by Jean Meslier
Here is another sign and a rather clear and convincing proof that our soul is material and mortal like our body, which is that it is strengthened and weakened as our body is strengthened and weakened, which would certainly not be the case if it were a spiritual and immortal substance; for if it were such, its strength and power wouldn’t depend at all on the disposition or constitution of the body, and since it is e{ntirely dependent on it, this is a very tangible, very convincing, and very clear proof that it is neither spiritual nor immortal; this led a contemporary Poet to speak in this way on this subject:
Finally, when the body starts to sag
Which bends to the weight of the years it’s had
At the same time, along with itself feels
The mind weakening by the weight of years
So few of them first-rate, and which nature
Eagerly formed from clay that was so pure,
Retaining, when the hair by age is bleached
In age’s Winter, and the mind set free;
The rest, having been made from shoddy clay
Like its own substance, is completely aged,
And his lot, with a body in decline,
Is a fading wit and an icy mind[897].
Journal historique, March, 1708.
92. THE VIEWS OF THE ANCIENTS ON THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL.
This is how the ancient poets wrote about this subject.
Vis animi pariter crescit cum corpore toto?[898]
Praeterea, si immortalis natura animai.[899]
Constat et in corpus nascentibus insinuatur,
Cur super anteactam aetatem meminisse nequimus,
Nec vestigia gestarum rerum ulla teneamus?
Nam si tantopere est animi mutata potestas,
Omnis ut actarum exciderit retinentia rerum,
Non, ut opinor, id ab letho jam longior errat:
Ergo corporeum naturam animi esse necesse est,[900]
Corporis quiniam telis, ictu que laborat.
Ingoratur enim quae sit natura animai[901]
Nata sit, an contra nascentibus insinuetur,
Et simul intereat nobiscum morte dirempta
Praeterea gigni pariter cum corpore, et una[902]
Crescere sentimus, pariterque senescere mentem.
An tenebras orei visat, vastasque lacunas,
An pecudes alias divinitus insinuet se.
...Mentem sanari, corpus ut segrum[903]
Cernims, et... mori et una posse videmus.
...vis animi, atque animai (ibid. 498)
Conturbatur, et...divisa seorsum
Disjectatur eodem illo distracta venens.
...Vis morbi distracta per artus[904]
Turbat agens animam....
Quin etiam morbis in in corporis avius errat[905]
Saepe animus, dementit enim, deliraque fatur;
Interdumque gravi lethargo fertur in altum.
Aeternumque soporem oculis vultuque cadenti[906]
...simul aevo fessa fatescit anima...
Quippe etenim mortale aeterno jungere et una
Consentire, putare et fungi mutua posse,
Disipere est; quid enim diversius esse putandum est[907].
Aut magis inter se disjunctum discrepitansque,
Quam mortale quod est immortaliatque peressi
Junctum, in consilio saevas tolerare procellas?
O pater au ne aliquas ad coelam nunc ire putandum est,
Sublimes animas, iterumque ad tarda reverti.
Corpora? quae his miseris jam dira cupido?[908]
93. THE THOUGHTS, THE DESIRES, THE WILL, THE GOOD AND BAD FEELINGS ARE ONLY INTERNAL MODIFICATIONS
The thoughts, desires, will and sentiments of good and evil are only modifications internal to the person or of the animal who thinks, knows, or who feels good and evil; and however men and beasts are only composed of matter, it does not follow from this that the thoughts, desires, or feelings of good or evil should be things round or square as the Cartesians imagine, and this is how they become absurd, as also in this, that for a vain reason, they want to deprive animals of knowledge and feeling; which opinion is very contemptible.
As wise Montaigne put it[909]:
It is certain that our understanding, our judgment, and generally speaking, the faculties of our soul suffer according to the movements and alterations of the body, which alterations are continual. Do we not have a more alert mind, a quicker memory, a livelier way of talking when healthy than when we're ill? Do joy and gaiety not make us receive the things that are presented to our soul with a completely different face than anger and melancholy? ...Doesn’t the very air and serenity of the heavens bring some alteration to us, as this verse of Cicero says:
Tales sunt hominum mentes, quali pater ipse
Juppiter auctifera lustravit lampade terras.
He continues:
It’s not only fevers, strong drink, and major accidents that disturb our faculty of judgment: the least things in the world distract it; and there is no doubt, even if we didn’t feel it, that if a prolonged fever can crush our soul, that even a third of it brings no alteration to it, according to its measure and proportions. If a stroke dulls and completely extinguishes the sight of our intelligence, there is no doubt that heat exhaustion dazzles it.
