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REALITY New York, New York, USA February 1924 (pages 59-61)
The Editor, “REALITY”
Dear Sir:
In regard to the brief article entitled “The Soul” by Benjamin F. Woodcox, which appears in the current issue of “Reality.” The evident intention of Mr. Woodcox is to clear up any confusion that may exist in regard to the true nature of the Soul, but, if I may be permitted to say so, there is a possibility that this attempt may only lead to further confusion since it is not based on a right understanding of the true nature of the Soul.
The Soul is not an "organ or contrivance." It is a substance, and as such it underlies all attributes, is a real being having an intrinsic unity of its own, and is the subject of its own qualities and acts.
Every activity is the act of some substance, every effect is produced upon some substance, and every passion is experienced by some substance.
Man is the highest of corporeal substances, but also, at one and the same time, the lowest of spiritual substances; he may therefore rightly be termed a spiritual-corporeal substance. Substantiality does not, however, imply materiality, and therefore it does not imply extension or any attribute of matter. A substantial form is the formative principle which makes any finite substance, of whatever degree or dignity, what is is. The name soul is properly applied to those substantial forms, or corporeal existences, which are of so high an order that in the substance as a whole the formal attributes clearly predominate over the material.
Life is not a substance, but a quality or attribute, and it consists essentially in self-determination. Terrestrial life is the manifestation of soul; the soul is a formative principle of so high an order that it begins to clearly preponderate over the matter that it informs, and the life is the evident preponderance itself, the totality of the operations by which the preponderance is manifested, or the soul itself considered as the cause of those operations.
The spirit is not separate from the soul, but is simply the totality of the spiritual faculties which are its higher planes, or, more particularly, the mystical faculty, which is the highest plane of all. The same soul which worships and aspires and knows is the cause of sensation, digestion and all the vital processes. It is devoid of parts, and is present, whole and entire, in each minutest particle of the living body, as well as in every part of the universe in which it is acting at the time by thought, emotion or volition. Its faculties are not distinct portions of it, or entities of any kind, but simply modes of its potential activities or powers which it is capable of exercising.
The soul of man is only half immersed in matter, its lower potentialities belonging to the corporeal realm and its higher to the spiritual or ideal. Man's soul comes from the Ideal and returns to It; his body comes from the earth and returns to it; but he himself endures, in undivided substantiality, capable of renewing, normally in greater perfection, the body whose essential principles he has withdrawn into himself.
When a human substance is corrupted,
under the general law of nature, its spirituality prevents
the corruption from being complete. The corruption thus
affects its corporeal planes only, those alone being part of
Nature or naturally subject to its laws. But even on these
planes it is only the material element which is corrupted,
the formative principle that governs and determines the
corporeal nature being one and the same soul which is the
seat of the higher activities and is spiritual in its
essence and therefore necessarily and forever incorruptible.
Therefore while the formative or vital principle of the body
remains in the soul, being inseparable from it and identical
with it, the matter of the body is eliminated.
Were we to accept the explanation tendered by Mr. Woodcox, we should have to admit the possibility of the breaking up of the formative principle which is not alone a valuable asset, but the very principle by which man is man, rather than animal, vegetable, mineral or elemental.
On the other hand, we must not forget that Man is in process of becoming Divine, and this same Soul is the medium whereby that Union may be more and more completely brought about. The Higher Powers are incorporeal substances and are more living than man himself; while God is the Plenum of all that which is partitively represented by finite formas. There is nothing to impede His super-eminent liberty, He is the Absolute Life as He is the Absolute Substance.
Yours in Reality,
Frater Achad [Charles Stansfeld Jones]
Frater Achad was responding to the following article:
REALITY New York, New York, USA January 1924 (page 58)
THE SOUL By Benjamin F. Woodcox
It seems to me that much confusion arises from the use of the word, “Soul.” What does this word “Soul” really mean? What is the soul? Is it not the uniting of the spirit-life with the physical life in the mentality? Is it not the seat of government by which these two lives operate together? Can it in any sense be considered either the one or the other? Is it not the two?
The soul is the mentality. It is that organ or contrivance by which the spirit-life functions in a physical world. And the necessity of this physical world to the development of the spirit-life can be clearly shown.
The word, “Soul” confuses. It misleads. It is in part responsible for the existence of materialism. And being in its only logical sense a plural word, having reference to two lives united in one, it should never be used without explanations. And never should it be used in reference to the inner or spiritlife.
Since the soul has to do with two lives united in one, it is not immortal. It is destroyed by the separation of the two lives. But the inner or spirit-life is immortal. It existed before it was united with the physical life in the mentality, and having existed before it will exist after both the mentality and the physical life shall have been destroyed. |