Finally, in the parallel and assimilation between body and soul, to reserve, with the power of thinking, preëminence to the mind because it is a simple and unique force, while the smallest body is a compound of these same simple forces, amounts to saying that a body could think if it were only decomposed and reduced to its simple elements, and to the unity of force. There is such a difference in act, mode, and aim between what is called the force of resistance, attributed to bodies, and designated, we know not why, by the name of active force, and between the faculty of thinking, that no common appellation, no matter how specious it may be, can ever confound or identify them.
We would not be able to comprehend how the soul, considered as a monad or simple element, should have by this fact the faculty of thinking, and yet two or several monads united and forming a body would not possess the same power. Why, in the latter case, should there be absence of thought instead of a union of two or several thoughts, concordant or contrary? How could we say that, because there is an assemblage of forces, there is an impossibility of thinking, and that the part is capable of doing what the whole cannot do? It is useless to choose and isolate the most delicate and ethereal element in a body; we can never imagine the soul to be really one of its parts, no matter how pure that part may be.
The notion of force, for the soul as well as for the body, must be put among those appellations which explain nothing, and only serve to cloak our ignorance.
Science itself begins to renounce this name of force; and the first theory which we have exposed, that which recognizes only motions in matter combats the theory of forces with energy, and considers it as vain and illusory. It is not here, consequently, that we shall find the philosophical explanation of phenomena, nor the reconciliation between the two orders of spirit and matter.
The theory of motions rests on a more solid foundation; at least, it employs a word having a precise signification and resting on a real fact, motion. It is only by induction and reasoning that it ascends to ether and the atom. It has never seen either of them, although it affirms their existence. It makes a synthesis. It admits in the universe something else besides atoms and movement, since the thought which it expresses implies the idea of being, of substance and cause. It has seen motions, vibrations, radiations, currents, and it has concluded from them that there is something which moves, vibrates, radiates; thus it has mounted up to a second cause, to ether, to the atom. But this is not sufficient. If it has seen that there is no motion without an object which moves, logic compels it to acknowledge that there is no change without an agent, no movement without a mover; and if the atom exists and moves, this atom also has an origin, a reason of being, a principle from which it has received the gift of existence and the power of motion.
If an admirable plan embraces the universe, if a sovereign unity directs and governs all phenomena, there must be a cause for them. The plan appears more manifestly, and the cause shows itself more necessarily in the very simplicity of the work, in its grandeur in this double quality raised to a higher power.
If the world be, as it is acknowledged to be, the work of thought; if a general and supreme reason presides over the universe, this thought lives in a spirit, this reason belongs to a soul.[207] Can there be a thought without a thinking subject and being? A thought implies a thinking being; reason means a living intelligence; or it must mean nothing, and then there is no sense in words, no reality in things.
It is useless to object; the human mind will have it so; it is the law of its conscience, it is the result of its profound conviction that it does not derive all from itself, and that nothing can produce nothing.
Now, can we say of the atom and motion combined, behold the universe? Yes, the mechanical universe, perhaps. But the mechanical universe is not self-sufficing; for we can always say, Who has made the atom? who has created motion? And then we have the right to propose another affirmation and to conclude: the notion of causality is the entire world—the physical, intellectual, and moral world.
This has been true from the very beginning of thought and the commencement of human reason. This has been true from the days of ancient philosophy, proclaiming through its greatest logician that whatever is in the effect ought to be found in the cause, that the cause must really exist before the effect, and that the perfection of all effects supposes the existence of a primary cause which contains them—a living, spiritual, and perfect cause, which cannot be produced by what is imperfect, inferior, material, or deprived of life, but which is and must be necessarily its generating principle and producing power.