SECTION IV.. _on the Soul, and on Our Ignorance._

On 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!