First Decade, Chapter Two
Ten questions concerning the immortality of the rational soul
Question One
Whether the rational soul is immortal and incorruptible
It is asked whether rational souls are immortal and incorruptible. It appears that the first answer should be negative.
For first, Solomon says in Ecclesiastes 3: “The destruction of human beings and of beasts is one, and the condition of each is equal.” But beasts perish together in body and soul; therefore human beings do also.
Again, the Philosopher says in Book I of On the Heavens: “That which did not always exist cannot possess the power of existing always.” But the soul did not always exist; therefore, and so forth.
Again, of things whose being is one, one cannot be corrupted without the other also being corrupted. But the being of body and soul in the composite is one, like that of matter and form. Therefore, and so forth.
Again, Alexander the Greek, as the Commentator recounts in Book III of On the Soul, and Albert in his book On the Origin of the Soul, said that the rational soul was generable and corruptible after the manner of other natural forms, through the most noble mixture of the primary qualities and the dissolution of that same mixture.
Again, Pliny says concerning souls in Book VII, chapter 55, of the Natural History: “It is easier and more certain for each person to trust himself and to take from the experience before birth a model of security.”
But to the contrary is Aristotle in Book XII of the Metaphysics, where he says: “Every form is corrupted when that of which it is the form is corrupted, except the intellective soul.” In Book I of On the Soul he says: “The intellect appears to be a certain substance and not to be corrupted.” And Dionysius says in chapter 4 of On the Divine Names: “Human souls have from the divine goodness that they are intellectual and that they possess a substantial and incorruptible life.”
For the solution of this question, leaving aside the theologians, who in this part could be suspected, the immortality of souls will be proved by natural arguments, by authorities of the gentiles, and by examples.
The first argument is as follows. Everything that is alien to all matter and corporeal corruption is immortal and everlasting. But every rational soul is of this kind. Therefore every rational soul is immortal. This argument appears in the first question of the first chapter.
The Philosopher proves the major premise in Book VII of the Metaphysics, where he shows that the corruption of things comes from their participation in matter, saying: “Matter is that through which a thing can be and not be,” that is, can be corrupted and not corrupted. In Book I of the Physics he says: “Matter is the first subject for each of the beings, out of which something comes to be while it remains inherent.”
For this reason the Philosopher concludes in Book I of On the Heavens that heaven is incorruptible, because it has neither matter nor a subject out of which it comes to be. Hence Averroes says in Book I of the Physics: “From this it will be declared that the celestial bodies have no matter at all, because they would then be generable and corruptible. For nothing other than prime matter is the cause of generation and corruption, on account of non-being being included in its substance.”
Anaxagoras proves the minor premise when he says that the soul is immortal, unmixed, and impassible - namely, with a corruptive passion, not a perfective one. This argument belongs to Scotus in Book IV of the Sentences.
Second, the same point is proved as follows. No form is corrupted except either by the action of a contrary, by the corruption of its subject, or through the failure of its cause. It is corrupted by the action of a contrary as heat is destroyed through the action of cold; by the corruption of its subject as, when the eye is destroyed, its sight or visual power is destroyed; and through the failure of a cause as light fails in the air when the presence of the sun, which was its cause, fails.
But the soul cannot be corrupted by the corruption of a contrary, because it has nothing contrary to it, since through the possible intellect it is itself receptive of all contraries. Nor can it be corrupted through the corruption of its subject, since the human soul is a form that does not depend upon the body with respect to its being. Nor can it be corrupted through the failure of its cause, because it has no cause except an eternal one, since it is created by God alone, as has been proved. Therefore the intellective soul can in no way be corrupted when the body has been corrupted. Thus Thomas, Book II of Against the Gentiles, chapter 78.
