THAT MAN IS ESSENTIALLY SUBJECT IN EVERYTHING
TO THE ETERNAL LAWS OF THE FIRST PRINCIPLE
Let us regard, with the eyes of reason, this animal man which the
great being has produced.
What is his first sensation? A sensation of pain; then the pleasure
of feeding. That is the whole of our life: pain and pleasure. Whence
have we these two springs which keep us in action until our last
moment, if not from this first principle of action, this Demiourgos?
Assuredly we do not give pain to ourselves; and how could we be
the cause of our few pleasures? We have said elsewhere that it is
impossible for us to invent a new kind of pleasure--that is to say,
a new sense. Let us now say that it is equally impossible for us to
invent a new kind of pain. The most execrable of tyrants cannot do
it. The Jews, whose tortures have been described by the Benedictine
monk Calmet in his dictionary, could only cut, tear, mutilate, draw,
burn, strangle, and crush; all torments may thus be summarised. We
can therefore do nothing of ourselves, either for good or evil; we
are but the blind instruments of nature.
But I wish to think and I think, most men will recklessly assert. Let
us consider it. What was our first idea after the feeling of pain?
The idea of the breast that we sucked; then the face of the nurse;
then a few other objects and needs made their faint impressions.
Would any one up to this point venture to say that he was more than
a sentient automaton, a wretched abandoned animal destitute of
knowledge or power, an outcast of nature? Will he venture to say
that in this condition he is a thinking being, the author of his own
ideas, the possessor of a soul? What is the son of a king when he
leaves the womb? He would excite the disgust of his father, if he
were not his father. A flower of the field that one treads underfoot
is an infinitely superior thing.