I see that any materialism in life coarsens the soul, and that the hunger of the body and the appetites of the flesh desecrate always, and often destroy.
The soul is something which contains the body. The body doesn't contain the soul. The soul, if we put it into modern language, is the entire complex of relationships in whose context this organism exists.
I am not so foolish as to declaim against forms. Forms are as essential as bodies; but to exalt particular forms, to adhere to oneform a moment after it is outgrown, is unreasonable, and it is alien to the spirit of Christ.
Live according to Nature, runs the maxim of the West; but according to what nature, the nature of the body or the nature which exceeds the body? This first we ought to determine.
There's something in it when a body like the widow or the parson prays, but it don't work for me, and I reckon it don't work for only just the right kind.
But if one observes, one will see that the body has its own intelligence; it requires a great deal of intelligence to observe the intelligence of the body.