‘I hope you are sceptical about that statement. At best it is a half-truth. For emotions are often confused with spirit.’
‘So you would make a distinction between the two?’
‘In this context, yes. It gives us a four-fold description of human nature as PHYSICAL, MENTAL, EMOTIONAL and SPIRITUAL. We are like aircraft that fly on four engines.’
‘So you see them as sources of power or energy?’
‘Physical energy is obvious, isn’t it? Mental power is also something we talk about. Emotion and motivation are close – the mot in each of the two words comes from the same Latin verb “to move”. It is not so clear that there is such a thing as spiritual energy, as my aircraft analogy posits, but maybe there is.’
‘Sounds more like windpower to me,’ smiled the young chief executive, shaking his sceptical head.
‘You may not be far off the mark. Spirit comes from the Latin word for air or breath. As dead people do not breathe, the primitive mind supposed that life was in the breath. So in Genesis, for example, God breathes into man (Adam is the Hebrew word for man), whose shape he previously shaped from the clay, and man comes alive. God literally inspires or inspirits him, with life.’
‘Like the kiss of life,’ reflected the young chief executive.
‘Of course the creation myth at the beginning of Genesis, with this anthropomorphic picture of God making man, is not to be taken literally. The concept of spirit as we know it took shape over centuries, as it acquired meanings or overtones above the original notion that it was life in the vital or biological sense. The following five developed senses of the word give us an idea of the present scope or range of the word:
- the active or essential power operating in persons;
- a particular character, disposition or temper which exists in or pervades or animates a person or a group of persons;
- the disposition, feeling or frame of mind with which something is considered, viewed or done;
- a person, group or organization considered in relation to its character or disposition;
- the essential nature or qualities of someone or some group, which constitutes its pervading or tempering principle.’
‘There is quite a strong sense that spirit is the active or essential power of the inner self,’ commented the young chief executive. ‘In that respect how does spirit differ from soul?’
No Man Really Knows About Other
Human Beings. The Best He Can Do Is
To Suppose That They Are Like Himself
John Steinbeck
‘Both refer to the indefinable immaterial essence, the animating or activating principle of an individual person. So neither can be located by the senses. That doesn’t mean to say that they are not real, of course, for there are lots of things (like electricity), that we cannot see yet we know to be real. The word soul is used more when we think of something akin to the essential person, with functions, responsibilities, aspects or a destiny, or when its connection with the body is in view. Perhaps the nearest we can get to it is when we sense a more or less unchanging inner self within us – that which constitutes me.’
‘And spirit?’
‘That sometimes stresses an opposition or antagonism to the material or corporeal, as for example when we speak of spiritual values in contrast to material values. But it is the preferred word when the stress is on the quality, movement or activity of that essence or entity. Soul sounds a bit static, but spirit is always dynamic.’
‘Yes, it’s a much more dynamic word,’ agreed the young chief executive. ‘If someone is described as spirited, it suggests to me a person with a high degree of energy and vitality, mixed with a touch of daring. But it can also suggest an extraordinary buoyancy or resilience, a calmness or other worldliness, a refusal to go under or to give up. Maybe spirit is the energy of the soul,’ he added, after some moments of reflection.
‘To use again that earlier distinction, spirit is implicit, it is innate in us. Usually it is only circumstances that reveal its presence and nature.’
‘There is another possible characteristic of spirit that is relevant here: the idea that it is something common, something we share – that it is not, as it were, private property.’
‘Rather like the air we breathe.’
‘And therefore it is possible – if that assumption is right – to communicate: to make common to all what one presently possesses.’
‘Transactions of the spirit,’ murmured the young chief executive. ‘It reminds me of our discussion about reciprocity, especially where a mutual relation springs up where trust or respect is given and the same is received back in return.’
‘Yes, I think those are examples of the wider communication I have in mind. If someone trusts another and that evokes a response in kind, could we not say that he or she had inspired trust?’
The young chief executive accepted that it would be normal to use the word in that context. It was a neutral term, he observed, since one can inspire mistrust, lack of respect, fear or hatred in others.
‘It’s very hard to separate the things of the spirit from the emotional and mental domains, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Some people can inspire emotions in others, such as love and fear. Others can arouse mental energies in others, such as interest and curiosity.’
‘Impossible, for we are wholes and not sums of parts. Body, heart, mind and spirit appear to us to be an indivisible unity, though many hope that ultimately the soul survives. What is especially important in this context is that spirit is associated with the human capability for transcendence, for surpassing usual limits or the high-tide water markers of past experience.’
I Am A Little World Made Cunningly of Elements,
And An Angelic Sprite
John Donne
To Solve A Problem Which Has Long
Resisted The Skill And Persistence Of
Others Is An Irresistible Magnet In
Every Sphere Of Human Activity.
There Is No Height, No Depths,
That The Spirit Of Man Guided By A
Higher Spirit Cannot Attain
Lord John Hunt, leader of the first expedition to climb Mount Everest in 1953.