The Reasons given by the Vitalists for distinguishing Soul from Life.—It is, in particular, on the opposite side, in the psychical world, that the early vitalists professed to entrench themselves. We have just seen that their doctrines were not so subtle as those of to-day; the vital principle to them was a real agent, and not an ideal plan in the process of being carried out. But they distinguished this spiritual principle from another co-existent with it in superior living beings—at any rate, in man: the thinking soul. They boldly distinguished between them, because the activity of the one is manifested by knowledge and volition, while on the contrary, the manifestations of the other for the most part escape both consciousness and volition.
In fact, we know nothing of what goes on in the normal state of our organs. Their perfect performance of their functions is translated to us solely by an obscure feeling of comfort. We do not feel the beating of the heart, the periodic dilations of the arteries, the movements of the lungs or intestine, the glands at their work of secretion, or the thousand reflex manifestations of our nervous system. The soul, which is conscious of itself, is nevertheless ignorant of all this vital movement, and is therefore external to it.
This is the view of all the philosophers of antiquity. Pythagoras distinguished the real soul, the thinking soul, the Nous, the intelligent and immortal principle, characterized by the attributes of consciousness and volition, from the vital principle, the Psyche, which gives breath and animation to the body, and which is a soul of secondary majesty, active, transient, and mortal. Aristotle did the same. On the one side he placed the soul properly so called, the Nous or intellect—that is to say, the understanding with its
