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The following article is from the Secular Humanist Bulletin, Volume 23, Number 4 (Winter 2007/2008).
Do not count me among those who demand that we avoid using all words derived from the root spirit. I have even been known to use the word soul once in a while without flinching. The Devil, you say! What kind of secular humanist invokes words without regard for their meaning? I have heard this argument before. I recall that when I was in law school, I argued with a professor who insisted that I not use the phrase “Pandora’s box” but rather replace it with “can of worms.” She honestly believed that the Pandora’s Box myth was, in general, such a powerful indictment against females that repeating the phrase that derived from it perpetuated antifeminist attitudes. Flabbergasted, I polled the class and discovered that only 10 percent had any inkling about the myth from which the term originated, despite its widespread use. I pointed out that the phrase “to pander” is, in fact, derogatory to males, as it comes from the name of another mythical figure, Pandarus, who assisted Troilus in seducing Criseyde (Pandarus’s own niece). The point is, expecting that language must be cleansed from its roots upward is madness, fanatical, and ultimately fruitless. The etymologies of most of our common words are mysterious enough—they are rooted in ancient histories and wrapped in centuries of linguistic evolution. I’ll give a dollar to the first person I meet on the street who, when asked for a synonym for panderer suggests pimp and ten to the first one to tell me the word’s root.
I enjoy language a lot. I employ it in different ways with different audiences to achieve varying effects. My spoken and written language differs significantly. Language has power, partly due to the intentions of the author or speaker, and partly due to the interpretations of the audience. Because of the dual nature of this power, both speaker/author and audience have corresponding duties. The speaker’s duty is to employ language in ways known to elicit understanding without intentionally being obscure, evasive, or deceitful. The listener’s duty is to be attentive and not overinterpret the speaker’s meaning. If both speaker and listener, or writer and reader, are honest, straightforward, and plain, then clear communication can, it is hoped, be accomplished. But language is not a science, and although some philosophers have at various times attempted to create “perfect” languages devoid of obscurity, ambiguity, or duplicative meanings, no such language has ever succeeded. Such attempts at purging will forever fail, thank goodness. This is because we actually thrive on and love metaphor, and metaphor demands some obscurity, itself a sort of deception.
The key to metaphor is using one object to refer to another object without a literal interpretation. James Joyce wrote an entire epic based on metaphor. Ulysses is not just a homage to The Odyssey, but it is also a metaphor for the epic nature of an “every-man’s every day.” Most successful films employ it visually as well as through their musical scores and dialogue. Poetry cannot exist without metaphor. Imagine Shakespeare refusing to use a metaphor: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? No.” Stirs the heart, doesn’t it? Consider, for instance, John Donne’s “The Flea,” in which the flea is a metaphor for love and sex. The poem could not exist without the use of an extended metaphor. Is it imprecise? Is it ambiguous? Does it deceitfully use one object to represent another? Why, of course. Thank heavens for metaphors, for without them poetry would read like menus in fast-food restaurants. I imagine a world devoid of poetic metaphor as something like the dystopia of THX-1138, one of the starkest, unhappiest, visions of the future ever depicted. Interestingly, this movie was written and directed by George Lucas, the same man who gave us Ewoks and Jar-Jar Binks. Tellingly, most people have never heard of THX-1138. It’s that different and unappealing.
So what of these troublesome words soul and spirit? As I’ve said, I do not oppose using them. They are handy metaphors. Although I have never believed they represented anything literal, they serve as a useful shorthand for referring to something about which believer and nonbeliever can agree exists. They refer to an essential quality of something. That ought to be good enough for even the most stringent naturalist. The Spirit of St. Louis embodied something essential that Charles Lindberg thought existed in the place (or person?) of St. Louis. When we use the phrase “in the spirit of,” we all know exactly what it means, just as we know exactly what someone means when he or she says we should try to keep our spirits up. Some of us even enjoy imbibing spirits. All of this is perfectly fine and ought not to bother even the most stringent nonbeliever. The word, as it has come to be used in a metaphorical, secular sense, conveys a well-understood meaning and doesn’t force anyone to accept or believe in the literal existence of the supernatural.
The same is true for the word soul. “The soul of a new machine,” “soul food,” “He plays music with real soul”—all these phrases are readily understood as referring not to literal existence of a soul but rather to an essential quality of something. When we refer to jazz music as “soulful,” we mean it is being played with real feeling and emotion. Emotions are tricky things to discuss because they don’t have hard edges; they cannot be viewed under microscopes or plotted mathematically. When we say that Mr. Burns on The Simpsons is a soulless, greedy, manipulative, conniving old bastard, we know exactly what we are saying. He lacks warmth and some element of humanity we deem essential.
Words like spirit and soul are useful. They will not ever be expunged from our discourse, nor should they be. I treasure and enjoy their metaphorical value as I do good music and poetry and all the unscientific and even sometimes sappy emotion they convey. I like to listen to traditional “spirituals” sung energetically by a hundred voices; I enjoy soul food and good, soulful jazz, and, although I generally say “Gesundheit” when someone sneezes, I do not wince when someone says “Bless you.” Language isn’t the problem—it’s belief that is troublesome, and ridding our language of “nonsensical” terms is not going to dispel nonsensical beliefs. We should appreciate the use of metaphors in our ordinary discourse, embrace them, and concentrate on more important things. Now go read some A.E. Housman (an admitted atheist) and do not wince when he uses the term soul in “A Shropshire Lad.” It’s a very lovely poem. (For more on A.E. Housman, see “A.E. Housman: Poet, Scholar, Atheist,” Free Inquiry, February/March 2008.)
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