A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 09

Such was the opinion of Gassendi, as we find in his objections to Descartes. "It is true," says Gassendi, "that you know that you think; but you, who think, know not of what kind of substance you are. Thus, though the operation of thought is known to you, the principle of your essence is hidden from you, and you do not know what is the nature of that substance, one of the operations of which is to think. You resemble a blind man who, feeling the heat of the sun, and being informed that it is caused by the sun, should believe himself to have a clear and distinct idea of that luminary, because, if he were asked what the sun is, he could answer, that it is a thing which warms…"

The same Gassendi, in his "Philosophy of Epicurus," repeats several times that there is no mathematical evidence of the pure spirituality of the soul.

Descartes, in one of his letters to Elizabeth, princess palatine, says to her: "I confess, that by natural reason alone, we can form many conjectures about the soul, and conceive flattering hopes; but we can have no assurance." And here Descartes combats in his letters what he advances in his books – a too ordinary contradiction.

We have seen, too, that all the fathers in the first ages of the Church, while they believed the soul immortal, believed it to be material. They thought it as easy for God to preserve as to create. They said, God made it thinking, He will preserve it thinking.

Malebranche has clearly proved, that by ourselves we have no idea, and that objects are incapable of giving us any; whence he concludes that we see all things in God. This, in substance, is the same as making God the author of all our ideas; for wherewith should we see ourselves in Him, if we had not instruments for seeing? and these instruments are held and directed by him alone. This system is a labyrinth, of which one path would lead you to Spinozism, another to Stoicism, another to chaos.

When men have disputed well and long on matter and spirit, they always end in understanding neither one another nor themselves. No philosopher has ever been able to lift by his own strength the veil which nature has spread over the first principle of things. They dispute, while nature is acting.

SECTION IIIOn the Souls of Beasts, and on Some Empty Ideas

Before the strange system which supposes animals to be pure machines without any sensation, men had never imagined an immaterial soul in beasts; and no one had carried temerity so far as to say that an oyster has a spiritual soul. All the world peaceably agreed that beasts had received from God feeling, memory, ideas, but not a pure spirit. No one had abused the gift of reason so far as to say that nature has given to beasts the organs of feeling, in order that they may have no feeling. No one had said that they cry out when wounded, and fly when pursued, without experiencing either pain or fear.

God's omnipotence was not then denied: it was in His power to communicate to the organized matter of animals pleasure, pain, remembrance, the combination of some ideas; it was in His power to give to several of them, as the ape, the elephant, the hound, the talent of perfecting themselves in the arts which are taught them: not only was it in His power to endow almost all carnivorous animals with the talent of making war better in their experienced old age than in their confiding youth; not only was it in His power to do this, but He had done it, as the whole world could witness.

Pereira and Descartes maintained against the whole world that it was mistaken; that God had played the conjurer; that He had given to animals all the instruments of life and sensation, that they might have neither sensation or life properly so called. But some pretended philosophers, I know not whom, in order to answer Descartes' chimera, threw themselves into the opposite chimera very liberally, giving "pure spirit" to toads and insects. "In vitium ducit culpæ fuga."

Betwixt these two follies, the one depriving of feeling the organs of feeling, the other lodging pure spirit in a bug – a mean was imagined, viz., instinct. And what is "instinct"? Oh! it is a substantial form; it is a plastic form; it is a – I know not what – it is instinct. I will be of your opinion, so long as you apply to most things "I know not what"; so long as your philosophy shall begin and end with "I know not"; but when you "affirm," I shall say to you with Prior, in his poem on the vanity of the world:

Then vainly the philosopher aversThat reason guides our deeds, and instinct theirs.How can we justly different causes frame,When the effects entirely are the same?Instinct and reason how can we divide?'Tis the fool's ignorance, and the pedant's pride.

The author of the article on "Soul," in the "Encyclopædia," explains himself thus: "I represent to myself the soul of beasts as a substance immaterial and intelligent." But of what kind? It seems to me, that it must be an active principle having sensations, and only sensations… If we reflect on the nature of the souls of beasts, it does not of itself give us any grounds for believing that their spirituality will save them from annihilation.

