The final chapter of Meier’s work is dedicated to a reading of Israel Gottlieb Canz’s 1741 book Überzeugender Beweis aus der Vernunft von der Unsterblichkeit sowohl der Menschen Seelen insgemein, als besonders der Kinder-Seelen (roughly: Convincing proof by reason of the immortality of both human soul in general and particularly child souls). Even judging from the title of the book it is obvious that Canz is attempting to do what Meier has deemed impossible. Meier himself considers Canz’s attempt more worthy of a closer look than those of other contemporaries. In addition, Canz represents a Wolffian of an earlier generation compared to Meier, thus, it is of interest to see what Meier particularly criticises in Canz’s ideas.
Canz begins his work with preliminary discussion about what the immortality of the human soul actually means. He particularly suggests that, if the human soul merely slept eternally after its death, this would be equal to destroying the soul. Meier does not agree with this, since true destruction would mean that the soul could not at all interact with other substances in the world. Furthermore, Meier thinks, even while sleeping, the soul could still have obscure representations, thus, sensations, feelings and desires.
Canz first argues that the soul is a simple thing and won’t thus disperse at the time of death, like material bodies would do. Meier is not interested in this argument, since he thinks that simplicity of the soul has nothing to do with its possible immortality. He does contradict Canz’s statement that a materialistic reading of the human soul would imply that the soul is completely dispersed after death. Instead, Meier points out a materialist could think that the soul is a bodily atom and therefore indivisible and separable from the body.
Meier picks up the argument, when Canz tries to prove that the human soul will retain its consciousness after death. Canz begins by stating that as long as a substance endures, it will retain its force. Meier considers this to be a too vague statement. We could say, Meier notes, that an actual substance always has some force, but this force could change, if the substance is finite and contingent. By this Meier means that a substance might be unable to do something that it could do earlier: an old cherry tree might not anymore produce fruits, while an old animal loses its ability to reproduce and an old scholar their ability to demonstrate. Hence, Meier concludes, nothing says that the soul couldn’t lose its consciousness or ability of clear representations after its death. Thus, if Canz wanted to prove otherwise, he should prove that the soul retains not just its force, but the same grade of force.
Canz continues by insisting that the soul always has the same essence. Meier admits this, because he thinks that the essence of the soul consists of the internal possibility of the soul to represent the world according to the place of the human body and that the soul necessarily has this possibility. Yet, Meier objects that although the essence of the soul remains, the same does not hold of the nature of the soul and especially of its force to think, which is contingent and variable. If the soul is actual, it has the possibility to think, Meier admits, but because it is finite, not everything possible is actually in it. Thus, the soul can remain a soul without actually thinking: indeed, we are human souls even before our birth and while sleeping.
Canz tries to further his proof by denying that anything could change its species. Meier admits that this is true enough, when we say that elephants cannot become mice and canaries cannot become horses. Yet, Canz is trying to suggest that a soul that now has distinct representations cannot become such that would have only confused or even only obscure representations. Meier points out that an opposite transition happens to the human soul during birth, so he finds no reason to doubt that a soul might return to its prenatal state through death.
Canz thinks he has established the position that the human soul must have reason, if it just is actual, just because it is always in itself possible that the soul has distinct representations. Meier emphasises once again that Canz has not managed to prove this result, because despite possibly having distinct representations, the soul might still not have enough force to actually form them. Thus, Meier continues, it is not contradictory to assume that a soul had been a mere animal before birth, without a physical possibility to use reason, and only after birth received physical possibility of reason. Indeed, he adds, such a change would not require a leap, but only a gradual development of our capacity to represent. It could well be that death would gradually diminish our capacities and make us physically incapable to reason, just like often happens in old age.
Canz goes on to argue that the human soul does not just stay in the same class of things after its death, but will always rise to higher levels and thus will have greater reason in the future. He justifies this with an analogy by saying that the state of the human soul before its birth was just a means for the goal of this life and thus less perfect. Indeed, Canz insists that all natural creatures go through a similar development of becoming more perfect, unless human will meddles with this natural progression. Meier finds all of this unconvincing. Firstly, he challenges the idea that means are always less perfect than the goal. Instead, means are the cause of the goal, and the cause is usually greater than its effect. Thus, although a single means might be less noble than the corresponding goal, all means are not. Indeed, Meier points out, wisdom and goodness of God is means for the glory that God receives in creation through them, still, wisdom and goodness must obviously be much nobler than God’s glory.
