_The Soul and the Spiritual System_.
Man, after having gratuitously supposed himself composed of two distinct
independent substances, that have no common properties, relatively with
each other; has pretended, as we have seen, that that which actuated him
interiorly, that motion which is invisible, that impulse which is
placed within himself, is essentially different from those which act
exteriorly. The first he designated, as we have already said, by the
name of a SPIRIT or a SOUL. If however it be asked, what is a spirit?
The moderns will reply, that the whole fruit of their metaphysical
researches is limited to learning that this motive-power, which they
state to be the spring of man's action, is a substance of an unknown
nature; so simple, so indivisible, so deprived of extent, so invisible,
so impossible to be discovered by the senses, that its parts cannot be
separated, even by abstraction or thought. The question then arises, how
can we conceive such a substance, which is only the negation of every
thing of which we have a knowledge? How form to ourselves an idea of a
substance, void of extent, yet acting on our senses; that is to say,
on those organs which are material, which have extent? How can a
being without extent be moveable; how put matter in action? How can a
substance devoid of parts, correspond successively with different parts
of space? But a very cogent question presents itself on this occasion:
if this distinct substance that is said to form one of the component
parts of man, be really what it is reported, and if it be not, it is
not what it is described; if it be unknown, if it be not pervious to
the senses; if it be invisible, by what means did the metaphysicians
themselves become acquainted with it? How did they form ideas of a
substance, that taking their own account of it, is not, under any of its
circumstances, either directly or by analogy, cognizable to the mind of
man? If they could positively achieve this, there would no longer be any
mystery in Nature: it would be as easy to conceive the time when all was
nothing, when all shall have passed away, to account for the
production of every thing we behold, as to dig in a garden or read a
lecture.--Doubt would vanish from the human species; there could no
longer be any difference of opinion, since all must necessarily be of
one mind on a subject so accessible to every enquirer.
But it will be replied, the materialist himself admits, the natural
philosophers of all ages have admitted, elements and atoms, beings
simple and indivisible, of which bodies are composed:--granted; they
have no more: they have also admitted that many of these atoms, many
of these elements, if not all, are unknown to them: nevertheless, these
simple beings, these atoms of the materialist, are not the same thing
with the spirit, or the soul of the metaphysician. When the natural
philosopher talks of atoms--when he describes them as simple beings,
he indicates nothing more than that they are homogeneous, pure, without
mixture: but then he allows that they have extent, consequently parts,
are separable by thought, although no other natural agent with which
he is acquainted is capable of dividing them: that the simple beings
of this genus are susceptible of motion--can impart action--receive
impulse--are material--are placed in Nature--are indestructible;--that
consequently, if he cannot know them from themselves, he can form some
idea of them by analogy: thus he has done that intelligibly, which the
metaphysician would do unintelligibly: the latter, with a view to render
man immortal, finding difficulties to his wish, from seeing that
the body decayed--that it has submitted to the great, the universal
law--has, to solve the difficulty, to remove the impediment, given him a
soul, distinct from the body, which he says is exempted from the action
of the general law: to account for this, he has called it a spiritual
being, whose properties are the negation of all known properties,
consequently inconceivable: had he, however, had recourse to the atoms
of the former--had he made this substance the last possible term of the
division of matter--it would at least have been intelligible; it would
also have been immortal, since, according to the reasonings of all men,
whether metaphysicians, theologians, or natural philosophers, an atom is
an indestructible element, that must exist to all eternity.
All men are agreed in this position, that motion is the successive
change of the relations of one body with other bodies, or with
the different parts of space. If that which is called _spirit_ be
susceptible of communicating or receiving motion--if it acts--if
it gives play to the organs of body--to produce these effects, it
necessarily follows that this being changes successively its relation,
its tendency, its correspondence, the position of its parts, either
relatively to the different points of space, or to the different organs
of the body which it puts in action: but to change its relation
with space, with the organs to which it gives impulse, it follows of
necessity that this spirit most have extent, solidity, consequently
distinct parts: whenever a substance possesses these qualities, it
is what we call MATTER, it can no longer be regarded as a simple pure
being, in the sense attached to it by the moderns, or by theologians.
