Animal soul. The question of an animal soul was a subject worthy enough to preoccupy the ancient philosophers; it does not seem however that they tormented themselves much with this issue, nor that, although divided on many different points, they made the nature of this soul the pretext of dispute. All shared the common opinion that brutes feel and know, attributing only to this principle of knowledge more or less dignity, more or less conformity with the human soul ; and perhaps contenting themselves in this way to obscure, diversely, in the savant shadows of their enigmatic style, the coarse prejudice so natural to men, that matter is capable of thought. But while the ancient philosophers were willing to leave certain popular prejudices unchallenged, the moderns demonstrate more boldness. Descartes, whose followers are many, was the first philosopher to dare to classify animals as pure machines : Gomesius Pereira, who said the same somewhat earlier, does he merit mention here; for he came upon this hypothesis by pure chance, and as M. Bayle judiciously states, had not developed this opinion from his true principles. So it was that he was not accorded the honor of being feared, nor of being followed, not even that of being remembered; and, what is the saddest fate for an innovator, he created no sectarian following.

Thus Descartes was the first to be led by the consequences of his profound meditations to deny the animal soul , a paradox that he has caused the world to embrace to an extraordinary degree. He would never have fallen into this opinion, if he had not been forced to do so, so to speak, by the great truth of the distinction between soul and body, that he was the first to publicize, joined to the human prejudice against according immortality to the animal soul . The machine opinion solved two important objections, one against the immortality of the soul , the other against the goodness of God. If you accept the automata system, these two difficulties disappear, but it was not noticed that doing so creates many other objections emanating from the very heart of this system. One might remark in passing that Descartes's philosophy, whatever the envious may have said, was biased in favor of religion; the machine hypothesis is one proof of this bias.

Cartesianism has alway triumphed as long as it contested only Aristotle's material souls, only those incomplete substances drawn from the power of matter, to form a substantial whole that thinks and knows in animals. We have so well overthrown these lovely scholastic entities, that I do not think anyone will reproduce them ever again: these phantoms would never dare expose themselves to the light of a century such as ours; and if there were no intermediate solution between them and the Cartesian automata, one would be obliged to accept the latter. Fortunately, since Descartes, we have discovered a third option; and it is in the wake of this discovery that the disdain for the automata system has developed. We are indebted to the improved ideas that have been established lately concerning the immaterial world. We have understood that this world must be much more extensive than was thought, and that it contains many more inhabitants than merely angels and human souls; an ample resource for natural philosophers, whenever mechanics falls short, in particular when explaining the movement of animals.

While addressing the famous automata system, less us try to omit none of its most specious arguments, and to present in shortened form all the substantive arguments that might support this system. These can reduced to the following; that the unique mechanism that rationally explains movement in animals, the hypothesis that they possess a soul, is false, because it is superfluous. Now this is easy to prove, once the principle has been accepted, that the animal body has already in itself, independently of the soul, a principle of its life and movement: experience provides us with incontestable proof of this.

1. It is certain that man makes a great number of movements mechanically, that is, without noticing them himself, and without willing them; actions that one can only attribute to the influence of objects and to a primitive disposition in the machine, in which the influence of the soul plays no part. Of this number are bodily habits, that come from the frequent reiteration of certain actions in the presence of certain objects; or from the combined traces that diverse sensations have left on the brain; or from the joining of a long series of movements, that one has often repeated in the same order, either accidentally or on purpose. Of this number are all the abilities acquired by art. A musician, a lute player, a dancer, execute the most varied and ordered movements together, in a very exact manner, without paying the slightest attention to each of these individual movements: there occurs only one single act of will, by which he decides to sing, or to play a particular air, and gives the initial stimulation to the animal spirits; all the rest follows in an orderly fashion without his thinking about it. Add to that so many surprising actions by distracted individuals, by sleepwalkers, &c. in all these cases men are so many automata.

2. There are natural movements that are so involuntary, that we are incapable of preventing them, for example, that admirable mechanism that maintains equilibrium, when we lower ourselves, when we walk on a straight plank, &c.

3. The natural attractions and antipathies for certain objects, that in children precede discernment and knowledge, and that at times in grown persons surmount all efforts of reason, have their origin in the mechanism, and are so many proofs of the influence of objects on the movements of the human body.

4. We know the extent to which passions depend on the degree of the movement of blood and on the reciprocal impressions produced by animals spirits on the heart and brain, the union of which is made so intimate by the agency of the nerves. One knows how these passions may be excited by external impressions, or fortified by them, in so much as they are simple modifications of the machine. Descartes in his Treatise on Passions , & le P. Malebranche in his Ethics , explain well the workings of the machine in this regard; and how, without the aid of thought, by the correspondence and amazing sympathy of nerves and muscles, each of the passions, considered as a wholly bodily emotion, produces its own unique look on the face, is accompanied by its characteristic natural gesture and posture, and produces in the entire body movements appropriate to its need and in proportion to its goals.

It is easy to see the outcome of all these reflections on the human body considered as an automaton that exists independently of a soul, or of a principle of feeling and intelligence: if we observe animals doing only that which such an automaton could do by virtue of its organization, there is, it seems, nothing that leads us to assume a principle of intelligence in animals, and to regard them as anything other than pure machines; there remains only the prejudice that causes us to attach to animal movement the same thoughts that accompany similar movements in ourselves.

Nothing provides us with a better idea of Cartesian automata than M. Regis's comparison with certain hydraulic machines that one sees in the grottos and fountains of the homes of certain nobles, in which the force of the water alone guided by the placement of pipes and by some exterior pressure moves various machines. He compares these fountain pipes to nerves; the muscles, tendons, &c. are the other mechanisms making up the machine; the spirits are the water that moves them; the heart is like the water source; and the cavities of the brain are the outlets. The exterior objects, that by their presence act upon the sense organs of animals, are like the outsiders who, entering into the grotto, and placing their feet on certain squares intended for this, make certain figures move; if they come near a Diana, she flees and dives into the fountain; if they advance farther, a Neptune approaches, and comes to menace them with his trident. One can also compare animals in this system to those organs that play different tunes by the movement of water alone: there may even be, the Cartesians say, an organization peculiar to animals, placed there by the Creator, and that the Creator ordered diversely according to the diverse species of animals, but always in proportion to the objects, always in accordance with the great goal of conserving the individual and the species. Nothing could be easier for the supreme worker, to he who knows perfectly the character and nature of all those objects that he created. The establishment of such a just correspondence would be as nothing for his power and wisdom. The notion of such a harmony appears great and worthy of God: that in itself, say the Cartesians, should make acceptable to a philosopher those paradoxes so shocking to popular prejudice, and that loan such an air of ridicule to Cartesianism on this point.

