You must, then, I imagine, be of Malebranche's opinion, that we see all in God?
I am at least certain of this, that if we do not see things in the Great Being, we see them in consequence of His powerful and immediate action.
And what was the nature or process of this action?
I have already told you repeatedly, in the course of our conversation, that I do not know a single syllable about the subject, and that God has not communicated His secret to any one. I am completely ignorant of that which makes my heart beat, and my blood flow through my veins; I am ignorant of the principle of all my movements, and yet you seem to expect how I should explain how I feel and how I think. Such an expectation is unreasonable.
But you at least know whether your faculty of having ideas is joined to extension?
Not in the least; It is true that Tatian, in his discourse to the Greeks, says the soul is evidently composed of a body. Irenæus, in the twenty-sixth chapter of his second book, says, "The Lord has taught that our souls preserve the figure of our body in order to retain the memory of it." Tertullian asserts, in his second book on the soul, that it is a body. Arnobius, Lactantius, Hilary, Gregory of Nyssa, and Ambrose, are precisely of the same opinion. It is pretended that other fathers of the Church assert that the soul is without extension, and that in this respect they adopt the opinion of Plato; this, however, may well be doubted. With respect to myself, I dare not venture to form an opinion; I see nothing but obscurity and incomprehensibility in either system; and, after a whole life's meditation on the subject, I am not advanced a single step beyond where I was on the first day.
The subject, then, was not worth thinking about?
That is true; the man who enjoys knows more of it, or at least knows it better, than he who reflects; he is more happy. But what is it that you would have? It depended not, I repeat, upon myself whether I should admit or reject all those ideas which have crowded into my brain in conflict with each other, and actually converted my medullary magazine into their field of battle. After a hard-fought contest between them, I have obtained nothing but uncertainty from the spoils.
It is a melancholy thing to possess so many ideas, and yet to have no precise knowledge of the nature of ideas?
It is, I admit; but it is much more melancholy, and inexpressibly more foolish, for a man to believe he knows what in fact he does not.