XXI. The Soul before and after Death

(BACON'S Unknown Land, NEW YORK, 1888.)

1. IF I am asked for a definition of the soul, I answer, " Est principium per quod homo sensitivus est, cogitat, et vult;" it is the principle by which man perceives, thinks, and acts; or again, more simply, "It is the principle of life, and of the vital acts of thought and will."

2. If I am asked for a definition of life, I say it is, " Activitas qua ens seipsum movet." By motion in man is intended not only physical, but intellectual, moral, and mental.

3. If any one shall ask for a metaphysical definition of principle, I answer, it is " that which produces any thing." " Principium est id quod rationem continet, cur illud sit, cujus dicitur principium." The idea of principle is that out of which anything proceeds, as a tree from a root, or a stalk from a grain of wheat, And yet the word " principle " is not a metaphor of similitude, but of proportion: as a root to a tree, so a principle to its product. A root and a principle may be dissimilar in everything but in the one point of production, yet the analogy or ratio of proportion holds good. The mistaking of analogies for metaphors or images is the source of endless confusion. It is like believing Providence to be an eye.

4. The soul is not something superadded to man or to human nature. Man has no existence till soul and body are united in one supposition.

5. A material organism is not human nature, or man. Powers and emotions without a principle do not constitute man. They are not produced by organ ism. The onus of proof lies on those who say so.

G. Matter is not the principiiun vit<c: for the greater mass of matter is without life.

7. Matter is not even organic till an organism supervenes.

8. But organism does not give life, for large regions of organised matter exist without life. There fore,

9. The union of matter and organism, neither of which gives life, does not give life.

10. No material organism, therefore, can be the principle or cause. Nor can it be ' the base or the nidus ' of life: unless life supervene as a distinct element. The subject, then, is lifted above all mere material organism.

11. Organised matter, " superveniente vita vegetativa," becomes a plant. This supervening of another and higher element creates a new kingdom of organic being: but the vegetative life is not contained in nor produced by either matter or organism: nor by both. Life is heterogeneous to that which is lifeless, i.e. to matter, but not to plant, or animal, or man.

12. Organised matter, " supcrveuieute vita sensitiva et animali," creates another and still higher kingdom of organised being, which, from its highest element, we call animal. But organised matter has in itself neither animal life, nor sensation, nor the perceptions of sense. All these are beyond its limits. 13. Nevertheless, there can be no animal life with out material organism as the condition of its manifestation and exercise, though the animal life is distinct from it.

13. This animal life is called by courtesy " anima brutorum;" but when the material organism is dissolved, the life ceases to live and to exist, " conditione naturra debita," by a law of Nature ordained by the Creator, the lower animals having no moral personality, no probation, and no judgment after death, The term of their existence is in and of this world: and their end, the service and use of man. All mere animal life is therefore mortal.

14. An organism which is material, sentient, and animal, " superveniente vita intellectiva, rationis et voluntatis" is man: or " natura rationalis," or " animal rationale." But reason and will are no more powers or functions of matter, or organism, or vegetable or animal life, than these are of organism and matter.

15. Organism is a higher element or perfection superinduced upon matter, vegetable life is a perfection superinduced upon material organism, animal life upon all these, and the rational life upon all these again; yet it is distinct from all, and independent in its higher functions of all. And this higher element is the " principium operationtim vitalium" — i.e. of reason and will — and by these terms we understand a rational nature, or a human soul.

16. This " principium," or soul, is independent of external sense in many of its highest functions — e.<i. in the formation of abstract ideas, as of goodness, justice, and the like — in judgment of the agreement or disagreement of terms, and in the philosophical pro cesses of induction and deduction, in mathematical reasoning, in discernment of good and evil, in the consciousness of the facts of internal sense; in all these and many more the rational powers of man are in dependent of sense, and abide -in an inward world of our personal consciousness.

17. Now, the soul does, indeed, perceive by the senses all objects proper to the senses; but this is >i lower function of the rational nature. Its chief an<l higher prerogative is its independence of all matter, both in its existence and in its activity.

