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The Human Soul

by Uriel Acosta

 

Since we have to deal with the mortality or immortality of the human soul, it is appropriate to ask what that soul is. Many ignorant fools speak of it as though it were a virgin personified; others describe it as something emergent from purgatory. We say that the human soul is man's vital spirit, by means of which he lives. This spirit is in the blood, and with it man acts and moves in the world. Man lives as long as the vital spirit works in his body. He dies when the spirit is either naturally or accidentally extinguished. The only difference between the animal soul and the human soul is that the human soul is endowed with reason, while the animal soul lacks reason.

We know that we have something called the soul, and we must ask what it is that creates this soul in the human body. Man creates, by a natural process, the soul of another man, just as an animal creates the soul of another animal similar to itself. That can be the only indubitable answer. ... Those who assert that the soul is different from the body; that it was created by a God who deposed it, are not worth being heeded. ... Man would not die if his vital spirit, his soul, could not die.

 

Excerpted from The Writings of Uriel Da Costa



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