A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 09

by Voltaire

As for Father Malebranche, he is quite persuaded that we see all in God—and he has found partisans: for the most extravagant fables are those which are the best received by the weak imaginations of men. Various philosophers then had written the romance of the soul: at length, a wise man modestly wrote its history. Of this history I am about to give an abridgment, according to the conception I have formed of it. I very well know that all the world will not agree with Locke's ideas; it is not unlikely, that against Descartes and Malebranche, Locke was right, but that against the Sorbonne he was wrong: I speak according to the lights of philosophy, not according to the relations of the faith.

It is not for me to think otherwise than humanly; theologians decide divinely, which is quite another thing: reason and faith are of contrary natures. In a word, here follows a short abstract of Locke, which I would censure, if I were a theologian, but which I adopt for a moment, simply as a hypothesis—a conjecture of philosophy. Humanly speaking, the question is: What is the soul?

1. The word "soul" is one of those which everyone pronounces without understanding it; we understand only those things of which we have an idea; we have no idea of soul—spirit; therefore we do not understand it.

2. We have then been pleased to give the name of soul to the faculty of feeling and thinking, as we have given that of life to the faculty of living, and that of will to the faculty of willing.

Reasoners have come and said: Man is composed of matter and spirit: matter is extended and divisible; spirit is neither extended nor divisible; therefore, say they, it is of another nature. This is a joining together of beings which are not made for each other, and which God unites in spite of their nature. We see little of the body, we see nothing of the soul; it has no parts, therefore it is eternal; it has ideas pure and spiritual, therefore it does not receive them from matter; nor does it receive them from itself, therefore God gives them to it, and it brings with it at its birth the ideas of God, infinity, and all general ideas.

Still humanly speaking, I answer these gentlemen that they are very knowing. They tell us, first, that there is a soul, and then what that soul must be. They pronounce the word "matter," and then plainly decide what it is. And I say to them: You have no knowledge either of spirit or of matter. By spirit you can imagine only the faculty of thinking; by matter you can understand only a certain assemblage of qualities, colors, extents, and solidities, which it has pleased you to call matter; and you have assigned limits to matter and to the soul, even before you are sure of the existence of either the one or the other.

As for matter, you gravely teach that it has only extent and solidity; and I tell you modestly, that it is capable of a thousand properties about which neither you nor I know anything. You say that the soul is indivisible, eternal; and here you assume that which is in question. You are much like the regent of a college, who, having never in his life seen a clock, should all at once have an English repeater put into his hands. This man, a good peripatetic, is struck by the exactness with which the hands mark the time, and still more astonished that a button, pressed by the finger, should sound precisely the hour marked by the hand. My philosopher will not fail to prove that there is in this machine a soul which governs it and directs its springs. He learnedly demonstrates his opinion by the simile of the angels who keep the celestial spheres in motion; and in the class he forms fine theses, maintained on the souls of watches. One of his scholars opens the watch, and nothing is found but springs; yet the system of the soul of watches is still maintained, and is considered as demonstrated. I am that scholar, opening the watch called man; but instead of boldly defining what we do not understand, I endeavor to examine by degrees what we wish to know.

Let us take an infant at the moment of its birth, and follow, step by step, the progress of its understanding. You do me the honor of informing me that God took the trouble of creating a soul, to go and take up its abode in this body when about six weeks old; that this soul, on its arrival, is provided with metaphysical ideas—having consequently a very clear knowledge of spirit, of abstract ideas, of infinity—being, in short, a very knowing person. But unfortunately it quits the uterus in the uttermost ignorance: for eighteen months it knows nothing but its nurse's teat; and when at the age of twenty years an attempt is made to bring back to this soul's recollection all the scientific ideas which it had when it entered its body, it is often too dull of apprehension to conceive any one of them. There are whole nations which have never had so much as one of these ideas. What, in truth, were the souls of Descartes and Malebranche thinking of, when they imagined such reveries? Let us then follow the idea of the child, without stopping at the imaginings of the philosophers.

