HKB
philosophical sin, objective precisions, and many other dogmas in speculative theology and even in the practical theology of cases of conscience, came into currency even after the Council of Trent.
A little before these changes, and before the great schism in the West that still endures, there was in Italy a sect of philosophers which disputed this conformity of faith with reason which I maintain. They were dubbed 'Averroists' because they were adherents of a famous Arab author, who was called the Commentator by pre-eminence, and who appeared to be the one of all his race that penetrated furthest into Aristotle's meaning. This Commentator, extending what Greek expositors had already taught, maintained that according to Aristotle, and even according to reason (and at that time the two were considered almost identical) there was no case for the [78] immortality of the soul. Here is his reasoning. The human kind is eternal, according to Aristotle, therefore if individual souls die not, one must resort to the metempsychosis rejected by that philosopher. Or, if there are always new souls, one must admit the infinity of these souls existing from all eternity; but actual infinity is impossible, according to the doctrine of the same Aristotle. Therefore it is a necessary conclusion that the souls, that is, the forms of organic bodies, must perish with the bodies, or at least this must happen to the passive understanding that belongs to each one individually. Thus there will only remain the active understanding common to all men, which according to Aristotle comes from outside, and which must work wheresoever the organs are suitably disposed; even as the wind produces a kind of music when it is blown into properly adjusted organ pipes.
Nothing could have been weaker than this would-be proof. It is not true that Aristotle refuted metempsychosis, or that he proved the eternity of the human kind; and after all, it is quite untrue that an actual infinity is impossible. Yet this proof passed as irresistible amongst Aristotelians, and induced in them the belief that there was a certain sublunary intelligence and that our active intellect was produced by participation in it. But others who adhered less to Aristotle went so far as to advocate a universal soul forming the ocean of all individual souls, and believed this universal soul alone capable of subsisting, whilst individual souls are born and die. According to this opinion the souls of animals are born by being separated like drops from their ocean, when they find a body which they can animate; and they die by being reunited to the ocean of souls when the body is destroyed, as streams are lost in the sea. Many even went so far as to believe that God is that universal soul, although others thought that this soul was subordinate and created. This bad doctrine is very ancient and apt to dazzle the common herd. It is expressed in these beautiful lines of Vergil (Aen., VI, v. 724):
Principio coelum ac terram camposque liquentes, Lucentemque globum Lunae Titaniaque astra, Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus Mens agitat molem, et magno se corpore miscet. Inde hominum pecudumque genus vitaeque volantum.
[79] And again elsewhere (Georg., IV, v. 221):
Deum namque ire per omnes Terrasque tractusque maris caelumque profundum: Hinc pecudes, armenta, viros, genus omne ferarum, Quemque sibi tenues nascentem arcessere vitas. Scilicet huc reddi deinde ac resoluta referri.