indestructible substance which existed before its temporary
conjunction with the material body and which survives the
dissolution of the body. The notion of the soul was taken over from
primitive thought and was refined and elaborated by philosophers.
Aristotle was the only great philosopher who rejected this view and
propounded a theory more in consonance with natural science. He
regarded the soul as the entelechy of the body, and as it was the form
of the body, it was also inseparable from it. The soul was thus placed
squarely in the system of natural phenomena. However, for
centuries after Aristotle, the older view of an independent and
supernatural soul was unquestionably accepted by both scientists
and philosophers. It was challenged only when modern science was
well under way.
In the eighteenth century, the term “self” came into vogue. It had
the advantage of being closer to nature than the term “soul” which
had a supernaturalistic flavour. The self was regarded as the subject
of experience. The unity of consciousness, unique in the world,
became intelligible only in the light of self which owned and held
together the various sensations, feelings and ideas which compose
consciousness. It was regarded as free and not subject to natural
laws. Moreover, it was believed that the self remained unchanged
and identical with itself throughout the life-span of the individual.
However, the line of thought which began with Locke and
culminated in the philosophy of Hume rendered this conception of
the self wholly unacceptable to English thinkers. Locke conceived
the human mind as a blank tablet which passively received
impressions from the outside world. The contents of the mind were
wholly derived from the external world; it did not itself produce or
create anything. It merely received and stored impressions from
external objects and forces. This view totally denies any activity to
the mind. Locke held that any idea in the mind which could not be
traced to its source in an impression was merely spurious. Berkeley
applied this test to the idea of self and reached the conclusion that it
was not a valid idea. Nevertheless, he believed that the flow of ideas
was orderly and lawful as these existed in the mind of God and were
owned by Him.
Hume delivered the coup de grace to the popular belief in an
independent self. He carried out a penetrating analysis of the mind
The Function of Deen 51