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_ Perhaps no man ever had a more judicious or more methodical genius,
or was a more acute logician than Mr. Locke, and yet he was not
deeply skilled in the mathematics. This great man could never
subject himself to the tedious fatigue of calculations, nor to the
dry pursuit of mathematical truths, which do not at first present
any sensible objects to the mind; and no one has given better proofs
than he, that it is possible for a man to have a geometrical head
without the assistance of geometry. Before his time, several great
philosophers had declared, in the most positive terms, what the soul
of man is; but as these absolutely knew nothing about it, they might
very well be allowed to differ entirely in opinion from one another.
In Greece, the infant seat of arts and of errors, and where the
grandeur as well as folly of the human mind went such prodigious
lengths, the people used to reason about the soul in the very same
manner as we do.
The divine Anaxagoras, in whose honour an altar was erected for his
having taught mankind that the sun was greater than Peloponnesus,
that snow was black, and that the heavens were of stone, affirmed
that the soul was an aerial spirit, but at the same time immortal.
Diogenes (not he who was a cynical philosopher after having coined
base money) declared that the soul was a portion of the substance of
God: an idea which we must confess was very sublime. Epicurus
maintained that it was composed of parts in the same manner as the
body.
Aristotle, who has been explained a thousand ways, because he is
unintelligible, was of opinion, according to some of his disciples,
that the understanding in all men is one and the same substance.
The divine Plato, master of the divine Aristotle,--and the divine
Socrates, master of the divine Plato--used to say that the soul was
corporeal and eternal. No doubt but the demon of Socrates had
instructed him in the nature of it. Some people, indeed, pretend
that a man who boasted his being attended by a familiar genius must
infallibly be either a knave or a madman, but this kind of people
are seldom satisfied with anything but reason.
With regard to the Fathers of the Church, several in the primitive
ages believed that the soul was human, and the angels and God
corporeal. Men naturally improve upon every system. St. Bernard,
as Father Mabillon confesses, taught that the soul after death does
not see God in the celestial regions, but converses with Christ's
human nature only. However, he was not believed this time on his
bare word; the adventure of the crusade having a little sunk the
credit of his oracles. Afterwards a thousand schoolmen arose, such
as the Irrefragable Doctor, the Subtile Doctor, the Angelic Doctor,
the Seraphic Doctor, and the Cherubic Doctor, who were all sure that
they had a very clear and distinct idea of the soul, and yet wrote
in such a manner, that one would conclude they were resolved no one
should understand a word in their writings. Our Descartes, born to
discover the errors of antiquity, and at the same time to substitute
his own, and hurried away by that systematic spirit which throws a
cloud over the minds of the greatest men, thought he had
demonstrated that the soul is the same thing as thought, in the same
manner as matter, in his opinion, is the same as extension. He
asserted, that man thinks eternally, and that the soul, at its
coming into the body, is informed with the whole series of
metaphysical notions: knowing God, infinite space, possessing all
abstract ideas--in a word, completely endued with the most sublime
lights, which it unhappily forgets at its issuing from the womb.
Father Malebranche, in his sublime illusions, not only admitted
innate ideas, but did not doubt of our living wholly in God, and
that God is, as it were, our soul.
Such a multitude of reasoners having written the romance of the
soul, a sage at last arose, who gave, with an air of the greatest
modesty, the history of it. Mr. Locke has displayed the human soul
in the same manner as an excellent anatomist explains the springs of
the human body. He everywhere takes the light of physics for his
guide. He sometimes presumes to speak affirmatively, but then he
presumes also to doubt. Instead of concluding at once what we know
not, he examines gradually what we would know. He takes an infant
at the instant of his birth; he traces, step by step, the progress
of his understanding; examines what things he has in common with
beasts, and what he possesses above them. Above all, he consults
himself: the being conscious that he himself thinks.
"I shall leave," says he, "to those who know more of this matter
than myself, the examining whether the soul exists before or after
the organisation of our bodies. But I confess that it is my lot to
be animated with one of those heavy souls which do not think always;
and I am even so unhappy as not to conceive that it is more
necessary the soul should think perpetually than that bodies should
be for ever in motion."
With regard to myself, I shall boast that I have the honour to be as
stupid in this particular as Mr. Locke. No one shall ever make me
believe that I think always: and I am as little inclined as he
could be to fancy that some weeks after I was conceived I was a very
learned soul; knowing at that time a thousand things which I forgot
at my birth; and possessing when in the womb (though to no manner of
purpose) knowledge which I lost the instant I had occasion for it;
and which I have never since been able to recover perfectly.
Mr. Locke, after having destroyed innate ideas; after having fully
renounced the vanity of believing that we think always; after having
laid down, from the most solid principles, that ideas enter the mind
through the senses; having examined our simple and complex ideas;
having traced the human mind through its several operations; having
shown that all the languages in the world are imperfect, and the
great abuse that is made of words every moment, he at last comes to
consider the extent or rather the narrow limits of human knowledge.
It was in this chapter he presumed to advance, but very modestly,
the following words: "We shall, perhaps, never be capable of
knowing whether a being, purely material, thinks or not." This sage
assertion was, by more divines than one, looked upon as a scandalous
declaration that the soul is material and mortal. Some Englishmen,
devout after their way, sounded an alarm. The superstitious are the
same in society as cowards in an army; they themselves are seized
with a panic fear, and communicate it to others. It was loudly
exclaimed that Mr. Locke intended to destroy religion; nevertheless,
religion had nothing to do in the affair, it being a question purely
philosophical, altogether independent of faith and revelation. Mr.
