Man a Machine

"According to the principles which we have laid down, and which we consider true; he who has the most imagination should be regarded as having the most intelligence or genius, for all these words are synonymous; and again, only by a shameful abuse [of terms] do we think that we are saying different things, when we are merely using different words, different sounds, to which no idea or real distinction is attached."

"[T]he finest, greatest, or strongest imagination is... the most suited to the sciences as well as to the arts."

"If one is known as having little judgment and much imagination, this means that the imagination has been left too much alone, has... occupied most of the time in looking at itself in the mirror of its sensations... more impressed by images than by their truth or their likeness."

"[I]f attention, that key or mother of the sciences, does not do its part, imagination can do little more than run over and skim its objects."

"See that bird on the bough: it seems always ready to fly away. Imagination is like the bird... [T]he soul pursues it, often in vain: it must expect to regret the loss of that which it has not quickly enough seized and fixed. Thus, imagination, the true image of time, is being ceaselessly destroyed and renewed."

"Such is the chaos and the continuous quick succession of our ideas: they drive each other away even as one wave yields to another. Therefore, if imagination does not... maintain a kind of equilibrium... to keep its attention for a while... and to prevent itself from contemplating prematurely another object—[unless the imagination does all this], it will never be worthy of the fine name of judgment. ...it will create orators, musicians, painters, poets, but never a single philosopher."

"[W]hat is there absurd in thinking that beings, almost as perfect machines as our selves, are, like us, made to understand and to feel nature? ...Man is not moulded from a costlier clay; nature has used but one dough, and has merely varied the leaven."

"[T]here are a thousand hereditary vices and virtues which are transmitted from parents to children..."

"[T]here is so much pleasure in doing good, in recognizing and appreciating what one receives, so much satisfaction in practising virtue, in being gentle, humane, kind, charitable, compassionate and generous (for this one word includes all the virtues), that I consider as sufficiently punished any one who is unfortunate enough not to have been born virtuous."

"Nature has created us solely to be happy—yes, all of us from the crawling worm to the eagle lost in the clouds."

"I do not mean to call in question the existence of a supreme being; on the contrary it seems to me that the greatest degree of probability is in favor of this belief. But since the existence of this being goes no further than that of any other toward proving the need of worship, it is a theoretic truth with very little practical value."

"[S]ince... religion does not imply exact honesty, we are authorized by the same reasons to think that atheism does not exclude it."

"[W]ho can be sure that the reason for man's existence is not simply the fact that he exists? Perhaps... simply that he must live and die, like the mushrooms which appear from day to day, or like those flowers which border the ditches and cover the walls."

"Let us not lose ourselves in the infinite, for we are not made to have the least idea thereof, and are absolutely unable to get back to the origin of things."

"[I]t does not matter for our peace of mind, whether matter be eternal or have been created, whether there be or be not a God. How foolish to torment ourselves so much about things which we can not know, and which would not make us any happier even were we to gain knowledge about them!"

"[T]o destroy chance is not to prove the existence of a supreme being, since there may be some other thing which is neither chance nor God—I mean, nature."

"The weight of the universe therefore far from crushing a real atheist does not even shake him. All these evidences of a creator, repeated thousands and thousands of times... Such is the pro and the con, and the summary of those fine arguments that will eternally divide the philosophers. I do not take either side."Non nostrum inter vos tantas componere lites." [It is not for us to settle such weighty disputes among you. --from Virgil--]"

"[S]ince all the faculties of the soul depend to such a degree on the proper organization of the brain and of the whole body, that apparently they are but this organization itself, the soul is clearly an enlightened machine."

"[E]ven if man alone had received a share of natural law, would he be any less a machine for that? A few more wheels, a few more springs than in the most perfect animals... a number of unknown causes might always produce this delicate conscience so easily wounded, this remorse which is no more foreign to matter than to thought, and in a word all the differences that are supposed... Could the organism then suffice for everything? ...[Y]es; since thought visibly develops with our organs, why should not the matter of which they are composed be susceptible of remorse also, when once it has acquired, with time, the faculty of feeling?"

"The soul is therefore but an empty word, of which no one has any idea, and which an enlightened man should use only to signify the part in us that thinks."

"If now any one ask me where is this innate force in our bodies... it... resides in what the ancients called the parenchyma... in the very substance of the organs not including the veins, that arteries, the nerves, in a word, it resides in the organization of the whole body... consequently each organ contains within itself forces more or less active according to the need of them."

