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The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

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the other by participation resulting from the unity; so that henceforth no act<br />

or suffering of the body is without the soul, no act or passion of the soul is<br />

without the body; all acts <strong>and</strong> passions are personal, pertaining to the<br />

whole man. Though this or that be relatively according to one or other<br />

nature, it is not to the exclusion of the other: "My soul cleaveth to the dust"<br />

<strong>and</strong> "My flesh crieth out for the living God." <strong>The</strong> human body has actual<br />

properties, in virtue of its union with spirit, which are utterly different front<br />

<strong>and</strong> beyond what matter, merely as matter, can possibly have. Because<br />

this great truth has been ignored, philosophy st<strong>and</strong>s helpless before the<br />

question, How the soul can receive impressions by the body? <strong>The</strong> attempts<br />

of the greatest of thinkers to solve this problem seem more like burlesques,<br />

than serious efforts. <strong>The</strong> personal unity of man alone solves the mystery.<br />

No theory but this can meet the facts of our being. None but this can<br />

avoid the two shoals of Absolute Idealism <strong>and</strong> Absolute Materialism.<br />

"<strong>The</strong> soul," says Tertullian, 529 "is not, by itself, man, nor is the flesh,<br />

without the soul, man. Man is, as it were, the clasp of two conjoined<br />

substances." "Man," says a work attributed to Augustine, though<br />

evidently, in part, of later date, 530 "consists of two substances, soul <strong>and</strong><br />

flesh: the soul with reason, the flesh with its senses, which senses, however,<br />

the flesh does not put into activity (movet), without the fellowship<br />

(societate) of the soul." "<strong>The</strong> soul," says the same ancient book, 531 "is so<br />

united to the flesh, that it is one person with the flesh. Of God as author,<br />

soul <strong>and</strong> flesh become one individual, one man: hence, what is proper to<br />

each nature remaining safe, that is added to the flesh, which is of the soul,<br />

<strong>and</strong> that is added to the soul, which is of the flesh: according to the unity of<br />

person, not according to the diversity of nature. What, therefore, is proper<br />

to each, is common to both; proper according to nature, common<br />

according to person."<br />

But if the body assumed by the soul has a new range of properties,<br />

which give it a dependent exaltation, how much more may we expect that<br />

when these conjoint natures, forming<br />

529 De Resurrect. Carnis.<br />

530 De Spirit. et Anim., C. III.<br />

531 Augustini Opera, VI., App. 810. Liber de Spirit. et Animae, C. XLI.

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