because the properties of some beings are analogous to his own mode of existence; he is born, because it is of the nature of some matter to combine itself under a determinate form; he lives, he acts, he thinks, because it is of the essence of certain combinations to maintain themselves in existence for a season; at length he dies, because a necessary law prescribes that all the combinations which are formed, shall either be destroyed or dissolve themselves. From all this it results, that nature is impartial to all its productions; she submits man, like all other beings, to those eternal laws from which she has not been able to exempt herself: if she was to suspend these laws, even for an instant, from that moment disorder would reign in her system, and her harmony would be disturbed. sent time, she seems to have refused In contemplating man under his true aspect; in quitting authority to follow experience; in laying aside errour to consult reason; in submitting every thing to physical laws, from which his imagination has vainly exerted its utmost power to withdraw them; it will be found, that the phenomena of the moral world follow exactly the same general rules as those of the physical, and that the greater part of those astonishing effects, which ignorance aided by his prejudices, makes him consider as inexplicable and as wonderful, are natural consequences flowing from simple causes. He will find, that the eruption of a volcano and the birth of a Tamerlane are to nature the same thing; in recurring to the primitive causes of those striking events which he beholds with consternation, of those terrible revolutions, those frightful convulsions that distract mankind, lay waste the fairest works of nature, and ravage nations, he will find the wills that compassed the most surprising changes, that operated the most extensive alterations in the state of things, were moved by physical causes, whose exility made him treat them as contemptible, and as utterly incapable to give birth to the phenomena, whose magnitude strikes him with awe and amazement. Those who wish to study nature, must take experience for their guide; this, and this only, can enable them to dive into her secrets, and to unravel by degrees the frequently imperceptible woof of those slender causes of which she avails herself to operate the greatest phenomena: by the aid of experience, man often discovers in her new properties, perceives modes of action entirely unknown to the ages which have preceded him; those effects which his grandfathers contemplated as marvellous, which they regarded as supernatural efforts, looked upon as miracles, If man was to judge of causes by 34 have become familiar to him in the their effects, there would be no small present day; are at this moment con- causes in the universe. In a nature templated as simple and natural conse- where every thing is connected; where quences of which he comprehends the every thing acts and reacts, moves and mechanism and the cause. Man, in changes, composes and decomposes, fathoming nature, has arrived at dis- forms and destroys, there is not an covering the true causes of earthquakes, atom which does not play an important of the periodical motion of the sea, of and necessary part; there is not an subterraneous conflagrations, of me- imperceptible particle, however minute, teors, of the electrical fluid, the whole which, placed in convenient circumof which were considered by his ances- stances, does not operate the most tors, and are still so by the ignorant, prodigious effects. If man was in a as indubitable signs of heaven's wrath. capacity to follow the eternal chain, His posterity, in following up, in recti- to pursue the concatenated links that fying the experience already made, will connect with their causes all the effects go still farther, and discover effects and he witnesses, without losing sight of causes which are totally veiled from any one of its rings, if he could unravel present eyes. The united efforts of the the ends of those insensible threads human species, will one day perhaps that give impulse to the thoughts, penetrate even into the sanctuary of decision to the will, direction to the nature, and throw into light many of passions of those men who are called those mysteries, which, up to the pre-mighty, according to their actions; he would find that they are true atoms which nature employs to move the moral world; that it is the unexpected but necessary junction of these indiscernible particles of matter, it is their aggregation, their combination, their proportion, their fermentation, which modifying the individual by degrees, in despite of himself, and frequently without his own knowledge, make him think, will and act in a determinate but necessary mode. If the will and the actions of this individual have an influence over a great number of other men, here is the moral world in a state of the greatest combustion. Too much acrimony in the bile of a fanatic, blood too much inflamed in the heart of a conqueror, a painful indigestion in the stomach of a monarch, a whim that passes in the mind of a woman, are sometimes causes sufficient to bring on war, to send millions of men to the slaughter, to root out an entire people, to overthrow walls, to reduce cities into ashes, to plunge nations into slavery, to put a whole people into mourning, to breed famine in a land, to engender pestilence, to propagate calamity, to extend misery, to spread desolation far and wide upon the surface of our globe, through a long