SOUL — A. in the form of a bird. Carved wood (Borneo) — Rome, Lateran Missionary Ethnological Museum.
B. Ankermann, Totenkult und Seelenglaube bei afrikanischen Völkern, in Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1918, pp. 89-153; W. Schmidt, Der Ursprung der Gottesidee, 6 vols., Münster in Westphalia, 1926-35; E. Camerling, Über Ahnenkult in Hinterindien und auf den Grossen Sunda-Inseln, Rotterdam 1928; Fr. Bösch, Les Banyanzeen, Münster in Westphalia, 1930; K. Th. Preuss, Tod und Unsterblichkeit im Glauben der Naturvölker, Tübingen 1930; H. M. Dubois, Monographie des Betsileo, Paris 1938.
IV. THE SOUL IN EXTRA-BIBLICAL RELIGIONS
The belief in the survival of the soul, which is found in the beliefs of primitive peoples (v. ANIMISM), is also found in the religions of culturally advanced peoples, whether these be the religions of the national groupings of the ancient (Egypt, Babylonia, Syria, etc.) and modern world (China, Japan, India, etc.), or whether they be supranational or universal religions (Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Islam).
1. CHINA
The Chinese have two different words to express the idea of the soul: p'o, which corresponds to the “sensitive soul” of Aristotelian philosophy, the one that presides over vital functions, manifests itself through breath, and departs from the body at death; and hun, which is the rational soul, the one that presides over the functions of the spirit and, in morbid phenomena and in dreams, seems temporarily to leave the body. The Li ki, or “Record of Rites,” one of the five classical Chinese books, states that, after death, one of the deceased’s relatives climbs onto the roof of the house and, facing north—the region of the dead—invites the deceased’s soul to return to the body: “after which the mouth of the dead was filled with rice and a piece of raw meat was placed beside him. Then one looked toward the sky and buried the body in the earth. The body and the animal soul go downward; the intelligent spirit goes upward” (Li ki, 7, 1, 7).Further evidence of this belief is found in the cult of the dead, which obliges the filial piety of descendants to venerate their parents and ancestors as if they were still alive: an obligation that falls upon all, from the head of state, who venerates them in special shrines, to the humblest private individual, who honors them as present in the tablets placed in a special corner of his home. This custom is so deeply rooted that—provided the tablet is stripped of its idolatrous meaning as a “support of the soul”—it has even been permitted for Catholic Chinese by a specific decree (8 Dec. 1939) of the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda.
2. JAPAN
Japan also shared the belief in the survival of the soul without investigating its nature or the manner of its survival. This is due to the fact that a purely animistic and naturalistic paganism (as demonstrated by its mythology) was soon overlaid by Chinese culture and religious influence and by Buddhist preaching.Closely dependent on Chinese influence is the cult of ancestors, which Japan also practices, venerating them within each home in special shrines (mitama-ya), where the tablet is kept that serves both as a support and a memorial of the deceased. The ancestors of the imperial family, moreover, are elevated to the category of Kami, or superior and divine spirits, protectors of the country.
3. EGYPT
In ancient Egypt, too, there is a double term to signify the twofold aspect of the soul. The ka (ko, ko') is the vital breath, conceived as identical to the person, which departs when the individual dies but remains near the tomb to which it is almost bound and is nourished by the offerings brought to the corpse. The ba (bai), on the other hand, is only the spiritual part of the soul, not bound to the tomb and capable of moving freely either toward the sky or toward the netherworld; for this reason it assumes the form of a bird and likes to visit the mummy from time to time and alight upon its heart. It is written in the Pyramid Texts: “(The dead man) goes toward the sky like falcons, with feathers like those of the goose, he soars toward the sky like the crane and kisses the sky like the hawk, he leaps toward the sky like a grasshopper. Thus the man flies far from you, O men, he is no longer on earth but in heaven, with his brother gods...” This is an affirmation not only of survival but also of the happy fate of the soul.
