by Jean Meslier
They had yet to be informed of this fine and subtle distinction which our new Philosophers have imagined there is between the body and the spirit. Unlike these, they had yet to hear, or be alert to whether a thought of the soul could be extended or not, if a desire of the soul could be round or square, or triangular or of any other shape, or whether knowledge or feeling might be cut into two or four parts. And, because these subtle philosophers have clearly acknowledged that a thought of the soul is not an extended body, that a desire of the soul is not something round or square or triangular, or any other shape, and that no knowledge or any feeling of the soul can be cut into two or four, they have thought they’d found an essential distinction between body and spirit, and they imagined that these were really and substantially two beings of different natures, that the property of the first was to be extended in length, heights, and depth, and that the property of the second was only to think and to feel.
90. THE WEAKNESS AND VANITY OF THE ARGUMENTS OF THE GOD-CULTISTS TO PROVE THE SUPPOSED SPIRITUALITY AND IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL.
This is how they speak on these subjects. The author of Recherche de la vérité[874] says:
We have only two sorts of ideas, the idea of the mind and the idea of the body; and, since we should only speak about what we can conceive of, we should only reason according to these two ideas. Thus, since the idea we have of all bodies show us that they can’t move of their own accord, we must conclude that minds are what move them. It is evident that all bodies, large and small, have no power to move themselves… The smallest or the largest conceivable bodies have no power to move by themselves; and not only can bodies not do anything, the noblest minds are similarly powerless, they can’t know anything if God doesn’t enlighten them, they can’t feel anything if God doesn’t modify them, they are incapable of wishing unless God works on them[875]. They are not what moves towards the good, but God moves them and they can do nothing but what God makes them do.
The first thing we ever learn is the existence of our soul, all our thoughts are incontestable demonstrations of it; for nothing could be more evident than what I’m currently thinking is currently something… But if it’s easy to recognize the existence of his soul, it’s not equally easy to know its essence and its nature. To properly know that it is, one must be especially careful not to confuse it[876] with those things with which it is united. The soul should not be confused with the body, or with the blood, or with the animal spirits, or fire, or an infinity of other things, for with which the Philosophers have confused it. The only thing one should think believe about the soul is what one can’t help but think, and of which one is fully convinced by one’s inner feelings, which one has of oneself; for otherwise error will ensue.
The ungodly must certainly strive a great deal to find out if their soul is mortal, as they think it is, or if it is immortal, as faith and reason teach us that it is. This is a matter of utmost import for them… Why, then, don’t they know it or why do they still have their doubts? For, in the end, could anything be harder to know than the difference between the soul and the body[877], between that which thinks and that which is extended, and that these two Beings are complete opposites? Must one pay that much attention to the mind to see that a thought is not something round or square? That extension is only capable of different shapes and different movements, and not of thoughts and reasoning? And thus, that which thinks and that which is extended are completely different things? However, that alone suffices to demonstrate that the soul is immortal and that it can’t perish, even when the body is destroyed. Bodies certainly will see corruption, since they are extended, and since they have parts that can be divided[878], but if the mind is not extended, it will not be divisible, and if it is not divisible then it is indisputable that, in this sense, it will not be corruptible.
But how can it be imagined that the mind was extended and divisible? One might, with a straight line, cut a square into two triangles, into two parallelograms, into two trapezoids, but by what line might it be conceived that a pleasure, a pain, a desire could be cut? And what shape would this division produce?... The mind is not, then, extended or divisible, and consequently it is immortal and incorruptible by its very nature… For ultimately[879], the question of the immortality of the soul is one of the easiest questions to resolve, when, without heeding one’s imagination, one considers with mental attention the clear and distinct idea of extension, and the relationship it might have with thought...[880] It’s therefore clear that, since thought is not the modification of extension, our soul is not annihilated, even assuming that death annihilate the body.
The Cartesians don’t think that animals feel pain and pleasure, that they love or hate anything; because they posit nothing but matter in animals, and they don’t think that the feelings, or the passions, are properties of any sort of matter. Certain Peripatetics, on the contrary, think that matter is capable of feeling and passion, when it is, they say, subtilized, that beasts can feel by means of animal spirits, that is, by means of a sort of matter that is extremely agitated, subtle, and delicate, and that the soul itself is only capable of having its feelings and passions due to the fact that it is united to this matter. Thus, to resolve the question of whether animals have a soul, one must meditate deeply and concentrate with all possible concentration, on what idea one has of matter. And if one’s conception is that matter is shaped in a certain way, for example square, round, oval, feeling pain, pleasure, heat, colors, sounds, etc., then it’s a sure bet that the soul of beasts, as material as it is, is capable of feeling. If this is not what is conceived, then it shouldn’t be said, for nothing should be advanced that isn’t conceived. In the same way, if it’s conceived that matter, extremely agitated from bottom to top, from top to bottom, in circular, spiral, parabolic or elliptic lines, be it love, joy, sadness, etc.[881], beasts can be said to have all the same passions as us. If this isn’t conceived, then it shouldn’t be said, at least, when we don’t mean to talk without knowing what we’re saying. But I think I can safely claim that nobody will ever believe that any motion of matter can constitute love or joy, provided that they’re thinking seriously. There is a contradiction, say the Cartesians, in saying that a soul or a substance that thinks, that feels or desires, etc., is material.
