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The System of Nature, or, the Laws of the Moral and Physical World. Volume 1

by baron d' Paul Henri Thiry Holbach · English · Gutenberg #8909 · 738,591 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The System of Nature, or, the Laws of the Moral and Physical World. Volume 1

Author: baron d' Paul Henri Thiry Holbach


        
Release date: September 1, 2005 [eBook #8909]
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THE SYSTEM OF NATURE, VOLUME I (of II)


By Paul Henri Thiery (Baron d'Holbach)


Introduction by Robert D. Richardson, Jr.




PRODUCTION NOTES: First published in French in 1770 under the pseudonym
of Mirabaud. This e-book based on a facsimile reprint of an English
translation originally published 1820-21. This e-text covers the first
of the original two volumes.





INTRODUCTION


Paul Henri Thiery, Baron d'Holbach (1723-1789), was the center of the
radical wing of the _philosophes_. He was friend, host, and patron to
a wide circle that included Diderot, D'Alembert, Helvetius, and Hume.
Holbach wrote, translated, edited, and issued a stream of books and
pamphlets, often under other names, that has made him the despair of
bibliographers but has connected his name, by innuendo, gossip, and
association, with most of what was written in defense of atheistic
materialism in late eighteenth-century France.

Holbach is best known for _The System of Nature_ (1770) and deservedly,
since it is a clear and reasonably systematic exposition of his main
ideas. His initial position determines all the rest of his argument.
"There is not, there can be nothing out of that Nature which includes
all beings." Conceiving of nature as strictly limited to matter and
motion, both of which have always existed, he flatly denies that there
is any such thing as spirit or a supernatural. Mythology began, Holbach
claims, when men were still in a state of nature and at the point when
wise, strong, and for the most part benign men were arising as leaders
and lawgivers. These leaders "formed discourses by which they spoke to
the imaginations of their willing auditors," using the medium of poetry,
because it "seem{ed} best adapted to strike the mind." Through poetry,
then, and by means of "its images, its fictions, its numbers, its rhyme,
its harmony... the entire of nature, as well as all its parts, was
personified, by its beautiful allegories." Thus mythology is given
an essentially political origin. These early poets are literally
legislators of mankind. "The first institutors of nations, and their
immediate successors in authority, only spoke to the people by fables,
allegories, enigmas, of which they reserved to themselves the right
of giving an explanation." Holbach is rather condescending about the
process, but since mythology is a representation of nature itself, he
is far more tolerant of mythology than he is of the next step. "Natural
philosophers and poets were transformed by leisure into metaphysicians
and theologians," and at this point a fatal error was introduced: the
theologians made a distinction between the power of nature and nature
itself, separated the two, made the power of nature prior to nature, and
called it God. Thus man was left with an abstract and chimerical being
on one side and a despoiled inert nature, destitute of power, on the
other. In Holbach's critique the point at which theology split off from
mythology marks the moment of nature's alienation from itself and paves
the way for man's alienation from nature.

Holbach is thus significant for Romantic interest in myth in two ways.
First, he provides a clear statement of what can be loosely called the
antimythic position, that rationalist condescension and derogation of
all myth and all religion that was never far from the surface during
the Romantic era. Holbach was and is a reminder that the Romantic
affirmation of myth was never easy, uncritical, or unopposed. Any new
endorsement of myth had to be made in the teeth of Holbach and the other
skeptics. The very vigor of the Holbachian critique of myth impelled the
Romantics to think more deeply and defend more carefully any new claim
for myth. Secondly, although Holbach's argument generally drove against
myth and religion both, he did make an important, indeed a saving
distinction between mythology and theology. Mythology is the more or
less harmless personification of the power in and of nature; theology
concerns itself with what for Holbach was the nonexistent power beyond
or behind nature. By exploiting this distinction it would
become possible for a Shelley, for example, to take a strong
antitheological--even an anti-Christian--position without having to
abandon myth.

Holbach was one of William Godwin's major sources for his ideas about
political justice, and Shelley, who discussed Holbach with Godwin,
quotes extensively from _The System of Nature_ in _Queen Mab_.
Furthermore, Volney's _Ruins_, another important book for Shelley,
is directly descended from _The System of Nature_. On the other side,
Holbach was a standing challenge to such writers as Coleridge and Goethe
and was reprinted and retranslated extensively in America, where his
work was well known to the rationalist circle around Jefferson and
Barlow.

Issued in 1770 as though by Jean Baptiste de Mirabaud (a former
perpetual secretary to the Académie française who had died ten years
before), _La Système de la nature_ was translated and reprinted
frequently. The Samuel Wilkinson translation we have chosen to reprint
was the most often reprinted or pirated version in English. A useful
starting point for Holbach's work is Jerome Vercruysse, _Bibliographie
descriptive des écrits du baron d'Holbach_ (Paris, 1971). The difficult
subject of the essentially clandestine evolution of biblical criticism
as an anti-Christian and antimyth critique in the early part of the
eighteenth century, before the well-documented era of the biblical
critic Eichhorn in Germany, is illuminated in Ira Wade, _The Clandestine
Organization and Diffusion of Philosophic Ideas in France from
1700-1750_ (Princeton Univ. Press, 1938).


Robert D. Richardson, Jr.

University of Denver


* * * * *



{Illustration: Parke sculp't M. DE MIRABAUD}




THE SYSTEM OF NATURE; OR, _THE LAWS_ OF THE MORAL AND PHYSICAL WORLD.



TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL FRENCH OF M. DE MIRABAUD



VOL. I.




CONTENTS

Preface


     PART I--Laws of Nature.--Of man.--The faculties of the soul.
     --Doctrine of immortality.--On happiness.


CHAP. I. Nature and her laws.

CHAP. II. Of motion and its origin.

CHAP. III. Of matter--of its various combinations--of its diversified
motion--or of the course of Nature.

CHAP. IV. Laws of motion common to every being of Nature--attraction and
repulsion--inert force-necessity.

CHAP. V. Order and confusion--intelligence--chance.

CHAP. VI. Moral and physical distinctions of man--his origin.

CHAP. VII. The soul and the spiritual system.

CHAP. VII. The soul and the spiritual system.

CHAP. VIII. The intellectual faculties derived from the faculty of
feeling.

CHAP. IX. The diversity of the intellectual faculties; they depend on
physical causes, as do their moral qualities.--The natural principles of
society--morals--politics.

CHAP. X. The soul does not derive its ideas from itself--it has no
innate ideas.

CHAP. XI. Of the system of man's free-agency.

CHAP. XII. An examination of the opinion which pretends that the system
of fatalism is dangerous.

CHAP. XIII. Of the immortality of the soul--of the doctrine of a future
state--of the fear of death.

CHAP. XIV. Education, morals, and the laws suffice to restrain man--of
the desire of immortality--of suicide.

CHAP. XV. Of man's true interest, or of the ideas he forms to himself of
happiness.--Man cannot be happy without virtue.

CHAP. XVI. The errors of man.--Upon what constitutes happiness.--The
true source of his evils.--Remedies that may be applied.

CHAP. XVII. Those ideas which are true, or founded upon Nature, are the
only remedies for the evil of man.--Recapitulation.--Conclusions of the
First Part.




PREFACE

_The source of man's unhappiness is his ignorance of Nature. The
pertinacity with which he clings to blind opinions imbibed in his
infancy, which interweave themselves with his existence, the consequent
prejudice that warps his mind, that prevents its expansion, that renders
him the slave of fiction, appears to doom him to continual error. He
resembles a child destitute of experience, full of ideal notions: a
dangerous leaven mixes itself with all his knowledge: it is of necessity
obscure, it is vacillating and false:--He takes the tone of his ideas
on the authority of others, who are themselves in error, or else have
an interest in deceiving him. To remove this Cimmerian darkness, these
barriers to the improvement of his condition; to disentangle him from
the clouds of error that envelope him; to guide him out of this Cretan
labyrinth, requires the clue of Ariadne, with all the love she could
bestow on Theseus. It exacts more than common exertion; it needs a most
determined, a most undaunted courage--it is never effected but by a
persevering resolution to act, to think for himself; to examine with
rigour and impartiality the opinions he has adopted. He will find that
the most noxious weeds have sprung up beside beautiful flowers; entwined
themselves around their stems, overshadowed them with an exuberance of
foliage, choaked the ground, enfeebled their growth, diminished their
petals; dimmed the brilliancy of their colours; that deceived by
their apparent freshness of their verdure, by the rapidity of their
exfoliation, he has given them cultivation, watered them, nurtured them,
when he ought to have plucked out their very roots.

Man seeks to range out of his sphere: notwithstanding the reiterated
checks his ambitious folly experiences, he still attempts the
impossible; strives to carry his researches beyond the visible world;
and hunts out misery in imaginary regions. He would be a metaphysician
before he has become a practical philosopher. He quits the contemplation
of realities to meditate on chimeras. He neglects experience to feed on
conjecture, to indulge in hypothesis. He dares not cultivate his
reason, because from his earliest days he has been taught to consider
it criminal. He pretends to know his date in the indistinct abodes of
another life, before he has considered of the means by which he is to
render himself happy in the world he inhabits: in short, man disdains
the study of Nature, except it be partially: he pursues phantoms
that resemble an _ignis-fatuus_, which at once dazzle, bewilders, and
affright: like the benighted traveller led astray by these deceptive
exhalations of a swampy soil, he frequently quits the plain, the simple
road of truth, by pursuing of which, he can alone ever reasonably hope
to reach the goal of happiness.

The most important of our duties, then, is to seek means by which we may
destroy delusions that can never do more than mislead us. The remedies
for these evils must be sought for in Nature herself; it is only in
the abundance of her resources, that we can rationally expect to find
antidotes to the mischiefs brought upon us by an ill directed, by an
overpowering enthusiasm. It is time these remedies were sought; it is
time to look the evil boldly in the face, to examine its foundations,
to scrutinize its superstructure: reason, with its faithful guide
experience, must attack in their entrenchments those prejudices, to
which the human race has but too long been the victim. For this purpose
reason must be restored to its proper rank,--it must be rescued from
the evil company with which it is associated. It has been too long
degraded--too long neglected--cowardice has rendered it subservient to
delirium, the slave to falsehood. It must no longer be held down by the
massive claims of ignorant prejudice.

Truth is invariable--it is requisite to man--it can never harm him--his
very necessities, sooner or later, make him sensible of this; oblige him
to acknowledge it. Let us then discover it to mortals--let us exhibit
its charms--let us shed it effulgence over the darkened road; it is
the only mode by which man can become disgusted with that disgraceful
superstition which leads him into error, and which but too often usurps
his homage by treacherously covering itself with the mask of truth--its
lustre can wound none but those enemies to the human race whose power is
bottomed solely on the ignorance, on the darkness in which they have in
almost every claimed contrived to involve the mind of man.

Truth speaks not to those perverse beings:--her voice can only be heard
by generous souls accustomed to reflection, whose sensibilities make
them lament the numberless calamities showered on the earth by political
and religious tyranny--whose enlightened minds contemplate with horror
the immensity, the ponderosity of that series of misfortunes which error
has in all ages overwhelmed mankind.

To error must be attributed those insupportable chains which tyrants,
which priests have forged for most nations. To error must be equally
attributed that abject slavery into which the people of almost every
country have fallen. Nature designed they should pursue their happiness
by the most perfect freedom.--To error must be attributed those
religious terrors which, in almost every climate, have either petrified
man with fear, or caused him to destroy himself for coarse or fanciful
beings. To error must be attributed those inveterate hatreds, those
barbarous persecutions, those numerous massacres, those dreadful
tragedies, of which, under pretext of serving the interests of heaven,
the earth has been but too frequently made the theatre. It is error
consecrated by religious enthusiasm, which produces that ignorance,
that uncertainty in which man ever finds himself with regard to his most
evident duties, his clearest rights, the most demonstrable truths.
In short, man is almost everywhere a poor degraded captive, devoid of
greatness of soul, of reason, or of virtue, whom his inhuman gaolers
have never permitted to see the light of day.

Let us then endeavour to disperse those clouds of ignorance, those
mists of darkness, which impede man on his journey, which obscure his
progress, which prevent his marching through life with a firm, with a
steady grip. Let us try to inspire him with courage--with respect for
his reason--with an inextinguishable love for truth--with a remembrance
of Gallileo--to the end that he may learn to know himself--to know his
legitimate rights--that he may learn to consult his experience, and no
longer be the dupe of an imagination led astray by authority--that he
may renounce the prejudices of his childhood--that he may learn to
found his morals on his nature, on his wants, on the real advantage of
society--that he may dare to love himself--that he may learn to pursue
his true happiness by promoting that of others--in short, that he may no
longer occupy himself with reveries either useless or dangerous--that he
may become a virtuous, a rational being, in which case he cannot fail to
become happy.

If he must have his chimeras, let him at least learn to permit others
to form theirs after their own fashion; since nothing can be more
immaterial than the manner of men's thinking on subjects not accessible
to reason, provided those thoughts be not suffered to embody themselves
into actions injurious to others: above all, let him be fully persuaded
that it is of the utmost importance to the inhabitants of this world to
be JUST, KIND, and PEACEABLE.

Far from injuring the cause of virtue, an impartial examination of the
principles of this work will shew that its object is to restore truth
to its proper temple, to build up an altar whose foundations shall be
consolidated by morality, reason, and justice: from this sacred pane,
virtue guarded by truth, clothed with experience, shall shed forth her
radiance on delighted mortals; whose homage flowing consecutively shall
open to the world a new aera, by rendering general the belief that
happiness, the true end of man's existence, can never be attained but BY
PROMOTING THAT OF HIS FELLOW CREATURE.

In short, man should learn to know, that happiness is simply an
emanative quality formed by reflection; that each individual ought to
be the sun of his own system, continually shedding around him his genial
rays; that these, re-acting, will keep his own existence constantly
supplied with the requisite heat to enable him to put forth kindly
fruit._




MIRABAUD'S SYSTEM OF NATURE


Translated from the Original, By Samuel Wilkinson.




PART I.

LAWS OF NATURE--OF MAN--THE FACULTIES OF THE SOUL--DOCTRINE OF
IMMORTALITY--ON HAPPINESS.




CHAP. I.

_Nature and her Laws_.


Man has always deceived himself when he abandoned experience to follow
imaginary systems.--He is the work of nature.--He exists in Nature.--He
is submitted to the laws of Nature.--He cannot deliver himself from
them:--cannot step beyond them even in thought. It is in vain his mind
would spring forward beyond the visible world: direful and imperious
necessity ever compels his return--being formed by Nature, he is
circumscribed by her laws; there exists nothing beyond the great whole
of which he forms a part, of which he experiences the influence. The
beings his fancy pictures as above nature, or distinguished from her,
are always chimeras formed after that which he has already seen, but of
which it is utterly impossible he should ever form any finished idea,
either as to the place they occupy, or their manner of acting--for him
there is not, there can be nothing out of that Nature which includes all
beings.

Therefore, instead of seeking out of the world he inhabits for beings
who can procure him a happiness denied to him by Nature, let him study
this Nature, learn her laws, contemplate her energies, observe the
immutable rules by which she acts.--Let him apply these discoveries to
his own felicity, and submit in silence to her precepts, which nothing
can alter.--Let him cheerfully consent to be ignorant of causes hid from
him under the most impenetrable veil.--Let him yield to the decrees of
a universal power, which can never be brought within his comprehension,
nor ever emancipate him from those laws imposed on him by his essence.

The distinction which has been so often made between the _physical_ and
the _moral_ being, is evidently an abuse of terms. Man is a being
purely physical: the moral man is nothing more than this physical being
considered under a certain point of view; that is to say, with
relation to some of his modes of action, arising out of his individual
organization. But is not this organization itself the work of Nature?
The motion or impulse to action, of which he is susceptible, is that
not physical? His visible actions, as well as the invisible motion
interiorly excited by his will or his thoughts, are equally the natural
effects, the necessary consequences, of his peculiar construction,
and the impulse he receives from those beings by whom he is always
surrounded. All that the human mind has successively invented, with a
view to change or perfect his being, to render himself happy, was never
more than the necessary consequence of man's peculiar essence, and that
of the beings who act upon him. The object of all his institutions, all
his reflections, all his knowledge, is only to procure that happiness
toward which he is continually impelled by the peculiarity of his
nature. All that he does, all that he thinks, all that he is, all that
he will be, is nothing more than what Universal Nature has made him.
His ideas, his actions, his will, are the necessary effects of those
properties infused into him by Nature, and of those circumstances in
which she has placed him. In short, art is nothing but Nature acting
with the tools she has furnished.

Nature sends man naked and destitute into this world which is to be his
abode: he quickly learns to cover his nakedness--to shelter himself from
the inclemencies of the weather, first with artlessly constructed huts,
and the skins of the beasts of the forest; by degrees he mends their
appearance, renders them more convenient: he establishes manufactories
to supply his immediate wants; he digs clay, gold, and other fossils
from the bowels of the earth; converts them into bricks for his house,
into vessels for his use, gradually improves their shape, and augments
their beauty. To a being exalted above our terrestrial globe, man would
not appear less subjected to the laws of Nature when naked in the forest
painfully seeking his sustenance, than when living in civilized society
surrounded with ease, or enriched with greater experience, plunged in
luxury, where he every day invents a thousand new wants and discovers
a thousand new modes of supplying them. All the steps taken by man to
regulate his existence, ought only to be considered as a long succession
of causes and effects, which are nothing more than the development of
the first impulse given him by nature.

The same animal, by virtue of his organization, passes successively from
the most simple to the most complicated wants; it is nevertheless the
consequence of his nature. The butterfly whose beauty we admire, whose
colours are so rich, whose appearance is so brilliant, commences as
an inanimate unattractive egg; from this, heat produces a worm, this
becomes a chrysalis, then changes into that beautiful insect adorned
with the most vivid tints: arrived at this stage he reproduces,
he generates; at last despoiled of his ornaments, he is obliged to
disappear, having fulfilled the task imposed on him by Nature, having
performed the circle of transformation marked out for beings of his
order.

The same course, the same change takes place in the vegetable world. It
is by a series of combinations originally interwoven with the energies
of the aloe, that this plant is insensibly regulated, gradually
expanded, and at the end of a number of years produces those flowers
which announce its dissolution.

It is equally so with man, who in all his motion, all the changes
he undergoes, never acts but according to the laws peculiar to his
organization, and to the matter of which he is composed.

The _physical man_, is he who acts by the causes our faculties make us
understand.

The _moral man_, is he who acts by physical causes, with which our
prejudices preclude us from becoming perfectly acquainted.

The _wild man_ is a child destitute of experience, incapable of
proceeding in his happiness, because he has not learnt how to oppose
resistance to the impulses he receives from those beings by whom he is
surrounded.

The _civilized man_, is he whom experience and sociality have enabled to
draw from nature the means of his own happiness, because he has learned
to oppose resistance to those impulses he receives from exterior beings,
when experience has taught him they would be destructive to his welfare.

The _enlightened man_ is man in his maturity, in his perfection; who
is capable of advancing his own felicity, because he has learned to
examine, to think for himself, and not to take that for truth upon
the authority of others, which experience has taught him a critical
disquisition will frequently prove erroneous.

The _happy man_ is he who knows how to enjoy the benefits bestowed
upon him by nature: in other words, he who thinks for himself; who is
thankful for the good he possesses; who does not envy the welfare of
others, nor sigh after imaginary benefits always beyond his grasp.

