Posted on 07/25/2010 1:37:12 PM PDT by betty boop
TWO REVOLUTIONS, TWO VIEWS OF MAN
By Jean F. Drew
As every American schoolchild has been taught, in Western history there were two great sociopolitical revolutions that took place near the end of the eighteenth century: The American Revolution of 1775; and the French, of 1789. Children are taught that both revolutions were fought because of human rights in some way; thus bloody warfare possibly could be justified, condoned so long as the blood and treasure were shed to protect the “rights of man.” The American schoolchild is assured that the American and French revolutions were both devoted to the expansion of human rights and thus were equally noble revolutions. Moreover, it is widely believed that the French Revolution was an evolution from the American one.
Rather than simply accept these ideas uncritically, comparison and contrast of the two revolutions can shed some light on what turns out to be their stark differences — as to inceptions, ostensible goals, foundational ideology, and respective outcomes.
Inceptions
There is a famous Pythagorean maxim (c. sixth century B.C.): “The beginning is the half of the whole.” That is to say, inception events have a way of profoundly influencing the course of events that follow from them; and so their analysis can give insight into the character of their development in time, and even of the motivations they configure. Less obviously, an inception event is itself the culmination of a train of social, political, and cultural development that finally “erupts,” or takes evident shape, as a concrete beginning, or precipitating event of what follows. At that point, a situation of no return has been reached: “The fat is in the fire.” There is no turning back….
And so, let us take a look at the beginnings of two revolutions:
The American:
“In London George III and his cabinet, their confidence bolstered by their huge majority in Parliament, moved toward a confrontation with the Americans. On February 2, 1775, [Prime Minister Frederick, Lord] North introduced a motion to declare the province of Massachusetts in a state of rebellion and asked the King to take steps to support the sovereignty of England. The opposition, led by Edmund Burke, decried this move as a declaration of war. But the measure passed by a majority of three to one. George III was immensely pleased….”
The King decided to send some 1,000 reinforcements to Boston, far short of the number that Governor General Thomas Gage had wanted.
“…The King and his ministers still refused to believe Gage’s assessment of the odds he faced…. Colonel James Grant — who had served in America, at one point in the same army with George Washington [in the French and Indian Wars] — declared he was certain the Americans ‘would never dare to face an English army.’… In this spirit the King … ordered Lord Dartmouth to draft a letter telling Gage that it was time to act.”
Gage promptly acted. Thanks to his spies, he knew that the Colonials were accumulating military stores at Concord, including large quantities of gunpowder. So Gage decided that a swift march on Concord to seize the powder as well as the fourteen cannon said to be in the town “would have a crippling, even demoralizing impact on the Provincial Congress’s plans to form an Army of Observation to pen the British inside Boston.”
From this decision ensued, on April 19, 1775, the opening shot — “the shot heard ’round the world” — of the American Revolutionary War, at North Bridge, Concord, Massachusetts at about 8 o’clock in the morning.
Although the Colonials already knew the British were coming to Concord and Lexington sooner or later, and for what purpose, and that the incursion would come by a night march (rare in that day) — the Americans proved early to be remarkably effective spies — what they did not know was the specific date, or whether the British forces would be moving by land — over Boston Neck — or by sea — in longboats across the Back Bay. Hence the famous signal of “one if by land, two if by sea” posted at the Old North Church, wherein observers were keeping an eye on British troop movements.
It turned out to be “two”: The British forces, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith, were subsequently debarked at Cambridge across the Charles River, from longboats attached to H.M.S. Somerset then standing guard over the Boston Harbor ferryway. This was a force of some 700 men composed of light infantrymen and “fearsome” grenadiers. From thence the body proceeded overland, on a much shorter march than would have been the case had they approached Concord via Boston Neck. The route from Cambridge to Concord led straight through the heart of the neighboring town of Lexington.
As soon as the news came that the British were moving, Paul Revere set upon his famous midnight ride “on a fast mare,” traveling west at high speed to warn the people of Concord and the surrounding towns that the British were coming. Samuel Prescott and William Dawes likewise fanned out on horseback, spreading the alert to all within earshot.
The folks at Concord, having thus been warned, working feverishly overnight, managed to remove all the military stores to safe locations. The locals felt confident they could handle the threat: After all, the town had 600 drilled and trained Minutemen on spot, and there were some 6,000 other Minutemen and Militia — a body composed of all able-bodied men between the ages of 15 and 60 — within fairly easy reach of Concord town who were already pledged to come to her aid in the event of the outbreak of actual hostilities.
The people of Concord evidently figured a show of force would suffice to deter the British officers from doing anything rash. But really what they were relying on was their expectation — based on their understanding of the so-far prevailing rules of engagement, frequently tested — that British troops would never open fire on their fellow citizens — i.e., the Colonials themselves, who were British subjects also — unless they were fired upon first. And the Americans did not intend to fire first.
In this assessment of the situation on the ground, they were sadly mistaken. In the approach to Concord, the Brits had provoked a bloody engagement at Lexington Green in which “the British light infantry unquestionably fired the first volleys, killing eight men and wounding ten.” Then the British forces continued their march into Concord, to secure the bridges of the town: The British commander Smith had detached four squadrons to visit a prominent local farm to see whether contraband might be stashed there; and feared his troops could not safely return if the North Bridge were under the control of the Colonials. In defense of the bridge, the Brits again fired first. For a moment, the Americans could not believe this was happening. “‘Goddamn it,’ one man shouted, ‘They are firing ball!’” Then their commander, Major Buttrick, “whirled and shouted, ‘Fire fellow soldiers, for God’s sake fire.’” The Americans sustained six casualties at North Bridge, all fatal. On the British side, “Two privates were killed and a sergeant, four privates and four officers were wounded.”
Then the Brits cut their losses and in disorderly retreat high-tailed it back to the security of their barracks in Boston — empty-handed. Their mission was a failure: They had not found, let alone confiscated, any military stores.
But the American Revolutionary War was officially ON….
* * * * * * *
The French:
“History will record, that on the morning of the 6th of October 1789, the king and queen of France, after a day of confusion, alarm, dismay, and slaughter, lay down, under the pledged security of public faith, to indulge nature in a few hours of respite, and troubled melancholy repose. From this sleep the queen was first startled by the voice of the sentinel at her door, who cried out to her, to save herself by flight — that this was the last proof of fidelity he could give — that they were upon him, and he was dead. Instantly he was cut down. A band of cruel ruffians and assassins, reeking with his blood, rushed into the chamber of the queen, and pierced with an hundred strokes of bayonets and poniards the bed, from whence this persecuted woman had just time to fly almost half naked, and through ways unknown to the murderers had escaped to seek refuge at the feet of a king and husband, not secure of his own life for a moment.
