Theos-Talk Archives (October 2003 Message tt00037)

Part 2 (continued) HAVE ANIMALS SOLS ?
 
Slavery, etc.
 
. 
 
 
II
 
 
What a chimera is man! what a confused chaos, what a subject of
contradiction! a professed judge of all things, and yet a feeble worm of
the earth! the great depository and guardian of truth, and yet ad mere
huddle of uncertainty! the glory and the scandal of the universe!
--PASCAL
 
 
WE shall now proceed to see what are the views of the Christian Church
as to the nature of the soul in the brute, to examine how she reconciles
the discrepancy between the resurrection of a dead animal and the
assumption that its soul dies with it, and to notice some miracles in
connection with animals.
 
Before the final and decisive blow is dealt to that selfish doctrine,
which has become so pregnant with cruel and merciless practices toward
the poor animal world, the reader must be made acquainted with the early
hesitations of the Fathers of the Patristic age themselves, as to the
right interpretation of the words spoken with reference to that question
by St. Paul. 
 
It is amusing to note how the Karma of two of the most indefatigable
defenders of the Latin Church--Messrs. Des. Mousseaux and De Mirville,
in whose works the record of the few miracles here noted are found--led
both of them to furnish the weapons now used against their own sincere
but very erroneous views.5 
 
The great battle of the Future having to be fought out between the
"Creationists" or the Christians, as all the believers in a special
creation and a personal god, and the Evolutionists or the Hindus,
Buddhists, all the Free-thinkers and last, though not least, most of the
men of science, a recapitulation of their respective positions is
advisable. 
 
1. The Christian world postulates its right over animal life: (a) on the
afore-quoted Biblical texts and the later scholastic interpretations;
(b) on the assumed absence of anything like divine or human soul in
animals. Man survives death, the brute does not. 
 
2. The Eastern Evolutionists, basing their deductions upon their great
philosophical systems, maintain it is a sin against nature's work and
progress to kill any living being--for reasons given in the preceding
pages. 
 
3. The Western Evolutionists, armed with the latest discoveries of
science, heed neither Christians nor Heathens. Some scientific men
believe in Evolution, others do not. They agree, nevertheless, upon one
point: namely, that physical, exact research offers no grounds for the
presumption that man is endowed with an immortal, divine soul, any more
than his dog. 
 
Thus, while the Asiatic Evolutionists behave toward animals consistently
with their scientific and religious views, neither the church nor the
materialistic school of science is logical in the practical applications
of their respective theories. The former, teaching that every living
thing is created singly and specially by God, as any human babe may be,
and that it finds itself from birth to death under the watchful care of
a wise and kind Providence, allows the inferior creation at the same
time only a temporary soul. The latter, regarding both man and animal as
the soulless production of some hitherto undiscovered forces in nature,
yet practically creates an abyss between the two. A man of science, the
most determined materialist, one who proceeds to vivisect a living
animal with the utmost coolness, would yet shudder at the thought of
laming--not to speak of torturing to death--his fellow man. Nor does one
find among those great materialists who were religiously inclined men
any who have shown themselves consistent and logical in defining the
true moral status of the animal on this earth and the rights of man over
it. 
 
Some instances must now be brought to prove the charges stated.
Appealing to serious and cultured minds it must be postulated that the
views of the various authorities here cited are not unfamiliar to the
reader. It will suffice therefore simply to give short epitomes of some
of the conclusions they have arrived at--beginning with the Churchmen. 
 
As already stated, the Church exacts belief in the miracles performed by
her great Saints. Among the various prodigies accomplished we shall
choose for the present only those that bear directly upon our
subject--namely, the miraculous resurrections of dead animals. Now one
who credits man with an immortal soul independent of the body it
animates can easily believe that by some divine miracle the soul can be
recalled and forced back into the tabernacle it deserts apparently for
ever. 
 
But how can one accept the same possibility in the case of an animal,
since his faith teaches him that the animal has no independent soul,
since it is annihilated with the body? For over two hundred years, ever
since Thomas of Aquinas, the Church has authoritatively taught that the
soul of the brute dies with its organism. What then is recalled back
into the clay to reanimate it? It is at this juncture that scholasticism
steps in, and--taking the difficulty in hand--reconciles the
irreconcilable. 
 