The _unhappy man_ is he who is incapacitated to enjoy the benefits of
nature; that is, he who suffers others to think for him; who neglects
the absolute good he possesses, in a fruitless search after ideal
benefits; who vainly sighs after that which ever eludes his pursuit.

It necessarily results, that man in his enquiry ought always to
contemplate experience, and natural philosophy: These are what he should
consult in his religion,--in his morals,--in his legislation,--in
his political government,--in the arts,--in the sciences,--in his
pleasures,--above all, in his misfortunes. Experience teaches that
Nature acts by simple, regular, and invariable laws. It is by his
senses, man is bound to this universal Nature; it is by his perception
he must penetrate her secrets; it is from his senses he must draw
experience of her laws. Therefore, whenever he neglects to acquire
experience or quits its path, he stumbles into an abyss; his imagination
leads him astray.

All the errors of man are physical: he never deceives himself but when
he neglects to return back to nature, to consult her laws, to call
practical knowledge to his aid. It is for want of practical knowledge
he forms such imperfect ideas of matter, of its properties, of its
combinations, of its power, of its mode of action, and of the energies
which spring from its essence. Wanting this experience, the whole
universe, to him, is but one vast scene of error. The most ordinary
results appear to him the most astonishing phenomena; he wonders at
every thing, understands nothing, and yields the guidance of his actions
to those interested in betraying his interests. He is ignorant of
Nature, and he has mistaken her laws; he has not contemplated the
necessary routine which she has marked out for every thing she holds.
Mistaken the laws of Nature, did I say? He has mistaken himself: the
consequence is, that all his systems, all his conjectures, all his
reasonings, from which he has banished experience, are nothing more than
a tissue of errors, a long chain of inconsistencies.

Error is always prejudicial to man: it is by deceiving himself, the
human race is plunged into misery. He neglected Nature; he did not
comprehend her laws; he formed gods of the most preposterous and
ridiculous kinds: these became the sole objects of his hope, and the
creatures of his fear: he was unhappy, he trembled under these visionary
deities; under the supposed influence of visionary beings created by
himself; under the terror inspired by blocks of stone; by logs of
wood; by flying fish; or the frowns of men, mortal as himself, whom
his disturbed fancy had elevated above that Nature of which alone he
is capable of forming any idea. His very posterity laughs at his folly,
because experience has convinced them of the absurdity of his groundless
fears--of his misplaced worship. Thus has passed away the ancient
mythology, with all the trifling and nonsensical attributes attached to
it by ignorance.

Not understanding that Nature, equal in her distributions, entirely
destitute of malice, follows only necessary and immutable laws, when
she either produces beings or destroys them, when she causes those to
suffer, whose construction creates sensibility; when she scatters among
them good and evil; when she subjects them to incessant change--he did
not perceive it was in the breast of Nature herself, that it was in her
exuberance he ought to seek to satisfy his deficiencies; for remedies
against his pains; for the means of rendering himself happy: he expected
to derive these benefits from fantastic beings, whom he supposed to
be above Nature; whom he mistakingly imagined to be the authors of his
pleasures, and the cause of his misfortunes. From hence it appears that
to his ignorance of Nature, man owes the creation of those illusive
powers; under which he has so long trembled with fear; that
superstitious worship, which has been the source of all his misery, and
the evils entailed upon posterity.

For want of clearly comprehending his own peculiar nature, his proper
course, his wants, and his rights, man has fallen in society, from
FREEDOM into SLAVERY. He had forgotten the purpose of his existence, or
else he believed himself obliged to suppress the natural desires of his
heart, to sacrifice his welfare to the caprice of chiefs, either elected
by himself, or submitted to without examination. He was ignorant of the
true policy of association--of the object of government; he disdained to
listen to the voice of Nature, which loudly proclaimed the price of all
submission to be protection and happiness: the end of all government
is the benefit of the governed, not the exclusive advantage of the
governors. He gave himself up without enquiry to men like himself, whom
his prejudices induced him to contemplate as beings of a superior order,
as Gods upon earth, they profited by his ignorance, took advantage of
his prejudices, corrupted him, rendered him vicious, enslaved him, and
made him miserable. Thus man, intended by Nature for the full enjoyment
of liberty, to patiently search out her laws, to investigate her
secrets, to cling to his experience; has, from a neglect of her salutary
admonitions, from an inexcusable ignorance of his own peculiar essence,
fallen into servility: has been wickedly governed.

Having mistaken himself, he has remained ignorant of the indispensable
affinity that subsists between him, and the beings of his own species:
having mistaken his duty to himself, it consequently follows, he has
mistaken his duty to others. He made a calculation in error of what his
happiness required; he did not perceive, what he owed to himself, the
excesses he ought to avoid, the desires he ought to resist, the impulses
he ought to follow, in order to consolidate his felicity, to promote his
comfort, and to further his advantage. In short, he was ignorant of his
true interests; hence his irregularities, his excesses, his shameful
extravagance, with that long train of vices, to which he has abandoned
himself, at the expense of his preservation, at the hazard of his
permanent prosperity.

It is, therefore, ignorance of himself that has hindered man from
enlightening his morals. The corrupt authorities to which he had
submitted, felt an interest in obstructing the practice of his duties,
even when he knew them. Time, with the influence of ignorance, aided by
his corruption, gave them a strength not to be resisted by his enfeebled
voice. His duties continued unperformed, and he fell into contempt both
with himself and with others.

The ignorance of Man has endured so long, he has taken such slow,
such irresolute steps to ameliorate his condition, only because he has
neglected to study Nature, to scrutinize her laws, to search out her
expedients, to discover her properties, that his sluggishness finds its
account, in permitting himself to be guided by example, rather than to
follow experience, which demands activity; to be led by routine, rather
than by his reason, which enjoins reflection; to take that for truth
upon the authority of others, which would require a diligent and patient
investigation. From hence may be traced the hatred man betrays for every
thing that deviates from those rules to which he has been accustomed;
hence his stupid, his scrupulous respect for antiquity, for the most
silly, the most absurd and ridiculous institutions of his fathers:
hence those fears that seize him, when the most beneficial changes are
proposed to him, or the most likely attempts are made to better his
condition. He dreads to examine, because he has been taught to hold
it irreverent of something immediately connected with his welfare; his
credulity suffers him to believe the interested advice, and spurns at
those who wish to show him the danger of the road he is travelling.

This is the reason why nations linger on in the most shameful lethargy,
suffering under abuses handed down from century to century, trembling at
the very idea of that which alone can repair their calamities.

It is for want of energy, for want of consulting experience, that
medicine, natural philosophy, agriculture, painting, in fact, all the
useful sciences, have so long remained under the fetters of authority,
have progressed so little: those who profess these sciences, prefer
treading the beaten paths, however imperfect, rather than strike out
new ones,--they prefer the phrensy of their imagination, their voluntary
conjectures, to that laboured experience which alone can extract her
secrets from Nature.

Man, in short, whether from sloth or from terror, having abnegated the
evidence of his senses, has been guided in all his actions, in all his
enterprizes, by imagination, by enthusiasm, by habit, by preconceived
opinions, but above all, by the influence of authority, which knew
well how to deceive him, to turn his ignorance to esteem, his sloth
to advantage. Thus imaginary, unsubstantial systems, have supplied the
place of experience--of mature reflection--of reason. Man, petrified
with his fears, intoxicated with the marvellous, stupified with sloth,
surrendered his experience: guided by his credulity, he was unable to
fall back upon it; he became consequently inexperienced; from thence he
gave birth to the most ridiculous opinions, or else adopted all those
vague chimeras, all those idle notions offered to him by men whose
interest it was to continue him in that lamentable state of ignorance.

Thus the human race has continued so long in a state of infancy, because
man has been inattentive to Nature; has neglected her ways,
because he has disdained experience--because he has thrown by his
reason--because he has been enraptured with the marvellous and the
supernatural,--because he has unnecessarily TREMBLED. These are the
reasons there is so much trouble in conducting him from this state of
childhood to that of manhood. He has had nothing but the most trifling
hypotheses, of which he has never dared to examine either the principles
or the proofs, because he has been accustomed to hold them sacred, to
consider them as the most perfect truths, and which he is not permitted
to doubt, even for an instant. His ignorance made him credulous; his
curiosity made him swallow the wonderful: time confirmed him in his
opinions, and he passed his conjectures from race to race for realities;
a tyrannical power maintained him in his notions, because by those alone
could society be enslaved. It was in vain that some faint glimmerings
of Nature occasionally attempted the recall of his reason--that slight
corruscations of experience sometimes threw his darkness into light, the
interest of the few was founded on his enthusiasm; their pre-eminence
depended on his love of the marvellous; their very existence rested on
the firmness of his ignorance; they consequently suffered no opportunity
to escape, of smothering even the transient flame of intelligence.
The many were thus first deceived into credulity, then forced into
submission. At length the whole science of man became a confused mass
of darkness, falsehood, and contradictions, with here and there a feeble
ray of truth, furnished by that Nature, of which he can never entirely
divest himself; because, without his perception, his necessities are
continually bringing him back to her resources.

Let us then, if possible, raise ourselves above these clouds of
prepossession! Let us quit the heavy atmosphere in which we are
enucleated; let us in a more unsullied medium--in a more elastic
current, contemplate the opinions of men, and observe their various
systems. Let us learn to distrust a disordered conception; let us take
that faithful monitor, experience, for our guide; let us consult Nature,
examine her laws, dive into her stores; let us draw from herself, our
ideas of the beings she contains; let us recover our senses, which
interested error has taught us to suspect; let us consult that reason,
which, for the vilest purposes has been so infamously calumniated, so
cruelly dishonoured; let us examine with attention the visible world;
let us try, if it will not enable us to form a supportable judgment of
the invisible territory of the intellectual world: perhaps it may be
found there has been no sufficient reason for distinguishing them--that
it is not without motives, well worthy our enquiry, that two empires
have been separated, which are equally the inheritance of nature.

The universe, that vast assemblage of every thing that exists, presents
only matter and motion: the whole offers to our contemplation, nothing
but an immense, an uninterrupted succession of causes and effects; some
of these causes are known to us, because they either strike immediately
on our senses, or have been brought under their cognizance, by the
examination of long experience; others are unknown to us, because they
act upon us by effects, frequently very remote from their primary cause.
An immense variety of matter, combined under an infinity of forms,
incessantly communicates, unceasingly receives a diversity of impulses.
The different qualities of this matter, its innumerable combinations,
its various methods of action, which are the necessary consequence of
these associations, constitute for man what he calls the ESSENCE of
beings: it is from these varied essences that spring the orders, the
classes, or the systems, which these beings respectively possess, of
which the sum total makes up that which is known by the term _nature_.

Nature, therefore, in its most significant meaning, is the great
whole that results from the collection of matter, under its various
combinations, with that contrariety of motion, which the universe
presents to our view. Nature, in a less extended sense, or considered in
each individual, is the whole that results from its essence; that is
to say, the peculiar qualities, the combination, the impulse, and the
various modes of action, by which it is discriminated from other beings.
It is thus that MAN is, as a whole, or in his nature, the result of
a certain combination of matter, endowed with peculiar properties,
competent to give, capable of receiving, certain impulses, the
arrangement of which is called _organization_; of which the essence is,
to feel, to think, to act, to move, after a manner distinguished from
other beings, with which he can be compared. Man, therefore, ranks in
an order, in a system, in a class by himself, which differs from that of
other animals, in whom we do not perceive those properties of which he
is possessed. The different systems of beings, or if they will, their
_particular natures_, depend on the general system of the great whole,
or that Universal Nature, of which they form a part; to which every
thing that exists is necessarily submitted and attached.

Having described the proper definition that should be applied to the
word NATURE, I must advise the reader, once for all, that whenever in
the course of this work the expression occurs, that "Nature produces
such or such an effect," there is no intention of personifying that
nature which is purely an abstract being; it merely indicates that the
effect spoken of necessarily springs from the peculiar properties of
those beings which compose the mighty macrocosm. When, therefore, it is
said, _Nature demands that man should pursue his own happiness_, it is
to prevent circumlocution--to avoid tautology; it is to be understood,
that it is the property of a being that feels, that thinks, that acts,
to labour to its own happiness; in short, that is called _natural_,
which is conformable to the essence of things, or to the laws, which
Nature prescribes to the beings she contains, in the different orders
they occupy, under the various circumstances through which they are
obliged to pass. Thus health is _natural_ to man in a certain state;
disease is _natural_ to him under other circumstances; dissolution, or
if they will, death, is a _natural_ state for a body, deprived of some
of those things, necessary to maintain the existence of the animal, &c.
By ESSENCE is to be understood, that which constitutes a being, such as
it is; the whole of the properties or qualities by which it acts as it
does. Thus, when it is said, it is the _essence_ of a stone to fall, it
is the same as saying that its descent is the necessary effect of its
gravity--of its density--of the cohesion of its parts--of the elements
of which it is composed. In short, the _essence_ of a being is its
particular, its individual nature.





CHAP. II.

_Of Motion, and its Origin._


Motion is an effect by which a body either changes, or has a tendency
to change, its position: that is to say, by which it successively
corresponds with different parts of space, or changes its relative
distance to other bodies. It is motion alone that establishes the
relation between our senses and exterior or interior beings: it is only
by motion that these beings are impressed upon us--that we know their
existence--that we judge of their properties--that we distinguish the
one from the other--that we distribute them into classes.

The beings, the substances, or the various bodies of which Nature is
the assemblage, are themselves effects of certain combinations or causes
which become causes in their turn. A CAUSE is a being which puts another
in motion, or which produces some change in it. The EFFECT is the change
produced in one body, by the motion or presence of another.

Each being, by its essence, by its peculiar nature, has the faculty of
producing, is capable of receiving, has the power of communicating, a
variety of motion. Thus some beings are proper to strike our organs;
these organs are competent to receiving the impression, are adequate to
undergoing changes by their presence. Those which cannot act on any of
our organs, either immediately and by themselves, or immediately by the
intervention of other bodies, exist not for us; since they can neither
move us, nor consequently furnish us with ideas: they can neither be
known to us, nor of course be judged of by us. To know an object, is to
have felt it; to feel it, it is requisite to have been moved by it. To
see, is to have been moved, by something acting on the visual organs;
to hear, is to have been struck, by something on our auditory nerves. In
short, in whatever mode a body may act upon us, whatever impulse we may
receive from it, we can have no other knowledge of it than by the change
it produces in us.

Nature, as we have already said, is the assemblage of all the beings,
consequently of all the motion of which we have a knowledge, as well
as of many others of which we know nothing, because they have not yet
become accessible to our senses. From the continual action and re-action
of these beings, result a series of causes and effects; or a chain
of motion guided by the constant and invariable laws peculiar to each
being; which are necessary or inherent to its particular nature--which
make it always act or move after a determinate manner. The different
principles of this motion are unknown to us, because we are in many
instances, if not in all, ignorant of what constitutes the essence of
beings. The elements of bodies escape our senses; we know them only in
the mass: we are neither acquainted with their intimate combination,
nor the proportion of these combinations; from whence must necessarily
result their mode of action, their impulse, or their different effects.

Our senses bring us generally acquainted with two sorts of motion in the
beings that surround us: the one is the motion of the mass, by which an
entire body is transferred from one place to another. Of the motion of
this genus we are perfectly sensible.--Thus, we see a stone fall, a ball
roll, an arm move, or change its position. The other is an internal or
concealed motion, which always depends on the peculiar energies of a
body: that is to say, on its _essence_, or the combination, the action,
and re-action of the minute--of the insensible particles of matter, of
which that body is composed. This motion we do not see; we know it only
by the alteration or change, which after some time we discover in
these bodies or mixtures. Of this genus is that concealed motion which
fermentation produces in the particles that compose flour, which,
however scattered, however separated, unite, and form that mass which
we call BREAD. Such also is the imperceptible motion by which we see a
plant or animal enlarge, strengthen, undergo changes, and acquire new
qualities, without our eyes being competent to follow its progression,
or to perceive the causes which have produced these effects. Such also
is the internal motion that takes place in man, which is called his
INTELLECTUAL FACULTIES, his THOUGHTS, his PASSIONS, his will. Of these
we have no other mode of judging, than by their action; that is, by
those sensible effects which either accompany or follow them. Thus, when
we see a man run away, we judge him to be interiorly actuated by the
passion of fear.

Motion, whether visible or concealed, is styled ACQUIRED, when it is
impressed on one body by another; either by a cause to which we are
a stranger, or by an exterior agent which our senses enable us to
discover. Thus we call that _acquired motion_, which the wind gives
to the sails of a ship. That motion which is excited in a body, that
contains within itself the causes of those changes we see it undergo, is
called SPONTANEOUS. Then it is said, this body acts or moves by its own
peculiar energies. Of this kind is the motion of the man who walks,
who talks, who thinks. Nevertheless, if we examine the matter a little
closer, we shall be convinced, that, strictly speaking, there is no
such thing as spontaneous motion in any of the various bodies of Nature;
seeing they are perpetually acting one upon the other; that all their
changes are to be attributed to the causes, either visible or concealed,
by which they are moved. The will of man is secretly moved or determined
by some exterior cause that produces a change in him: we believe he
moves of himself, because we neither see the cause that determined him,
the mode in which it acted, nor the organ that it put in motion.

That is called SIMPLE MOTION, which is excited in a body by a single
cause. COMPOUND MOTION, that which is produced by two or more
different causes; whether these causes are equal or unequal, conspiring
differently, acting together or in succession, known or unknown.

Let the motion of beings be of whatsoever nature it may, it is always
the necessary consequence of their essence, or of the properties which
compose them, and of those causes of which they experience the action.
Each being can only move and act after a particular manner; that is to
say, conformably to those laws which result from its peculiar essence,
its particular combination, its individual nature: in short, from its
specific energies, and those of the bodies from which it receives an
impulse. It is this that constitutes the invariable laws of motion:
I say _invariable_, because they can never change, without producing
confusion in the essence of things. It is thus that a heavy body must
necessarily fall, if it meets with no obstacle sufficient to arrest its
descent; that a sensible body must naturally seek pleasure, and avoid
pain; that fire must necessarily burn, and diffuse light.

Each being, then, has laws of motion, that are adapted to itself, and
constantly acts or moves according to these laws; at least when
no superior cause interrupts its action. Thus, fire ceases to burn
combustible matter, as soon as sufficient water is thrown into it, to
arrest its progress. Thus, a sensible being ceases to seek pleasure, as
soon as he fears that pain will be the result.

The communication of motion, or the medium of action, from one body to
another, also follows certain and necessary laws; one being can only
communicate motion to another, by the affinity, by the resemblance, by
the conformity, by the analogy, or by the point of contact, which it
has with that other being. Fire can only propagate when it finds matter
analogous to itself: it extinguishes when it encounters bodies which it
cannot embrace; that is to say, that do not bear towards it a certain
degree of relation or affinity.