4. BABYLONIA
According to the Babylonians, after death the corpse survives the edimmu, that is, its soul conceived as a spiritual being, winged like a bird, which goes to the land of shadows (arallu) located beneath the earth. So that this shade may be at peace and not torment the living, neither burial nor care must be lacking. On the tomb, therefore, the relatives must provide, on the appointed day, the funeral meal (kispu): “Have you seen,” Gilgamesh asks Eabani, “the fate of the edimmu of him whose corpse is uncared for?” And Eabani replies: “I have seen it eating the scraps of the pot, the remains of food thrown in the street.” But this gloomy vision left open a glimmer of hope, almost a hope for a resumption of life, because it is precisely in the darkness of the arallu that the spring of life flows, which the goddess Ishtar goes seeking for Tammuz; and Gilgamesh is moved on his journey by the desire for immortality, which is doubled in him by the death of his friend Eabani. Even the myth of Adapa, who, at the advice of Ea, refuses the immortality that the god Anu offers him by presenting him with the food and water of life, demonstrates in its own way the yearning of the Babylonian soul for the privilege of immortality.5. SYRIA
Among the other Semitic peoples as well, the soul is the vital breath (nephesh) which, after death, descends into a dark region from which there is no return. But its lot can be alleviated by the funeral rites performed by the living at the tomb, the inviolability of which was a strict law among all Semites. For the otherworldly fate of the soul, the Aramaic inscription of King Panammu dedicated to the god Hadad (excavations at Zincirli, 8th century B.C.) is important, in which explicit allusion is made to the abode of the souls of the Syrians near the deity. Panammu indeed commands that this vow be addressed to Hadad at the moment of sacrifice: “May the soul of Panammu eat and drink with you!”—that is, may it also share in the sacrifice offered to the god.6. INDO-EUROPEANS
The funerary furnishings of the primitive Indo-European peoples, collected for northern Europe in the museums of Germany, Scandinavia, and Slavic countries, demonstrate among the various peoples of this family the belief in the survival of the soul. This is conceived as the breath or spirit (Sanskrit ātman, Avestan atan), which at the moment of death leaves the body and goes to join its “fathers,” “ancestors,” or “the blessed” in their region. It must not, however, be abandoned, for that would make it angry and therefore harmful; rather, it must be assisted by providing the corpse in which it once dwelt with the utensils, weapons, and ornaments used in life, and by bringing food and drink offerings to the tomb. These offerings are made on the third, ninth, and thirtieth (or fortieth) day after death, and are renewed on a day of the year that is commemorative for all the dead and which, among the ancient Greeks, was the day of the Anthesteria, among the Romans that of the Lemuria and the Feralia. The souls are invited to partake of the offerings, in return for which they are asked to grant the living the fruits of the earth and livestock, and finally are entreated to depart: “Manes exite paterni!”7. India
Vedism. – The Vedic Indian recognizes in the body the presence of an element of aerial, shadowy consistency, which can abandon its seat either temporarily (and then the body loses consciousness of itself, as in cases of illness or sleep), or definitively at the moment of death (and then the body decomposes, while that shadowy essence acquires an independent life and can assume various forms). The Vedas give two names to this aerial element: *asa* “breath, exhalation,” something material, which man shares with the soul, and which it breathes out at the moment of death; and *manas*, i.e., spirit as the seat of intelligence and will, which resides in the heart; popular imagination conceives of it as a soul the size of a thumb. These two names, however, are often used interchangeably. At death, the *manas* departs to the world beyond, where the ancestors (*pitaras*) already dwell, ruled over by Yama, the first man who knew death. Naturally, even here the state of the *a.* in the afterlife depends on the piety of the living, hence the complex funerary ritual and the cult of tombs, with their attendant funeral offerings (*dāna*), without which the deceased would suffer and torment the living.
**Brahmanism.** – In Brahmanism, the Vedic notion of the *a.*, so primitive but in the end so close to reality, is realized in a pantheistic vision of the entire cosmic organism, in which there is no longer room for the affirmation of a personal and permanent *ego* amid the mutable flux of things. The name used to designate the *ego*, the *a.*, is *ātman* “breath, wind,” i.e., the inner principle that sustains the life of the individual. But this same name is also used to express the *ego* that gives life to the entire universe: the individual *ātman* and the universal *ātman* (Brahman) are ultimately identical; individual *a.*s emerge from the universal *a.* like countless sparks from a fire, partaking of its nature (Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣad 1.7; 1.1). Indeed, this identification constitutes salvation (*mokṣa*), which is precisely an immersion in the universal Being, like a river that loses itself in the sea.