Another point in favor of Cartesianism, that appears to be somewhat dazzling, is taken from artistic productions. One knows how far human industry has gone in the creation of certain machines: their effects are inconceivable, and appear miraculous to the minds of those untrained in mechanics. Assemble here all such marvels of which you have heard, walking statues, artificial flies that fly and buzz; spiders of the same construction that spin their webs; birds that sing; a golden head that talks; a Pan that plays the flute: even if one limits oneself to type of object, one would never finish the list of such artistic inventions that copy nature so delightfully. The celebrated creations of Vulcan, those tripods that walked on their own about the gods' assembly; those golden slaves who seemed to have learned their art from their master and who worked alongside him, are types of marvels that do not seem impossible; and the gods that admired him so much were possessed of less enlightenment, apparently, than the mechanics of our day. So it is that our Cartesian philosophers reason. Unite all the art and surprising movements of these different machines into one alone, and it would remain only human art; judge what divine art might produce. Notice that it is question here not of an ideal machine that God might produce; the animal body is incontestably a machine composed of infinite mechanisms more nimble than ever could be those of that artificial machine in which we imagine united all the extended and shared industry of the many others that we have so far seen. It is necessary thus to establish whether, the animal body being without comparison superior to this sort of machine in its delicacy, variety, arrangement, and the composition of its mechanisms, we are not capable of judging that by reasoning from the smallest to the largest, its organization may cause that variety of regular movement that we see in an animal; and whether, although we do not exactly have precise knowledge in this area, we are not in a position to judge that it contains enough art to produce these effects. From all of this the Cartesian concludes that nothing obliges us to admit the presence in animals of a soul beyond this machine, for all the actions of animals have as a final goal only the conservation of the body, and it is divine wisdom not to create anything without a purpose, to act by the simplest methods, to allocate the excellence and number of means according to the importance of the ends; and that consequently God will have employed only mechanical laws for the upkeep of the machine, and will have placed in it, not outside of it, the principle of its conservation and of all the operations that work toward this conservation. Now the Cartesian argument is concluded; let us see how others have responded.

I propose that if one wants to reason from experience, one must undo the Cartesian machines, and that, beginning from the actions that we witness animals make, we can move from point to point, following the rules of the most exact logic, until we demonstrate that there is in animals an immaterial principle that is the cause of these actions. First, we must not quibble with the Cartesians over the possibility that a mechanism produces all of these phenomena. We must carefully guard against attacking what they say about the fecundity of the laws of movement, about the miraculous effects of mechanisms, about the incomprehensible scope of divine understanding; and about the parallels that they draw between machines produced by human art and the infinitely greater marvels that the Creator of the universe might place in the machines that he might produce. This fecund and almost limitless notion of the possibilities of mechanics, of the combinations of figure and movement, joined to that of the wisdom and power of the Creator, seems the inexpungeable strength of Cartesianism. One could not say where it might lead; and certainly anyone who has in the least considered the notion of the infinitely perfect Being, will take care never to deny any possibility, provided that no contradiction is involved.

But the Cartesian is wrong when, based on this possibility which we allow him, he continues to argue in the following manner; Because God can produce beings like my automata, who can prevent us from believing that he has produced them? The actions of beasts, as admirable as they may appear to us, may be the result of a combination of mechanisms, of a certain arrangement of organs, of a certain precise application of the general laws of movement, an application that divine art is capable of perceiving and producing: thus one must not attribute to animals a principle that thinks and feels, for all can be explained without this principle; so one must conclude that they are pure machines. We would do well to deny him this conclusion, and to tell him: we are certain that there exists in animals a principle that thinks and feels; everything that we see them do indicates such a principle; so we have reason to attribute it to them, despite the contrary possibility that we are presented with: notice that we are dealing here with a question of fact, that is, whether in beasts such a principle exists or does not exist: we see the actions of animals, our task is to discover the cause of these actions; and we are limited in doing so to the same type of reasoning that natural philosophers employ in their research on natural causes, and that historians employ when they wish to ascertain the truth of certain events. The same principles that lead us to certainty concerning questions of such a nature, must determine our conclusions in this case.

The first rule, is that God is incapable of deceiving us. Here is the second: the joining of a large number of appearances or effects to a cause that explains them, proves the existence of this cause. If the postulated cause explains all the known phenomena, if they all are united in one single principle, as so many lines to a common center; if we are unable to imagine a principle other than this one that explains all these phenomena; we must hold as indisputable the existence of this principle. That is the fixed point of certainty beyond which the human mind is incapable of going; for it is impossible for our mind to remain undecided, when sufficient proof exists on one side, and not at all on the other. If we are wrong in spite of all this, it is God who deceives us, since he made us in this way, and gave us no other method for achieving certitude on such subjects. If animals are pure machines, God is deceiving us; this argument is the fatal blow to the machine hypothesis.

First of all let us admit the following; if God can create a machine that by the disposition of its mechanisms alone can execute all the surprising actions that one admires in a dog or a monkey, he can form other machines that can imitate all the actions of men: each of these is equally possible for God; there would only be in the latter case a greater artistic output; a finer organization, more combined mechanisms, would be all the difference. God in his infinite understanding encompasses the ideas of all combinations, of all possible relationships between figures, impressions, and determinations of movement, and his power equaling his intelligence, it appears clear that the only difference between these two suppositions is that of degree more or less, which changes nothing in the realm of possibilities. I do not see how the Cartesians can escape this conclusion, and what essential disparities they might find between the case of the animal mechanisms that they defend, and the imaginary case that would transform all men into automata, and that would reduce a Cartesian to being not at all sure whether there exist intelligences in the world other than God and his own mind.