18. It is for those who deny the existence of the soul after death, or for those who make the soul a function or a power of a material organism, to prove that matter or organism can possess the powers of thought and will. We affirm it to be repugnant to the order and facts of nature to make thought a function or power of matter which is not capable in and by itself even of sense. But no proof has ever been offered, except that the scalpel has not yet found the soul. If you say matter, we know, but soul we do not know. I answer, not knowing disproves nothing.

19. When Horace said, " Non omnis moriar "

" I shall not all die "—or the whole of me will not die

— he did not only mean that he would live in his " Odes" and " Satires." He meant that he was conscious of something in himself independent of the body, which would survive when the body should die. He meant to say, My poems and I will live on when this material organism, in which and by which I feel, and have •cognisance of sensible things, shall be dissolved. Thus that which distinguishes me from the world of irrational animals cannot be affected by the dissolution of the material organism in which I eat and drink.

21. The denial of this would make us read, " Omnis omnino moriar " — I shall altogether die, or I shall die •every bit of me, and leave nothing behind but my memory, good or evil, and old clothes.

22. The dissolution of the material organism with draws from sense the phenomena of a personal mind and agency; but it in no way proves that the personal mind has ceased to exist. It in no way proves the cessation of that which existed and acted independently of sense. But reason and will are, and act independently of sense. Reason and will are not the phenomena of matter; they are intrinsically independent of matter, as in thought and volition; though they may also act through and upon matter, as by the eye, or by the arm. They are independent of our material organisation: (1) in consciousness of existence; (2) in the sensus intinuis; (3) in the perceiving of internal facts of intellectual and moral consciousness; (4) in abstract reasoning; (5) in the power of numbers; (6) in moral sense.

23. I therefore affirm that the person, the principle and radix of rational operations, and therefore the rational operations themselves, cannot be proved to cease, because the material organism which man has in common with the lower animals, with plants, and with crystals, is dissolved.

24. The onus probandi lies wholly on those who assert it. The personal survival is in possession, and cannot be dispossessed till it is turned out of the consciousness of mankind by evident reason.

25. But we may go further. Thought and will are not material. Therefore they are not dissoluble. The radix of thought and will, which I would call rational soul, if people would let me, is, like its pro ducts, not material, therefore not dissoluble. I affirm this on a self-evident law of all existences; every product is homogeneous with its root. The vital actions of the soul are immaterial, that is, simple, therefore indissoluble, and therefore, unless by the intervention of some other law, imperishable.

26. In the case of the lower animals, which have a vegetative and sentient life, there is this other law: the sphere and term of their existence is in their transient state. They serve man in this earthly period. They have no moral personality, no probation, no judgment to come. The law of their creation is that their life should be terminable. When the material organism is dissolved, the ox dies. " Omnis moritur." He dies every bit of him. There is no life extending beyond and independent of the material organism. Like the vine and the cedar, so the ox serves man and dies by the law of its own nature.

27. But of man none of these predicates can be made. There is that in him which lives, feels, thinks, wills, independently of matter. He can both act through his material organism and independently of it: "Animus velox sine corpore currit."

28. Nay, further, there is strong presumption that the vital actions of thought and will are even extended after the dissolution of the material organism through which they acted before death. It localises, narrows, confines them. The body is mensurable in quantity. The " vita intellectiva " has no mensurable quantity in genere continui — that is, as bodies have. It rests, again, upon the objectors to do what has not been done yet— I mean, to show that thought and will cease when the body dies. The presumption is not only that they live, but that they are extended in their range aiid their activity.

29. Such was the judgment of Aristotle, who may be taken as the highest witness of the evidence of natural reason. In the Tenth Book of the "Ethics " he says that happiness, gySa/^owa, after death will consist not in well-doing, or gysrf ag/a, as in this life, because there will be none to whom we can do good, for there will be none who need it; but in Qtuofa, or contemplation, by which he affirms the survival of the vital operations of the intellectual life; and if it be bliss, it implies the extension and perfection of the intellectual power, and therefore of the nature or radix from which they spring: or, as he would say, and we may say with him, of the %|/y^ or soul.