Locke's opponents needed but to examine, calmly and impartially,
whether the declaring that matter can think, implies a
contradiction; and whether God is able to communicate thought to
matter. But divines are too apt to begin their declarations with
saying that God is offended when people differ from them in opinion;
in which they too much resemble the bad poets, who used to declare
publicly that Boileau spake irreverently of Louis XIV., because he
ridiculed their stupid productions. Bishop Stillingfleet got the
reputation of a calm and unprejudiced divine because he did not
expressly make use of injurious terms in his dispute with Mr. Locke.
That divine entered the lists against him, but was defeated; for he
argued as a schoolman, and Locke as a philosopher, who was perfectly
acquainted with the strong as well as the weak side of the human
mind, and who fought with weapons whose temper he knew. If I might
presume to give my opinion on so delicate a subject after Mr. Locke,
I would say, that men have long disputed on the nature and the
immortality of the soul. With regard to its immortality, it is
impossible to give a demonstration of it, since its nature is still
the subject of controversy; which, however, must be thoroughly
understood before a person can be able to determine whether it be
immortal or not. Human reason is so little able, merely by its own
strength, to demonstrate the immortality of the soul, that it was
absolutely necessary religion should reveal it to us. It is of
advantage to society in general, that mankind should believe the
soul to be immortal; faith commands us to do this; nothing more is
required, and the matter is cleared up at once. But it is otherwise
with respect to its nature; it is of little importance to religion,
which only requires the soul to be virtuous, whatever substance it
may be made of. It is a clock which is given us to regulate, but
the artist has not told us of what materials the spring of this
chock is composed.
I am a body, and, I think, that's all I know of the matter. Shall I
ascribe to an unknown cause, what I can so easily impute to the only
second cause I am acquainted with? Here all the school philosophers
interrupt me with their arguments, and declare that there is only
extension and solidity in bodies, and that there they can have
nothing but motion and figure. Now motion, figure, extension and
solidity cannot form a thought, and consequently the soul cannot be
matter. All this so often repeated mighty series of reasoning,
amounts to no more than this: I am absolutely ignorant what matter
is; I guess, but imperfectly, some properties of it; now I
absolutely cannot tell whether these properties may be joined to
thought. As I therefore know nothing, I maintain positively that
matter cannot think. In this manner do the schools reason.
Mr. Locke addressed these gentlemen in the candid, sincere manner
following: At least confess yourselves to be as ignorant as I.
Neither your imaginations nor mine are able to comprehend in what
manner a body is susceptible of ideas; and do you conceive better in
what manner a substance, of what kind soever, is susceptible of
them? As you cannot comprehend either matter or spirit, why will
you presume to assert anything?
The superstitious man comes afterwards and declares, that all those
must be burnt for the good of their souls, who so much as suspect
that it is possible for the body to think without any foreign
assistance. But what would these people say should they themselves
be proved irreligious? And indeed, what man can presume to assert,
without being guilty at the same time of the greatest impiety, that
it is impossible for the Creator to form matter with thought and
sensation? Consider only, I beg you, what a dilemma you bring
yourselves into, you who confine in this manner the power of the
Creator. Beasts have the same organs, the same sensations, the same
perceptions as we; they have memory, and combine certain ideas. In
case it was not in the power of God to animate matter, and inform it
with sensation, the consequence would be, either that beasts are
mere machines, or that they have a spiritual soul.
Methinks it is clearly evident that beasts cannot be mere machines,
which I prove thus. God has given to them the very same organs of
sensation as to us: if therefore they have no sensation, God has
created a useless thing; now according to your own confession God
does nothing in vain; He therefore did not create so many organs of
sensation, merely for them to be uninformed with this faculty;
consequently beasts are not mere machines. Beasts, according to
your assertion, cannot be animated with a spiritual soul; you will,
therefore, in spite of yourself, be reduced to this only assertion,
viz., that God has endued the organs of beasts, who are mere matter,
with the faculties of sensation and perception, which you call
instinct in them. But why may not God, if He pleases, communicate
to our more delicate organs, that faculty of feeling, perceiving,
and thinking, which we call human reason? To whatever side you
turn, you are forced to acknowledge your own ignorance, and the
boundless power of the Creator. Exclaim therefore no more against
the sage, the modest philosophy of Mr. Locke, which so far from
interfering with religion, would be of use to demonstrate the truth
of it, in case religion wanted any such support. For what
philosophy can be of a more religious nature than that, which
affirming nothing but what it conceives clearly, and conscious of
its own weakness, declares that we must always have recourse to God
in our examining of the first principles?
Besides, we must not be apprehensive that any philosophical opinion
will ever prejudice the religion of a country. Though our
demonstrations clash directly with our mysteries, that is nothing to
the purpose, for the latter are not less revered upon that account
by our Christian philosophers, who know very well that the objects
of reason and those of faith are of a very different nature.
Philosophers will never form a religious sect, the reason of which
is, their writings are not calculated for the vulgar, and they
themselves are free from enthusiasm. If we divide mankind into
twenty parts, it will be found that nineteen of these consist of
persons employed in manual labour, who will never know that such a
man as Mr. Locke existed. In the remaining twentieth part how few
are readers? And among such as are so, twenty amuse themselves with
romances to one who studies philosophy. The thinking part of
mankind is confined to a very small number, and these will never
disturb the peace and tranquillity of the world.
Neither Montaigne, Locke, Bayle, Spinoza, Hobbes, the Lord
Shaftesbury, Collins, nor Toland lighted up the firebrand of discord
in their countries; this has generally been the work of divines, who
being at first puffed up with the ambition of becoming chiefs of a
sect, soon grew very desirous of being at the head of a party. But
what do I say? All the works of the modern philosophers put
together will never make so much noise as even the dispute which
arose among the Franciscans, merely about the fashion of their
sleeves and of their cowls. _
Read next: LETTER XIV - ON DESCARTES AND SIR ISAAC NEWTON
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