N. Quépat, “La philosophie matérialiste au XVIIIe siècle. Essai sur La Mettrie, sa vie, et ses œuvres.” Paris, 1873.
NOTES ON MAN A MACHINE.
[1.] “Matter may well be endowed with the faculty of thought.” Although La Mettrie attempts to “avoid this reef,” by refraining from the use of these words, yet he asserts throughout his work that sensations, consciousness, and the soul itself are modifications of matter and motion.
The possibility of matter being endowed with the faculty of thought, is denied by Elie Luzac, the publisher of “L’homme machine,” in his work “L’homme plus que machine.” In this work he tries to disprove the conclusions of “L’homme machine.” He says: “We have therefore proved by the idea of the inert state of matter, by that of motion, by that of relations, by that of activity, by that of extension, that matter can not be possessed of the faculty of thinking”.... “To be brief, I say, that if, by a material substance, we understand that matter which falls under the cognizance of our senses, and which is endowed with the qualities we have mentioned, the soul can not be material: so that it must be immaterial, and, for the same reason, God could not have given the faculty of thinking to matter, since He can not perform contradictions.”[2]
[2.] “How can we define a being whose nature is absolutely unknown to us?” La Mettrie uses this as an argument against the belief in a soul, and yet he later admits that the “nature of motion is as unknown to us as the nature of matter.” It is difficult then to see why there is more reason to doubt the existence of spirit, than to doubt the existence of matter. Locke makes this point very well. “It is for want of reflection that we are apt to think that our senses show us nothing but material things. Every act of sensation, when duly considered, gives us an equal view of both parts of nature, the corporeal and spiritual.”[3]... “If this notion of immaterial spirit may have, perhaps, some difficulties in it not easy to be explained, we have therefore no more reason to deny or doubt the existence of such spirits, than we have to deny or doubt the existence of body because the notion of body is cumbered with some difficulties, very hard and perhaps impossible to be explained or understood by us.”[4]
[3.] “Author of the ‘Spectacle de la nature.’” Noel Antoine Pluche (1688–1761) was a Jansenist author. He was Director of the College of Laon, but was deprived of his position on account of his refusal to adhere to the bull “Unigenitus.” Rollin then recommended him to Gasville, intendant of Normandy, who entrusted him with his son’s education. He finally settled in Paris. His principal works are: “Spectacle de la nature,” (Paris, 1739); “Mécanique des langues et l’art de les enseigner,” (Paris, 1751); “Harmonie des Psaumes et de l’Evangile,” (Paris, 1764); “Concorde de la géographie des différents ages,” (Paris, 1765).[5]
La Mettrie describes Pluche in the “Essais sur l’esprit et les beaux esprits” thus: “Without wit, without taste, he is Rollin’s pedant. A superficial man, he had need of the work of M. Réaumur, of whom he is only a stale and tiresome imitator in the flat little sayings scattered in his dialogues. It was with the works of Rollin as with the ‘Spectacle de la Nature,’ one made the fortune of the other: Gaçon praised Person, Person praised Gaçon, and the public praised them both.”[6]
This quotation from La Mettrie occurs in Assézat’s edition of La Mettrie’s “L’homme machine,” which was published as the second volume of the series “Singularités physiologiques” (1865). Assézat was a French publisher and writer. He was at one time Secretary of the Anthropological Society, and collaborated with other writers in the publication of “La Revue Nationale,” “La Revue de Paris,” and “La Pensée nouvelle.” His notes to “L’Homme Machine” show great knowledge concerning physiological subjects. He intended to publish a complete edition of Diderot’s works, but overwork on this undermined his health, so that he was unable to complete it.[7]
[4.] Torricelli was a physicist and mathematician who lived from 1608 to 1647. He was a disciple of Galileo, and acted as his amanuensis for three months before Galileo’s death. He was then nominated as grand-ducal mathematician and professor of mathematics in the Florentine Academy. In 1643, he made his most famous discovery. He found that the height to which a liquid will rise in a closed tube, depends on the specific gravity of the liquid, and concludes from this that the column of liquid is sustained by atmospheric pressure. This discovery did away with the obscure idea of a fuga vacui, and laid bare the principle on which mercurial barometers are constructed. For a long time the mercurial thermometer was called the “Torricellian tube,” and the vacuum which the barometer includes is still known as a “Torricellian vacuum.”[8]