30. I have affirmed with all, except those who-deny the existence of the soul as an immaterial entity, that it is in its nature uucompoundecl, or incomposite —that is, it is made up of no parts or elements which, as they cohere, so they may he dissolved. It is, there fore, absolute in its simplicity.

31. But what is simple cannot he dissolved.

(1) It has no separable or soluble elements.

(2) It is indestructible by external force.

(3) It cannot commit suicide. Eternal death is eternal life of evil and remorse.

32. Therefore the soul survives, that is, it lives on, eadcm numcro, in all its personal identity after death. Its state is changed: its identity is not changed. To use modern terminology, the physical Ego is changed, so far as the material organism: the psychical Ego is not changed, for extension of its sphere, energy, and powers is not change, but perfection.

33. The reliquite upon earth, by word, by action, by writing, survive not personally, but in the intelligence and will, in the life and formation of other men and of nations. But this is not a survival of the soul, but of the work wrought by the soul. It is impersonal in itself, and exists only in the persons of other men.

34. The sum of my argument is this:

(1) That matter as such has no life in itself.

(2) That organism as such has no life in itself. Therefore,

(3) That organised matter has no life in itself, for neither element can give what it has not.

(4) That organised matter plus vegetative life becomes a plant.

(5) That vegetative life is heterogeneous as regards matter and organism, and therefore is not contained in them, but it is the differentia or necessary constituent part of a plant.

(6) That organised matter plus sentient and animal life becomes an animal nature.

(7) That this sentient and animal life is heterogeneous as regards the matter and organism, but is the necessary differentia of an animal nature.

(8) That a material organism plus vegetative, sentient, and intellectual life becomes human nature.

(9) That this intellectual life is heterogeneous as regards the matter and organism of the body, and also the vegetative and animal life, but it is the necessary differentia which constitutes the human species or human nature. Without it, humanity or man does not exist.

(10) That the dissolution of the material organism affords no proof of the cessation of the intellectual life, because the intellectual life is not material. It is heterogeneous as regards matter, and therefore not included in the same laws.

(11) That the cessation of the vegetative life, when the material organism is dissolved, is no proof.of the cessation of the intellectual life in man, which is heterogeneous as regards the vegetative life, and not subject to the same laws.

(12) That the cessation of the animal life is no proof of the cessation of the intellectual life, because the intellectual life is heterogeneous as regards the nnimnl life, and is not included in the same laws and destinies.

(13) From this I conclude that the death of the body affords no proof of the cessation of the intellectual life. But the intellectual life is the vital action of the soul. Therefore the soul does not die with the body, but survives when the body dies.

85. Finally, " Non omiris moriar" is a consciousness of my rational nature. It clings to me at every moment. It is confirmed by my hopes and by my fears, by the dictates of my reason and by the instincts of my heart, by my conscious relation to a Supreme Law-Giver, by my whole sense of moral responsibility to Him, and by a sleepless anticipation of an account, a balancing, and a completion hereafter of my moral life and state now. And this consciousness is not derived from sense, nor dependent upon sense. I am more sure of its truth than of any reports of sense, and of any syllogisms of logic. Moreover, what I find in my own consciousness I find to exist in the consciousness of others; and not of one or two here and there, but of all about me. And I read of it as having existed in all men, at all times, and in all places. And this communis sensns of men is a certain evidence of truth, not so much by reason of the number or multitude of witnesses, as by the universal voice of human nature, which is the voice of its Maker and of its Judge.

The argument thus far rests upon the observed facts of Nature. Sceptics may deny the arguments, but they cannot deny the facts. And how much soever they may deny the arguments, they cannot prove their denial by reason. I have affirmed that the consciousness of a personal identity which will survive the death of the body has been universal in the human race. So far as any records remain, evidences of this belief continually appear, both explicitly or implicitly.

1. For, first, it is certain that all mankind has seen and suffered death. The first sight of death — whether it came by murder or by disease matters not —must have raised the question of the future. To suppose that the father and mother, the kindred surviving the dead, thought only of the body without life, and had no care or even curious thought of the life or the living and personal identity which had been their joy, is an incredible imagination, or, I will say, a heartless and senseless scepticism.

