"Creavit Deus cete grandia, et omnem animam viventem, atque motabilem quam produxerant aquæ. (And God created great dragons (tannitiim), and every living soul that moveth, which the waters brought forth.) It is difficult to explain the creation of these watery dragons, but such is the text, and it is for us to submit to it.
"Producat terra animam viventem in genere suo, jumenta et reptilia." (Let the earth produce the living soul after its kind, cattle and creeping things.)
"Et in quibus est anima vivens, ad vescendum." (And to everything wherein there is a living soul [every green herb], for meat.)
"Et inspiravit in faciem ejus spiraculum vitæ, et factus est homo in animam viventem." (And breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.)
"Sanguinem enim animarum vestrarum requiram de manu cunctarum betiarum, et de manu hominis," etc. (I shall require back your souls from the hands of man and beast.)
Souls here evidently signify lives. The sacred text certainly did not mean that beasts had swallowed the souls of men, but their blood, which is their life; and as to the hands given by this text to beasts, it signifies their claws.
In short, more than two hundred passages may be quoted in which the soul is used for the life, both of beasts and man; but not one which explains either life or soul.
If life be the faculty of sensation, whence this faculty? In reply to this question, all the learned quote systems, and these systems are destructive of one another. But why the anxiety to ascertain the source of sensation? It is as difficult to conceive the power which binds all things to a common centre as to conceive the cause of animal sensation. The direction of the needle towards the pole, the paths of comets, and a thousand other phenomena are equally incomprehensible.
Properties of matter exist, the principle of which will never be known to us; and that of sensation, without which there cannot be life, is among the number.
Is it possible to live without experiencing sensation? No. An infant which dies in a lethargy that has lasted from its birth has existed, but not lived.