It premises by saying that the miracles of the Resurrection of animals
are numberless and as well authenticated as "the resurrection of our
Lord Jesus Christ."6 The Bollandists give instances without number. As
Father Burigny, a hagiographer of the 17th century, pleasantly remarks
concerning the bustards resuscitated by St. Remi--"I may be told, no
doubt, that I am a goose myself to give credence to such 'blue bird'
tales. I shall answer the joker, in such a case, by saying that, if he
disputes this point, then must he also strike out from the life of St.
Isidore of Spain the statement that he resuscitated from death his
master's horse; from the biography of St. Nicolas of Tolentino--that he
brought back to life a partridge, instead of eating it; from that of St.
Francis--that he recovered from the blazing coals of an oven, where it
was baking, the body of a lamb, which he forthwith resurrected; and that
he also made boiled fishes, which he resuscitated, swim in their sauce;
etc., etc. Above all he, the sceptic, will have to charge more than
100,000 eye-witnesses--among whom at least a few ought to be allowed
some common sense--with being either liars or dupes." 
 
A far higher authority than Father Burigny, namely, Pope Benedict
(Benoit) XIV, corroborates and affirms the above evidence. The names,
moreover, as eye-witnesses to the resurrections, of Saint Sylvestrus,
Francois de Paule, Severin of Cracow and a host of others are all
mentioned in the Bollandists. "Only he adds"--says Cardinal de Ventura
who quotes him--"that, as resurrection, however, to deserve the name
requires the identical and numerical reproduction of the form,7 as much
as of the material of the dead creature; and as that form (or soul) of
the brute is always annihilated with its body according to St. Thomas'
doctrine, God, in every such case finds himself obliged to create for
the purpose of the miracle a new form for the resurrected animal; from
which it follows that the resurrected brute was not altogether identical
with what it had been before its death (non idem omnino esse.)"8 
 
Now this looks terribly like one of the mayas of magic. However,
although the difficulty is not absolutely explained, the following is
made clear: the principle, that animated the animal during its life,.
and which is termed soul, being dead or dissipated after the death of
the body, another soul--"a kind of an informal soul"--as the Pope and
the Cardinal tell us--is created for the purpose of miracle by God; a
soul, moreover, which is distinct from that of man, which is "an
independent, ethereal and ever lasting entity." 
 
Besides the natural objection to such a proceeding being called a
"miracle" produced by the saint, for it is simply God behind his back
who "creates" for the purpose of his glorification an entirely new soul
as well as a new body, the whole of the Thomasian doctrine is open to
objection. For, as Descartes very reasonably remarks: "if the soul of
the animal is so distinct (in its immateriality) from its body, we
believe it hardly possible to avoid recognizing it as a spiritual
principle, hence--an intelligent one." 
 
The reader need hardly be reminded that Descartes held the living animal
as being simply an automaton, a "well wound up clock-work," according to
Malebranche. One, therefore, who adopts the Cartesian theory about the
animal would do as well to accept at once the views of the modern
materialists. For, since that automaton is capable of feelings, such as
love, gratitude, etc., and is endowed as undeniably with memory, all
such attributes must be as materialism teaches us "properties of
matter." But if the animal is an "automaton," why not Man? Exact
science-- anatomy, physiology, etc.,--finds not the smallest difference
between the bodies of the two; and who knows justly enquires
Solomon--whether the spirit of man "goeth upward" any more than that of
the beast? Thus we find metaphysical Descartes as inconsistent as any
one. 
 
But what does St. Thomas say to this? Allowing a soul (anima) to the
brute, and declaring it immaterial, he refuses it at the same time the
qualification of spiritual. Because, he says: "it would in such case
imply intelligence, a virtue and a special operation reserved only for
the human soul." But as at the fourth Council of Lateran it had been
decided that "God had created two distinct substances, the corporeal
(mundanam) and the spiritual (spiritualem), and that something
incorporeal must be of necessity spiritual St. Thomas had to resort to a
kind of compromise, which can avoid being called a subterfuge only when
performed by a saint. He says: "This soul of the brute is neither
spirit, nor body; it is of a middle nature."9 This is a very unfortunate
statement. For elsewhere, St. Thomas says that "all the souls--even
those of plants--have the substantial form of their bodies," and if this
is true of plants, why not of animals? It is certainly neither "spirit"
nor pure matter, but of that essence which St. Thomas calls "a middle
nature." But why, once on the right path, deny it survivance--let alone
immortality? The contradiction is so flagrant that De Mirville in
despair exclaims, "Here we are, in the presence of three substances,
instead of the two, as decreed by the Lateran Council!", and proceeds
forthwith to contradict, as much as he dares, the "Angelic Doctor." 
 
