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The state of the human psyche

This necessary step in evolution is one in which humanity must emerge fully from domination by its animal origins. But humanity at large is as yet proving itself incapable of making the effort necessary to complete this step.  This situation is at least in part a result of certain historical accidents. Toynbee also wrote: “The primary distinctive feature of human nature is consciousness, including a human being’s consciousness of himself, as well as his consciousness of the Universe outside himself, in which his fellow human beings figure side by side with non-human nature, animate and inanimate. Consciousness reveals the possibility of making choices, and this evokes the will to choose. Man’s apparent power to will – whether this is a reality or an illusion – is the second of the distinctive spiritual features of his nature.”

What is specific to the human psyche, and is not shared in the same way with other animals, is what is currently beginning to be described as our semantic nature.  This is the part of the psyche that organises our thoughts, and in doing so, it gives us the power of choice.  But without special help, it is easily influenced in ways that prevent individual autonomy. Earlier in Toynbee's book he says that the characteristic of human nature not present in animals is the ability to choose.  It is in our choosing that the struggle develops which we now see as between head and heart, common sense and desire. But the early Christian would have seen this particular struggle very differently. Saint Paul saw it as between the human and spiritual on the one hand, and the animal and purely physical on the other. So different was the state of the human heart at one time in early Christian society that they perceived its role in a way very different from how we see it today.