2. But every generation of man, and every man in every generation, has been familiar with death from the beginning of the world; the funeral rites of all nations have compelled men to think of death, and of the state after death. It may with truth be said that a belief in the existence of God, and of the soul, and of its survival after the death of the body, pervaded the consciousness of the old world so profusely as to degenerate not into atheism, but into polytheism and pantheism; not^ into materialism, but into the anima mundi; not into Comtism or Agnosticism, but into the elaborate visions of Elysian Fields and of the Plutonian realms. Atbeism and materialism are modern aberrations from the consciousness of the human race.

3. If it be said that the rearing of pyramids and the embalming of bodies in the Egyptian dynasties signified only the memory of the past, I must answer that this is to beg the question. If it proves nothing, it disproves nothing. To perpetuate the memory of the past is to imply a hope of a perpetuity to come.

4. However this may be, it is certain that the literature of Greece and Rome is pervaded by a belief not only of a future state, but of a retributive justice which will dispense happiness or misery, according to justice and mercy. Homer and Virgil are proof enough. The words " Quisque suos patimur manes"1 affirm survival and a retribution. But perhaps it will be said that in proportion as the human intellect advanced in cultivation, scepticism as to the existence of God, of the soul, and of its survival after death, rose into the ascendent. We are told that Aristotle did not believe in God, and that Cicero was a sceptic. It may not be amiss to let them speak for themselves, for they are, without doubt, the two culminating intellects of the Greek and of the Roman race.

5. So far were the highest intellects of the Greek world from disbelieving the existence of the soul, that they each one had a theory of its nature. Alcmreon •aid that it was in perpetual motion and immortal;

1 JZneid, lib. vi. 744.

Diogenes, that it was air; Dernocritus, that it was fire and motion; Anaxagoras, that it was essentially distinct from everything else, the source of motion endowed with cognitive power, and separate from all without. Empedocles thought it to partake of the four elements, with love and hatred as principles of motion; Pythagoras held it to be a mixture of contrary elements and qualities, with an universality of cognition; Xenocrates said that the soul is a number (or indivisible unity) moving itself. Last of all, Plato unites psychology, or the sciences of the soul, with cosmology, or the science of the world. He thought the world to be a Divine immortal being, having a rotatory body and a rational soul, with cognition and motive power. He believed every man to possess a debased copy of the perfect rational soul of the cosmos or world. 2 All this is quoted not for pedantry, but to show how far they are from the truth who imagine that the intellects of the old world were unconscious of the soul. They so profusely believed in its existence as to speculate intensely as to its nature. In all their diversities they believed it to be something independent of the material body, and in its separate state to be:

" A devouring flame of thought, A naked and eternally restless mind." 3

6. All these theories were too indefinite and too vague for Aristotle. He believed the soul to be a, form which brings the potential into actuality; a substance endowed with energy and motion. The highest ele-

• Grote's Aristotle, c. xii. " De Anima." London, 1880. 3 Arnold's " Empedocles on Etna."

ment in the soul, he says, is vovg, or the intelligence or reason; and the perfection of the soul is, according to him, in the highest energy of the highest part or power of the soul exercised on the highest matter subject to it. 4 He adds, that even well-doing to others is less perfect than contemplation of the Divine; and that perfect happiness is in contemplation. Therefore the life of the gods is the happiest. But they have no deeds of well-doing to discharge. So, also, when well doing is impossible to men, what remains but contemplation? and men only are capable of contemplation. " The whole life of the gods," he says, "is blessed; and of men in the measure in which there is a likeness of this energy " 5 of contemplation. " But such a life as this would be better than the life of man. For it would not be living as a man, but as there is some thing Divine in him." ' This happiness of the intelligence is not in this life only, for Aristotle holds the vovg or reason of man to be immortal. Apart from Revelation, no one has approached so near to the immortality of the soul and to the Beatific Vision. Aristotle says also that of all living beings, man alone is capable of happiness, because he alone is capable of the higher life; and from this higher life he excludes those who live in vicious or the lower enjoyment of human pleasures or passions.

7. The intellectual tradition of the Greek world passed into the ruder and more material Roman mind; and we may find it fully represented in the first book

• Arist., Ethic.Vfcoro., lib. x. c. vii. • Ibid. lib. x. c. viii.