Every thing in the universe is in motion: the essence of matter is to
act: if we consider its parts, attentively, we shall discover there is
not a particle that enjoys absolute repose. Those which appear to us to
be without motion, are, in fact, only in relative or apparent rest;
they experience such an imperceptible motion, and expose it so little
on their surfaces, that we cannot perceive the changes they undergo. All
that appears to us to be at rest, does not, however, remain one instant
in the same state. All beings are continually breeding, increasing,
decreasing, or dispersing, with more or less dullness or rapidity. The
insect called EPHEMERON, is produced and perishes in the same day;
of consequence, it experiences the greatest changes of its being very
rapidly, in our eyes. Those combinations which form the most solid
bodies, which appear to enjoy the most perfect repose, are nevertheless
decomposed, and dissolved in the course of time. The hardest stones, by
degrees, give way to the contact of air. A mass of iron, which time, and
the action of the atmosphere, has gnawed into rust, must have been in
motion, from the moment of its formation, in the bowels of the earth,
until the instant we behold it in this state of dissolution.

Natural philosophers, for the most part, seem not to have sufficiently
reflected on what they call the _nisus_; that is to say, the incessant
efforts one body is making on another, but which, notwithstanding
appear, to our superficial observation, to enjoy the most perfect
repose. A stone of five hundred weight seems to rest quiet on the earth,
nevertheless, it never ceases for an instant, to press with force upon
the earth, which resists or repulses it in its turn. Will the assertion
be ventured, that the stone and earth do not act? Do they wish to be
undeceived? They have nothing to do but interpose their hand betwixt the
earth and the stone; it will then be discovered, that notwithstanding
its seeming repose, the stone has power adequate to bruise it;
because the hand has not energies sufficient, within itself, to resist
effectually both the stone and earth.--Action cannot exist in bodies
without re-action. A body that experiences an impulse, an attraction,
or a pressure of any kind, if it resists, clearly demonstrates by such
resistance that it re-acts; from whence it follows, there is a concealed
force, called by these philosophers _vis inertia_, that displays itself
against another force; and this clearly demonstrates, that this inert
force is capable of both acting and re-acting. In short, it will be
found, on close investigation, that those powers which are called
_dead_, and those which are termed _live_ or _moving_, are powers of
the same kind; which only display themselves after a different manner.
Permit us to go a greater distance yet. May we not say, that in those
bodies, or masses, of which their whole become evident from appearances
to us to be at rest, there is notwithstanding, a continual action, and
counter-action, constant efforts, uninterrupted or communicated force,
and continued opposition? In short, a _nisus_, by which the constituting
portions of these bodies press one upon another, mutually resisting
each other, acting and re-acting incessantly? that this reciprocity of
action, this simultaneous re-action, keeps them united, causes their
particles to form a mass, a body, and a combination, which, viewed in
its whole, has the appearance of complete rest, notwithstanding no one
of its particles really ceases to be in motion for a single instant?
These collective masses appear to be at rest, simply by the equality of
the motion--by the responsory impulse of the powers acting in them.

Thus it appears that bodies enjoying perfect repose, really receive,
whether upon their surface, or in their interior, a continual
communicated force, from those bodies by which they are either
surrounded or penetrated, dilated or contracted, rarified or condensed:
in fact, from those which compose them; whereby their particles are
incessantly acting and re-acting, or in continual motion, the effects
of which are displayed by extraordinary changes. Thus heat rarifies and
dilates metals, which is evidence deducible that a bar of iron, from the
change of the atmosphere alone, must be in continual motion; that there
is not a single particle in it that can be said to enjoy rest even for a
single moment. In those hard bodies, indeed, the particles of which are
in actual contact, and which are closely united, how is it possible to
conceive, that air, cold, or heat, can act upon one of these particles,
even exteriorly, without the motion being communicated to those which
are most intimate and minute in their union? Without motion, how should
we be able to comprehend the manner in which our sense of smelling is
affected, by emanations escaping from the most solid bodies, of which
all the particles appear to be at perfect rest? How could we, even by
the assistance of a telescope, see the most distant stars, if there was
not a progressive motion of light from these stars to the retina of our
eye?

Observation and reflection ought to convince us, that every thing in
Nature is in continual motion--that there is not a single part, however
small, that enjoys repose--that Nature acts in all--that she would cease
to be Nature if she did not act. Practical knowledge teaches us, that
without unceasing motion, nothing could be preserved--nothing could
be produced--nothing could act in this Nature. Thus the idea of Nature
necessarily includes that of motion. But it will be asked, and not a
little triumphantly, from whence did she derive her motion? Our reply
is, we know not, neither do they--that _we_ never shall, that _they_
never will. It is a secret hidden from us, concealed from them, by the
most impenetrable veil. We also reply, that it is fair to infer, unless
they can logically prove to the contrary, that it is in herself, since
she is the great whole, out of which nothing can exist. We say this
motion is a manner of existence, that flows, necessarily, out of the
nature of matter; that matter moves by its own peculiar energies; that
its motion is to be attributed to the force which is inherent in itself;
that the variety of motion, and the phenomena which result, proceed from
the diversity of the properties--of the qualities--of the combinations,
which are originally found in the primitive matter, of which Nature is
the assemblage.

Natural philosophers, for the most part, have regarded as inanimate, or
as deprived of the faculty of motion, those bodies which are only
moved by the intervention of some agent or exterior cause; they have
considered themselves justified in concluding, that the matter which
forms these bodies is perfectly inert in its nature. They have not
forsaken this error, although they must have observed, that whenever
a body is left to itself, or disengaged from those obstructions which
oppose themselves to its descent, it has a tendency to fall or to
approach the centre of the earth, by a motion uniformly accelerated;
they have rather chosen to suppose a visionary exterior cause, of which
they themselves had but an imperfect idea, than admit that these bodies
held their motion from their own peculiar nature.

These philosophers, also, notwithstanding they saw above them an
infinite number of globes that moved with great rapidity round a common
centre, still adhered to their favourite opinions; and never ceased to
suppose some whimsical causes for these movements, until the immortal
NEWTON clearly demonstrated that it was the effect of the gravitation
of these celestial bodies towards each other. Experimental philosophers,
however, and amongst them the great Newton himself, have held the cause
of gravitation as inexplicable. Notwithstanding the great weight of this
authority, it appears manifest that it may be deduced from the motion of
matter, by which bodies are diversely determined. Gravitation is nothing
more than a mode of moving--a tendency towards a centre: to speak
strictly, all motion is relative gravitation; since that which falls
relatively to us, rises, with relation to other bodies. From this
it follows, that every motion in our microcosm is the effect of
gravitation; seeing that there is not in the universe either top or
bottom, nor any absolute centre. It should appear, that the weight of
bodies depends on their configuration, as well external as internal,
which gives them that form of action which is called gravitation. Thus,
for instance, a piece of lead, spherically formed, falls quickly and
direct: reduce this ball into very thin plates, it will be sustained
in the air for a much longer time: apply to it the action of fire, this
lead will rise in the atmosphere: here, then, the same metal, variously
modified, has very different modes of action.

A very simple observation would have sufficed to make the philosophers,
antecedent to Newton, feel the inadequateness of the causes they
admitted to operate with such powerful effect. They had a sufficiency
to convince themselves, in the collision of two bodies, which they could
contemplate, and in the known laws of that motion, which these always
communicate by reason of their greater or less compactness; from whence
they ought to have inferred, that the density of _subtle_ or _ethereal_
matter, being considerably less than that of the planets, it could only
communicate to them a very feeble motion, quite insufficient to produce
that velocity of action, of which they could not possibly avoid being
the witnesses.

If Nature had been viewed uninfluenced by prejudice, they must have been
long since convinced that matter acts by its own peculiar activity; that
it needs no exterior communicative force to set it in motion. They might
have perceived that whenever mixed bodies were placed in a situation to
act on each other, motion was instantly excited; and that these mixtures
acted with a force capable of producing the most surprising results.

If particles of iron, sulphur, and water be mixed together, these
bodies thus capacitated to act on each other, are heated by degrees, and
ultimately produce a violent combustion. If flour be wetted with water,
and the mixture closed up, it will be found, after some lapse of time,
(by the aid of a microscope) to have produced organized beings that
enjoy life, of which the water and the flour were believed incapable:
it is thus that inanimate matter can pass into life, or animate matter,
which is in itself only an assemblage of motion.

Reasoning from analogy, which the philosophers of the present day do not
hold incompatible, the production of a man, independent of the ordinary
means, would not be more astonishing than that of an insect with flour
and water. Fermentation and putrid substances, evidently produce living
animals. We have here the principle; with proper materials, principles
can always be brought into action. That generation which is styled
_uncertain_ is only so for those who do not reflect, or who do not
permit themselves, attentively, to observe the operations of Nature.

The generative of motion, and its developement, as well as the energy of
matter, may be seen everywhere; more particularly in those unitions in
which fire, air, and water, find themselves combined. These elements, or
rather these mixed bodies, are the most volatile, the most fugitive
of beings; nevertheless in the hands of Nature, they are the essential
agents employed to produce the most striking phenomena. To these we must
ascribe the effects of thunder, the eruption of volcanoes, earthquakes,
&c. Science offers to our consideration an agent of astonishing force,
in gunpowder, the instant it comes in contact with fire. In short, the
most terrible effects result from the combination of matter, which is
generally believed to be dead and inert.

These facts prove, beyond a doubt, that motion is produced, is
augmented, is accelerated in matter, without the help of any exterior
agent: therefore it is reasonable to conclude that motion is the
necessary consequence of immutable laws, resulting from the essence,
from the properties existing in the different elements, and the
various combinations of these elements. Are we not justified, then,
in concluding, from these precedents, that there may be an infinity of
other combinations, with which we are unacquainted, competent to produce
a great variety of motion in matter, without being under the necessity
of having recourse, for the explanation, to agents who are more
difficult to comprehend than even the effects which are attributed to
them?

Had man but paid proper attention to what passed under his review, he
would not have sought out of Nature, a power distinguished from herself,
to set her in action, and without which he believes she cannot move. If,
indeed, by Nature is meant a heap of dead matter, destitute of peculiar
qualities purely passive, we must unquestionably seek out of this Nature
the principle of her motion. But if by Nature be understood, what it
really is, a whole, of which the numerous parts are endowed with various
properties, which oblige them to act according to these properties;
which are in a perpetual ternateness of action and reaction; which
press, which gravitate towards a common center, whilst others depart
from and fly off towards the periphery, or circumference; which attract
and repel; which by continual approximation and constant collision,
produce and decompose all the bodies we behold; then, I say, there is
no necessity to have recourse to supernatural powers, to account for the
formation of things, and those extraordinary appearances which are the
result of motion.

Those who admit a cause exterior to matter, are obliged to believe that
this cause produced all the motion by which matter is agitated in giving
it existence. This belief rests on another, namely, that matter could
begin to exist; an hypothesis that, until this moment, has never been
satisfactorily demonstrated. To produce from nothing, or the CREATION,
is a term that cannot give us the least idea of the formation of the
universe; it presents no sense, upon which the mind can rely. In fact,
the human mind is not adequate to conceive a moment of non-existence, or
when all shall have passed away; even admitting this to be a truth, it
is no truth for us, because by the very nature of our organization, we
cannot admit positions as facts, of which no evidence can be adduced
that has relation to our senses; we may, indeed, consent to believe it,
because others say it; but will any rational being be satisfied with
such an admission? Can any moral good spring from such blind assurance?
Is it consistent with sound doctrine, with philosophy, or with reason?
Do we, in fact, pay any respect to the intellectual powers of another,
when we say to him, "I will believe this, because in all the attempts
you have ventured, for the purpose of proving what you say, you have
entirely failed; and have been at last obliged to acknowledge you know
nothing about the matter?" What moral reliance ought we to have on such
people? Hypothesis may succeed hypothesis; system may destroy system: a
new set of ideas may overturn the ideas of a former day. Other
Gallileos may be condemned to death--other Newtons may arise--we may
reason--argue--dispute--quarrel--punish and destroy: nay, we may even
exterminate those who differ from us in opinion; but when we have
done all this, we shall be obliged to fall back upon our original
darkness--to confess, that that which has no relation with our senses,
that which cannot manifest itself to us by some of the ordinary modes
by which other things are manifested, has no existence for us--is not
comprehensible by us--can never entirely remove our doubt--can never
seize on our stedfast belief; seeing it is that of which we cannot form
even a notion; in short, that it is that, which as long as we remain
what we are, must be hidden from us by a veil, which no power, no
faculty, no energy we possess, is able to remove. All who are not
enslaved by prejudice agree to the truth of the position, that _nothing
can be made of nothing_. Many theologians have acknowledged Nature to
be an active whole. Almost all the ancient philosophers were agreed to
regard the world as eternal. OCELLUS LUCANUS, speaking of the universe,
says, "_it has always been, and it always will be_." VATABLE and GROTIUS
assure us, that to render the Hebrew phrase in the first chapter of
GENESIS correctly, we must say, "_when God made heaven and earth, matter
was without form._" If this be true, and every Hebraist can judge for
himself, then the word which has been rendered _created_, means only
to fashion, form, arrange. We know that the Greek words _create_ and
_form_, have always indicated the same thing. According to ST. JEROME,
_creare_ has the same meaning as _condere_, to found, to build. The
Bible does not anywhere say in a clear manner, that the world was made
of nothing. TERTULLIAN and the father PETAU both admit, that "_this is
a truth established more by reason than by authority._" ST. JUSTIN seems
to have contemplated matter as eternal, since he commends PLATO for
having said, that "_God, in the creation of the world, only gave impulse
to matter, and fashioned it._" BURNET and PYTHAGORAS were entirely of
this opinion, and even our Church Service may be adduced in support; for
although it admits by implication a beginning, it expressly denies an
end: "_As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world
without end._" It is easy to perceive that that which cannot cease to
exist, must have always been.

Motion becomes still more obscure, when creation, or the formation of
matter, is attributed to a SPIRITUAL being; that is to say, to a being
which has no analogy, no point of contact, with it--to a being which
has neither extent or parts, and cannot, therefore, be susceptible of
motion, as we understand the term; this being only the change of one
body, relatively to another body, in which the body moved presents
successively different parts to different points of space. Moreover,
as all the world are nearly agreed that matter can never be totally
annihilated, or cease to exist; by what reasoning, I would ask, do they
comprehend--how understand--that that which cannot cease to be, could
ever have had a beginning?

If, therefore, it be asked, whence came matter? it is very reasonable to
say it has always existed. If it be inquired, whence proceeds the motion
that agitates matter? the same reasoning furnishes the answer; namely,
that as motion is coeval with matter, it must have existed from all
eternity, seeing that motion is the necessary consequence of its
existence--of its essence--of its primitive properties, such as its
extent, its gravity, its impenetrability, its figure, &c. By virtue
of these essential constituent properties, inherent in all matter, and
without which it is impossible to form an idea of it, the various matter
of which the universe is composed must from all eternity have
pressed against, each other--have gravitated towards a center--have
clashed--have come in contact--have been attracted--have been
repelled--have been combined--have been separated: in short, must have
acted and moved according to the essence and energy peculiar to each
genus, and to each of its combinations.

Existence supposes properties in the thing that exists: whenever it
has properties, its mode of action must necessarily flow from those
properties which constitute, its mode of being. Thus, when a body is
ponderous, it must fall; when it falls, it must come in collision with
the bodies it meets in its descent; when it is dense, when it is solid,
it must, by reason of this density, communicate motion to the bodies
with which it clashes; when it has analogy, when it has affinity with
these bodies, it must be attracted, must be united with them; when it
has no point of analogy with them, it must be repulsed.

From which it may be fairly inferred, that in supposing, as we are under
the necessity of doing, the existence of matter, we must suppose it to
have some kind of properties; from which its motion, or modes of action,
must necessarily flow. To form the universe, DESCARTES asked but matter
and motion: a diversity of matter sufficed for him; variety of motion
was the consequence of its existence, of its essence, of its properties:
its different modes of action would be the necessary consequence of
its different modes of being. Matter without properties would be a mere
nothing; therefore, as soon as matter exists, it must act; as soon as
it is various, it must act variously; if it cannot commence to exist,
it must have existed from all eternity; if it has always existed, it can
never cease to be: if it can never cease to be, it can never cease to
act by its own energy. Motion is a manner of being, which matter derives
from its peculiar existence.

The existence, then, of matter is a fact: the existence of motion is
another fact. Our visual organs point out to us matter with different
essences, forming a variety of combinations, endowed with various
properties that discriminate them. Indeed, it is a palpable error to
believe that matter is a homogeneous body, of which the parts differ
from each other only by their various modifications. Among the
individuals of the same species that come under our notice, no two
resemble exactly; and it is therefore evident that the difference
of situation alone will, necessarily, carry a diversity more or less
sensible, not only in the modifications, but also in the essence, in
the properties, in the entire system of beings. This truth was well
understood by the profound and subtle LEIBNITZ.

If this principle be properly digested, and experience seems always to
produce evidence of its truth, we must be convinced that the matter or
primitive elements which enter into the composition of bodies, are
not of the same nature, and consequently, can neither have the same
properties, nor the same modifications; and if so, they cannot have
the same mode of moving and acting. Their activity or motion, already
different, can be diversified to infinity, augmented or diminished,
accelerated or retarded, according to the combinations, the proportions,
the pressure, the density, the volume of the matter, that enters their
composition. The endless variety to be produced, will need no further
illustration than the commonest book of arithmetic furnishes us, where
it will be found, that to ring all the changes that can be produced on
twelve bells only, would occupy a space of more than ninety-one years.
The element of fire is visibly more active and more inconstant than that
of earth. This is more solid and ponderous than fire, air, or water.
According to the quantity of these elements, which enter the composition
of bodies, these must act diversely, and their motion must in some
measure partake the motion peculiar to each of their constituent parts.
Elementary fire appears to be in Nature the principle of activity;
it may be compared to a fruitful leaven, that puts the mass into
fermentation and gives it life. Earth appears to be the principle of
solidity in bodies, from its impenetrability, and by the firm coherence
of its parts. Water is a medium, to facilitate the combination of
bodies, into which it enters itself, as a constituent part. Air is a
fluid whose business it seems to be, to furnish the other elements with
the space requisite to expand, to exercise their motion, and which is,
moreover, found proper to combine with them. These elements, which
our senses never discover in a pure state--which are continually and
reciprocally set in motion by each other--which are always acting and
re-acting, combining and separating, attracting and repelling--are
sufficient to explain to us the formation of all the beings we behold.
Their motion is uninterruptedly and reciprocally produced from each
other; they are alternately causes and effects. Thus, they form a vast
circle of generation and destruction--of combination and decomposition,
which, it is quite reasonable to suppose, could never have had a
beginning, and which, consequently can never have an end. In short,
Nature is but an immense chain of causes and effects, which unceasingly
flow from each other. The motion of particular beings depends on the
general motion, which is itself maintained by individual motion. This
is strengthened or weakened, accelerated or retarded, simplified or
complicated, procreated or destroyed, by a variety of combinations and
circumstances, which every moment change the directions, the tendency,
the modes of existing, and of acting, of the different beings that
receive its impulse.

If it were true, as has been asserted by some philosophers, that every
thing has a tendency to form one unique or single mass, and in that
unique mass the instant should arrive when all was in _nisus_, all would
eternally remain in this state; to all eternity there would be no more
than one Being and one effort: this would be eternal and universal
death.

If we desire to go beyond this, to find the principle of action in
matter, to trace the origin of things, it is for ever to fall back upon
difficulties; it is absolutely to abridge the evidence of our senses; by
which only we can understand, by which alone we can judge of the causes
acting upon them, or the impulse by which they are set in action.