Thus it will be seen, that those who, to conquer insurmountable
difficulties, have supposed in man an immaterial substance,
distinguished from his body, have not thoroughly understood themselves;
indeed they have done nothing more than imagined a negative quality,
of which they cannot have any correct idea: matter alone is capable of
acting on our senses; without this action nothing would be capable
of making itself known to us. They have not seen that a being without
extent is neither in a capacity to move itself, nor has the capability
of communicating motion to the body; since such a being, having no
parts, has not the faculty of changing its relation, or its distance,
relatively to other bodies, nor of exciting motion in the human body,
which is itself material. That which is called our soul moves itself
with us; now motion is a property of matter--this soul gives impulse to
the arm; the arm, moved by it, makes an impression, a blow, that follows
the general law of motion: in this case, the force remaining the same,
if the mass was two-fold, the blow should be double. This soul again
evinces its materiality in the invincible obstacles it encounters on
the part of the body. If the arm be moved by its impulse when nothing
opposes it, yet this arm can no longer move, when it is charged with
a weight beyond its strength. Here then is a mass of matter that
annihilates the impulse given by a spiritual cause, which spiritual
cause having no analogy with matter, ought not to find more difficulty
in moving the whole world, than in moving a single atom, nor an atom,
than the universe. From this, it is fair to conclude, such a substance
is a chimera--a being of the imagination. That it required a being
differently endowed, differently constituted, to set matter in
motion--to create all the phenomena we behold: nevertheless, it is a
being the metaphysicians have made the contriver, the Author of Nature.
As man, in all his speculations, takes himself for the model, he no
sooner imagined a spirit within himself, than giving it extent, he
made it universal; then ascribed to it all those causes with which his
ignorance prevents him from becoming acquainted, thus he identified
himself with the Author of Nature--then availed himself of the
supposition to explain the connection of the soul with the body: his
self-complacency prevented his perceiving that he was only enlarging the
circle of his errors, by pretending to understand that which it is
more than possible he will never be permitted to know; his self-love
prevented him from feeling, that whenever he punished another for not
thinking as he did, that he committed the greatest injustice, unless he
was satisfactorily able to prove that other wrong, and himself right:
that if he himself was obliged to have recourse to hypothesis--to
gratuitous suppositions, whereon to found his doctrine, that from the
very fallibility of his nature, these might be erroneous: thus GALLILEO
was persecuted, because the metaphysicians, the theologians of his day,
chose to make others believe what it was evident they did not themselves
understand.
As soon as I feel an impulse, or experience motion, I am under the
necessity to acknowledge extent, solidity, density, impenetrability in
the substance I see move, or from which I receive impulse: thus, when
action is attributed to any cause whatever, I am obliged to consider
it MATERIAL. I may be ignorant of its individual nature, of its mode
of action, or of its generic properties; but I cannot deceive myself in
general properties, which are common to all matter: this ignorance will
only be increased, when I shall take that for granted of a being, of
which from that moment I am precluded by what I admit from forming any
idea, which moreover deprives it completely either of the faculty of
moving itself, giving an impulse, or acting. Thus, according to the
received idea of the term, a spiritual substance that moves itself, that
gives motion to matter, and that acts, implies a contradiction, that
necessarily infers a total impossibility.
The partizans of spirituality believe they answer the difficulties they
have accumulated, by asserting that "_the soul is entire--is whole under
each point of its extent_." If an absurd answer will solve difficulties,
they certainly have done it. But let us examine this reply:--it will
be found that this indivisible part which is called soul, however
insensible or however minute, must yet remain something: then an
infinity of unextended substances, or the same substance having no
dimensions, repeated an infinity of times, would constitute a substance
that has extent: this cannot be what they mean, because according to
this principle, the human soul would then be as infinite as the Author
of Nature; seeing that they have stated this to be a being without
extent, who is an infinity of times whole in each part of the universe.
