maggie2

The deleted section had the explanation about why the soul matters for Spike's journey within the context of his own paradigm. I think of it as conscience -- faculty by which we can see what's objectively good and evil. Without the soul, Spike has an inchoate (and unusual for a vampire) desire for the good that goes from latent to active when he meets Buffy. He does pretty well in late season 5 because he's got Buffy as a role model, and an internal desire to win her respect (or to be the sort of person who would deserve her respect if she were around to give it). And also a few good motives of his own (attaching his well-being to her well-being). But when the role model goes south, as she does after her resurrection, he falls into the gutter with her. (A fall that is amped by his choice to prefer the possession of Buffy over the desire to be respected by Buffy). I think the bathroom scene forces Spike to see that having Buffy as a role model is not enough, and that he's also failing in his desire to secure his well-being (which again, is an important part of his well-being) presumably because he's just clueless about how to do that. If we think of the soul as delivering some extra sense for discerning good and evil, he's right that it's essential if he wants to have a shot at getting where he wants to go -- which would be to be someone with full agency, or ability to discern for himself what's right and wrong rather than trying to blindly follow a wildly gyrating compass. He probably doesn't understand it that way. More just the gut reaction that it's all fallen apart, and he's not who he wants to be, and maybe even that they are pulling each other down in a way that is totally quashing the effulgence that was the source of the attraction in the first place. So he goes off to get the soul without fully knowing why it's necessary. But that's actually exactly how moral progress works in this paradigm. We learn about where we are going as we go there, in a journey launched by an inchoate desire for something, but a real sense of adventure in that we are going to be changed into something and we are going to be in possession of something that we could not have defined or understood when we started. That Spike is all about the self-surrender to something more is part of why he fits this paradigm so well.