Let us, therefore, content ourselves with saying WHAT is supported by
our experience, and by all the evidence we are capable of understanding;
against the truth of which not a shadow of proof, such as our reason can
admit, has ever been adduced--which has been maintained by philosophers
in every age--which theologians themselves have not denied, but which
many of them have upheld; namely, that _matter always existed; that
it moves by virtue of its essence; that all the phenomena of Nature
is ascribable to the diversified motion of the variety of matter she
contains; and which, like the phoenix, is continually regenerating out
of its own ashes._





CHAP. III.

_Of Matter.--Of its various Combinations.--Of its diversified Motion, or
of the Course of Nature._


We know nothing of the elements of bodies, but we know some of their
properties or qualities; and we distinguish their various matter by the
effect or change produced on our senses; that is to say, by the variety
of motion their presence excites in us. In consequence, we discover
in them, extent, mobility, divisibility, solidity, gravity, and inert
force. From these general and primitive properties flow a number
of others, such as density, figure, colour, ponderosity, &c. Thus,
relatively to us, matter is all that affects our senses in any manner
whatever; the various properties we attribute to matter, by which we
discriminate its diversity, are founded on the different impressions we
receive on the changes they produce in us.

A satisfactory definition of matter has not yet been given. Man,
deceived and led astray by his prejudices, formed but vague,
superficial, and imperfect notions concerning it. He looked upon it
as an unique being, gross and passive, incapable of either moving by
itself, of forming combinations, or of producing any thing by its
own energies. Instead of this unintelligible jargon, he ought to have
contemplated it as a _genus_ of beings, of which the individuals,
although they might possess some common properties, such as extent,
divisibility, figure, &c. should not, however, be all ranked in the same
class, nor comprised under the same general denomination.

An example will serve more fully to explain what we have asserted,
throw its correctness into light, and facilitate the application.
The properties common to all matter, are extent, divisibility,
impenetrability, figure, mobility, or the property of being moved in
mass. FIRE, beside these general properties, common to all matter,
enjoys also the peculiar property of being put into activity by a motion
that produces on our organs of feeling the sensation of heat; and by
another, that communicates to our visual organs the sensation of light.
Iron, in common with matter in general, has extent and figure; is
divisible, and moveable in mass: if fire be combined with it in a
certain proportion, the iron acquires two new properties; namely, those
of exciting in us similar sensations of heat and light, which were
excited by the element of fire, but which the iron had not, before its
combination with the igneous matter. These distinguishing properties
are inseparable from matter, and the phenomena that result, may, in the
strictest sense of the word, be said to result necessarily.

If we contemplate a little the paths of Nature--if, for a time, we trace
the beings in this Nature, under the different states through which,
by reason of their properties, they are compelled to pass; we shall
discover, that it is to motion, and motion only, that is to be ascribed
all the changes, all the combinations, all the forms, in short, all the
various modifications of matter. That it is by motion every thing that
exists is produced, experiences change, expands, and is destroyed. It
is motion that alters the aspect of beings; that adds to, or takes away
from their properties; which obliges each of them, by a consequence of
its nature, after having occupied a certain rank or order, to quit it,
to occupy another, and to contribute to the generation, maintenance, and
decomposition of other beings, totally different in their bulk, rank,
and essence.

In what experimental philosophers have styled the THREE ORDERS OF
NATURE, that is to say, the _mineral_, the _vegetable_, and _animal_
worlds, they have established, by the aid of motion, a transmigration,
an exchange, a continual circulation in the particles of matter. Nature
has occasion in one place, for those particles which, for a time, she
has placed in another. These particles, after having, by particular
combinations, constituted beings endued with peculiar essences, with
specific properties, with determinate modes of action, dissolve and
separate with more or less facility; and combining in a new manner, they
form new beings. The attentive observer sees this law execute itself, in
a manner more or less prominent, through all the beings by which he is
surrounded. He sees nature full of _erratic germe_, some of which expand
themselves, whilst others wait until motion has placed them in their
proper situation, in suitable wombs or matrices, in the necessary
circumstances, to unfold, to increase, to render them more perceptible
by the addition of other substances of matter analogous to their
primitive being. In all this we see nothing but the effect of motion,
necessarily guided, modified, accelerated or slackened, strengthened or
weakened, by reason of the various properties that beings successively
acquire and lose; which, every moment, infallibly produces alterations
in bodies more or less marked. Indeed, these bodies cannot be, strictly
speaking, the same in any two successive moments of their existence;
they must, every instant, either acquire or lose: in short, they are
obliged to undergo continual variations in their essences, in their
properties, in their energies, in their masses, in their qualities, in
their mode of existence.

Animals, after they have been expanded in, and brought out of, the wombs
that are suitable to the elements of their machine, enlarge, strengthen,
acquire new properties, new energies, new faculties; either by deriving
nourishment from plants analogous to their being, or by devouring other
animals whose substance is suitable to their preservation; that is to
say, to repair the continual deperdition or loss of some portion of
their own substance, that is disengaging itself every instant. These
same animals are nourished, preserved, strengthened, and enlarged, by
the aid of air, water, earth, and fire. Deprived of air, or of the fluid
that surrounds them, that presses on them, that penetrates them, that
gives them their elasticity, they presently cease to live. Water,
combined with this air, enters into their whole mechanism of which
it facilitates the motion. Earth serves them for a basis, by giving
solidity to their texture: it is conveyed by air and water, which carry
it to those parts of the body with which it can combine. Fire itself,
disguised and enveloped under an infinity of forms, continually received
into the animal, procures him heat, continues him in life, renders him
capable of exercising his functions. The aliments, charged with these
various principles, entering into the stomach, re-establish the nervous
system, and restore, by their activity, and the elements which compose
them, the machine which begins to languish, to be depressed, by the loss
it has sustained. Forthwith the animal experiences a change in his
whole system; he has more energy, more activity; he feels more courage;
displays more gaiety; he acts, he moves, he thinks, after a different
manner; all his faculties are exercised with more ease. This igneous
matter, so congenial to generation--so restorative in its effect--so
necessary to life, was the JUPITER of the ancients: from all that has
preceded, it is clear, that what are called the elements, or primitive
parts of matter, variously combined, are, by the agency of motion,
continually united to, and assimilated with, the substance of
animals--that they visibly modify their being--have an evident influence
over their actions, that is to say, upon the motion they undergo,
whether visible or concealed.

The same elements, which under certain circumstances serve to nourish,
to strengthen, to maintain the animal, become, under others, the
principles of his weakness, the instruments of his dissolution--of his
death: they work his destruction, whenever they are not in that just
proportion which renders them proper to maintain his existence: thus,
when water becomes too abundant in the body of the animal, it enervates
him, it relaxes the fibres, and impedes the necessary action of the
other elements: thus, fire admitted in excess, excites in him disorderly
motion destructive of his machine: thus, air, charged with principles
not analogous to his mechanism, brings upon him dangerous diseases and
contagion. In fine, the aliments modified after certain modes, in the
room of nourishing, destroy the animal, and conduce to his ruin: the
animal is preserved no longer than these substances are analogous to his
system. They ruin him when they want that just equilibrium that renders
them suitable to maintain his existence.

Plants that serve to nourish and restore animals are themselves
nourished by earth; they expand on its bosom, enlarge and strengthen at
its expense, continually receiving into their texture, by their
roots and their pores, water, air, and igneous matter: water visibly
reanimates them whenever their vegetation or genus of life languishes;
it conveys to them those analogous principles by which they are enabled
to reach perfection: air is requisite to their expansion, and furnishes
them with water, earth, and the igneous matter with which it is charged.
By these means they receive more or less of the inflammable matter; the
different proportions of these principles, their numerous combinations,
from whence result an infinity of properties, a variety of forms,
constitute the various families and classes into which botanists have
distributed plants: it is thus we see the cedar and the hyssop develop
their growth; the one rises to the clouds, the other creep humbly on
the earth. Thus, by degrees, from an acorn springs the majestic oak,
accumulating, with time, its numerous branches, and overshadowing us
with its foliage. Thus, a grain of corn, after having drawn its own
nourishment from the juices of the earth, serves, in its turn, for
the nourishment of man, into whose system it conveys the elements or
principles by which it has been itself expanded, combined, and modified
in such a manner, as to render this vegetable proper to assimilate and
unite with the human frame; that is to say, with the fluids and solids
of which it is composed.

The same elements, the same principles, are found in the formation
of minerals, as well as in their decomposition, whether natural or
artificial. We find that earth, diversely modified, wrought, and
combined, serves to increase their bulk, and give them more or less
density and gravity. Air and water contribute to make their particles
cohere; the igneous matter, or inflammable principle, tinges them with
colour, and sometimes plainly indicates its presence, by the brilliant
scintillation which motion elicits from them. These stones and metals,
these bodies, so compact and solid, are disunited, are destroyed, by
the agency of air, water, and fire; which the most ordinary analysis is
sufficient to prove, as well as a multitude of experience, to which our
eyes are the daily evidence.

Animals, plants, and minerals, after a lapse of time, give back to
Nature; that is to say, to the general mass of things, to the universal
magazine, the elements, or principles, which they have borrowed: The
earth retakes that portion of the body of which it formed the basis
and the solidity; the air charges itself with these parts, that are,
analogous to it, and with those particles which are light and subtle;
water carries off that which is suitable to liquescency; fire, bursting
its chains, disengages itself, and rushes into new combinations with
other bodies.

The elementary particles of the animal, being thus dissolved, disunited,
and dispersed; assume new activity, and form new combinations: thus,
they serve to nourish, to preserve, or destroy new beings; among others,
plants, which arrived at their maturity, nourish and preserve new
animals; these in their turn yielding to the same fate as the first.

Such is the constant, the invariable course, of Nature; such is
the eternal circle of mutation, which all that exists is obliged
to describe. It is thus motion generates, preserves for a time, and
successively, destroys, one part of the universe by the other; whilst
the sum of existence remains eternally the same. Nature, by its
combinations, produces suns, which place themselves in the centre of
so many systems: she forms planets, which, by their peculiar essence,
gravitate and describe their revolutions round these suns: by degrees
the motion is changed altogether, and becomes eccentric: perhaps the day
may arrive when these wondrous masses will disperse, of which man, in
the short space of his existence, can only have a faint and transient
glimpse.

It is clear, then, that the continual motion inherent in matter, changes
and destroys all beings; every instant depriving them of some of their
properties, to substitute others: it is motion, which, in thus changing
their actual essence, changes also their order, their direction, their
tendency, and the laws which regulate their mode of acting and being:
from the stone formed in the bowels of the earth, by the intimate
combination and close coherence of similar and analogous particles, to
the sun, that vast reservoir of igneous particles, which sheds torrents
of light over the firmament; from the benumbed oyster, to the thoughtful
and active man; we see an uninterrupted progression, a perpetual chain
of motion and combination; from which is produced, beings that only
differ from each other by the variety of their elementary matter--by the
numerous combinations of these elements, from whence springs modes
of action and existence, diversified to infinity. In generation, in
nutrition, in preservation, we see nothing more than matter, variously
combined, of which each has its peculiar motion, regulated by fixed and
determinate laws, which oblige them to submit to necessary changes. We
shall find, in the formation, in the growth, in the instantaneous
life, of animals, vegetables, and minerals, nothing but matter; which
combining, accumulating, aggregating, and expanding by degrees, forms
beings, who are either feeling, living, vegetating, or else destitute
of these faculties; which, having existed some time under one particular
form, are obliged to contribute by their ruin to the production of other
forms.

Thus, to speak strictly, nothing in Nature is either born, or dies,
according to the common acceptation of those terms. This truth was
felt by many of the ancient philosophers. PLATO says, that according to
tradition, "the living were born of the dead, the same as the dead did
come of the living; and that this is the constant routine of Nature." He
adds from himself, "who knows, if to live, be not to die; and if to die,
be not to live?" This was the doctrine of PYTHAGORAS, a man of great
talent and no less note. EMPEDOCLES asserts, "there is neither birth nor
death, for any mortal; but only a combination, and a separation of that
which was combined, and that this is what amongst men they call birth,
and death." Again he remarks, "those are infants, or short-sighted
persons, with very contracted understandings, who imagine any thing is
born, which did not exist before, or that any thing can die or perish
totally."





CHAP. IV.

_Laws of Motion, common to every Being of Nature.--Attraction and
Repulsion.--Inert Force.--Necessity._


Man is never surprised at those effects, of which he thinks he knows the
cause; he believes he does know the cause, as soon as he sees them act
in an uniform and determinate manner, or when the motion excited is
simple: the descent of a stone, that falls by its own peculiar weight,
is an object of contemplation to the philosopher only; to whom the mode
by which the most immediate causes act, and the most simple motion, are
no less impenetrable mysteries than the most complex motion, and the
manner by which the most complicated causes give impulse. The uninformed
are seldom tempted either to examine the effects which are familiar to
them, or to recur to first principles. They think they see nothing in
the descent of a stone, which ought to elicit their surprise, or become
the object of their research: it requires a NEWTON to feel that the
descent of heavy bodies is a phenomenon, worthy his whole, his most
serious attention; it requires the sagacity of a profound experimental
philosopher, to discover the laws by which heavy bodies fall, by which
they communicate to others their peculiar motion. In short, the mind
that is most practised in philosophical observation, has frequently the
chagrin to find, that the most simple and most common effects escape all
his researches, and remain inexplicable to him.

When any extraordinary, any unusual, effect is produced, to which our
eyes have not been accustomed; or when we are ignorant of the energies
of the cause, the action of which so forcibly strikes our senses, we
are tempted to meditate upon it, and take it into our consideration.
The European, accustomed to the use of GUNPOWDER, passes it by, without
thinking much of its extraordinary energies; the workman, who labours to
manufacture it, finds nothing marvellous in its properties, because he
daily handles the matter that forms its composition. The American, to
whom this powder was a stranger, who had never beheld its operation,
looked upon it as a divine power, and its energies as supernatural. The
uninformed, who are ignorant of the true cause of THUNDER, contemplate
it as the instrument of divine vengeance. The experimental philosopher
considers it as the effect of the electric matter, which, nevertheless,
is itself a cause which he is very far from perfectly understanding.--It
required the keen, the penetrating mind of a FRANKLIN, to throw light
on the nature of this subtle fluid--to develop the means by which
its effects might be rendered harmless--to turn to useful purposes, a
phenomenon that made the ignorant tremble--that filled their minds with
terror, their hearts with dismay, as indicating the anger of the gods:
impressed with this idea, they prostrated themselves, they sacrificed to
JUPITER, to deprecate his wrath.

Be this as it may, whenever we see a cause act, we look upon its effect
as natural: when this cause becomes familiar to the sight, when we are
accustomed to it, we think we understand it, and its effects surprise
us no longer. Whenever any unusual effect is perceived, without our
discovering the cause, the mind sets to work, becomes uneasy; this
uneasiness increases in proportion to its extent: as soon as it is
believed to threaten our preservation, we become completely agitated; we
seek after the cause with an earnestness proportioned to our alarm;
our perplexity augments in a ratio equivalent to the persuasion we are
under: how essentially requisite it is, we should become acquainted with
the cause that has affected us in so lively a manner. As it frequently
happens that our senses can teach us nothing respecting this cause
which so deeply interests us--which we seek with so much ardour, we have
recourse to our imagination; this, disturbed with alarm, enervated by
fear, becomes a suspicious, a fallacious guide: we create chimeras,
fictitious causes, to whom we give the credit, to whom we ascribe the
honour of those phenomena by which we have been so much alarmed. It is
to this disposition of the human mind that must be attributed, as will
be seen in the sequel, the religious errors of man, who, despairing of
the capacity to trace the natural causes of those perplexing phenomena
to which he was the witness, and sometimes the victim, created in his
brain (heated with terror) imaginary causes, which have become to him a
source of the most extravagant folly.

In Nature, however, there can be only natural causes and effects; all
motion excited in this Nature, follows constant and necessary laws: the
natural operations, to the knowledge of which we are competent, of which
we are in a capacity to judge, are of themselves sufficient to enable us
to discover those which elude our sight; we can at least judge of them
by analogy. If we study Nature with attention, the modes of action which
she displays to our senses will teach us not to be disconcerted by those
which she refuses to discover. Those causes which are the most remote
from their effects, unquestionably act by intermediate causes; by the
aid of these, we can frequently trace out the first. If in the chain of
these causes we sometimes meet with obstacles that oppose themselves
to our research, we ought to endeavour by patience and diligence to
overcome them; when it so happens we cannot surmount the difficulties
that occur, we still are never justified in concluding the chain to be
broken, or that the cause which acts is SUPER-NATURAL. Let us, then, be
content with an honest avowal, that Nature contains resources of which
we are ignorant; but never let us substitute phantoms, fictions, or
imaginary causes, senseless terms, for those causes which escape our
research; because, by such means we only confirm ourselves in ignorance,
impede our enquiries, and obstinately remain in error.

In spite of our ignorance with respect to the meanderings of Nature,
(for of the essence of being, of their properties, their elements, their
combinations, their proportions, we yet know the simple and general
laws, according to which bodies move;) we see clearly, that some of
these laws, common to all beings, never contradict themselves; although,
on some occasions, they appear to vary, we are frequently competent to
discover that the cause becoming complex, from combination with other
causes, either impedes or prevents its mode of action being such as
in its primitive state we had a right to expect. We know that active,
igneous matter, applied to gunpowder, must necessarily cause it to
explode: whenever this effect does not follow the combination of the
igneous matter with the gunpowder--whenever our senses do not give us
evidence of the fact, we are justified in concluding, either that the
powder is damp, or that it is united with some other substance that
counteracts its explosion. We know that all the actions of man have a
tendency to render him happy: whenever, therefore, we see him labouring
to injure or destroy himself, it is just to infer that he is moved by
some cause opposed to his natural tendency; that he is deceived by some
prejudice; that, for want of experience, he is blind to consequences:
that he does not see whither his actions will lead him.

If the motion excited in beings was always simple; if their actions did
not blend and combine with each other, it would be easy to know, and we
should be assured, in the first instance, of the effect a cause would
produce. I know that a stone, when descending, ought to describe a
perpendicular: I also know, that if it encounters any other body which
changes its course, it is obliged to take an oblique direction, but if
its fall be interrupted by several contrary powers, which act upon it
alternately, I am no longer competent to determine what line it will
describe. It may be a parabola, an ellipsis, spiral, circular, &c. this
will depend on the impulse, it receives, and the powers by which it is
impelled.

The most complex motion, however, is never more than the result of
simple motion combined: therefore as soon as we know the general laws of
beings and their action, we have only to decompose, to analyse them, in
order to discover those of which they are combined; experience teaches
us the effects we are to expect. Thus it is clear, the simplest motion
causes that necessary junction of different matter, of which all bodies
are composed: that matter, varied in its essence, in its properties,
in its combinations, has each its several modes of action or motion,
peculiar to itself; the whole motion of a body is consequently the sum
total of each particular motion that is combined.

Amongst the matter we behold, some is constantly disposed to unite,
whilst other is incapable of union; that which is suitable to unite,
forms combinations, more or less intimate, possessing more or less
durability: that is to say, with more or less capacity to preserve their
union, to resist dissolution. Those bodies which are called SOLIDS,
receive into their composition a great number of homogeneous, similar,
and analogous particles, disposed to unite themselves with energies
conspiring or tending to the same point. The primitive beings, or
elements of bodies, have need of supports, of props; that is to say, of
the presence of each other, for the purpose of preserving themselves;
of acquiring consistence or solidity: a truth, which applies with equal
uniformity to what is called _physical_, as to what is termed _moral_.