“This king … and this queen, and their infant children (who once would have been the pride and hope of a great and generous people) were then forced to abandon the sanctuary of the most splendid palace in the world, which they left swimming in blood, polluted by massacre, and strewed with scattered limbs and mutilated carcasses. Thence they were conducted into the capital of their kingdom. Two had been selected from the unprovoked, unresisted, promiscuous slaughter which was made of the gentlemen of birth and family who composed the king’s bodyguard. These two gentlemen, with all the parade of an execution of justice, were cruelly and publicly dragged to the block, and beheaded…. Their heads were stuck upon spears, and led the procession; whilst the royal captives who followed in the train were slowly moved along, amidst the horrid yells, and shrilling screams, and frantic dances, and infamous contumelies, and all the unutterable abominations of the furies of hell…. After they had been made to taste, drop by drop, more than the bitterness of death, in the slow torture of a journey of twelve miles protracted to six hours, they were, under a guard composed of those very soldiers who had thus conducted them through this famous triumph, lodged in one of the old palaces of Paris, now converted into a Bastile for kings….”
And thus, the French Revolutionary War was officially ON….
On the question of origins — beginnings, inceptions, precipitating events — it would appear that the American and French Revolutions do not seem to resemble one another very much. It’s difficult to draw a common understanding of what human rights might be on the basis of such disparate evidence.
On the one hand, it’s possible to see that perhaps human rights had something to do with the defense of Concord: People coming together to protect and defend their lives, liberty, and property against the tyranny of George III, who then was most corruptly usurping the ancient “rights of Englishmen” not only in America, but also back in the home isles — as the Colonials were very well aware.
People today do not appreciate how close was the tie with the “mother country” at the time, through the printed word: In that day, the London presses were offloading their publications directly onto American ships bound for Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston, as soon as the ink was dry. It was from the London press that the Colonials learned of the usurpations of individual liberty that good King George was perpetrating at home, not to mention in their own backyard. They wanted no part of it.
On the other hand, it’s difficult to see what human right is implicated in the inception event of the French Revolution — unless it be the right to commit regicide. Or maybe the right to agitate and deploy mobs as instruments of social and political change….
In the end, “Citizen Louis Capet,” formerly known as King Louis XVI of France, was tried and convicted of treason by the National Convention and was guillotined on 21 January 1793 — the only French king in history to fall victim to regicide. His queen, Marie Antoinette, was also tried and convicted of treason: She was executed by guillotine on 16 October 1793, nine months after her husband.
Ostensible Goals
It seems clear that the Americans were not seeking to kill the king, or to overthrow the traditions of the British constitutional monarchy. Rather, they were seeking a complete, formal separation from it — because they were motivated by the conviction that their historic liberties were being systematically violated by George III.
By 1775, the Americans already had a tradition of local or self-government going back some 150 years. When the king sent in his governors, who ruled autocratically as directed by himself and his council, the Americans were outraged. The maxim “no taxation without representation” was but one expression of their revulsion for what they perceived as the wholesale destruction of the historic liberties of British subjects in America. The Sons of Liberty at Boston, notably including Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, and John Hancock, eloquently argued for total separation from the British Crown — not the most popular idea at first. But the events at Lexington Green and Concord Bridge caused many to reappraise their position on this matter. In the end, complete separation was the idea that prevailed, and which was finally achieved….
So what was this notion of liberty that had the Americans so exercised? John Trenchard and Robert Gordon, writing in Cato’s Letters — serially published in The London Journal in 1721 and after, which was avidly read in America at the time — describe human liberty as follows:
All men are born free; Liberty is a Gift which they receive from God; nor can they alienate the same by Consent, though possibly they may forfeit it by crimes....
Liberty is the power which every man has over his own Actions, and the Right to enjoy the Fruit of his Labor, Art, and Industry, as far as by it he hurts not the Society, or any Member of it, by taking from any Member, or by hindering him from enjoying what he himself enjoys.
The fruits of a Man’s honest Industry are the just rewards of it, ascertained to him by natural and eternal Equity, as is his Title to use them in the Manner which he thinks fit: And thus, with the above Limitations, every Man is sole Lord and Arbiter of his own private Actions and Property....
These were the ideas that had earlier inspired the Glorious Revolution of 1688, of which the great British philosopher and political activist, John Locke (1632–1704) — a thinker enormously respected in America — was the intellectual father. Above all, Locke’s ideas constitute a theory of the individual human being. This is the same theory that inspired the American Revolution of 1775: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed….” Indeed, it appears the author of the Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776) was strongly resonating to Locke’s essential political ideas in these passages.
Edmund Burke (1729–1797) — the great Anglo-Irish statesman, political theorist, and philosopher (who as already noted was sympathetic to the American cause) — also articulated the historic rights of Englishmen, and of all free peoples universally, as follows:
“…If civil society be made for the advantage of man, all the advantages for which it is made become his right. It is an institution of beneficence; the law itself is only beneficence acting by a rule. Men have a right to live by that rule; they have a right to justice; as between their fellows, whether their fellows are in political function or in ordinary occupation. They have a right to the fruits of their industry; and to the means of making their industry fruitful. They have a right to the acquisitions of their parents; to the nourishment and improvement of their offspring; to instruction in life, and to consolation in death. Whatever each man can separately do, without trespassing on others, he has a right to do for himself; and he has a right to a fair portion of all which society, with all its combinations of skill and force, can do in his favor. But as to the share of power, authority and direction which each individual ought to have in the management of the state, that I must deny to be amongst the direct original rights of man in civil society; for I have in my contemplation the civil social man, and no other. It is a thing to be settled by convention.
“If civil society be the offspring of convention, that convention must be its law. That convention must limit and modify all the descriptions of constitution which are formed under it. Every sort of legislative, judicial, or executory power are its creatures. They can have no being in any other state of things; and how can a man claim, under the conventions of civil society, rights which do not so much as suppose its existence?”
