Loyola University Maryland - Evergreen / Green and Gray Yearbook (Baltimore, MD)

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appositely to our own era? If we consider the modern man of business or profession, the corporation magnate or the lawyer, the doctor or the banker, we see them nearly all con- centred in the world, devoting their time to stocks and bonds, to wills and law suits, to operations and experiments, having as their only goal material advancement and material pros- perity. Ask one of this class if he has a soul. What will the answer be? Either a positive negation or a dubious reply. One, that he has never seen it; another, never felt it; another still, never found it in dissection ; and the last knows nothing about it. They unanimously concur, however, in the declara- tion that science has flouted the very existence of a spirit soul, as a hoax of religion ; that science has erased it from the book of knowledge and has once for all time rung its death-knell. But has true, real science branded it as a nonentity? Has it proved as fallacious the existence of a spiritual soul in man, distinct from matter and directive of it? Has it relegated this dogma to the refuse pile of exploded theories as the mere trumpery of the psychologist? Evolutionists have long tried to substantiate the theory that man evolved by successive changes from the brute beast, and hence has no spiritual or at most only a material principle. But the whole cohort of materialists met defeat at the hands of such as Lord Kelvin, St. Geo. Mivart and the German chemist, Liebig. Liebig, walking one day through a meadow with Kelvin, who asked him if he believed that the flowers were gradually evolved by mere mechanical forces, replied emphatically: “No! No more than I could believe a book of botany describing them could grow by mere mechanical forces.” If this is not true of the plant kingdom, how less true of the body of man? According to Lord Kelvin, for the body of man to grow from lower forms of life, more time would be required than even the age of the world or the sun allows. Darwin, speaking of this statement, said that “Kelvin’s views on the recent age of the world have been for some time one of my sorest troubles.” If there is no conclusive proof for the evolution of the body, there is none whatever adducible for man’s soul growing by successive changes from matter. Scientists have vainly endeavored for more than a century to And the soul

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It is not my intention to dispute the claims of rival systems. To attempt such would be productive of mystifying doubt. It is my purpose to present a brief review of the most salient dogmas of Scholastic or Catholic Philosophy, to point out how they would eradicate many evils from our modern life, and how their observance would make for the man of the twentieth century a happier and a nobler livelihood. To expose the subject to you succinctly: Man is an indi- vidual and a social being; considered in himself, he is a com- posite nature. His material element is the body, which digests and assimilates, perceives and remembers, imagines and, in fact, performs its functions like the animal. But man is more than matter. There is that within him which exalts him above the animal, above the brute, a factor not emanating nor originating in any way from matter, but though depend- ing on it for its operation is infused into the body before birth by the creative act of the Supreme Being. That is the soul, from which proceeds his power of thinking and reflec- tion, reason and judgment; the power by which he meditates and deliberates, as to what is true or false, right or wrong, what is evil and what is good. By it, and through the medium of the senses, he can seek the origin of his existence and the purpose of his being. Man is more than intellectual; he is volitional, too. He possesses a will, a power free to choose the good or the evil, unimpeded by external influence. Furthermore, man is a social being, and as such is prescribed by duties to others. If he is a husband, he has the duty of loving and aiding his wife ; if he is a father, he is bound to rear and educate his offspring properly. As a neighbor he is obliged to respect the rights of others to life and the means of subsistence. Above all, man is bound to God, bound to render Him homage and fealty, as his First Cause and Crea- tion; to serve and revere Him, as provident and ever-sustain- ing; obliged at last to God, as man’s last end and ultimate beatitude. Indeed, while the doctrines of philosophy are as varied and as numerous as the works of creation, there have always been certain ones especially appropriate for each age, because of the trend of human thought. But what doctrine applies most (30)

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in man, to prove that it were merely material, but neither experiment nor study yielded it a material constitution. The animal body reveals a physiological construction allied to man’s; it has the same functions of assimilation and diges- tion, the same functions of growth and perception. Yet never has the animal been found to enunciate a single rational judg- ment, neither one sign indicative of an intellectual power, nor an effect, actuated by other than a blind instinct. But man can reason and reflect in complete abstraction of sense and matter and can choose this or that course of action with untrammeled freedom of selection. What, then, causes this? The soul alone! Not the soul of the plant, not the vivifying principle of the brute, but the spiritual, vitalizing soul, that raises humankind above the conglomerate mass of those “nourishing a blind life’ within the brain,” and enthrones it with the regal crown of a free, all-rationalizing power. The spirituality of the soul is not the only and perhaps not the greatest tenet of Catholic Philosophy. To acknowledge its truth, however, would mean to garb life with its richest jewel; to reject it as false would rob us of our greatest bless- ing, make us slaves of passion and render equity a dream of jurists! What a change would its acceptance make in the constant, ceaseless cycle of business or professional life ! Man amasses a fabulous fortune, builds palaces and maintains an establishment of regal proportions; he has everything the heart can crave, every enjoyment, every satiety affluence can afford. But what a gigantic bubble, what a colossal farce, what a baseless fabric, is the whole labor of his existence if he reject the deathless soul. He has toiled and he has sweat; he has hoarded and invested ; he has utilized every means skill and initiative afford; he has undersold his competitors, worked his employees to the edge of physical exhaustion for a barely living wage; he has relinquished all the finer and ennobling instincts of culture to lay up a fortune, when, in the midst of it all, within the very grasp of success, he beholds the fatal handwriting on the wall and infers its unutterable significance. A sudden snapping of this intricate mechanism, a sudden gasp, and he sinks to lifeless clay. Then comes the terrible reali- zation of how futile, how impractical, were all his efforts. (32)