**Buddhism.** – From this pantheistic valorization of the individual *a.* in the universal *a.*, Buddhism goes so far as to deny the *a.* altogether, rejecting as rationally unthinkable the idea of *ātman*, whether universal or individual. It admits, like Brahmanism, that the personal *ego* and the sensible world are a fabric of appearances in constant transformation, but denies that the Absolute (Brahman) is the sole reality or that the substance of the *a.* (*ātman*) is to be recognized in II. The *a.* is not an individual, permanent spiritual substance, the subject of the phenomena of knowledge and consciousness; it is the apparent result of a succession of consciousness-states, detached from one another but linked in series; just as a rope, one end of which is set alight and whirled around the other, describes a circle of fire that does not in reality exist. The personal *ego* does not exist—so the monk Nāgasena tells King Milinda—only the five aggregates that constitute human existence: form, sensation, perception, mental formations, and consciousness; just as the chariot does not exist, only the pole, wheels, yoke, etc., whose assembly is given the name “chariot.” The denial of the *a.* as a permanent individual substance appears to contradict the doctrine of metempsychosis, which Buddhism accepts and which makes the new existence depend on the “law” (*karma*), i.e., the chain of actions performed in a previous existence. But Buddhism resolves this contradiction by positing the idea of a “non-permanent continuity” in the process from one existence to another: “continuity” because the new existence in fact continues the previous one, “non-permanent” because, with the denial of a substantial *ego*, the new personality has nothing to do with the previous one; just as when one flame is lit from another, one cannot say that the first flame has transmigrated into the second, even though a new flame is in fact born. Thus, according to Buddhism, what occurs is not true transmigration, but rebirth.
Later Buddhism, known as the Mahāyāna (in contrast to the original Hīnayāna), did not substantially alter this fundamental doctrine of the Master, even though it constructed an elaborate speculative and practical *buddhalogy* that transformed the concepts of the Buddha and *nirvāṇa*, diverted half of the monastic vocation, and organized a veritable cult of the Buddha.
8. Persia
Beliefs regarding the survival of the *a.* in pre-Zoroastrian Persia were likely no different from those of the other Indo-European peoples mentioned above. A remnant of these beliefs, accepted by later Mazdeism, is to be recognized in the *Fravaši*, which are to be understood as the spirits of the ancestors, something akin to the Lares and Genii of the Romans who protect the descendants of their own family. Precisely because of this too evidently animistic significance, however, the *Fravaši* are not mentioned in the oldest parts of the Avesta (which date to the preaching of Zarathustra) but are found instead in the later Avesta (an entire hymn is dedicated to them), where they appear as the *a.*s of the righteous, functioning as guardian angels who from birth stand beside man and protect him from demons. In place of the *Fravaši*, Zarathustra introduced the *daēnā*, i.e., the conscience of the *ego*, which determines the good or bad destiny of each individual. In Mazdean eschatology, the *daēnā* takes the form of the conscience of the righteous man, who appears to him as a beautiful maiden accompanying him to judgment, toward which he proceeds under the guidance of Sraośa, crossing the Chinvat Bridge that spans between earth and heaven. After the weighing of deeds, if the *a.* is found wanting, it falls from the bridge into the abyss that yawns beneath; if justified, it crosses the bridge and enters the paradise of spiritual delights.