This last point draws attention to Burke’s understanding that the foundational rights of man declared by the French philosophes — Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité — are purely abstract rights indicating no sign of understanding of, or connection with, the actual development and maintenance of a just civil society. In other words, the philosophes envisioned man abstractly, or to put it another way, as abstracted from both nature and society as if this abstract man stands as a total end in himself, as sacrosanct, beyond any demand of society which nature assigns to him as inescapable part and participant of it. It seems the philosophes first reduce the human being to an abstraction — by taking him entirely out of the context of historical experience and traditional understandings of natural law going back millennia. Then, with man having been so abstracted, from there it is easy to dissolve him into an abstract mass: The individual is no longer the natural or even “legal” bearer of rights; rather, the legal bearer of rights is now the mass, the “group”— mankind at large or however else defined.
There is a further consideration regarding the original American founding that we should remember today: The British colony at Massachusetts was not established by means of military power — which is the usual way that states of whatever description acquire new territories. Instead, the Massachusetts Bay Colony was established by religious refugees: They were dissenters from the Church of England, the established church of which the reigning king was titular head.
Beginning with Henry VIII and extending to all his successors, the king of England entirely combined in his own person both the fundamental secular and spiritual authority of British society. But, when religious pilgrims on November 11, 1620, at Provincetown, Massachusetts, ratified what has been described as the first written constitution in human history, the Mayflower Compact, they were acting in resonance to a spiritual authority superior to that of the then-reigning king, James I — or of kings in general.
Just by making the voyage to America, the religious refugees were repudiating the authority of the king over their spiritual lives. Once there, the secular authority of the king was of absolutely no help to them. They had to shift for themselves, and basic survival was the highest priority: Almost the majority of the original colony perished during their first New England winter. They were forced to place their reliance entirely on themselves, on each other, and on God. The Mayflower Compact, moreover, made the pilgrim’s primary reliance on God perfectly explicit. Its first five words are: “In the name of God, Amen.”
Hold that thought while we turn to the French experience.
For centuries, the foundation of French society, culture, and politics had been the idea of the Etats General, of which there were three “estates”: the aristocracy, whose head was the King; the Church, whose head was the Pope; and everybody else; i.e., your average, everyday, common, “small” people….
What is known is that when King Louis XVI was decapitated, the social force of the French aristocracy was effectively decapitated with him. Also it is known that in the four-year period between the invasion of the queen’s bedchamber and the execution of the king, some 16,000 French men and women were guillotined at Paris — mainly aristocrats and other well-off people — as “enemies of the State.” Also all Church lands (probably accounting for some twenty percent of the total French real estate) and property were forcibly confiscated by the State, now reposed in a body called the National Assembly, composed by the Third Estate, the “people” of France. Thousands of clergy — bishops, priests, monks, and nuns — were murdered.
In effect the Third Estate utterly destroyed the other two: That’s the French Revolution in a nutshell.
Foundational Ideology
The French Revolution managed to kill off the first two Estates — and with that, evidently hoped to extinguish forever all aristocratic and theological ideas, pretensions, and powers regarding questions of the human condition. Indeed, the general expectation then seemed to be the Third Estate, the people, unchained from past “superstitions” and “repressions,” had at last come into its own sphere, where it could finally define and exercise true human “liberty.”
But the people were not some sort of homogeneous mass. Rather, there is a natural hierarchical order within the Third Estate similar to that found in both the aristocratic and theological estates.
In France at the time, at the top of this natural hierarchy were the people with expertise in manufacturing, commerce, banking, and law. They were the beneficiaries of the rising tide of the Enlightenment, as plentifully nourished from the side of Newtonian science.
In the rank immediately below them were the skilled craftsmen. Below this, relatively unskilled laborers. Then, the “least” of the people, the peasants/serfs who mainly were the impoverished suffering victims of the feudal order then embraced by both the aristocracy and the Church.
Thus within the Third Estate there were marked disparities of wealth, opportunity, education, talent, and ability. Yet the doctrine of Egalité erases all such distinctions: An Einstein and the most ignorant day laborer were considered “equal.” All were “equal” in the National Assembly too. On this basis, the doctrine of Fraternité, of the universal brotherhood of mankind, is blind and silent regarding the problem of: how the victims of the revolution become “non-brothers” in the first place, such that they could be destroyed with impunity by the mob, or condemned as “enemies of the state” by the National Convention and sent to the guillotine. On this basis, the doctrine of Liberté seems little more than a defense of gratuitous, passionate license that is immensely destructive to society.
Burke’s analysis of the situation in France, the condition of the National Assembly, and their combined implications, retains its extraordinary political noteworthiness to defenders of Liberty in our own day:
“It is no wonder therefore, that it is with these ideas of everything in their constitution and government at home, either in church or state, as illegitimate and usurped, or, at best as a vain mockery, they look abroad with an eager and passionate enthusiasm. Whilst they are possessed by these notions, it is vain to talk to them of the practice of their ancestors, the fundamental laws of their country, the fixed form of a constitution, whose merits are confirmed by the solid test of long experience, and an increasing public strength and national prosperity.
“They despise experience as the wisdom of unlettered men; and as for the rest, they have wrought underground a mine that will blow up at one grand explosion all examples of antiquity, all precedents, charters, and acts of parliament. They have ‘the rights of men.’ Against these there can be no prescription; against these no agreement is binding; these admit no temperament [modification], and no compromise: anything withheld from their full demand is so much of fraud and injustice. Against these their rights of men let no government look for security in the length of its continuance, or in the justice and lenity of its administration….”
Burke again reminds us a few pages later on that there is deep danger in relying on abstract rights when it comes to the organization of a just — that is “liberal,” in the sense of liberty, the root idea of classical liberalism — political society:
“The moment you abate anything from the full rights of men, each to govern himself, and suffer any artificial positive limitation upon those rights, from that moment the whole organization of government becomes a consideration of convenience. This it is which makes the constitution of a state, and the due distribution of its powers, a matter of the most delicate and complicated skill. It requires a deep knowledge of human nature and human necessities, and of the things which facilitate or obstruct the various ends which are to be pursued by the mechanism of civil institutions. The state is to have recruits to its strength, and remedies to its distempers. What is the use of discussing a man’s abstract right to food or medicine? The question is upon the method of procuring and administering them. In that deliberation I shall always advise to call in the aid of the farmer and the physician, rather than the professor of metaphysics.”
