The Human Soul Is The First Principle Of Life Essay

I shall advance the thesis that the human soul is not a religious fiction. Rather, the soul is the first principle of life, that which its origin is from God. By saying that the soul is the first principle of life, I mean that as Saint Thomas Aquinas has proposed in his Summa Theologica, “the soul which is the first principle of life, is not a body, but the act of a body.”1 There needs to be a first principle of life, so that we can function our body, and stay in the state that we call alive. The reason, we, the human being, can move our body, for example: our hands, legs, or eyes, and mouth, and why we can reason to know what the soul is, is in fact the proof that the soul exists. That thing which animates the body to know and move is called

By knowing the soul is the first principle of life, we have the answer to the question what is the soul? In the Nested Psychic Hierarchy of Saint Thomas, he says that there are three kinds of soul: vegetative, sensitive, intellectual soul. The vegetative soul can be found in any living being like: plants, animals, and human being. For sensitive soul, it can be found in animals, and human being. And then, the intellectual soul which can only be found in human being. Based on this hierarchy, we can see that every living being in this world have the soul as their first principle of life. The higher soul will have the power of the lower soul. The plant has the power of vegetative, so it can attain nutrition, grow, and decay, then reproduce. For animals, they have the sensitive soul, and so they have the power of the vegetative and sensitive. The animals live based on their sensitive soul with the operation of sensation, locomotion, rest, and the vegetative power; for example, they are hungry, they will go to look for food. They are tired, they will rest. When someone hits them, they will feel pain. As for human being, we have the intellectual soul that which including the powder of the three kinds of soul, meaning that we have the operation of understanding, nutrition, growth and decay, reproduction, sensation, locomotion, rest. Therefore, we say that the soul is not the body, but it is the first principle of life, meanings the

Everything in this world has an end, and existing for a purpose. The difference between an end and a purpose are that as Francis Slade says, “Ends exists independently of our willing them. [Whereas,] purposes take their origin from our willing them; purposes would not be if agents did not give them being.”5 “All creatures, even those that are devoid of reason, are directed to god as their last end.. .the intellectual creature attains to Him in a special way, namely, through its proper operation, by understanding Him.”6 Therefore, God is the last end of man through the proper operation of our intellectual soul by our understanding of Him. This fact is the end that exists independently without our will. We do not choose this end, but it is the end that exists as the nature of our existence. The proof is that as Saint Thomas says,” just as the intellect of necessity adheres to first principles. So, the will must of necessity adhere to the last end, which is happiness.”7 The will desires for happiness as their last end, which at the end is the ultimate good, therefore, as Rene Descartes says, "It is only the will or free choice that I experience to be so great in me that I cannot grasp the idea of any greater faculty. This is so much the case that the will is the chief basis for my understanding that I bear a certain image and likeness of God."8 Therefore, we say, men’s last end and the purpose of our existence are in