The day that his mother was brought to bed of him and his soul, there were born in the house a dog, a cat, and a canary bird. At the end of eighteen months I make the dog an excellent hunter; in a year the canary bird whistles an air; in six weeks the cat is master of its profession; and the child, at the end of four years, does nothing. I, a gross person, witnessing this prodigious difference, and never having seen a child, think at first that the cat, the dog, and the canary are very intelligent creatures, and that the infant is an automaton. However, by little and little, I perceive that this child has ideas and memory, that he has the same passions as these animals; and then I acknowledge that he is, like them, a rational creature. He communicates to me different ideas by some words which he has learned, in like manner as my dog, by diversified cries, makes known to me exactly his different wants. I perceive at the age of six or seven years the child combines in his little brain almost as many ideas as my hound in his; and at length, as he grows older, he acquires an infinite variety of knowledge. Then what am I to think of him? Shall I believe that he is of a nature altogether different? Undoubtedly not; for you see on one hand an idiot, and on the other a Newton; yet you assert that they are of one and the same nature—that there is no difference but that of greater and less. The better to assure myself of the verisimilitude of my probable opinion, I examine the dog and the child both waking and sleeping—I have them each bled immediately; then their ideas seem to escape with their blood. In this state I call them—they do not answer; and if I draw from them a few more ounces, my two machines, which before had ideas in great plenty and passions of every kind, have no longer any feeling. I next examine my two animals while they sleep; I perceive that the dog, after eating too much, has dreams; he hunts and cries after the game; my youngster, in the same state, talks to his mistress and makes love in his dreams. If both have eaten moderately, I observe that neither of them dream; in short, I see that the faculties of feeling, perceiving, and expressing their ideas unfold themselves gradually, and also become weaker by degrees. I discover many more affinities between them than between any man of strong mind and one absolutely imbecile. What opinion then shall I entertain of their nature? That which every people at first imagined, before Egyptian policy asserted the spirituality, the immortality, of the soul. I shall even suspect that Archimedes and a mole are but different varieties of the same species—as an oak and a grain of mustard are formed by the same principles, though the one is a large tree and the other the seed of a small plant. I shall believe that God has given portions of intelligence to portions of matter organized for thinking; I shall believe that matter has sensations in proportion to the fineness of its senses, that it is they which proportion them to the measure of our ideas; I shall believe that the oyster in its shell has fewer sensations and senses, because its soul being attached to its shell, five senses would not at all be useful to it. There are many animals with only two senses; we have five—which are very few. It is to be believed that in other worlds there are other animals enjoying twenty or thirty senses, and that other species, yet more perfect, have senses to infinity.

Such, it appears to me, is the most natural way of reasoning on the matter—that is, of guessing and inspecting with certainty. A long time elapsed before men were ingenious enough to imagine an unknown being, which is ourselves, which does all in us, which is not altogether ourselves, and which lives after us. Nor was so bold an idea adopted all at once. At first this word "soul" signifies life, and was common to us and the other animals; then our pride made us a soul apart, and caused us to imagine a substantial form for other creatures. This human pride asks: What then is that power of perceiving and feeling, which in man is called soul, and in the brute instinct? I will satisfy this demand when the natural philosophers shall have informed me what is sound, light, space, body, time. I will say, in the spirit of the wise Locke: Philosophy consists in stopping when the torch of physical science fails us. I observe the effects of nature; but I freely own that of first principles I have no more conception than you have. All I do know is that I ought not to attribute to several causes—especially to unknown causes—that which I can attribute to a known cause; now I can attribute to my body the faculty of thinking and feeling; therefore I ought not to seek this faculty of thinking and feeling in another substance, called soul or spirit, of which I cannot have the smallest idea. You exclaim against this proposition. Do you then think it irreligious to dare to say that the body can think? But what would you say, Locke would answer, if you yourselves were found guilty of irreligion in thus daring to set bounds to the power of God? What man upon earth can affirm, without absurd impiety, that it is impossible for God to give to matter sensation and thought? Weak and presumptuous that you are! you boldly advance that matter does not think, because you do not conceive how matter of any kind should think.