Chapter 3

The spirituality of the soul is proved directly through consciousness

131. Difficulties in consenting to this affirmation spring from the prejudice, 'There can be no feeling other than corporeal feeling.' This, as I said, is a prejudice. The species is taken for the genus. Because corporeal feeling is easily known, we arbitrarily conclude that every feeling must be corporeal. There is here a huge leap from the particular to the general. But to a careful observer of nature it is clear that feelings exist which are totally different from those produced by our own body or other bodies. On the other hand, no one can demonstrate that spiritual feelings, that is, feelings which do not terminate in any extension or matter, are absurd.

132. Direct meditation on myself shows without difficulty that there is such a feeling. The word myself does in fact express a feeling altogether different from every corporeal fantasy; myself offers neither extension, shape, colour nor anything else proper to any body whatsoever. The substance of the soul expressed by the word myself is, therefore, incorporeal and altogether immaterial. Every time we add something corporeal or material to it, we simply add to myself with the imagination that which is not present in it, but is the term of its acts. As we have already seen, the soul is neither its acts nor the term of its acts; all these things have to be separated from it if we are to reach the soul itself.

133. But a substance which has no bodily or material property is called 'spiritual' or spirit. The human soul, therefore, is a spirit.