In most simple terms, throughout human history there have always been various kinds of distinctions between such things as (1) rocks that don’t breathe, and (2) life forms that breathe, palpitate, sometimes demonstrate some kind of locomotion, and commence or enter into various kinds of activities.
Admittedly, the above is so simplified as to be almost inane. But even so, it adequately describes a double set of distinctions that were tremendously important in pre-modern societies—the distinctions between the INORGANIC and the ORGANIC—also known as the distinctions between the INANIMATE and the ANIMATE.
In order to emphasize the implication here, the pre-moderns had neither an overload of opportunities to deaden the real-life observational faculties, nor was there any particular kind of information glut to stress their memory storage capacities.
In explanation of this, there is a good deal of anthropological evidence indicating that such primitives devoted a great deal of observational time to what characterized the living from the not living—and in doing so became more sensitive to the existence of energetics.
Of course, such primitives did not possess the term ENERGETICS. And so they utilized terms more familiar to them. Those terms, when examined, clearly refer to something along the lines of energizing principles.
As described earlier, modern societies distinguished themselves from pre-modern societies by various methods—such as condemning the pre-moderns as superstitional, naive and primitive, and engulfed in myths having no credible basis within the modern philosophies and sciences.
As it happened, though, since language is a fluid-like thing that flows from generation to generation, the modern societies could not altogether rid themselves of the pre-modern terms.
But meanings could be altered, and in this way the old meanings could be retired back into the primitive and unenlightened past, and new meanings could be assigned to old terms.
One not unusual fall-out of this is that people utilize THEIR contemporary meanings to assess the past, and are somewhat oblivious to the fact that in the past the meanings were different, and sometimes radically so. An example of different meanings can be realized by examining the word INFLUENCES, influences, of course, being one of the major constituents of sexual energies.
INFLUENCES
Of particular interest is that many terms used in modern times to identify THINGS were utilized in antiquity and up through the Renaissance period to specify various kinds of “influences.”
The important distinctions in this regard are difficult to clarify, for at least three significant reasons.
First, although the concept of influencing has never been lost, the modern two-part formula of cause-effect is quite different from the three-part formula of pre-modern times.
Second, there are primary distinctions between the verb TO INFLUENCE and the noun AN INFLUENCE. The noun implies that an influence is an actual thing in itself, having its own identity. The verb implies an activity of some kind, usually a transient activity.
Third, although a cause or source can be seen to have influenced something else as an effect or result, the influencing process BETWEEN the cause and the effect tends to remain invisible.
In the light of the above considerations, it is thus possible, if only roughly so, to discern the essential differences between the modern and the pre-modern ideas of the cause/effect formula:
The Three-part Pre-modern Formula
CAUSE <-> INFLUENCE <-> EFFECT
The Two-part Modern Formula
CAUSE -> EFFECT
In considering these two general formulas, it is interesting to remember that the study of the nature of influences was of extraordinary interest to the thinkers of the Renaissance.
But as the Renaissance vision came to a somewhat unexplainable end at about 1670, scientific and philosophic interest in the nature of influences had vanished almost entirely by the beginning of the twentieth century.
Thus, no science of influences evolved during the modernist period. The avoidance in this regard is important, in that many phenomena exist (sexualizing activity, for example) that cannot be adequately explained in the absence of knowledge about influences.
One clearly recognizable reason for this omission was that up until the advent of quantum physics, the modern sciences principally considered only physical and tangible phenomena where causes and effects could easily be observed and verified.
There remained, however, many “effects” for which no physical causes could be determined—such as how inanimate matter becomes organized into animate organisms.
Another reason, not so recognizable, but which can be identified by research, was that the topic of INFLUENCES had socio-political ramifications regarding power and empowerment. And indeed, influence and power have always been almost synonymous.
In the light of the above considerations, we can now examine the established definitions of INFLUENCE.
The verb, TO INFLUENCE, is defined as “to affect or alter by indirect or intangible means; to have an effect on the condition or development of something; also, to sway.”