If I were arguing with a Pyrrhonian of this sort, how would I go about proving to him that the men he sees are not automata? I would first parade before myself these two principles: 1. God is incapable of deception; 2. the link between a long chain of appearances and a cause that perfectly explains these appearances, and that alone explains them to me, proves the existence of this cause. Pure possibility proves nothing here, for he who proposes the possibility that something exists in a certain manner, proposes equally at the same time the existence of its opposite. You allege to me the possibility that God made machines similar to human bodies, who by the laws of mechanics alone might speak, converse with me, discourse logically, write well-reasoned books. It would be God in this case who, having all of the ideas that I receive on witnessing the diverse movements of these beings whom I believe to be intelligent like myself, would control the mechanisms of certain automata to cause these ideas of mine, and who would execute all of this himself by mechanical laws. I agree that all of this is possible: but compare your supposition with mine. You attribute all that I see to a hidden mechanism, that is perfectly unknown to you; you suppose a cause of which you assuredly do not see the link with any of the effects, and that explains none of the appearances: I first find a cause that I understand, a cause that brings together, that explains, all of these appearances; this cause is a soul similar to my own. I know that I perform all of the exterior acts that I see other men perform by means of a soul that thinks, that reasons, that has ideas, that is united to a body, the movements of which it regulates as it pleases. A reasoning soul thus explains to me clearly the similar actions that I witness other human bodies around me performing. I conclude from this that their bodies like mine are united to reasoning souls. That is a principle of which I have an idea, that unites and that explains with perfect clarity the innumerable phenomena that I see.

The pure possibility of a different cause of which you give me no idea, your possible but inconceivable mechanism, and that explains none of the effects that I see, will never stop me from asserting the existence of a reasoning soul that explains them to me, nor from believing firmly that the men with whom I interact are not pure automata. And take care, my belief is a perfect certitude, because it rests on that other evident principle, that God is incapable of deceit: and if what I take to be men like myself are in fact only automata, he would be deceiving me; he would be doing all that was necessary to push me into error, by making me conceive on the one hand a clear reason for the phenomena that I perceive, that however would not exist, while hiding from me the true reason.

All that I have just said applies easily to the actions of beasts, and the conclusion is self-evident. What do we perceive in them? Actions that follow logically, that indicate sense and represent the ideas, desires, interests, and designs of some particular being. It is true that they do not speak; and this disparity between animals and men will serve you only by proving that they do not have as he does universal ideas, that they do not reason abstractly. But they act in a logical manner; this proves that they possess a feeling of their own existence, and a self-interest that is the principle and goal of their acts; all their movements are aimed at their needs, at their self-preservation, at their well-being. If one makes the least effort to observe their aspects, it seems manifestly clear that there exists a type of society among those of the same species, and sometimes even between different species; they appear to understand each other and to act together toward the same goal; they have communication with men: witness horses, dogs, andc. we train them, they learn; we command them, they obey; we menace them, they appear fearful; we pet them, they in turn nuzzle us. Even more, because we must here set aside all the wonders of instinct, we see these animals perform spontaneous acts that appear to reflect reason and liberty, all the more so in that these acts are less uniform, more diverse, less predictable, adjusted immediately to the occasion at hand.

You, as a Cartesian, allege vague ideas to me of a possible mechanism, but one that is unknown and inexplicable to you or to myself: here, you say, is the source of the phenomena that animals present to you. And I have a clear idea of a different cause; I have the idea of a sensible principle: I see that this principle has very distinct connections to all the phenomena in question, and that it explains and universally unites all these phenomena. I see that my soul in its quality of sensible principle produces a thousand actions and moves my body in a thousand ways, all similar to the ways in which animals move their own in similar circumstances. Propose such a principle in animals, I see the reason and the cause of all the movements that they perform to preserve their machine: I see why the dog withdraws his paw when the fire burns it; why he cries out when hit, &c. remove this principle and I no longer see the reason, nor the one and simple cause, of all of that. I conclude that there is in animals a sensible principle, because God is not deceitful, and because he would be deceitful if animals were pure machines; in that he would present to me a multitude of phenomena that would necessarily create in my mind the idea of cause that would not exist: so it is that the reasons that directly demonstrate to us the existence of an intelligent soul in each man, also assure us of the existence of an immaterial principle in animals.

But we must pursue this reasoning further in order to understand better all of its force. Let us suppose in animals, if you will, a mechanical disposition which gives rise to all of their surprising operations; let us believe it worthy of divine wisdom to produce a machine capable of self-preservation, that possesses within itself by virtue of its admirable organization the principle of all the movements that preserve it; I ask, what is the point of such a machine? why this amazing arrangement of mechanisms? why all these organs similar to our sense organs? why these eyes, these ears, these nostrils, this brain? they are there, you say, to regulate the movements of the automaton in reaction to the diverse impressions of exterior bodies: the goal of all this, is the very conservation of the machine. But again I ask you, of what use are such self-preserving machines to the universe? It is not for us, you say, to penetrate the goals of the Creator, and to determine the ends that he assigns to each of his creations. But if he reveals these goals to us by relatively telling signs, it is not reasonable to notice them? What! am I wrong to say that the ear is designed for hearing and the eyes for seeing; that the fruits of the earth are destined to nourish man; that the air is necessary to keep him alive, in that the circulation of blood would not occur in its absence? Would you deny that the different parts of the animal body are made by the Creator for the uses indicated by experience? If you deny this, you allow the atheists to triumph.

I will go further: our sense organs, that such an industrious hand fashioned with such knowledge, did the Creator intend them for ends other than the very sensations that are excited by them in our soul? Can one doubt that our body is not made for our soul, to be its sensible principle and the instrument of its action? And if this is true of men, why would it not be so of animals? In the animal machine we uncover a very wise goal, a goal very worthy of God, a goal verified by our experience in similar cases; that is, to unite itself with an immaterial principle, and to be for it a source of perception and an instrument of action; here is a unified goal, in accord with the prodigious combination of mechanisms that compose the organized body; remove this goal, deny this immaterial principle, feeling by means of the machine, acting upon the machine, and working ceaselessly in its own interest to preserve the machine; I no longer see any goal for this admirable creation. This machine must be made for some distinct end of its own; because it does not exist for itself, anymore than the wheels of a clock are made for the clock. Do not reply, that as the clock exists to mark the hours, and thus its use is to provide men with the correct time, the same is true of beasts; that they are machines that God intended for the use of man. There would be great error in such a statement; because one must carefully distinguish between accessory uses that are so to speak foreign to objects, and their natural and final principles. How many brutish animals exist, from which man gets no use, such as savage beasts, insects, all those tiny living beings that people the air, the water, and almost all bodies! The animals that serve man, do so only by accident; it is; he who subdues them, who tames them, who trains them, who adroitly turns them to his needs. We use dogs and horses artfully according to our needs, just as we use the wind to move ships and to turn windmills. One would be quite mistaken in believing that the natural use of wind and God's principal goal in designing this meteorological phenomenon was to turn windmills, and to aid the movement of ships, and we would be far closer to the truth if we said that the winds were designed to purify and refresh the air. Apply this to our subject. A clock is made to indicate time, and is made only for that; all of the different pieces that compose it are necessary to this goal and work toward it: but is there any proportion between the delicacy, the variety, the multiplicity of the organs of animals, and the uses that we make of them, that we make only of a small number of species, and of only the smallest part of each of these species? The clock has its own distinctive goal: but examine animals well, observe their movements, watch them in their natural setting, when unconstrained by human industry and not subjected to our needs and caprices, you will not see any goal at work other than their self-preservation. But what do you understand by preservation? that of the machine? Your answer is not satisfying in the least; pure matter is not its own end; one can claim this even less so of a piece of organized matter; the arrangement of a material whole has as a goal something other than this whole; the preservation of the animal machine, when its principle lies in the machine alone, would be a means and not an end: the more there existed of fine mechanics in all of this, the more I would perceive art, and the more I would be obliged to have recourse to something outside of the machine, that is, to a simple being for whom this arrangement was made, and for whom the whole machine would serve a useful purpose. It is thus that our notions of the wisdom and truthfulness of God, work together to lead us to that general conclusion that we may now view as certain. There is an animal soul, that is, an immaterial principle united with their machine, made for it, as the machine is made for the soul, that receives in its turn different sensations, and that causes in animals those actions that surprise us, by the diverse orders that it instills in the moving force inside the machine.

