Page:Modern Rationalism (1897).djvu/122

On the question of the spirituality of the soul and its separability from the body the result of the philosophical struggle is, perhaps, more definite. The traditional notion of a spiritual principle informing a material structure, acting independently of it in its higher powers, and substantially separable from it, is now not only destitute of scientific proof, but is negatived by all the evidence of psychology. There is a general practice of either having recourse to "revealed" documents for a solution of the anthropological problem, or of seeking a solution in the phenomena of ethical life. Of the value of the revealed documents we have already seen the decision of the Rationalistic critics. Of the second source of hope of personal immortality we must again forbear to speak until we have discussed the ethical progress of the nineteenth century. The scholastic arguments for the spirituality of the soul have once more collapsed, and modern scholastics are at utter variance with regard to their value. Other philosophers entirely neglect them. The spiritualistic position has also been deeply affected by the discovery of the evolution of man. The proof of the somatic evolution of man from the lower animals (which will be described in the next chapter) concentrated attention upon the psychical differences which seemed to mark him off. These were not found sufficiently strong to forbid the extension of the doctrine of evolution to his mental constitution. The problem has, therefore, become a question of revealed doctrine or of ethical consideration for the majority of philosophers. When we remember that at the close of the last century the existence of a personal God and the immortality of the human soul were scarcely called into question outside of the French school of Diderot, Lamettrie, Holbach, and Cabanis, and when we consider the universal diffusion of Empiricism (Agnostic or Positivistic or Materialistic) and of Pantheism—each of which systems excludes both beliefs—in England, France, Italy, and Germany, we have a correct idea of the progress of Rationalism in the province of philosophy.