Among the more interesting of the cur rent views concerning the nature of the soul is that which assimilates the soul to the phe nomena of life in general. While this is the tendency of all vitalists, it reaches the high est degree of metaphysical development in the philosophy of Henri Bergson. Bergson's phi losophy is based on the contrast between two aspects of the universe: between the immedi ately given living time and the atomic s'iace known only through the analytic powers of the intelligence. The temporal aspect of the universe is identified with the spiritual force of life. Accordingly the true nature of the self is inaccessible to the formal, deadening intellect and can be grasped only through in tuition. In this aspect, as grasped by intuition, it transcends all individuation and personality. It is the same living force which exemplifies it self throughout all nature. Only through the damming of the stream of life by matter does the individual soul arise with its concomitant body. Empirical psychology is of itself unable to transcend the individual soul and see the greater reality that lies behind. The Bergsonian philosophy, that is, points out the limitations of a rational account of the soul and indicates a superrational mode of approach — psychology.
s Bergsonianism treats of matters which it claims are not properly subject to the reason, it is clear that it claims for itself an intuitive basis. Whether the Bergsonian intuition ex ists or not is a sheer question of fact; it is certain at any rate that there are many who do not feel an intuitive compulsion to accept Bergson's view of the soul.
At present there is a strong tendency to re turn to what is in a sense the Humian view of the soul. James and the American school of Neo-Realism (see REALISM) agree to the extent that they consider the soul as the stream of its states and maintain that these states, in a different context and arrangement, form the subject matter of the physical science. This view, similar as it is to that of Hume, marks at once a great advance over that of Hume and a partial revival of Aristotelianism. The stream of states is not a mere fortuitous aggregm of experiences; A's experiences and B's experiences are each united in a manner totally different from the manner in which some of A's experiences can be united to some of B's.
In other words, this theory, which calls itself neutral monism, makes the soul consist, not merely of certain states which are aggregated, but of a system of states-in-a-peculiar-mode-of- aggregation. The distinction between these alternatives was inadmissible for Hume be cause of his nominalism. On the other hand it may be expressed in Aristotelian languages by calling the mode of aggregation the entel echy of the stream of states. Like Aristo telianism, neutral monism finds the unity of consciousness in the embodiment of a form or structure or relation, but unlike Aristotelian ism, it maintains that the matter shaped by this form is not the body, but the stream of consciousness itself.
Neutral monism has recently been subjected to a keen and unfavorable criticism by Bertrand Russell. His objections are (1) that introspec tion shows that knowledge does not consist in the entry of an experience into a system of experiences, but in a direct relation to a mind or soul; (2) that neutral monism cannot ac count for the relation of belief ; (3) that the thought of a timeless thing is in time, so that the thing and the thought cannot differ merely in their context ; (4) that neutral monism is adapted to explain rather the knowledge of things than that of facts; (5) that there are °emphatic particulars" such as athis° and aP and "now.° It is possible, however, to modify neutral monism so as to avoid much of the force of these objections. To begin with objection (3), it is not essential for neutral monism to maintain that every experience is identical with its object. This much of nominalism is valid, that in much of our thinking, the ultimate ob jects are supplanted by their symbols. There is nothing controverting the principles of neu tral monism in the supposition that in a certain context one experience datum may acquire a vicarious interpretation as another. (See