Our research has led us as far as the recognized existence of the animal soul , that is, of an immaterial principle joined to their machine. If this soul were not spiritual, we could not assure ourselves that our own was so; since the privilege of reason and all the other faculties of the human soul, are not any more incompatible with the idea of pure matter, than is simple sensation, and there is further to go from refined subtilized matter, placed in whatever possible arrangement, to the simple perception of an object, than there is from this simple direct perception to considered acts and to reason.

First of all there is an essential distinction between human reason and that of animals. Although the common prejudice extends to according them a degree of reason, it has not gone so as far to make them the equals of humans. The reason of brutes acts only upon small objects, and acts very weakly; this reason does not apply itself to all sorts of objects as does ours. The bestial soul would thus be a thinking substance, but the basis of its thought would be much narrower than that of the human soul . It would have an idea of those corporal objects that had some useful relationship to its body: but it would have no spiritual and abstract ideas; it would not be susceptible to the idea of a God, a religion, of moral good and evil, nor of all those ideas that are so well tied to these, that an intelligence capable of receiving the first is necessarily susceptible to the others. Neither would the animal soul contain those notions and principles on which the sciences and arts are built. Here then are many of the properties of the human soul missing from that of animals: but what guarantees this lack? Experience: with whatever care one observes animals, however one turns them, none of their actions reveal to us the least trace of the ideas of which I have just spoken; I include even those of their actions that demonstrate the most subtlety and finesse, and that appear the most reasoned. If we judge by experience alone, we are thus in a position to deny them all the properties of the human soul. Will you say with Bayle that because the bestial soul , imprisoned as it is in certain organs, does not demonstrate this or that faculty, this or that idea, it does not follow at all that it is not susceptible to these ideas nor that it does not possess these faculties; because it is perhaps the organization of the machine that veils them and covers them? To this ridiculous perhaps , that offends common sense, here is a decisive response. It would be in direct opposition to the nature of a good and wise God, and contrary to the order that he invariably follows, to give to his creation certain faculties, and to forbid him to exercise them, especially if those faculties, through their use, might contribute to the glory of the Creator and the happiness of the created. Here is a principle clearly contained by the idea of a supremely good and supremely wise God: that the intelligences that he has created, in whatever order he places them, to whatever economy it pleases him to subject them (I am referring to a lasting economy regulated by the general laws of nature), be capable of glorifying him as much as their nature permits them, and be at the same time capable of obtaining the happiness to which this nature is susceptible. From this it follows that it is repugnant to the wisdom and goodness of God, to submit these creatures to any economy that would permit them to deploy only the least noble of their faculties, that would render useless to them those that were the most noble, and that consequently would prevent them from striving for the greatest degree of happiness that they were capable of attaining. An example of such an economy would be one that limited creatures capable of reason and of clear ideas to simple sensations, and that deprived them of the kind of happiness gained by evident knowledge and free and reasonable operations, to reduce them to the simple pleasures of the senses. Now the bestial soul , supposing that it did not differ essentially from the human soul, would be in that state of forced subjection that is repellant to the goodness and wisdom of the Creator, and that is directly contrary to the laws of order. This is enough to convince us that the bestial soul having, as experience demonstrates, no knowledge of divinity, no religious principle, no notions of moral good and evil, is not susceptible to these notions. This exclusion comprises an infinite number of ideas and spiritual properties. But if it is not the same as that of men, what then is its nature? Here is what one can conjecture most reasonably on this subject, and that is the least susceptible to the problems that otherwise arise.

I imagine the animal soul to be an immaterial and intelligent substance: but of what kind? It seems that it must be an active principle that has sensations, and only sensations. Our soul has in itself, in addition to its essential activity, two faculties that provide to this activity the matter on which it operates. One is the faculty of forming clear and distinct ideas on which the active principle or the will acts in a manner called reflection, judgment, reasoning, free choice : the other is the faculty of feeling, that consists of the perception of an infinity of small involuntary ideas, that rapidly succeed one another, that the soul does not perceive at all, but the different orderings of which please or displease, and in response to which the active principle reacts only by confused desires. These two faculties appear independent of each other: what prevents us from supposing on the scale of intelligences beneath that of the human soul a more limited kind of mind, that would resemble the human mind however only by the faculty of sensation; a mind that would have this one faculty without possessing the other, that would be capable only of indistinct ideas, or of confused perceptions? This mind, having much more restrictive limitations than the human soul, would be essentially or specifically distinct from it. Its activity would be limited in proportion to its intelligence: as the latter would be limited to confused perceptions, the former would consist only of confused desires that would be relative to those perceptions. It would have only some traits of the human soul; it would be its portrait in miniature. The bestial soul , as I imagine it, perceives objects by sensation; it does not reflect at all; it has no distinct idea; it has only a confused idea of the body. But what a difference between those corporal ideas that sensation gives birth to in us, and those that an animal receives by the same route! The senses do generate in us the idea of bodies: but our soul, having in addition a superior faculty to that of sensation, formulate this idea in quite a different manner than that in which the senses gave it. For example, I see a tree, an animal sees it as well: but my perception is very different from the animal's. As far as sensation is concerned, perhaps all is equal between it and myself: I have however a perception that it does not, and why? Because I have the power to reflect upon the object that sensation presents to me. As soon as I have seen one tree, I have an abstract idea of "tree" in general, that is separate in my mind from that of a plant, of that a horse and of a house. This vision that understanding forms of an object to which sensation directs it, is the principle of all reasoning, that supposes reflection, distinct vision, abstract ideas of objects, by which we see the relationships and differences, and that places in each object a type of unity. We believe that we owe to our senses knowledge that comes from a much more noble principle, by which I mean an intelligence that distinguishes, that unites, that compares, that furnishes this vision with discretion and discernment. Let us then boldly strip animals of the privileges that they have usurped in our imagination. A purely sensible soul is limited in its activity, as in its intelligence; it does not reflect, it does not reason; properly speaking, neither does it choose in the least; it is capable neither of virtue nor of vice, nor of any progress other than that produced by mechanical impressions and habits. There is for it neither past nor future; it is content to feel and to act, and if its actions seem to imply all of the properties I have just refused it, one must blame the pure mechanics of organs for these deceiving appearances.