The soul is so blind that it doesn’t know itself and it doesn’t see that its own sensations belong to it. It is so intimately united to its body, and it has become so carnal after the introduction of sin, that it attributes many things to it, which only belong to itself, and has become nearly indistinguishable from it. Such[882] that it doesn’t attribute to it only the feelings presently under discussion, but also the power of imagination, and even sometimes the power of reason; for may Philosophers are stupid and vulgar enough to believe that the soul was only the finest and subtlest part of the body. In animals, there is neither intelligence nor soul, as typically understood, they eat without pleasure, they screech without pain, they grow without realizing it; they desire nothing, they fear nothing, they know nothing; and if they act skillfully and in a way that shows intelligence, the truth is[883] that God, having made them in order to preserve them, has shaped their bodies so as to make them automatically and fearlessly avoid everything that might destroy them? Otherwise, it would be necessary to say that there is more intelligence in the smallest animals, or even in a single seed than in the most intellectual human, for it’s clear that there more different parts and that more mechanical motions are produced there than we can even realize.
I don’t think anyone can doubt, after they’ve seriously thought it through, that the essence of the mind is summed up by thought, just as the essence of matter is summed up by extension, and that, according to the various modifications of thought, the mind can sometimes wish, sometimes imagine, or finally that there are many particular forms; just as since, according to the various modifications of extension, matter is sometimes of water, sometimes of wood, sometimes of fire, or that it has an infinity of other particula
r forms… I also don’t believe it possible to form a conception of a mind that doesn’t think, while it’s quite easy to conceive of one that doesn’t feel, imagine, or even have wishes; just as it’s impossible to conceive of matter without extension, while it’s easy to conceive of matter which is neither earth, or metal, or square, or round, and which isn’t in motion; from which we must conclude that, since it can be that there is matter which is neither earth, nor metal, nor square, nor round, nor even in motion, it may also be that a mind feels neither cold nor heat, nor joy nor sadness, which imagines nothing at all; so that all these things are not part of its essence. Thought alone is, therefore, the essence of the mind, as well as extension all alone is the essence of matter… But, since motion is not of matter’s essence; since it presupposes extension; it is not of the essence of the mind to wish, since wishing presupposes perception. Thought alone is therefore properly that which constitutes the essence of the mind and the different ways of thinking, as well as feeling and imagining are only the modifications of which it is capable and by which it is not always modified; but to wish is a property which always accompanies it, although it is united with a body, or separated from it, which, however, is not essential to it, since it presupposes thought[884].
To add any clear and distinct idea to the word life, we might say that the life of the soul is the knowledge of the truth and the love of the good, or rather that its thought is its life; and that the life of the body consists in the circulation of the blood and in the proper temperament of the humors, or rather, that the life of the body is the movement of its parts related to its preservation[885]. And then, with clear and distinct ideas attached to the word life, it will be quite evident that 1) the soul cannot transmit life to the body; 2) that it can’t give it the life by which it is nourished, and grows, etc., since it doesn’t even know what is necessary to digest what it eats; 3) that it can’t make it feel, since matter is incapable of feeling, etc.
The tracks in the brain are interconnected, and they are followed by the motion of the animal spirits. When the tracks are awakened in the brain, ideas are awakened in the mind, and the movements stimulated in the animal spirits excite the passions in the will[886]; as soon as the soul receives any new ideas, new tracks are imprinted on the brain, and as soon as the objects produce new tracks in the brain, the soul receives new ideas; not that it considers these tracks, since it has no awareness of them, not that these tracks contain these ideas, since they have no relationship with them; not, finally, that it receives these ideas from these tracks; for, as shall be explained elsewhere[887], it is inconceivable that the mind would receive anything from the body, and that it becomes more enlightened than it was by turning toward it, as the Philosophers say, who would have it be by conversion to the phantoms or tracks in the brain, per conversionem ad phantasmata, that the mind apperceives everything. In the same way as the soul wants the arm to move, although it doesn’t even know what it takes for it to move, the arm is moved; and as soon as the animal spirits are agitated, the soul emotes, even though it doesn’t even know that there are animal spirits in its body. There is a linkage between the ideas and emotions of the soul, as there is also a linkage between the ideas and the tracks, and interlinkages between the tracks themselves. For example, there is a natural connection which is independent of our will, between the tracks that produce a tree or a mountain that we see, and the ideas of trees or mountains, between the tracks that produce, in our brain, the cries of a man or an animal that’s suffering and that we hear moaning, between the air of the face of a man who threatens or is afraid of us, and the ideas of pains, strengths, weaknesses, and even between the feelings of compassion, fear, and courage which are produced naturally in us[888].
