The souls of cats, whales, cabbages, and men

The majority are right, for a change. Animals do have souls, and if any human wants further guidance, she can do no better than to read David Albert Jones O.P. on the analogous question, "Do Whales have souls?"

To have a soul, anima, is to be animate, to be alive. Writes Fr. Jones: "Having a soul is having a certain form, a certain organization such that one can move oneself ... This self-moving quality, shown in the processes of nutrition, growth and reproduction, is common to all living things." Thus, St. Thomas Aquinas would affirm that a cabbage, so long as it is alive, is alive in virtue of having a soul. (Although, as Fr. Jones adds, "Plants are a bit of a borderline case, for though clearly alive they are not very lively.") One learns that Genesis uses the same word, nephesh, "living soul," to describe, on the one hand, the living creatures brought forth from the waters and, on the other, the lump that becomes man through the breath of God.

You may read more in the December 1992 issue of New Blackfriars.