8 Ibid. c. vii. 185 of Cicero's Tusculan Disputations on The Contempt of Death, which he rests upon the belief of immortality. After reciting the opinions or philosophies of the Greeks, he says: "Many contend against this, and inflict death on the mind, as if it were under capital sentence; and for no other reason is the eternity of the mind incredible, but because they cannot under stand or comprehend in thought of what kind the mind is out of the body/' But he adds, " To me, when I contemplate often the nature of the mind, it is much more difficult and more obscure to conceive what the mind is in the body as in a strange house, than what it is when it shall have gone out, and come into the free heaven as if into its own home. For unless we are unable to understand what anything is which we have never seen, we are certainly able to comprehend in thought both God Himself and the Divine mind liberated from the body." He goes on to say, "We are not our bodies, nor in saying this am I speaking to your body, but to you."7 Cicero then quotes the argument of Socrates in the PJucdo of Plato: "That which is always in motion is eternal; but that which gives motion to another, being itself moved from some other source, when the motion comes to an end, necessarily comes to the end of life. That only which moves itself never ceases to be moved, for it is never deserted by itself.... Forasmuch as it is evident that whatsoever moves itself is eternal, who can deny that this nature is imparted to the mind?" 8 " Homer," he says, " transferred human nature to the gods. I r Tusc. Disp., lib. i. xxii. * Ibid, xxiii.

VOL. III. ee had rather transfer Divine things to us. What are these Divine things? To live, to know, to discover, to remember. Therefore the mind (which, as I say, is Divine) is, as Euripides dares to say, God. And, indeed, if God or the soul (anima) is fire, such also is the mind of man: for as that heavenly nature is free from earth and moisture, so the mind of man is free from both of these. But if there be a fifth nature (element), which Aristotle first introduced, this is the nature both of gods and of minds." 9 Cicero then sums up his own opinion in a passage from his work De liepublica as follows: "No origin of the mind can be found on earth; for in the mind there is nothing mixed or concrete, or which seems to be born or fashioned of the earth, there is nothing of moisture, or air, or fire. For in these natures there is nothing that has the power of memory, or intelligence, or thought, capable of retaining the past, of foreseeing the future, or of embracing the present; which powers are Divine alone, nor will any source be ever found whence they can come to man except from God. The nature and power of the mind is, therefore, singular, apart from all usual and known natures; so that whatsoever it be that feels and knows, and lives and acts, is heavenly and Divine, and for that reason it is by necessity eternal. Nor can God Himself, Who is understood by us, be under stood in any other way except as an intelligence, inde pendent and free, separate from all mortal admixture, perceiving and moving all things, having in itself eternal motion." 10 These passages are given in full in

• Tutc. Ditp., xxvi. lf Ibid. xx?ii.

order to show that a belief in the existence of the soul pervaded the ancient world not as a superstition of gross minds, but as a result from the most searching analysis of the nature of man. It pervaded the unanalysed consciousness of mankind, as the witness of personal identity of which no man could doubt, and it was confirmed by the introspection and severe ratiocination of the highest intellects of the old world. These two witnesses from the Greek and Roman races are not isolated testimonies. They sum up and lay bare the most advanced thoughts of the human intellect external to the light of Revelation. They so profoundly realised the existence, and it may be said the necessary existence, of a nature higher and nobler than matter, that they conceived the world to have a soul, and that soul Divine. The modern materialism and the pollarded Catholicism of Comte have no root in the old world. They are the last word of the philosophy of sense, and are at variance with the history of the human mind. Such works as Cudworth's Intellectual System ought to have rendered impossible such deviations from the rational tradition of mankind.

Our argument hitherto amounts to this: that the lights of nature make known to us the existence of the soul as- distinct from the body; that there is no rea son to show that the death of the body involves the death of the soul; and, lastly, that the lights of nature affirm the survival of the soul. Further, that belief in the existence of the soul and its survival after the death of the body has pervaded the human race, and that these truths were perceived and unfolded in the measure in which the intellectual culture of men advanced, and culminated in the chief intellects of the Greek and Roman worlds.

