And as we cannot
connect the higher reasoning, and, above all, conscience and the
religious belief, as a "property" of physical structure, we conclude
that the Scripture only asserts facts when it attributes both to the
soul, as a spiritual element or nature belonging to the body. Man is
essentially one;[3] but there is both a material and a non-material, a
physical and a spiritual element, in the one nature. But, being a
spiritual element, that part of our nature necessarily has two sides (so
to speak). It has its point of contact with self and the world of sense,
and its point of contact with the world of spirit and with the Great
Spirit of all, from whom it came. _Because_ of that higher "breath of
lives" given by the Most High, man possesses the faculty of
_consciousness of God_ (i.e., the higher spiritual faculties), besides
the consciousness of self, or merely intellectual power regarding self
and the external world. Therefore, when an Apostle desires to speak very
forcibly of something that is to affect a man through and through, in
every part and in every aspect of his nature, he speaks of the "whole
spirit, soul, and body." To sum up: all that we know from the Bible is
that God gave a "soul" (nephesh) to the animals, in consequence of which
(when united to the physical structure) the functions of life and the
phenomena of intelligence are manifested.
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