The Soul and Its Mechanism - Daily: Monday, 15th of September From the 5th century on to the 17th we have the ideas of various schools; of Scholastics, of Arabian philosophers, of Kabalists, also the philosophers of the Middle Ages, and that notable group of men who brought about the Reformation and Renaissance. They discussed the various theories accounting for the soul, but not much progress was made, for all was gradually tending towards the emergence of modern science, the establishment of modern medicine, and the revelations of the age of electricity. Gradually the form aspect of nature and the laws governing natural phenomena engrossed attention, until speculations as to the soul and its nature were increasingly relegated to the theologians. In the 17th century, Stahl wrote fully upon the subject of the soul and summarized a great deal of the teaching extant in his time. This has been termed the Theory of Animism. It is the doctrine that the soul is the vital principle, and responsible for all organic development. We speak of the animism of the little evolved races, who personified and worshipped the forces of nature; we recognize the animism outlined by Stahl in the later cycles of our own time as having been always present; we study the modern scientists teaching as to force, as to energy, as to the atom, and we find that we are [79] confronted by a world of energies which cannot be negated. We live in a universe animated by forces. Speed, activity, vitality, transportation, the transmission of sound, electrical energy, and many such phrases are the catch-words of today. We speak and think in terms of force. Stahl summed up the teaching in the following terms: The body is made for the soul; the soul is not made for, and is not the product of, the body... The source of all vital movement is the soul, which builds up the machine of the body, and maintains it for a time against external influences... The immediate cause of death is not disease, but the direct action of the soul, which leaves the bodily machine, either because it has become unworkable through some serious lesion or because it does not choose to work it any longer. - Hollander, Bernard, M.D., In Search of the Soul, Vol. I, p. 169. Berkeleys definition of the soul is interesting, for he defines it as a simple, active being, revealed to us through experience.
Posted on: Mon, 15 Sep 2014 21:00:41 +0000
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