series of ages. The dominant passion of an individual of the human species, when it disposes of the passions of many others, arrives at combining their will, at uniting their efforts, and thus decides the condition of man. It is after this manner that an ambitious, crafty, and voluptuous Arab gave to his countrymen an impulse, of which the effect was the subjugation and desolation of vast countries in Asia, in Africa, and in Europe; whose consequences were sufficiently potential to give a novel system of religion to millions of human beings; to overturn the altars of their former gods; in short, to alter the opinions, to change the customs of a considerable portion of the population of the earth. But in examining the primitive sources of this strange revolution, what were the concealed causes that had an influence over this man, that excited his peculiar passions, that modified his temperament? What was the matter from the combination of which resulted a crafty, ambitious, enthusiastic, and eloquent man; in short, a personage competent to impose on his fellow creatures, and capable of making them concur in his views. They were the insensible particles of his blood, the imperceptible texture of his fibres, the salts, more or less acrid, that stimulated his nerves, the proportion of igneous fluid that circulated in his system. From whence came these elements? It was from the womb of his mother, from the aliments which nourished him, from the climate in which he had his birth, from the ideas he received, from the air which he respired, without reckoning a thousand inappreciable and transitory causes, that, in the instance given, had modified, had determined the passions of this important being, who had thereby acquired the capacity to change the face of this mundane sphere. To causes so weak in their principles, if in the origin the slightest obstacle had been opposed, these wonderful events, which have astounded man, would never have been produced. The fit of an ague, the consequence of bile a little too much inflamed, had sufficed, perhaps, to have rendered abortive all the vast projects of the legislator of the Mussulmen. Spare diet, a glass of water, a sanguinary evacuation, would sometimes have been sufficient to have saved kingdoms. It will be seen, then, that the condition of the human species, as well as that of each of its individuals, every instant depends on insensible causes, to which circumstances, frequently fugitive, give birth; that opportunity develops, and convenience puts in action: man attributes their effects to chance, whilst these causes operate necessarily and act according to fixed rules: he has frequently neither the sagacity, nor the honesty, to recur to their true principles; he regards such feeble motives with contempt, because he has been taught to consider them as incapable of producing such stupendous events. They are, however, these motives, weak as they may appear to be, these springs, so pitiful in his eyes, which, according to her necessary laws, suffice in the hands of nature, to move the universe. The conquests of a Gengiskhan have nothing in them that is more strange to the eye of a philosopher than the explosion of a mine, caused in its principle by a feeble spark, which commences with setting fire to a single grain of powder; this presently communicates itself to many millions of other contiguous grains, of which the united and multiplied powers, terminate by blowing up mountains, overthrowing fortifications, or converting populous cities into heaps of ruins. fortunes which frequently terminate by poisoning his happiness, and with imbittering the most fortunate existence. Let man then submit to necessity: in despite of himself it will always hurry him forward: let him resign himself to nature; let him accept the good with which she presents him let him oppose to the necessary evil which she makes him experience, those necessary remedies which she consents to afford him: let him not disturb his mind with useless inquietude; let him enjoy with moderation, because he will find that pain is the necessary companion of excess: let him follow the paths of virtue, because every thing will prove to him, even in this world of perverseness, that it is absolutely necessary to render him estimable in the eyes of others, and to make him contented with himself. Thus,imperceptible causes, concealed in the bosom of nature until the moment their action is displayed, frequently decide the fate of man. The happiness or the wretchedness, the prosperity or the misery of each individual, as well as that of whole nations, are attached to powers which it is impossible for him to foresee, to appreciate, or to arrest the action. Perhaps, at this moment, atoms are amassing, insensible particles are combining, of which the assemblage shall form a sovereign, who will be either the scourge or the saviour of a Feeble, and vain mortal, thou premighty empire.