The noun form, (an) INFLUENCE, is taken from the ancient Latin INFLUERE (to flow in), and as such has some surprising definitions that have been carried into English, although shoved to the background:
1. An ethereal fluid thought to flow from the cosmos and stars and to affect the actions of men
2. An emanation of hidden, intangible power held to derive from non-tangible sources
3. The act or power of producing an effect without apparent exertion of force or direct exercise of command
4. The power or capacity of causing an effect in indirect or intangible ways
These definitions share an obvious constituent, but which is not given verbal form, but is clearly indicative of an energetic principle.
To flow from so as to affect, emanation, act or power of producing, power of causing—all these are more than suggestive of hidden, intangible, ethereal active principles, but which none the less have tangible effects.
In other words, to flow, to emanate, to produce, to cause, etc., are active, energetic principles. If they were .not, it is quite difficult to see how they could influence anything at all.
One additional definition for INFLUENCE as both a noun and a verb is usually tucked somewhere into the lineup of its definitions: “Corrupting interference with authority for personal gain.” In that influences might be “corrupting,” authority in general doesn’t like the idea of their existing.
And herein indeed exists a particular, if subtle, story quite relevant to why the modern West never developed a philosophy, a science, or a psychology, of invisible, intangible, energetic influences and functions.
As we will see, this subtle story has much to do with how and WHY the decidedly energetic phenomena examined ahead were treated in modernist societal contexts.
THE LIFE PRINCIPLE
It can be said of the modern period that no absolute philosophical or scientific explanation was considered necessary regarding the nature, essence and energies of what the ancients had generally dubbed the LIFE principle.
However, in terms of recorded history the need to do so was felt from at least 3,000 B.C., and continued up through the Late Renaissance—after which the modern sciences and philosophies departed from anything remotely involving supernal considerations.
Prior to the modern epoch, then, the need for a conceptual life principle had always been necessary, and this called for appropriate nomenclature.
In a number of cultural languages, the basic terms selected almost always had to do with “breath,” since that is what living things basically did.
They also stopped breathing upon death, at which time it was conceived that the “breath of life” had departed from the physical body now empty of the life principle.
After the Life Principle departed, the body was no longer animated and turned back into its material “dust.”
ANIMA
Although certainly deriving from earlier languages, the Latin term for this life-breath principle was ANIMA—in the first instance probably taken as meaning “breath.”
However, as already stated, since it could easily be determined that the physical body ended up as non-living dust, it was considered that the life principle consisted of something other than, and independent from, the dust.
In LATE Latin (i.e., not in EARLY Latin), ANIMA also was taken to refer to “soul,” in that soul represented the breath-factor of the life principle. But there are certain subsequent confusions.
The Latin ANIMA basically referred a life principle typified by breath; but in ancient times, there were concepts that referred to entity-like factors designated by the term SOUL or its many linguistic equivalents.
At some early point, ANIMA and SOUL became collapsed into each other, the earlier distinctions becoming ambiguous.
SOUL
In English, the soul concept is derived not from Latin but from early Old Nordic and Old Germanic sources. However, the terms “animate” and “animated” were incorporated into the principle definitions of “soul.”
The earliest meanings of SOUL in Old English first referred to “animate existence,” but this was later incorporated into “the principle of life in man or animals.”
Somewhat later in English, but still very early, SOUL was also established as referring to “the principle of thought and action in man, commonly regarded as an entity distinct from the body; the spiritual part of man in contrast to the purely physical.”
SOUL also occasionally referred to “the corresponding or analogous principle in animals.”
By about 1400, the concept of SOUL had taken on a number of meanings referred to as metaphysical—”the vital, sensitive, or rational principle in plants, animals or human beings.”
Today, having in general lost touch with metaphysics, we would find it difficult to see why those vital, sensitive, or rational qualities should be considered as metaphysical.
In any event, SOUL was also used “frequently with distinguishing adjectives, such as vegetative, sensible or sensitive, rational or reasonable.”
The foregoing tour among definitions has been necessary to establish two factors regarding ANIMA and SOUL that are often overlooked, but which are important to the several contexts of this book.
Both words define not THINGS per se, but TWO functions. The first has to do with the life principle that distinguishes between the inanimate and the ANIMATED. The second function establishes additional or inherent factors of the animating life principle, such as the sensitive and sensible qualities.
Temporarily leaving aside the rational or reasonable factors associated to them, the sensitive and sensible qualities are SENSATE ones.