9. Greece and Rome
Even in that important vestibule of Greek religion which is the Minoan-Mycenaean period, the belief in the survival of the *a.* is clearly documented: abundant funerary furnishings, clay or marble figurines, vases, obsidian or bronze blades, seals, gold masks preserving the likeness of the deceased—all this equipment presupposes the reality of a further life for the deceased and the use he may still make of the things he loved and used on earth. But the most eloquent monument of all is the painted sarcophagus of Hagia Triada, whose funerary significance (despite the exegesis of E. Petersen and J. E. Harrison, who see in it rather scenes alluding to the spring awakening of nature) cannot be doubted. The two long sides of the sarcophagus depict, one, the deceased standing before the tomb receiving the offering of a boat and animals, and the other, the solemn sacrifice of a bull. Of the two short sides, one shows a chariot drawn by horses with two women inside, perhaps a scene from real life, while the other shows a chariot drawn by griffins (symbolic animals, often in Minoan monuments, in relation to death) with two men inside, one of whom, certainly the deceased, is depicted in a darker hue and entirely enveloped in a robe that covers even his arms; above, a bird flies in the opposite direction to the chariot and represents the *a.* of the dead. This sarcophagus demonstrates that the Minoans believed in the survival of the *a.*, in its journey to the afterlife (the boat and chariot), and in the efficacy of funerary rites.
Also in Homer the faith in the survival of the soul is clearly affirmed. When the warrior dies, his soul (ψυχή — vital breath —) issuing from his mouth and from the gash of the wound descends into the invisible underworld (Hades). It retains the form (εἴδωλον) of the deceased, who is indeed recognizable (Achilles in Hades recognizes Patroclo), but it is tenuous as a shadow, so much so that it cannot be grasped in one’s arms. This soul lacks consciousness, because psychic activity depends on the viscera of the body from which it is now separated: only blood can restore it to consciousness, and thus Odysseus, before descending into Hades, sacrifices the victim whose blood, once tasted, restores to the souls their sense and memory of life.
The funeral ritual of classical Greece likewise presupposes faith in the survival of the soul. After closing his eyes and folding his arms, the corpse was washed, dressed, crowned, and laid out with his feet toward the door. In a later period it became customary to place an obol in his mouth for Charon, and a prayer to Hermes psychopompos, that is, the guide of souls, was not omitted, so that he might kindly perform his office. Once the body was cremated or buried, the objects cherished in life were placed in the tomb. Upon returning from the funeral, the funeral feast (ἐπίδειπνον) took place, and on the third, ninth, and thirtieth day, as well as on the anniversary, offerings of legumes, especially of beans, were prepared on the tomb.
For the Romans the soul after death lives a shadowy life in a subterranean region called Orcus. Its condition there depends on how the corpse is treated. It is the duty of the family to provide for burial and to appease the Manes of the deceased with funeral offerings at the tomb. The tomb is the necessary meeting place for the soul, and to be deprived of it is the most anguishing of pains: thus cenotaphs were built for the unburied dead and for shipwrecked men, inviting three times in a loud voice the wandering soul to enter and dwell within. The summons was also performed at the moment of death after the last breath of the dying had been gathered. In Rome too there was the funeral feast (silicernium) on the day of burial, a banquet on the ninth day (coena novendialis), and the parentatio or annual commemoration of the dead.
The spirits of the dead were called Lares and Manes if kindly or favorable to the living, Larvae and Lemures if harmful and tormentors. Their attitude toward the living depended on the manner in which the corpse had been treated. Three times a year the souls confined in Orcus came to visit the living by passing through an opening made in the mundus, or ritual pit, which connected the world of the living with that of the dead.
II. MYSTERIES
The evolution from the concept of survival to that of the immortality of the soul occurred in Greece through the spiritual development of the mystery religions. Originally these were secret rites aimed at securing the rhythm of the seasons, thus ensuring, after the death of vegetation in winter, its rebirth in the new spring. From this original sacred-magical meaning a mystical transition is natural, inasmuch as the deity, in whom the spirit of vegetation is personified (and to which the initiates are assimilated through initiatory rites), guarantees them a similar fate and almost makes them experience it in the transport of ecstasy aroused by the rite, which raises their souls to a higher region. This particular experience was especially vivid in the Dionysian mysteries, where intoxication reached its peak when, after the frenzied race, the initiates tore apart the goat or fawn, the embodiment of the god.From this rather crude manner of union with the deity, which gave the soul the experience of a life superior to the ordinary and more desirable, there developed the discipline of the Orphics, who, elaborating the myth of Dionysus and refining his ritual, reduced to a fixed rule of asceticism what had been an orgiastic transport of an hour.