It is, therefore, contrary to the history of mankind to suppose that the existence of the soul and a future state are made known to us only by Revelation. They are truths of the natural order— doctrines of natural religion, known from the beginning, and believed by all mankind. If any sceptics or unbelievers in these truths were to be found, they were as the handful of the blind among all men who see. The evidences of natural religion are so manifest and abundant that those who do not believe the power and divinity of God are inexcusable.11 Even they who refuse to believe in Christianity are here in contradiction with the lights of nature.

1. We may now go on to the witness and teaching of the Catholic Church. The preambles of faith include the large and luminous religion or theology of nature, the existence and perfections of God, the existence, spirituality, and immortality of the soul, the power and freedom of the will, the eternal distinction of right and wrong, the moral law based upon it, the responsibility of man to the Law-giver, the rewards and penalties attached to the law, the awards of retribution after death. All these are known by the

11 Rom. i. 20.

light of nature, and by the law written upon the heart of mankind. 12

2. This religion of nature is carefully guarded by the Church, forasmuch as it is a primeval revelation of God " by the works which He has made." It is taken up and fulfilled in the revelation of faith. Again and again, even in our day, the supreme authority of the Church has vindicated and affirmed the certainty of the religion of nature.

In 1848 the Holy See authoritatively declared that " the use of reason is able to prove with certitude the existence of God. Faith is a heavenly gift which comes after by revelation, and therefore cannot fittingly be al leged against atheists in proof of the existence of God."13 Again, in 1855, the same authority declared that " the use of reason is able to prove with certitude the existence of God, the spirituality of the soul, the liberty of man. Faith follows by revelation, and therefore can not be fittingly alleged against atheists to prove the existence of God, nor against materialism and fatalism /to prove the spirituality and liberty of the rational soul."14

And in 1870 the Vatican Council, having before it not any new heresy or mutilation of Christianity, but the materialism, naturalism, and rejection of the lights and laws of nature, which for three hundred years have been spreading like the stifling sand of the desert over the face of Christendom, began its work by summing up and republishing the religion of nature. It teaches

12 Rcm. ii. 14, 15. 13 Denzinger's Enchiridion, 1488, p. 441.

« Ibid. 1506, p. 452.

as follows: " That there is one true and living God, Creator and Lord of heaven and earth, almighty, eternal, immense, incomprehensible, infinite in intelligence, in will, and in all perfections, Who, as being one sole absolutely simple and immutable spiritual substance, is to be declared as really and essentially distinct from the world, supreme in beatitude in and from Himself, and ineffably exalted above all things which exist, or are conceivable except Himself.

11 This one only true God, of His own goodness and almighty powrer, not for the increase or acquirement of His own happiness, but to manifest His perfection by the blessing which He bestows on creatures, and with absolute freedom of counsel, created out of nothing from the beginning of time both the spiritual and corporeal creature — that is, the angelical and the mundane — and afterwards the human creature as par taking of both — that is, of spirit and of body."

In this declaration of faith is contained the solution of all the questions of Greek and Roman speculations, religious and philosophical. The Revelation of Jesus Christ " has brought to light life and incorruption by the Gospel." 1C It has cast a light upon the life of man, which was obscurely comprehended before, and upon incorruption, which was dimly seen in the simplicity and eternity of the mind. Revelation, or the illumination of supernatural truths, does not only bring things which lie beyond the horizon of nature within the intelligence of man, but it fills the whole world

'* Dogmatic Constitution on Catholic Faith, c. i. '•II. Tim. i. 10.

with a light in which the primeval truths of the natural order become self-evident and complete.

3. It would be waste of time and of words to prove what even unbelievers admit — namely, ihat both the Jewish and the Christian world have believed that God and the soul, and the responsibility of the soul to God, both in this life and after death, are, and have ever been, the faith and consciousness of men.

We have seen that Aristotle held that form is of a higher nature than matter: that form gives actuality or actual existence to matter; and is, therefore, the cause why anything has its special and proper exist- -ence. He says that mind, or vovg, is the form which constitutes human nature, and that it is a likeness of the Divine, or, indeed, Qtiov n, something Divine in us. In like manner the Church teaches that the soul is the form of the body; that the body is concrete and corruptible; that the soul being spiritual is incorruptible; that the body will be dissolved; that the soul cannot be dissolved; that we shall survive the death of the body, and give account of all things done in the body, " whether it be good or evil."

