a multitude of mortals
who are dupes enough to go after them?

Man's vanity persuades him that he is the sole center of the universe;
he creates for himself a world and a God; he thinks himself of
sufficient consequence to derange nature at his will, but he reasons as
an atheist when the question of other animals is involved. Does he not
imagine that the individuals different from his species are automatons
unworthy of the cares of universal Providence, and that the beasts can
not be the objects of its justice and kindness? Mortals consider
fortunate or unfortunate events, health or sickness, life and death,
abundance or famine, as rewards or punishments for the use or misuse of
the liberty which they arrogate to themselves. Do they reason on this
principle when animals are taken into consideration? No; although they
see them under a just God enjoy and suffer, be healthy and sick, live
and die, like themselves, it does not enter their mind to ask what
crimes these beasts have committed in order to cause the displeasure of
the Arbiter of nature. Philosophers, blinded by their theological
prejudices, in order to disembarrass themselves, have gone so far as to
pretend that beasts have no feelings!

Will men never renounce their foolish pretensions? Will they not
recognize that nature was not made for them? Will they not see that this
nature has placed on equal footing all the beings which she produced?
Will they not see that all organized beings are equally made to be born
and to die, to enjoy and to suffer? Finally, instead of priding
themselves preposterously on their mental faculties, are they not
compelled to admit that they often render them more unhappy than the
beasts, in which we find neither opinions, prejudices, vanities, nor the
weaknesses which decide at every moment the well-being of men?

C.--WHAT IS THE SOUL? WE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT IT. IF THIS PRETENDED SOUL
WAS OF ANOTHER ESSENCE FROM THAT OF THE BODY, THEIR UNION WOULD BE
IMPOSSIBLE.

The superiority which men arrogate to themselves over other animals, is
principally founded upon the opinion of possessing exclusively an
immortal soul. But as soon as we ask what this soul is, they begin to
stammer. It is an unknown substance; it is a secret force distinguished
from their bodies; it is a spirit of which they can form no idea. Ask
them how this spirit, which they suppose like their God, totally
deprived of a physical substance, could combine itself