But when there shall appear as much solidity in the answer as there is
a want of it, it must be acknowledged that in whatever manner the spirit
or the soul finds itself in its extent, when the body moves forward the
soul does not remain behind; if so, it has a quality in common with
the body, peculiar to matter; since it is conveyed from place to place
jointly with the body. Thus, when even the soul should be admitted to
be immaterial, what conclusion must be drawn? Entirely submitted to the
motion of the body, without this body it would remain dead and inert.
This soul would only be part of a two-fold machine, necessarily impelled
forward by a concatenation, or connection with the whole. It would
resemble a bird, which a child conducts at its pleasure, by the string
with which it is bound.
Thus, it is for want of consulting experience, by not attending to
reason, that man has darkened his ideas upon the concealed principle of
his motion. If, disentangled from prejudice--if, destitute of gratuitous
suppositions--if, throwing aside error, he would contemplate his soul,
or the moving principle that acts within him, he would be convinced that
it forms a part of its body, that it cannot be distinguished from
it, but by abstraction; that it is only the body itself, considered
relatively with some of its functions, or with those faculties of which
its nature, or its peculiar organization, renders it susceptible:--he
will perceive that this soul is obliged to undergo the same changes as
the body; that it is born with it; that it expands itself with it;
that like the body, it passes through a state of infancy, a period of
weakness, a season of inexperience; that it enlarges itself, that it
strengthens itself, in the same progression; that like the body, it
arrives at an adult age or reaches maturity; that it is then, and not
till then, it obtains the faculty of fulfilling certain functions; that
it is in this stage, and in no other, that it enjoys reason; that it
displays more or less wit, judgment, and manly activity; that like the
body, it is subject to those vicissitudes which exterior causes obliges
it to undergo by their influence; that, conjointly with the body, it
suffers, enjoys, partakes of its pleasures, shares its pains, is sound
when the body is healthy, and diseased when the body is oppressed
with sickness; that like the body, it is continually modified by the
different degrees of density in the atmosphere; by the variety of the
seasons, and by the various properties of the aliments received into
the stomach: in short, he would be obliged to acknowledge that at some
periods it manifests visible signs of torpor, stupefaction, decrepitude,
and death.
In despite of this analogy, or rather this continual identity, of
the soul with the body, man has been desirous of distinguishing their
essence; he has therefore made the soul an inconceivable being: but
in order that he might form to himself some idea of it, he was,
notwithstanding, obliged to have recourse to material beings, and to
their manner of acting. The word _spirit_, therefore, presents to the
mind no other ideas than those of breathing, of respiration, of wind.
Thus, when it is said the _soul is a spirit_, it really means nothing
more than that its mode of action is like that of breathing: which
though invisible in itself, or acting without being seen, nevertheless
produces very visible effects. But breath, it is acknowledged, is a
material cause; it is allowed to be air modified; it is not, therefore,
a simple or pure substance, such as the moderns designate under the name
of SPIRIT.
It is rather singular that in the Hebrew, the Greek, and the Latin, the
synonymy, or corresponding term for spirit should signify _breath_.
The metaphysicians themselves can best say why they have adopted such
a word, to designate the substance they have distinguished from matter:
some of them, fearful they should not have distinct beings enough, have
gone farther, and compounded man of three substances, BODY, SOUL, and
INTELLECT.
