Article 1: On Spirits (Part 9)

A Western writer states (Extract 7) that “all human beings have always distinguished a living, active, principle of motion from a dead, passive being incapable of motion. The first they called spirit, the second body or matter. This distinction is as ancient as the world itself; it is found everywhere that man is found. All were so convinced of the lifelessness of matter that they supposed the presence of a spirit wherever they observed motion”. Such a proposition, derived allegedly from science, must be tested by science.375 Science—and humanity in general—acknowledges only life, not the presence of spirit, where it sees the movement of a body independently of the action upon it of another body. Life—otherwise called organic force—is beyond human comprehension: this truth science has acknowledged. Plants, insects, animals, and human beings are alive. And plants too have their own movement. Their growth, their gradual clothing in leaves, flowers, and fruit—what is this if not movement? The sap in trees rises in spring from the root to the crown of the tree—what is this if not movement? The leaves and flowers of certain plants make movement of their own accord, now folding, now unfolding: for example, clover folds its leaves at night and unfolds them with the coming of morning. Apart from movement, sensation serves us as a sign of the life of a body. Movement alone, without sensation, may belong to lifeless matter—as it does to the planets. What then is life? Life is an idea in the mind of man, born in him from the impression made upon him by bodies that have movement and sensation. Science has no positive answer: of necessity it had to resort to a negative definition. It had to describe the impression that the phenomenon of life in visible creatures produces upon man, and to substitute a definition of this impression for a definition of the process occurring within the creatures themselves. Someone will say: do plants then have sensation? We answer: they have no means of telling us this clearly; but we see that plants, cut off from their roots, wither—a phenomenon that in delicate plants occurs rapidly and arouses our sympathy. Having no grounds for adopting the definitive opinion that plants are endowed with a sensation proper to themselves, we have no right to deny it definitively either. The movement of matter and the presence of sensation within it testify only to its life, and in no way to the presence of spirit within it. No one has ever or at any time acknowledged the presence of spirit in insects, fish, birds, or animals in general: they have acknowledged life in them, often calling life a soul. And therefore the question of spirit, on the foundations laid by the Western writer, remains untouched.

The concept of spirit arose in man from other causes. It arose in him, first of all, from the examination of himself. Man perceives within himself the presence of a being entirely distinct from the body. He sees in this being a far greater development of life than in his own body. The body has its sensations; the being dwelling within the body has its own distinct sensations and, beyond sensations, has reason—which in the proper sense is itself a kind of feeling.376 The being that dwells within man is commonly called the soul. Despite the diversity of the properties of soul and body, between them there is an indissoluble bond. Thus, from thoughts there arise in the soul sensations corresponding to those thoughts; the sensations of the soul are reflected in the sensations of the body. And conversely, the sensations of the body act upon the soul, giving rise in it to corresponding sensations; from these sensations arise thoughts corresponding to them. Such a union of the soul with the body proves that, despite the considerable difference between body and soul, they share something in common—they possess, to use the language of chemistry, an affinity. If there were no affinity, there could be no bond whatsoever. And if there is an affinity, then the soul must necessarily possess a certain materiality proper to itself.

When a man is alive, the process of life is carried on by continual breathing. Breathing is the essential and evident sign of life. When a man is dying, the final process of death is accomplished by labored breathing or by several repeated sighs. In the course of such intensified breathing the soul departs from the body. The departure of the soul from the body is accomplished through intensified breathing; after the soul has left the body, breathing ceases; until the soul has left the body, breathing serves as a sign of the soul’s presence within the body; after its departure from the body the soul is invisible: on the basis of these facts it was entirely natural to call the being living within the body a spirit and a soul. It was equally natural to acknowledge the soul, or spirit, as an invisible, bodiless, and immaterial being—as something distinct from all that we see in matter subjected to our senses. And it was equally natural to acknowledge in the soul a materiality proper to itself, indicated by the particularly full breathing with which it departs. The acknowledgment of the soul’s existence after its separation from the body and after the death of the body naturally flows from the sensation and consciousness of oneself as immortal, which is present in every human being. Despite the most certain knowledge that every person dies in the body, every person feels and inwardly is conscious of himself as immortal, lives and acts as an immortal being: this is the sensation and consciousness of the soul.

All of humanity—which does not enter into a deep examination of the nature of the soul, contenting itself with a superficial, commonly accepted knowledge—indiscriminately calls the invisible part of our being, which dwells in the body and constitutes its essence, both soul and spirit. Since breathing is also a sign of life in animals, human society calls them, by reason of life, animals; and by reason of the soul, animate beings (animates). The rest of matter is called lifeless, inanimate, or soulless. Man, in distinction from the other animals, is called rational, and they, in distinction from him, irrational. The mass of humanity, wholly occupied with care for earthly and temporal things and looking at all else superficially, perceived the difference between man and animals in the gift of speech. But men of understanding perceived that man differs from animals by an inner quality—a particular capacity of the human soul. This capacity they called the power of rationality, properly the spirit. To this were assigned not only the capacity for thought, but also the capacity for spiritual sensations, such as the sensation of the sublime, the sensation of the beautiful, and the sensation of virtue. In this respect the meaning of the words soul and spirit is very different, even though in human society both words are used interchangeably, the one in place of the other.

