Object #12

Arnold Schönberg
Payerbach
1901

Arnold Schönberg Center, Wien

Soul (Greek psyche, Latin anima), in common parlance the inner activity principle of a living being, is differentiated in this sense both between the lifeless body and the rational spirit (pneuma). In scientific usage, both those who deny the existence of the soul and those who allow it, the word signifies the uniform, real but immaterial carrier of psychic (conscious) phenomena (imagining, feeling, desiring and willing) which relate to it like matter (e.g.) relates to the physical (or natural) phenomena (physical, chemical and biological processes). Things in which manifestations of consciousness are perceptible (such as humans, animals and, according to some, [...] plants as well) are called ensouled. This designation is carried over to apply to intrinsically lifeless things (mountains, rivers, springs, rocks – indeed, the entire world edifice), when, as happens in poetical, fantastical and effusive worldviews of mythology, animism, fetishism and spiritism, aspects of consciousness (intelligence, mood, will) are erroneously imputed to them (mountain and spring spirits, astral spirits, the anima mundi, etc.). Due to its trait of immateriality, the soul is differentiated from every (alleged) carrier of conscious processes and materialism, according to the principle that one must wrest as much solid ground from the soul as possible, endeavouring to substitute in its stead e.g. the brain or the entire nervous system. The soul appears as the uniform-real carrier of psychic processes, which oppose the likewise unitary but merely idealistic carriers thereof (self-image, self-awareness), on which idealism wishes to impose in its place. Due to its existence and its nature, this immaterial (non-sensory) essence cannot be a subject of (sensory) experience, although both can indeed be indicative thereof from (inner) experiential virtualities.

Meyers Konversations-Lexikon. Eine Encyklopädie des allgemeinen Wissens. Vol. 14. Rüböl – Sodawasser.
Leipzig: Verlag des Bibliographischen Instituts, 1889
(Arnold Schönberg’s personal library)