Chapter 19

Animal death

603. The foregoing supposition means that death for the larger, observable animals would simply be the dissolution of their fundamental feeling. Their individual existence would perish because of the loss of the organic composition suitable for the stimulated feeling which individuates the fundamental feeling.

604. Nevertheless in this event the primal, elementary feeling would not cease to exist. It would simply be composed differently, accumulated and stimulated, or, after dividing down to the elementary state, would receive other individuations, and thus cause the existence of other animals and living elements. This would explain spontaneous generation; indeed all generation would be reduced to a single law.

605. Metaphysicians, I am sure, would consider this not only as very possible and without harmful consequences, but as probable, if 1. they began their reasoning from internal observation of the consciousness of their own feeling; 2. they realised that without this observation, which makes them conscious of their feeling, the sensitive soul could not be known; 3. they accepted that the soul is found only in feeling and is defined as a feeling principle; 4. they acknowledged in this feeling principle an extended, variable, divisible and multipliable term; and 5. they noted that the principle exists only by adhering to its term, and multiplies when the term multiplies.

606. Note, however, that the intelligent soul is a higher principle. Intelligent being therefore cannot lose its identity and individuality through the loss of corporeal feeling, as I will explain later at greater length.

607. It may perhaps be objected against the universal law which I have discussed that no animal has yet been obtained by uniting purely inorganic substances. I know that some chemists claim to have obtained a rudimentary organisation by making purely inorganic substances interact but, leaving this aside, I maintain that the objection does not necessarily destroy the universality of the law I have proposed. It has already been demonstrated that certain, extremely simple aggregations of elements cannot give observable signs of life, even if they had it.

Whether elements joined in such a way as to acquire the wonderful organisation without which life cannot be seen or manifested externally by continuous, extrasubjective movements, need a pre-existent organisation as a kind of suitable machine in which the second composition can be elaborated and ordered, is a separate question.

608. Finally, it may be objected that according to this theory animal death would only take place as a result of disorganisation. Nevertheless, in certain corpses there is no sign of disorganisation. I reply:

1. Disorganisation can evade observation, as in fact often happens(305).

2. If life adheres to elements so minute that they escape human observation, the break-up of organisation may indeed be unobservable.

3. Finally, all observations carried out so far to discover which disorders in organisation cause death were made on human corpses. In human beings however there is a principle superior to the body. We cannot demonstrate as impossible that this principle has the power to divide spontaneously from the body without any preceding organic decomposition, although in this case, I think, a momentary alienation rather than a true separation must take place.

609. I must add here that the hypothesis of life in the first elements would reconcile two apparently contradictory opinions expressed by the best authors who, we must believe, had no real intention of contradicting each other so grossly.

The most brilliant minds thought that the immortality of the human soul could be proved from its being the life of the body. They argued that 'because the body receives the life of the soul, it is by nature dead. But the soul, which gives life to the body, cannot cease to live because it itself is life.'(306) This way of arguing is very solid, and valid for both the human and the animal soul. It demonstrates that the principle which gives life to the body, whether joined with intelligence or not, cannot perish.

The same eminent authors, who argue in this way, teach that the souls of animals perish. How then can they be reconciled with themselves?

610. The answer is: by the theory of life of the primal elements of matter, a life distinct from the organic-stimulated life proper to animals. Primal, hidden, initial life, which never perishes, pertains to the elements, and the argument given above fits it most aptly. But the patent life of animals does not consist in the primal feeling alone; it requires in addition stimulation, which must be continuous and regular. In other words, it requires organisation which reproduces a harmonious stimulation in a perpetual cycle. Hence, when the organisation is destroyed, the animal perishes. But although its very own life perishes, life remains, that is, the principle of its life or the soul adhering to the primal elements into which the organism breaks up.

611. The other argument for the immortality of the soul, deduced from the spontaneity of movement(307) applies equally to the sensitive and the intellective principle. Under suitable conditions, both have an ability to move of themselves. This argument is certainly efficacious but for proving the immortality of the life of the primal elements not the immortality of the individual intellective soul.

612. It is no surprise therefore that many of the ancient philosophers, unable to distinguish between the stimulated life of animals and the quiescent life of the elements, had maintained the immortality of both human and animal souls. Among such philosophers were the Indian Buddha or Shakyamuni, who said that animal souls differed only relative to the subject in which they were present. Hence, these philosophers again made the mistake of distinguishing the subject of the soul from the soul itself.(308)

There are other, equally impressive arguments favouring the opinion that atoms are animated, but I will deal with them as corollaries of truths yet to be explained (cf. 459-460).

Notes

(305)Cf. Houdart, Etudes historiques et critiques sur la vie et la doctrine d'Hippocrate etc., bk. 3, sect. 2, which reports some facts about corpses in which disorganisation was accidentally found only at a later stage.

(306) St. Augustine writes: 'There are those who have found that the substance (of the soul) is not a kind of corporeal life but a LIFE WHICH ANIMATES AND VIVIFIES THE WHOLE LIVING BODY. Consequently, they have tried as best they could to prove that the soul is immortal BECAUSE LIFE CANNOT LACK LIFE' (De Trinit., 10, n. 9). By 'body', he always means, he says, that which is extended 'whose location in space is less than the whole of space'. He thus excludes the sensitive principle, the soul of animals, as a body. Prior to him, St. Ambrose had said: 'The soul which creates life does not receive death' (De mortis bono, c. 9).

Later, Cassiodorus uses the same argument: 'Authors of secular works have proved in many ways that souls are immortal. According to them, everything that vivifies something else is itself alive. The soul is therefore immortal because it vivifies the body and is itself alive' (De Anima, c. 8). St. Bernard argues in the same way: 'The living soul is certainly life, but only and exclusively of itself. If we want to speak about it correctly, we should say that it is life rather than living. Consequently, the soul when infused into the body, vivifies it. Here the body is alive through the presence of life, but it is not itself life' (Super Cant. Serm. 81); he thus concludes to the immortality of the soul. This kind of reasoning was common to the Platonic philosophers; cf. Proclus, Theol. Platon., bk. 3, c. 1 and 21; bk. 4, c. 184-189; Iamblichus, De Myst. Aegypt., sect. 8; Macrobius, In Somn. Scip., bk. 2, c. 13-17.

(307) St. Athanasius uses the argument in this way: 'If the soul moves the body but is not itself moved by something else, it must be moved by itself, and after the body has been placed in the ground, the soul continues to be moved by itself' (Orat. contra idola).

(308) Naigeon, Philosophie ancienne et moderne, vol. 1, p. 245. Many Platonic philosophers argued in the same way: the soul is the principle of movement; therefore the souls of animals, they concluded, must be immortal. Cf. Plutarch, Adv. Colot., and Romul.; Apuleius, De Deo Socrat.; Maximus Tyrius, Disp. 27-28; Plotinus, Aenn. 4, bk. 7; Macrobius, In Somn. Scrip., bk. 1, c. 17, and Huet, Alnet. Quaestiones, bk. 2, c. 8.