Elemental_. "The human soul is
simple," he says, and adds: "Simplicity consists in the absence of
parts, and the soul has none. Let us suppose that it has three parts--A,
B, C. I ask, Where, then, does thought reside? If in A only, then B and
C are superfluous; and consequently the simple subject A will be the
soul. If thought resides in A, B, and C, it follows that thought is
divided into parts, which is absurd. What sort of a thing is a
perception, a comparison, a judgement, a ratiocination, distributed
among three subjects?" A more obvious begging of the question cannot be
conceived. Balmes begins by taking it for granted that the whole, as a
whole, is incapable of making a judgement. He continues: "The unity of
consciousness is opposed to the division of the soul. When we think,
there is a subject which knows everything that it thinks, and this is
impossible if parts be attributed to it. Of the thought that is in A, B
and C will know nothing, and so in the other cases respectively. There
will not, therefore, be _one_ consciousness of the whole thought: each
part will have its special consciousness, and there will be within us as
many thinking beings as there are parts." The begging of the question
continues; it is assumed without any proof that a whole, as a whole,
cannot perceive as a unit. Balmes then proceeds to ask if these parts A,
B, and C are simple or compound, and repeats his argument until he
arrives at the conclusion that the thinking subject must be a part which
is not a whole--that is, simple. The argument is based, as will be seen,
upon the unity of apperception and of judgement. Subsequently he
endeavours to refute the hypothesis of a communication of the parts
among themselves.

Balmes--and with him the _a priori_ spiritualists who seek to
rationalize faith in the immortality of the soul--ignore the only
rational explanation, which is that apperception and judgement are a
resultant, that perceptions or ideas themselves are components which
agree. They begin by supposing something external to and distinct from
the states of consciousness, something that is not the living body which
supports these states, something that is not I but is within me.

The soul is simple, others say, because it reflects upon itself as a
complete whole. No; the state of consciousness A, in which I think of my
previous state of consciousness B, is not the same as its predecessor.
Or if I think of my soul, I think of an idea