Man and the dog are born, unwittingly, of a mother who has brought them into the world in spite of herself. Both of them suck the mother’s breast without knowing what they do, and they do this in virtue of a very delicate and complex mechanism, the nature of which is known to few men.
Both of them have, after a time, ideas, memory, and will; the dog much earlier than the man.
If the animals were mere machines, it would be another argument for the position of those who believe that man also is a mere machine; but there are now none who do not admit that the animals have ideas, memory, and a measure of intelligence, and that they improve their knowledge; that a hunting-dog learns its work, an old fox is more astute than a young one, and so on.
Whence have they these faculties, if not from the primordial eternal cause, the principle of action, the great being that animates the whole of nature?
Man obtains the faculties of the animals much later than they, but in a higher degree; can he obtain them from any other source?
He has nothing but what the great being has given him. It would be a strange contradiction, a singular absurdity, if all the stars and elements, the animals and plants, obeyed, unceasingly and irresistibly, the laws of the great being, and man alone were independent of them.
VIII
THAT MAN IS ESSENTIALLY SUBJECT IN EVERYTHING
TO THE ETERNAL LAWS OF THE FIRST PRINCIPLE
Let us regard, with the eyes of reason, this animal man which the great being has produced.
What is his first sensation? A sensation of pain; then the pleasure of feeding. That is the whole of our life: pain and pleasure. Whence have we these two springs which keep us in action until our last moment, if not from this first principle of action, this Demiourgos? Assuredly we do not give pain to ourselves; and how could we be the cause of our few pleasures? We have said elsewhere that it is impossible for us to invent a new kind of pleasure—that is to say, a new sense. Let us now say that it is equally impossible for us to invent a new kind of pain. The most execrable of tyrants cannot do it. The Jews, whose tortures have been described by the Benedictine monk Calmet in his dictionary, could only cut, tear, mutilate, draw, burn, strangle, and crush; all torments may thus be summarised. We can therefore do nothing of ourselves, either for good or evil; we are but the blind instruments of nature.
But I wish to think and I think, most men will recklessly assert. Let us consider it. What was our first idea after the feeling of pain? The idea of the breast that we sucked; then the face of the nurse; then a few other objects and needs made their faint impressions. Would any one up to this point venture to say that he was more than a sentient automaton, a wretched abandoned animal destitute of knowledge or power, an outcast of nature? Will he venture to say that in this condition he is a thinking being, the author of his own ideas, the possessor of a soul? What is the son of a king when he leaves the womb? He would excite the disgust of his father, if he were not his father. A flower of the field that one treads underfoot is an infinitely superior thing.