Thomas
says, so at its separation from the body He could annihilate it. And as
the criticism of these proofs has been undertaken a hundred times, it is
unnecessary to repeat it here.
Is it possible for the unforewarned reason to conclude that our soul is
a substance from the fact that our consciousness of our identity--and
this within very narrow and variable limits--persists through all the
changes of our body? We might as well say of a ship that put out to sea
and lost first one piece of timber, which was replaced by another of the
same shape and dimensions, then lost another, and so on with all her
timbers, and finally returned to port the same ship, with the same
build, the same sea-going qualities, recognizable by everybody as the
same--we might as well say of such a ship that it had a substantial
soul. Is it possible for the unforewarned reason to infer the simplicity
of the soul from the fact that we have to judge and unify our thoughts?
Thought is not one but complex, and for the reason the soul is nothing
but the succession of co-ordinated states of consciousness.
In books of psychology written from the spiritualist point of view, it
is customary to begin the discussion of the existence of the soul as a
simple substance, separable from the body, after this style: There is in
me a principle which thinks, wills, and feels.... Now this implies a
begging of the question.
Pages:
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151