Since sensate factors are not particularly identifiable with matter, which is usually considered inert, it must be assumed that sensate factors are inherent and inseparable extensions of an animating life form that, by virtue of the animating factors, is endowed with faculties to sense whatever is important to sense.
For example, the sensing of invisible, intangible influences, such as sexualizing influences whose existence almost anyone can sense.
Indeed, it is exquisitely necessary to sense influences. After all, it is rather too late to avoid effects AFTER they have come down on one. Thus, any animate life form that is not sensate regarding the sensing of influences will probably and promptly be clobbered into extinction.
With all of this, it can now be suggested that it is possible, in somewhat vulgarized versions, to consider and discuss the animate and the soul WITHOUT necessarily including the sensate influencing attributes of either or both. Indeed, except in a usually gross material manner, knowledge about what animate life forms can and do sense is almost NON-EXISTENT.
Also during the modern period, it became possible to drop the concept of ANIMATE and simply refer to life forms only as life forms. This neatly disposed of the inconvenient difficulties arising out of the enigma posed by the nature, essence and energies of the animating life principle.
ANIMAL
The term ANIMAL is derived from the Latin ANIMA and which basically referred to animating breath.
Today, ANIMAL is principally utilized to distinguish whatever is alive but which, on the one hand, cannot be identified as a plant, or, on the other hand, is not to be identified with MAN, and most certainly never with WOMEN.
In its earliest and most original Latin meaning, however, ANIMALIS specifically referred to “anything living,” which is to say, anything alive, breathing, and “having the breath of life.”
In this sense, then, the term ANIMAL was associated with such terms as ANIMATING and ANIMISTIC.
Later concepts of ANIMAL SPIRIT or ANIMAL SOUL had to do with “the supposed ‘spirit’ or principle of sensation and voluntary motion, and answering to nerve fluid, nerve force, or nervous activity.”
Please note that the definition of ANIMAL SOUL given just above is considered obsolete, largely because the idea of soul as animating energy was also declared obsolete.
All of these factors having been declared obsolete, it was then possible to consider that the sole energy aspect of a life form involved only what it consumed as nutritional substances acquired from some source external to itself.
At this, the concept of a formative, indwelling energetic principle could be abandoned, together with the ideas of indwelling nerve fluid, nerve force, and nervous activity.
Thereafter, concepts having to do with indwelling energies arose only with regard to human creative energies, human power, and human sexualizing energies. It cannot really be said that these types of energetic activities exclusively arise from nutritional substances alone.
It seems that at some point, probably in early Medieval Latin, the term ANIMALIS was sometimes treated as originating from ANIMA, but at other times treated as originating from the Latin ANIMUS.
ANIMUS, suggestive of aggression and aggressive force, referred mostly to “brute force,” “brute beasts” and, as time advanced, to “inferior animals.”
So, in this way the term ANIMAL was detached from its earlier meanings of animating force or energy, and also from the concept of “animal soul”—which likewise referred to animating energetics, but gave those energies something of an entity-like form.
Since this shift in meanings regarding ANIMAL is entirely relevant to the topic of this book, it is necessary to identify more precisely how and why it came into existence.
The eight volumes of THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY (1967) is a wonderful compilation of just about everything philosophical. The encyclopedia carries a rather extensive entry for ANIMAL SOUL. That entry is well worth reading, if only because, all things considered, it is one of the most amusing, if not outright hilarious entries in the eight volumes.
In the context of ANIMAL SOUL, we again encounter the personage of Rene Descartes (1569-1650), the famous French philosopher and scientist. As is stated in many authoritative sources, Descartes was chief among the founders who designed the contours of modern thought and among the most original philosophers and mathematicians of any age.
In its essay on Descartes, the Encyclopedia points up that the “concept of the animal soul did not give rise to any serious problems until the seventeenth century, when Cartesian dualism brought out distinctions which had been latent in the dominant Aristotelian tradition.”
However, as a result of Descartes’ concepts, debates increasingly surrounded the animal soul or mind, and they became “sensitive indicators of a number of fundamental issues in modern philosophy and science.”