The great Bossuet in his Traité de la Connaissance de Dieu et de soi
même analyses and compares the system of Descartes with that of St.
Thomas. No one can find fault with him for giving the preference in the
matter of logic to Descartes. He finds the Cartesian "invention"--that
of the automaton,--as "getting better out of the difficulty" than that
of St. Thomas, accepted fully by the Catholic Church; for which Father
Ventura feels indignant against Bossuet for accepting "such a miserable
and puerile error." And, though allowing the animals a soul with all its
qualities of affection and sense, true to his master St. Thomas, he too
refuses them intelligence and reasoning powers. "Bossuet," he says, "is
the more to be blamed, since he himself has said: 'I foresee that a
great war is being prepared against the Church under the name of
Cartesian philosophy'." He is right there, for out of the "sentient
matter" of the brain of the brute animal comes out quite naturally
Locke's thinking matter, and out of the latter all the materialistic
schools of our century. But when he fails, it is through supporting St.
Thomas' doctrine, which is full of flaws and evident contradictions.
For, if the soul of the animal is, as the Roman Church teaches, an
informal, immaterial principle, then it becomes evident that, being
independent of physical organism, it cannot "die with the animal" any
more than in the case of man. If we admit that it subsists and survives,
in what respect does it differ from the soul of man? And that it is
eternal--once we accept St. Thomas' authority on any subject--though he
contradicts himself elsewhere. "The soul of man is immortal, and the
soul of the animal perishes," he says (Summa, Vol. V. p. 164),--this,
after having queried in Vol. II of the same grand work (p. 256) "are
there any beings that re-emerge into nothingness?" and answered
himself:--"No, for in the Ecclesiastes it is said: (iii. 14) Whatsoever
GOD doeth, it shall be for ever. With God there is no variableness
(James I. 17)." "Therefore," goes on St. Thomas, "neither in the natural
order of things, nor by means of miracles, is there any creature that
re-emerges into nothingness (is annihilated); there is naught in the
creature that is annihilated, for that which shows with the greatest
radiance divine goodness is the perpetual conservation of the
creatures."l0 
This sentence is commented upon and confirmed in the annotation by the
Abbé Drioux, his translator. "No," he remarks--"nothing is annihilated;
it is a principle that has become with modern science a kind of axiom." 
 
And, if so, why should there be an exception made to this invariable
rule in nature, recognized both by science and theology,--only in the
case of the soul of the animal? Even though it had no intelligence, an
assumption from which every impartial thinker will ever and very
strongly demur. 
 
Let us see, however, turning from scholastic philosophy to natural
sciences, what are the naturalist's objections to the animal having an
intelligent and therefore an independent soul in him. 
 
"Whatever that be, which thinks, which understands, which acts, it is
something celestial and divine; and upon that account must necessarily
be eternal," wrote Cicero, nearly two millenniums ago. We should
understand well, Mr. Huxley contradicting the conclusion,--St. Thomas of
Aquinas, the "king of the metaphysicians," firmly believed in the
miracles of resurrection performed by St. Patrick.l1 
 
Really, when such tremendous claims as the said miracles are put forward
and enforced by the Church upon the faithful, her theologians should
take more care that their highest authorities at least should not
contradict themselves, thus showing ignorance upon questions raised
nevertheless to a doctrine. 
 