When one unites the mechanism with the action of an immaterial and self-moving principle, from that point on the great obstacle weakens, and the reasoned actions of beasts may easily be reduced to a sensible principle joined to an organized body. In Descartes's hypothesis, the mechanism aims only to preserve the machine; but the goal and use of this machine is inexplicable, pure matter not able to be its own end, and the most industrious arrangement of any material whole having necessarily for its preservation a reason other than itself. Furthermore, to this machine's reaction, I mean the movements excited in it by the impression of exterior bodies, one can ascribe no natural or final cause. For example, in order to explain how animals seek out the food that is appropriate for them, does it suffice to say that the stimulation caused by a certain bitter juice to the nerves of the stomach of a dog, being transmitted to the brain, oblige it to open itself to the most suitable places in order to cause the spirits to flow into the leg muscles; which causes the dog-machine to move toward the meat that one offers to it? I see no physical reason that demonstrates that the movement of this nerve transmitted all the way to the brain must cause the animal spirits to flow into the muscles that produce this movement that is useful to the machine. What force pushes these spirits precisely to this side? If one were to discover the physical reason that produces such an effect, one would seek the final cause to no avail. The insensible machine has no motive, because it is susceptible to no happiness; nothing, properly speaking, is of use to it.

The opposite is true of the hypothesis of the mechanism united with a sensible principle; this hypothesis is based on a real utility, that is, on that of a sensible principle, that would not exist if there were no machine to which it was united. The principle being active, it has the power to move the mechanisms of this machine, the Creator arranges them in such a way that it is able to move them usefully for its happiness, having constructed them so artfully, that on the one hand the movements that produce agreeable sensations in the soul work to preserve the machine, the source of these feelings; and on the other hand the soul's desires, that are in accord with these feelings, produce in the machine insensible movements, that by virtue of the harmony that reigns there, work in their turn to preserve it in a good state, in order to draw from it agreeable sensations for the soul. The physical cause of these animal movements so wisely proportioned to the impressions of objects, is the activity of the soul itself, that has the power to move the body; it directs and modifies its activity in conformity with diverse sensations, that are excited in it by certain external impressions, as soon as it is involuntarily exposed to them; impressions that, depending on whether they are agreeable or painful to the soul, are advantageous or damaging to the machine. On the other side of this force, as blind as it is, one finds submitted to it an instrument so artistically fabricated that from a series of impressions made upon it by this blind force there result movements equally regular and useful to this agent.

Thus all is connected and supportive: the soul, as the sensible principle, is submissive to the mechanism that transmits to it in a certain manner the impression of exterior objects; as the active principle, it presides itself over another mechanism that is subordinate to it, and that being for it only an instrument of action, gives to this action all the necessary regularity. The animal soul, being active and sensible all at once, regulating its action by its feeling, and finding in the disposition of its machine both the capacity to feel agreeable sensations, and the means to act usefully both for itself and for the good of the other parts of the universe, is the link between this double mechanism; it is its reason and its final cause in the Creator's intention.

But in order to explain my thoughts better, let us suppose one of those mechanical masterpieces in which diverse weights and diverse mechanisms are so industriously adjusted, that at the least movement that one produces in it, it produces the most surprising and agreeable effects; similar to one of those hydraulic machines M. Regis speaks of, one of those marvelous clocks, one of those moving pictures, one of those animated scenes; suppose that we instruct a child to press on a lever, or to turn a handle, and immediately we see superb decorations and laughing landscapes, that we see several figures move about and dance, that we hear harmonious sounds, &c. this child, is he not a blind agent, with regard to the machine? He is in perfect ignorance of its workings, he does not know how and by what laws all these effects occur that surprise him; yet he is the cause of these movements; by touching one spring he made the entire machine play; he is the moving force that sets it in motion. The mechanism is the business of the worker who invented this machine to amuse him: this mechanism, of which the child is unaware, is created for him, and it is he makes it move without knowing it. Such is the animal soul : but the example is less than perfect; one must imagine that there is something about the lever that makes the machine work that attracts the child, that pleases him, and invites him to touch it. One must imagine that as the child enters into a grotto, his foot scarcely touches a certain point where a lever is placed when a Neptune appears to menace him with his trident; that frightened by this apparition, he flees toward a place where another lever, once pressed, make a more pleasing figure appear, or makes the first figure disappear. You see that the child contributes to all of this as a blind agent whose actions are determined by the pleasing or frightening impression produced in him by certain objects. The animal soul is identical, and from this identity comes the marvelous accord between the impression of objects and the movements made by the soul in reaction to them. All that is wise and regular about these movements is to be attributed to the supreme intelligence that produced the machine, according to goals in line with its wisdom and its goodness. The soul is the goal of the machine; it is its moving force; regulated by the mechanism, it regulates it in turn. The same is true of man in certain aspects, in all habitual or instinctive actions: he acts only as a sensible principle, he is only the moving force suddenly determined by sensation: as man is in certain aspects, animals are in all; and perhaps if the reasonable and intelligent principle were erased in man, one would observe in him no fewer reasoned movements regarding the well-being of his body or, what amounts to the same thing, regarding the usefulness of the sensible principle that would alone remain, than one would observe in animals.