In Burke’s view — and I daresay in the view of his contemporary American readers — the French Revolution was a
“… usurpation which, in order to subvert ancient institutions, has destroyed ancient principles, will hold power by arts similar to those by which it has acquired it. When the old feudal and chivalrous spirit of Fealty, which by freeing kings from fear, freed both kings and subjects from the precautions of tyranny, shall be extinct in the minds of men, plots and assassinations will be anticipated by preventive murder and preventive confiscation, and that long roll of grim and bloody maxims which form the political code of all power not standing on its own honor and the honor of those who are to obey it. Kings will be tyrants from policy when subjects are rebels from principle.”
“Excuse me … if I have dwelt too long on this atrocious spectacle of the sixth of October 1789, or have given too much scope to the reflections which have arisen in my mind on occasion of the most important of all revolutions, which may be dated from that day, I mean a revolution in sentiments, manners, and moral opinions. As things now stand, with everything respectable destroyed without us, and an attempt to destroy within us every principle of respect, one is almost forced to apologize for harboring the common feelings of men….”
Clearly, Burke understands the French Revolution first and foremost as a “revolution in sentiments, manners, and moral opinions” — that is, it was preeminently a social, not a political revolution. Certainly that was not the case with the American Revolution. Indeed, Bernard Bailyn, eminent professor of Early American History at Harvard, has asked a tantalizing question: Was the American Revolution a revolution, or was it an evolution?
The prevailing American view at the time did not reject the ancient British tradition of natural liberty under natural law; it was rejecting King George as the traducer and usurper of this tradition. They didn’t want a king or a pope; they wanted a system of self-government that had already been in long usage in America. Ultimately they wanted a Constitution exclusively devoted to the defense of human liberty under just and equal laws. Which if history was of any guide meant that the action of the State had to be kept minimal in its scope by well-defined authority.
Most colonial Americans, being heirs of the same ancient, natural-law cultural tradition as Edmund Burke, likely would have agreed with him about this:
“…We are not the converts of Rousseau; we are not the disciples of Voltaire; Helvetius has made no progress amongst us. Atheists are not our preachers; madmen are not our lawgivers. We know that we have made no discoveries; and we think that no discoveries are to be made, in morality; nor many in the great principles of government, nor in the ideas of liberty, which were understood long before we were born, altogether as well as they will be after the grave has heaped its mould on our presumption….”
The allusion to Rousseau here is particularly instructive. Rousseau held that man is born perfectly good: He is born the “noble savage.” But as soon as he is in the world long enough, he becomes subject to a relentless process of corruption that makes him “bad” — because of the “bad institutions” of society, including churches and states, educational systems, economic organizations, and so forth. Man is victimized by society and powerless against it. “Bad institutions” are entirely to blame for human misery.
In short, Rousseau’s doctrine is directly opposed to the natural law doctrine that human beings are responsible (within limits) for whatever happens to them. Natural law theory holds that individual human beings alone have the ability to choose, decide, act; and that they are responsible for the decisions they make. And this implies the objective existence of good and evil. It also requires a universal (divine) spiritual authority to underwrite the foundational truths of the natural and moral worlds, thus to bring them into correspondence in human reason and experience.
In short, the Americans were not disciples of Rousseau…. He stands their theory of man on its very head.
Two Views of Man — Then and Now
The two revolutions have theories of man that are diametrically opposed, based on the idea of what constitutes human liberty, of the source of human rights. What Locke and Burke and the Americans held in common was the belief that human rights are the gifts of God, and are therefore inseparable from human nature itself. In other words, these rights inalienably inhere in concrete individual persons, each and every one, equally.
In contrast, on the French revolutionary view, human rights are the province of an abstraction known as “mankind.” Its doctrine is the Rights of Man — not the equal, inalienable rights of actual men. It sets up scope for the idea of “group rights,” as opposed to the idea of rights divinely vested in the individual person in such a way as to constitute his or her very own human nature. Under the French Revolution, the “metaphysicians” — Burke’s term for intellectual elites — would guide the rest of us in our understanding of such matters. In short, our rights as human beings ineluctably would be what politically powerful elites tell us they are. There is to be no higher standard of truth than that.
In the so-called post-modern world, the revolution that works overtime to kill truth wants to destroy it at its root — at the Logos. Rather than engage in fully free and fair debate, the entire project of the French Revolution seems have been the delegitimation of the idea that there is an “objective” standard by which Reality can be ascertained and judged, the root criterion for the discernment of good and evil in the actual world, by which human beings, acting according to reason and experience, can guide their lives in fruitful ways — or do the opposite. In short, once the concept of good and evil is destroyed, the human being has no firm guide by which to navigate his own personal existence.
Instead of the perennial question of good v. evil, in the post-modern world some “metaphysicians” tell us there is no objective truth at all — which logically follows from the presupposition of the “death” of God which they have, like Rousseau, already achieved in their own minds. The description of human reality thus boils down to a competition of amoral human “narratives,” or skilled opinions; but in the end still opinions. And under the principle of Egalité, one man’s opinion is just like any other man’s, neither good nor bad.
It appears we have among us today “metaphysicians” who desire, in the words of the great Anglo-American poet T. S. Eliot, to contrive and execute “systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.” And then to impose them on humanity. To succeed in this project, first they have to discredit the foundational motivating ideas of the American Revolution….
To speak of the Now: The currently sitting American president seems to be an activist of the French model. He is distinctly a post-modernist thinker, as an analysis of his words vis-à-vis his actions will show. Evidently he has no sympathy for the values, principles, and goals of the American Revolution, and has disparaged the Constitution — to which he freely swore an Oath of fidelity — on grounds that it is a “system of negative liberties” that has outlived its usefulness.
Indeed, it appears that he is doing everything in his power finally to drive a silver stake through the very heart of American liberty — the historic liberty of We the People of the United States of America, and that of our Posterity — for which the Constitution originally was “ordained and established.”
©2010 Jean F. Drew
ENDNOTES
1 Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie, The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library, David Fideler, ed., Grand Rapids: Phanes Press, 1988, p. 97.
2 Thomas Fleming, Liberty!: The American Revolution, New York: Viking, 1997, p. 104f.
3 Fleming, p. 105.
4 Ibid.
5 Fleming, p. 112.
6 Fleming, p. 118.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
9 Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, New York: The Classics of Liberty Library, 1982, p. 105f. Note: Because this edition is a facsimile of the original publication of 1790, I’ve taken the liberty of modernizing the spelling and punctuation.