The Philosopher proves the same point third as follows. In Books I and V of the Physics, he says that every transmutation and alteration occurs between contrary termini; hence he says in Book I of the Physics: “All principles, therefore, make contraries,” and so forth. The argument then proceeds as follows. If the soul were naturally to come to non-being through its essence, it would be alterable, since alteration precedes corruption. But it is not alterable, since the contrary qualities between which alteration occurs are inseparable accidents of prime matter and of elemental bodies. Hence the Commentator in Book II of the Physics, commentary 15, calls these qualities the essential accidents of matter. The soul is wholly alien to that matter, as the first argument proved. Therefore the conclusion is the same as above.
The same is proved fourth as follows. Aristotle in Books I and II of On the Heavens and Book III of On the Soul says that God and nature do nothing in vain. And in Book II of the Physics it is said: “It is vain when it does not come to be.” Since, therefore, our two universal powers - namely, intellect and will - were produced to attain the first truth and the supreme good, and since these are not acquired here, as experience shows, because that which is temporal cannot make one truly blessed and happy, it will therefore be necessary either that these powers be in vain or that another life can be given in which we may attain our objects. The latter is impossible if immortal souls do not remain after this life.
Fifth, the conditions of that which receives and that which is received ought to be proportioned. But the universals received in the soul are immortal and incorruptible, according to Book I of the Posterior Analytics. Therefore the intellective soul is also immortal and incorruptible.
Sixth, the same is proved as follows: if the soul were material, the intellect would not be reflexive upon itself, nor capable of knowing universals.
If it should be said that, although the soul is not corrupted per se, since it does not have matter, it is nevertheless corrupted accidentally upon the corruption of the body, its proximate subject, as other accidents and substantial or natural forms are, the answer is that a thing is said to be corrupted accidentally upon the corruption of another when it cannot exist without that other and depends upon it with respect to being and preservation, as is evident in accidents and natural forms.
The rational soul, however, can exist without the body, since it is separated from the body “as the perpetual from the corruptible,” according to Book III of On the Soul. It alone among natural forms is both form and substance; and the body has a greater dependence upon the soul than conversely, since the soul is related to the body as its formal, efficient, and final cause, according to Book II of On the Soul.
The authorities of the philosophers and gentiles must now be set down.
First, Plato, concerning whom Augustine speaks as follows in Book IX of The City of God, chapter 9: “For Plato, when he was treating human souls, said: ‘God himself made mortal bonds for those wretched souls.’ He therefore judged that the very fact that human beings are mortal in body pertains to the mercy of God the Father, lest they be held forever in the misery of this life.”
And Lactantius says in Book III of the Divine Institutes: “Many philosophers, reading the book which Plato wrote on immortality, killed themselves with their own hands, as though they would migrate into heaven after death.”
Aristotle also says in Book III of On the Soul, concerning the agent intellect and the passive power, which is the possible intellect: “Nothing is yet manifest, but it appears to be another kind of soul because of its incorporeality; and this, above the genus of intellective things, seems capable of being separated from the other powers as the perpetual from the corruptible.”
Again, he says in Book I of On the Soul: “Understanding and contemplating are corrupted when a certain interior thing - namely, the phantasm - is corrupted; but it is impossible for the intellect itself to be corrupted.” He adds: “The intellect is something divine and impassible,” namely, by a corruptive passion.
The Commentator also says in commentary 22 on Book III of On the Soul: “It is evident from Aristotle’s words that certain parts of the soul are not abstracted from a subject; rather, they are generated and corrupted when it is corrupted. The intellect, however, is abstracted from its subject and is neither generated nor corrupted with it. Hence the intelligences of heaven are simply abstracted from body, because they neither inform a body nor inhere in a body. Forms educed from the potency of matter, however, are simply joined to body, namely through inherence and through information, and therefore are corruptible. The intellective soul, however, holds a middle position, because in one way it is joined to the body, namely through information, and in another way it is withdrawn from it, namely through inherence.”
This is good philosophy. For what else does the Philosopher wish to mean by “this is separated from that as the perpetual from the corruptible,” except that when the body has been corrupted the soul remains incorruptible?
Again, Avicenna says in Book VI of the Metaphysics, chapter 7: “Our law, which Muhammad handed down, shows the perfection of the happiness and misery that are according to the body. But there is another promise which is apprehended by the intellect and which will be in the conjunction of the first and highest truth.”