If the animal soul is immaterial, they say, if it is a spirit as our hypothesis supposes it to be, it is thus immortal, and you should necessarily accord it the privilege of immortality, as a prerogative inseparable from the spirituality of its nature. Whether you accept this consequence or deny it, you end up in a terrible state of confusion. The immortality of the animal soul is an opinion too shocking and ridiculous to reason itself, assuming that it is not prescripted by a superior authority, to be seriously upheld. You are thus reduced to denying this consequence, and to maintaining that not every immaterial being is immortal: but then you destroy one of the greatest proofs provided by reason as to the immortality of the soul. Here is how they tend to prove this point of dogma: the soul does not die with the body, because it is not body, because it is not divisible like the body, because it is not a whole in the same way as the human body, that can perish when the parts that comose it are disturbed or separated. This argument holds true only when the principle on which it is based holds true as well; that is, if everything immaterial is immortal, and if no substance is destroyed: but this principle is refutable by means of the example of animals; so the spirituality of the animal soul ruins the proofs of the immortality of the human soul. There would be no problem if by reasoning thus we concluded that the human soul is immortal: but such is not the case. The perfect certainty we possess of the immortality of our souls is based only on God's having revealed it to us: now, the same revelation that teaches us that the human soul is immortal, teaches us that the soul of animals does not possess the same privilege. Thus, although the animal soul is spiritual, and dies with the body, this fact does not cloud the dogma of the immortality of our souls, because these two truths are facts that derive their certainty from divine evidence. Not that reason does not join with revelation to establish the immortality of our souls: but its proofs are other than spiritual. It is true that one can place spirituality at the head of all other evidence; one must harden men against astonishing difficulties: they are accustomed, by virtue of a natural tendency, to confound soul and body; perceiving at least that, despite their separateness, it is impossible not to feel that the body rules over the soul, the extent to which it influences its happiness or unhappiness, how strong the mutual dependence of these two substances is; one persuades oneself easily that their destiny is the same; and that because what harms the body hurts the soul, that which destroys the body must necessarily destroy the soul. To arm ourselves against this prejudice, there is nothing as effective as reasoning founded on the essential difference between these two beings, that proves to us that the one can subsist without the other. This argument is valid only in certain respects, and provided that one does not pursue it beyond a certain point. It is already a great deal to have convinced us that our soul cannot be touched by all the blows that death can administer to our body.

If we reflect on the nature of the animal soul , it provides us with no profound sign that leads us to believe that its spirituality saves it from destruction. This soul, I admit, is immaterial; it has some degree of activity and intelligence, but this intelligence is limited to indistinct perceptions; this activity consists only of confused desires, of which these indistinct perceptions are the immediate cause. It is very likely that a purely sensitive soul, and one of which all the faculties depend on an organized body in order to deploy themselves, was designed to last only as long as this body: it is natural that a principle capable only of sensation, a principle that God made only to unite it with certain other organs, cease to feel and to exist as soon as, these other organs having dissolved, God ends the union for which he had exclusively created it. This purely sensitive soul has no faculties that it can exercise when separated from its body: it cannot grow in happiness, nor in knowledge, nor contribute eternally, as does the human soul, to the glory of its creator, by eternally progressing in knowledge and virtue. Furthermore, it does not reflect, it neither predicts nor desires the future, it is completely occupied by what it feels at each moment of its existence; one can thus not say that God's goodness engages him to accord it a gift that it is incapable of comprehending, to prepare for it a future that it can neither hope for nor desire. Immortality is not for such a soul ; for to take pleasure in this gift, one must be capable of reflection, of anticipating the most distant future; one must be able to tell oneself, I am immortal, and whatever happens, I will never cease to be, and to be happy.

The objection arising from the suffering of animals is the most redoubtable of all those that one can make against the spirituality of their soul : it is of such great weight that the Cartesians believed that they could use it to prove their feeling, the only point on which they granted them this, in spite of the insurmountable problems that this feeling posed for them. If beasts are not pure machines, if they feel, if they know, they are susceptible to pain as well as to pleasure, they are subject to a flood of evils that they suffer through no fault of their own, and without having merited them, for they are innocent and have never violated an order of which they are ignorant. Where in this case would lie the goodness and fairness of the Creator? Where is the truth of this principle that we must regard as an eternal law of order? Under a just God, one cannot suffer without having merited suffering. But what is worst about their condition, is that they suffer in this life with no recompense in the other, for their soul dies with their body; and this fact doubles the difficulty. Le Pere Malebranche used this objection extensively in his defense against M. de la Ville's accusations.

I respond first of all that St. Augustine's principle, namely, that under a just God one cannot suffer without having merited suffering , holds only for reasonable creatures, and that one can justly apply it only to them. The idea of justice, of merit and demerit, supposes a free agent, and God's conduct with regard to that agent. Only such an agent is capable of vice and virtue, and can merit anything. The maxim in question thus has nothing to do with the animal soul . This soul is capable of feeling, but not of reason, nor liberty, nor vice, nor virtue; having no conception of rule, law, of moral good or evil, it is capable of no morally good or bad action. Since pleasure is not a reward for it, pain cannot be a punishment: one must thus change the maxim, and reduce it to the following; namely, that under a good God no creature can be made to suffer without having merited it: but far from accepting this principle I believe that I must hold it to be false. The animal soul is susceptible of sensations, and only of sensations: it is thus capable of being happy to some degree. But how would it be happy? by joining itself to an organized body; its constitution is such that the confused perception that it has of a certain series of movements, excited by exterior objects in the body to which it is united, produces in it an agreeable sensation: but therefore, as a necessary consequence, this soul , according to what happens to its body, is susceptible to pain as well as pleasure. If the feeling inspired by a certain series of movements pleases it, it follows that the feeling inspired by a totally different series of movements causes it suffering and wounds it: now according to the general laws of nature, the body to which the soul is linked must receive impressions of this latter type, as it receives those of the former, and consequently the soul must receive sensations of pain as well as agreeable sensations. This fact is necessary in order for it to work to conserve the machine on which its existence depends, and to cause it to act in a useful manner with regard to the other beings in the universe; this fact is furthermore indispensable: would you have this soul experience only pleasing sensations? One would need to change the course of nature, and suspend the laws of motion, for the laws of motion produce this alternation of opposed impressions in living bodies, as well as those of their generation and destruction: but from the result of these laws is the greatest good for all the immaterial system, and those intelligences that are linked to it; the suspension of these laws would upset everything. Of what use then is the true idea of a good God? it is of value in that when he acts he acts always for the good, and produces good; no creature leaves his hands that does not profit more than not from existing: now such is the condition of animals; whoever could penetrate to their interior would find there a compensation for pains and pleasures that would work to the greater glory of divine goodness; one would see that in those who suffer unequally, there is a proportion, inequality, either of pleasures or of duration; and that the degree of pain that might make their existence unhappy, is precisely that which destroys it: in a word, if one were to calculate the sum of pains, one would always find at the end of one’s calculations a residue of pure benefit, for which they are indebted solely to divine goodness; one would see that divine wisdom has managed things so that in every sensible individual, the degree of evil that he suffers, without causing his existence to be disadvantageous to him, works elsewhere to better the universe. Neither should we imagine that the suffering of animals resembles our own: animals are immune to a great number of our sufferings, because they do not share our compensations; not enjoying the pleasures that reason procures, they do not suffer its pains: furthermore, bestial perception being circumscribed by the indivisible moment of the present, they suffer much less than do we from identical pains, because impatience for and fear of the future do not embitter their sufferings, and because fortunately for them they do not possess a genius for increasing their sufferings.

