Think of an animal. Make sure that the animal you have chosen is not a human. Are you sure? Good. Now, consider yourself. Are you a human? I'm afraid that I will, with no malice intended towards other species, have to somewhat arbitrarily assume that you are for the purposes of this paper.

Now, consider yourself in relation to the animal that you have chosen. Who comes out on top? Well, if you're like most people, there's probably a pretty good chance that you came out on top. There's nothing particularly wrong with this, while this superiority stays at a reasonable level... and while one doesn't let it go to one's head.

But ARE humans really superior to other species? Maybe they are. But, then, why? Well, humans have emotions and feel pain. 'Well, so do animals!' But humans are so much more intelligent than other animals... 'Humans are certainly good at certain kinds of things, but their multitude of ridiculous passions can eclipse this easily.' Well, maybe, but humans have souls; animals don't. And so humans are clearly the best of all species.

Ah... it was a year or two ago that this debate first took place amid the then-great hall of the Common Room. I have puzzled over its questions and matters of fact for a while now, and I'm very little closer to proving that animals have souls than I was before. For what is a soul? And why do people have souls?

But there is one thing that I have realized out of all this. It goes back to the very beginning of time, and has some important points in the present.

For this to work, we must declare that there was a first cause. That first cause is, by definition, God. It doesn't really matter what God turns out to be, whether an ideal, a plan, a principle, or a spiritual being. And, needless to say, it doesn't matter what nickname we call God by (though one might think that this nickname should convey whatever respect and possibly gravity (or other emotion) appropriate). The important thing is that God was the first cause, and therefore set in motion the chain of events that led to the universe and everything else that exists or has existed. It doesn't even matter whether this is the first or only universe to exist, just that God was the first cause.

So we take that fact as established. Now, as the first cause, God therefore created (or at any rate started) everything that was to come. Now, consider how God did so. We might take it to be through some supreme act of will, or some innate creative tendency... or even simple necessity. Maybe this doesn't really matter. But out of what? Where did God get the materials to start creating everything? Well, perhaps God created them out of nothing. 'Something out of nothing? But that defies a basic law - you can't get something out of nothing!' Well, this is true. I either have a cookie or I do not, in a mutually exclusive universe, and to get one I need to put the necessary effort into getting it. There also has to be a cookie for me to get. 'But what if you bake your own cookies?' you might ask. Why, then I would need the necessary ingredients needed for making cookies. If I baked myself some cookies but did not have the necessary ingredients to make them... well, that would be impossible. One of the two statements would have to be wrong: either I did not actually bake myself some cookies, or I had suitable ingredients to bake them with.

So, the question remains... could God have disobeyed a law of nature so basic as this? Did the laws of nature even exist in the beginning, i.e. are they a basic part of or manifestation of God, or simply something created at some later point by God? Where is the first moment of their existence relative to the first moments of existence for the rest of creation?

Well, let's just assume that those laws of nature were active back then. Maybe they are a direct manifestation of God, or maybe God just found it easiest and most useful to create these laws first. This would mean that, unless God existed in some sort of primordial void already (seemingly impossible if God is to be the first cause), God would have had to use itself as the material to use while creating everything else.

So, if our assumption is true, everything is made out of God. Therefore, everything has within it, innate within the innermost reaches of its being, a divine component.

But what are the characteristics of this divine component? Well, what are the characteristics of God? Well, the general consensus among mono-deistic religions seems to be that God is immortal, never-ending, unchanging in its faith, and divine; and therefore worthy of glorification and, to the maximum extent possible, emulation. For why else were the Ten Commandments given, if not to help the people emulate God? Why should we revere Jesus, or the Christ in general, simply because they're really great people? Remember, when you revere a virtue or a vice, you tend to emulate it, and when you revere a person or ideal, you tend to emulate them... perhaps that, then, is the answer to that question.

And so even the animals, whether they have a 'soul' (strictly speaking) or not, would seem to be (under such assumptions) divine at heart. And that divine spark in their hearts would be perfect and unending. Doesn't that sound like what an immortal soul might be?

But wait... humans, we presume, were created by God as well, and therefore also retain this divine spark. We assume that when we assume that humans have souls. But humans do not seem to be perfect... which they would logically be if they were created entirely out of God, who is (we presume) divine. Humans are fallible. Humans are all too often meek subjects to circumstance. Is that divine matter at work?

Ah, but we can rectify this by changing our definition of divinity. If divinity is not so much the actual state of perfection itself, but the desire for perfection and journey that eventually takes us TO perfection, and (because God is unending) never really ends, then maybe this would work. Let us examine our current proposition: humans would be entirely created out of a desire for perfection, and therefore keep seeking that perfection. And before you can reach perfection, it seems that one would first have to rectify whatever imperfection that precedes it. And to do that you have to discover first, what that imperfection is, and second, how to go about rectifying it.

For the search for perfection is a journey; the trying of wrong things until we find a right, only occasionally helped by signposts. And, in fact, those same signposts are written in strange languages that we do not initially know... therefore, part of the journey is learning to read the signposts, the maps that will lead us to our destination.

And so there it stands. If we assume that God created all things not out of nothing but out of God, then all things and people are divine at heart. That divinity is the unending struggle for perfection. Imperfection is the struggle for perfection, the learning to read the signposts along the way. At least, that is how it seems to me.

And now, I think I might just put forth the necessary effort to acquire some of those cookies I mentioned earlier. *RUBS HANDS TOGETHER WITH GLEE* Thank you for your time.