Since that is truly the case, which none can doubt, this is, as I’ve said, a quite plain, quite convincing, and quite obvious proof that the soul is not spiritual and immortal, as the Cartesians assert and as the superstitious God-cultists would have us believe.
But let’s look a little more specifically at what they say about the nature of this soul. the author of the Recherche de la vérité says the following:
The essence of the mind resides entirely in thought, just as the essence of matter resides entirely in extension. Nobody can conceive of a Mind which doesn’t think; thought on its own is, therefore, the essence of the mind. It is not of the essence of the mind to want, since wanting presupposes perception; thought alone is, therefore, properly that which constitutes the essence of the mind; and if we want to add any clear and distinct idea to the word life, it might be said 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.
How can this author say that the whole essence of the soul or the mind consists only in thought? That simply can’t be the case, since thought is only an action, or an ephemeral modification of the soul or mind, it can’t be the essence of the soul or mind, for it’s the soul or the mind which makes, forms, or conceives its own thoughts; so, its thoughts can’t comprise its essence. The effect or the action of a cause can’t be the essence of the cause; and thought is the effect or the action of the soul or the mind, since thought is an action vital to the soul; therefore, this vital action cannot be the essence of the soul itself. That is obvious. Besides, if it’s thought alone, which forms the life or essence of the soul and the mind, then it’s not true to say that the soul sis a substance or that it is immortal; for it is clear and evident, by ourselves, that thought is only a vital action of the soul and not a substance, and it would be ridiculous to say that a thought could be immortal, since they usually last only a moment; does the author imagine he’s saying that all the thoughts of men were substances, and that they could subsist alone, outside their heads, flying through the air like flies? It would be fun to watch these swarms of thoughts flying out of everyone’s heads; there would certainly be far more thoughts than flies in the air, and even if each of them wasn’t opaque, they’d completely darken the sky and keep the sunlight from getting through. What folly to think such things. Besides, one more, if thought alone was the life and essence of the soul and the mind, then the soul and mind must be without life and without essence, when they aren’t thinking, and when they don’t presently have any knowledge of the truth, or any love for the good, and consequently, they must be nothing, whe
n they aren’t thinking; since nothing that’s alive can exist without that which gives it its life and its essence. And thus, without thought, which is their life and essence, the soul and mind would be without life or essence, and consequently, they wouldn’t be anything at all; which would be ridiculous to say and think.
But, our Cartesians reply, it’s not possible to conceive of a mind that doesn’t think. That is manifestly false, even by their own principles; for they won’t say, I think, that people who are sleeping in a sweet, calm, and deep manner, are this whole time without a soul, and that their soul is temporarily destroyed, only to be reborn when they wake up. They wouldn’t say that, I think, for fear of ridicule. And yet, those who sleep in a sweet, peaceful, and deep manner are not thinking about anything and have no thoughts, not even of what they cherish most; so, we may indeed conceive of a mind that doesn’t think, but thousands upon thousands of them are conceivable, since it’s easy to conceive of thousands upon thousands of people who are sleeping in a sweet, peaceful, and deep manner.
If our Cartesians maintain that no sweet, calm, and deep sleep can completely take away all the thoughts of the soul, every last person can prove them wrong with their own experience; for we know that when we’ve slept in a sweet, calm, and deep manner, we’ve thought of nothing at all, and we haven’t even thought of ourselves, even about what is dearest to us. If they say that in reality we just don’t remember it after we wake up, this reply is baseless, and they remember no better than we do. And if they themselves can’t remember thinking, they’re talking without knowing what they’re saying, and consequently they don’t deserve a hearing. But what, for example, might the spiritual and immortal soul of an infant that’s still in its mother’s womb possibly think about? It could only think about what it already knew, and it wouldn’t know anything yet. For, in the maxim of the Philosophers, there is nothing in the understanding that wasn’t previously in the senses[910]. And nothing has yet passed through the senses of this infant, it has never seen, heard, tasted, touched, or felt anything: and so, there aren’t yet any thoughts, or any knowledge in its brain, and consequently, it can’t think about anything yet; and it truly has a spiritual and immortal soul, then it’s clear and evident that the essence of this soul wouldn’t be in its thoughts, as our Cartesians claim.