10 John Trenchard and Robert Gordon, Cato’s Letters, Vol. 1, Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, Inc., 1995, p. 406ff.
11 Burke, p. 87–88.
12 Burke, p. 85–86.
13 Burke, p. 89–90.
14 Burke, p. 116.
15 Burke, p. 119; emphasis added.
16 Burke, p. 127–128; emphasis added.
And yet we know they do not deny reason, rational thought, or logic. (If they did, they'd be out of a job.) They just refuse to acknowledge the fundamental authority, the basis for the legitimacy of reason, rational thought, and logic. This basis cannot be observed in the phenomenal world for the simple reason that it transcends the phenomenal world. Which sort of thing the physicalist/materialist rejects out of hand: NOTHING transcends the physical world, the world of direct observables. Thus he's in a deep pickle without even being aware of it — for he delegitimates the very foundations of his own thinking.
In an earlier post on another thread, Texas Songwriter, you wrote, "science and philosophy are inextricably linked. In fact it is impossible to 'do science' apart from philosophy, because no one, especially science, approaches a scientific problem apart from their worldview. That is why fidelity to truth is so important. If one's faithfulness is to one's worldview, irrespective of truth, progress is impossible."
I so agree!
And yet science and philosophy have been relentlessly delinked in recent times. Science thinks it can work without philosophy even though its initial premises and its methods depend on it. Yet by excluding the sector of reality that philosophy addresses — universals, non-corporeals (like logic, reason, natural laws), etc. — science both limits itself to a partial and incomplete view of the Whole which we call the universe, and puts itself into a position whereby it cannot even explain its own modus operandi.
I try to work within a "whole systems" approach to Nature, which is a legacy to me from Pythagoras (~600 B.C.), the father of whole systems theory. The Pythagorean approach integrates mathematics, psychology, ethics, and political philosophy into one integrated whole.
...[T] central focus of Pythagorean thought is in many respects placed on the principle of harmonia. The Universe is One, but the phenomenal realm is a differentiated image of this unity — the world is unity in multiplicity. What maintains the unity of the whole, even though it consists of many parts, is the hierarchical principle of harmony, the logos of relation, which enables every part to have its place in the fabric of the all....I very much admire C.S. Lewis' (truthful!) answer to the question of whether he had a soul: He said "I am a soul."Pythagoras, no doubt, would have disapproved of the radical split which occurred between the sciences and philosophy during the 17th century "enlightenment" and which haunts the intellectual and social fabric of Western civilization to this day. In retrospect perhaps we can see that man is most happily at home in the universe as long as he can relate his experiences to both the universal and the particular, the eternal and the temporal levels of being.
Natural science takes an Aristotelian approach to the universe, delighting in the multiplicity of the phenomenal web. It is concerned with the individual parts as opposed to the whole, and its method is one of particularizing the universal. Natural science attempts to quantify the universal, through the reduction of living form and qualitative relations to mathematical and statistical formulations based on the classification of material artifacts.
By contrast, natural philosophy is primarily Platonic in that it is concerned with the whole as opposed to the part. Realizing that all things are essentially related to certain eternal forms and principles, the approach of the natural philosopher strives to understand the relation that the particular has with the universal. Through the language of natural philosophy, and through the Pythagorean approach to whole systems, it is possible to relate the temporal with the eternal and to know the organic relations between multiplicity and unity.
If the scientific spirit is seen as a desire to study the universe in its totality, it will be seen that both approaches are complementary and necessary in scientific inquiry, for an inclusive cosmology must be equally at home in dealing with the part or the whole. The great scientists of Western civilization — Kepler, Copernicus, Newton, Einstein, and those before and after — were able to combine both approaches in a valuable and fruitful way....
Today, in many circles, to a large part fueled by the desire for economic reward, science has nearly become confused with and subservient to technology, and from this perspective it might be said that the ideal of a universal or inclusive science has been lost. This is because the ideal scientist is also a natural philosopher who is interested in relating his discoveries to a larger universal framework, whereas the dull-minded technologist, if he has any interest in universal principles at all, limits that interest to their specific mechanistic applications rather than their intrinsic worth of study. Yet, those who study universal principles as principles-in-themselves, often find that these principles have many applications in a wide variety of fields.
While Pythagoras would have taken a dim view of this artificial and dangerous split between science and philosophy, the negative consequences of this rupture have not gone unnoticed. Yet with his emphasis on the unity of all life, Pythagoras would have been in an excellent position to foresee the negative consequences: ecological imbalance, materialism, the varied effects of personal greed, the disintegration of human values, the decline of the arts, a lack of interest in personal excellence and achievement. In a sense these problems, not necessarily unique to this age, result from a lack of balance and an ability to see the parts in relation to the whole. [from The Pythagoran Sourcebook and Library (1987), David Fideler, ed., "Introduction," p. 43f]
Indeed, the soul — as "the form of the body" — takes precedence over the body. But science nowadays only studies "bodies."
Texas Songwriter, thank you so very much for your outstanding essay/post!
EXCELLENT POINTS, YET AGAIN.
I certainly agree that philosophy is inextricably linked to all science and all scientific actitivites.
THANKS FOR THE PING.
The belief is a fact, the object of that belief is not.
What exact distinction do you draw between the existence of the soul and "ensoulment?"
If it is merely a "life force" then the evidence of it is in the fact that all living things are quickened by it and that all living things have some sort of a "soul". If you mean that a soul is a human cosmic "entity" that is stuffed into a body, then it is a mere postulate—and a highly heretical one, as far as the Church is concerned, I might add.
The doctrine of ensoulment differs in the Eastern Church from that of the Western Church. In the East, life is imply passed on beginning with the ancestral parents to their offspring to all mankind like one lit candle providing light for all other candles. This makes us all related.
In the West, the Church teaches that God creates a new soul at the moment of conception; that makes us all unrelated. We can see how the western idea of individualism may have welled from that concept. Every person is unique and unrelated, with individual rights.
But the Church struggled with the the actual moment of ensoulment, i.e. at which moment did the a fetus become a living human being. This uncertainty continued all the way up to the 17th century, when medical science made it obvious that life begins at conception.
St. Augustine observes that one cannot "kill what is not living" when speaking of early abortion. The Church officials observed that aborted fetuses in the early stage of pregnancy (first trimester) did not move. The fact that human fetuses at this stage of development (organogensis) do not even "look" human led many to believe they were not human, and therefore could not have a soul.
