The invention of the soul

Humans weren’t given souls by God or genes. We made them ourselves with language – turning sentience into something sacred

by Nicholas Humphrey  BIO

Seville, Spain, 1992. Photo by Alex Webb/Magnum Photos

is a theoretical psychologist and bye-fellow of Darwin College, Cambridge, UK. He is the author of many books on the evolution of human intelligence and consciousness, the latest being Sentience: The Invention of Consciousness (UK 2022; US 2023). He is the recipient of the 2026 Dennett Prize awarded by the International Center for Consciousness Studies.

Edited byPam Weintraub

In his novel Penguin Island (1908), Anatole France spins a wonderful tale about a blind old monk who sets off from Brittany on a mission to the Hebrides and lands on an island inhabited only by penguins. Though the birds speak a strange language, he assumes they must be human beings. So he proceeds to baptise them.

When the news of this reaches heaven, it causes a major stir. God himself is embarrassed. He gathers an assembly of clerics and doctors, and asks them for an opinion on the delicate question of whether the birds must now be given souls. It is a matter of more than theoretical importance. ‘The Christian state,’ St Cornelius points out, ‘is not without serious inconveniences for a penguin … The habits of birds are, in many points, contrary to the commandments of the Church …’ After lengthy discussion, they settle on a compromise. The baptised penguins are indeed to be granted souls – but, on St Catherine’s recommendation, their souls are to be of small size.

For the penguins, souls were an unexpected bonus. As René Descartes, the philosopher-scientist of the 17th century, had explained, nonhuman animals in general, in a state of nature, are mere soulless machines. Here’s a sketch of a Cartesian penguin, without even a smidgen of a soul.

That Penguin (2010) by Anita H Lehmann. Pencil sketch. Courtesy and © the artist

Descartes believed that humans too are machines of a kind. But he held that, with humans, thankfully, God has arranged the addition of a soul as standard practice. Early in infancy, the material substance of the human brain is put into communication via the pineal gland with the separate substance of the mind: res extensa (extended stuff) is joined by res cogitans (thinking stuff). The consciousness that results lays the foundation for the soul.

Today, we may think such ‘substance dualism’ laughable. A century and a half after Descartes, the great French essayist Denis Diderot was certainly laughing. ‘A tolerably clever man,’ he wrote in 1780, ‘began his book with these words: “Man … is composed of two distinct substances, the soul and the body.” … I nearly shut the book. Oh! ridiculous writer … you do not know what it is that you call soul, less still how they are united.’

Yet, by around 1838, Charles Darwin had apparently not seen the joke. ‘The soul,’ he wrote in one of his youthful scientific notebooks, ‘by the consent of all is superadded, animals not got it.’

Should we laugh? Or should we as contemporary scientists show some understanding? As I see it, it is not as clear-cut as many of us would like to believe. To the contrary, anyone who looks objectively at the natural history of human beings might well conclude that Descartes and the young Darwin were pretty much on target. Anthropology, psychology, religion, philosophy, art, all suggest that the possession of a soul – founded on consciousness – is part and parcel of being human. Perhaps it was Diderot who was being ridiculous.

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To start with, we do know what it is that we call soul. By tradition the soul, your soul – I’ll turn to the second person, you’ll see why as I go on – is nothing less than the spirit at the core of your being. It’s you, your conscious self, the subject of your private thoughts and feelings. It’s the person you know yourself to be – and the person other people treat you as being.

This soul of yours has obviously come into existence with your body. Yet equally obviously it’s not made of bodily stuff. It lasts through the night when your body sleeps. It wanders off and leaves your body when you dream. It does not grow old and decrepit, as your body does. It’s not unreasonable to hope it will be able to outlast your body’s death.

What’s more, contra Diderot, we do have a pretty good idea of how soul and body are united. The soul is united to the body in just the way Descartes thought it was: as an added resource, a controlling influence. The soul is intermingled with the body while you are awake, giving your life purpose and direction. But it has a life of its own. It’s able to retire and take shore leave. It can meet up with other souls, share stories and plan voyages.

In an important sense, your soul is what the human community has made of you

Everywhere in the world people have a conception of this kind. Souls are part of the manifest image we have of what it means to be a human being. Descartes undoubtedly grasped something important. Yet, in agreeing with him, am I making sceptical readers nervous? Have you nearly closed this essay? Here’s the major qualification I want to add: this human soul has not been put on board by God but, equally, has not been written into the brain by genetic selection. No, the fact is, our souls have been added by human culture – culture working with nature as it always does, but free to invent remarkable castles in the air.

Strange to say, your soul isn’t exactly yours at all. In an important sense, it’s what the human community has made of you. It’s their view of just who and what you are – where you belong in the scheme of things. To put it bluntly, it is as if you’ve come to have a soul in rather the same way you’ve come to have a passport. Your soul is a kind of culturally sanctioned guarantee of your spiritual identity and rights. Like your passport, it adds to your significance in your own and others’ eyes.

Just look at that first page of a British passport, for example: ‘Her Britannic Majesty’s Secretary of State requests and requires in the name of Her Majesty all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely …’ When I got my first passport as a boy, I spent ages admiring it… what a fine fellow am I! And, just as I imagined I could rely on the queen to uphold my rights, people commonly believe they can rely on some form of magical higher authority to underpin their spiritual status. ‘The Catholic Church’s Bridge to God on Earth requests and requires in the name of the Saviour.’ ‘The Mohawk tribe’s Chief Shaman requests and requires in the name of the Ancestors.’

Your soul is your private........

© Aeon