nature of this soul; while we are more familiarized
with matter or the body, which we imagine we know, and of which we
believe we have understood the springs; but the most simple movements of
our bodies are, for every thinking man, enigmas as difficult to divine
as thought.

CVI.--CONTINUATION.

The esteem which so many people have for the spiritual substance,
appears to result from the impossibility they find in defining it in an
intelligible way. The contempt which our metaphysicians show for matter,
comes from the fact that "familiarity breeds contempt." When they tell
us that the soul is more excellent and noble than the body, they tell us
nothing, except that what they know nothing about must be more beautiful
than that of which they have some faint ideas.

CVII.--THE DOGMA OF ANOTHER LIFE IS USEFUL BUT FOR THOSE WHO PROFIT BY IT
AT THE EXPENSE OF THE CREDULOUS PUBLIC.

We are constantly told of the usefulness of the dogma of life hereafter.
It is pretended that even if it should be a fiction, it is advantageous,
because it imposes upon men and leads them to virtue. But is it true
that this dogma renders men wiser and more virtuous? The nations where
this fiction is established, are they remarkable for the morality of
their conduct? Is not the visible world always preferred to the
invisible world? If those who are charged to instruct and to govern men
had themselves enlightenment and virtue, they would govern them far
better by realities than by vain chimeras; but deceitful, ambitious, and
corrupt, the legislators found it everywhere easier to put the nations
to sleep by fables than to teach them truths; than to develop their
reason; than to excite them to virtue by sensible and real motives; than
to govern them in a reasonable way.

Theologians, no doubt, have had reasons for making the soul immaterial.
They needed souls and chimeras to populate the imaginary regions which
they have discovered in the other life. Material souls would have been
subjected, like all bodies, to dissolution. Moreover, if men believe
that everything is to perish with the body, the geographers of the other
world would evidently lose the chance of guiding their souls to this
unknown abode. They would draw no profits from the hopes with which they
feast them, and from the terrors with which they take care to overwhelm
them. If the future is of no real utility to the human race, it is at
least of the greatest advantage to t