Algazel says in his treatise On Natural Things: “When the soul has been separated from the body, its adherence to the agent intelligence will endure, and it will delight in a delight whose being cannot be explained.”
Albert the Great, disputing in Book I of On the Soul against those who maintained that the soul was corruptible, speaks as follows: “But that which appears to destroy this doubt is what has been asserted from the time of the ancient Trismegistus, and is now asserted by diviners and enchanters: namely, that spirits which they call angels or demons, and souls stripped of their bodies, move from place to place. We ourselves have experienced the truth of this in magical practices.”
Cicero, in the Dream of Scipio and Book VI of On the Republic, introduces the elder Scipio addressing the younger and saying: “But so that you may be more eager, Africanus, to protect the republic, hold this to be so: for all who have preserved or enlarged their fatherland there is a certain and determined place in heaven, where the blessed enjoy an everlasting age.”
And in the book On Old Age he introduces Socrates or Plato saying: “Why say more? Thus I persuade myself, thus I think. Since there is such great swiftness of minds, such great memory of things past and prudence concerning things future, so many arts, so great sciences, and so many inventions, the nature which contains these things cannot be mortal.”
At the end of On Old Age he says: “I depart from life as from an inn, not as from a home; for nature has given us a lodging place, not a dwelling place. O glorious day, when I shall set out for that council and assembly of souls and depart from this crowd and filth! For I shall set out not only to those men of whom I spoke before, but also to my Cato, than whom no better or more excellent man was ever born. His body was cremated by me, whereas it was fitting, on the contrary, that mine should be cremated by him.”
And Cyrus the Elder, when dying, says to his sons in Xenophon, as is evident above: “Do not suppose, my dearest sons, that when I have departed from you I shall never or nowhere exist. For even while I was with you, you did not see my soul; but from the deeds which I performed while I was in this body, you understood that it existed. Believe, therefore, that it is the same even if you see nothing. Nor indeed would honors to illustrious men remain after death if their souls accomplished nothing by which we might retain their memory for a longer time. I could never be persuaded that souls lived while they were in mortal bodies but died when they departed from them.”
Herodotus says in Book V: “The Thracians practice the following concerning the births and deaths of their people. When a child has been born, its relatives sit around it and follow it with lamentation, recounting all the human calamities which it must endure now that it has entered life. But they commit a person who has fulfilled his fate to the earth amid play and rejoicing, recounting that, freed from evils, he is in every felicity.” Valerius sets down the same in Book II, rubric 1.
Again, Sallust in the Catilinarian introduces Cato and Caesar speaking concerning the punishments of separated souls. And Valerius says in Book II, rubric 1: “The custom of the Gauls approves the immortality of souls, for they hope that money lent will be repaid to them in the underworld.”
Virgil in Book VI of the Aeneid says that the soul after separation is subject to justice and will receive after death according as it conducted itself in life, saying…
Therefore they are exercised by penalties and pay the punishments of ancient evils.
Some are spread out empty, suspended before the winds; for others, beneath a vast abyss,
The infected crime is washed away or burned out by fire.
Each of us suffers his own Manes; thence through broad Elysium
We are sent, and a few possess the joyful fields.
Ovid also maintains the immortality of souls, especially in Book IX of the Metamorphoses, when he presents excellent men as having been deified, and when he introduces the death of Hercules there and says that Jupiter spoke as follows:
He will feel Vulcan as powerful only in the part derived from his mother.
What he drew from me is eternal, exempt
And immune from death, and conquerable by no flame.
And Seneca in his first tragedy introduces Theseus returning from the underworld and addressing Amphitryon, saying:
Whoever is peacefully powerful and lord of life, let him preserve innocent and unstained hands. Let him rule himself and obey the hall of Dis after traversing long spaces for a long time. Happy are those who seek heaven, or happy is he who seeks the joyful places of the Elysian grove. A fixed place holds the guilty shut in, and, as report bears, savage punishment subdues the impious in perpetual waves.