Although the word _spirit_ is so very ancient among men, the sense
attached to it by the moderns is quite new: the idea of spirituality, as
admitted at this day, is a recent production of the imagination. Neither
PYTHAGORAS nor PLATO, however heated their brain, however decided
their taste for the marvellous, appear to have understood by spirit an
immaterial substance, or one without extent, devoid of parts; such as
that of which the moderns have formed the human soul, the concealed
author of motion. The ancients, by the word spirit, were desirous to
define matter of an extreme subtilty, of a purer quality than that which
acted grossly on our senses. In consequence, some have regarded the soul
as an ethereal substance; others as igneous matter; others again have
compared it to light. DEMOCRITUS made it consist in motion, consequently
gave it a manner of existence. ARISTOXENES, who was himself a musician,
made it harmony. ARISTOTLE regarded the soul as the moving faculty, upon
which depended the motion of living bodies.
The earliest doctors of Christianity had no other idea of the soul,
than that it was material. TERTULLIAN, ARNOBIUS, CLEMENT of ALEXANDRIA,
ORIGEN, SAINT JUSTIN, IRENAEUS, have all of them discoursed upon it; but
have never spoken of it other than as a corporeal substance--as matter.
It was reserved for their successors at a great distance of time, to
make the human soul and the soul of the world _pure spirits_; that is
to say, immaterial substances, of which it is impossible they could
form any accurate idea: by degrees this incomprehensible doctrine of
spirituality, conformable without doubt to the views of those who make
it a principle to annihilate reason, prevailed over the others: But
it might be fairly asked, if the pretended proofs of this doctrine owe
themselves to a man, who on a much more comprehensible point has been
proved in error; if, on that which time has shewn was accessible to
man's reason, the great champion in support of this dogma was deceived;
are we not bound to examine, with the most rigorous investigation, the
reasonings, the evidence, of one who was the decided, the proven child
of enthusiasm and error? Yet DESCARTES, to whose sublime errors the
world is indebted for the Newtonian system, although before him the
soul had been considered spiritual, was the first who established that,
"_that which thinks ought to be distinguished from matter_;" from whence
he concludes rather hastily, that the soul, or that which thinks in man,
is a spirit; or a simple indivisible substance. Perhaps it would have
been more logical, more consistent with reason, to have said, since
man, who is matter, who has no idea but of matter, enjoys the faculty of
thought, matter can think; that is, it is susceptible of that particular
modification called thought.
However this may be, this doctrine was believed divine, supernatural,
because it was inconceivable to man. Those who dared believe even that
which was believed before; namely, _that the soul was material_, were
held as rash inconsiderate madmen, or else treated as enemies to the
welfare and happiness of the human race. When man had once renounced
experience; when he had abjured his reason; when he had joined the
banner of this enthusiastic novelty; he did nothing more, day after day,
than subtilize the delirium, the ravings of his imagination: he pleased
himself by continually sinking deeper into the most unfathomable depths
of error: he felicitated himself on his discoveries; on his pretended
knowledge; in an exact ratio as his understanding became enveloped in
the mists of darkness, environed with the clouds of ignorance. Thus,
in consequence of man's reasoning upon false principles; of having
relinquished the evidence of his senses; the moving principle within
him, the concealed author of motion, has been made a mere chimera, a
mere being of the imagination, because he has divested it of all known
properties; because he has attached to it nothing but properties
which, from the very nature of his existence, he is incapacitated to
comprehend.
The doctrine of spirituality, such as it now exists, offers nothing but
vague ideas; or rather is the absense of all ideas. What does it present
to the mind, but a substance which possesses nothing of which our senses
enable us to have a knowledge? Can it be truth that a man is able to
figure to himself a being not material, having neither extent nor
parts, which, nevertheless, acts upon matter without having any point
of contact, any kind of analogy with it; and which itself receives the
impulse of matter by means of material organs, which announce to it the
presence of other beings? Is it possible to conceive the union of the
soul with the body; to comprehend how this material body can bind,
enclose, constrain, determine a fugitive being which escapes all our
senses? Is it honest, is it plain dealing, to solve these difficulties,
by saying there is a mystery in them; that they are the effects of a
power, more inconceivable than the human soul; than its mode of acting,
however concealed from our view? When to resolve these problems, man is
obliged to have recourse to miracles or to make the Divinity interfere,
does he not avow his own ignorance? When, notwithstanding the ignorance
he is thus obliged to avow by availing himself of the divine agency,
he tells us, this immaterial substance, this soul, shall experience the
action of the element of fire, which he allows to be material; when he
confidently says this soul shall be burnt; shall suffer in purgatory;
have we not a right to believe, that either he has a design to deceive
us, or else that he does not himself understand that which he is so
anxious we should take upon his word?
