Le Livre des Esprits

spiritist; as a generality, it is linked to the spiritualist doctrine, of which it represents one phase. This is the reason why it carries at the head of its title the words: Spiritualist Philosophy.

II

There is another word upon which it is equally important to agree, because it is one of the cornerstones of every moral doctrine and is the subject of numerous controversies for lack of a well-defined meaning; that word is soul. The divergence of opinions on the nature of the soul comes from the particular application that everyone makes of this word. A perfect language, where every idea would have its representation by its own term, would avoid many discussions; with a word for every thing, everyone would understand one another.

According to some, the soul is the principle of material organic life; it has no existence of its own and ceases with life: this is pure materialismThe philosophical belief that nothing exists except matter and its movements, and that consciousness is merely a byproduct of biological functions.. In this sense, and by comparison, they say of a cracked instrument that no longer produces sound: that it has no soul. According to this opinion, the soul would be an effect and not a cause.

Others think that the soul is the principle of intelligence, a universal agent of which every being absorbs a portion. According to them, there would be only one single soul for the entire universe, which distributes sparks among various intelligent beings during their life; after death, each spark returns to the common source where it merges into the whole, just as streams and rivers return to the sea from which they originated. This opinion differs from the previous one in that, in this hypothesis, there is something in us more than matter, and something remains after death; but it is almost as if nothing remained, since, no longer having any individuality, we would no longer have consciousness of ourselves. In this opinion, the universal soul would be God, and every being a portion of the Divinity; this is a variety of pantheismThe belief that the universe (or nature) and God are identical, often suggesting that individual identity is lost upon returning to the divine whole..

Finally, according to others, the soul is a moral being, distinct and independent of matter, which preserves its individuality after death. This meaning is, without contradiction, the most general,