Tradition has preserved among all peoples the concept of the existence of an invisible world—that is, of the life beyond the grave of human souls, of the existence of spirits (beings similar to the human soul), and of the existence of a place in which virtuous souls enjoy blessedness and evil souls suffer. This tradition, preserved in various forms but among all peoples, bears witness to itself: that it belongs to all humanity. The communion with the fallen spirits, into which fallen humanity entered, sustained, disseminated, and clarified in a one-sided manner the concept of spirits. Ancient philosophy was often united with magic,377 as we see in the wise men of Pharaoh who opposed Moses, in Julian the Apostate,378 and in Cyprian—who later became bishop of Antioch and a martyr. “Believe me”, Cyprian related after his conversion, “I have seen the devil himself. I besought him with sacrifices, and I kissed him, and I spoke with him, and with those who are elders among him. He loved me, praised my understanding, and said before all: “Here is a new Amvry,379 swift in obedience to us, worthy of communion with us.” And he promised to make me a prince upon my departure from the body, and during my earthly life to help me in all things, and gave me a regiment of demons in his service. When I departed from him, he cried out after me: “Be valiant, noble Cyprian!” — and, rising, escorted me, which astonished all the demonic elders. For this reason his princes showed obedience to me, seeing the honor he had bestowed upon me. His face was like the color of a field; his head was crowned with a wreath adorned with gold and most brilliant stones; his garments were wondrous beyond telling. When he turned in any direction, the whole place shook; many malevolent spirits stood in great submission before his throne: then did I give myself entirely to him”.380 The knowledge obtained through magic testified that spirits are incorporeal like the soul, possess the power of rationality, have a materiality proper to their nature, have influence over matter, and themselves come under the influence of matter in certain cases. The existence of communion between rejected human beings and rejected spirits is evident from Holy Scripture.381 It continues to this day, among other means, through the medium of magnetism and spiritism.

The sciences that study matter have in recent times reached the greatest development. Among the many services rendered to man by the sciences in their present development, not the least place should be given to the recognition of the extreme limitedness of our knowledge. When science was more meager, man considered himself more learned. When man supposed that the sky was a vault above the earth, that the sky and the earth met at their edges and touched—he was in his own eyes greater than he now appears to himself, since it has been discovered that above us lies an immeasurable space and that the earth in relation to this space is a barely perceptible speck. Contemporary science says: we do not know what our body is, despite the fact that, from habit and because it is subject to our senses, we think we know it satisfactorily. The life of the body is beyond our comprehension. Anatomy examines corpses, not bodies. It does not see the life of the body; it does not see the body itself, properly speaking. The body remains a body only until the moment when life has not yet departed from it. With the departure of life from it begins its decomposition. More than this: it is this departure that brings about the decomposition; any further decomposition is only a consequence of the primary, essential decomposition. The decomposition of matter, according to the laws of chemistry, can occur only through the separation from it of one or several of its constituent parts. Here is a pointer from science toward the materiality of the soul: the separation of something immaterial, something abstract, would produce no effect whatsoever upon matter. But the soul is invisible. What of that? The caloric is also invisible. It is a principle that cannot be weighed; but it is separated chemically from water by a separation imperceptible and incomprehensible to the senses, and water is converted into another substance, into ice. Scarcely has life departed from the body than it is a body no longer: it is a corpse. The sensations and properties of the body can be described but not defined. Suppositions, however ingenious, can in no way substitute for definitions. The misuse of science can satisfy the curiosity of ignorance with brilliant suppositions and silence it. To lead human beings into deception in the name of science is dishonest. Science, by providing true and exact knowledge, is obliged to place man in the most correct relations with all things.

Chemistry has positively indicated that everything finite has its degree of materiality. Mathematics has equally positively demonstrated that everything finite is subject to space. On this basis, God alone is confessed to be perfectly immaterial, independent of both space and time, infinite in all respects, subject to no change and no external influence, unlimited both in His essence and in His properties, and differing infinitely from all creatures both in essence and in properties. On this same basis, created spirits—being creatures—are limited beings; they must of necessity have their degree of materiality and must be subject to space. A being finite in essence must have finite properties as well. To ascribe an infinite property, or infinite properties, to a finite being is devoid of meaning (nonsense).

