organic machine once
destroyed or deranged, is no longer capable of producing the same
effects, or of exercising the same functions. It is with our body as
it is with a watch which indicates the hours, and which goes not if
the spring or a pinion be broken.

Cease, Eugenia, cease to torment yourself about the fate which shall
attend you when death will have separated you from all that is dear on
earth. After the dissolution of this life, the soul shall cease to
exist; those devouring flames with which you have been threatened by
the priests will have no effect upon the soul, which can neither be
susceptible then of pleasures nor pains, of agreeable or sorrowful
ideas, of lively or doleful reflections.

It is only by means of the bodily organs that we feel, think, and are
merry or sad, happy or miserable; this body once reduced to dust, we
will have neither perceptions nor sensations, and, by consequence,
neither memory nor ideas; the dispersed particles will no longer have
the same qualities they possessed when united; nor will they any
longer conspire to produce the same effects. In a word, the body being
destroyed, the soul, which is merely a result of all the parts of the
body in action, will cease to be what it is; it will be reduced to
nothing with the life's breath.

Our teachers pretend to understand the soul well; they profess to be
able to distinguish it from the body; in short, they can do nothing
without it; and therefore, to keep up the farce, they have been
compelled to admit the ridiculous dogma of the Persians, known by the
name of the _resurrection_. This system supposes that the particles of
the body which have been scattered at death will be collected at the
last day, to be replaced in their primitive condition. But that this
strange phenomenon may take place, it is necessary that the particles
of our destroyed bodies, of which some, have been converted into
earth, others have passed into plants, others into animals, some of
one species, others of another, even of our own; it is requisite, I
say, that these particles, of which some have been mixed with the
waters of the deep, others have been carried on the wings of the wind,
and which have successively belonged to many different men, should be
reunited to reproduce the individual to whom they formerly belonged.
If you cannot get over this impossibility, the theologians will
explain it to you by saying, very briefly, "Ah! it is a profound
mystery,