Let us not then be surprised at those subtile hypotheses, as ingenious
as they are unsatisfactory, to which theological prejudice has obliged
the most profound modern speculators to recur; when they have undertaken
to reconcile the spirituality of the soul, with the physical action of
material beings, on this incorporeal substance; its re-action upon these
beings; its union with the body. When the human mind permits itself to
be guided by authority without proof, to be led forward by enthusiasm;
when it renounces the evidence of its senses; what can it do more
than sink into error? Let those who doubt this, read the metaphysical
romances of LEIBNITZ, DESCARTES, MALEBRANCHE, CUDWORTH, and many others:
let them coolly examine the ingenious, but fanciful systems entitled
_the pre-established harmony of occasional causes; physical pre-motion,
&c._
If man wishes to form to himself clear, perspicuous ideas of his soul,
let him throw himself back on his experience--let him renounce his
prejudices--let him avoid theological conjecture--let him tear the
bandages which he has been taught to think necessary, but with which he
has been blind-folded, only to confound his reason. If it be wished to
draw man to virtue, let the natural philosopher, let the anatomist,
let the physician, unite their experience; let them compare their
observations, in order to show what ought to be thought of a substance,
so disguised, so hidden by absurdities, as not easily to be known. Their
discoveries may perhaps teach moralists the true motive-power that ought
to influence the actions of man--legislators, the true motives that
should actuate him, that should excite him to labour to the welfare of
society--sovereigns, the means of rendering their subjects truly happy;
of giving solidity to the power of the nations committed to their
charge. Physical souls have physical wants, and demand physical
happiness. These are real, are preferable objects, to that variety of
fanciful chimeras, each in its turn giving place to the other, with
which the mind of man has been fed during so many ages. Let us, then,
labour to perfect the morality of man; let us make it agreeable to him;
let us excite in him an ardent thirst for its purity: we shall presently
see his morals become better, himself become happier; his soul become
calm and serene; his will determined to virtue, by the natural, by the
palpable motives held out to him. By the diligence, by the care which
legislators shall bestow on natural philosophy, they will form citizens
of sound understandings; robust and well constituted; who, finding
themselves happy, will be themselves accessary to that useful impulse so
necessary for their soul. When the body is suffering, when nations are
unhappy, the soul cannot be in a proper state. _Mens sana in corpore
sano_, a sound mind in a sound body, will be always able to make a good
citizen.
The more man reflects, the more he will be convinced that the soul, very
far from being distinguished from the body, is only the body itself,
considered relatively to some of its functions, or to some of the modes
of existing or acting, of which it is susceptible whilst it enjoys life.
Thus, the soul is man, considered relatively to the faculty he has of
feeling, of thinking, of acting in a mode resulting from his peculiar
nature; that is to say, from his properties, from his particular
organization: from the modifications, whether durable or transitory,
which the beings who act upon him cause his machine to undergo.
Those who have distinguished the soul from the body, appear only to
have distinguished their brain from themselves. Indeed, the brain is the
common center, where all the nerves, distributed through every part of
the body, meet and blend themselves: it is by the aid of this interior
organ that all those operations are performed which are attributed to
the soul: it is the impulse, or the motion, communicated to the nerve,
which modifies the brain: in consequence, it re-acts, or gives play to
the bodily organs; or rather it acts upon itself, and becomes capable
of producing within itself a great variety of motion, which has been
designated _intellectual faculties_.
