Ye great philosophers, who decide on the power of God, and say that God can of a stone make an angel—do you not see that, according to yourselves, God would in that case only give to a stone the power of thinking? for if the matter of the stone did not remain, there would no longer be a stone; there would be a stone annihilated and an angel created. Whichever way you turn you are forced to acknowledge two things—your ignorance and the boundless power of the Creator; your ignorance, to which thinking matter is repugnant; and the Creator's power, to which certes it is not impossible.
You, who know that matter does not perish, will dispute whether God has the power to preserve in that matter the noblest quality with which He has endowed it. Extent subsists perfectly without body, through Him, since there are philosophers who believe in a void; accidents subsist very well without substance with Christians who believe in transubstantiation. God, you say, cannot do that which implies contradiction. To be sure of this, it is necessary to know more of the matter than you do know; it is all in vain; you will never know more than this—that you are a body, and that you think. Many persons who have learned at school to doubt of nothing, who take their syllogisms for oracles and their superstitions for religion, consider Locke as impious and dangerous. These superstitious people are in society what cowards are in an army; they are possessed by and communicate panic terror. We must have the compassion to dissipate their fears; they must be made sensible that the opinions of philosophers will never do harm to religion. We know for certain that light comes from the sun, and that the planets revolve round that luminary; yet we do not read with any the less edification in the Bible that light was made before the sun, and that the sun stood still over the village of Gibeon. It is demonstrated that the rainbow is necessarily formed by the rain; yet we do not the least reverence the sacred text which says that God set His bow in the clouds, after the Deluge, as a sign that there should never be another inundation.
What though the mystery of the Trinity and that of the eucharist are contradictory to known demonstrations? They are not the less venerated by Catholic philosophers, who know that the things of reason and those of faith are different in their nature. The notion of the antipodes was condemned by the popes and the councils; yet the popes discovered the antipodes and carried thither that very Christian religion, the destruction of which had been thought to be sure, in case there could be found a man who, as it was then expressed, should have, as relative to our own position, his head downwards and his feet upwards, and who, as the very unphilosophical St. Augustine says, should have fallen from heaven.
And now, let me once repeat that, while I write with freedom, I warrant no opinion—I am responsible for nothing. Perhaps there are, among these dreams, some reasonings, and even some reveries, to which I should give the preference; but there is not one that I would not unhesitatingly sacrifice to religion and to my country.
SECTION IX.
I shall suppose a dozen of good philosophers in an island where they have never seen anything but vegetables. Such an island, and especially twelve such philosophers, would be very hard to find; however, the fiction is allowable. They admire the life which circulates in the fibres of the plants, appearing to be alternately lost and renewed; and as they know not how a plant springs up, how it derives its nourishment and growth, they call this a vegetative soul. What, they are asked, do you understand by a vegetative soul? They answer: It is a word that serves to express the unknown spring by which all this is operated. But do you not see, a mechanic will ask them, that all this is naturally done by weights, levers, wheels, and pulleys? No, the philosophers will say; there is in this vegetation something other than ordinary motion; there is a secret power which all plants have of drawing to themselves the juices which nourish them; and this power cannot be explained by any system of mechanics; it is a gift which God has made to matter, and the nature of which neither you nor we comprehend.
After disputing thus, our reasoners at length discover animals. Oh, oh! say they, after a long examination, here are beings organized like ourselves. It is indisputable that they have memory, and often more than we have. They have our passions; they have knowledge; they make us understand all their wants; they perpetuate their species like us. Our philosophers dissect some of these beings, and find in them hearts and brains. What! say they, can the author of these machines, who does nothing in vain, have given them all the organs of feeling, in order that they may have no feeling? It were absurd to think so—there is certainly something in thera which, for want of knowing a better term, we likewise call soul—something that experiences sensations, and has a certain number of ideas. But what is this principle? Is it something absolutely different from matter? Is it a pure spirit? Is it a middle being, between matter, of which we know little, and pure spirit, of which we know nothing? Is it a property given by God to organized matter?
They then make experiments upon insects; upon earth worms—they cut them into several parts, and are astonished to find that, after a short time, there come heads to all these divided parts; the same animal is reproduced, and its very destruction becomes the means of its multiplication. Has it several souls, which wait until the head is cut off the original trunk, to animate the reproduced parts? They are like trees, which put forth fresh branches, and are reproduced from slips. Have these trees several souls? It is not likely. Then it is very probable that the soul of these reptiles is of a different kind from that which we call vegetative soul in plants; that it is a faculty of a superior order, which God has vouchsafed to give to certain portions of matter. Here is a fresh proof of His power—a fresh subject of adoration.
A man of violent temper, and a bad reasoner, hears this discourse and says to them: You are wicked wretches, whose bodies should be burned for the good of your souls, for you deny the immortality of the soul of man. Our philosophers then look at one another in perfect astonishment, and one of them mildly answers him: Why burn us so hastily? Whence have you concluded that we have an idea that your cruel soul is mortal? From your believing, returns the other, that God has given to the brutes which are organized like us, the faculty of having feelings and ideas. Now this soul of the beasts perishes with them; therefore you believe that the soul of man perishes also.
The philosopher replies: We are not at all sure that what we call "soul" in animal perishes with them; we know very well that matter does not perish, and we believe that God may have put in animals something which, if God will it, shall forever retain the faculty of having ideas. We are very far from affirming that such is the case, for it is hardly for men to be so confident; but we dare not set bounds to the power of God. We say that it is very probable that the beasts, which are matter, have received from Him a little intelligence. We are every day discovering properties of matter—that is, presents from God—of which we had before no idea. We at first defined matter to be an extended substance; next we found it necessary to add solidity; some time afterwards we were obliged to admit that this matter has a force which is called "vis inertiæ"; and after this, to our great astonishment, we had to acknowledge that matter gravitates.