At the end of the work he says: “Souls are without death.”
And Juvenal in Satire 2 warns that one must act well through fear of the underworld, where souls will be tormented perpetually after death, saying:
That there are any Manes and subterranean kingdoms,
And Cocytus and black frogs in the Stygian abyss,
And that so many thousands cross the ford together in one boat,
Not even boys believe, except those not yet washed for a coin.
But do you hold these things to be true.
And he concludes below:
Alas, wretches, we are carried there; what more can arms do? - and so forth.
Now let us add examples of philosophers, some of whom, believing souls to be immortal, killed themselves voluntarily. Lactantius adduces some of them in Book III, chapter 15, of the Institutes, saying: “Many of those who suspected that souls were eternal, as though they were about to migrate into heaven, laid hands upon themselves: Cleanthes, Elisippus, Zeno, and Empedocles, who cast himself into a burning cave of Etna on a stormy night so that, when he had suddenly disappeared, it might be believed that he had gone to the gods. Among the Romans, Cato, after he had read Plato’s book written on the eternity of souls, was driven by the philosopher’s authority to the highest crime. Ambrachiades, after reading the same book, cast himself headlong from a high place. And Cliobrotus, in order to attain the immortality of which he had read in Plato’s books, drove himself to death.” Thus Lactantius there.
Because of this expected and believed immortality of souls, those ancient philosophers of great and excellent genius and the Romans of old attempted to receive the deaths of their people and the chances of nature with moderation and an even mind. For when the philosophers Telamon and Anaxagoras had lost their sons, they said that there should be no further mourning.
Pericles and Xenophon, followers of Socrates, acted as follows. The one, having lost two sons, delivered a discourse before the assembly while crowned. The other, while sacrificing, heard that his son had been killed in war and removed his crown; but afterwards, when he learned that his son had fallen while fighting bravely in the battle line, he took up again the crown which he had removed.
And Socrates, moved by the hope of immortality, sought no advocate for his capital trial. When he held the deadly cup in his hand, he uttered such words that anyone would have judged that he did not believe himself about to die, but about to exchange death for life.
And there is the saying of Solon the Wise in which he said that he wished his death to be free from the grief and lamentations of friends. Ennius was accustomed to tell his own people: “Let no one honor me with tears, nor make my funeral with weeping.” For he wished to teach through the mouths of learned men that death, which is followed by immortality, is not to be mourned.
Hence also, among the Romans, Quintus Maximus, when carrying out the funeral of his consular son, shed no tears. Marcus Porcius Cato bore with dry eyes the death of his son, who had been designated praetor. Marcus Horatius Pulvillus, while dedicating the temple of Jupiter on the Capitol, was turned aside from his purpose by the person announcing his son’s death in no other respect than that he ordered the corpse to be carried out. Lucius Paulus entered the city in triumph within seven days and between the funerals of two sons.
But why do I set forth examples of human beings? The swan is consecrated to Apollo because it appears to possess divination from him; foreseeing that there is nothing evil in death, it dies with song and pleasure.
Hence very many also maintain that we do not fear the slain bodies of many animals for this reason: in them nothing remains after death; but we fear dead human bodies because, they say, some divine thing - I know not what - lies hidden in human bodies.
Hence the canonists say at 24, question 1, chapter Si habens: “If one soul should perish by departing from the body without baptism, the death of innumerable bodies cannot be compared with this loss.”
And the jurist, in the Code On Most Holy Churches, law Sancimus nemini licere, and in the Digest On the Carbonian Edict, law 1, says that counsel should be taken for the soul rather than for the body, because where there is the greater danger, provision must be made more cautiously.
But I ask: apart from the things which have been said by philosophers, orators, and poets - and more could be adduced - whence came so great an observance of laws among the ancients, whence the erection of so many temples and statues, whence so many costly funerals and so many acts of piety toward the gods? Certainly they all came from the immortality of souls, which was alone hoped for - indeed, held to be most certain.
For this reason Cicero, concluding the Dream of Scipio, said concerning the immortality of souls: “Indeed, those who have flown out from the bonds of bodies as from a prison truly live. But that which is called our life is death.”
