What Is the "Soul?"

It does not seem that the discussion of whether or not there is such a thing as “the soul” is really very serious. I hold that it is self-evident that all living creatures are in possession of a soul. However, I expect that a large portion of those who would disagree with this statement are actually making a statement about the properties of the soul, not about the existence of the soul.

That the soul exists is demonstrated simply. There is something which differentiates between that which is living and that which is non-living and this thing is called a soul. This is not a controversial statement and is one which, I presume, everyone can agree with. Thus if it is determined that it is the human brain which differentiates between the living and the non-living, than we can justly say that the human brain is actually the soul. This is really the classical definition of the soul and is in keeping with most philosophical and religious thought.

The difficulty, and the controversy, comes from the discussion of the properties of the soul. Is the soul made of matter or is it immaterial? Is the soul immortal or does it cease to exist upon death? Is there any difference between the soul of a man and that of a tree? These are the questions which are really interesting, and which fuel our discussion and thoughts on the soul.

Using the above example in which it was supposed the human brain were the principle which differentiates from the living and the non-living and thus was the soul, a couple of points become clear. The principle which determines which things are living and which are not will have to be in every living thing. From this example, the human brain would have to be found in every living thing. Obviously this cannot really be the “soul” as grass, which is living, does not possess a brain at all! There is a way around this difficulty, which is to suggest that there are different categories of souls. A tree has a “tree soul” or a “plant soul” with particular characteristics and other types of living things have different souls with different characteristics. In fact, this is what Aristotle suggested so long ago, saying that plants have a “nutritive soul” while animals have a different type of soul.

Another point which the above example illustrates is that the soul must be found in living things but not found in things that are not living. Thus if the brain truly were the principle of life, than it would have to in some way leave the living creature upon it’s demise. This brings up an important problem for those who contend that the soul is a material thing as there really seems to be no material physical difference between a living object and one which is no longer living. The material changes occur after an object passes from living to non-living. In fact, once you start to think about it, we really don’t have a very clear definition for what it means for something to be alive at all!

To momentarily skip over this, admittedly important question, there must be something which unifies all things which we call alive. Thus, even if there are different categories of souls, they cannot really be totally different things. As there is no material difference between the living and the non-living and as there is no unifying material property of living things, we can deduce that the soul is ultimately non-material.

This is why it has been held for centuries that the soul consists on a non-material level. Further, from this one conclusion, several other conclusions naturally follow. First, if the soul is non-material, there is some part of all living things which exists outside of time (for this proof, spend a little time reading my discussions on The Source), but in what way must still be determined. Secondly, this would mean that the soul exists on some level which is inaccessible to scientific (at least scientific materialism’s) scrutiny.