Soul

"When the breath of life was imparted that simply was applied which set the machine in motion. 

No separate and independent organization was added, but a change took place in the man himself. 

 

The verb “became” is defined by Webster, “to pass from one

 state to another; to enter into some state or condition, by a change
from another state or condition, or by assuming or receiving new
properties or qualities, additional matter or a new character.” 

And And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. Gen.2:7, is then cited as an illustration of this definition. 

But it will be seen that none of these will fit the popular idea of the superadded soul; for that is not held to be simply a change in Adam’s condition, or a new property or quality of his being, or an addition of matter, or a new character; but a separate and independent entity, capable, without the body, of a higher existence than with it. 

 

The boy becomes a man; the acorn, an oak; the egg, an eagle; the chrysalis, a butterfly; but the capabilities of the change all inhere in the object which experiences it. A superadded, independent soul could not have been put into man, and be said to have become that soul. 

 

Yet it is said of Adam, that he, 

on receiving the breath of life, 

became a living soul. 

 

An engine is put into a ship, and by its power propels it over the face of the deep; but the ship, by receiving the engine, does not become the engine, nor the engine the ship. No sophistry, even from the darkest depths of its alchemy, can bring up and attach to the word “become” a definition which will make it mean, as applied to any body, the addition of a distinct and separate organization to that body." Uriah Smith