Now I shall adduce in excerpt from Herodian the Greek how the Romans, in order to display the immortality of souls, enrolled the shades of emperors among the gods after their funerals.
“It is the custom of the Romans,” Herodian says, “to consecrate emperors in this manner and enroll them among the gods. They set forth in the royal vestibule, upon an ivory couch, a certain image most like the deceased, laid out in golden garments. On the left is the entire senate clothed in black garments; on the right, honorable and eminent matrons dressed in plain garments. After seven days the noblest and choicest young men lift the couch upon their shoulders and carry it along the Sacred Way into the Forum, where Roman magistrates have been accustomed to lay down their authority.
“Around the couch there was a platform resembling stairs. Upon it, on one side, a chorus of boys and women sang hymns and poems concerning the deceased in a lamentable song. From there the couch was carried outside the city into the Campus Martius.
“Here there arose a certain structure, that is, a platform built in the form of a pavilion from the material of huge timbers, filled within with dry kindling, but ornamented outside with gold and various paintings. Above this platform was another, smaller in form but very similar in ornament; a third and fourth followed, each narrower than the one beneath it, and then another, until the highest one, which was the shortest of all, was reached. You could compare the form of this building to those towers which, standing high at night with a fire carried before them, direct ships into safe stations; the common people call them lighthouses.
“Therefore, when the couch had been raised into the second pavilion, the whole people and city gathered aromatic substances and incense of every kind - fruits, herbs, juices, everything fragrant - and always poured them out in heaps. Then the entire equestrian order rode around the building in a certain prescribed circuit and recurving Pyrrhic motion.
“Finally, the successor to the imperial power took a torch and applied it to the pavilion. Then the others set fire to it from every side, and all those things, filled as they were with dry kindling and aromatic substances, were immediately seized by the strong fire. It was also customary for an eagle to be released from the highest and smallest pavilion, as though from a certain pinnacle, at the same time as the fire was kindled beneath it. The eagle is believed to carry the soul of the prince himself into heaven. From that time onward the emperor is worshiped together with the other divinities.” Thus he speaks.
Now the arguments are answered. To the first it is said that Solomon speaks there in the person of the foolish and the Epicureans, as Thomas says in Part I, question 75. And the reply to the passage in Wisdom 2 is similar: “The impious said among themselves, thinking not rightly: ‘Short and wearisome is the time of our life, and no one is known to have returned from the dead, because we were born from nothing and after this we shall be as though we had not existed.’”
To the second argument it is said that the soul does not possess the power of existing always in the sense of being without beginning and without end; but it possesses the power of existing always in the sense of being without end only. The Philosopher takes the word in the first manner in Book I of On the Heavens. Hence Scotus says in Book IV that the adverb “always,” when placed in the predicate, signifies a beginning and an end, but when placed on the side of the subject, signifies only an end.
To the third argument it must be said, as the Commentator says in Book III of On the Soul, that the intellect is not said to be a form in the same manner as other material and natural forms. For since the soul has absolute being, as its operation shows, it does not exist through the being of the composite as other material forms do; rather, the composite exists through the being of the soul. Therefore, when the body has been corrupted, the soul is not corrupted accidentally, as are other forms which exist only through the being of the composite. For this reason, when the soul is separated from the body, it indeed ceases to be a form, but it does not cease to be an essence, which does not belong to natural forms.
To the fourth argument Albert answers, in the place cited above in the objection, that Alexander alone among the Peripatetics degenerated from all the Peripatetics by saying that the rational soul perishes together with the body.
To the fifth, Pliny’s own argument, the answer is to deny it as profane, or to say that he spoke those words by way of report and not by way of assertion.
Let us therefore conclude finally with the Church: when a human being dies and the soul is divided from the body, the dust returns to its earth and the spirit returns to the God who made it. Lucretius confirms this judgment when he says:
That which was formerly from earth returns backward to the same;
But that which was sent from above, the gleaming temples of heaven receive again.