It is upon this disposition in matter and bodies, with relation to each
other, that is founded those modes of action which natural philosophers
designate by the terms _attraction, repulsion, sympathy, antipathy,
affinities, relations_; that moralists describe under the names of
_love, hatred, friendship, aversion_. Man, like all the beings in
nature, experiences the impulse of attraction and repulsion; the motion
excited in him differing from that of other beings, only, because it is
more concealed, and frequently so hidden, that neither the causes which
excite it, nor their mode of action are known. This system of attraction
and repulsion is very ancient, although it required a NEWTON to develop
it. That love, to which the ancients attributed the unfolding, or
disentanglement of chaos, appears to have been nothing more than a
personification of the principle of attraction. All their allegories and
fables upon chaos, evidently indicate nothing more than the accord or
union that exists between analogous and homogeneous substances; from
whence resulted the existence of the universe: whilst discord or
repulsion, which they called SOIS, was the cause of dissolution,
confusion, and disorder; there can scarcely remain a doubt, but this was
the origin of the doctrines of the TWO PRINCIPLES. According to DIOGENES
LAERTIUS, the philosopher, EMPEDOCLES, asserted, that "_there is a
kind of affection by which the elements unite themselves; and a sort of
discord, by which they separate or remove themselves._"

However it may be, it is sufficient for us to know that by an invariable
law, certain bodies are disposed to unite with more or less facility;
whilst others cannot combine or unite themselves: water combines itself
readily with salt, but will not blend with oil. Some combinations are
very strong, cohering with great force, as metals; others are extremely
feeble, their cohesion slight and easily decomposed, as in fugitive
colours. Some bodies, incapable of uniting by themselves, become
susceptible of union by the agency of other bodies, which serve for
common bonds or MEDIUMS. Thus, oil and water, naturally heterogeneous,
combine and make soap, by the intervention of alkaline salt. From matter
diversely combined, in proportions varied almost to infinity, result
all physical and moral bodies; the properties and qualities of which are
essentially different, with modes of action more or less complex: which
are either understood with facility, or difficult of comprehension,
according to the elements or matter that has entered into their
composition, and the various modifications this matter has undergone.

It is thus, from the reciprocity of their attraction, the primitive
imperceptible particles of matter, which constitute bodies, become
perceptible, form compound substances, aggregate masses; by the union
of similar and analogous matter, whose essences fit them to cohere. The
same bodies are dissolved, their union broken, whenever they undergo the
action of matter inimical to their junction. Thus by degrees are formed,
plants, metals, animals, men; each grows, expands, and increases in its
own system or order; sustaining itself in its respective existence,
by the continual attraction of analogous matter; to which it becomes
united, and by which it is preserved and strengthened. Thus, certain
aliments become fit for the sustenance of man, whilst others destroy his
existence: some are pleasant to him, strengthen his habit; others
are repugnant to him, weaken his system: in short, never to separate
physical from moral laws, it is thus that men, mutually attracted
to each other by their reciprocal wants, form those unions which we
designate by the terms, MARRIAGE, FAMILIES, SOCIETIES, FRIENDSHIPS,
CONNEXIONS: it is thus that virtue strengthens and consolidates them;
that vice relaxes or totally dissolves them.

Of whatever nature may be the combination of beings, their motion has
always one direction or tendency: without direction we could not have
any idea of motion: this direction is regulated by the properties of
each being; as soon as they have any given properties, they necessarily
act in obedience to them: that is to say, they follow the law invariably
determined by these same properties; which, of themselves, constitute
the being such as he is found, and settle his mode of action, which
is always the consequence of his manner of existence. But what is the
general direction, or common tendency, we see in all beings? What is
the visible and known end of all their motion? It is to conserve their
actual existence--to preserve themselves--to strengthen their several
bodies--to attract that which is favorable to them--to repel that
which is injurious them--to avoid that which can harm them--to resist
impulsions contrary to their manner of existence, and to their natural
tendency.

To exist, is to experience the motion peculiar to a determinate essence:
to conserve this existence, is to give and receive that motion from
which results its maintenance:--it is to attract matter suitable
to corroborate its being--to avoid that by which it may be either
endangered or enfeebled. Thus, all beings of which we have any
knowledge, have a tendency to conserve themselves, each after its
peculiar manner: the stone, by the firm adhesion of its particles,
opposes resistance to its destruction. Organized beings conserve
themselves by more complicated means, but which are, nevertheless,
calculated to maintain their existence against that by which it may
be injured. Man, both in his physical and in his moral capacity, is
a living, feeling, thinking, active being; who, every instant of his
duration, strives equally to avoid that which may be injurious, and to
procure that which is pleasing to him, or that which is suitable to his
mode of existence; all his actions tending solely to conserve himself.
ST. AUGUSTINE admits this tendency in all whether organized or not.

Conservation, then, is the common point to which all the energies, all
the powers, all the faculties of beings, seem continually directed.
Natural philosophers call this direction or tendency, SELF-GRAVITATION:
NEWTON calls it INERT FORCE: moralists denominate it in man, SELF-LOVE
which is nothing more than the tendency he has to preserve himself--a
desire of happiness--a love of his own welfare--a wish for pleasure--a
promptitude in seizing on every thing that appears favourable to
his conservation--a marked aversion to all that either disturbs his
happiness, or menaces his existence--primitive sentiments, that are
common to all beings of the human species; which all their faculties are
continually striving to satisfy; which all their passions, their wills,
their actions, have eternally for their object and their end. This
self-gravitation, then, is clearly a necessary disposition in man,
and in all other beings; which, by a variety means, contribute to the
preservation of the existence they have received, as long as nothing
deranges the order of their machine, or its primitive tendency.

Cause always produces effect; there can be no effect without cause.
Impulse is always followed by some motion, more or less sensible; by
some change, more or less remarkable in the body which receives it.
But motion, and its various modes of displaying itself, is, as has been
already shewn, determined by the nature, the essence, the properties,
the combinations of the beings acting. It must, then, be concluded that
motion, or the modes by which beings act, arises from some cause; that
as this cause is not able to move or act, but in conformity with the
manner of its being or its essential properties, it must equally be
concluded, that all the phenomena we perceive are necessary; that every
being in Nature, under the circumstances in which it is placed, and with
the given properties it possesses, cannot act otherwise than it does.

Necessity is the constant and infallible relation of causes with their
effects. Fire consumes, of necessity, combustible matter plated within
its circuit of action: man, by fatality, desires either that which
really is, or appears to be serviceable to his welfare. Nature, in all
the extraordinary appearances she exhibits, necessarily acts after her
own peculiar essence: all the beings she contains, necessarily act each
after its own a individual nature: it is by motion that the whole has
relation with its parts; and these parts with the whole: it is thus
that in the general system every thing is connected: it is itself but
an immense chain of causes and effects, which flow without ceasing, one
from the other. If we reflect, we shall be obliged to acknowledge that
every thing we see is necessary; that it cannot be otherwise than it is;
that all the beings we behold, as well as those which escape our
sight, act by invariable laws. According to these laws, heavy
bodies fall--light bodies ascend--analogous substances attract each
other--beings tend to preserve themselves--man cherishes himself; loves
that which he thinks advantageous--detests that which he has an idea may
prove unfavourable to him.--In fine, we are obliged to admit, there
can be no perfectly independent energy--no separated cause--no detached
action, in a nature where all the beings are in a reciprocity of
action--who, without interruption, mutually impel and resist each
other--who is herself nothing more than an eternal circle of motion,
given and received according to necessary laws; which under the same
given incidents, invariably produce the same effect.

Two examples will serve to throw the principle here laid down, into
light--one shall be taken from physics, the other from morals.

In a whirlwind of dust, raised by elemental force, confused as it
appears to our eyes, in the most frightful tempest excited by contrary
winds, when the waves roll high as mountains, there is not a single
particle of dust, or drop of water, that has been placed by CHANCE, that
has not a cause for occupying the place where it is found; that does
not, in the most rigorous sense of the word, act after the manner in
which it ought to act; that is, according to its own peculiar essence,
and that of the beings from whom it receives this communicated force.
A geometrician exactly knew the different energies acting in each case,
with the properties of the particles moved, could demonstrate that after
the causes given, each particle acted precisely as it ought to act, and
that it could not have acted otherwise than it did.

In those terrible convulsions that sometimes agitate political
societies, shake their foundations, and frequently produce the overthrow
of an empire; there is not a single action, a single word, a single
thought, a single will, a single passion in the agents, whether they act
as destroyers, or as victims, that is not the necessary result of the
causes operating; that does not act, as, of necessity, it must act, from
the peculiar essence of the beings who give the impulse, and that of the
agents who receive it, according to the situation these agents fill in
the moral whirlwind. This could be evidently proved by an understanding
capacitated to rate all the action and re-action, of the minds and
bodies of those who contributed to the revolution.

In fact, if all be connected in Nature, if all motion be produced,
the one from the other, notwithstanding their secret communications
frequently elude our sight; we ought to feel convinced of this truth,
that there is no cause, however minute, however remote, that does not
sometimes produce the greatest and most immediate effects on man. It
may, perhaps, be in the parched plains of Lybia, that are amassed
the first elements of a storm or tempest, which, borne by the winds,
approach our climate, render our atmosphere dense, and thus operating
on the temperament, may influence the passions of a man, whose
circumstances shall have capacitated him to influence many others, who
shall decide after his will the fate of many nations.

Man, in fact, finds himself in Nature, and makes a part of it: he acts
according to laws, which are appropriate to him; he receives in a manner
more or less distinct, the action and impulse of the beings who surround
him; who themselves act after laws that are peculiar to their essence.
Thus he is variously modified; but his actions are always the result of
his own energy, and that of the beings who act upon him, and by whom he
is modified. This is what gives such variety to his determinations--what
generally produces such contradiction in his thoughts, his opinions,
his will, his actions; in short, in that motion, whether concealed or
visible, by which he is agitated. We shall have occasion, in the sequel,
to place this truth, at present so much contested, in a clearer light:
it will be sufficient for our purpose at present to prove, generally,
that every thing in Nature is necessary--that nothing to be found in it
can act otherwise than it does.

Motion, alternately communicated and received, establishes the
connection or relation between the different orders of beings: when they
are in the sphere of reciprocal action, attraction approximates
them; repulsion dissolves and separates them; the one strengthens and
preserves them; the other enfeebles and destroys them. Once combined,
they have a tendency to conserve themselves in that mode of existence,
by virtue of their _inert force_; in this they cannot succeed, because
they are exposed to the continual influence of all other beings, who
perpetually and successively act upon them; their change of form, their
dissolution, is requisite to the preservation of Nature herself: this is
the sole end we are able to assign her--to which we see her tend without
intermission--which she follows without interruption, by the destruction
and reproduction of all subordinate beings, who are obliged to submit to
her laws--to concur, by their mode of action, to the maintenance of her
active existence, so essentially requisite to the GREAT WHOLE.

It is thus each being is an individual, who, in the great family,
performs his necessary portion of the general labour--who executes the
unavoidable task assigned to him. All bodies act according to laws,
inherent in their peculiar essence, without the capability to swerve,
even for a single instant, from those according to which Nature herself
acts. This is the central power, to which all other powers, essences,
and energies, are submitted: she regulates the motions of beings, by the
necessity of her own peculiar essence: she makes them concur by various
modes to the general plan: this appears to be nothing more than the
life, action, and maintenance of the whole, by the continual change of
its parts. This object she obtains, in removing them, one by the other;
by that which establishes, and by that which destroys, the relation
subsisting between them; by that which gives them, and that which
deprives them of, their forms, combinations, proportions, and qualities,
according to which they act for a time, after a given mode; these are
afterwards taken from them, to make them act after a different manner.
It is thus that Nature makes them expand and change, grow and decline,
augment and diminish, approximate and remove, forms and destroys them,
according as she finds it requisite to maintain the whole; towards the
conservation which this Nature is herself essentially necessitated to
have a tendency.

This irresistible power, this universal necessity, this general energy,
then, is only a consequence of the nature of things; by virtue of which
every thing acts, without intermission, after constant and immutable
laws: these laws not varying more for the whole than for the beings of
which it is composed. Nature is an active living whole, to which all its
parts necessarily concur; of which, without their own knowledge, they
maintain the activity, the life, and the existence. Nature acts and
exists necessarily: all that she contains, necessarily conspires to
perpetuate her active existence. This is the decided opinion of PLATO,
when he says, "_matter and necessity are the same thing; this necessity
is the mother of the world._" In point of fact, we cannot go beyond this
aphorism, MATTER ACTS, BECAUSE IT EXISTS; AND EXISTS, TO ACT. If it be
enquired how, or for why, matter exists? We answer, we know not: but
reasoning by analogy, of what we do not know by that which we do, we
should be of opinion it exists necessarily, or because it contains
within itself a sufficient reason for its existence. In supposing it to
be created or produced by a being distinguished from it, or less known
than itself, (which it may be, for any thing we know to the contrary,)
we must still admit, that this being is necessary, and includes a
sufficient reason for his own existence. We have not then removed any of
the difficulty, we have not thrown a clearer light upon the subject, we
have not advanced a single step; we have simply laid aside a being,
of which we know some few of the properties, but of which we are still
extremely ignorant, to have recourse to a power, of which it is utterly
impossible we can, as long as we are men, form any distinct idea; of
which, notwithstanding it may be a truth, we cannot, by any means we
possess, demonstrate the existence. As, therefore, these must be at best
but speculative points of belief, which each individual, by reason of
its obscurity, may contemplate with different optics, under various
aspects, they surely ought to be left free for each to judge after his
own fashion: the Hindoo can have no just cause of enmity against
the Christian for his faith: this has no moral right to question
the Mussulman upon his; the numerous sects of each of the various
persuasions spread over the face of the earth, ought to make it a creed
to look with an eye of complacency on the deviation of the others;
and rest upon that great moral axiom, which is strictly conformable
to Nature, which contains the whole of man's happiness--"_Do not unto
another, that which do you not wish another should do unto you_;" for it
is evident, according to their own doctrines, out of all the variety of
systems, one only can be right.

We shall see in the sequel, how much man's imagination labours to
form an idea, of the energies of that Nature he has personified, and
distinguished from herself: in short, we shall examine some of the
ridiculous and pernicious inventions, which, for want of understanding
Nature, have been imagined to impede her course, to suspend her eternal
laws, to place obstacles to the necessity of things.





CHAP. V.

_Order and Confusion.--Intelligence.--Chance._


The observation of the necessary, regular, and periodical motion in the
universe, generated in the mind of man the idea of ORDER; this term,
in its original signification, represents nothing more than a mode of
considering, a facility of perceiving, together and separately, the
different relations of a whole; in which is discovered, by its manner of
existing and acting, a certain affinity or conformity with his own. Man,
in extending this idea to the universe, carried with him those methods
of considering things which are peculiar to himself: he has consequently
supposed there really existed in Nature affinities and relations, which
he classed under the name of ORDER; and others which appeared to him not
to conform to those, which he has ranked under the term of CONFUSION.

It is easy to comprehend, that this idea of order and confusion can have
no absolute existence in Nature, where every thing is necessary; where
the whole follows constant and invariable laws, which oblige each being,
in every moment of its duration, to submit to other laws, which
flow from its own peculiar mode of existence. Therefore it is in his
imagination, only, man finds a model of that which he terms order or
confusion; which, like all his abstract, metaphysical ideas, supposes
nothing beyond his reach. Order, however, is never more than the faculty
of conforming himself with the beings by whom he is environed, or with
the whole of which he forms a part.

Nevertheless, if the idea of order be applied to Nature, it will be
found to be nothing but a series of action or motion, which he judges
to conspire to one common end. Thus, in a body that moves, order is the
chain of action, the series of motion, proper to constitute it what it
is, and to maintain it in its actual state. Order, relatively to the
whole of Nature, is the concatenation of causes and effects, necessary
to her _active_ existence--to maintaining her constantly together; but,
as it has been proved in the chapter preceding, every individual being
is obliged to concur to this end, in the different ranks they occupy;
from whence it is a necessary deduction, that what is called the ORDER
OF NATURE, can never be more than a certain manner of considering the
necessity of things, to which all, of which man has any knowledge, is
submitted. That which is styled CONFUSION, is only a relative term, used
to designate that series of necessary action, that chain of requisite
motion, by which an individual being is necessarily changed or disturbed
in its mode of existence--by which it is instantaneously obliged to
alter its manner of action; but no one of these actions, no part of
this motion is capable, even for a single instant, of contradicting
or deranging the general order of Nature; from which all beings derive
their existence, their properties, the motion appropriate to each.

What is termed confusion in a being, is nothing more than its passage
into a new class, a new mode of existence; which necessarily carries
with it a new series of action, a new chain of motion, different from
that of which this being found itself susceptible in the preceding
rank it occupied. That which is called order, in Nature, is a mode of
existence, or a disposition of its particles, strictly _necessary_. In
every other assemblage of causes and effects, of worlds, as well as
in that which we inhabit, some sort of arrangement, some kind of order
would necessarily be established. Suppose the most incongruous, the
most heterogeneous substances were put into activity, and assembled by
a concatenation of extraordinary circumstances; they would form amongst
themselves, a complete order, a perfect arrangement. This is the true
notion of a property, which may be defined, an aptitude to constitute a
being, such as it is actually found, such as it is with respect to the
whole of which it makes a part.

Order, then, is nothing but necessity, considered relatively to the
series of actions, or the connected chain of causes and effects, that
it produces in the universe. What is the motion in our planetary system;
but a series of phenomena, operated upon according to necessary laws,
that regulate the bodies of which it is composed? In conformity to these
laws, the sun occupies the centre; the planets gravitate towards it, and
revolve round it, in regulated periods: the satellites of these planets
gravitate towards those which are in the centre of their sphere of
action, and describe round them their periodical route. One of these
planets, the earth which man inhabits, turns on its own axis; and by the
various aspects which its revolution obliges it to present to the sun,
experiences those regular variations which are called SEASONS. By a
sequence of the sun's action upon different parts of this globe, all its
productions undergo vicissitudes: plants, animals, men, are in a sort of
morbid drowsiness during _Winter_: in _Spring_, these beings re-animate,
to come as it were out of a long lethargy. In short, the mode in
which the earth receives the sun's beams, has an influence on all its
productions; these rays, when darted obliquely, do not act in the same
manner as when they fall perpendicularly; their periodical absence,
caused by the revolution of this sphere on itself, produces _night_ and
_day_. However, in all this, man never witnesses more than necessary
effects, flowing from the nature of things, which, whilst that remains
the same, can never be opposed with propriety. These effects are owing
to gravitation, attraction, centrifugal power, &c.

