Library Islam Faith and Reason Brief Answer
Brief Answer
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Brief Answer
Before embarking on the answer to this question, it must be noted that the answer provided below is based on the school of Transcendent Theosophy, i.e., Sadrian philosophy. In this light, the answer will be expounded under two main headings and several subtopics.
Under the first heading, “The Existence of Spirit in Animals”, the following topics will be examined:
1. In all philosophical discussions pertaining to the question of the spirit, animal spirit is always enumerated as an indubitable instance of spirit. However, obviously the various forms of spirit possess their own peculiarities which distinguish them from one another.
2. What comprises the essence of an animal is its animal spirit, and to imagine the animal without an animal spirit would be to downgrade it to the lower degree of existence—i.e., vegetable existence.
3. In several animals, such as the honey bee, the spider, etc., the signs of an indwelling spirit are clearly noticeable.
4. Scholars provide various sorts of evidence for the existence of animal spirit—among them: the presential knowledge of animals of their own essences, the role that will plays in animal behaviour, the resurrection of animal spirits in the Hereafter.
5. The fact that animals can comprehend imaginal and immaterial forms and the performance by them of varying dissimilar actions.
The topics covered in the second heading, “The Difference between the Animal and the Human Spirit”, are as follows:
1. Human nature is different from animal nature. The material components of the human body are relatively finer and more perfect.
2. Human spirit also differs from animal spirit in many respects; including the human capacity to communicate by employing letters, words, thoughts, etc., and the human psychological variations—such as laughter, weeping, etc.—in response to different external phenomena.
3. The existence of art, industry, and human innovation display clearly the superiority of the human soul as they have no place in the realm of animals.
4. The essential difference of the human soul from the animal soul is that the former is intellectual while the latter is imaginal.
5. In addition, the sole pursuit of the animal soul is the gratification of the corporeal needs while the scope of human soul, in terms of its conceptual and practical aspects, stretches to the farthest reaches of existence.
