Snails are among the earth’s oldest living creatures, and the more we see our snail Socrates, the more amazing nature seems to be. It is a sad thing that so many of us have become so disconnected from nature, it is the source of so much comfort and wisdom and spirituality.

Someone asked me the other day if snails have souls? I answered honestly, that I have no idea, I’m not sure what a soul is exactly. Socrates  moves quietly and continuously through out tank, his antennae swirling out ahead of him, scouting for food and danger. I almost never see him move, yet he is almost always in a different place.

Sometimes, I am surprised to see him way up on the top of the tank, inhaling the air he needs to survive.

He is sometimes on the sides of the glass, eating algae with his thousands of microscopic sharp teeth. Sometimes trawling the ground slowly for food and waste.

He can switch genders if necessary to reproduce. He makes mucus bubbles that help him float to up, or when he releases them like a balloon, down. As awkward as it might seem, he can and does go anywhere in the tank.

He loves to ride the leaves of plants like a child on a merry-go-round. Different faiths have different ideas about the soul, but in most philosophical and mythological traditions,  there is a belief that the incorporeal essence (not composed of matter) of a living being is the soul.

The word soul derives from the Greek term psyche, the mental abilities of a living being, reason, chapter, feeling, consciousness, memory, perception, thinking, instinct.

I can’t find any definitions of soul that limits the term to humans, it is always a “living being,” so yes, I guess that Socrates does have a soul. To me, he is industrious and free, independent and contemplative. Every couple of days, he withdraws into himself – I think of Thomas Merton and his solitude – and is still.

Socrates eats algae and the waste of fishing, he helps keep the tank clean. I love how he nestles himself onto the leaves of plants, and rides them as they bob slowly up and down in the current made by the filter.

He is a compact and ungainly thing with no visible means of moving, yet he is astonishingly agile. He floats up to the top of plants, slices on his own slime across the bottom, pulls into himself when threatened or startled. That’s the wonderful thing about nature I think, i never gave snails a thought in my life.

I did not live in nature for the longest time, I can’t imagine returning to that state. Nature inspires me and teaches me and surprises me every day, I have come to understand the idea – long preached by people pushed to the margins of our society – that without nature, we are broken and drawn to an angry, alienated and disconnected life. You can see that on the news every day, the great difference between people who live in nature, and people who don’t.

Socrates is soulful, one of those living things you can look at but never see. Artists and writers are supposed to see things that other people see but can’t see, that is our work.

He is a  fascinating symbols of evolution, adaptation and the great wonder of nature, if you can pay attention to it.