The animal, then, is debarred from progress and immortality, because he
is an automaton. According to Descartes, he has no intelligence,
agreeably to mediæval scholasticism; nothing but instinct, the latter
signifying involuntary impulses, as affirmed by the materialists and
denied by the Church. 
Both Frederic and George Cuvier have discussed amply, however, on the
intelligence and the instinct in animals.l2 Their ideas upon the subject
have been collected and edited by Flourens, the learned Secretary of the
Academy of Sciences. This is what Frederic Cuvier, for thirty years the
Director of the Zoological Department and the Museum of Natural History
at the Jardin des Plantes, Paris, wrote upon the subject. "Descartes'
mistake, or rather the general mistake, lies in that no sufficient
distinction was ever made between intelligence and instinct. Buffon
himself had fallen into such an omission, and owing to it every thing in
his Zoological philosophy was contradictory. Recognizing in the animal a
feeling superior to our own, as well as the consciousness of its actual
existence, he denied it at the same time thought, reflection, and
memory, consequently every possibility of having thoughts." (Buffon,
Discourse on the Nature of Animals, VII, p. 57.) But, as he could hardly
stop there, he admitted that the brute had a kind of memory, active,
extensive and more faithful than our (human) memory (Id. Ibid., p. 77).
Then, after having refused it any intelligence, he nevertheless admitted
that the animal "consulted its master, interrogated him, and understood
perfectly every sign of his will." (Id. Ibid., Vol. X, History of the
Dog, p. 2.) 
 
A more magnificent series of contradictory statements could hardly have
been expected from a great man of science. 
 
The illustrious Cuvier is right therefore in remarking in his turn, that
"this new mechanism of Buffon is still less intelligible than Descartes'
automaton."l3 
As remarked by the critic, a line of demarcation ought to be traced
between instinct and intelligence. The construction of beehives by the
bees, the raising of dams by the beaver in the middle of the
naturalist's dry floor as much as in the river, are all the deeds and
effects of instinct forever unmodifiable and changeless, whereas the
acts of intelligence are to be found in actions evidently thought out by
the animal, where not instinct but reason comes into play, such as its
education and training calls forth and renders susceptible of perfection
and development. Man is endowed with reason, the infant with instinct;
and the young animal shows more of both than the child. 
 
Indeed, every one of the disputants knows as well as we do that it is
so. If any materialist avoid confessing it, it is through pride.
Refusing a soul to both man and beast, he is unwilling to admit that the
latter is endowed with intelligence as well as himself, even though in
an infinitely lesser degree. In their turn the churchman, the
religiously inclined naturalist, the modern metaphysician, shrink from
avowing that man and animal are both endowed with soul and faculties, if
not equal in development and perfection, at least the same in name and
essence. Each of them knows, or ought to know that instinct and
intelligence are two faculties completely opposed in their nature, two
enemies confronting each other in constant conflict; and that, if they
will not admit of two souls or principles, they have to recognize, at
any rate, the presence of two potencies in the soul, each having a
different seat in the brain, the localization of each of which is well
known to them, since they can isolate and temporarily destroy them in
turn--according to the organ or part of the organs they happen to be
torturing during their terrible vivisections. What is it but human pride
that prompted Pope to say: 
 
Ask for whose
end the heavenly bodies shine; 
Earth for whose use? Pride answers, 'Tis for mine. 
For me kind nature wakes her genial power, 
Suckles each herb, and spreads out every flower.
****
     
For me the mine a thousand treasures brings; 
For me health gushes from a thousand springs; 
Seas roll to waft me, suns to light me rise; 
My footstool earth, my canopy the skies!
 
 
And it is the same unconscious pride that made Buffon utter his
paradoxical remarks with reference to the difference between man and
animal. That difference consisted in the "absence of reflection, for the
animal," he says, "does not feel that he feels." How does Buffon know?
"It does not think that it thinks," he adds, after having told the
audience that the animal remembered, often deliberated, compared and
chose!l4 Who ever pretended that a cow or a dog could be an idealogist?
But the animal may think and know it thinks, the more keenly that it
cannot speak, and express its thoughts. How can Buffon or any one else
know? One thing is shown however by the exact observations of
naturalists and that is, that the animal is endowed with intelligence;
and once this is settled, we have but to repeat Thomas Aquinas'
definition of intelligence--the prerogative of man's immortal soul--to
see that the same is due to the animal. 
But in justice to real Christian philosophy, we are able to show that
primitive Christianity has never preached such atrocious doctrines--the
true cause of the falling off of so many of the best men as of the
highest intellects from the teachings of Christ and his disciples.
 
 
 
To: Part 3 HAVE ANIMALS SOULS ? (CONTINUED)
 
Vivisection considered
 
 
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