"I wish to speak of this impetuous principle that Hippocrates calls ἐνορμὤν (soul). This principle exists and has its seat in the brain at the origin of the nerves, by which it exercises its control over all the rest of the body. By this fact is explained all that can be explained, even to the surprising effects of maladies of the imagination."

"[I]f what thinks in my brain is not a part of this organ and therefore of the whole body, why does my blood boil, and the fever of my mind pass into my veins, when lying quietly in bed... forming the plan of some work or carrying on an abstract calculation? Put this question to men of imagination... by what they will tell you they have experienced, you will judge the cause by its effects; by that harmony which Borelli, a mere anatomist, understood better than all the Leibnizians, you will comprehend the material unity of man."

"[I]f the nerve-tension which causes pain occasions also the fever by which the distracted mind loses its will-power, and if, conversely, the mind too much excited, disturbs the body... if an agitation rouses my desire and my ardent wish for what, a moment ago, I cared nothing about, and if in their turn certain brain impressions excite the same longing and the same desires, then why should we regard as double what is manifestly one being? In vain you fall back on the power of the will, since for one order that the will gives, it bows a hundred times to the yoke. ...[A]s the power of the will is exercised by means of the nerves, it is likewise limited by them"

"Should we... be astonished that philosophers have always had in mind the health of the body, to preserve the health of the soul, that Pythagoras gave rules for the diet as carefully. as Plato forbade wine? The regime suited to the body is always the one with which sane physicians think they must begin, when it is a question of forming the mind, and of instructing it in the knowledge of truth and virtue; but these are vain words in the disorder of illness, and in the tumult of the senses."

"Without the precepts of hygiene, Epictetus, Socrates, Plato, and the rest preach in vain: all ethics is fruitless for one who lacks his share of temperance; it is the source of all virtues, as intemperance is the source of all vices."

"[T]he soul is but a principle of motion or a material and sensible part of the brain, which can be regarded, without fear of error, as the mainspring of the whole machine, having, a visible influence on all the parts."

"Stahl... has wished to persuade us that the soul is the sole cause of all our movements. But this is to speak as a fanatic and not as a philosopher."

"One need only read the "Institutions of Medicine" by Boerhaave to see what laborious and enticing systems this great man was obliged to invent, by the labor of his mighty genius, through failure to admit that there is so wonderful a force in all bodies."

"Willis and Perrault, minds of a more feeble stamp, but careful observers of nature seem to have preferred to suppose a soul generally extended over the whole body, instead of the principle which we are describing."

"[H]ow many excellent philosophers have shown that thought is but a faculty of feeling, and that the reasonable soul is but the feeling soul engaged in contemplating its ideas and in reasoning! This would be proved by the fact alone that when feeling is stifled, thought also is checked, for instance in , in lethargy, in catalepsis, etc. For it is ridiculous to suggest that, during these stupors, the soul keeps on thinking, even though it does not remember the ideas that it has had."

"The nature of motion is as unknown to us as that of matter. I am... quite as content not to know how inert and simple matter becomes active and highly organized, as not to be able to look at the sun without red glasses..."

"It appears that there is but one [type of organization] in the universe, and that man is the most perfect [example]. ...He is to the ape, and to the most intelligent animals, as the planetary pendulum of Huyghens is to a watch of Julien Leroy."

"[O]f two physicians, the better one and the one who deserves more confidence is always, in my opinion, the one who is more versed in the physique or mechanism of the human body, and who, leaving aside the soul and all the anxieties which this chimera gives to fools and to ignorant men, is seriously occupied only in pure naturalism."

"[L]et the pretended M. Charp deride philosophers who have regarded animals as machines. How different is my view! I believe that Descartes would be a man in every way worthy of respect, if, born in a century that he had not been obliged to enlighten, he had known the value of experiment and observation, and the danger of cutting loose from them. But it is none the less just for me to make an authentic reparation to this great man for all the insignificant philosophers—poor jesters, and poor imitators of Locke—who instead of laughing impudently at Descartes, might better realize that without him the field of philosophy, like the field of science without Newton, might perhaps be still uncultivated. This celebrated philosopher, it is true, was much deceived, and no one denies that. But at any rate he understood animal nature, he was the first to prove completely that animals are pure machines. And after a discovery of this importance demanding so much sagacity, how can we without ingratitude fail to pardon all his errors! In my eyes, they are all atoned for by that great confession. For after all, although he extols the distinctness of the two substances, this is plainly but a trick of skill, a ruse of style, to make theologians swallow a poison, hidden in the shade of an analogy which strikes everybody else and which they alone fail to notice. For it is this, this strong analogy, which forces all scholars and wise judges to confess that these proud and vain beings... are at bottom only animals and machines which, though upright, go on all fours."