4. We have travelled a long way and over a heavy soil to reach this point — namely, what is the state after death? But it has seemed better to review the whole subject in outline, and to show that while reasoning cannot disprove the survival of the soul after death, the consciousness and the reasoning of the old world and of the new — that is, of the whole human race — has borne steadfast witness to a day of reckon-

17 II. Oor. v. 10.

ing to come, and that the state of the soul after death will be determined by its state and acts in this life.

5. \Ve must now define what we mean by a future state. Does the term state signify a locality and its circumstances, or a subjective condition of those who are in it? Or does it signify both? In its primary and proper sense a state is a stable and permanent condition of anything, whether of a person or of his surroundings. There can be no state of anything which has ceased to exist, unless we are pleased to say that the body returns to the state of dust. But in speaking of the soul it signifies existence or incorruption, the indissoluble unity of the soul in its life and simplicity.

6. But it signifies or involves something more than this. It has a moral sense. The soul in this life passes from what is potential into what is actual. It& powers, capacities, faculties, affections, and passions, for good or for evil, for rectitude or for distortion, for conformity or, as Aristotle says, for likeness to a Divine life, or for deformity and degradation, are unfolded in this life. The soul or the man becomes good or evil, pure or impure, true or false, just or unjust, and the ultimate shape, or attitude, or colour of the soul at the death of the body, so far as we know by nature, is thenceforward fixed, stable, and permanent. As we live, so we die; as we die, so we shall be. There is nothing in the lights of nature to suggest or even to hint that those who die in the actual form of evil can pass after death into the actual form of good. If reason cannot affirm even the extinction of the soul with the body, much less can it make any predicates whatsoever as to the state of the soul after the death of the body. The only answer I know is, "I do not believe in souls," or " I do not know that the soul exists after death." This is a cheap answer. But it has against it the belief of the whole world, old and new; and want of knowledge disproves nothing; and disbelief is an act not of the pure reason only, but also of the will. The reason may be averted or perverted by a wrill that is biassed or bribed.

7. We may lay down, then, that there is a state of the soul after death, and that, for good or for evil, it is fixed at death, and eternal.

8. That this twofold state is one either of happiness or of misery is undeniably manifest by the analogy of nature, and by the facts of our moral life in this world. The just, pure, upright, and merciful, in spite of all sorrow and suffering from without, have a mental happiness of their own internal and immutable. If that state were fixed, raised to a perfect fulness, shielded from the outward evils and sorrows of this life, and made perpetual after death, it would be a state of bliss. For heaven is essentially not only a place, but a character; a conformity to the perfections of God, and a capacity to enjoy them by a kindred nature. Even Aristotle could see this in his opoiufJUx n rqg rotavrrig \vtgytfag. We may say of him in the words of Tertullian, 0 anima naturaliter Christiana. So also that the unjust, impure, false, and cruel, with all their wilful indulgence of low enjoyments of passion,, and, all the more, in the measure of their unlimited

42G THE SOUL BEFORE AND AFTER DEATH.

indulgence of sense, are in this world unsatisfied, craving, insatiable, disappointed, baffled, jealous, resentful, and full of sorrows: and not of sorrows only, but of pains, which are penal consequences of their lawless and wilful enjoyment of devouring lusts: all this is as certain and as visible as the laws which govern the tides. But the moral world is a counterpart of the natural world. " Be not deceived, God is not mocked: whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. He that soweth in his flesh, of the flesh also shall reap corruption: but he that soweth in the spirit, of the spirit shall reap life everlasting." 18 These are, indeed, the words of Revelation; but what do they affirm beyond the affirmations of Aristotle, who, in ascribing a blessed life to those who have in them a likeness to the Divine life, expressly excludes those who by living in lower and evil enjoyments have no such likeness to the Divine? What is this but the vision of peace, and the pama damni the pain of loes, the privation which is wilfully earned by a corrupt life? " The wages of sin is death." l9 The wages are earned and will bepaid. The labourer is worthy of his hire, and his master is not God.

