Note 12 — Chapter II · THE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN SOUL

To develop the argument drawn from rational volition for the spirituality of the human soul would carry us too far afield. Those who wish to pursue the subject further may consult Chapter VIII of Gründer’s monograph entitled “Psychology without a Soul,” also his monograph on “Free Will.”

G. H. Parker of Harvard, though admitting the fact of human freedom, tries to explain it away in terms of materialism. The following is the description which he gives of his theory: “It is a materialist view which, however, recognizes in certain types of organized matter a degree of free action consistent with human behavior and the resultant responsibility.” (Science, June 13, 1924, p. 520.) Freedom, in other words, “emerges” from matter having a peculiar “type of organization.”

This view must be interpreted in the light of the philosophy of “Emergent Evolution,” which Parker holds in common with C. Lloyd Morgan and R. W. Sellars. The philosophy in question recognizes in nature an ascending scale of more and more complexly organized units, starting with protons and electrons, at the bottom, and culminating in the human organism, at the top. At each higher level of this cosmic scale we find higher units formed by coalescence of the simpler units of a lower level. These higher units, however, are something more than a mere summation of the lower units; for, in addition to additive properties that can be predicted from a knowledge of the components, they exhibit genuinely new properties which, not being mere sums of the properties of the component units, are unpredictable on that basis. Given, for example, the weight of two volumes of hydrogen and one volume of oxygen, we could predict an additive property such as the weight of the compound, i.e. the water, formed by their combination. Other properties, of the compound, however, such as liquidity, are not foreshadowed by the properties of the component gases. Similarly, the weight of carbon disulphid (CS₂) is an additive function of the combining weights of sulphur and carbon, but the other properties of this mobile liquid are not predictable on the basis of the properties of sulphur and carbon. Hence two kinds of properties are distinguished: (1) additive (quantitative) properties called resultants, which are predictable; (2) specificative (qualitative) properties called emergents, which are unprecedented and unpredictable. Freedom and intelligence, accordingly, are pronounced to be emergents of matter organized to that degree of complexity which we find in man.

This dualism of resultance and emergence is merely a new verbal vesture for the hylomorphic dualism of Aristotle. The additive properties (resultants) are based on matter, which is the principle of continuity. The specificative (constituitive or qualitative) properties called emergents are rooted in entelechy (form), which is the principle of novelty. In fact, entelechy (form) itself is an emergent of matter just as the specificative properties are emergents of matter, with the sole difference that entelechy is the primary emergent of matter, whereas the specificative or qualitative properties are secondary emergents. For in Aristotelian philosophy, entelechy is not, as it is in Neo-vitalism, “an alien principle inserted into matter” abruptly and capriciously “at the level of life,” but a primary emergent and constituent of matter both living and non-living. In fine, entelechy is an emergent of matter in all the units of nature from the simplest atom to the most complex plant or animal organism. The only entelechy, which is not an emergent, but an insert into matter, is the spiritual human soul. Neither the human soul nor the superorganic functions rooted in it, namely, abstraction, reflection, and election, are emergents. Here we have novelty without continuity, and therefore not emergence (eduction), but insertion (infusion).

In his “Emergent Evolution,” 1923, Lloyd Morgan lays it down as axiomatic that emergence involves continuity—“There may often be resultants,” he says, “without emergence; but there are no emergents that do not involve resultant effects also. Resultants give quantitative continuity which underlies new constitutive steps in emergence.” (Op. cit., p. 5.) Now our proofs for human spirituality consist precisely in the complete exclusion of quantitative continuity between organic functions (e. g. sensation) and superorganic functions (e. g. conceptual thought and free volition). Hence, by the very axiom which Morgan himself formulates, the human soul and its superorganic functions are excluded from the category of material emergents. If there can be no emergence without quantitative continuity, then the human soul is not an emergent from, but an insert into, matter. Free choice, too, it is needless to say, is not an emergent of matter, but an expression of the supermaterial nature of the human soul. So much for the new-old dualism of emergence and resultance.