While the Church opposed deliberate abortion consistently, at some points in the Church history in the West not all abortion was considered murder precisely because of the uncertainty of when the ensoulment took place.
You wrote, "I did not say souls did not exist." Okay; does that mean you are prepared to say that they do exist? And if they do, does there not need to be a process of "ensoulment" of the body?
Souls could exist. But ensoulment does not refer to a soul entering a body. Rather it is a moment when the body receives the divine "breath of life" and becomes a living being. The idea that souls "enter" a body is profoundly Gnostic and un-Christian. It was condemned by the early Church as heresy.
It is clear that Adam did not pre-exist as a "soul". Pre-existence of the souls is a common pagan belief and leads to the pagan belief in reincarnation, which the Church condemned along with the pre-existence of the souls.
So, while there is no doubt that something animates us, the idea of ensoulment is still a postulate because it is clear that both the female ovum and the male sperm already have life in them; two living cells physically combine their genetic material and form a new, living =, dividing organism. Speaking of "ensoulment" may be convenient but it doe snot explain or prove what takes place.
Depends what you mean by "smarter?" Better informed yes, smarter no. In the Darwinian model, 2,000-3,000 years is simply not enough for such differentiation. More like 50 times that number.
If Hitler were not opposed by a force greater than his, his world order, values and ways of thinking would still carry weight. Churchill, Roosevelt and others would be "war criminals" and the history taught in schools would be quite different.
First let's not forget that Hitler came to power by a democratic process, being elected Chancellor of Germany. How ironic. In the eyes of many Germans he was more than right, more like god sent, because he brought Germany out of the misery of the Weimar Republic, restored German honor in their eyes, stood up to German enemies, gave Germans jobs and created almost instant prosperity.
In the Old Testament way of thinking he was another Babylon, a punishment exacted by God which was not judged as right or wrong (that's too Platonic), but as an act of God intended to teach a lesson, no different than the chaos exacted by a hurricane or an earthquake.
To the British and the French and the Americans he was of course not right because he was a threat. If he were a small banana republic dictator in some remote part of the world chances are no one would have paid any attention to him.
The point is that he had the might to prevail and he did prevail for a while whether he was right or wrong. In order to defeat him the Allies had to share the same bed with Joseph Stalin and Americans didn't even mind that their Vice President (Henry A. Wallace) was a sleeper-cell Marxist who said "the American and the Russian revolution were part of 'the march to freedom of the past 150 years.'" (that same man became the Presidential candidate in 1948 on the Progressive Party ticket and officially endorsed by the Communist Party USA. Had Roosevelt died 82 days earlier, he would have been the next US President.)
Would you say that was right? Do ends justify the means? And did we not utilize Werner von Braun, Hitler's trusted engineer, to work for us against Stalin when being an ex-Nazi was better than being a commie?
What a convoluted way of thinking! Anything you don't like is immediately turned into something French or communist or both! No one has monopoly on truth, although many claim it. And there are always two sides to a coin and someone decides which side will be seen and which won't. Every society has an "official truth" and a "politically correct" approach to it.
You are right. There are actually many versions of it.
And there is one Santa...
No it's not. English word doctrine comes from the Latin docere—to teach, show, point out.
So, because you are not aware of it I suppose it isn't so? Is that what you are saying?
Yeah, but Plato is not a normative authority of the Koine Greek. Koine Greek is Koine Greek, and doxa means this many things (from the Koine Greek lexicon):
opinion, judgment, view opinion, estimate, whether good or bad concerning someone in the NT always a good opinion concerning one, resulting in praise, honour, and glory splendour, brightness of the moon, sun, stars magnificence, excellence, preeminence, dignity, grace majesty a thing belonging to God the kingly majesty which belongs to him as supreme ruler, majesty in the sense of the absolute perfection of the deity a thing belonging to Christ, the kingly majesty of the Messiah, the absolutely perfect inward or personal excellency of Christ; the majesty of the angels, as apparent in their exterior brightness a most glorious condition, most exalted state of that condition with God the Father in heaven to which Christ was raised after he had achieved his work on earth the glorious condition of blessedness into which is appointed and promised that true Christians shall enter after their Saviour's return from heaven
Wouldn't it be an oxymoron for the Eastern Church to call itself orthodox (ortho+doxa), which according to the supreme authority of betty boop's knowledge of Koine Greek would literally mean the right-false opinion!!!? How pathetic.
There is never any right praise for ignorance either, especially in-your-face ignorance.
Inward where? What am I looking for? Do you even think these answers through, betty boop, or do you just reach to the shelf and throw at me whatever you can grasp?
I never said that!!! I never said "the only country with liberty will disappear in the near future and be replaced by the 'French model.'"
Dear kosta, it is evident to me that you and I do not live in the "same world."
You live in a world where you have resort to a "crystal ball" by means of which to prophesize what WILL happen in the future. Either that, or you live in a mechanistic, utterly deterministic system where the path from point A inexorably leads to point B. It's a "steady-state" system utterly determined by what is already known, which does not anticipate the introduction of any new elements that could change the "fatal" path....
But I do not have a crystal ball, and do not live in a deterministic universe: I live in a contingent one: The path from point A to B can be disturbed, influenced, even transformed by the introduction of new elements along the way.
While I do truly appreciate your analysis of the "situation on the ground" in American society right now — it's actually awesomely spot-on in many respects — I do not consider the outcome you describe to be a "done deal."
Don't count your chickens before they hatch.
And the Latin word "evolved" from the Greek.... Certainly the great masters of doxa in Plato's world— the sophists — were in the business of "teaching, showing, and pointing out." The problem — for Plato — was that what they were teaching, showing, and pointing out represented a radical departure from Truth.
Plato was a great literary artist and master of his language — Koine — before anybody even thought to analyze it.
You have a knack for "either–or" diatribes. The Law of the Excluded Middle may be the closest you come to the idea of God. I dunno....
Maybe I'm not sufficiently "orthodox"; but it is not my belief that God "creates a new soul at the moment of conception." My believe is that God creates all souls in the Beginning. And they are definitely all related, by virtue of one single paternity — God the Father, of whom we are sons (and daughters), and moreover made in His image.
[kosta]...in response to betty boop's observation that the only country with liberty will disappear in the near future and be replaced by the "French model."
