Chapter 7

The human soul is devoid of all matter

830. Having clarified the concept of matter and of first matter, it is now easy to show that the human soul is entirely devoid of all matter. In fact, the concept of matter, summarised briefly, is made up of several elements.
It provides us with:
1. an activity in act in its term, not in its principle;
2. some extension, some mass, as the mode of this activity in act in its term;
3. mobility, that is, an aptitude for receiving and transmitting motion, not for producing it (receiving and transmitting motion pertains to the term; producing it to the principle of activity). But all these things are inherently contradictory to 'soul'.

831. Soul, as we have defined it, is indeed 'the sentient, rational and active principle, according to feeling and rationality'. This definition posits not only a difference, but true opposition between the concept of soul and that of matter. Soul is the principle of an act; matter is thought of simply as term.

Soul as principle is unextended; matter has extension, mass, as its very own essential condition.
The soul as principle is mover, but is not mobile. It is the principle of motion, but is itself immobile.
The soul, therefore, is exclusive of all those elements which constitute the concept of matter.

832. It may not seem easy at first sight to understand how the soul is immobile. The difficulty is overcome by considering carefully that everything moved is thought of as term because movement is the term of the mover-action.

833. Second, motion takes place only in extension. The soul, however, is not in extension either as a continual solid, nor as lines and points, which are only the abstract limits of what is solid and therefore pertain to the solid. In fact, what is solid, and hence its limits, exists only in what is simple. This explains why the best philosophers call the soul that which contains the solid, not that which is contained by it.(45) The continuous solid is, therefore, in the soul without its being soul. Rather, it is in opposition to soul as term is in opposition to principle, and object to subject (this is a result of the connection and communication of substances that constitute the synthesism of nature). In the same way, it can rightly be said that motion occurs in the continuum which is in the soul, but never in the soul itself which has its term, the continuum, in itself.

834. It may be objected that the soul, too, is transported when we take the body from one place to another. This is not true. The soul does not move. All that arises is a new relationship on the part of the soul between its body and the place occupied by the body. It is the body which changes, not the soul. When the body belonging to the soul finds itself in relationship with other exterior objects and with different space, it seems that the soul is transported together with its body. In fact, all that has moved is the felt element of the soul, not the sentient principle. All that is felt in the soul through movement is in the soul as something once felt but now passed. Note carefully that the felt element here is understood as the place of one's own body; the soul, on the other hand, is present to space as a whole (cf. 554-559).(46)

835. The notion of matter implies, therefore, some activity considered in the term of its action. But because the term of an action is that which is done and not that which does, matter has in itself the concept of passive potency, not of active potency.(47)

836. However, the concept of matter does not solely imply the activity lying in its term; it is the term considered as ens, as a term-ens. The understanding, through the principle of cognition, conceives something only as an ens, and ens is joined to that which we first perceive of an entity. If we perceive a term-entity, and nothing prior to it, our concept has as its object a term-ens. In this term-ens, the first thing conceived (the first co-act of the ens which holds everything else that can be distinguished in the ens) is called act or substance or subject.

837. We perceive entia, therefore, in two ways: as principle and as term.

We perceive entia as term when we are passive and receive their activity in our feeling. At that moment, we perceive activity in us as in the term of action, and take the nature of the perceived ens from the nature of the term of its action, the only thing we perceive. This takes place when we perceive bodies.

838. The ens that we perceive as principle of activity is simply ourselves, the soul, which is perceived as our own feeling. In this feeling what we think as first act is distinguished from everything else subsisting in the soul. This first act is, therefore, substance, subject; it is a principle-ens.

839. It is true that the soul also perceives itself as term. Precisely because it perceives itself as feeling (which involves passivity), it realises that its very own existence must have a cause. Its thought is raised to the Creator. Nevertheless, it also perceives itself as active principle. Under this aspect, its concept is opposed to the concept of body which it perceives solely as term-ens, and not as principle-ens.

Notes

(45) Another proof that soul contains body is found in the nature of the action exercised by the soul: '(The soul) TAKES HOLD of the body which is always in flux and prone to corruption and TIGHTENS ITS GRIP on what in the body is insecure and mortal. It bears up what falls, and allows changing, corruptible nourishment to reach fruition. It is not right, therefore, for it to lose its force when separated from the BODY which it CONTAINS and PRESERVES' (St. Isidore of Pelusium, Ep . bk. 3, 235).

(46) St. Thomas offers two arguments to prove that the soul is not composed of matter and form . According to the first argument, the soul is form . But if it had some matter in it, this material part would not be the soul. This argument harmonises with our own proof based on the soul as principle of acts, and matter solely as term. The other argument (which is valid only for the intellective soul) depends on the fact that the intellect understands only by abstracting from matter . In this argument, matter , taken as synonymous with reality , has another meaning (S.T ., I, q. 57, art. 5; Quodl ., 3, art. 20). Moreover, St. Thomas begins from the definition of matter as 'that which is in potency ONLY', a definition which would be suitable only to things considered in their possibility or idea. He would be coherent in doing this because matter would once more be taken as synonymous with reality, which in the idea is only in potency. But amongst possible things soul, as well as matter, is found. This explains why the argument starting from this definition, although basically true, does not convince me.

(47) Matter, because it is a term-ens, retains its name even in the order of cognitions. Consequently, we say that the felt element is the matter of knowledge. But when we say that every object is matter of cognition, we use matter with another, relative meaning. We say that the object is matter of cognition because it is its term. Ideal being considered not as object, but as means of knowledge in which we know everything that we know, is essentially form , and cannot in any way be called matter. This is strengthened by the fact that it is not passive in any sense.