like Pinel, trained in the
materialistic school of the eighteenth century. And it was clearly
impossible that the great and humane reforms in this field could have
taken place before the decisive decay of theology. Theology assumes
perversity as the natural condition of the human heart, and could only
regard insanity as an intolerable exaggeration of this perversity.
Secondly, the absolute independence of mind and body which theology
brought into such overwhelming relief naturally excluded the notion
that, by dealing with the body, you might be doing something to heal the
mind. Perhaps we are now in some danger of overlooking the potency of
the converse illustration of what Holbach says: namely, the efficacy of
mental remedies or preventives in the case of bodily disease.

If you complain--to resume our exposition--that the mechanism is not
sufficient to explain the principle of the movements and faculties of
the soul, the answer is, that it is in the same case with all the bodies
in nature. In them the simplest movements, the most ordinary phenomena,
the commonest actions, are inexplicable mysteries, whose first
principles are for ever sealed to us. How shall we flatter ourselves
that we know the first principle of gravity, by virtue of which a stone
falls? What do we know of the mechanism that produces the attraction of
some substances, and the repulsion of others? But surely the
incomprehensibility of natural effects is no reason for assigning to
them a cause that is still more incomprehensible than any of those
within our cognisance.

It is not given to man to know everything; it is not given to him to
know his own origin, nor to penetrate into the essence of things, nor to
mount up to the first principle of things. What is given to him is to
have reason, to have good faith, to concede frankly that he is ignorant
of what he cannot know, and not to supplement his lack of certainty by
words that are unintelligible, and suppositions that are absurd.

Suns go out and planets perish; new suns are kindled, and new planets
revolve in new paths; and man--infinitely small portion of a globe that
is itself only a small point in immensity--dreams that it is for him
that the universe has been made, imagines that he must be the confidant
of nature, and proudly flatters himself that he must be eternal! O man,
wilt thou never conceive that thou art but an insect of a day? All
changes in the universe; nature contains not a form