But is it not cruel and unjust to make souls suffer and to destroy them, by destroying their bodies in order to preserve other bodies? is it not a visible overturning of order that the soul of a fly, nobler than the most noble of bodies, in that it is spiritual, be destroyed in order that the fly serve as food for the swallow, that could have eaten something else? Is it right that the soul of a chicken suffer and die so that the body of a man be nourished? that the soul of a horse endure a thousand pains and suffer fatigue for so long in order to furnish man with the advantage of traveling in an easier manner? In this multitude of souls that disappear every day for the passing needs of living bodies, does one recognize the equitable and wise subordination that a good and just God must necessarily respect? I answer that this objection would be victorious, if the souls of animals existed in relation to the body and only in relation to the body, for certainly every spiritual being is superior to matter. But, pay close attention, the use to which the Creator makes of this spiritual soul is not limited to the body as a body, it extends to the happiness of intelligent beings. If the horse carries me, and the chicken nourishes me, those are obviously effects that connect it directly to my body: but their endpoint is my soul, because only my soul gains from this use. The body exists only for the soul, the advantages of the body are proper to the soul; all the pleasures of animal life are for it alone, as only it is capable of feeling and consequently susceptible to happiness. The question is thus reduced to determining if the soul of the horse, of the dog, of the chicken, is not perhaps of a rather inferior order to the human soul, so that the Creator may employ the former to provide even the least bit of happiness to the latter, without violating the rule of order and proportions. One could say the same of the fly in relation to the swallow, who is of a more excellent nature. Where destruction is concerned, this is not an evil for a creature that does not reflect at all on its existence, that is incapable of anticipating an end, and of comparing, so to speak, being with nonbeing, even though existence is for it a good thing, because it feels. Death, with regard to the sensible soul, is only the removal of a good that was not owed; not an evil that poisons the Creator's gifts and makes a creature miserable. Thus, although these souls and these innumerable lives that God draws each day out of nothingness are proofs of divine goodness, their daily destruction does not impair this goodness: they exist in relation to the world of which they form a part; they must serve usefully the beings that compose it; it suffices that this usefulness not exclude their own, and that they be happy themselves in some measure, while contributing to the happiness of others. You will find this system developed more extensively in the treatise of the philosophical essay on the animal soul by M. Bouillet, from which these thoughts were taken.

L' Amusement philosophique du Pere Bougeant (Jesuit) on the language of animals, is too well-known not too merit its place here. If it is not true, at least it is ingenious. Do animals have a soul , or do they not? a thorny and tricky question, especially for a Christian philosopher. Descartes, who based his argument on the principle that all of the movements of animals can be explained by mechanical laws, claimed that they were only simple machines, pure automata. Our reason seems to rebel against such a claim: there is even something in us that joins reason in banishing Descartes's opinion from society. Not only a simple prejudice, this feeling is an intimate persuasion, the origin of which is the following. It is not possible that the men with whom I live are so many automata or trained parrots without my being aware of this. I perceive in their outward appearance tones and movements that appear to indicate a soul: I see the reign of a certain train of ideas that indicates reason: I see order in the reasoning that they present to me, see more or less intelligence in their works. Based on these assembled appearances, I pronounce boldly that they do in effect think. Perhaps God could produce an automaton similar in every way to a human body, that by the laws of mechanics alone would speak, would produce logical discourse, would write well-reasoned books. But what reassures me that I am right is the truthfulness of God. I need only to find in my soul the unique principle that unites and explains all these phenomena that strike me in those like myself, in order to believe myself well-founded in declaring that they are men like me. Now animals are the same with respect to me. I see a dog come running when I call, rub against me when I praise it, tremble and flee when I menace it, obey my commands, and give all other exterior marks of various feelings of joy, sadness, pain, fear, desire, of the passions of love and hate; I immediately conclude that a dog possesses within itself a principle of knowledge and of feeling, of whatever sort. It suffices that the soul that I suppose it to possess be the unique sufficient reason that joins with all these appearances and phenomena that strike my eyes, for me to be persuaded that it is not a machine. Furthermore such a machine would require too great a collection of devices to be in accord with God’s wisdom, that acts always by the simplest paths. It seems likely that Descartes, that superior genius, adopted a system so little in conformity with our ideas only as a mental amusement, and with the sole aim of contradicting the Perapeticians, whose opinion on animal knowledge is in fact indefensible. It would be better to stick with Descartes’s machines, if one had in opposition to them only the substantial form of the Peripatecians, that is neither spirit nor matter. This middle substance is a chimera, an abstraction, of which we have neither idea nor feeling. Is it then true that animals have a spiritual soul like man? But if that is the case, their soul would be immortal and free; they would be capable of merit & demerit, worthy of recompense or punishment; they would need a paradise and a hell. Animals would be a species of man, or men a species of animal; all of which consequences are impossible to reconcile with religious principles. Here are difficulties daunting to the hardiest of minds, but one finds their outcome developed in the system of our Jesuit. In effect, provided that one accepts the supposition that God placed demons in the bodies of animals; one can easily conceive how animals might think, know, feel and possess a spiritual soul , without being implicated in religious dogma. This supposition is not in the least absurd; it even flows naturally from the principles of religion. For in the end, because it is proved in several passages of Scripture that demons do not at all suffer the pains of hell, and will only be damned to experience them at the last judgment, what better use has divine justice to make of all these legions of reprobate spirits, that to use a portion of them to animate millions of animals of all kinds that fill the universe, and cause us to admire the wisdom and omnipotence of the Creator? But why do animals, whose souls seem in all likelihood to be more perfect than ours, not possess as much intellect as do we? Oh, says Pere Bougeant, that is because in animals, as in ourselves, mental operations are subject to the machine’s material organs, to which the mind is united, and these organs being in animals rougher and less perfect than in ourselves, it follows that the knowledge, the thoughts and all the spiritual operations of animals must also be less perfect than our own. Such a shameful degradation for these proud spirits, for they are reduced to being nothing but animals, is a first effect of the divine vengeance that awaits only the last day to act upon them in a much more horrible way.