I do not understand how you represent to yourself an immaterial substance. To represent a thing to yourself is to make to yourself an image of it; and hitherto no one has been able to paint the mind. I am willing to suppose that by the word "represent," the author means I "conceive"; for my part, I own that I do not conceive it. Still less do I conceive how a spiritual soul is annihilated, because I have no conception of creation or of nothing; because I never attended God's council; because I know nothing at all of the principle of things.

If I seek to prove that the soul is a real being, I am stopped, and told that it is a faculty. If I affirm that it is a faculty, and that I have that of thinking, I am answered, that I mistake; that God, the eternal master of all nature, does everything in me, directing all my actions, and all my thoughts; that if I produced my thoughts, I should know those which I should have the next minute; that I never know this; that I am but an automaton with sensations and ideas, necessarily dependent, and in the hands of the Supreme Being, infinitely more subject to Him than clay is to the potter.

I acknowledge then my ignorance; I acknowledge that four thousand volumes of metaphysics will not teach us what our soul is.

An orthodox philosopher said to a heterodox philosopher, "How can you have brought yourself to imagine that the soul is of its nature mortal, and that it is eternal only by the pure will of God?" "By my experience," says the other. "How! have you been dead then?" "Yes, very often: in my youth I had a fit of epilepsy; and I assure you, that I was perfectly dead for several hours: I had no sensation, nor even any recollection from the moment that I was seized. The same thing happens to me now almost every night. I never feel precisely the moment when I fall asleep, and my sleep is absolutely without dreams. I cannot imagine, but by conjectures, how long I have slept. I am dead regularly six hours in twenty-four, which is one-fourth of my life."

The orthodox then maintained against him that he always thought while he was asleep, without his knowing of it. The heterodox replied: "I believe, by revelation, that I shall think forever in the next world; but I assure you, that I seldom think in this."

The orthodox was not mistaken in affirming the immortality of the soul, since faith demonstrates that truth; but he might be mistaken in affirming that a sleeping man constantly thinks.

Locke frankly owned that he did not always think while he was asleep. Another philosopher has said: "Thought is peculiar to man, but it is not his essence."

Let us leave every man at liberty to seek into himself and to lose himself in his ideas. However, it is well to know that in 1750, a philosopher underwent a very severe persecution, for having acknowledged, with Locke, that his understanding was not exercised every moment of the day and of the night, no more than his arms or his legs. Not only was he persecuted by the ignorance of the court, but the malicious ignorance of some pretended men of letters assailed the object of persecution. That which in England had produced only some philosophical disputes, produced in France the most disgraceful atrocities: a Frenchman was made the victim of Locke.

There have always been among the refuse of our literature, some of those wretches who have sold their pens and caballed against their very benefactors. This remark is to be sure foreign to the article on "Soul": but ought one to lose a single opportunity of striking terror into those who render themselves unworthy of the name of literary men, who prostitute the little wit and conscience they have to a vile interest, to a chimerical policy, who betray their friends to flatter fools, who prepare in secret the hemlock-draught with which powerful and wicked ignorance would destroy useful citizens.

Did it ever occur in true Rome, that a Lucretius was denounced to the consuls for having put the system of Epicurus into verse; a Cicero, for having repeatedly written, that there is no pain after death; or that a Pliny or a Varro was accused of having peculiar notions of the divinity? The liberty of thinking was unlimited among the Romans. Those of harsh, jealous, and narrow minds, who among us have endeavored to crush this liberty – the parent of our knowledge, the mainspring of the understanding – have made chimerical dangers their pretext; they have forgotten that the Romans, who carried this liberty much further than we do, were nevertheless our conquerors, our lawgivers; and that the disputes of schools have no more to do with government than the tub of Diogenes had with the victories of Alexander.

This lesson is worth quite as much as a lesson on the soul. We shall perhaps have occasion more than once to recur to it.

In fine, while adoring God with all our soul, let us ever confess our profound ignorance concerning that soul – that faculty of feeling and thinking which we owe to His infinite goodness. Let us acknowledge that our weak reasonings can neither take from nor add to revelation and faith. Let us, in short, conclude that we ought to employ this intelligence, whose nature is unknown, in perfecting the sciences which are the object of the "Encyclopædia," as watchmakers make use of springs in their watches, without knowing what spring is.

