It would be a fine thing to see one's soul. "Know thyself" is an excellent precept; but it belongs only to God to put it in practice. Who but He can know His own essence?
We call "soul" that which animates. Owing to our limited intelligence we know scarcely anything more of the matter. Three-fourths of mankind go no further, and give themselves no concern about the thinking being; the other fourth seek it; no one has found it, or ever will find it.
Poor pedant! thou seest a plant which vegetates, and thou sayest, "vegetation," or perhaps "vegetative soul." Thou remarkest that bodies have and communicate motion, and thou sayest, "force"; thou seest thy dog learn his craft under thee, and thou exclaimest, "instinct," "sensitive soul"! Thou hast combined ideas, and thou exclaimest, "spirit!"
But pray, what dost thou understand by these words? This flower vegetates; but is there any real being called vegetation? This body pushes along another, but does it possess within itself a distinct being called force? Thy dog brings thee a partridge, but is there any being called instinct? Wouldst thou not laugh, if a reasoner—though he had been preceptor to Alexander—were to say to thee: All animals live; therefore there is in them a being, a substantial form, which is life?
If a tulip could speak and were to tell thee: I and my vegetation are two beings evidently joined together; wouldst thou not laugh at the tulip?
Let us at first see what thou knowest, of what thou art certain; that thou walkest with thy feet; that thou digestest with thy stomach; that thou feelest with thy whole body; and that thou thinkest with thy head. Let us see if thy reason alone can have given thee light enough by which to conclude, without supernatural aid, that thou hast a soul.
The first philosophers, whether Chaldæans or Egyptians, said: There must be something within us which produces our thoughts; that something must be very subtile; it is a breath; it is fire; it is ether; it is a quintessence; it is a slender likeness; it is an antelechia; it is a number; it is a harmony. Lastly, according to the divine Plato, it is a compound of the same and the other. "It is atoms which think in us," said Epicurus, after Democrites. But, my friend, how does an atom think? Acknowledge that thou knowest nothing of the matter.
The opinion which one ought to adopt is, doubtless, that the soul is an immaterial being; but certainly we cannot conceive what an immaterial being is. No, answer the learned; but we know that its nature is to think. And whence do you know this? We know, because it does think. Oh, ye learned! I am much afraid that you are as ignorant as Epicurus! The nature of a stone is to fall, because it does fall; but I ask you, what makes it fall?
We know, continue they, that a stone has no soul. Granted; I believe it as well as you. We know that an affirmative and a negative are not divisible, are not parts of matter. I am of your opinion. But matter, otherwise unknown to us, possesses qualities which are not material, which are not divisible; it has gravitation towards a centre, which God has given it; and this gravitation has no parts; it is not divisible. The moving force of bodies is not a being composed of parts. In like manner the vegetation of organized bodies, their life, their instinct, are not beings apart, divisible beings; you can no more cut in two the vegetation of a rose, the life of a horse, the instinct of a dog, than you can cut in two a sensation, an affirmation, a negation. Therefore your fine argument, drawn from the indivisibility of thought, proves nothing at all.
What, then, do you call your soul? What idea have you of it? You cannot of yourselves, without revelation, admit the existence within you of anything but a power unknown to you of feeling and thinking.