* Man cannot answer tendest to be a free agent; alas, dost for his own destiny one single instant; not thou see all the threads which he has no cognizance of what is passing enchain thee? Dost thou not perceive within himself; he is ignorant of the that they are atoms which form thee; causes which act in the interior of his that they are atoms which move thee; machine; he knows nothing of the cir- that they are circumstances independent cumstances that will give them activity of thyself that modify thy being, and and develop their energy; it is, never- rule thy destiny? In the puissant natheless, on these causes, impossible to ture that environs thee, shalt thou prebe unravelled by him, that depends his tend to be the only being who is able condition in life. Frequently an un-to resist her power? Dost thou really foreseen rencounter gives birth to a passion in his soul, of which the consequences shall necessarily have an influence over his felicity. It is thus that the most virtuous man, by a whimsical combination of unlooked for circumstances, may become in an instant the most criminal of his species. believe, that thy weak prayers will induce her to stop in her eternal march, or change her everlasting course? CHAPTER XIII. of the Immortality of the Soul;-Of the Doctrine of a Future State;-Of the Fear of Death. This truth, without doubt, will be found frightful and terrible: but at bottom, what has it more revolting than that which teaches him that an infinity of accidents, as irremediable as they are unforeseen, may every instant wrest from him that life to which he is so strongly attached ? Fatalism reconciles the good man easily to death: it makes him contemplate it as a certain means of withdrawing himself from wickedness; this system shows death, even to the happy man himself, as a medium between him and those mis-it grows up with it; that it is modified *By a strange coincidence, Napoleon Buonaparte was born the same year in which the System of Nature was first published. THE reflections presented to the reader in this work, tend to show, what ought to be thought of the human soul, as well as of its operations and faculties: every thing proves, in the most convincing manner, that it acts and moves according to laws similar to those prescribed to the other beings of nature; that it cannot be distinguished from the body; that it is born with it; that in the same progression; in short, every thing ought to make man conclude that it perishes with it. This soul, as well as the body, passes through a state of weakness and infancy; it is in this stage of its existence that it is assailed by a multitude of modifications and of ideas which it receives from exterior objects through the medium of the organs; that it amasses facts; that it collects experience, whether true or false; that it forms to itself a system of conduct, according to which it thinks and acts, and from whence results either its happiness or its misery, its reason or its delirium, its virtues or its vices: arrived with the body at its full powers; having in conjunction with it reached maturity, it does not cease for a single instant to partake in common of its sensations, whether these are agreeable or disagreeable; in consequence it conjointly approves or disapproves its state; like it, it is either sound or diseased, active or languishing, awake or asleep. In old age, man extinguishes entirely, his fibres become rigid, his nerves lose their elasticity, his senses are obtunded, his sight grows dim, his ears lose their quickness, his ideas become unconnected, his memory fails, his imagination cools; what, then, becomes of his soul? Alas! it sinks down with the body; it gets benumbed as this loses its feeling, becomes sluggish as this decays in activity; like it, when enfeebled by years it fulfils its functions with pain; and this substance, which is deemed spiritual or immaterial, undergoes the same revolutions, and experiences the same vicissitudes as does the body itself. In despite of this convincing proof of the materiality of the soul, and of its identity with the body, some thinkers have supposed that although the latter is perishable, the former does not perish; that this portion of man enjoys the especial privilege of immortality; that it is exempt from dissolution and free from those changes of form all the beings in nature undergo: in consequence of this, man has persuaded himself that this privileged soul does not die its immortality above all appears indubitable to those who suppose it spiritual: after having made it a simple being, without extent, devoid of parts, totally different from any thing of which he has a knowledge, he pretended that it was not subjected to the laws of decomposition common to all beings, of which experience shows him the continual operation. Man, feeling within himself a concealed force that insensibly produced action, that imperceptibly gave direction to the motion of his machine, believed that the entire of nature, of whose energies he is ignorant, with whose modes of acting he is unacquainted, owed its motion to an agent analogous to his own soul, who acted upon the great macrocosm in the same manner that this soul acted upon his body. Man having supposed himself double, made nature double also: he distinguished her from her own peculiar energy; he separated her from her mover, which by degrees he made spiritual. Thus this being distinguished from nature was regarded as the soul of the world, and the soul of man was considered as portions emanating from this universal soul. This notion upon the origin of the soul, is of very remote antiquity. It was that of the Egyptians, of the Chaldeans, of the Hebrews, of the greater number of the wise men of the east.* It was in these schools that Pherecydes, Pythagoras, Plato, drew up a doctrine so flattering to the vanity of human nature-so gratifying to the imagination of mortals. Thus man believed himself a portion of the Divinity; immortal, like the Godhead, in one part of himself; nevertheless, religions subsequently invented have renounced these advantages, which they *It appears that Moses believed, with the Egyptians, the divine emanation of souls: according to him, " God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul" Gen. ii. 7.