SECTION IVOn the Soul, and on our Ignorance

Relying on our acquired knowledge, we have ventured to discuss the question: Whether the soul is created before us? Whether it arrives from nothing in our bodies? At what age it came and placed itself between the bladder and the intestines, "cæcum" and "rectum"? Whether it received or brought there any ideas, and what those ideas are? Whether, after animating us for a few moments, its essence is to live after us in eternity, without the intervention of God Himself? Whether, it being a spirit, and God being spirit, they are of like nature? These questions have an appearance of sublimity. What are they but questions of men born blind discussing the nature of light?

What have all the philosophers, ancient and modern, taught us? A child is wiser than they: he does not think about what he cannot conceive.

How unfortunate, you will say, for an insatiable curiosity, for an unquenchable thirst after well-being, that we are thus ignorant of ourselves! Granted: and there are things yet more unfortunate than this; but I will answer you: "Sors tua mortalis, non est mortale quod optas."– "Mortal thy fate, thy wishes those of gods."

Once more let it be repeated, the nature of every principle of things appears to be the secret of the Creator. How does the air convey sound? How are animals formed? How do some of our members constantly obey our will? What hand places ideas in our memory, keeps them there as in a register, and draws them thence sometimes at our command, and sometimes in spite of us? Our own nature, that of the universe, that of the smallest plant – all, to us, involved in utter darkness.

Man is an acting, feeling, and thinking being; this is all we know of the matter: it is not given to us to know either what renders us feeling or thinking, or what makes us act, or what causes us to be. The acting faculty is to us as incomprehensible as the thinking faculty. The difficulty is not so much to conceive how this body of clay has feelings and ideas as to conceive how a being, whatever it be, has ideas and feelings.

Behold on one hand the soul of Archimedes, and on the other that of a simpleton; are they of the same nature? If their essence is to think, then they think always and independently of the body, which cannot act without them. If they think by their own nature, can a soul, which is incapable of performing a single arithmetical operation, be of the same species as that which has measured the heavens? If it is the organs of the body that have made Archimedes think, why does not my idiot think, seeing that he is better constituted than Archimedes, more vigorous, digesting better, performing all his functions better? Because, say you, his brain is not so good; but you suppose this; you have no knowledge of it. No difference has ever been found among sound brains that have been dissected; indeed, it is very likely that the brain-pan of a blockhead would be found in a better state than that of Archimedes, which has been prodigiously fatigued, and may be worn and contracted.

Let us then conclude what we have concluded already, that we are ignorant of all first principles. As for those who are ignorant and self-sufficient, they are far below the ape.

Now then dispute, ye choleric arguers; present memorials against one another; abuse one another; pronounce your sentences – you who know not a syllable of the matter!

SECTION VWarburtons Paradox on the Immortality of the Soul

Warburton, the editor and commentator of Shakespeare, and Bishop of Gloucester, using English liberty, and abusing the custom of vituperating against adversaries, has composed four volumes to prove that the immortality of the soul was never announced in the Pentateuch; and to conclude from this very proof, that the mission of Moses, which he calls "legation," was divine. The following is an abstract of his book, which he himself gives at the commencement of the first volume:

"1. That to inculcate the doctrine of a future state of rewards and punishments is necessary to the well-being of civil society.

"2. That all mankind [wherein he is mistaken], especially the most wise and learned nations of antiquity, have concurred in believing and teaching, that this doctrine was of such use to civil society.

"3. That the doctrine of a future state of rewards and punishments is not to be found in, nor did it make part of, the Mosaic dispensation.

"That therefore the law of Moses is of divine origin;

"Which one or both of the two following syllogisms will evince:

"I. Whatever religion and society have no future state for their support must be supported by an extraordinary Providence.

"The Jewish religion and society had no future state for their support;

"Therefore the Jewish religion and society were supported by an extraordinary Providence.

"And again,

"II. The ancient lawgivers universally believed that such a religion could be supported only by an extraordinary Providence.

"Moses, an ancient lawgiver, versed in all the wisdom of Egypt, purposely instituted such a religion; Therefore Moses believed his religion was supported by an extraordinary Providence."