Chemistry rejects the childish definition of matter based on our senses. Matter must be defined by its properties. It can extend and does extend far beyond the limits of our senses, whose range of action is very restricted. The existence of something material that has no effect upon our senses, or has an effect that we do not understand and do not notice, is not only not contrary to the teaching of chemistry—it follows from that teaching. The existence of spirits in the form in which it is presented by Orthodox theology is in no way contrary to the teaching of chemistry and mathematics; it fully coincides and accords with the positively demonstrated theory of these sciences. Let us note: these sciences, having separated God from creatures by an infinite difference, as it were open the door to faith, explaining the necessity of revealed knowledge of God. They cannot reject it, by reason of the omnipotence of God acknowledged by them, and the independence of His actions from human judgment.

Such are the sources of the concept of spirits in human society. From these sources, humanity could not form and cannot form a correct knowledge—by reason of the obscurity of certain concepts, the falsehood of others, and by reason of its own fall: fallen man is in communion only with the fallen spirits; he is a stranger to communion with the holy spirits. The distinguishing marks of the fallen spirits are a mad and frenzied hatred of God, pride, and falsehood.382 By reason of their pride and enmity toward God, the fallen spirits strove to have fallen man render them the worship due to God; by reason of their falsehood they employed all means of seduction and deception to achieve this end. Demons not only brought those who had lost knowledge of the true God to worship them as gods: to this day they strive to seduce those to whom they appear, even holy ascetics, and to draw them to the same. “When they appear”, the great Anthony tells us, “they strive to intensify fear in the one to whom they have appeared, in order to cast him into the deep pit of impiety by wresting from men an act of worship toward themselves”.383 For this reason, a Christian who desires to obtain an unerring concept of spirits must disregard all the concepts supplied by human tradition, learning, magic, magnetism, spiritism, and other such means—as capable of supplying only incorrect and erroneous concepts, in which a man not renewed by Divine grace can in no way separate truth from its abundant admixture of falsehood.

For obtaining exact knowledge of spirits, the one and only means is Christianity, studied in Holy Scripture, in the holy Fathers of the Orthodox Church, and by a devout, ascetic life in accordance with the moral Tradition of the Orthodox Church. For an initial theoretical knowledge of spirits, the teaching presented in Orthodox theology is entirely sufficient. The invisible struggle with spirits in thoughts, fantasies, and sensations constitutes the proper concern of ascetics, of monks engaged in a rightly ordered ascetic endeavor in monastic communities. They acquire, in accordance with their manner of life, a moral—let us use this word for the sake of clarity—understanding of the fallen spirits. This understanding is called by ascetic writers spiritual sight; for in possessing it, the ascetic sees with his mind and feels with his heart the invisible snares of the invisible enemies.384 Saint Ignatius the God-bearer depicted his own moral understanding of the fallen spirits in this way: “The lying spirit proclaims itself, speaks its own things, is pleasing to itself—for it is full of pride—it speaks falsehood, it deludes, it is fawning, it flatters, it is cunning, it composes verses, it is shameless, discordant, boastful, slippery, and fearful: from its working may Jesus Christ deliver you”.385 Also: “O most wicked of all evil spirits in soul, from your own malice you are overcome—vanquished by the belly and dishonored by vainglory; by love of money and love of power you draw men into impiety. You are Belial, a dragon, an apostate, a crooked serpent; you have departed from God, been separated from Christ, been estranged from the Holy Spirit, and cast down from the rank of angels—you are a mocker of God’s laws and an enemy of those who are lawful”.386 Such a knowledge of spirits, such a sight of them—this is a knowledge and a sight essentially necessary! In its fullness it is granted by an attentive monastic life. It is a gift of God, with which the proper, earnest ascetic struggle of the ascetic is crowned—the struggle of one who strives to discern the immaterial persons of the demons, as if in a mirror, in Holy Scripture, in the writings of the holy Fathers, and in his own activity. It is the discernment of spirits,387 a gift of the Holy Spirit. With this gift is joined victory over sinful thoughts, fantasies, and sensations; the one who is vanquished by them is thereby shown that he has not yet obtained the gift, but is being deluded, deceived, and taken captive by the invisible enemy. Through spiritual sight, spirits are seen in their actions: to behold the very essence of spirits is granted or permitted to very few, by special Divine Providence. Those who presumptuously remove the veil and covering established by God Himself, and forcibly and rashly break into the world of spirits, are exposed to the greatest calamities.388

In conclusion, let us say: Divine Revelation has explained to us the created spirits, our soul, our body, to the degree in which this knowledge is necessary for our salvation. As creations of God, spirits, the soul, and even our own body—together with all the objects of visible nature—remain in their essence a mystery to us, being comprehensible only in part. In the devout contemplation of God’s creations, and by reason of such contemplation, let us enter into the ranks of created things as those who undoubtedly belong to them, let us glorify our Creator, and in perplexity before His omnipotence and wisdom let us offer a humble and true confession together with David: Wondrous are Your works, O Lord! I am struck with astonishment! Your knowledge has overcome me; it is exalted, and I cannot attain to it.389 “Our God, in heaven and on earth, has done all that He willed”.390