I think that this comes down to personal belief, actually, and how you use it to interperet canon. As I see it, you don't have your own personal soul that's imprinted with every emotion and experience you ever had. I think that souls are actually fairly interchangeable, and relatively unimportant in the greater scheme of things. The soul is, as Spike says, the spark, but not the sum total of your emotions. Spike's character proved that you can have the full range of human emotions as a demon, only the emotions are expressed and interpereted differently as a demon because a demon's spirit is different from a human soul.
I also loved that particular quote from "Becoming." It seems to me that demons, or at least the demon that inhabits vampires, are like small children when they first rise, wanting everything and just taking it because no one ever teaches them that they can't. Spike proves that they can learn the difference between right and wrong when properly taught, i.e., the chip. His demon grew up, so to speak, which explains why him with a soul isn't really that different than him from before a soul, once he gets out from under the First's crazy-making influence.
Angel is, in my opinion, a terrible example of soul versus no-soul. Because Angelus was considered the worst vampire in history, the most twisted, the most evil. Look at Darla, instead- even when she was evil and they supposedly didn't care about each other, she loved him. She admitted to loving him in "Angel" in first season- talking to Buffy, she said something along the lines of, "The worst thing in the world is loving someone who doens't care about you." At times she hated him, thought he was a disgusting perversion because he had a soul, and did her best to drive him insane and make him evil again, but she still loved him. Despite everything. Angelus, on the other hand, didn't share her feelings. He was with her for kicks, and thought that they belonged together because they were well-suited, but he didn't love her. Most vampires that are evolved at least beyond fledge status show some capacity to love, but Angelus never did.
I don't think you lost the thread, but it's entirely possible that I just did.
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I also loved that particular quote from "Becoming." It seems to me that demons, or at least the demon that inhabits vampires, are like small children when they first rise, wanting everything and just taking it because no one ever teaches them that they can't. Spike proves that they can learn the difference between right and wrong when properly taught, i.e., the chip. His demon grew up, so to speak, which explains why him with a soul isn't really that different than him from before a soul, once he gets out from under the First's crazy-making influence.
Angel is, in my opinion, a terrible example of soul versus no-soul. Because Angelus was considered the worst vampire in history, the most twisted, the most evil. Look at Darla, instead- even when she was evil and they supposedly didn't care about each other, she loved him. She admitted to loving him in "Angel" in first season- talking to Buffy, she said something along the lines of, "The worst thing in the world is loving someone who doens't care about you." At times she hated him, thought he was a disgusting perversion because he had a soul, and did her best to drive him insane and make him evil again, but she still loved him. Despite everything. Angelus, on the other hand, didn't share her feelings. He was with her for kicks, and thought that they belonged together because they were well-suited, but he didn't love her. Most vampires that are evolved at least beyond fledge status show some capacity to love, but Angelus never did.
I don't think you lost the thread, but it's entirely possible that I just did.