with their
material bodies? They will tell you that they know nothing about it;
that it is a mystery to them; that this combination is the effect of the
Almighty power. These are the clear ideas which men form of the hidden,
or, rather, imaginary substance which they consider the motor of all
their actions! If the soul is a substance essentially different from the
body, and which can have no affinity with it, their union would be, not
a mystery, but a thing impossible. Besides, this soul, being of an
essence different from that of the body, ought to act necessarily in a
different way from it. However, we see that the movements of the body
are felt by this pretended soul, and that these two substances, so
different in essence, always act in harmony. You will tell us that this
harmony is a mystery; and I will tell you that I do not see my soul,
that I know and feel but my body; that it is my body which feels, which
reflects, which judges, which suffers, and which enjoys, and that all of
its faculties are the necessary results of its own mechanism or of its
organization.

CI.--THE EXISTENCE OF A SOUL IS AN ABSURD SUPPOSITION, AND THE EXISTENCE
OF AN IMMORTAL SOUL IS A STILL MORE ABSURD SUPPOSITION.

Although it is impossible for men to have the least idea of the soul, or
of this pretended spirit which animates them, they persuade themselves,
however, that this unknown soul is exempt from death; everything proves
to them that they feel, think, acquire ideas, enjoy or suffer, but by
the means of the senses or of the material organs of the body. Even
admitting the existence of this soul, one can not refuse to recognize
that it depends wholly on the body, and suffers conjointly with it all
the vicissitudes which it experiences itself; and however it is imagined
that it has by its nature nothing analogous with it; it is pretended
that it can act and feel without the assistance of this body; that
deprived of this body and robbed of its senses, this soul will be able
to live, to enjoy, to suffer, be sensitive of enjoyment or of rigorous
torments. Upon such a tissue of conjectural absurdities the wonderful
opinion of the immortality of the soul is built.

If I ask what ground we have for supposing that the soul is immortal:
they reply, it is because man by his nature desires to be immortal, or
to live forever. But I rejoin, if you desire anything very much, is it
sufficient to conclude that this desire will be fulfilled? B