The debates are traced back to Aristotle, had postulated gradations from inert, inanimate matter to plants, and then to animals. Plants had the functions of nourishment and reproduction, but animals were also endowed with sensation, motion, and all degrees of mental functions except reason.
Aristotle reserved reason for man, but his gradations from inert to reason precluded a sharp discontinuity between physical and mental functions in man.
To help resolve various resulting theoretical complexities, Descartes advanced the concept that “animals are pure machines, while men are machines with minds.”
Further, if biological phenomena could be included in the domain of Descartes’ idea of a universal physics, “then a boundary would no longer lie between inanimate and animate beings.”
Physics would then include all of nature except the mind of man. Note that it is somewhat of a wonderment to consider what an inanimate being might consist of.
The Encyclopedia goes on to state that after the discovery of the circulation of the blood, Descartes “was encouraged to attempt a general mechanistic physiology in hydraulic terms.”
He argued that most human motions do not depend on the mind, and he gave examples of physiological functions and reactions which occur independently of the will—functions such as digestion, reactions such as sneezing.
Descartes went on to stipulate that in man the mind could also direct the course of the fluid (or animal spirits) which controls movements. However, to attribute minds to animals would threaten traditional religious beliefs, “since the psychological concept of mind was conflated with the theological concept of soul.”
To help resolve THIS problem, Descartes argued that it would “be impious to imagine that animals have souls of the same order as men, and that man has nothing more to hope for in the afterlife than flies and ants have.”
Similarly, “God could not allow the sinless creatures to suffer. Without souls, animals would not suffer, and man would be absolved from guilt for exploiting, killing and eating them.”
One of the longer-term results of Descartes’ ideas, many of which became modernist doctrines, was that the distinction between man-mind and animal-beast became more recognizable, largely because, in a philosophical sense, the distinctions tended to inflate men’s appreciation of man, and relegated animals to a lower order.
The encyclopedia points up that the debate of the animal soul controversy was enormous. The central issue, however, did not actually focus on the animal-machine and man-machine-with-mind hypotheses, but concerned the adequacy of mechanistic explanation to account for all biological and psychological phenomena.
Prior to Descartes, the search for mechanistic explanation had incorporated the concept of Final Cause and Purpose—i.e., with regard to the origin especially of animate life forms and their purpose of their existing.
In other words, is mechanistic explanation adequate to account not only for the mechanistic (hydraulic) workings of biological and psychological phenomena, but also for origin and purpose?
Descartes coped with this difficulty in an expeditious and surgical manner: he excluded explanation-by-purpose from physics and from biology.
This was very comforting to societal mainstreams, since they no longer had to worry about THEIR Final Cause and Purpose. Thus, purpose has remained excluded from the modern mainstream sciences ever since. Indeed, the exclusion of Purpose is convenient to the elimination of conscience.
In any event, the nature of Purpose (the Why of things) was an issue of enormous antiquity, in all pre-modern cultures, and was inextricably bound together with the Life Principle.
Eliminating Purpose from the science of physics and from biology served quite well in also eliminating the difficulties of admitting the existence of a life principle.
So, these theoretical maneuvers had the long-term effect of setting science free of metaphysical contexts, and free of the mysteries of how and why matter came into existence and how it became animated.
Thereafter, as the Encyclopedia indicates, “adherence to the animal-machine doctrine in physics and biology became the crucial test of loyalty not only to Cartesianism, but a test of loyalty to the formats of the modern sciences.”
One of the principal fall-outs of all this was the widening of the gulf between man-machine and beast-machine—with the term ANIMAL thereafter being associated with beast-machines having no souls.
This ultimately resulted in ANIMAL being dissociated from contexts of animate, organized, living, and redefined the term exclusively as “one of the lower animals—a brute, or beast as distinguished from man.”
As stated in the Encyclopedia, “there has been no peace” since
Descartes’ theories became science doctrines. The doctrines “have proven inadequate” in the light of the theory of evolution, the methods of modern psychology, and of cybernetics—and the emergence of Soviet and Chinese bio-energetics.
This somewhat extended discussion of ANIMATE and ANIMAL has been necessary since it sets the ground for the next chapter dealing with the energies studied by the Renaissance magnetists, and the following chapter on animal magnetism and its direct association with sexualizing energies.