There have always been among the refuse of our literature, some of those wretches who have sold their pens and caballed against their very benefactors. This remark is to be sure foreign to the article on "Soul": but ought one to lose a single opportunity of striking terror into those who render themselves unworthy of the name of literary men, who prostitute the little wit and conscience they have to a vile interest, to a chimerical policy, who betray their friends to flatter fools, who prepare in secret the hemlock-draught with which powerful and wicked ignorance would destroy useful citizens.
Did it ever occur in true Rome, that a Lucretius was denounced to the consuls for having put the system of Epicurus into verse; a Cicero, for having repeatedly written, that there is no pain after death; or that a Pliny or a Varro was accused of having peculiar notions of the divinity? The liberty of thinking was unlimited among the Romans. Those of harsh, jealous, and narrow minds, who among us have endeavored to crush this liberty—the parent of our knowledge, the mainspring of the understanding—have made chimerical dangers their pretext; they have forgotten that the Romans, who carried this liberty much further than we do, were nevertheless our conquerors, our lawgivers; and that the disputes of schools have no more to do with government than the tub of Diogenes had with the victories of Alexander.
This lesson is worth quite as much as a lesson on the soul. We shall perhaps have occasion more than once to recur to it.
In fine, while adoring God with all our soul, let us ever confess our profound ignorance concerning that soul—that faculty of feeling and thinking which we owe to His infinite goodness. Let us acknowledge that our weak reasonings can neither take from nor add to revelation and faith. Let us, in short, conclude that we ought to employ this intelligence, whose nature is unknown, in perfecting the sciences which are the object of the "Encyclopædia," as watchmakers make use of springs in their watches, without knowing what spring is.
SECTION IV.
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.