On the other hand, this _order_, which man admires as a supernatural
effect, is sometimes disturbed, or changed into what he calls
_confusion_: this confusion is, however, always a necessary consequence
of the laws of Nature; in which it is requisite to the support of the
whole that some of her parts should be deranged and thrown out of the
ordinary course. It is thus, COMETS present themselves so unexpectedly
to man's wondering eyes; their eccentric motion disturbs the
tranquillity of his planetary system; they excite the terror of the
misinstructed to whom every thing unusual is marvellous. The natural
philosopher, himself, conjectures that in former ages, these comets
have overthrown the surface of this mundane ball, and caused great
revolutions on the earth. Independent of this extraordinary _confusion_,
he is exposed to others more familiar to him: sometimes, the seasons
appear to have usurped each other's place; to have quitted their regular
order: sometimes the opposing elements seem to dispute among themselves
the dominion of the world; the sea bursts its limits; the solid earth
is shaken and rent asunder; mountains are in a state of conflagration;
pestilential diseases destroy both men and animals; sterility desolates
a country: then affrighted man utters piercing cries, offers up his
prayers to recall order; tremblingly raises his hands towards the Being
he supposes to be the author of all these calamities; nevertheless, the
whole of this afflicting confusion are necessary effects, produced by
natural causes; which act according to fixed laws, determined by their
own peculiar essence, and the universal essence of Nature: in which
every thing must necessarily be changed, moved, and dissolved; where
that which is called ORDER, must sometimes be disturbed and altered into
a new mode of existence; which to his deluded mind, to his imagination,
led astray by ignorance and want of reflection, appears CONFUSION.

There cannot possibly exist what is generally termed _a confusion of
Nature_: man finds order in every thing that is conformable to his
own mode of being; confusion in every thing by which it is opposed:
nevertheless, in Nature, all is in order; because none of her parts are
ever able to emancipate themselves from those invariable rules which
flow from their respective essences: there _is_ not, there _cannot_
be confusion in a whole, to the maintenance of which what is _called_
confusion is absolutely requisite; of which the general course can never
be discomposed, although individuals may be, and necessarily are; where
all the effects produced are the consequence of natural causes, that
under the circumstances in which they are placed, act only as they
infallibly are obliged to act.

It therefore follows, there can be neither monsters nor prodigies;
wonders nor miracles in Nature: those which are designated MONSTERS, are
certain combinations, with which the eyes of man are not familiarized;
but which, therefore, are not less the necessary effects of natural
causes. Those which he terms PRODIGIES, WONDERS, or SUPERNATURAL
effects, are phenomena of Nature, with whose mode of action he is
unacquainted; of which his ignorance does not permit him to ascertain
the principles; whose causes he cannot trace; but which his impatience,
his heated imagination, aided by a desire to explain, makes him
foolishly attribute to imaginary causes; which, like the idea of order,
have no existence but in himself; and which, that he may conceal his
own ignorance, that he may obtain more respect with the uninformed,
he places beyond Nature, out of which his experience is every instant
demonstrably proving that none of these things can have existence.

As for those effects which are called MIRACLES, that is to say, contrary
to the unalterable laws of Nature, it must be felt such things are
impossible; because, nothing can, for an instant, suspend the necessary
course of beings, without the whole of Nature was arrested; without
she was disturbed in her tendency. There have neither been wonders nor
miracles in Nature; except for those, who have not sufficiently studied
the laws, who consequently do not feel, that those laws can never be
contradicted, even in the most minute parts, without the whole being
destroyed, or at least without changing her essence, her mode of action;
that it is the height of folly to recur to supernatural causes to
explain the phenomena man beholds, before he becomes fully acquainted
with natural causes--with the powers and capabilities which Nature
herself contains.

_Order_ and _Confusion_, then, are only relative terms, by which man
designates the state in which particular beings find themselves. He
says, a being is in order, when all the motion it undergoes conspires to
favor its tendency to its own preservation; when it is conducive to the
maintenance of its actual existence: that it is in confusion when the
causes which move it disturb the harmony of its existence, or have a
tendency to destroy the equilibrium necessary to the conservation of its
actual state. Nevertheless, confusion, as we have shown, is nothing but
the passage of a being into a new order; the more rapid the progress,
the greater the confusion for the being that is submitted to it: that
which conducts man to what is called death, is, for him, the greatest
of all possible confusion. Yet this death is nothing more than a passage
into a new mode of existence: it is the eternal, the invariable, the
unconquerable law of Nature, to which the individuals of his order, each
in his turn, is obliged to submit.

The human body is said to be in order, when its various component parts
act in that mode, from which results the conservation of the whole; from
which emanates that which is the tendency of his actual existence;
in other words, when all the impulse he receives, all the motion he
communicates, tends to preserve his health, to render him happy, by
promoting the happiness of his fellow men. He is said to be in health
when the fluids and solids of his body concur to render him robust, to
keep his mind in vigour; when each lends mutual aid towards this end. He
is said to be in _confusion_, or in ill health, whenever this tendency
is disturbed; when any of the essential parts of his body cease to
concur to his preservation, or to fulfil its peculiar functions. This
it is that happens in a state of sickness, in which, however, the motion
excited in the human machine is as necessary, is regulated by laws as
certain, as natural, as invariable, as that which concurs to produce
health. Sickness merely produces in him a new order of motion, a new
series of action, a new chain of things. Man dies: to him, this appears
the greatest confusion he can experience; his body is no longer what it
was--its parts no longer concur to the same end--his blood has lost
its circulation--he is deprived of feeling--his ideas have vanished--he
thinks no more--his desires have fled--death is the epoch, the cessation
of his human existence.--His frame becomes an inanimate mass, by the
subtraction of those principles by which it was animated; that is, which
made it act after a determinate manner: its tendency has received a
new direction; its action is changed; the motion excited in its ruins
conspires to a new end. To that motion, the harmony of which he calls
order, which produced life, sentiment, thought, passions, health,
succeeds a series of motion of another species; that, nevertheless,
follows laws as necessary as the first; all the parts of the dead
man conspire to produce what is called dissolution, fermentation,
putrefaction: these new modes of being, of acting, are just as natural
to man, reduced to this state, as sensibility, thought, the periodical
motion of the blood, &c. were to the living man: his essence having
changed, his mode of action can no longer be the same. To that regulated
motion, to that necessary action, which conspired to the production
of life, succeeds that determinate motion, that series of action which
concurs to produce the dissolution of the dead carcass; the dispersion
of its parts; the formation of new combinations, from which result new
beings; and which, as we have before seen, is the immutable order of
active Nature.

How then can it be too often repeated, that relatively to the great
whole, all the motion of beings, all their modes of action, can never be
but in order, that is to say, are always conformable to Nature; that in
all the stages through which beings are obliged to pass, they invariably
act after a mode necessarily subordinate to the universal whole? To say
more, each individual being always acts in order; all its actions,
the whole system of its motion, are the necessary consequence of its
peculiar mode of existence; whether that be momentary or durable. Order,
in political society, is the effect of a necessary series of ideas,
of wills, of actions, in those who compose it; whose movements are
regulated in a manner, either calculated to maintain its indivisibility,
or to hasten its dissolution. Man constituted, or modified, in the
manner we term virtuous, acts necessarily in that mode, from whence
results the welfare of his associates: the man we stile wicked, acts
necessarily in that mode, from whence springs the misery of his fellows:
his Nature, being essentially different, he must necessarily act after
a different mode: his individual order is at variance, but his relative
order is complete: it is equally the essence of the one, to promote
happiness, as it is of the other to induce misery.

Thus, order and confusion in individual beings, is nothing more than
the manner of man's considering the natural and necessary effects, which
they produce relatively to himself. He fears the wicked man; he says
that he will carry confusion into society, because he disturbs its
tendency and places obstacles to its happiness. He avoids a falling
stone, because it will derange in him the order necessary to his
conservation. Nevertheless, order and confusion, are always, as we
have shewn, consequences, equally necessary to either the transient or
durable state of beings. It is in order that fire burns, because it
is of its essence to burn; on the other hand, it is in order, that an
intelligent being should remove himself from whatever can disturb his
mode of existence. A being, whose organization renders him sensible,
must in virtue of his essence, fly from every thing that can injure his
organs, or that can place his existence in danger.

Man calls those beings _intelligent_, who are organized after his
own manner; in whom he sees faculties proper for their preservation;
suitable to maintain their existence in the order that is convenient to
them; that can enable them to take the necessary measures towards this
end, with a consciousness of the motion they undergo. From hence, it
will be perceived, that the faculty called intelligence, consists in a
possessing capacity to act comformably to a known end, in the being
to which it is attributed. He looks upon these beings as deprived of
intelligence, in which he finds no conformity with himself; in whom
he discovers neither the same construction, nor the same faculties:
of which he knows neither the essence, the end to which they tend, the
energies by which they act, nor the order that is necessary to them. The
whole cannot have a distinct name, or end, because there is nothing out
of itself, to which it can have a tendency. If it be in himself, that
he arranges the idea of _order_, it is also in himself, that he draws up
that of _intelligence_. He refuses to ascribe it to those beings, who
do not act after his own manner: he accords it to all those whom he
supposes to act like himself: the latter he calls intelligent agents:
the former blind causes; that is to say, intelligent agents who act
by _chance_: thus chance is an empty word without sense, but which
is always opposed to that of intelligence, without attaching any
determinate, or any certain idea.

Man, in fact, attributes to _chance_ all those effects, of which the
connection they have with their causes is not seen. Thus he uses the
word _chance_, to cover his ignorance of those natural causes, which
produce visible effects, by means which he cannot form an idea of; or
that act by a mode of which he does not perceive the order; or whose
system is not followed by actions conformable to his own. As soon as he
sees, or believes he sees, the order of action, or the manner of motion,
he attributes this order to an _intelligence_; which is nothing more
than a quality borrowed from himself--from his own peculiar mode of
action--from the manner in which he is himself affected.

Thus an _intelligent being_ is one who thinks, who wills, and who acts,
to compass an end. If so, he must have organs, an aim conformable to
those of man: therefore, to say Nature is governed by an intelligence,
is to affirm that she is governed by a being, furnished with organs;
seeing that without this organic construction, he can neither have
sensations, perceptions, ideas, thought, will, plan, nor action which he
understands.

Man always makes himself the center of the universe: it is to himself
that he relates all he beholds. As soon as he believes he discovers a
mode of action that has a conformity with his own, or some phenomenon
that interests his feelings, he attributes it to a cause that resembles
himself--that acts after his manner--that has faculties similar to those
he possesses--whose interests are like his own--whose projects are in
unison with and have the same tendency as those he himself indulges: in
short, it is from himself, or the properties which actuate him, that he
forms the model of this cause. It is thus that man beholds, out of his
own species, nothing but beings who act differently from himself;
yet believes that he remarks in Nature an order similar to his own
ideas--views conformable to those which he himself possesses. He
imagines that Nature is governed by a cause whose intelligence is
conformable to his own, to whom he ascribes the honor of the order which
he believes he witnesses--of those views that fall in with those that
are peculiar to himself--of an aim which quadrates with that which is
the great end of all his own actions. It is true that man, feeling his
incapability of producing the vast, the multiplied effects of which he
witnesses the operation, when contemplating the universe, was under the
necessity of making a distinction between himself and the cause which
he supposed to be the author of such stupendous effects; he believed
he removed every difficulty, by amplifying in this cause all those
faculties of which he was himself in possession; adding others of which
his own self-love made him desirous, or which he thought would render
his being more perfect: thus, he gave JUPITER wings, with the faculty of
assuming any form he might deem convenient: it was thus, by degrees,
he arrived at forming an idea of that intelligent cause, which he has
placed above Nature, to preside over action--to give her that motion
of which he has chosen to believe she was in herself incapable. He
obstinately persists in regarding this Nature as a heap of dead, inert
matter, without form, which has not within itself the power of producing
any of those great effects, those regular phenomena, from which emanates
what he styles _the order of the Universe_. ANAXAGORAS is said to have
been the first who supposed the universe created and governed by an
intelligence: ARISTOTLE reproaches him with having made an automaton
of this intelligence; or in other words, with ascribing to it the
production of things, only when he was at a loss to account for their
appearance. From whence it may be deduced, that it is for want of being
acquainted with the powers of Nature, or the properties of matter, that
man has multiplied beings without necessity--that he has supposed the
universe under the government of an intelligent cause, which he is, and
perhaps always will be, himself the model: in fine, this cause has been
personified under such a variety of shapes, sexes, and names, that
a list of the deities he has at various times supposed to guide this
Nature, or to whom he has submitted her, makes a large volume that
occupies some years of his youthful education to understand. He only
rendered this cause more inconceivable, when he extended in it his own
faculties too much. He either annihilates, or renders it altogether
impossible, when he would attach to it incompatible qualities, which
he is obliged to do, to enable him to account for the contradictory and
disorderly effects he beholds in the world. In fact, he sees confusion
in the world; yet, notwithstanding his confusion contradicts the
plan, the power, the wisdom, the bounty of this intelligence, and the
miraculous order which he ascribes to it; he says, the extreme beautiful
arrangement of the whole, obliges him to suppose it to be the work of
a sovereign intelligence: unable, however, to reconcile this seeming
confusion with the benevolence he attaches to this cause, he had
recourse to another effort of his imagination; he made a new cause,
to whom he ascribed all the evil, all the misery, resulting from this
confusion: still, his own person served for the model; to which he
added those deformities which he had learned to hold in disrespect: in
multiplying these counter or destroying causes, he peopled Pandemonium.

It will no doubt be argued, that as Nature contains and produces
intelligent beings, either she must be herself intelligent, or else she
must be governed by an intelligent cause. We reply, intelligence is
a faculty peculiar to organized beings, that it is to say, to beings
constituted and combined after a determinate manner; from whence results
certain modes of action, which are designated under various names;
according to the different effects which these beings produce: wine
has not the properties called _wit_ and _courage_; nevertheless, it
is sometimes seen that it communicates those qualities to men, who are
supposed to be in themselves entirely devoid of them. It cannot be
said Nature is intelligent after the manner of any of the beings she
contains; but she can produce intelligent beings by assembling matter
suitable to their particular organization, from whose peculiar modes of
action will result the faculty called intelligence; who shall be capable
of producing certain effects which are the necessary consequence of this
property. I therefore repeat, that to have intelligence, designs and
views, it is requisite to have ideas; to the production of ideas, organs
or senses are necessary: this is what is neither said of Nature nor
of the causes he has supposed to preside over her actions. In short
experience warrants the assertion, it does more, it proves beyond
a doubt, that matter, which is regarded as inert and dead, assumes
sensible action, intelligence, and life, when it is combined and
organized after particular modes.

From what has been said, it must rationally be concluded that _order_ is
never more than the necessary or uniform connection of causes with
their effects; or that series of action which flows from the peculiar
properties of beings, so long as they remain in a given state; that
_confusion_ is nothing more than the change of this state; that in the
universe, all is necessarily in order, because every thing acts and
moves according to the various properties of the different beings it
contains; that in Nature there cannot be either confusion or real evil,
since every thing follows the laws of its natural existence; that there
is neither _chance_ nor any thing fortuitous in this Nature, where no
effect is produced without a sufficient, without a substantial cause;
where all causes act necessarily according to fixed and certain laws,
which are themselves dependant on the essential properties of these
causes or beings, as well as on the combination, which constitutes
either their transitory or permanent state; that intelligence is a mode
of acting, a method of existence natural to some particular beings; that
if this intelligence should be attributed to Nature, it would then be
nothing more than the faculty of conserving herself in active existence
by necessary means. In refusing to Nature the intelligence he himself
enjoys--in rejecting the intelligent cause which is supposed to be the
contriver of this Nature, or the principle of that _order_ he discovers
in her course, nothing is given to _chance_, nothing to a blind cause,
nothing to a power which is indistinguishable; but every thing he
beholds is attributed to real, to known causes; or to those which by
analogy are easy of comprehension. All that exists is acknowledged to
be a consequence of the inherent properties of eternal matter, which by
contact, by blending, by combination, by change of form, produces order
and confusion; with all those varieties which assail his sight, it
is himself who is blind, when he imagines blind causes:--man only
manifested his ignorance of the powers of motion, of the laws of Nature,
when he attributed, any of its effects to _chance_. He did not shew a
more enlightened feeling when he ascribed them to an intelligence, the
idea of which he borrowed from himself, but which is never in conformity
with the effects which he attributes to its intervention--he only
imagined words to supply the place of things--he made JUPITER, SATURN,
JUNO, and a thousand others, operate that which he found himself
inadequate to perform; he distinguished them from Nature, gave them an
amplification of his own properties, and believed he understood them by
thus obscuring ideas, which he never dared either define or analyze.





CHAP. VI.

_Moral and Physical Distinctions of Man.--His Origin._


Let us now apply the general laws we have scrutinized, to those beings
of Nature who interest us the most. Let us see in what man differs from
the other beings by which he is surrounded. Let us examine if he has not
certain points in conformity with them, that oblige him, notwithstanding
the different properties they respectively possess, to act in certain
respects according to the universal laws to which every thing is
submitted. Finally, let us enquire if the ideas he has formed of himself
in meditating on his own peculiar mode of existence, be chimerical, or
founded in reason.

Man occupies a place amidst that crowd, that multitude of beings,
of which Nature is the assemblage. His essence, that is to say, the
peculiar manner of existence, by which he is distinguished from other
beings, renders him susceptible of various modes of action, of a variety
of motion, some of which are simple and visible, others concealed and
complicated. His life itself is nothing more than a long series, a
succession of necessary and connected motion; which operates perpetual
changes in his machine; which has for its principle either causes
contained within himself, such as blood, nerves, fibres, flesh, bones;
in short, the matter, as well solid as fluid, of which his body is
composed--or those exterior causes, which, by acting upon him, modify
him diversely; such as the air with which he is encompassed, the
aliments by which he is nourished, and all those objects from which
he receives any impulse whatever, by the impression they make on his
senses.

Man, like all other beings in Nature, tends to his own destruction--he
experiences inert force--he gravitates upon himself--he is attracted by
objects that are contrary or repugnant to his existence--he seeks after
some--he flies, or endeavours to remove himself from others. It is this
variety of action, this diversity of modification of which the human
being is susceptible, that has been designated under such different
names, by such varied nomenclature. It will be necessary, presently, to
examine these closely and go more into detail.

However marvellous, however hidden, however secret, however complicated
may be the modes of action, which the human frame undergoes, whether
interiorly or exteriorly; whatever may be, or appear to be the impulse
he either receives or communicates, examined closely, it will be found
that all his motion, all his operations, all his changes, all his
various states, all his revolutions, are constantly regulated by the
same laws, which Nature has prescribed to all the beings she brings
forth--which she developes--which she enriches with faculties--of which
she increases the bulk--which she conserves for a season--which she ends
by decomposing, by destroying: obliging them to change their form.

Man, in his origin, is an imperceptible point, a speck, of which the
parts are without form; of which the mobility, the life, escapes his
senses; in short, in which he does not perceive any sign of those
qualities, called SENTIMENT, FEELING, THOUGHT, INTELLIGENCE, FORCE,
REASON, &c. Placed in the womb suitable to his expansion, this point
unfolds, extends, increases, by the continual addition of matter he
attracts, that is analogous to his being, which consequently assimilates
itself with him. Having quitted this womb, so appropriate to conserve
his existence, to unfold his qualities, to strengthen his habits; so
competent to give, for a season, consistence to the weak rudiments of
his frame; he travels through the stage of infancy; he becomes adult:
his body has then acquired a considerable extension of bulk, his motion
is marked, his action is visible, he is sensible in all his parts; he is
a living, an active mass; that is to say, a combination that feels and
thinks; that fulfils the functions peculiar to beings of his species.
But how has he become sensible? Because he has been by degrees
nourished, enlarged, repaired by the continual attraction that takes
place within himself, of that kind of matter which is pronounced inert,
insensible, inanimate; which is, nevertheless, continually combining
itself with his machine; of which it forms an active whole, that is
living, that feels, judges, reasons, wills, deliberates, chooses,
elects; that has the capability of labouring, more or less
efficaciously, to his own individual preservation; that is to say, to
the maintenance of the harmony of his existence.