[betty boop] I never said that!!! I never said "the only country with liberty will disappear in the near future and be replaced by the 'French model.'"
I was was paraphrasing it. For the record this is what you wrote (my emphasis):
But if the "French model" finally wins, America as we know it will cease to exist. It's just that simple. The only system of liberty under just and equal laws on the face of the planet will die. (Post #625)
I was wrong in not including your "if," for which I apologize. You did reject the "mathematical certainty" which makes your "if "a legitimate and important qualifier.
I do not have a crystal ball either, betty boop, but barring some truly monumental change, perhaps an act of God as some people would say, all things considered point to a pretty much done deal, imo.
Thanks for the ping.
The Greek word to "teach" is not doxa but didasko (that's where Didache comes from).
Plato was a great literary artist and master of his language — Koine — before anybody even thought to analyze it
Koine Greek was spoken vernacular and no one "owned" it, not even Plato, especially since in his days that language did not even exist yet. :)
What you are reading are latter-day copies claiming to be his works written in Koine Greek.
That's not really addressing the issue is it, betty boop?
Maybe I'm not sufficiently "orthodox"; but it is not my belief that God "creates a new soul at the moment of conception."
Goes without saying. Your beliefs are contrary to what your Church teaches, if it is still your Church, that is. The Book of Genesis makes it clear that Adam's soul did not pre-exist. And if Eve was made form Adam's rib than his soul became her soul.
In you believe in the pre-existence of the souls, your belief is heresy according to the Catholic Church. The Church specifically condemned the teaching of Origen over this issue and over the issue of universal salvation. Both of these are Gnostic beliefs that ultimately lead to the pagan belief in reincarnation, which the Church flatly condemns.
From what you are saying you have strayed rather far from the teaching of your Church and into the Christian periphery. But then again, you did say that you are presently unchurched, so at least you admit to that.
Au contraire: What the Book of Genesis says is God created heaven and the earth (i.e., all things) "in the beginning." Genesis 1 describes that beginning, which includes the beginning of Man (men).
At Genesis 1:26–27, God created the beginning of Man. But Man (man), at this point, is discarnate. I interpret this to mean that man is, at this point, pure soul.
This soul does not acquire physical or material form/existence until Genesis 2:7, when God breathed the Breath of Life into the first man Adam.
On this basis, I would argue that God's creation of Man in Genesis 1 was not the creation of the physical man, but the spiritual man (i.e., man as soul). We have to wait until Genesis 2 for the incarnation of man; that is, for man to arise as a physical being.
So accuse me of being a heretic! Coming from you, that would be most amusing!
Or maybe you could just "sue me." :^)
LOL.
THX FOR THE PING.
“”At Genesis 1:26–27, God created the beginning of Man. But Man (man), at this point, is discarnate. I interpret this to mean that man is, at this point, pure soul.””
Be careful,dear sister,you are wandering into gnostic idea’s because this turns God into a successive creator
That Creation is not Successive by Thomas Aquinas -Jacques Maritain
http://www2.nd.edu/Departments//Maritain/etext/gc2_19.htm
Succession is proper to movement. But creation is not movement. Therefore there is in it no succession.
2. In every successive movement there is some medium between the extremes. But between being and not-being, which are the extremes in creation, there can be no medium, and therefore no succession.
3. In every making, in which there is succession, the process of being made is before the state of achieved completion. But this cannot happen in creation, because, for the process of being made to precede the achieved completion of the creature, there would be required some subject in which the process might take place. Such a subject cannot be the creature itself, of whose creation we are speaking, because that creature is not till the state of its achieved completion is realised. Nor can it be the Maker, because to be in movement is an actuality, not of mover, but of moved. And as for the process of being made having for its subject any pre-existing material, that is against the very idea of creation. Thus succession is impossible in the act of creation.
5. Successive stages in the making of things become necessary, owing to defect of the matter, which is not sufficiently disposed from the first for the reception of the form. Hence, when the matter is already perfectly disposed for the form, it receives it in an instant. Thus because a transparent medium is always in final disposition for light, it lights up at once in the presence of any actually shining thing. Now in creation nothing is prerequisite on the part of the matter, nor is anything wanting to the agent for action. It follows that creation takes place in an instant: a thing is at once in the act of being created and is created, as light is at once being shed and is shining.
and...
That the Human Soul is brought into Being by a Creative Act of God
http://www2.nd.edu/Departments//Maritain/etext/gc2_87.htm
Everything that is brought into being is either generated or created. But the human soul is not generated, either by way of composition of parts or by the generation of the body (Chap. LXXXVI); and yet it comes new into existence, being neither eternal nor pre-existent (Chapp. LXXXIII, LXXXIV): therefore it comes into being by creation. Now, as has been shown above, God alone can create (Chap. XXI).
2. Whatever has existence as subsistent being, is also made in the way that a subsistent being is made: while whatever has no existence as a subsistent being, but is attached to something else, is not made separately, but only under condition of that having been made to which it is attached. But the soul has this peculiarity to distinguish it from other forms, that it is a subsistent being; and the existence which is proper to it communicates to the body. The soul then is made as a subsistent being is made: it is the subject of a making-process all its own, unlike other forms, which are made incidentally in the making of the compounds to which hey belong. But as the soul has no material part, it cannot be made out of any subject-matter: consequently it must be made out of nothing, and so created.
5. The end of a thing answers to its beginning. Now the end of the human soul and its final perfection is, by knowledge and love to transcend the whole order of created things, and attain to its first principle and beginning, which is God. Therefore from God it has properly its first origin.
Holy Scripture seems to insinuate this conclusion: for whereas, speaking of the origin of other animals, it scribes their souls to other causes, as when it says: Let the waters produce the creeping thing of living soul (Gen. i, 20): coming to man, it shows that his soul is created by God, saying: God formed man from the slime of the earth, and breathed into his face the breath of life (Gen. ii, 7).
“The Church specifically condemned the teaching of Origen over this issue and over the issue of universal salvation. Both of these are Gnostic beliefs that ultimately lead to the pagan belief in reincarnation, which the Church flatly condemns.”
Right! Along with the teachings of Evagrius of Pontus and Didymos the Blind at the Second Council of Constantinople in 553. This is a very old but once commonly held heresy. Like so many of them, they seem to pop up in various Protestant and other extra-Ecclesial groups.
I don't see it that way, dear brother in Christ.
