_Souls of Fools and Monsters._
A child, ill-formed, is born absolutely imbecile, has no ideas, lives
without ideas; instances of this have been known. How shall this animal
be defined? Doctors have said that it is something between man and
beast; others have said that it is a sensitive soul, but not an
intellectual soul: it eats, it drinks, it sleeps, it wakes, it has
sensations, but it does not think.
Is there for it another life, or is there none? The case has been put,
and has not yet been entirely resolved.
Some have said that this creature must have a soul, because its father
and its mother had souls. But by this reasoning it would be proved that
if it had come into the world without a nose, it should have the
reputation of having one, because its father and its mother had one.
A woman is brought to bed: her infant has no chin; its forehead is flat
and somewhat black, its eyes round, its nose thin and sharp; its
countenance is not much unlike that of a swallow: yet the rest of his
body is made like ours. It is decided by a majority of voices that it is
a man, and possesses an immaterial soul; whereupon the parents have it
baptized. But if this little ridiculous figure has pointed claws, and a
mouth in the form of a beak, it is declared to be a monster; it has no
soul; it is not baptized.
It is known, that in 1726, there was in London a woman who was brought
to bed every eight days of a young rabbit. No difficulty was made of
refusing baptism to this child, notwithstanding the epidemic folly which
prevailed in London for three weeks, of believing that this poor jade
actually brought forth wild rabbits. The surgeon who delivered her,
named St. André, swore that nothing was more true; and he was believed.
But what reason had the credulous for refusing a soul to this woman's
offspring? She had a soul; her children must likewise have been
furnished with souls, whether they had hands? or paws, whether they were
born with a snout or with a face: cannot the Supreme Being vouchsafe the
gift of thought and sensation to a little nondescript, born of a woman,
with the figure of a rabbit, as well as a little nondescript born with
the figure of a man? Will the soul which was ready to take up its abode
in this woman's fœtus return unhoused?
It is very well observed by Locke, with regard to monsters, that
immortality must not be attributed to the exterior of a body--that it
has nothing to do with the figure. "This immortality," says he, "is no
more attached to the form of one's face or breast than it is to the way
in which one's beard is clipped or one's coat is cut."
He asks: What is the exact measure of deformity by which you can
recognize whether an infant has a soul or not? What is the precise
degree at which it is to be declared a monster and without a soul?
Again, it is asked: What would a soul be that should have none but
chimerical ideas? There are some which never go beyond such. Are they
worthy or unworthy? What is to be made of their pure spirit?
What are we to think of a child with two heads, which is otherwise well
formed? Some say that it has two souls, because it is furnished with two
pineal glands, with two callous substances, with two "_sensoria
communia_." Others answer that there cannot be two souls, with but one
breast and one navel.
In short, so many questions have been asked about this poor human soul,
that if it were necessary to put an end to them all, such an examination
of its own person would cause it the most insupportable annoyance. The
same would happen to it as happened to Cardinal Polignac at a conclave:
his steward, tired of having never been able to make him pass his
accounts, took a journey to Rome, and went to the small window of his
cell, laden with an immense bundle of papers; he read for nearly two
hours; at last, finding that no answer was made, he thrust forward his
head: the cardinal had been gone almost two hours. Our souls will be
gone before their stewards have finished their statements; but let us be
just before God--ignorant as both we and our stewards are.
See what is said on the soul in the "Letters of Memmius."