Orphism holds that man consists of two elements: one divine, the soul, and the other earthly, the body, united together (as the prisoner and his prison) from the day when, from the ashes of the Titans, struck by Zeus because they had torn apart and devoured Dionysus-Zagreus, the human race was born. Orphic discipline teaches how to free the divine, Dionysian element, that is, the soul, from the earthly, Titanic element, that is, the body, so that it may return to the bosom of the deity; especially since the imprisonment is long, for the soul is condemned to pass into other bodies (v. MISTERIO) until complete purification. The Orphic lamellae, found in tombs of southern Italy and Crete, convey a vivid sense of the soul’s divine origin and its longing for liberation, to which it yearns as a thirsty man yearns for a fresh spring. “My lineage is from heaven,” says the soul to the guardians of Hades in the lamella from Petelia, “and this you know well; a burning thirst consumes me: give me now of the fresh water flowing from the lake of Mnemosyne.” “I fled from the mournful and harsh circle,” says the soul in one of the lamellae from Thurii, “and with swift wing I reached the longed-for crown... Happy and most blessed are you who from man became a god!”
The Orphic belief in the divine origin of the soul and its immortal destiny exercised great influence in the Hellenic world. Pythagoras owed to the Orphics his doctrine of the soul, Plato his psychology and the vision of immortality that shines in the Phaedo, Cicero the consoling certainty that delights his Somnium Scipionis, the Neopythagoreans their firm belief that the soul, like Sappho freed from human allurements, tends, at the sound of the mystic lyre, toward the supernal regions; Neoplatonism, which grew from the Orphic thought, owes to it its doctrine of the soul and its return to the One, as illustrated by Plotinus; finally, Gnosticism — that unbalanced and chaotic ferment of ideas that at the dawn of Christianity unfolded in the East, drawing on Neoplatonism, Christian faith, Iranian dualism, and Chaldean astrology — was likewise indebted to Orphic ideas inasmuch as it maintains that the soul is a ray of divine light enclosed in the darkness of material substance and that its supreme duty is to attain gnosis, that is, the true doctrine that opens the way to salvation.
III. ISLAM
Muḥammad, opposing the paganism of the Arab tribes with his preaching, which contained elements learned from Jewish and Christian communities with which he had come into contact, affirmed not only the survival of the soul, already implicit in the animistic beliefs of the Bedouins, but its immortality. This, however, is not explicitly stated in the Qur’ān but is implicit in the solemn and oft-repeated affirmation that Muḥammad makes of Allah’s final judgment and the consequent retribution for the good and the wicked. He does not have a clear idea of the spiritual nature of the soul, conceiving it as incapable of thought or action without the support of the body. After death it remains immersed in a state of unconsciousness (as the Seven Sleepers in their cave, Qur’ān 18:8–9) until Allah awakens it, either temporarily in the tomb or definitively on the Day of Judgment. After the angel of death, Isrāfīl, has executed the separation of the soul from the body and the corpse has been laid in the tomb, Allah revives it again so that it may undergo the particular judgment by two special angels (Qur’ān 7:35; 30:16). If the verdict is favorable, it will enjoy in advance the joys of paradise; if unfavorable, the deceased will suffer the so-called “punishment of the tomb,” consisting of anguish, stench, and remorse. “Even in the tomb,” says theMuslim animism — Animism returns to the body, and Arianism creates a kind of vitality for the dead so that they may feel pain and pleasure. On the Day of Judgment, Allah will judge men by means of a great balance that will weigh their actions justly (Qur’an 21:48); the good Muslim will cross the bridge of Sirāṭ stretched over the abyss and enter Paradise; the unbeliever and the wicked Muslim will fall from the bridge into Hell, the unbeliever forever, the Muslim for a limited period of time.