The way I see it is: God can never be "a successor creator." He is the uncaused cause of the Creation, its very BEGINNING, Who creates ex nihilio. He Creates by His creative Word, His Logos, His Son — Who is called Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last. There is nothing "before" God to be a first creator (i.e., to be the creator or "cause" of God), for Him to succeed ("successor creator"). He is — in Aristotelian language — the "prime mover," the unmoved mover, the uncaused cause of everything, the First Cause.
Moreover, there is nothing until God makes it. But before He can make anything in particular, He has to make the "stuff" out of which its made. That would be space and time for openers. He made one single Creation embracing heaven and earth, in the Beginning, by His Holy Word — Who also turns out to be our Lord Jesus Christ — Who God our Father made plainly manifest in the Revelation of His Son, Jesus Christ, Who is not only our Truth (Logos) but our Savior and Redeemer.
To speak of "succession" at all, one must invoke Time. But God is not bound by this rule — He is not IN Time; only we are. Our "eternity" is His "all at once" — just to indicate the enormity of the "distance" between God and man.
I love Jacques Maritain. At the links, he is referencing Thomas Aquinas. From whom I took a page to clarify my own thinking on these points.
Indeed, the very title That Creation is not Successive is my very understanding of Genesis 1. Only its manifestation (i.e., Genesis 2) is successive; but even that not until after the Fall of Adam.
To put it very crudely (and may God forgive me), but He made the "whole ball of wax" out of nothing but His Will and Desire, towards His divine Purpose; He did all this out of nothing, for He hadn't created anything yet; He did it "all at once," in the Beginning; and He did it by His Holy Word, our Lord Jesus Christ, Logos.
I get the feeling, dear brother in Christ, that we agree more than we disagree about such matters. May God ever bless you and your dear ones!
Pax Christi
“”Genesis 2) is successive.””
Not to God(only in the minds of man)God cannot be moved and succession is not part of creation to Him .Thus, souls are not pre existent
The scriptures disagree (see Wisdom of Sirach aka Ecclasiasticus 18:1). Blessed Augustine translated the Greek text erronoeusly to read "Qui vivit in aeternum creavit omnia simul" to mean "He whol lives in eternity created everything at once." But the Greek text ὁ ζῶν εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα ἔκτισεν τὰ πάντα κοινῇ doesn't say that. It sasy "the [one] living in eternity made all thing in common [or in general]." [here you have the word κοινῇ – koine – which certainly does not mean "at once"!]
Augustine devotes an entire book (de Genesi ad literrarum) on the origin of the human soul. By making a capital mistake in translation (his Greek was known to be marginal) Augustine falls into a theological error of asserting the Platonic (pagan) pre-existence of the souls, which he later recanted (see his Retractions, I.1.13), where he simply admits to not knowing (then or now): "nec tunc sciebam, nec nunc scio."
The issue is not simple, especially for Augustine, because he was searching for theodicy in condmening unbaptized infants:
He develops a double-life hypothesis, by which we have lived in and sinned in Adam and are not being punished (condemned) in this life, a strange Neoplatonic concept to say the least.
Perhaps this will help...
From Summa Theologica
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1090.htm
Article 4. Whether the human soul was produced before the body?
Objection 1. It would seem that the human soul was made before the body. For the work of creation preceded the work of distinction and adornment, as shown above (66, 1; 70, 1). But the soul was made by creation; whereas the body was made at the end of the work of adornment. Therefore the soul of man was made before the body.
Objection 2. Further, the rational soul has more in common with the angels than with the brute animals. But angels were created before bodies, or at least, at the beginning with corporeal matter; whereas the body of man was formed on the sixth day, when also the animals were made. Therefore the soul of man was created before the body.
Objection 3. Further, the end is proportionate to the beginning. But in the end the soul outlasts the body. Therefore in the beginning it was created before the body.
On the contrary, The proper act is produced in its proper potentiality. Therefore since the soul is the proper act of the body, the soul was produced in the body.
I answer that, Origen (Peri Archon i, 7,8) held that not only the soul of the first man, but also the souls of all men were created at the same time as the angels, before their bodies: because he thought that all spiritual substances, whether souls or angels, are equal in their natural condition, and differ only by merit; so that some of them—namely, the souls of men or of heavenly bodies—are united to bodies while others remain in their different orders entirely free from matter. Of this opinion we have already spoken (47, 2); and so we need say nothing about it here.
Augustine, however (Gen. ad lit. vii, 24), says that the soul of the first man was created at the same time as the angels, before the body, for another reason; because he supposes that the body of man, during the work of the six days, was produced, not actually, but only as to some “causal virtues”; which cannot be said of the soul, because neither was it made of any pre-existing corporeal or spiritual matter, nor could it be produced from any created virtue. Therefore it seems that the soul itself, during the work of the six days, when all things were made, was created, together with the angels; and that afterwards, by its own will, was joined to the service of the body. But he does not say this by way of assertion; as his words prove. For he says (Gen. ad lit. vii, 29): “We may believe, if neither Scripture nor reason forbid, that man was made on the sixth day, in the sense that his body was created as to its causal virtue in the elements of the world, but that the soul was already created.”
Now this could be upheld by those who hold that the soul has of itself a complete species and nature, and that it is not united to the body as its form, but as its administrator. But if the soul is united to the body as its form, and is naturally a part of human nature, the above supposition is quite impossible. For it is clear that God made the first things in their perfect natural state, as their species required. Now the soul, as a part of human nature, has its natural perfection only as united to the body. Therefore it would have been unfitting for the soul to be created without the body.
Therefore, if we admit the opinion of Augustine about the work of the six days (74, 2), we may say that the human soul preceded in the work of the six days by a certain generic similitude, so far as it has intellectual nature in common with the angels; but was itself created at the same time as the body. According to the other saints, both the body and soul of the first man were produced in the work of the six days.
Reply to Objection 1. If the soul by its nature were a complete species, so that it might be created as to itself, this reason would prove that the soul was created by itself in the beginning. But as the soul is naturally the form of the body, it was necessarily created, not separately, but in the body.
Reply to Objection 2. The same observation applies to the second objection. For if the soul had a species of itself it would have something still more in common with the angels. But, as the form of the body, it belongs to the animal genus, as a formal principle.
Reply to Objection 3. That the soul remains after the body, is due to a defect of the body, namely, death. Which defect was not due when the soul was first created.
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