All the motion and changes that man experiences in the course of his
life, whether it be from exterior objects or from those substances
contained within himself, are either favorable or prejudicial to his
existence; either maintain its order, or throw it into confusion; are
either in conformity with, or repugnant to, the essential tendency of
his peculiar mode of being. He is compelled by Nature to approve of
some, to disapprove of others; some of necessity render him happy,
others contribute to his misery; some become the objects of his most
ardent desire, others of his determined aversion: some elicit his
confidence, others make him tremble with fear.

In all the phenomena man presents, from the moment he quits the womb
of his mother, to that wherein he becomes the inhabitant of the silent
tomb, he perceives nothing but a succession of necessary causes and
effects, which are strictly conformable to those laws that are common
to all the beings in Nature. All his modes of action--all his
sensations--all his ideas--all his passions--every act of his
will--every impulse which he either gives or receives, are the necessary
consequences of his own peculiar properties, and those which he finds in
the various beings by whom he is moved. Every thing he does--every thing
that passes within himself--his concealed motion--his visible action,
are the effects of inert force--of self-gravitation--the attractive or
repulsive powers contained in his machine--of the tendency he has, in
common with other beings, to his own individual preservation; in short,
of that energy which is the common property of every being he beholds.
Nature, in man, does nothing more than shew, in a decided manner, what
belongs to the peculiar nature by which he is distinguished from the
beings of a different system or order.

The source of those errors into which man has fallen, when he has
contemplated himself, has its rise, as will presently be shown, in the
opinion he has entertained, that he moved by himself--that he always
acts by his own natural energy--that in his actions, in the will that
gave him impulse, he was independent of the general laws of Nature; and
of those objects which, frequently, without his knowledge, always in
spite of him, in obedience to these laws, are continually acting upon
him. If he had examined himself attentively, he must have acknowledged,
that none of the motion he underwent was spontaneous--he must have
discovered, that even his birth depended on causes, wholly out of the
reach of his own powers--that, it was without his own consent he entered
into the system in which he occupies a place--that, from the moment
in which he is born, until that in which he dies, he is continually
impelled by causes, which, in spite of himself, influence his frame,
modify his existence, dispose of his conduct. Would not the slightest
reflection have sufficed to prove to him, that the fluids, the solids,
of which his body is composed, as well as that concealed mechanism,
which he believes to be independent of exterior causes, are, in fact,
perpetually under the influence of these causes; that without them he
finds himself in a total incapacity to act? Would he not have seen,
that his temperament, his constitution, did in no wise depend on
himself--that his passions are the necessary consequence of this
temperament--that his will is influenced, his actions determined by
these passions; consequently by opinions, which he has not given to
himself, of which he is not the master? His blood, more or less heated
or abundant; his nerves more or less braced, his fibres more or less
relaxed, give him dispositions either transitory or durable--are not
these, at every moment decisive of his ideas; of his thoughts: of his
desires: of his fears: of his motion, whether visible or concealed? The
state in which he finds himself, does it not necessarily depend on the
air which surrounds him diversely modified; on the various properties
of the aliments which nourish him; on the secret combinations that form
themselves in his machine, which either preserve its order, or throw it
into confusion? In short, had man fairly studied himself, every thing
must have convinced him, that in every moment of his duration, he was
nothing more than a passive instrument in the hands of necessity.

Thus it must appear, that where all is connected, where all the causes
are linked one to the other, where the whole forms but one immense
chain, there cannot be any independent, any isolated energy; any
detached power. It follows then, that Nature, always in action, marks
out to man each point of the line he is bound to describe; establishes
the route, by which he must travel. It is Nature that elaborates, that
combines the elements of which he must be composed;--It is Nature that
gives him his being, his tendency, his peculiar mode of action. It is
Nature that develops him, expands him, strengthens him, increases his
bulk--preserves him for a season, during which he is obliged to fulfil
the task imposed on him. It is Nature, that in his journey through life,
strews on the road those objects, those events; those adventures,
that modify him in a variety of ways, that give him impulses which
are sometimes agreeable and beneficial, at others prejudicial and
disagreeable. It is Nature, that in giving him feeling, in supplying him
with sentiment, has endowed him with capacity to choose, the means to
elect those objects, to take those methods that are most conducive, most
suitable, most natural, to his conservation. It is Nature, who when he
has run his race, when he has finished his career, when he has
described the circle marked out for him, conducts him in his turn to
his destruction; dissolves the union of his elementary particles,
and obliges him to undergo the constant, the universal law; from the
operation of which nothing is exempted. It is thus, motion places man in
the matrix of his mother; brings him forth out of her womb; sustains
him for a season; at length destroys him; obliges him to return into
the bosom of Nature; who speedily reproduces him, scattered under an
infinity of forms; in which each of his particles run over again, in the
same manner, the different stages, as necessary as the whole had before
run over those of his preceding existence.

The beings of the human species, as well as all other beings, are
susceptible of two sorts of motion: the one, that of the mass, by which
an entire body, or some of its parts, are visibly transferred from one
place to another; the other, internal and concealed, of some of which
man is sensible, while some takes place without his knowledge, and is
not even to be guessed at, but by the effect it outwardly produces. In a
machine so extremely complex as man, formed by the combination of such
a multiplicity of matter, so diversified in its properties, so different
in its proportions, so varied in its modes of action, the motion
necessarily becomes of the most complicated kind; its dullness, as well
as its rapidity, frequently escapes the observation of those themselves,
in whom it takes place.

Let us not, then, be surprised, if, when man would account to himself
for his existence, for his manner of acting, finding so many obstacles
to encounter, he invented such strange hypotheses to explain the
concealed spring of his machine--if then this motion appeared to him,
to be different from that of other bodies, he conceived an idea, that he
moved and acted in a manner altogether distinct from the other beings in
Nature. He clearly perceived that his body, as well as different parts
of it, did act; but, frequently, he was unable to discover what
brought them into action: from whence he received the impulse: he then
conjectured he contained within himself a moving principle distinguished
from his machine, which secretly gave an impulse to the springs which
set this machine in motion; that moved him by its own natural energy;
that consequently he acted according to laws totally distinct from those
which regulated the motion of other beings: he was conscious of certain
internal motion, which he could not help feeling; but how could he
conceive, that this invisible motion was so frequently competent to
produce such striking effects? How could he comprehend, that a fugitive
idea, an imperceptible act of thought, was so frequently capacitated
to bring his whole being into trouble and confusion? He fell into the
belief, that he perceived within himself a substance distinguished from
that self, endowed with a secret force; in which he supposed existed
qualities distinctly differing from those, of either the visible
causes that acted on his organs, or those organs themselves. He did not
sufficiently understand, that the primitive cause which makes a stone
fall, or his arm move, are perhaps as difficult of comprehension,
as arduous to be explained, as those internal impulses, of which his
thought or his will are the effects. Thus, for want of meditating
Nature--of considering her under her true point of view--of remarking
the conformity--of noticing the simultaneity, the unity of the motion
of this fancied motive-power with that of his body--of his material
organs--he conjectured he was not only a distinct being, but that he was
set apart, with different energies, from all the other beings in Nature;
that he was of a more simple essence having nothing in common with any
thing by which he was surrounded; nothing that connected him with all
that he beheld.

It is from thence has successively sprung his notions of SPIRITUALITY,
IMMATERIALITY, IMMORTALITY; in short, all those vague unmeaning words
he has invented by degrees, in order to subtilize and designate the
attributes of the unknown power, which he believes he contains within
himself; which he conjectures to be the concealed principle of all his
visible actions when man once imbibes an idea that he cannot comprehend,
he meditates upon it until he has given it a complete personification:
Thus he saw, or fancied he saw, the igneous matter pervade every thing;
he conjectured that it was the only principle of life and activity; he
proceeded to embody it; he gave it his own form; called it JUPITER, and
ended by worshipping this image of his own creation, as the power from
whom he derived every good he experienced, every evil he sustained.
To crown the bold conjectures he ventured to make on this internal
motive-power, he supposed, that different from all other beings, even
from the body that served to envelope it, it was not bound to undergo
dissolution; that such was its perfect simplicity, that it could not
be decomposed, nor even change its form; in short, that it was by
its essence exempted from those revolutions to which he saw the body
subjected, as well as all the compound beings with which Nature is
filled.

Thus man, in his own ideas, became double; he looked upon himself as a
whole, composed by the inconceivable assemblage of two different, two
distinct natures, which have no point of analogy between themselves: he
distinguished two substances in himself; one evidently submitted to
the influence of gross beings, composed of coarse inert matter: this
he called BODY;--the other, which he supposed to be simple, of a purer
essence, was contemplated as acting from itself: giving motion to the
body, with which it found itself so miraculously united: this he called
SOUL, or SPIRIT; the functions of the one, he denominated _physical,
corporeal, material_; the functions of the other he styled _spiritual,
intellectual._ Man, considered relatively to the first, was termed the
PHYSICAL MAN; viewed with relation to the last, he was designated the
MORAL MAN. These distinctions, although adopted by the greater number of
the philosophers of the present day, are, nevertheless, only founded
on gratuitous suppositions. Man has always believed he remedied his
ignorance of things, by inventing words to which he could never attach
any true sense or meaning. He imagined he understood matter, its
properties, its faculties, its resources, its different combinations,
because he had a superficial glimpse of some of its qualities: he has,
however, in reality, done nothing more than obscure the faint ideas he
has been capacitated to form of this matter, by associating it with a
substance much less intelligible than itself. It is thus, speculative
man, in forming words, in multiplying beings, has only plunged himself
into greater difficulties than those he endeavoured to avoid; and
thereby placed obstacles to the progress of his knowledge: whenever he
has been deficient of facts, he has had recourse to conjecture, which he
quickly changed into fancied realities. Thus, his imagination, no longer
guided by experience, hurried on by his new ideas, was lost, without
hope of return, in the labyrinth of an ideal, of an intellectual world,
to which he had himself given birth; it was next to impossible to
withdraw him from this delusion, to place him in the right road, of
which nothing but experience can furnish him the clue. Nature points out
to man, that in himself, as well as in all those objects which act upon
him, there is never more than matter endowed with various properties,
diversely modified, that acts by reason of these properties: that man is
an organized whole, composed of a variety of matter; that like all the
other productions of Nature, he follows general and known laws, as
well as those laws or modes of action which are peculiar to himself and
unknown.

Thus, when it shall be inquired, what is man?

We say, he is a material being, organized after a peculiar manner;
conformed to a certain mode of thinking--of feeling; capable
of modification in certain modes peculiar to himself--to his
organization--to that particular combination of matter which is found
assembled in him.

If, again, it be asked, what origin we give to beings of the human
species?

We reply, that, like all other beings, man is a production of Nature,
who resembles them in some respects, and finds himself submitted to
the same laws; who differs from them in other respects, and follows
particular laws, determined by the diversity of his conformation.

If, then, it be demanded, whence came man?

We answer, our experience on this head does not capacitate us to resolve
the question: but that it cannot interest us, as it suffices for us to
know that man exists; that he is so constituted, as to be competent to
the effects we witness.

But it will be urged, has man always existed? Has the human species
existed from all eternity; or is it only an instantaneous production of
Nature? Have there been always men like ourselves? Will there always
be such? Have there been, in all times, males and females? Was there a
first man, from whom all others are descended? Was the animal anterior
to the egg, or did the egg precede the animal? Is this species without
beginning? Will it also be without end? The species itself, is it
indestructible, or does it pass away like its individuals? Has man
always been what he now is; or has he, before he arrived at the state in
which we see him, been obliged to pass under an infinity of successive
developements? Can man at last flatter himself with having arrived at
a fixed being, or must the human species again change? If man is the
production of Nature, it will perhaps be asked, Is this Nature competent
to the production of new beings, to make the old species disappear?
Adopting this supposition, it may be inquired, why Nature does not
produce under our own eyes new beings--new species?

It would appear on reviewing these questions, to be perfectly
indifferent, as to the stability of the argument we have used, which
side was taken; that, for want of experience, hypothesis must settle a
curiosity that always endeavours to spring forward beyond the boundaries
prescribed to our mind. This granted, the contemplator of Nature will
say, that he sees no contradiction, in supposing the human species, such
as it is at the present day, was either produced in the course of time,
or from all eternity: he will not perceive any advantage that can arise
from supposing that it has arrived by different stages, or successive
developements, to that state in which it is actually found. Matter is
eternal, it is necessary, but its forms are evanescent and contingent.
It may be asked of man, is he any thing more than matter combined, of
which the former varies every instant?

Notwithstanding, some reflections seem to favor the supposition, to
render more probable the hypothesis, that man is a production formed in
the course of time; who is peculiar to the globe he inhabits, who is the
result of the peculiar laws by which it is directed; who, consequently,
can only date his formation as coeval with that of his planet. Existence
is essential to the universe, or the total assemblage of matter
essentially varied that presents itself to our contemplation; the
combinations, the forms, however, are not essential. This granted,
although the matter of which the earth is composed has always existed,
this earth may not always have had its present form--its actual
properties; perhaps it may be a mass detached in the course of time from
some other celestial body;--perhaps it is the result of the spots, or
those encrustations which astronomers discover in the sun's disk,
which have had the faculty to diffuse themselves over our planetary
system;--perhaps the sphere we inhabit may be an extinguished or a
displaced comet, which heretofore occupied some other place in the
regions of space;--which, consequently, was then competent to produce
beings very different from those we now behold spread over its surface;
seeing that its then position, its nature, must have rendered its
productions different from those which at this day it offers to our
view.

Whatever may be the supposition adopted, plants, animals, men, can only
be regarded as productions inherent in and natural to our globe, in the
position and in the circumstances in which it is actually found: these
productions it would be reasonable to infer would be changed, if this
globe by any revolution should happen to shift its situation. What
appears to strengthen this hypothesis, is, that on our ball itself, all
the productions vary, by reason of its different climates: men, animals,
vegetables, minerals, are not the same on every part of it: they vary
sometimes in a very sensible manner, at very inconsiderable distances.
The elephant is indigenous to, or native of the torrid zone: the rein
deer is peculiar to the frozen climates of the North; Indostan is the
womb that matures the diamond; we do not find it produced in our own
country: the pine-apple grows in the common atmosphere of America; in
our climate it is never produced in the open ground, never until art has
furnished a sun analogous to that which it requires--the European in his
own climate finds not this delicious fruit. Man in different climates
varies in his colour, in his size, in his conformation, in his powers,
in his industry, in his courage, and in the faculties of his mind. But,
what is it that constitutes climate? It is the different position of
parts of the same globe, relatively to the sun; positions that suffice
to make a sensible variety in its productions.

There is, then, sufficient foundation to conjecture that if by any
accident our globe should become displaced, all its productions would of
necessity be changed; seeing that causes being no longer the same, or
no longer acting after the same manner, the effects would necessarily no
longer be what they now are, all productions, that they may be able to
conserve themselves, or maintain their actual existence, have occasion
to co-order themselves with the whole from which they have emanated.
Without this they would no longer be in a capacity to subsist: it is
this faculty of co-ordering themselves,--this relative adaption, which
is called the ORDER OF THE UNIVERSE: the want of it is called CONFUSION.
Those productions which are treated as MONSTROUS, are such as are unable
to co-order themselves with the general or particular laws of the beings
who surround them, or with the whole in which they find themselves
placed: they have had the faculty in their formation to accommodate
themselves to these laws; but these very laws are opposed to their
perfection: for this reason they are unable to subsist. It is thus that
by a certain analogy of conformation, which exists between animals of
different species, mules are easily produced; but these mules, unable to
co-order themselves with the beings that surround them, are not able to
reach perfection, consequently cannot propagate their species. Man can
live only in air, fish only in water: put the man into the water, the
fish into the air, not being able to co-order themselves with the fluids
which surround them, these animals will quickly be destroyed. Transport
by imagination, a man from our planet into SATURN, his lungs will
presently be rent by an atmosphere too rarified for his mode of being,
his members will be frozen with the intensity of the cold; he will
perish for want of finding elements analogous to his actual existence:
transport another into MERCURY, the excess of heat, beyond what his mode
of existence can bear, will quickly destroy him.

Thus, every thing seems to authorise the conjecture, that the human
species is a production peculiar to our sphere, in the position in which
it is found: that when this position may happen to change, the human
species will, of consequence, either be changed or will be obliged to
disappear; seeing that there would not then be that with which man could
co-order himself with the whole, or connect himself with that which can
enable him to subsist. It is this aptitude in man to co-order himself
with the whole, that not only furnishes him with the idea of order, but
also makes him exclaim "_whatever is, is right_;" whilst every thing is
only that which it can be, as long as the whole is necessarily what it
is; whilst it is positively neither good nor bad, as we understand those
terms: it is only requisite to displace a man, to make him accuse the
universe of confusion.

These reflections would appear to contradict the ideas of those, who
are willing to conjecture that the other planets, like our own, are
inhabited by beings resembling ourselves. But if the LAPLANDER differs
in so marked a manner from the HOTTENTOT, what difference ought we not
rationally to suppose between an inhabitant of our planet and one of
SATURN or of VENUS?

However it may be, if we are obliged to recur by imagination to the
origin of things, to the infancy of the human species, we may say that
it is probable that man was a necessary consequence of the disentangling
of our globe; or one of the results of the qualities, of the
properties, of the energies, of which it is susceptible in its present
position--that he was born male and female--that his existence is
co-ordinate with that of the globe, under its present position--that as
long as this co-ordination shall subsist, the human specie will conserve
himself, will propagate himself, according to the impulse, after
the primitive laws, which he has originally received--that if this
co-ordination should happen to cease; if the earth, displaced, should
cease to receive the same impulse, the same influence, on the part of
those causes which actually act upon it, or which give it energy; that
then the human species would change, to make place for new beings,
suitable to co-order themselves with the state that should succeed to
that which we now see subsist.

In thus supposing the changes in the position of our globe, the
primitive man did, perhaps, differ more from the actual man, than the
quadruped differs from the insect. Thus man, the same as every thing
else that exists on our planet, as well as in all the others, may be
regarded as in a state of continual vicissitude: thus the last term of
the existence of man is to us as unknown and as indistinct as the first:
there is, therefore, no contradiction in the belief that the species
vary incessantly--that to us it is as impossible to know what he will
become, as to know what he has been.

With respect to those who may ask why Nature does not produce new
beings? we may enquire of them in turn, upon what foundation they
suppose this fact? What it is that authorizes them to believe this
sterility in Nature? Know they if, in the various combinations which
she is every instant forming, Nature be not occupied in producing new
beings, without the cognizance of these observers? Who has informed them
that this Nature is not actually assembling, in her immense elaboratory,
the elements suitable to bring to light, generations entirely new,
that will have nothing in common with those of the species at present
existing? What absurdity then, or what want of just inference would
there be, to imagine that the man, the horse, the fish, the bird, will
be no more? Are these animals so indispensably requisite to Nature, that
without them she cannot continue her eternal course? Does not all change
around us? Do we not ourselves change? Is it not evident that the whole
universe has not been, in its anterior eternal duration, rigorously the
same that it now is? that it is impossible, in its posterior eternal
duration, it can be rigidly in the same state that it now is for a
single instant? How, then, pretend to divine that, to which the
infinite succession of destruction, of reproduction, of combination, of
dissolution, of metamorphosis, of change, of transposition, may be able
eventually to conduct it by their consequence? Suns encrust themselves,
and are extinguished; planets perish and disperse themselves in the vast
plains of air; other suns are kindled, and illumine their systems; new
planets form themselves, either to make revolutions round these suns,
or to describe new routes; and man, an infinitely small portion of the
globe, which is itself but an imperceptible point in the immensity
of space, vainly believes it is for himself this universe is made;
foolishly imagines he ought to be the confident of Nature; confidently
flatters himself he is eternal: and calls himself KING OF THE
UNIVERSE!!!