The philosophical-theological development of the concept of the soul (anima) in Muslim theology unfolded along two distinct lines: the Aristotelian current represented by Avicenna (q.v.), who deduced the immortality of the soul from its spirituality, and the mystical current illustrated by al-Ghazālī (q.v.), who placed living experience of the Qur’ānic faith above rational demonstration.
V. THE SOUL IN THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
1. ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY — The opinions of the pre-Socratics on the soul have been preserved for us by Aristotle (De Anima, 1), by the doxographers, and by the fragments that modern historiography has been able to identify from their lost works. The scarcity of sources and the controversies still current regarding the interpretation of this term and its various periods of thought render any attempt at rigorous classification difficult and uncertain. On the other hand, the fact remains that the problem of the soul is present in all thinkers and often indeed occupies the center of their world-conception, which greatly facilitates any attempt at classification and a substantial understanding of these early solutions.
Aetius distinguishes two classes of opinions: those that attribute a corporeal nature to the soul, and those that make it incorporeal. Among the latter he names Anaxagoras and his followers, of whom Stobaeus (Ecl., I, 49) recalls together with Anaximenes also Archelaus, Diogenes of Apollonia, and Anaximander. For them the soul is of an aerial nature, since for them air is the moving principle of nature; this view was supported by the observation of the close connection between the act of breathing and the preservation of life. “Men and other animals,” declares Diogenes, “live by the respiration of air. And this is for them the soul and the faculty of intellection, as is clear from the fact that when it departs, they die and intellection departs with it” (fr. 4). Yet the soul is a special kind of air, as Diogenes himself declares, warmer than the air outside but much colder than the air near the sun (fr. 5). According to Aristotle, some Pythagoreans held the same view because “they said... that the soul is the dust that stirs in the air,” while others said it is the moving principle of that dust (De Anima, 1, 2, 404a, 17-19). Isolated opinions are those that make the soul of a watery nature (Hippō, De Anima, I, 2, 405b, 1b, 24), or that, like Homer and Critias, locate it in the blood (ibid., 403a, 31; 405b, 4-7). Hippō, Democritus, and Leucippus likened it to the nature of “fire,” for among the atomists it consists of fire-atoms because they are more mobile and operative. Heraclitus held that the soul was the “warm exhalation” (ἀναθυμίασις: De Anima, I, 2, 405a, 26), while Empedocles is said by Theodoret to have conceived it as a mixture of “ethereal and aerial substance,” or even of all four elements and their ratio or “proportion” (ἀγών), as Aristotle hints (De Anima, I, 5, 410a, 1 ff.). Thales, however, is placed by Aetius at the head of those who conceived the soul as “incorporeal,” having been the first to call it “a self-moving nature and eternally in motion” (ἀρχικίνητον καὶ ἀεικίνητον), followed by Alcmaeon, who further declared it “immortal and akin to the gods.” Yet from Aristotle we know that the notion of “incorporeal” is no less present to the other Ionians, despite the apparent contradiction in terms. “Incorporeal” (ἀσώματος) for them signifies “subtle” (ἐπταμόρφος: De Anima, I, 2, 405a, 6), penetrating and therefore particularly mobile and capable of moving the body, as is evident from the fact that when it departs, they die (De Anima, I, 2, 405b, 31; 405a, 7, 27; 405b, 12).
These and other indications have led to a complete revision of the interpretation, dominant before Zeller, that attributed to early philosophy an exclusively cosmological and strictly physical meaning. Zeller instead characterized it as “hylozoism,” because all the primary inquiry was centered on the presence of soul in the cosmos. More recently K. Joël observed, following a hint from Aristotle himself, that for the early philosophers, as for every man who begins to move in the world, the beginning of thought is taken from what precedes “when not,” moving therefore from ourselves, and not “when if,” moving from an absolute reality that is foreign to us. The character therefore of Ionian philosophy, as much physical and cosmological as it is essentially anthropological and mystical: “The problem of the soul, that is, of life, is the fundamental problem for the ancient naturalist philosophers, and not merely an addition to the physical problem. There is not one of the so-called φυσικοί who, even in their meager fragments... neglects to speak of the soul.” Nor do they explain the soul by means of the physical world, comments Mondolfo, but rather the reverse: which constitutes (third point, together with the feeling of self and the value of soul and life) that anthropomorphism of mystical and lyrical foundation of natural philosophy that elevates man to the symbol and key of the world (La filosofia dei Greci, I, 11, p. 32). The analogy is explicit in the fragment of Anaximenes, which seems the only genuine one: “As our soul, being air, holds us together (συγκρατεῖ), so also air and spirit surround (προέχει) the whole world.” To sustain, to surround, to activate, to move, to govern are the attributes given to the soul, which remain without meaning in a purely “physical” interpretation. Thereby that “monism” is attenuated which attributes to the early philosophers the same Aristotle, and for the most part of them materialism, if we adhere to the mentality they had, and not to ours or to another more evolved such as that of Greek thought after the systems of Aristotle and Plato.