Furthermore, if thought is the life of the soul, and the circulation of the blood and the proper temperament of the humors is the life of the body, as our Cartesians say, then each of us has two different sorts of life in us: that of the soul and that of the body, which is manifestly false; for we obviously feel that we have only one and the same life, and that what we call our soul and our body form together only one single life and one single living being, not two lives and two living beings, and it is ridiculous for our Cartesians to make a distinction between two different kinds of life and two different principles of life in a single person. And, since they acknowledge that the circulation of the blood and the proper temperament of the humors form the life of the body and all its motions, it is absurd and superfluous for them to imagine and uselessly forge another principle of life, which we don’t need at all, since the one principle which they recognize, that of the life of the body, is sufficient for us, as well as for all the other animals, to perform all the functions and all the acts of life. Yet our Cartesians agree that this one principle of the body's life is sufficient for all the other animals, to perform all the functions and acts of their lives: and so, they should also recognize that it’s sufficient for men to carry out all the functions and all the acts of their life, and if it’s sufficient for them, it’s clearly an error and an illusion for our Cartesians to say that our soul is spiritual and immortal, and it is an even greater illusion for them to invincibly believe they can demonstrate this supposed spirituality and this supposed immortality with such feeble and absurd arguments as those they resort to on this subject.
And I will show this even more clearly with the following argument. If our soul were a spiritual and intelligent substance, i.e., capable of knowledge and feeling by itself, and if it were truly distinct from its matter, it would know and would feel, immediately and certainly by itself, that it was truly a spiritual, distinct substance from matter, as we know and as we feel immediately and certainly by ourselves that we are corporeal substances: for we certainly have no need for anything but ourselves to make us feel and know with certainty that we are such. It would certainly be the same way with the soul, if it truly were a spiritual substance, and it would quite easily distinguish itself from matter, as we are able to distinguish ourselves from all that isn’t us.
But it is certain that the soul doesn’t know itself, and that it certainly doesn’t feel like a spiritual substance, for if it knew itself and felt certainly that it was such, then nobody could doubt its spirituality, because each of us would know and feel for themselves that it indeed was such. But nobody knows or feels that, to be sure: therefore, the soul is not a spiritual substance, as our Cartesians understand the term.
Furthermore, if the soul truly were a substance that was spiritual, knowledgeable, sensible, and completely distinct from matter, it would know itself before it knew matter, it would easily distinguish itself from matter, and it would even be impossible for it not to distinguish itself from matter; for if it were in fact completely enclosed in matter, it would definitely feel enclosed in it, the way we, for example, can feel that we’re contained in our clothes when we’re dressed, and sense the sheets and blankets enveloping us when we’re in bed. And, as said soul in a human body, it would find itself shut in, like a man finds himself shut up in a room, or like a Prisoner in a jail. With this in mind, it is clear and evident that the soul would distinguish itself, and would necessarily distinguish itself no less easily from matter, as we distinguish ourselves from our clothes when dressed, or as we distinguish ourselves from the sheets and covers when we’re lying in a bed. It couldn’t help but distinguish itself from matter as easily as we distinguish ourselves from a room we’re locked in; and finally, it would as easily be able to distinguish itself from matter as a prisoner could distinguish itself from the walls of his jail. But it’s clear that everyone has a strong sense, from their own experience, that the soul can’t distinguish itself from the matter in which it’s contained. Even the Cartesians can’t disagree with this, for they say, as I’ve already noted, that the soul is so blind that it misunderstands itself and that it fails to see that its own sensations belong to it. It is, they say, so closely joined with the body, and it has become so carnal since the introduction of sin, that it can scarcely distinguish itself from its body, to the point that, not only does it attribute to itself all its sensations, but also its power of imagination and sometimes even the point of reason. “The mind of man,” says Mr. de Cambrai, “which ceaselessly see all the objects around it, is deeply ignorant about itself; it gropes 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 the springs of this body which it doesn’t know, it is unaware of its own thoughts and its own desires,” etc. With that in mind, it’s quite clear and evident that the soul is not a substance that is spiritual, intelligent, and tangible per se, and that it’s not a substance distinct from matter, or of a different nature than matter, because, as I’ve just said, if it truly were so, it wouldn’t fail to know and feel inherently that it as a spiritual substance. It would know itself better than it knows matter; it’s not even conceivable how it could know matter; and finally, assuming that it might know matter, it would also be able to distinguish itself from matter with just as much assurance as prisoners are able to distinguish themselves from the walls of their jails. And therefore, since the soul can’t know itself and can’t even distinguish itself from the matter that contains it, this is a certain, clear, and evident proof that it’s not what the Cartesians say it is.