What is most extraordinary, is this assertion of Warburton, which he has put in large characters at the head of his work. He has often been reproached with his extreme temerity and dishonesty in daring to say that all ancient lawgivers believed that a religion which is not founded on rewards and punishments after death cannot be upheld but by an extraordinary Providence: not one of them ever said so. He does not even undertake to adduce a single instance of this in his enormous book, stuffed with an immense number of quotations, all foreign to the subject. He has buried himself under a heap of Greek and Latin authors, ancient and modern, that no one may reach him through this horrible accumulation of coverings. When at length the critic has rummaged to the bottom, the author is raised to life from among all those dead, to load his adversaries with abuse.

It is true, that near the close of the fourth volume, after ranging through a hundred labyrinths, and fighting all he met with on the way, he does at last come back to his great question from which he has so long wandered. He takes up the Book of Job, which the learned consider as the work of an Arab; and he seeks to prove, that Job did not believe in the immortality of the soul. He then explains, in his own way, all the texts of Scripture that have been brought to combat his opinion.

All that should be said of him is, that if he was in the right, it was not for a bishop to be so in the right. He should have felt that two dangerous consequences might be drawn: but all goes by chance in this world. This man, who became an informer and a persecutor, was not made a bishop through the patronage of a minister of state, until immediately after he wrote his book.

At Salamanca, at Coimbra, or at Rome, he would have been obliged to retract and to ask pardon. In England he became a peer of the realm, with an income of a hundred thousand livres. Here was something to soften his manners.

SECTION VIOn the Need of Revelation

The greatest benefit for which we are indebted to the New Testament is its having revealed to us the immortality of the soul. It is therefore quite in vain that this Warburton has sought to cloud this important truth, by continually representing, in his "Legation of Moses," that "the ancient Jews had no knowledge of this necessary dogma," and that "the Sadducees did not admit it in the time of our Lord Jesus."

He interprets in his own way, the very words which Jesus Christ is made to utter: "Have ye not read that which is spoken unto you by God saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob: God is not the God of the dead, but of the living." He gives to the parable of the rich bad man a sense contrary to that of all the churches. Sherlock, bishop of London, and twenty other learned men, have refuted him. Even the English philosophers have reminded him how scandalous it is in an English bishop to manifest an opinion so contrary to the Church of England; and after all, this man has thought proper to call others impious: like Harlequin, in the farce of "The Housebreaker" (Le Dévaliseur des Maisons) who, after throwing the furniture out at the window, seeing a man carrying some articles away, cries with all his might – "Stop, thief!"

The revelation of the immortality of the soul, and of pains and rewards after death, is the more to be blessed, as the vain philosophy of men always doubted of it. The great Cæsar had no faith in it. He explained himself clearly to the whole senate, when, to prevent Catiline from being put to death, he represented to them that death left man without feeling – that all died with him: and no one refuted this opinion.

The Roman Empire was divided between two great principal sects: that of Epicurus, who affirmed that the divinity was useless to the world, and the soul perished with the body; and that of the Stoics, who regarded the soul as a portion of the divinity, which after death was reunited to its original – to the great All from which it had emanated. So that, whether the soul was believed to be mortal, or to be immortal, all sects united in contemning the idea of rewards and punishments after death.

There are still remaining numerous monuments of this belief of the Romans. It was from the force of this opinion profoundly engraved on all hearts, that so many Roman heroes and so many private citizens put themselves to death without the smallest scruple; they did not wait for a tyrant to deliver them into the hands of the executioner.

Even the most virtuous men, and the most thoroughly persuaded of the existence of a God, did not then hope any reward, nor did they fear any punishment. It has been seen in the article on "Apocrypha," that Clement himself, who was afterwards pope and saint, began with doubting what the first Christians said of another life, and that he consulted St. Peter at Cæsarea. We are very far from believing that St. Clement wrote the history which is attributed to him; but it shows what need mankind had of a precise revelation. All that can surprise us is that a tenet so repressing and so salutary should have left men a prey to so many horrible crimes, who have so short a time to live, and find themselves pressed between the eternities.

SECTION VIISouls 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.