within its own peculiar nature. And can any increase bring joy, where nothing, not even anything good, can accrue ? What such an Existent is, it is unchange- ably.
Thus assuredly Sense-Perception, Discursive-Reasoning and all our ordinary mentation are foreign to the Soul : for sensation is a receiving — whether of an Ideal-Form or of an impassive body — and reasoning and all ordinary mental action deal with sensation.
The question still remains to be examined in the matter of the intellections — whether these are to be assigned to the Soul — and as to
Pure-Pleasure (pleasure apart from sense), whether this belongs to the Soul in its solitary state.
We may treat of the Soul as in the body — whether it be set above it or actually within it — since the association of the two constitutes the one thing called the living organism, the Animate.
Now from this relation, from the Soul using the body as an instru- ment, it does not follow that the Soul must share the body’s experiences : a man does not himself feel all the experiences of the tools with which he is working.
It may be objected that the Soul must, however, have Sense- Perception since its use of its instrument must acquaint it with the external conditions, and such knowledge comes by way of sense. Thus, it will be argued, the eyes are the instrument of seeing, and seeing may bring distress to the soul : hence the Soul may feel sorrow and pain and every other affection that belongs to the body ; and from this again will spring desire, the Soul seeking the mending of its instrument.
But, we ask, how, possibly, can these affections pass from body to Soul ? Body may communicate qualities or conditions to another body : but — body to Soul ? Something happens to A ; does that make it happen to B ? As long as we have agent and instrument, there are two distinct entities ; if the Soul uses the body it is separate from it.
But apart from the philosophical separation how does Soul stand to body ?
Clearly there is a combination. And for this several modes are possible. There might be a complete coalescence : Soul might be inter- woven through the body : or it might be an Ideal-Form detached or an Ideal-Form in governing contact like a pilot : or there might be part of the Soul detached and another part in contact, the disjoined part being the agent or user, the conjoined part ranking with the instrument or thing used.
In this last case it will be the double task of philosophy to direct this lower Soul towards the higher, the agent, and except in so far as the
conjunction is absolutely necessary, to sever the agent from the instru- ment, the body, so that it need not forever have its Act upon or through this inferior.
Let us consider, then, the hypothesis of a coalescence.
Now if there is a coalescence, the lower is ennobled, the nobler degraded ; the body is raised in the scale of being as made participant in life ; the Soul, as associated with death and unreason, is brought lower. How can a lessening of the life-quality produce an increase such as Sense-Perception ?
No : the body has acquired life, it is the body that will acquire, with life, sensation and the affections coming by sensation. Desire, then, will belong to the body, as the objects of desire are to be enjoyed by the body. And fear, too, will belong to the body alone ; for it is the body’s doom to fail of its joys and to perish.
Then again we should have to examine how such a coalescence could be conceived : we might find it impossible : perhaps all this is like announcing the coalescence of things utterly incongruous in kind, let us say of a line and whiteness.
Next for the suggestion that the Soul is interwoven through the body : such a relation would not give woof and warp community of sensation : the interwoven element might very well suffer no change : the permeating soul might remain entirely untouched by what affects the body — as light goes always free of all it floods — and all the more so, since, precisely, we are asked to consider it as (not confined to any one part but) diffused throughout the entire frame.
Under such an interweaving, then, the Soul would not be subjected to the body’s affections and experiences : it would be present rather as Ideal-Form in Matter.
Let us then suppose Soul to be in body as Ideal-Form in Matter. Now if — the first possibility — the Soul is an essence, a self-existent, it can be present only as separable form and will therefore all the more decidedly be the Using-Principle (and therefore unaffected).
I- I- 5]
Suppose, next, the Soul to be present like axe-form on iron : here, no doubt, the form is all important but it is still (not the one member but) the axe, the complement of iron and form, that effects whatever is effected by the iron thus modified : on this analogy, therefore, we are even more strictly compelled to assign all the experiences of the combina- tion to the body : their natural seat is the material member, the instru- ment, the potential recipient of life (and not the Life-Principle itself).
Compare the passage (in Plato) where we read that “ it is absurd to suppose that the Soul weaves ” ; equally absurd to think of it as desiring, grieving. All this is rather in the province of something which we may call the Animate.
Now this Animate might be merely the body as having life : it might be the Couplement of Soul and body : it might be a third and different entity formed from both.