Hence, Meier continues, even Canz’s analogy of souls’ becoming more and more perfect after birth falls apart, because only God’s decree can guarantee it. In any case, Meier points out that we see old animals and plants becoming more imperfect without any human interference. The same fate appears to hold for old humans, as their faculties deteriorate, when they approach death. In addition, Meier makes the final move, the notion of hell is hard to reconcile with the idea of continuous perfection of the human soul.
Canz also uses an argument where the route to the conclusion is somewhat opposite. Now, he speaks of a principle that nature has gradually, throughout generations, perfected the world. He goes on to suggest that the world couldn’t constantly be improved if nature wouldn’t have also arranged for the continuing improvement of human souls. Meier sees nothing convincing in this argument, since there is no reason why human souls couldn’t improve the world just during this life.
Canz next proceeds to refute the possibility that the human souls would just sleep eternally after their death. He compares human souls with the sun and notes that if the sun would be covered by great clouds that prevented it from warming the earth, it would not be able to fulfil its inner drive. The same would happen, Canz argues, if the human soul would just sleep after death, as it would not even live, since its central drive would be stilled. Meier objects that even if the human soul would sleep, it might still act and live in some manner that is, by having obscure representations or dreams.
Canz also argues that nature never makes means that are useless. This would happen, he thinks, if the human soul was just sleeping after death and was unable to fulfil its drive to think. Meier points out that Canz appears to confuse ability and drive to think. Even if the human soul had the ability to think, its drive to think might be stilled and become so weak that it would not make us think anymore.
Canz goes on to insist that the human soul must have eternally those characteristics it has independent of its body, such as conceiving, judging and deducing. He again compares the human soul with the sun and considers the body to be like a cloud hindering the sun, so that a lack of body would just help the soul to think more clearly. Meier is adamantly against this idea, since he considers one of the main discoveries of the current philosophy that the soul is so closely connected to a body that it must have one also if it continued living after death. Thus, he sees a body as not just a hindrance of thinking, but required for focusing our thoughts, since they always need some object.
Canz continues to imagine the future disembodied state of the human soul and insists that it won’t need any sleep, because the need for it is caused by nothing else than the body being tired. We have already seen Meier being against the idea that the soul could exist without a body – and he points out that even the Bible speaks of the resurrection of bodies. Furthermore, he notes, even if the human soul would exist by itself, it would require sleep, because every finite force, and therefore also that of soul, weakens with time and loses the clarity of its representations. For instance, scholars who tire from reading lose their mental, not physical strength.
Meier has not found Canz’s bag of arguments convincing and thinks Canz is on even shakier grounds when attempting to show that the human soul remembers its previous life. Indeed, Canz tries to prove this with the rather incredible suggestion that the human soul can remember its previous life, because it can deduce from its state after death what its earlier life must have been. Meier points out, quite correctly, that this is not what we usually mean by memory, which requires a stronger awareness of having lived through past events.
Canz next goes on to argue that the continued existence of the human soul must have been something that God intends to occur. Most of his arguments involve basically the formula that destroying the human soul would be against God’s wisdom or goodness etc., and Meier’s counterpoint is often just that God looks for the best of the whole world and we might not know what that means for the human soul.
An interesting difference lies in what the two philosophers appear to say about the constitution of the world. Canz says that the world consists of a certain set of simple entities, and destruction of any of them would destroy the world and create a new one in its place, which would make God look like they made an error and had to correct it. Meier, on the other hand, considers the world to consist of not just a set of simple entities, but also of their spatio-temporal ordering. Thus, even the past entities of the world are still part of the world, even if they do not exist at this moment of time, just like Cicero is part of our world, even if he died in the Roman days.
Canz finally considers the question what happens to souls of small children who died before they had the chance to develop their reason. He is convinced that they will turn into fully reasoning persons at the time of death, just like tiny starlets that can finally shine, when the clouds have dispersed. Meier notes that Canz’s arguments here are even more dependent on unproven conjectures. Furthermore, he notes that Canz has difficulties with the objection concerning the oddness of how a child with nothing else, but obscure representations could suddenly have clear and distinct representations after death, especially as nature abhors such sudden leaps. Canz’s only answers are, firstly, an analogy that similar thing happens when we wake up from a deep sleep, and secondly, the first awakening of Adam to a full use of his faculties. Of the first answer, Meier points out that the sleeper in question, unlike a little child, has already had clear representations, while the case of Adam was explicitly a miraculous event.
