An old philosophy professor of mine loved to quote: “For the ancients, the problem was death because everything was alive. For the moderns, the problem is life because everything is made of dead stuff.”
We are raised in a culture accustomed to seeing the physical world through the lens of the scientific method — making observations, hypotheses and determining the universal scientific laws by which our world is governed. Yet the soul, being spiritual, is unobservable and therefore not directly detectable through this inductive process.
We know the soul exists much in the same way we know gravity exists. No one has ever seen gravity, yet gravity is discernible through its effects upon the physical world. Similarly, the existence of the soul is known by its effect on physical reality. A cadaver has the same physical configuration as a living body, yet it has lost something essential to its personal nature. At the simplest level, the soul is the principle of life in every living organism. Every animate creature — trees, dogs, corn, ants and even cats — has a soul, yet most of these souls are non-rational and cease to exist at death. These kinds of souls are classically called “vegetative souls” or “animal souls.”
The human soul, on the other hand, is unique. While retaining the universal function of animating the bodily and sensory processes proper to non-rational souls, the human soul has the capacity for thought. We can consider the future, recall the past and make free choices in a way unlike any other creature.
From observation, we believe the human soul is immortal for two reasons. First, each soul can fulfill the desires proper to its nature. A dog desires food, affection and safety, and its soul animates its life to fulfill these desires. On the other hand, humans desire to know and to love in a way beyond what we experience on this earth. For these desires to be fulfilled, the soul continues to exist after death.
Secondly, the operations of sensation and growth are achieved through the body. Yet, while using the physical brain and nervous system, thinking is an operation that also transcends the physical in what can be thought. The human soul has a spiritual operation in nature, indicating that the soul has a spiritual modality of existence beyond the physical operations of our body. This implies that the soul is substantial and can exist apart from its union with the body.
Father Charlie Archer is associate pastor of St. Peter Parish in Kirkwood.