9. There are, and there can be, only two states in this life or after death. " He that is not with Me is against Me." If our will is not conformed to God's will, it is at variance with it. There is no neutrality: neutrality is treason. Even Seneca could say that " the soul is God dwelling in us;" and the soul is our life, and united with God is eternal life. So the soul at vari- « Gal. vi. 7,8. " Horn. vi. 23.

ance with God is separated from Him, and separation from God is eternal death.

10. We are now among the lights of the supernatural order, and we might confirm our reasoning hy a multitude of citations from the Divine Tradition of the Faith. But I refrain from all details. They are well known to those who believe; those who cavil would cavil still. It is enough to give the outlines which are derived from the light of reason and from the illumination of faith. There is a state of happiness after death for all who die in union with God. It is inchoate in the realm of purification; it is made perfect in the Vision of Bliss. So also there is a state of pain after death for all who die culpably separated from God: that is, the loss or privation of God in the outer darkness, "where the worm dieth not:" in other words, an eternal remorse for wilful self-murder. There is also a pain " where the fire is not quenched." So the Redeemer and Judge of men has declared. It is not for us to contradict or to explain away His words. They are for our warning. The obedient will need no interpretations. I have said culpably, because as no one will be saved except by the grace of God, so none will be lost except by his own will. Every soul that loses the vision of God dies by its own hand. No one will be lost because he dies, geographically, out of the Church, but culpably out of it by wilful resistance to the known truth. We are taught by the Divine Teacher that there is forgiveness for all who know not what they do. Responsibility is measured by knowledge. No man can be ignorant of the truths which are taught by the light of nature. Of these truths no ignorance is invincible. The works of God preach them in all the world.

11. No man is responsible for not knowing the Ono Name by which we are saved, the one baptism for the remission of sin, the one fold of the one Shepherd, to whom these truths have never been made known. The ignorance, therefore, of the heathen world, until the Divine Witness speaks to them, is, both physically and morally, invincible. God has not revealed to us how He will deal with those who have never heard the name of Jesus; but He has revealed to us that His mercies are over all His works; that He so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that all who believe in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life; that Jesus has tasted death for every man; that He is the Lamb that taketh away the sin of the world; that He would have all men " to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth;" " that the Spirit of the Lord has tilled the whole earth." Resting upon these Divine foundations, the Head of the Church has condemned those who said: "Pagans, Jews, and heretics, and others of this kind, receive no influx (of grace) from Jesus Christ:; and from this fact the inference is right that in them the will is bare and unarmed, being alto gether without sufficient grace." 20 This is contrary to the Faith. Catholic theology teaches that " to all men of age of responsibility, even infidels, grace i& given, either proximately or remotely, sufficient for salvation.'"21 As in Adam all die, so all in Christ shall

9 Alexander VIII.

11 Hazier, Theul. Doam. Compend., torn. iii. pp.51, 52.

be made alive. S. Thomas affirms that, *• If any man reared up in the forests, and among the brute animals, should follow the guidance of reason in the desire for good and the avoidance of evil, it is most certainly to be held that either God by internal inspiration will reveal to him what it is necessary to believe, or will send to him a preacher of the Faith, as He sent Peter to Cornelius." Orosius, the disciple of S. Augustine, writes: "My firm and undoubted conviction always is that God gives His grace not only in His body, which is the Church, to which, for the faith of those who believe, He bestows special gifts of His grace, but also to all nations in the world He bestows it, through His long-suffering and eternal mercy day by day, by times and seasons and moments, and to all and to every one.": They who know the only revealed way through the vision of faith to the vision of God in eternity are bound by the law, ''Extra Ecclesiarn nulla salus," to obey the Spirit of Truth. They who might know the truth if they had the will are bound to search until they know it. They who neither physically nor morally can know it are in the hands that were pierced for them on the Cross, and the Eternal Love has many mysteries of His unrevealed grace which are not written in our theology.

• Hurter, Theol. Dogm. Compend., torn. iii. p. 53.