Man dies entirely. Nothing is more evident to him who is not delirious.
The human body, after death, is but a mass, incapable of producing any
movements the union of which constitutes life. We no longer see
circulation, respiration, digestion, speech, or reflection. It is
claimed then that the soul has separated itself from the body. But to
say that this soul, which is unknown, is the principle of life, is
saying nothing, unless that an unknown force is the invisible principle
of imperceptible movements. Nothing is more natural and more simple than
to believe that the dead man lives no more, nothing more absurd than to
believe that the dead man is still living.
We ridicule the simplicity of some nations whose fashion is to bury
provisions with the dead--under the idea that this food might be useful
and necessary to them in another life. Is it more ridiculous or more
absurd to believe that men will eat after death than to imagine that
they will think; that they will have agreeable or disagreeable ideas;
that they will enjoy; that they will suffer; that they will be conscious
of sorrow or joy when the organs which produce sensations or ideas are
dissolved and reduced to dust? To claim that the souls of men will be
happy or unhappy after the death of the body, is to pretend that man
will be able to see without eyes, to hear without ears, to taste without
a palate, to smell without a nose, and to feel without hands and without
skin. Nations who believe themselves very rational, adopt, nevertheless,
such ideas.