A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 09

I shall not feign to rank Descartes and Malebranche with these teachers of error. The former assures us that the soul of man is a substance, whose essence is to think, which is always thinking, and which, in the mother's womb, is occupied with fine metaphysical ideas and general axioms, which it afterwards forgets.

As for Father Malebranche, he is quite persuaded that we see all in God – and he has found partisans: for the most extravagant fables are those which are the best received by the weak imaginations of men. Various philosophers then had written the romance of the soul: at length, a wise man modestly wrote its history. Of this history I am about to give an abridgment, according to the conception I have formed of it. I very well know that all the world will not agree with Locke's ideas; it is not unlikely, that against Descartes and Malebranche, Locke was right, but that against the Sorbonne he was wrong: I speak according to the lights of philosophy, not according to the relations of the faith.

It is not for me to think otherwise than humanly; theologians decide divinely, which is quite another thing: reason and faith are of contrary natures. In a word, here follows a short abstract of Locke, which I would censure, if I were a theologian, but which I adopt for a moment, simply as a hypothesis – a conjecture of philosophy. Humanly speaking, the question is: What is the soul?

1. The word "soul" is one of those which everyone pronounces without understanding it; we understand only those things of which we have an idea; we have no idea of soul – spirit; therefore we do not understand it.

2. We have then been pleased to give the name of soul to the faculty of feeling and thinking, as we have given that of life to the faculty of living, and that of will to the faculty of willing.

Reasoners have come and said: Man is composed of matter and spirit: matter is extended and divisible; spirit is neither extended nor divisible; therefore, say they, it is of another nature. This is a joining together of beings which are not made for each other, and which God unites in spite of their nature. We see little of the body, we see nothing of the soul; it has no parts, therefore it is eternal; it has ideas pure and spiritual, therefore it does not receive them from matter; nor does it receive them from itself, therefore God gives them to it, and it brings with it at its birth the ideas of God, infinity, and all general ideas.

Still humanly speaking, I answer these gentlemen that they are very knowing. They tell us, first, that there is a soul, and then what that soul must be. They pronounce the word "matter," and then plainly decide what it is. And I say to them: You have no knowledge either of spirit or of matter. By spirit you can imagine only the faculty of thinking; by matter you can understand only a certain assemblage of qualities, colors, extents, and solidities, which it has pleased you to call matter; and you have assigned limits to matter and to the soul, even before you are sure of the existence of either the one or the other.

As for matter, you gravely teach that it has only extent and solidity; and I tell you modestly, that it is capable of a thousand properties about which neither you nor I know anything. You say that the soul is indivisible, eternal; and here you assume that which is in question. You are much like the regent of a college, who, having never in his life seen a clock, should all at once have an English repeater put into his hands. This man, a good peripatetic, is struck by the exactness with which the hands mark the time, and still more astonished that a button, pressed by the finger, should sound precisely the hour marked by the hand. My philosopher will not fail to prove that there is in this machine a soul which governs it and directs its springs. He learnedly demonstrates his opinion by the simile of the angels who keep the celestial spheres in motion; and in the class he forms fine theses, maintained on the souls of watches. One of his scholars opens the watch, and nothing is found but springs; yet the system of the soul of watches is still maintained, and is considered as demonstrated. I am that scholar, opening the watch called man; but instead of boldly defining what we do not understand, I endeavor to examine by degrees what we wish to know.

Let us take an infant at the moment of its birth, and follow, step by step, the progress of its understanding. You do me the honor of informing me that God took the trouble of creating a soul, to go and take up its abode in this body when about six weeks old; that this soul, on its arrival, is provided with metaphysical ideas – having consequently a very clear knowledge of spirit, of abstract ideas, of infinity – being, in short, a very knowing person. But unfortunately it quits the uterus in the uttermost ignorance: for eighteen months it knows nothing but its nurse's teat; and when at the age of twenty years an attempt is made to bring back to this soul's recollection all the scientific ideas which it had when it entered its body, it is often too dull of apprehension to conceive any one of them. There are whole nations which have never had so much as one of these ideas. What, in truth, were the souls of Descartes and Malebranche thinking of, when they imagined such reveries? Let us then follow the idea of the child, without stopping at the imaginings of the philosophers.

