The first volume of Rosmini's Psychology sets the context for the whole work. Surprisingly enough to our modern minds, its subject is the soul without which psychology, as we understand it today, has no consistency and unity. Rosmini finds within the depth of the self 'a feeling which, anterior to consciousness, constitutes properly speaking the pure substance of the soul.' Despite Rosmini's overtly metaphysical purpose. therefore. the source of his work is constituted by real, hirnian experience, not by a mental abstraction. Moreover, the distinction he makes between the existence and knowledge of the feeling and consciousness of it is a powerful anticipation of modern psychology.
The properties of the soul according to Rosmini are unity, spirituality and immoriality. Proof of the last two is found in consciousness. The relationship between soul and body, and the finiteness and infinity of the soul. are dealt with at length. Rosmini also devotes many paqes to the simplicity of the soul which is liiked with extremely important questions such as the origin of the
human person. Developments in modern science. oarticularly in biology, have accenruited rather thari attenuated these problemsl which stand in urgent need of solutions on the basis of principle rather than utility. Finally, the concept of death, another pressing problem in medical-moral science today, is considered exhaustively, togethir vrith further proofs of the immortality of the soul.