This acute philosopher easily perceived the insufficiency of the common argument which attempts to prove that the soul- it being granted that it is a simple being- cannot perish by dissolution or decomposition; he saw it is not impossible for it to cease to be by extinction, or disappearance.He endeavoured to prove in his Phaedo, that the soul cannot be annihilated, by showing that a simple being cannot cease to exist.Inasmuch as, be said, a simple existence cannot diminish, nor gradually lose portions of its being, and thus be by degrees reduced to nothing (for it possesses no parts, and therefore no multiplicity), between the moment in which it is, and the moment in which it is not, no time can be discovered- which is impossible.But this philosopher did not consider that, granting the soul to possess this simple nature, which contains no parts external to each other and consequently no extensive quantity, we cannot refuse to it any less than to any other being, intensive quantity, that is, a degree of reality in regard to all its faculties, nay, to all that constitutes its existence.But this degree of reality can become less and less through an infinite series of smaller degrees.It follows, therefore, that this supposed substance- this thing, the permanence of which is not assured in any other way, may, if not by decomposition, by gradual loss (remissio) of its powers (consequently by elanguescence, if I may employ this expression), be changed into nothing.For consciousness itself has always a degree, which may be lessened.* Consequently the faculty of being conscious may be diminished; and so with all other faculties.The permanence of the soul, therefore, as an object of the internal sense, remains undemonstrated, nay, even indemonstrable.Its permanence in life is evident, per se, inasmuch as the thinking being (as man) is to itself, at the same time, an object of the external senses.But this does not authorize the rational psychologist to affirm, from mere conceptions, its permanence beyond life.*[2]
*Clearness is not, as logicians maintain, the consciousness of a representation.For a certain degree of consciousness, which may not, however, be sufficient for recollection, is to be met with in many dim representations.For without any consciousness at all, we should not be able to recognize any difference in the obscure representations we connect; as we really can do with many conceptions, such as those of right and justice, and those of the musician, who strikes at once several notes in improvising a piece of music.But a representation is clear, in which our consciousness is sufficient for the consciousness of the difference of this representation from others.If we are only conscious that there is a difference, but are not conscious of the difference- that is, what the difference is-the representation must be termed obscure.There is, consequently, an infinite series of degrees of consciousness down to its entire disappearance.
*[2] There are some who think they have done enough to establish a new possibility in the mode of the existence of souls, when they have shown that there is no contradiction in their hypotheses on this subject.Such are those who affirm the possibility of thought- of which they have no other knowledge than what they derive from its use in connecting empirical intuitions presented in this our human life- after this life bas ceased.But it is very easy to embarrass them by the introduction of counter-possibilities, which rest upon quite as good a foundation.Such, for example, is the possibility of the division of a simple substance into several substances; and conversely, of the coalition of several into one simple substance.
For, although divisibility presupposes composition, it does not necessarily require a composition of substances, but only of the degrees (of the several faculties) of one and the same substance.
Now we can cogitate all the powers and faculties of the soul- even that of consciousness- as diminished by one half, the substance still remaining.In the same way we can represent to ourselves without contradiction, this obliterated half as preserved, not in the soul, but without it; and we can believe that, as in this case every.