The transition from the concept of soul as incorporeal reality, subtle and penetrating, to that of “spiritual” seems to be due to the Pythagoreans, from whom Plato took it, and the original and common source is probably to be seen in the doctrines of the Orphics, to which the Neoplatonists would expressly appeal. For them too the souls wandered in the “dust” of the atmosphere and entered man through respiration. Yet in seeking to explain their intimate nature, the Pythagoreans posited as the principle of things “numbers,” that is, contents of intelligible nature, whence the clear separation—at least intuited—of the material and the spiritual. Some of them called the soul “harmony,” which is an effect of consonance of numbers, as Dicaearchus did; but Pythagoras, Xenocrates, and the majority of the school called it outright “self-moving number” (De Anima, I, 4, 407b, 30; 409a, 6). Another point of the Pythagorean conception of the soul, which would likewise be taken up by the Neoplatonists, is to explain the soul as a synthesis or resultant of “finite” and “infinite,” which for them had above all an ethical-religious meaning. Yet the cosmological aspect was not neglected. Already the Ionians, who attributed life to respiration, had conceived the stars as ensouled. In the same way and more clearly the Pythagoreans, as a fragment of Alcmaeon attests (fr. A. 12), by reason of their circular and therefore eternal motion, attributed to each star an immortal soul.
Dualism, which the Pythagoreans arrived at by introducing the intelligible or spiritual alongside corporeal substance, had some vague precedents. Heraclitus considered the soul as a “reason” (ἀγῶς) that increases itself (fr. 115, ed. Walzer, Florence 1934, p. 146). The same term, as has been noted, appears in Empedocles, for whom—even if one does not fully accept the idealization attempted by Rosmini—if one considers his theories regarding the “sphere” or intelligible cosmos, the admission found in the poem *Katharmoi* of higher agents or δαίμονες, and the contact he could have had with the Pythagorean schools of Magna Graecia, one must admit that he arrived at conceiving forces superior to matter, and such were Love and Strife. Certainly, Anaxagoras’ *Nous* explicitly posits a substantial heterogeneity with the corporeal, and this is the starting point for the concept of absolute spirituality that would later be affirmed by Aristotle. The heterogeneity of the soul from the body, however, is still lacking.
