Julien Offray de La Mettrie

"Lamettrie was not only the extremest of the French Materialists, but was the first also in point of time. ...for several decades men could with virtuous indignation condemn this sinner, while they were gradually absorbing his ideas."

"Hettner forgets his own chronological data when he maintains that Lamettrie, instigated chiefly by Diderot's 'Pensées Philosophiques,' wrote in 1745 the 'Histoire Naturelle de l'Ame,' and in 1748 'L'Homme Machine;' and in Schlosser's ' History of the World' we may read that Lamettrie was a very ignorant man, who had the impudence to pass off the discoveries and observations of others as his own. Only that in nearly every case where we find a striking similarity of ideas between Lamettrie and any famous contemporary of his, the former had an indisputable priority!"

"With regard to the questions with which we are concerned, Lamettrie stands at the commencement of the whole series."

"Unity of principle in the multiplicity of organisms... we find it developed with great clearness and distinctness by Lamettrie as early as the 'L'Homme Plante' in 1748. Lamettrie was led to write this treatise by Linné's just published pioneering work on the classification of plants (1747), just as we find in all his writings constant traces of the zealous following up of the newest scientific investigations. Lamettrie cites Linné; none of the later writers think it necessary to cite Lamettrie... Whoever swims with the stream of tradition and neglects the chronology, will of course represent the 'ignorant' Lamettrie as decking himself with borrowed plumes!"

"[I]n [Lamettrie's] ' Natural History of the Soul,' the Materialism is covered only by a very transparent veil. In the same work we find an idea which in all probability afforded the suggestion for Condillac's sensitive statue [ Traité des sensations]."

"That the true connection could so long be misrepresented is, next to the influence of Hegel and his school, chiefly to be attributed to the resentment excited by Lamettrie's attack upon the Christian morality. People forgot, in consequence, his theoretical writings; and the calmest and most serious of them, including the 'Natural History of the Soul,' were most completely forgotten."

"As a friend, he may have been obliging and self-sacrificing; as an enemy, he was, as in particular had to experience, malicious and low in the choice of his means."

"In the year 1742 he... received there a position as surgeon to the Guard. In this capacity he made a campaign in Germany, and... was seized by a violent fever, and used this opportunity in order to institute observations upon himself as to the influence of quickened circulation upon thought. He came to the conclusion that thought is nothing but a consequence of the organisation of our mechanism. ...[H]e tried during his convalescence to explain the mental functions by the help of anatomy, and he had his conjectures printed under the title of a 'Natural History of the Soul.' The regimental chaplain sounded the alarm, and soon a universal cry of indignation was raised... His books were recognised as heretical, and he could no longer continue to be surgeon of the Guard. ...about the same time ...writing a satire on his rivals, the foremost Paris practitioners. ...He fled in the year 1746 to Leyden. Here he wrote ...a new satire upon the charlatanism and ignorance of doctors, and soon afterwards (1748) appeared also his 'Homme Machine.'"

"The 'Natural History of the Soul' begins by showing that as yet no philosopher, from Aristotle down to Malebranche, had been able to account for the nature of the soul."

"Very ingeniously Lamettrie observes that at bottom I am immediately certain only of my own feeling. That other men also feel, I conclude with very much stronger conviction from the expression of their feelings in gestures and cries than from their articulate speech. That energetic language of the emotions is, however, the same in the animals as in men, and it carries with it much stronger proof than all the sophisms of Descartes. ...[T]he internal organisation of man and of the animals offers a perfect analogy. If it remains for the present incomprehensible how the capability of feeling can be an attribute of matter, it is with this, as with a thousand other puzzles, in which, according to an idea of Leibniz, instead of the thing itself we see only the veil that hides it. ...[S]ensation, like motion, must at all events potentially belong to all matter. So thought the ancients, whose philosophy is preferred by all capable minds to the inadequate attempts of the moderns. After this Lamettrie passes to the doctrine of substantial forms..."

"Whether the soul occupies only a particular point or a circuit we do not know, but as all nerves do not meet in one point in the brain, the former supposition is improbable. All knowledge is in the soul only at the moment in which it is affected by it; all preservation of it is to be resolved into organic conditions. Thus the 'Natural History of the Soul,' starting from ordinary notions, gradually leads us on into Materialism, and it is concluded that... which feels must also be material. How this comes about Lamettrie too does not know; but why should we (according to Locke) limit the omnipotence of the Creator because of our ignorance? Memory, imagination, passions, and so on, are then explained in a thoroughly materialistic way."

"The very much shorter section on the rational soul discusses freedom, reflection, judgment, and so on, with the same strong leaning to Materialism there follows a chapter over which is written, "...religious faith alone can confirm our belief as to the existence of a rational soul." ...[T]he object... is to show how metaphysics and religion came to adopt the notion of a soul, and it concludes by saying that true philosophy freely confesses that the... soul is unknown to her. ...[M]ention is also made of Voltaire's phrase, 'I am body, and I think;' and Lamettrie refers with pleasure to the way in which Voltaire scoffs at the Scholastic proof for the proposition that no matter can think."

"[T]he last chapter... bears the title, " Narratives which prove that all Ideas are derived from the Senses." ...Everywhere the consequence is drawn that only the education he receives through the senses makes man man, and gives him what we call the soul, while no development of the mind from within outwards ever takes place."

"Mnoho povolaných, málo vyvolených."

"Trink, iss, schlafe schnarche, träume!"

"Die Menschen sind im allgemeinen von Natur aus böse. Ohne Erziehung gäbe es nur wenige gute Menschen."

"Die Welt wird nur dann glücklich sein, wenn sie atheistisch ist."

"Der Mensch ist eine Maschine, welche so zusammengesetzt ist, dass es unmöglich ist, sich zunächst von ihr eine deutliche Vorstellung zu machen und folglich sie zu definiren. Deshalb sind alle Untersuchungen theoretischer Natur, welche die grössten Philosophen angestellt haben, das heisst, indem sie gewissermassen auf den Flügeln des Geistes vorzugehen versuchten, vergeblich gewesen."

"Behaupten wir also dreist, dass der Mensch eine Maschine ist und dass es in der ganzen Welt nur eine einzige verschieden geartete Wesenheit giebt."

""Ziehen wir also den kühnen Schluss, dass der Mensch eine Maschine ist und dass es im ganzen Weltall nur eine Substanz gibt, die freilich verschieden modifiziert ist." – La Mettrie: Der Mensch eine Maschine. Übersetzung von Theodor Lücke. Reclam 2001, S. 94, ISBN 978-3150-181461."