Another reason that proves that animals are only metamorphosed demons, is that most of them are exposed to such excessive evils, and truly suffer from them. How horses are to be pitied, we say, when we see a horse being beaten by an unpitying cart driver! how a dog being trained to hunt is miserable! how sad the fate of animals that live in the forest! Now if animals are not demons, reveal to me what crime they committed to be born subject to such cruel masters? This excess of evils is according to any other system incomprehensible; while according to Pere Bougeant nothing is easier to understand. Rebel spirits merit even worse punishment: they are too fortunate in that their suffering is postponed; in a word, the goodness of God is justified; man himself is justified. For what right would he have to kill thousands of animals without need, and often for pure diversion, if God had not authorized it? and would a good and just God have given man this right; for after all, animals are as sensitive as ourselves to pleasure and to death; if they were not so many guilty victims punished by divine justice?

But listen, our philosopher continues, to something more sensational and more interesting. Animals are naturally vicious: carnivorous beasts and birds of prey are cruel; many insects devour others of the same species; cats are perfidious and ungrateful; monkeys are evildoers; dogs are envious; all animals are excessively jealous and vindictive, not to speak of the many other vices that we know them to possess. We must choose: either it pleased God to make animals as vicious as they are, and to give us in them models of what is most shameful; or they like man committed some original sin that perverted their primitive nature. The first of these propositions is difficult to conceive and is formally contrary to the Holy Scripture, that says that all that left God's hand at the creation of the world was good and even very good. Now if animals were then such as they are now, how could one say that they were good and even very good? Where is the good in a monkey's being so mischievous, in a dog’s being so envious, in a cat’s being so perfidious? One must have recourse to the second proposition, and say that the nature of animals like that of man was corrupted by some original sin; another baseless supposition that equally shocks reason and religion. How do we choose? accept the system of demons transformed into animals, all is explained. Animal soul s are rebel spirits that have committed crimes against God. This sin in animals is not an original sin, it is a personal sin that corrupted and perverted their nature in all its substance: from whence all the vices that we see in them.

You are perhaps anxious to discover the destiny of the demons after the death of animals. It is easy to satisfy your curiosity. Pythagorus taught of old, that at the moment of our death our souls pass into the body, either of a man or of an animal, to start a new life, and so on in succession until the end of time. This system, unacceptable with regard to man, and furthermore contrary to religion, fits admirably well in the case of animals, according to P. Bougeant, and offends neither religion, nor reason. The demons destined by God to be animals necessarily survive their bodies, and would cease to fulfill their destiny, if when their first body was destroyed, they did not immediately pass into another to start life in another form.

If animals have knowledge and feeling, they must consequently have an intelligible language among themselves for their mutual needs. Such a thing is possible, one has only to examine if it is necessary. All animals have knowledge, this is an avowed principle; and we do not see why the Author of nature would have given them knowledge for any reason other than to make them capable of providing for their own needs, for their own conservation, for all that is proper and fitting to their condition, and to the form of life for which he created them. Add to this principle that many species of animals are made to live in society, and other to live together as a household, so to speak, a male with a female, and a family with their little ones until they are grown. Now, if one supposes that they have no language, of whatever kind, to express themselves to each other, one can no longer imagine how their society can exist: how do beavers, for example, help each other to build a dwelling, if they have no clear language, and no language as intelligible to each other as are ours to ourselves? Knowledge without reciprocal communication via a physical and known language, is not sufficient to maintain society, nor to execute an enterprise that demands unity and intelligence. How would wolves work together to carry out their strategies in the hunting battles that they carry out against troops of sheep if they did not understand each other? Finally, how without speaking to each other were swallows able to join together and plan to confine a sparrow that they found in the nest of one of their fellows, when they realized that they could not chase it away? One could add a thousand other similar examples to support this reasoning. But what is incontestable here, is that if nature made them capable of understanding a foreign language, how could it have refused them the faculty of understanding and speaking a natural language? for animals speak to us and understand us very well.

Once one knows that animals speak and understand each other, one is avidly curious to learn what sort of discussion they might have among themselves. However difficult it might be to explain their language and to give a dictionary of it, Pere Bougeant dared to try it. One can be sure that their language is quite limited, because it does not go beyond the basic needs of life; for nature gave animals the faculty of speech only to express among themselves their desires and feelings, in order to satisfy by this means their needs and all that is necessary to their preservation: so that all that they think, all that they feel, is reduced to animal life. No abstract ideas or metaphysical reasoning, consequently, no curious research into the objects that surround them, no other science than that of living healthily, preserving themselves, avoiding that which harms them, and procuring their good. This principle once established, that the knowledge, desires, and needs of animals, and consequently their expressions are limited to that which is useful or necessary to their preservation or to the multiplication of their species, nothing is easier than to understand what they say to each other. Place yourself in the diverse circumstances of someone who can know and express only his needs, and you will find in your own discourse the interpretation of what they are saying to each other. As that which is most important to them is multiplying their species, or at least obtaining the means for this, all their conversation ordinarily turns on this point. One can say that Pere Bougeant describes their loves with much vivacity, and that the dictionary that he gives of their tender and voluptuous phrases is worthy of that of the opera. This was what was found revolting, coming from a Jesuit condemned by that state never to allow his brush to be abandoned to love's hands. Gallantry is pardonable in a philosophical work only when the author of the work is a man of the world; even then some find it misplaced. By seeming to give one's reasoning a light air able to interest only as badinage, one often falls into ridicule; and one always creates a scandal, if one’s state does not permit one’s imagination to indulge itself in one’s witticisms. It appears that our Jesuit has been too harshly censured for saying that animals are animated by demons. It is easy to see that he never regarded this system as other than imaginary and almost insane. The title amusement that he gave to his book, and the pleasantries with which he filled it, clearly indicate that he did not believe it to be based on grounds solid enough truly to persuade. Not that this system does not resolve many difficulties; not that it is easy to contradict: but this proves only that one can support chimerical opinions in a way that confounds the intelligent, not that convinces them. Only truth, said M. de Fontenelle in a similar circumstance, persuades, even without appearing with all of its proofs. It enters into the mind so naturally that when one encounters it for the first time, it seems that one is only remembering it. As for me, if I am permitted to express my own feeling, I find this little work charming and very pleasingly made. I see in it only two faults; that of being the work of a man of religion; and the other, the bizarre assortment of jokes scattered throughout it on subjects touching on religion, for which one can never have too much respect.