Chapter XXXIX. The union of the soul with the bopy

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T is an article of faith that the intellective soul is per se and essentially the form of the body. This truth was defined by the Council of Vienne (1311-12): “We define that if anyone shall presume to assert, defend, or hold that the rational or intellective soul is not per se and essentially the form of the human body, he shall be considered a heretic.” * In these words the Council of Vienne condemned the error of Olivi, who taught that the rational soul informed the body not per se but that it did so through the vegetative and sensitive faculties.

This definition states three things. 1. The human soul is the form of the human body, or the soul is substantially united to the body as form to matter, not like a mover to a thing that is moved, but constituting one nature with the body. 2. This union is per se and not through another, not through the mediation of a sensitive or vegetative principle, but directly and immediately through the soul. 3. The union is essential, that is, by the essence of the soul and not through some faculty, or consciousness of operation, or some accidental influx, so that the essence of the soul is the radical principle of the vegetative and sensitive operations together with the body with which it is united.

Among the condemned propositions of Rosmini we find: “The union of the soul and the body properly consists in an immanent perception by which the subject, comprehending an idea, affirms the sensible part, after having comprehended its own essence in the idea.” ?

In a declaration against the false doctrine of A. Guenther, Pius IX

D enz., no, I 914. 83 a¹ said: “The rational soul is the true form of the body, per se and immediate.” *

Cardinal Zigliara concludes: “The fathers of the Council of Vienne used the word ‘form’ in its strict scholastic sense,” * which was the sense commonly accepted by those to whom the Council addressed itself. The Council, however, as Zigliara points out, did not wish to condemn Scotus’ thesis which admits the form of corporeity besides the rational soul. Hence the Council did not define that the rational soul was the only form of the human body, but rather that it is the substantial form and the principle of the vegetative and sensitive life of the human body.

Corollary. Hence, as Vacant points out, it cannot be admitted that there are several souls in man, as the Gnostics, Manichaeans, Apollinaris, and Guenther said. We must hold that the intellective soul is the only soul in man and the principle of the vegetative, sensitive, and intellectual life of man, even though it has not been defined that it is the only form. Indeed, Palmieri was able to make a defense for his atomism, according to which the rational soul is still the principle of even vegetative life.

St. Thomas, however, proves from reason that the rational soul is not only the form of the human body and the only soul in man but also that it is the only form because if any other substantial form existed beforehand it would follow that the soul was only accidentally united to the body.

St. Thomas wrote: “That by which anything is primarily operated is the form to which the operation is attributed. . . . But it is evident that that by which the body lives primarily is the soul. . . For it is the soul by which we are nourished, feel, move in place, and by which also we primarily think. . . . For it is the same man who perceives that he thinks and feels; and feeling cannot take place without the body. . . . If the intellect is not united to Socrates’ body, except as the mover of the body, Socrates would not be absolutely one, and consequently he would not be a simple being.” °

Nevertheless the rational soul is not immersed in matter, for as St. Thomas says: “The more noble a form is the more it dominates the

*Cf£. Card. Zigliara, De mente Concilti Viennensis (1878), no. 136; Liberatore, S.J., De composito humano (1865).

5 Vacant, Etudes sur le Concile du Vatican, 1, 246. 8 Summa theol., Ia, q.76, a. 1.

UNION OF SOUL WITH BODY 585 corporeal matter and the less it is immersed in it, and the more it excels the matter by its operation and power.” 7 “The soul communicates that being in which it subsists to the corporeal matter. . . . For this reason, when the body is destroyed, the soul retains its own being, which is not true of other forms.” ®

The intellective principle is multiplied as the human bodies are multiplied; otherwise Socrates and Plato would be one intelligence. “If there were but one intellect in all men, the variety of phantasms found in this man and that could not cause the variety of intellectual operations of this or that man.” ° When it is separated from its body the soul remains individuated, because it preserves its natural relation to this particular body rather than to another.

Nor are there other souls in man, because then man would not be simply one, “for nothing is simply one except by one form.” +° “The intellective soul contains the sensitive soul of the animal and the nutritive soul of the plants, just as the pentagon contains the tetragon.” 1?

Nor is the form of corporeity in man distinct from the intellective soul “because the substantial form confers being absolutely. If besides the intellective soul some other substantial form existed beforehand in matter by which the subject of the soul would be in act, it would follow that the soul would not confer being absolutely and that consequently it would not be the substantial form.” ** This was the opinion held by Thomists at all times in opposition to Scotus and his followers. “That which is per se one, namely, one nature, does not come into being out of two acts but out of potency and act. This was Cajetan’s conclusion from the words of Aristotle himself.

