I shall suppose a dozen of good philosophers in an island where they
have never seen anything but vegetables. Such an island, and especially
twelve such philosophers, would be very hard to find; however, the
fiction is allowable. They admire the life which circulates in the
fibres of the plants, appearing to be alternately lost and renewed; and
as they know not how a plant springs up, how it derives its nourishment
and growth, they call this a vegetative soul. What, they are asked, do
you understand by a vegetative soul? They answer: It is a word that
serves to express the unknown spring by which all this is operated. But
do you not see, a mechanic will ask them, that all this is naturally
done by weights, levers, wheels, and pulleys? No, the philosophers will
say; there is in this vegetation something other than ordinary motion;
there is a secret power which all plants have of drawing to themselves
the juices which nourish them; and this power cannot be explained by any
system of mechanics; it is a gift which God has made to matter, and the
nature of which neither you nor we comprehend.
After disputing thus, our reasoners at length discover animals. Oh, oh!
say they, after a long examination, here are beings organized like
ourselves. It is indisputable that they have memory, and often more than
we have. They have our passions; they have knowledge; they make us
understand all their wants; they perpetuate their species like us. Our
philosophers dissect some of these beings, and find in them hearts and
brains. What! say they, can the author of these machines, who does
nothing in vain, have given them all the organs of feeling, in order
that they may have no feeling? It were absurd to think so--there is
certainly something in thera which, for want of knowing a better term,
we likewise call soul--something that experiences sensations, and has a
certain number of ideas. But what is this principle? Is it something
absolutely different from matter? Is it a pure spirit? Is it a middle
being, between matter, of which we know little, and pure spirit, of
which we know nothing? Is it a property given by God to organized
matter?
They then make experiments upon insects; upon earth worms--they cut them
into several parts, and are astonished to find that, after a short time,
there come heads to all these divided parts; the same animal is
reproduced, and its very destruction becomes the means of its
multiplication. Has it several souls, which wait until the head is cut
off the original trunk, to animate the reproduced parts? They are like
trees, which put forth fresh branches, and are reproduced from slips.
Have these trees several souls? It is not likely. Then it is very
probable that the soul of these reptiles is of a different kind from
that which we call vegetative soul in plants; that it is a faculty of a
superior order, which God has vouchsafed to give to certain portions of
matter. Here is a fresh proof of His power--a fresh subject of
adoration.
A man of violent temper, and a bad reasoner, hears this discourse and
says to them: You are wicked wretches, whose bodies should be burned for
the good of your souls, for you deny the immortality of the soul of man.
Our philosophers then look at one another in perfect astonishment, and
one of them mildly answers him: Why burn us so hastily? Whence have you
concluded that we have an idea that your cruel soul is mortal? From your
believing, returns the other, that God has given to the brutes which are
organized like us, the faculty of having feelings and ideas. Now this
soul of the beasts perishes with them; therefore you believe that the
soul of man perishes also.
The philosopher replies: We are not at all sure that what we call "soul"
in animal perishes with them; we know very well that matter does not
perish, and we believe that God may have put in animals something which,
if God will it, shall forever retain the faculty of having ideas. We are
very far from affirming that such is the case, for it is hardly for men
to be so confident; but we dare not set bounds to the power of God. We
say that it is very probable that the beasts, which are matter, have
received from Him a little intelligence. We are every day discovering
properties of matter--that is, presents from God--of which we had before
no idea. We at first defined matter to be an extended substance; next we
found it necessary to add solidity; some time afterwards we were obliged
to admit that this matter has a force which is called "_vis inertiæ_";
and after this, to our great astonishment, we had to acknowledge that
matter gravitates.
When we sought to carry our researches further, we were forced to
recognize beings resembling matter in some things, but without the
other, attributes with which matter is gifted. The elementary fire, for
instance, acts upon our senses like other bodies; but it does not, like
them, tend to a centre; on the contrary, it escapes from the centre in
straight lines on every side. It does not seem to obey the laws of
attraction, of gravitation, like other bodies. There are mysteries in
optics, for which it would be hard to account, without venturing to
suppose that the rays of light penetrate one another. There is certainly
something in light which distinguishes it from known matter. Light seems
to be a middle being between bodies and other kinds of beings of which
we are ignorant! It is very likely that these other kinds are themselves
a medium leading to other creatures, and that there is a chain of
substances extending to infinity. "_Usque adeo quod tangit idem est,
tamen ultima distant!_"
This idea seems to us to be worthy of the greatness of God, if anything
is worthy of it. Among these substances He has doubtless had power to
choose one which He has lodged in our bodies, and which we call the
human soul; and the sacred books which we have read inform us that this
soul is immortal. Reason is in accordance with revelation; for how
should any substance perish? Every mode is destroyed; the substance
remains. We cannot conceive the creation of a substance; we cannot
conceive its annihilation; but we dare not affirm that the absolute
master of all beings cannot also give feelings and perceptions to the
being which we call matter. You are quite sure that the essence of your
soul is to think; but we are not so sure of this; for when we examine a
fœtus, we can hardly believe that its soul had many ideas in its
head; and we very much doubt whether, in a sound and deep sleep, or in a
complete lethargy, any one ever meditated. Thus it appears to us that
thought may very well be, not the essence of the thinking being, but a
present made by the Creator to beings which we call thinking; from all
which we suspect that, if He would, He could make this present to an
atom; and could preserve this atom and His present forever, or destroy
it at His pleasure. The difficulty consists not so much in divining how
matter could think, as in divining how any substance whatever does
think. You have ideas only because God has been pleased to give them to
you; why would you prevent Him from giving them to other species? Can
you really be so fearless as to dare to believe that your soul is
precisely of the same kind as the substances which approach nearest to
the Divinity? There is great probability that they are of an order very
superior, and that consequently God has vouchsafed to give them a way of
thinking infinitely finer, just as He has given a very limited measure
of ideas to the animals which are of an order inferior to you. I know
not how I live, nor how I give life; yet you would have me know how I
have ideas. The soul is a timepiece which God has given us to manage;
but He has not told us of what the spring of this timepiece is composed.