From this it may be seen that some philosophers have been desirous to
make a spiritual substance of the brain. It is evidently nothing but
ignorance that has given birth to and accredited this system, which
embraces so little, either of the natural or the rational. It is from
not having studied himself, that man has supposed he was compounded with
an agent, essentially different from his body: in examining this body,
he will find that it is quite useless to recur to hypothesis for the
explanation of the various phenomena it presents to his contemplation;
that hypothesis can do nothing more than lead him out of the right road
to the information after which he seeks. What obscures this question,
arises from this, that man cannot see himself: indeed, for this purpose,
that would be requisite which is impossible; namely, that he could he
at one and the same moment both within and without himself: he may be
compared to an Eolian harp, that issues sounds of itself, and should
demand what it is that causes it to give them forth? It does not
perceive that the sensitive quality of its chords causes the air to
brace them; that being so braced, it is rendered sonorous by every gust
of wind with which it happens to come in contact.
When a theologian, obstinately bent on admitting into man two substances
essentially different, is asked why he multiplies beings without
necessity? he will reply, because _"thought cannot be a property of
matter."_ If, then, it be enquired of him, _cannot God give to matter
the faculty of thought?_ he will answer, _"no! seeing that God cannot
do impossible things!"_ According to his principles, it is as impossible
that spirit or thought can produce matter, as it is impossible that
matter can produce spirit or thought: it might, therefore, be concluded
against him, that the world was not made by a spirit, any more than a
spirit was made by the world. But in this case, does not the theologian,
according to his own assertion, acknowledge himself to be the true
atheist? Does he not, in fact, circumscribe the attributes of the
Deity, and deny his power, to suit his own purpose? Yet these men demand
implicit belief in doctrines, which they are obliged to maintain by the
most contradictory assertions.
The more experience we collect, the more we shall be convinced that the
word _spirit_, in its present received usage, conveys no one sense
that is tangible, either to ourselves or to those that invented it;
consequently cannot be of the least use, either in physics or morals.
What modern metaphysicians believe and understand by the word, is
nothing more than an _occult_ power, imagined to explain _occult_
qualities and actions, but which, in fact, explains nothing. Savage
nations admit of spirits, to account to themselves for those effects,
which to them appear marvellous, as long as their ignorance knows
not the cause to which they ought to be attributed. In attributing to
spirits the phenomena of Nature, as well as those of the human body, do
we, in fact, do any thing more than reason like savages? Man has filled
Nature with spirits, because he has almost always been ignorant of
the true causes of those effects by which he was astonished. Not being
acquainted with the powers of Nature, he has supposed her to be animated
by a _great spirit_: not understanding the energy of the human frame,
he has in like manner conjectured it to be animated by a _minor spirit_:
from this it would appear, that whenever he wished to indicate the
unknown cause of a phenomena, he knew not how to explain in a natural
manner, he had recourse to the word _spirit_. In short, _spirit_ was a
term by which he solved all his doubts, and cleared up his ignorance to
himself. It was according to these principles that when the AMERICANS
first beheld the terrible effects of gunpowder, they ascribed the cause
to wrathful spirits, to their enraged divinities: it was by adopting
these principles, that our ancestors believed in a plurality of gods, in
ghosts, in genii, &c. Pursuing the same track, we ought to attribute
to spirits gravitation, electricity, magnetism, &c. &c. It is somewhat
singular, that priests have in all ages so strenuously upheld those
systems which time has exploded; that they have appeared to be either
the most crafty or the most ignorant of men. Where are now the priests
of Apollo, of Juno, of the Sun, and a thousand others? Yet these are the
men, who in all times have persecuted those who have been the first
to give natural explanations of the phenomena of Nature, as witness
ANAXAGORAS, ARISTOTLE, GALLILEO, DESCARTES, &c. &c.