"I reduce to two the systems of philosophy which deal with man's soul. The first and older system is materialism; the second is spiritualism."

"In truth, to ask whether matter can think, without considering it otherwise than in itself, is like asking whether matter can tell time. It may be foreseen that we shall avoid this reef upon which Locke had the bad luck to shipwreck."

"The Leibnizians with their monads have set up an unintelligible hypothesis. They have rather spiritualized matter than materialized the soul. How can we define a being whose nature is absolutely unknown to us? Descartes and all the Cartesians, among whom the followers of Malebranche have long been numbered, have made the same mistake. They have taken for granted two distinct substances in man, as if they had seen them, and positively counted them."

"To distrust the knowledge that can be drawn from the study of animated bodies, is to regard nature and revelation as two contraries which destroy each other, and consequently to dare uphold the absurd doctrine, that God contradicts Himself in His various works and deceives us."

"If there is a revelation, it can not then contradict nature."

"[M]an, even though he should come from an apparently still more lowly source, would yet be the most perfect of all beings, so whatever the origin of his soul, if it is pure, noble, and lofty, it is a beautiful soul which dignifies the man endowed with it."

"[E]ither everything is illusion, nature as well as revelation, or experience alone can explain faith."

"Experience and observation should therefore be our only guides here. Both are to be found throughout the records of the physicians who were philosophers, and not in the works of philosophers who were not physicians. The former have traveled through and illuminated the labyrinth of man; they alone have laid bare to us those springs [of life] hidden under the external integument which conceals so many wonders from our eyes. What could the others, especially the theologians, have to say? Is it not ridiculous to hear them shamelessly coming to conclusions about a subject concerning which they have had no means of knowing anything, and from which on the contrary they have been completely turned aside by obscure studies that have led them to a thousand prejudiced opinions,—in a word, to fanaticism, which adds yet more to their ignorance of the mechanism of the body?"

"Man is so complicated a machine that it is impossible to get a clear idea of the machine beforehand, and hence impossible to define it. For this reason, all the investigations have been vain, which the greatest philosophers have made à priori, that is to say, in so far as they use, as it were, the wings of the spirit. Thus it is only à posteriori or by trying to disentangle the soul from the organs of the body, so to speak, that one can reach the highest probability concerning man's own nature, even though one can not discover with certainty what his nature is."

"Let us then take in our hands the staff of experience... To be blind and to think that one can do without this staff is the worst kind of blindness."

"One can and one even ought to admire all these fine geniuses in their most useless works, such men as Descartes, Malebranche, Leibniz, Wolff and the rest, but what profit, I ask, has any one gained from their profound meditations, and from all their works? Let us start out then to discover not what has been thought, but what must be thought for the sake of repose in life."

"Even Galen knew this truth which Descartes carried so far as to claim that medicine alone can change minds and morals, along with bodies. ...[E]ach man different from another. In disease the soul is sometimes hidden, showing no sign of life; sometimes it is so inflamed by fury that it seems to be doubled; sometimes, imbecility vanishes and the convalescence of an idiot produces a wise man. Sometimes, again, the greatest genius becomes imbecile and loses the sense of self. Adieu then to all that fine knowledge... This man cries like a child at death's approach, while this other jests. What was needed to change the bravery of Caius Julius, Seneca, or Petronius into cowardice or faintheartedness? Merely an obstruction in the an impediment in the portal vein? Why? Because the imagination is obstructed along with the viscera, and this gives rise to all the singular phenomena of hysteria and hypochondria."

"[T]his man who is devoured by jealousy, hatred, avarice, or ambition, can never find any rest. The most peaceful spot, the freshest and most calming drinks are alike useless to one who has not freed his heart from the torment of passion."

"The soul and the body fall asleep together. ...the soul can no longer bear the burden of thought; it is in sleep as if it were not."

"It is not enough for a wise man to study nature and truth; he should dare state truth for the benefit of the few who are willing and able to think. As for the rest, who are voluntarily slaves of prejudice, they can no more attain truth, than frogs can fly."