SOUL (AS. said, saecul, Goth. OHG. sPula, sCla, Ger. Scele, soul; possibly connected with Lat. swculum, generation, age). A term which is used for at least three conceptions. In the most primitive sense the soul is conceived as a refined and intangible material being, often as a sort of diaphanous double of the physical body. In a later sense the term designates the human spirit, conceived to be an immaterial (and usually an immortal ) being, which is the source of human life, intelligence, and person ality. In a third sense it is used by psycholo gists to designate the totality of psychical phe nomena connected with one individual or one body. In this sense the soul is equivalent either to consciousness considered as a whole or to those factors of consciousness which may be said to constitute the ego. It is not, however, asserted to have any existence outside of or apart from consciousness.
By primitive man the soul was not carefully distinguished from the body; the conception was probably the result of observing the phenomena of death. A man is alive, he dies, and his body, which has still the same appearance, has suddenly lost all power of motion and feeling. The soul has gone out of it like a breath of air, or a phantom or a dream, or like a subtle es sence pervading things. Beyond this primitive man does not seem to have gone in defining what soul means. Advance is shown among Oriental peoples. Thus the Hindus teach in their Vedas that the human soul is a portion of the Supreme Being, which fills all things. Being pantheists. most Oriental people fail in their conceptions of individual personality. Hence the Hindus hold that all finite differentiations of Brahma are ultimately absorbed. There is, therefore, only a negative belief in the soul.
Among the Egyptians transmigration provides a background for more distinct ideas. According to this theory the soul lives primarily in the body of an animal and passes from it, after wandering for 3000 years through all the species of animals, into a human body, unless the priests, shorten this period. In the Book of the Dead a vague belief in immortality is foreshadowed: but it is doubtful if this belief is dissociated entirely from the corresponding idea of the sur vival of the body. We find traces of this uncer tainty and confusion specially in the earlier tra dition of the Hebrews. In the later tradition, and especially under the influence of prophet ism, more refined conceptions followed the preaching of ethical monotheism. A trichotomy of body, soul, and spirit appears among the later Jewish and early Christian thinkers, in which 'body' (0-(1),aa) is the material, 'soul' (pvx7)) and `spirit' (7r- vei3iAa) the spiritual part of the human personality; but the tendency is to resolve this threefold division into a dualism in which body and soul are' joined against the spirit. The whole weight of Christianity was thrown on the side of the soul conceived of as that part of man that is under divine law. This part was regarded as having absolute worth, inasmuch as it is the seat of the divine spirit, and is opposed to the 'flesh' (o-dpE), i.e. to human nature in estrangement from the divine. The salvation of the soul is negatively its deliverance from bondage to the 'flesh' in this broad signification, and, positively, union and communion with God, the essence of the soul's life.
We find a similar gradual distinction between body and soul in the history of Greek thought. In Homer the soul is a kind of image of the body (ErScoXos), which escapes in death throngh the mouth or through an open wound. An natural objects are supposed to have souls. The Ionic philosophers, incapable of making this distinction clear, sought for some physical prin ciple to define what they meant by the soul, and found it in water, air, fire, or the 'infinite' (hylozoism) ; and whyt later reflection added to this the notion of reason it was only as 'think ing air' that the soul was conceived even then. Nor did Parmenides with his absolute unity, or the Pythagoreans with their doctrine of num bers, attain a clear differentiation of body and soul; and Democritus is openly materialistic, maintaining that, inasmuch as matter is eternal, there is no need to distinguish body from that which moves it. Anaxagoras (born B.C. 499) was the first of the Greek thinkers to formulate the distinction in question in his theory of in telligence (your), which. lie contended. is differ ent from body because it is simple, mixes with nothing, is never passive. is infinite, and has absolute power over matter. Though this can not be taken as a clear definition of the soul as an individualized thinking substance. it is an advance in thought. Socrates added to this theory of Anaxagoras the idea of the good, which be regarded as equivalent to the absolute or God, and from it derived the soul of man as a small part, clearly reeognizing the distinction between it and the body. together with the implication of immortality, which, on his hypothesis of the good, was contained in it. The deeper reflection of Plato and Aristotle naturally discloses more satisfactory evidence of positive ideas. Plato in particular was much influenced by his general metaphysical theory. Thus in the Timdus he teaches that the soul is one of many modes of 'the one and the many,' by which he means the absolute mind and the phenomenal world of re lated things ruled by the demiurgus. The high est of these incarnations is in the stars. the next in man (Philebusl. The soul of the world is created intelligent by God, and it is this soul that is in our bodies. As such it has the principle of movement in itself : it is self-moved; has reality (oOT , and partakes of the harmony and beauty of the world as created by God, and alolo leads to all true knowledge. According to Aris totle the soul is the formal, efficient, and final cause (esreXIxeia 71-payr7)) of the body (De Anima), the unity of three kinds of causal ity; and he distinguishes three kinds of soul. the vegetable, the sensitive, and the intellectual, which respectively represent the spiritual life of plant, animal. and human beings. As the `final cause' of the body, man's soul cannot be indeterminate; it must have individuality to organize it, direct its movements, and lead it to its true end. Here we approach very near to the modern conception of the soul as an individ ualized, self-conscious, self-determining reality; but not quite, for this idea was not fully at tained by Greek thought.