Meanwhile, Mr. de Cambrai says that[889]:
The power of the soul over the body is not only supreme, but also blind. The most ignorant of peasants[890] knows equally well how to move his body as the most savant anatomist. The mind of the peasant commands his nerves, his muscles, his tendons about which he’s ignorant, and about which he’s never even heard. Without being able to distinguish them and without knowing where they’re located, he finds them, he calling precisely on the ones he needs, and he doesn’t mix them up. A tightrope dancer has only to wish, and instantly the spirits flow rapidly, now to this nerve, now that one; all his nerves tense or relax as needed. Ask him which ones he set in motion and where he started to make them vibrate, and he won’t even grasp what you’re trying to say. He’s deeply ignorant of what goes on in the inner clockwork of his machine. The lute-player with a perfect knowledge of all the strings on his instrument, who sees them with his eyes, who touches them each in turn with his fingers, lacks understanding here. But the soul, which governs the machine of the human body, moves all its gears skillfully without seeing them, without discerning them, without knowing either their shape or positions, or the force, and it makes no mistake. What a wonder it is that my mind commands what it doesn’t understand, and which it’s incapable of knowing, and it is unquestioningly obeyed. What blindness! What power! The blindness is in man, but where does the power originate? To whom do we attribute it, if not He who sees what man cannot see, and who does in him that which surpasses him.
My soul may wish to move the bodies around it, and which it knows quite distinctly, but none of them will move; it has no power to displace the tiniest atom through sheer willpower[891]. Human thought has no power over bodies[892]. The same mind which ceaselessly sees the infinite, and in the rule of the infinite, all finite things are also infinitely ignorant of all the objects that surround it. It itself is deeply ignorant, as if stumbling along in a dark abyss. It doesn’t know what it is, or how it is attached to a body, or how it has such power over all the clockwork of this body which it doesn’t understand. It is unaware of its own thoughts and its own will. It doesn’t have any certainty about what it believes or what it wants. It often imagines it believes and wants what it hasn’t believed or wanted. It makes mistakes, and it’s best to recognize this[893]. It’s even so natural to believe that matter can’t think, that everyone with an unbiased mind can’t help but laugh when told that animals are only pure machines, because they can’t conceive that pure machines could have the knowledge that they claim to observe in animals;... hence even the ancients who knew of nothing real but what was corporeal, still wanted the human soul to be a 5th element, or a sort of unnamed quintessence.
91. A REFUTATION OF THEIR VAIN ARGUMENTS.
It is plain to see, by all these arguments, that the reason why the Cartesians refuse to acknowledge that matter is capable of thinking, feeling, desiring and wanting, loving and hating, etc., is because they imagine that if thought and knowledge, feeling and will, love and hate, sadness and joy, and all other kinds of thoughts of the soul were only modifications of matter, they would necessarily be things with extension in length, in width, and depth, just like matter; that they would necessarily be round or square, as they say, and that they could, like matter itself, be divided, split, or cut into many parts, similar or dissimilar.
Now, it is clear and evident that, even if matter were capable of thinking and feeling, of desiring and wanting, of loving and hating, of feeling joy or sadness, etc., this would not mean that these sorts of modifications of matter would be things that are extended in length, width, and depth, and consequently, it wouldn’t follow that the thoughts, desires, and wishes or other affects of the soul would be round or square things, as they say, or that they could, like matter itself, be divided and split or cut into many parts, equal or otherwise. It is ridiculous to even imagine that this would be entailed. Here is clear proof of this. It is clear and evident that movement, for example, is a mode or a modification of matter, just as extension could be; but it’s obvious that motion in itself isn’t round or square; for although it might move in a manner that is round, square, or like an oval, we don’t say for that, that motion is a round, square, or oval thing, or that it’s a thing that can be measured in
pots or pints, or that can be weighed on a scale; and it’s not a thing that can be split or cut into many parts; therefore, all the modifications of matter are not necessarily things that are round or square, or things that we can always be divided, split, or cut into pieces.
Similarly, life and death, beauty and ugliness, health and illness, strength and the weakness of living bodies are only modes or modifications of matter, as well as extension; yet it is clear that neither life nor death, neither beauty nor ugliness, neither strength nor weakness, neither the health nor the disease of living bodies, are things that are extended in length, width, and depth; nor are they things that are round or square, or that can be split or divided into pieces; these aren’t the sort of things that can be measured with a yardstick or weighed in a balance; and yet, they are only modifications of matter. Thus, all changes of matter aren’t for that always round or square things; and it would even be ridiculous to say for this reason that beauty and ugliness, that strength and weakness, that the health and illness of living bodies must be round or square things, and that they must be able to be split and divided into parts, on the pretext that they are modifications of matter.