Is there anything in all this from which it can be inferred that our
souls are mortal? Once more let us repeat it--we think as you do of the
immortality announced to us by faith; but we believe that we are too
ignorant to affirm that God has not the power of granting thought to
whatever being He pleases. You bound the power of the Creator, which is
boundless; and we extend it as far as His existence extends. Forgive us
for believing Him to be omnipotent, as we forgive you for restraining
His power. You doubtless know all that He can do, and we know nothing of
it. Let us live as brethren; let us adore our common Father in
peace--you with your knowing and daring souls, we with our ignorant and
timid souls. We have a day to live; let us pass it calmly, without
quarrelling about difficulties that will be cleared up in the immortal
life which will begin to-morrow.
The brutal man, having nothing good to say in reply, talked a long
while, and was very angry. Our poor philosophers employed themselves for
some weeks in reading history; and after reading well, they spoke as
follows to this barbarian, who was so unworthy to have an immortal soul:
My friend, we have read that in all antiquity things went on as well as
they do in our own times--that there were even greater virtues, and that
philosophers were not persecuted for the opinions which they held; why,
then, should you seek to injure us for opinions which we do not hold? We
read that all the ancients believed matter to be eternal. They who saw
that it was created left the others at rest. Pythagoras had been a cock,
his relations had been swine; but no one found fault with this; his sect
was cherished and revered by all, except the cooks and those who had
beans to sell.
The Stoics acknowledged a god, nearly the same as the god afterwards so
rashly admitted by the Spinozists; yet Stoicism was a sect the most
fruitful in heroic virtues, and the most accredited.
The Epicureans made their god like our canons, whose indolent corpulence
upholds their divinity, and who take their nectar and ambrosia in quiet,
without meddling with anything. These Epicureans boldly taught the
materiality and the mortality of the soul; but they were not the less
respected; they were admitted into all offices; and their crooked atoms
never did the world any harm.
The Platonists, like the Gymnosophists, did not do us the honor to think
that God had condescended to form us Himself. According to them, He left
this task to His officers--to genii, who in the course of their work
made many blunders. The god of the Platonists was an excellent workman,
who employed here below very indifferent assistants; but men did not the
less reverence the school of Plato.
In short, among the Greeks and the Romans, so many sects as there were,
so many ways of thinking about God and the soul, the past and the
future, none of these sects were persecutors. They were all
mistaken--and we are very sorry for it; but they were all peaceful--and
this confounds us, this condemns us, this shows us that most of the
reasoners of the present day are monsters, and that those of antiquity
were men. They sang publicly on the Roman stage: "_Post mortem nihil
est, ipsaque mors nihil._"--"Naught after death, and death is nothing."
These opinions made men neither better nor worse; all was governed, all
went on as usual; and Titus, Trajan, and Aurelius governed the earth
like beneficent deities.
Passing from the Greeks and the Romans to barbarous nations, let us only
contemplate the Jews. Superstitious, cruel, and ignorant as this
wretched people were, still they honored the Pharisees, who admitted the
fatality of destiny and the metempsychosis; they also paid respect to
the Sadducees, who absolutely denied the immortality of the soul and the
existence of spirits, taking for their foundation the law of Moses,
which had made no mention of pain or reward after death. The Essenes,
who also believed in fatality, and who never offered up victims in the
temple, were reverenced still more than the Pharisees and the Sadducees.
None of their opinions ever disturbed the government. Yet here were
abundant subjects for slaughtering, burning, and exterminating one
another, had they been so inclined. Oh, miserable men! profit by these
examples. Think, and let others think. It is the solace of our feeble
minds in this short life. What! will you receive with politeness a Turk,
who believes that Mahomet travelled to the moon; will you be careful not
to displease the pasha Bonneval; and yet will you have your brother
hanged, drawn, and quartered, because he believes that God created
intelligence in every creature?
So spake one of the philosophers; and another of them added: Believe me,
it need never be feared that any philosophical opinion will hurt the
religion of a country. What though our mysteries are contrary to our
demonstrations, they are not the less reverenced by our Christian
philosophers, who know that the objects of reason and faith are of
different natures. Philosophers will never form a religious sect; and
why? Because they are without enthusiasm. Divide mankind into twenty
parts; and of these, nineteen consist of those who labor with their
hands, and will never know that there has been such a person as Locke in
the world. In the remaining twentieth, how few men will be found who
read! and among those who read, there are twenty that read novels for
one that studies philosophy. Those who think are excessively few; and
those few do not set themselves to disturb the world.
Who are they who have waved the torch of discord in their native
country? Are they Pomponatius, Montaigne, La Vayer, Descartes, Gassendi,
Bayle, Spinoza, Hobbes, Shaftesbury, Boulainvilliers, the Consul
Maillet, Toland, Collins, Flood, Woolston, Bekker, the author disguised
under the name of Jacques Massé, he of the "Turkish Spy," he of the
"_Lettres Persanes_" of the "_Lettres Juives_," of the "_Pensées
Philosophiques_"? No; they are for the most part theologians, who,
having at first been ambitious of becoming leaders of a sect, have soon
become ambitious to be leaders of a party. Nay, not all the books of
modern philosophy put together will ever make so much noise in the world
as was once made by the dispute of the Cordeliers about the form of
their hoods and sleeves.