O man! wilt thou never conceive, that thou art but an ephemeron? All
changes in the great macrocosm: nothing remains the same an instant, in
the planet thou inhabitest: Nature contains no one constant form, yet
thou pretendest thy species can never disappear; that thou shalt be
exempted from the universal law, that wills all shall experience
change! Alas! In thy actual being, art not thou submitted to continual
alterations? Thou, who in thy folly, arrogantly assumest to thyself the
title of KING OF NATURE! Thou, who measurest the earth and the heavens!
Thou, who in thy vanity imaginest, that the whole was made, because thou
art intelligent! There requires but a very slight accident, a single
atom to be displaced, to make thee perish; to degrade thee; to ravish
from thee this intelligence of which thou appearest so proud.

If all the preceding conjectures be refused by those opposed to us; if
it be pretended that Nature acts by a certain quantum of immutable and
general laws; if it be believed that men, quadrupeds, fish, insects,
plants, are from all eternity, and will remain eternally, what they now
are: if I say it be contended, that from all eternity the stars have
shone, in the immense regions of space, have illuminated the firmament;
if it be insisted, we must no more demand why man is such as he appears,
then ask why Nature is such as we behold her, or why the world exists?
We are no longer opposed to such arguments. Whatever may be the system
adopted, it will perhaps reply equally well to the difficulties with
which our opponents endeavour to embarrass the way: examined closely, it
will be perceived they make nothing against those truths, which we have
gathered from experience. It is not given to man to know every thing--it
is not given him to know his origin--it is not given him to penetrate
into the essence of things, nor to recur to first principles--but it is
given him, to have reason, to have honesty, to ingenuously allow he
is ignorant of that which he cannot know, and not to substitute
unintelligible words, absurd suppositions, for his uncertainty. Thus, we
say to those, who to solve difficulties far above their reach, pretend
that the human species descended from a first man and a first woman,
created diversely according to different creeds;--that we have some
ideas of Nature, but that we have none of creation;--that the human mind
is incapable of comprehending the period when all was nothing;--that to
use words we cannot understand, is only in other terms to acknowledge
our ignorance of the powers of Nature;--that we are unable to fathom
the means by which she has been capacitated to produce the phenomena we
behold.

Let us then conclude, that man has no just, no solid reason to believe
himself a privileged being in Nature; because he is subject to the same
vicissitudes, as all her other productions. His pretended prerogatives
have their foundation in error, arising from mistaken opinions
concerning his existence. Let him but elevate himself by his thoughts
above the globe he inhabits, he will look upon his own species with
the same eyes he does all other beings in Nature: He will then clearly
perceive that in the same manner that each tree produces its fruit, by
reason of its energies, in consequence of its species: so each man acts
by reason of his particular energy; that he produces fruit, actions,
works, equally necessary: he will feel that the illusion which he
anticipates in favour of himself, arises from his being, at one and the
same time, a spectator and a part of the universe. He will acknowledge,
that the idea of excellence which he attaches to his being, has no other
foundation than his own peculiar interest; than the predilection he
has in favour of himself--that the doctrine he has broached with such
seeming confidence, bottoms itself on a very suspicious foundation,
namely IGNORANCE and SELF-LOVE.





CHAP. VII.

_The Soul and the Spiritual System_.


Man, after having gratuitously supposed himself composed of two distinct
independent substances, that have no common properties, relatively with
each other; has pretended, as we have seen, that that which actuated him
interiorly, that motion which is invisible, that impulse which is
placed within himself, is essentially different from those which act
exteriorly. The first he designated, as we have already said, by the
name of a SPIRIT or a SOUL. If however it be asked, what is a spirit?
The moderns will reply, that the whole fruit of their metaphysical
researches is limited to learning that this motive-power, which they
state to be the spring of man's action, is a substance of an unknown
nature; so simple, so indivisible, so deprived of extent, so invisible,
so impossible to be discovered by the senses, that its parts cannot be
separated, even by abstraction or thought. The question then arises, how
can we conceive such a substance, which is only the negation of every
thing of which we have a knowledge? How form to ourselves an idea of a
substance, void of extent, yet acting on our senses; that is to say,
on those organs which are material, which have extent? How can a
being without extent be moveable; how put matter in action? How can a
substance devoid of parts, correspond successively with different parts
of space? But a very cogent question presents itself on this occasion:
if this distinct substance that is said to form one of the component
parts of man, be really what it is reported, and if it be not, it is
not what it is described; if it be unknown, if it be not pervious to
the senses; if it be invisible, by what means did the metaphysicians
themselves become acquainted with it? How did they form ideas of a
substance, that taking their own account of it, is not, under any of its
circumstances, either directly or by analogy, cognizable to the mind of
man? If they could positively achieve this, there would no longer be any
mystery in Nature: it would be as easy to conceive the time when all was
nothing, when all shall have passed away, to account for the
production of every thing we behold, as to dig in a garden or read a
lecture.--Doubt would vanish from the human species; there could no
longer be any difference of opinion, since all must necessarily be of
one mind on a subject so accessible to every enquirer.

But it will be replied, the materialist himself admits, the natural
philosophers of all ages have admitted, elements and atoms, beings
simple and indivisible, of which bodies are composed:--granted; they
have no more: they have also admitted that many of these atoms, many
of these elements, if not all, are unknown to them: nevertheless, these
simple beings, these atoms of the materialist, are not the same thing
with the spirit, or the soul of the metaphysician. When the natural
philosopher talks of atoms--when he describes them as simple beings,
he indicates nothing more than that they are homogeneous, pure, without
mixture: but then he allows that they have extent, consequently parts,
are separable by thought, although no other natural agent with which
he is acquainted is capable of dividing them: that the simple beings
of this genus are susceptible of motion--can impart action--receive
impulse--are material--are placed in Nature--are indestructible;--that
consequently, if he cannot know them from themselves, he can form some
idea of them by analogy: thus he has done that intelligibly, which the
metaphysician would do unintelligibly: the latter, with a view to render
man immortal, finding difficulties to his wish, from seeing that
the body decayed--that it has submitted to the great, the universal
law--has, to solve the difficulty, to remove the impediment, given him a
soul, distinct from the body, which he says is exempted from the action
of the general law: to account for this, he has called it a spiritual
being, whose properties are the negation of all known properties,
consequently inconceivable: had he, however, had recourse to the atoms
of the former--had he made this substance the last possible term of the
division of matter--it would at least have been intelligible; it would
also have been immortal, since, according to the reasonings of all men,
whether metaphysicians, theologians, or natural philosophers, an atom is
an indestructible element, that must exist to all eternity.

All men are agreed in this position, that motion is the successive
change of the relations of one body with other bodies, or with
the different parts of space. If that which is called _spirit_ be
susceptible of communicating or receiving motion--if it acts--if
it gives play to the organs of body--to produce these effects, it
necessarily follows that this being changes successively its relation,
its tendency, its correspondence, the position of its parts, either
relatively to the different points of space, or to the different organs
of the body which it puts in action: but to change its relation
with space, with the organs to which it gives impulse, it follows of
necessity that this spirit most have extent, solidity, consequently
distinct parts: whenever a substance possesses these qualities, it
is what we call MATTER, it can no longer be regarded as a simple pure
being, in the sense attached to it by the moderns, or by theologians.

Thus it will be seen, that those who, to conquer insurmountable
difficulties, have supposed in man an immaterial substance,
distinguished from his body, have not thoroughly understood themselves;
indeed they have done nothing more than imagined a negative quality,
of which they cannot have any correct idea: matter alone is capable of
acting on our senses; without this action nothing would be capable
of making itself known to us. They have not seen that a being without
extent is neither in a capacity to move itself, nor has the capability
of communicating motion to the body; since such a being, having no
parts, has not the faculty of changing its relation, or its distance,
relatively to other bodies, nor of exciting motion in the human body,
which is itself material. That which is called our soul moves itself
with us; now motion is a property of matter--this soul gives impulse to
the arm; the arm, moved by it, makes an impression, a blow, that follows
the general law of motion: in this case, the force remaining the same,
if the mass was two-fold, the blow should be double. This soul again
evinces its materiality in the invincible obstacles it encounters on
the part of the body. If the arm be moved by its impulse when nothing
opposes it, yet this arm can no longer move, when it is charged with
a weight beyond its strength. Here then is a mass of matter that
annihilates the impulse given by a spiritual cause, which spiritual
cause having no analogy with matter, ought not to find more difficulty
in moving the whole world, than in moving a single atom, nor an atom,
than the universe. From this, it is fair to conclude, such a substance
is a chimera--a being of the imagination. That it required a being
differently endowed, differently constituted, to set matter in
motion--to create all the phenomena we behold: nevertheless, it is a
being the metaphysicians have made the contriver, the Author of Nature.
As man, in all his speculations, takes himself for the model, he no
sooner imagined a spirit within himself, than giving it extent, he
made it universal; then ascribed to it all those causes with which his
ignorance prevents him from becoming acquainted, thus he identified
himself with the Author of Nature--then availed himself of the
supposition to explain the connection of the soul with the body: his
self-complacency prevented his perceiving that he was only enlarging the
circle of his errors, by pretending to understand that which it is
more than possible he will never be permitted to know; his self-love
prevented him from feeling, that whenever he punished another for not
thinking as he did, that he committed the greatest injustice, unless he
was satisfactorily able to prove that other wrong, and himself right:
that if he himself was obliged to have recourse to hypothesis--to
gratuitous suppositions, whereon to found his doctrine, that from the
very fallibility of his nature, these might be erroneous: thus GALLILEO
was persecuted, because the metaphysicians, the theologians of his day,
chose to make others believe what it was evident they did not themselves
understand.

As soon as I feel an impulse, or experience motion, I am under the
necessity to acknowledge extent, solidity, density, impenetrability in
the substance I see move, or from which I receive impulse: thus, when
action is attributed to any cause whatever, I am obliged to consider
it MATERIAL. I may be ignorant of its individual nature, of its mode
of action, or of its generic properties; but I cannot deceive myself in
general properties, which are common to all matter: this ignorance will
only be increased, when I shall take that for granted of a being, of
which from that moment I am precluded by what I admit from forming any
idea, which moreover deprives it completely either of the faculty of
moving itself, giving an impulse, or acting. Thus, according to the
received idea of the term, a spiritual substance that moves itself, that
gives motion to matter, and that acts, implies a contradiction, that
necessarily infers a total impossibility.

The partizans of spirituality believe they answer the difficulties they
have accumulated, by asserting that "_the soul is entire--is whole under
each point of its extent_." If an absurd answer will solve difficulties,
they certainly have done it. But let us examine this reply:--it will
be found that this indivisible part which is called soul, however
insensible or however minute, must yet remain something: then an
infinity of unextended substances, or the same substance having no
dimensions, repeated an infinity of times, would constitute a substance
that has extent: this cannot be what they mean, because according to
this principle, the human soul would then be as infinite as the Author
of Nature; seeing that they have stated this to be a being without
extent, who is an infinity of times whole in each part of the universe.
But when there shall appear as much solidity in the answer as there is
a want of it, it must be acknowledged that in whatever manner the spirit
or the soul finds itself in its extent, when the body moves forward the
soul does not remain behind; if so, it has a quality in common with
the body, peculiar to matter; since it is conveyed from place to place
jointly with the body. Thus, when even the soul should be admitted to
be immaterial, what conclusion must be drawn? Entirely submitted to the
motion of the body, without this body it would remain dead and inert.
This soul would only be part of a two-fold machine, necessarily impelled
forward by a concatenation, or connection with the whole. It would
resemble a bird, which a child conducts at its pleasure, by the string
with which it is bound.

Thus, it is for want of consulting experience, by not attending to
reason, that man has darkened his ideas upon the concealed principle of
his motion. If, disentangled from prejudice--if, destitute of gratuitous
suppositions--if, throwing aside error, he would contemplate his soul,
or the moving principle that acts within him, he would be convinced that
it forms a part of its body, that it cannot be distinguished from
it, but by abstraction; that it is only the body itself, considered
relatively with some of its functions, or with those faculties of which
its nature, or its peculiar organization, renders it susceptible:--he
will perceive that this soul is obliged to undergo the same changes as
the body; that it is born with it; that it expands itself with it;
that like the body, it passes through a state of infancy, a period of
weakness, a season of inexperience; that it enlarges itself, that it
strengthens itself, in the same progression; that like the body, it
arrives at an adult age or reaches maturity; that it is then, and not
till then, it obtains the faculty of fulfilling certain functions; that
it is in this stage, and in no other, that it enjoys reason; that it
displays more or less wit, judgment, and manly activity; that like the
body, it is subject to those vicissitudes which exterior causes obliges
it to undergo by their influence; that, conjointly with the body, it
suffers, enjoys, partakes of its pleasures, shares its pains, is sound
when the body is healthy, and diseased when the body is oppressed
with sickness; that like the body, it is continually modified by the
different degrees of density in the atmosphere; by the variety of the
seasons, and by the various properties of the aliments received into
the stomach: in short, he would be obliged to acknowledge that at some
periods it manifests visible signs of torpor, stupefaction, decrepitude,
and death.

In despite of this analogy, or rather this continual identity, of
the soul with the body, man has been desirous of distinguishing their
essence; he has therefore made the soul an inconceivable being: but
in order that he might form to himself some idea of it, he was,
notwithstanding, obliged to have recourse to material beings, and to
their manner of acting. The word _spirit_, therefore, presents to the
mind no other ideas than those of breathing, of respiration, of wind.
Thus, when it is said the _soul is a spirit_, it really means nothing
more than that its mode of action is like that of breathing: which
though invisible in itself, or acting without being seen, nevertheless
produces very visible effects. But breath, it is acknowledged, is a
material cause; it is allowed to be air modified; it is not, therefore,
a simple or pure substance, such as the moderns designate under the name
of SPIRIT.

It is rather singular that in the Hebrew, the Greek, and the Latin, the
synonymy, or corresponding term for spirit should signify _breath_.
The metaphysicians themselves can best say why they have adopted such
a word, to designate the substance they have distinguished from matter:
some of them, fearful they should not have distinct beings enough, have
gone farther, and compounded man of three substances, BODY, SOUL, and
INTELLECT.

Although the word _spirit_ is so very ancient among men, the sense
attached to it by the moderns is quite new: the idea of spirituality, as
admitted at this day, is a recent production of the imagination. Neither
PYTHAGORAS nor PLATO, however heated their brain, however decided
their taste for the marvellous, appear to have understood by spirit an
immaterial substance, or one without extent, devoid of parts; such as
that of which the moderns have formed the human soul, the concealed
author of motion. The ancients, by the word spirit, were desirous to
define matter of an extreme subtilty, of a purer quality than that which
acted grossly on our senses. In consequence, some have regarded the soul
as an ethereal substance; others as igneous matter; others again have
compared it to light. DEMOCRITUS made it consist in motion, consequently
gave it a manner of existence. ARISTOXENES, who was himself a musician,
made it harmony. ARISTOTLE regarded the soul as the moving faculty, upon
which depended the motion of living bodies.

The earliest doctors of Christianity had no other idea of the soul,
than that it was material. TERTULLIAN, ARNOBIUS, CLEMENT of ALEXANDRIA,
ORIGEN, SAINT JUSTIN, IRENAEUS, have all of them discoursed upon it; but
have never spoken of it other than as a corporeal substance--as matter.
It was reserved for their successors at a great distance of time, to
make the human soul and the soul of the world _pure spirits_; that is
to say, immaterial substances, of which it is impossible they could
form any accurate idea: by degrees this incomprehensible doctrine of
spirituality, conformable without doubt to the views of those who make
it a principle to annihilate reason, prevailed over the others: But
it might be fairly asked, if the pretended proofs of this doctrine owe
themselves to a man, who on a much more comprehensible point has been
proved in error; if, on that which time has shewn was accessible to
man's reason, the great champion in support of this dogma was deceived;
are we not bound to examine, with the most rigorous investigation, the
reasonings, the evidence, of one who was the decided, the proven child
of enthusiasm and error? Yet DESCARTES, to whose sublime errors the
world is indebted for the Newtonian system, although before him the
soul had been considered spiritual, was the first who established that,
"_that which thinks ought to be distinguished from matter_;" from whence
he concludes rather hastily, that the soul, or that which thinks in man,
is a spirit; or a simple indivisible substance. Perhaps it would have
been more logical, more consistent with reason, to have said, since
man, who is matter, who has no idea but of matter, enjoys the faculty of
thought, matter can think; that is, it is susceptible of that particular
modification called thought.

However this may be, this doctrine was believed divine, supernatural,
because it was inconceivable to man. Those who dared believe even that
which was believed before; namely, _that the soul was material_, were
held as rash inconsiderate madmen, or else treated as enemies to the
welfare and happiness of the human race. When man had once renounced
experience; when he had abjured his reason; when he had joined the
banner of this enthusiastic novelty; he did nothing more, day after day,
than subtilize the delirium, the ravings of his imagination: he pleased
himself by continually sinking deeper into the most unfathomable depths
of error: he felicitated himself on his discoveries; on his pretended
knowledge; in an exact ratio as his understanding became enveloped in
the mists of darkness, environed with the clouds of ignorance. Thus,
in consequence of man's reasoning upon false principles; of having
relinquished the evidence of his senses; the moving principle within
him, the concealed author of motion, has been made a mere chimera, a
mere being of the imagination, because he has divested it of all known
properties; because he has attached to it nothing but properties
which, from the very nature of his existence, he is incapacitated to
comprehend.

The doctrine of spirituality, such as it now exists, offers nothing but
vague ideas; or rather is the absense of all ideas. What does it present
to the mind, but a substance which possesses nothing of which our senses
enable us to have a knowledge? Can it be truth that a man is able to
figure to himself a being not material, having neither extent nor
parts, which, nevertheless, acts upon matter without having any point
of contact, any kind of analogy with it; and which itself receives the
impulse of matter by means of material organs, which announce to it the
presence of other beings? Is it possible to conceive the union of the
soul with the body; to comprehend how this material body can bind,
enclose, constrain, determine a fugitive being which escapes all our
senses? Is it honest, is it plain dealing, to solve these difficulties,
by saying there is a mystery in them; that they are the effects of a
power, more inconceivable than the human soul; than its mode of acting,
however concealed from our view? When to resolve these problems, man is
obliged to have recourse to miracles or to make the Divinity interfere,
does he not avow his own ignorance? When, notwithstanding the ignorance
he is thus obliged to avow by availing himself of the divine agency,
he tells us, this immaterial substance, this soul, shall experience the
action of the element of fire, which he allows to be material; when he
confidently says this soul shall be burnt; shall suffer in

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