The view that imperishable life belongs to the individual soul could only be reached by a line of thought that took as a fact and held fast to it as something given that the individual spirit is a reality. (Its appearance and disappearance in the [389] midst of the one universe was indeed for the physiologists the true miracle, the problem never satisfactorily solved.) Such a belief in individuality, the belief in an independently existent individual substance that had never had a beginning and could therefore never have an end, was the contribution, however fancifully it might be expressed, of the theologians and the mystics. For them immortality, the power of substantive duration unlimited by time, was extended also to include the individual. The individual soul is for them a self-existent, individual, divine being, indestructible because it is divine.
Greek philosophy underwent many changes in the course of its speculations during the following ages; but exactly in proportion as it, to a greater or lesser degree, accepted theological elements or on the other hand rejected such elements, did it give fundamental support to the view of the soul’s immortality, or grudgingly admit it, or absolutely reject it.
NOTES TO CHAPTER XI
[1] ψυχή = “life,” “concept of life,” in Homer (though not indeed used to denote psychical powers during lifetime): see above, [pp. 30], 31. So, too, occasionally in the remains of the Iambic and Elegiac poets of the earliest period: Archil. 23; Tyrt. 10, 14; 11, 5; Sol. 13, 46; Thgn. 568 f., 730; (Hippon. 43, 1?). ψυχή = “life” in the proverbial phrase περὶ ψυχῆς τρεχεῖν (see Wessel. and Valck. on Hdt. vii, 57; Jacobs on Ach. Tat., p. 896). ψυχή frequently = “life” in the idiom of the Attic orators (see Meuss, Jahrb. f. Philol. 1889, p. 803).
[2] See above, pp. [5], [30]. Even the Homeric poems in one case show a slight uncertainty of language and of psychological conception when they use θυμός, the highest and most general of the powers of life dwelling within the visible and living man, in the sense of ψυχή, the double of the man who dwells as a lodger in his body, separate and taking no part in the ordinary business of his life. The θυμός (see above, chap. i, [n. 57]) is active during the man’s lifetime, is enclosed in the midriff (ἐν φρεσὶ θυμὸς) and when that is overtaken by death is itself overwhelmed (Ψ 104): on the arrival of death it leaves the body and perishes—while the ψυχή flies away intact. The distinction is clearly maintained, e.g. in λ 220 f.: “fire destroys the body” ἐπεί κεν πρῶτα λίπῃ λεύκ’ ὀστέα θυμός, ψυχὴ δ’ ἠύτ’ ὄνειρος ἀποπταμένη πεπότηται. θυμός and ψυχή therefore leave the body of the slain man simultaneously (θυμοῦ καὶ ψυχῆς κεκαδών Λ 334, φ 154); but in very different ways. The relation between them becomes, however, interchangeability in the single case when it is said of the θυμός that it in death will enter ἀπὸ μέλέων δόμον Ἄιδος εἴσω—Η 131; in reality this could only be said of that very different being, the ψυχή. (When a fainting-fit has passed over we do indeed hear, not that the ψυχή—though this it was that had left the man: see above, chap. i, [n. 8]—but that ἐς φρένα θυμὸς ἀγέρθη, X 475, ε 458, ω 349. This, however, is not a case of θυμός instead of ψυχή, but θυμός is merely an abbreviated form of the whole statement which would be in full: both θυμός and ψυχή have now returned into the man; cf. Ε 696. It is a kind of synecdoche.) In the line Η 131 we really, then, do have θυμός instead of ψυχή either as the result of a misunderstanding of the real meaning of the two words or merely through an oversight. But never (and this is the most essential point) do we have a case in Homer of the opposite exchange of significance: i.e. of ψυχή used in the sense θυμός (νόος, μένος, ἠτορ, etc.), as meaning the mental power and its activity in the living and waking man. Just this, however, and more than this, the sum and substance of all the mental powers in general, is what the word ψυχή means in the language of the philosophers (except those affected by religious tendencies). They left out of account altogether that spiritual double of mankind whom the popular psychology called the ψυχή, and were thus free to use the word to express the whole psychical content of the human individual. From the fifth century onwards we find the word ψυχή used commonly, and even regularly, in this sense in the vocabulary of non-philosophical poets and prose writers. Only theologians and poets, or philosophers of a theological tendency, continued to use the [391] word in its ancient and primitive sense. Indeed, when the separation of a spiritual being from the body of a man in death was being spoken of, ψυχή always continued to be the proper word for this sense even in popular language. (An extremely rare example of θυμός in this sense, comparable with Η 131, is [Arist.] Pepl. 61 Bgk.; θυμόν . . . αἰθὴρ λαμπρὸς ἔχει. In the corresponding epigram, Epigr. Gr. 41, we have ψυχήν.)
[3] ἔνιοι, among them Choirilos of Samos: D.L. i, 24 (from Favorinus): Vors.4, i, p. 1, 21.
[4] Arist., An. 1, 2, p. 405a, 20 f. “Aristotle and Hippias” ap. D.L. i, 24; Vors., p. 2, 1. τὰ φυτὰ ἔμψυχα ζῷα, Dox. 438a, 6, b, 1.
[5] Metaphorical language: Θαλῆς ᾠήθη πάντα πλήρη θεῶν εἶναι, Arist., An. 1, 5, p. 411a, 8. τὸν κόσμον (ἔμψυχον καὶ) δαιμόνων πλήρη, D.L. i, 27; Dox. 301b, 2; Vors. p. 2, 20. Pl., Lg. 899 B, is an allusion to the θεῶν πλήρη πάντα (as Krische remarks, Theol. Lehr. d. Gr. Denker, p. 37). There is perhaps a half-mocking reference to the words in the saying attributed by anecdotal tradition to Herakleitos: εἶναι καὶ ἐνταῦθα θεούς (i.e. in his own hearth) Arist., PA. 1, 5, p. 645a, 17 ff. Hence Herakleitos himself was credited with the opinion of Thales in slightly altered form: πάντα ψυχῶν εἶναι καὶ δαιμόνων πλήρη, D.L. ix, 7 (Vors., p. 68, 29), in the first (and valueless) of the two lists of the doctrines of Herakl. there given.
[6] Arist., Phys. 3, 4, p. 203b, 10–14. Dox. 559, 18. Vors., p. 17, 35.
[7] Anaximander, fr. 2 Mull. Vors., p. 15, 26. That Anaximander declared the soul to be “like air” is an erroneous statement of Theodoret.: see Diels, Dox. 387b, 10 (Vors. 21, 5).