The day that his mother was brought to bed of him and his soul, there were born in the house a dog, a cat, and a canary bird. At the end of eighteen months I make the dog an excellent hunter; in a year the canary bird whistles an air; in six weeks the cat is master of its profession; and the child, at the end of four years, does nothing. I, a gross person, witnessing this prodigious difference, and never having seen a child, think at first that the cat, the dog, and the canary are very intelligent creatures, and that the infant is an automaton. However, by little and little, I perceive that this child has ideas and memory, that he has the same passions as these animals; and then I acknowledge that he is, like them, a rational creature. He communicates to me different ideas by some words which he has learned, in like manner as my dog, by diversified cries, makes known to me exactly his different wants. I perceive at the age of six or seven years the child combines in his little brain almost as many ideas as my hound in his; and at length, as he grows older, he acquires an infinite variety of knowledge. Then what am I to think of him? Shall I believe that he is of a nature altogether different? Undoubtedly not; for you see on one hand an idiot, and on the other a Newton; yet you assert that they are of one and the same nature – that there is no difference but that of greater and less. The better to assure myself of the verisimilitude of my probable opinion, I examine the dog and the child both waking and sleeping – I have them each bled immediately; then their ideas seem to escape with their blood. In this state I call them – they do not answer; and if I draw from them a few more ounces, my two machines, which before had ideas in great plenty and passions of every kind, have no longer any feeling. I next examine my two animals while they sleep; I perceive that the dog, after eating too much, has dreams; he hunts and cries after the game; my youngster, in the same state, talks to his mistress and makes love in his dreams. If both have eaten moderately, I observe that neither of them dream; in short, I see that the faculties of feeling, perceiving, and expressing their ideas unfold themselves gradually, and also become weaker by degrees. I discover many more affinities between them than between any man of strong mind and one absolutely imbecile. What opinion then shall I entertain of their nature? That which every people at first imagined, before Egyptian policy asserted the spirituality, the immortality, of the soul. I shall even suspect that Archimedes and a mole are but different varieties of the same species – as an oak and a grain of mustard are formed by the same principles, though the one is a large tree and the other the seed of a small plant. I shall believe that God has given portions of intelligence to portions of matter organized for thinking; I shall believe that matter has sensations in proportion to the fineness of its senses, that it is they which proportion them to the measure of our ideas; I shall believe that the oyster in its shell has fewer sensations and senses, because its soul being attached to its shell, five senses would not at all be useful to it. There are many animals with only two senses; we have five – which are very few. It is to be believed that in other worlds there are other animals enjoying twenty or thirty senses, and that other species, yet more perfect, have senses to infinity.

Such, it appears to me, is the most natural way of reasoning on the matter – that is, of guessing and inspecting with certainty. A long time elapsed before men were ingenious enough to imagine an unknown being, which is ourselves, which does all in us, which is not altogether ourselves, and which lives after us. Nor was so bold an idea adopted all at once. At first this word "soul" signifies life, and was common to us and the other animals; then our pride made us a soul apart, and caused us to imagine a substantial form for other creatures. This human pride asks: What then is that power of perceiving and feeling, which in man is called soul, and in the brute instinct? I will satisfy this demand when the natural philosophers shall have informed me what is sound, light, space, body, time. I will say, in the spirit of the wise Locke: Philosophy consists in stopping when the torch of physical science fails us. I observe the effects of nature; but I freely own that of first principles I have no more conception than you have. All I do know is that I ought not to attribute to several causes – especially to unknown causes – that which I can attribute to a known cause; now I can attribute to my body the faculty of thinking and feeling; therefore I ought not to seek this faculty of thinking and feeling in another substance, called soul or spirit, of which I cannot have the smallest idea. You exclaim against this proposition. Do you then think it irreligious to dare to say that the body can think? But what would you say, Locke would answer, if you yourselves were found guilty of irreligion in thus daring to set bounds to the power of God? What man upon earth can affirm, without absurd impiety, that it is impossible for God to give to matter sensation and thought? Weak and presumptuous that you are! you boldly advance that matter does not think, because you do not conceive how matter of any kind should think.

Ye great philosophers, who decide on the power of God, and say that God can of a stone make an angel – do you not see that, according to yourselves, God would in that case only give to a stone the power of thinking? for if the matter of the stone did not remain, there would no longer be a stone; there would be a stone annihilated and an angel created. Whichever way you turn you are forced to acknowledge two things – your ignorance and the boundless power of the Creator; your ignorance, to which thinking matter is repugnant; and the Creator's power, to which certes it is not impossible.

You, who know that matter does not perish, will dispute whether God has the power to preserve in that matter the noblest quality with which He has endowed it. Extent subsists perfectly without body, through Him, since there are philosophers who believe in a void; accidents subsist very well without substance with Christians who believe in transubstantiation. God, you say, cannot do that which implies contradiction. To be sure of this, it is necessary to know more of the matter than you do know; it is all in vain; you will never know more than this – that you are a body, and that you think. Many persons who have learned at school to doubt of nothing, who take their syllogisms for oracles and their superstitions for religion, consider Locke as impious and dangerous. These superstitious people are in society what cowards are in an army; they are possessed by and communicate panic terror. We must have the compassion to dissipate their fears; they must be made sensible that the opinions of philosophers will never do harm to religion. We know for certain that light comes from the sun, and that the planets revolve round that luminary; yet we do not read with any the less edification in the Bible that light was made before the sun, and that the sun stood still over the village of Gibeon. It is demonstrated that the rainbow is necessarily formed by the rain; yet we do not the least reverence the sacred text which says that God set His bow in the clouds, after the Deluge, as a sign that there should never be another inundation.

What though the mystery of the Trinity and that of the eucharist are contradictory to known demonstrations? They are not the less venerated by Catholic philosophers, who know that the things of reason and those of faith are different in their nature. The notion of the antipodes was condemned by the popes and the councils; yet the popes discovered the antipodes and carried thither that very Christian religion, the destruction of which had been thought to be sure, in case there could be found a man who, as it was then expressed, should have, as relative to our own position, his head downwards and his feet upwards, and who, as the very unphilosophical St. Augustine says, should have fallen from heaven.

And now, let me once repeat that, while I write with freedom, I warrant no opinion – I am responsible for nothing. Perhaps there are, among these dreams, some reasonings, and even some reveries, to which I should give the preference; but there is not one that I would not unhesitatingly sacrifice to religion and to my country.

SECTION IX

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."