Of primary importance for the formation of Greek doctrines on the soul are the pronounced Orphic traditions, which over time came to form a single body with the Pythagorean. Aristotle cited the Orphic poems that attribute an extrinsic origin to the soul and explain its entry into the body through respiration, a conception common to all early Greek thought and perhaps to all primitive human thought (De anima, I, 5, 410 b, 26-29). Proclus mentions the theory of the cycle of time, of births and of misery, of the wheel of fate and of generation (In Tim., 330 ab, ed. Diels, III, Leipzig 1906, pp. 206-207); a doctrine that enthused the neo-pagan Nietzsche. Clement of Alexandria recalls the theory or tradition of original sin: “The ancient theologians and seers attest that the soul is joined to the body as a punishment for some fault and is buried in it like in a tomb” (Stromata, III, 433, tr. Mondolfo; the doctrine is expounded at length by Plato: Cratylus, 400 bc, or it is a curious play of etymologies; the emphasis on sin is also found in Aristotle: fr. 60 Rose, Berlin 1870, 10 b; in the ed. Walzer, p. 44). This doctrine is followed by that of the transmigration of souls referred to by Proclus; a transmigration that can be twofold, because the same spirits become in turn fathers and sons, and well-ordered spouses and mothers and daughters; according to the heavens, the soul of men passes into other animals... (In Rempublicam, ed. Kroll, II, Leipzig 1901, pp. 338-339). All these doctrines recur verbatim and are attributed to Pythagoras by Dicaearchus in the citation made by Porphyry (Vita Pythagor., § 19, ed. Nauck, Leipzig 1886, pp. 26-27). Pythagoras therefore went so far as to say that the souls of animals are of the same nature (φιλοσοφία) as ours (Porphyry, De Abstinentia, I, § 10, ed. Nauck, pp. 99, 13). Empedocles is no less explicit, and this confirms the supposition made above regarding the inspiration and character of his doctrines: “There is an oracle of fate, an ancient decree of the gods sealed with broad oaths: if ever one of the demons (among whom are certainly human souls) who have been allotted a long life stains his limbs with guilty blood, or, following impious Discord, swears false, he shall wander for ten thousand long years far from the blessed, being born in the course of time in all mortal forms, traversing the painful paths of life...” (fr. 115). “For I once was a boy and a girl, and a bush and a bird and a mute fish of the sea” (fr. 117, tr. Mondolfo; cf. frr. 136-37, the condemnation of bloody sacrifices). In these Orphic-Pythagorean theories, as Proclus himself attests (In Tim., 124 c, ed. Diels, I, Leipzig 1903, p. 407), all the elements of Plato’s doctrine of the soul are already present, giving a certain unity to the otherwise quite contrasting expositions of the various dialogues. Plato, however, criticizes the Pythagorean notion of the soul as harmony (Phaedo, 93 b); this critique was taken up by Aristotle in *De Anima* (I, 4, 407 b, 32-408 a, 9), and even earlier in the lost *Eudemus*, from which W. Jaeger derives the most explicit critique made by Plotinus of the same theory (Enneads, IV, 7, 8, ed. Bréhier, IV, Paris 1927, pp. 202-203; cf. W. Jaeger, *Aristotle*, Italian trans., Florence 1935, p. 57, note). The sense of the critique was in the reply that the soul is substance, while harmony is instead a modification and combination; moreover, harmony is always a good, whereas the soul can become bad.
The aspiration to make the soul a substance in itself, self-moving and immortal, which already appears in Thales and in Alcmaeon according to Aetius (Dox. gr., p. 386), finds in Plato its expected fulfillment, down to the most minute details. But it is a difficult task, and interpreters still declare that they have not succeeded in offering a coherent exposition of the diverse perspectives of the different dialogues: in this, as in other doctrines—even the most important—Plato never made a fixed point amid the continuous agitation of his full mind. Added to this is the complication deriving from the use of myth, which in regard to the soul is continuous and merges with doctrine. If we accept with A. E. Taylor (*Plato, the Man and his Work*, New York 1936, p. 306) that the *Laws* develop the hints of the *Phaedrus* (244 c ff.), we can establish the following principles: 1) The soul is a substance in itself, because it must set other things in motion; to it belongs that movement which comes tenth in the natural order but is logically first in origin and power, namely, to move itself and other objects. “And it never fails... not only for itself, but is the source and principle of motion for all other things” (*Laws*, 804 c ff.; *Phaedrus*, 244 cd). 2) Consequently, the soul must be said not only to be independent of the body and immortal, but to preexist the body of which it is the moving principle (*Laws*, 806 c ff.), and the perfections of the soul existed before the perfections of bodies. 3) As many as are the movements, so many are the souls; there is therefore before all else a “world soul,” and the sun has a soul and each star has its own (*Laws*, 808 d ff.): the cosmic character that Plato attributes to the soul is attested by the attribution he makes of a soul even to the gods themselves.
**SOUL** – *St. Michael Weighing Souls*, attributed to Cristoforo da Lendinara (15th c.) – Bari, Pinacoteca.