form any idea.

Notwithstanding, the divines pretend that this unknown being, entirely
different from the body, of a substance which has nothing conformable
with itself, is, nevertheless, capable of setting the body in motion;
and this, doubtless, is a mystery very inconceivable. We have noticed
the alliance between this spiritual substance and the material body,
whose functions it regulates. As the divines have supposed that matter
could neither think, nor will, nor perceive, they have believed that
it might conceive much better those operations attributed to a being
of which they had ideas less clear than they can form of matter. In
consequence, they have imagined many gratuitous suppositions to
explain the union of the soul with the body. In fine, in the
impossibility of overcoming the insurmountable barriers which oppose
them, the priests have made man twofold, by supposing that he contains
something distinct from himself; they have cut through all
difficulties by saying that this union is a great mystery, which man
cannot understand; and they have everlasting recourse to the
omnipotence of God, to his supreme will, to the miracles which he has
always wrought; and those last are never-failing, final resources,
which the theologians reserve for every case wherein they can find no
other mode of escaping gracefully from the argument of their
adversaries.

You see, then, to what we reduce all the jargon of the metaphysicians,
all the profound reveries which for so many ages have been so
industriously hawked about in defence of the soul of man; an
immaterial substance, of which no living being can form an idea; a
spirit, that is to say, a being totally different from any thing we
know. All the theological verbiage ends here, by telling us, in a
round of pompous terms,--fooleries that impose on the ignorant,--that
we do not know what essence the soul is of; but we call it a spirit
because of its nature, and because we feel ourselves agitated by some
unknown agent; we cannot comprehend the mechanism of the soul; yet can
we feel ourselves moved, as it were, by an effect of the power of God,
whose essence is far removed from ours, and more concealed from us
than the human soul itself. By the aid of this language, from which
you cannot possibly learn any thing, you will be as wise, Madam, as
all the theologians in the world.

If you would desire to form ideas the most precise of yourself, banish
from you the prejudices o