-nevertheless Christians at this day reject this system of Divine emanation, seeing that it supposes the Divinity divisible; besides, their religion having need of a Hell to torment the souls of the damned, of the Divinity to Hell, conjointly with the it would have been necessary to send a portion souls of those victims that were sacrificed to his own vengeance. Although Moses, in the above quotation, seems to indicate that the soul was a portion of the Divinity, it does not appear that the doctrine of the immortality of the soul was established in any one of the books attributed to him. It was during the Babylonish captivity that the Jews learned the doctrine of future rewards and punishments, the Hebrew Legislator did not understand, or taught by Zoroaster to the Persians, but which at least he left his people ignorant on the subject. judged incompatible with the other parts of their systems: they held forth that the sovereign of nature, or her contriver, was not the soul of man, but that in virtue of his omnipotence, he created human souls in proportion as he produced the bodies which they must animate; and they taught, that these souls once produced, by an effect of the same omnipotence, enjoyed immortality. of the essence of man; it ought not to excite surprise if he received with eagerness an hypothesis that flattered his hopes, by promising that his desire would one day be gratified; but let him beware how he concludes, that this desire itself is an indubitable proof of the reality of this future life, with which, for his present happiness, he seems to be far too much occupied. The passion for existence, is in man only a natural However it may be with these varia- consequence of the tendency of a sentions upon the origin of souls, those sible being, whose essence it is to be who supposed them emanating from willing to conserve himself: in the the Divinity, believed that after the human being, it follows the energy of death of the body, which served them his soul or keeps pace with the force for an envelope, they returned by re- of his imagination, always ready to funding to their first source. Those realize that which he strongly desires. who, without adopting the opinion of He desires the life of the body, neverdivine emanation, admired the spiritu-theless this desire is frustrated; whereality and the immortality of the soul, were under the necessity to suppose a region, to find out an abode for these souls, which their imagination painted to them each according to his fears, his hopes, his desires, and his prejudices. Nothing is more popular than the doctrine of the immortality of the soul; nothing is more universally diffused than the expectation of another life. Nature having inspired man with the most ardent love for his existence, the desire of preserving himself for ever was a necessary consequence this desire was presently converted into certainty; from that desire of existing eternally, which nature has implanted in him, he made an argument to prove that man would never cease to exist. Abbadie says: "Our soul has no useless desires, it desires naturally an eternal life;" and by a very strange logic he concludes, that this desire could not fail to be fulfilled.* However this may be, man, thus disposed, listened with avidity to those who announced to him systems so conformable with his wishes. Nevertheless, he ought not to regard as supernatural the desire of existing, which always was, and always will be, *Cicero before Abbadie had declared the fore should not the desire for the life of the soul be frustrated like the other ?† The most simple reflection upon the nature of his soul, ought to convince man that the idea of its immortality is only an illusion of the brain. Indeed, what is his soul, save the principle of sensibility? What is it to think, to enjoy, to suffer; is it not to feel? What is life, except it be the assemblage of modifications, the congregation of motion, peculiar to an organized being? Thus, as soon as the body ceases to live, its sensibility can no longer exercise itself; therefore it can no longer have ideas, nor in consequence thoughts. Ideas, as we have proved, can only reach man through his senses; now, how will they have it, that once deprived of his senses, he is yet capable of receiving sensations, of having perceptions, of forming ideas? As they have made the soul of man a being separated from the animated body, wherefore have they not made life a being distinguished from the living body? Life in a body is the totality of its motion; feeling and thought make a part of this motion: thus, in the dead man, these motions will cease like all the others. proved, that this soul, which cannot Indeed, by what reasoning will it be immortality of the soul to be an innate idea in man; yet, strange to tell, in another part of his works he considers Pherecydes as the inventor of the doctrine -Naturam ipsam de + The partisans of the doctrine of the imimmortalitate animarum tacitam judicare; mortality of the soul, reason thus: "All men nescio quomodo inhæret in mentibus quasi desire to live for ever; therefore they will live sæculorum quodam augurium. Permanere for ever." Suppose the argument retorted on animos arbitramur consensu nationum om-them: "All men naturally desire to be rich; nium.-Tusculam Disputat. lib. i. therefore, all men will one day be rich." |