Finally, it is fitting that the intellective soul be united to a proper body for the purpose of sensation to become a human body, because “the intellective soul is the lowest grade of intellectual substances,” and therefore its proportionate object is the lowest intelligible being of sensible things, knowable through the senses. “Hence it is proper that the intellective soul have not only the power of intellection but also the power of sensation. The action of the senses, however, does

not take place without a corporeal instrument. It is proper, therefore, that the intellective soul be united to a body which can be a proper organ for the senses.” **

Thus man is a microcosm in which there is the being of the stone, life as we find it in plants and animals, and intellection as it is in the angels. And in man we see the highest degree of the lowest form of life, namely the highest degree of sensitive life as found in the imagination, and at the same time the lowest degree of the highest kind of life, namely, the lowest degree of intellection. The human species appears, therefore, as a unique species, that is, there cannot be several ontologically distinct species of rational animals. In this one species the highest degree of the lowest life unites with the lowest degree of the highest life, while an immeasurable distance remains between sensitive and intellective life.

The principal objection against the doctrine that the intellective soul is the only form of the body is the following. An intellective power cannot be the form of a body. But an intellective substance is more noble than its power. Therefore an intellective substance cannot be the form of a body.

St. Thomas replied: “The human soul is not a form immersed in corporeal matter, or completely comprehended by matter, because of the perfection of the soul, and therefore there is nothing to prohibit some power of the soul from being the act of the body, although the soul by its essence is the form of the body.” *

In other words, the intellective soul is the form of the body inasmuch as it is eminently and formally vegetative and sensitive, or inasmuch as the intellective soul does for the human body what the sensitive soul does for the animal and what the vegetative soul does for plants. In this manner the intellective soul is virtually multiple.

This teaching is sometimes misunderstood to mean that the intellective soul is virtually sensitive and vegetative. On the contrary, according to the interpretation of Cajetan, Ferrariensis, and John of St. Thomas, the intellective soul is eminently and formally vegetative and sensitive. It is God alone who virtually possesses vegetative and sensi-

UNION OF SOUL WITH BODY 587 tive life, as He possesses other mixed perfections which He can produce, and God cannot be the form of the human body.

The intellective soul contains vegetative and sensitive life eminently and formally, just as God in the sublimity of the Deity formally contains the absolutely perfect perfections, such as being, intellection, love. The soul therefore can be the form of the human body, but this would be impossible if the soul were only virtually and not formally vegetative and sensitive.

But, as in God the absolutely perfect perfections are only virtually distinct, so the sensitive, vegetative, and corporeal forms are only virtually distinct in the intellective soul. This is the clear teaching of St. Thomas. Some have caused confusion on this point by saying that the vegetative and sensitive parts are only virtually in the soul because St. Thomas said that the intellective, sensitive, and vegetative parts are only virtually distinct. The term “virtually” refers to “distinguish” and not to the verb “is,” as when we speak of the absolutely perfect perfections in God.

Moreover, it would be repugnant for the soul to be the immediate principle of such diverse operations as those of vegetative, sensitive, and intellectual life, but it is not repugnant that the soul produce these operations through the mediation of various subordinate faculties. No created substance, not even the angel, is immediately operative; it cannot understand except through the intellective faculty, nor can it will except through the will. The created essence is ordered to being, but the operative faculties are ordered to operations and are specified by the formal object of these operations.’”

The twofold principle for the solution of the objections against this traditional doctrine is: the intellective soul is the form of the body, and yet it is in no way immersed in matter. This teaching is well stated as the sixteenth of the Thomistic propositions approved by the Sacred Congregation of Studies (1914): “This same rational soul is united to the body in such a way that it is the only substantial form of the body, and through this form man is man, animal, living, a body, substance, and being. This form therefore confers on man every essential degree of perfection; besides this the soul confers on the body the act of being by which it itself is.” For the Thomists this proposition is certain according to the principles that refer to the distinction between potency and act, and between essence and being. Suarez, on the contrary, who conceived these principles otherwise, held that it was only probable that the rational soul is the only form of the body.*® Denying the real distinction between created essence and being, he said that the substantial being of man cannot be one, but that there is a twofold being just as there are two parts in the essence of man, namely, matter and form. As in the question of creation, so here also Suarez differs considerably from St. Thomas.

From St. Thomas’ principles concerning the distinction between potency and act it follows that the human soul and body unite in the one being of man in such a way that the soul does not depend on the body for being, but communicates its being to the body; and after the separation from the body, the soul can again communicate its being to the body, as happens in the resurrection of the dead. From the same principles it follows that there is one being in Christ, namely, the being of the Word, communicated to the human nature, which does not subsist except in the Word."

This doctrine of the spirituality and personal immortality of the soul shows how St. Thomas Christianized that Aristotelianism which the Averroists interpreted in a pantheistic sense. We see this likewise in the question of free creation from nothing. In these two questions the holy doctor shows how the principles supporting the preambles of faith are demonstrated and explained by the Aristotelian teaching on potency and act.’®

18 Cf. Cajetan’s profound commentary on Ia, q.75, 76, in which he defends this doctrine against Scotus.

Footnotes

1. Denz., no. 481; cf. Fifth Council of the Lateran, Denz., nos. 738, 1655, 1911, 1914. ↩