The Soul in turn — apart from the nature of the Animate — must be either impassive, merely causing Sense-Perception in its yoke-fellow, or sympathetic ; and, if sympathetic, it may have identical experiences with its fellow or merely correspondent experiences : desire for example in the Animate may be something quite distinct from the accompanying movement or state in the desiring faculty.
The body, the live-body as we know it, we will consider later.
Let us take first the Couplement of body and Soul. How could suffering, for example, be seated in this Couplement ?
It may be suggested that some unwelcome state of the body produces a distress which reaches to a Sensitive-Faculty which in turn merges into Soul. But this account still leaves the origin of the sensation unexplained.
Another suggestion might be that all is due to an opinion or judge- ment : some evil seems to have befallen the man or his belongings and this conviction sets up a state of trouble in the body and in the entire Animate. But this account leaves still a question as to the source and seat of the judgement : does it belong to the Soul or to the Couplement ? Besides, the judgement that evil is present does not involve the feeling
of grief : the judgement might very well arise and the grief by no means follow : one may think oneself slighted and yet not be angry ; and the appetite is not necessarily excited by the thought of a pleasure. We are, thus, no nearer than before to any warrant for assigning these affections to the Couplement.
Is it any explanation to say that desire is vested in a Faculty-of- desire and anger in the Irascible-Faculty and, collectively, that all tendency is seated in the Appetitive-Faculty ? Such a statement of the facts does not help towards making the affections common to the Couple- ment ; they might still be seated either in the Soul alone or in the body alone. On the one hand if the appetite is to be stirred, as in the carnal passion, there must be a heating of the blood and the bile, a well-defined state of the body ; on the other hand, the impulse towards The Good cannot be a joint affection, but, like certain others too, it would belong necessarily to the Soul alone.
Reason, then, does not permit us to assign all the affections to the Couplement.
In the case of carnal desire, it will certainly be the Man that desires, and yet, on the other hand, there must be desire in the Desiring-Faculty as well. How can this be ? Are we to suppose that, when the man originates the desire, the Desiring-Faculty moves to the order ? How could the Man have come to desire at all unless through a prior activity in the Desiring-Faculty ? Then it is the Desiring-Faculty that takes the lead ? Yet how, unless the body be first in the appropriate condition ?
It may seem reasonable to lay down as a law that when any powers are contained by a recipient, every action or state expressive of them must be the action or state of that recipient, they themselves remaining unaffected as merely furnishing efficiency.
But if this were so, then, since the Animate is the recipient of the Causing-Principle (i.e. the Soul) which brings life to the Couplement, this Cause must itself remain unaffected, all the experiences and expressive activities of the life being vested in the recipient, the Animate.
I. I. 7]
But this would mean that life itself belongs not to the Soul but to the Couplement ; or at least the life of the Couplement would not be the life of the Soul ; Sense-Perception would belong not to the Sensitive-Faculty but to the container of the faculty.
But if sensation is a movement traversing the body and culminating in Soul, how can the soul lack sensation ? The very presence of the Sensitive-Faculty must assure sensation to the Soul.
Once again, where is Sense-Perception seated ?
In the Couplement.
Yet how can the Couplement have sensation independently of action in the Sensitive-Faculty, the Soul left out of count and the Soul- Faculty ?
The truth lies in the Consideration that the Couplement subsists by virtue of the Soul's presence.
This, however, is not to say that the Soul gives itself as it is in itself to form either the Couplement or the body.
No ; from the organised body and something else, let us say a light, which the Soul gives forth from itself, it forms a distinct Principle, the Animate ; and in this Principle are vested Sense-Perception and all the other experiences found to belong to the Animate.
But the “ We " ? How have We Sense-Perception ?
By the fact that We are not separate from the Animate so consti- tuted, even though certainly other and nobler elements go to make up the entire many-sided nature of Man.
The faculty of perception in the Soul cannot act by the immediate grasping of sensible objects, but only by the discerning of impressions printed upon the Animate by sensation : these impressions are already Intelligibles while the outer sensation is a mere phantom of the other (of that in the Soul) which is nearer to Authentic-Existence as being an impassive reading of Ideal-Forms.
And by means of these Ideal-Forms, by which the Soul wields single lordship over the Animate, we have Discursive-Reasoning, Sense-Know-
ledge and Intellection. From this moment we have peculiarly the We : before this there was only the “ Ours ” ; but at this stage stands the WE (the authentic Human-Principle) loftily presiding over the Animate.