Part 18
"2. That all mankind [wherein he is mistaken], especially the most wise and learned nations of antiquity, have concurred in believing and teaching, that this doctrine was of such use to civil society.
"3. That the doctrine of a future state of rewards and punishments is not to be found in, nor did it make part of, the Mosaic dispensation.
"That therefore the law of Moses is of divine origin;
"Which one or both of the two following syllogisms will evince:
"I. Whatever religion and society have no future state for their support must be supported by an extraordinary Providence.
"The Jewish religion and society had no future state for their support;
"Therefore the Jewish religion and society were supported by an extraordinary Providence.
"And again,
"II. The ancient lawgivers universally believed that such a religion could be supported only by an extraordinary Providence.
"Moses, an ancient lawgiver, versed in all the wisdom of Egypt, purposely instituted such a religion; Therefore Moses believed his religion was supported by an extraordinary Providence."
What is most extraordinary, is this assertion of Warburton, which he has put in large characters at the head of his work. He has often been reproached with his extreme temerity and dishonesty in daring to say that all ancient lawgivers believed that a religion which is not founded on rewards and punishments after death cannot be upheld but by an extraordinary Providence: not one of them ever said so. He does not even undertake to adduce a single instance of this in his enormous book, stuffed with an immense number of quotations, all foreign to the subject. He has buried himself under a heap of Greek and Latin authors, ancient and modern, that no one may reach him through this horrible accumulation of coverings. When at length the critic has rummaged to the bottom, the author is raised to life from among all those dead, to load his adversaries with abuse.
It is true, that near the close of the fourth volume, after ranging through a hundred labyrinths, and fighting all he met with on the way, he does at last come back to his great question from which he has so long wandered. He takes up the Book of Job, which the learned consider as the work of an Arab; and he seeks to prove, that Job did not believe in the immortality of the soul. He then explains, in his own way, all the texts of Scripture that have been brought to combat his opinion.
All that should be said of him is, that if he was in the right, it was not for a bishop to be so in the right. He should have felt that two dangerous consequences might be drawn: but all goes by chance in this world. This man, who became an informer and a persecutor, was not made a bishop through the patronage of a minister of state, until immediately after he wrote his book.
At Salamanca, at Coimbra, or at Rome, he would have been obliged to retract and to ask pardon. In England he became a peer of the realm, with an income of a hundred thousand livres. Here was something to soften his manners.
SECTION VI.
_On the Need of Revelation._
The greatest benefit for which we are indebted to the New Testament is its having revealed to us the immortality of the soul. It is therefore quite in vain that this Warburton has sought to cloud this important truth, by continually representing, in his "Legation of Moses," that "the ancient Jews had no knowledge of this necessary dogma," and that "the Sadducees did not admit it in the time of our Lord Jesus."
He interprets in his own way, the very words which Jesus Christ is made to utter: "Have ye not read that which is spoken unto you by God saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob: God is not the God of the dead, but of the living." He gives to the parable of the rich bad man a sense contrary to that of all the churches. Sherlock, bishop of London, and twenty other learned men, have refuted him. Even the English philosophers have reminded him how scandalous it is in an English bishop to manifest an opinion so contrary to the Church of England; and after all, this man has thought proper to call others impious: like Harlequin, in the farce of "The Housebreaker" (_Le Dévaliseur des Maisons_) who, after throwing the furniture out at the window, seeing a man carrying some articles away, cries with all his might--"Stop, thief!"
The revelation of the immortality of the soul, and of pains and rewards after death, is the more to be blessed, as the vain philosophy of men always doubted of it. The great Cæsar had no faith in it. He explained himself clearly to the whole senate, when, to prevent Catiline from being put to death, he represented to them that death left man without feeling--that all died with him: and no one refuted this opinion.
The Roman Empire was divided between two great principal sects: that of Epicurus, who affirmed that the divinity was useless to the world, and the soul perished with the body; and that of the Stoics, who regarded the soul as a portion of the divinity, which after death was reunited to its original--to the great All from which it had emanated. So that, whether the soul was believed to be mortal, or to be immortal, all sects united in contemning the idea of rewards and punishments after death.
There are still remaining numerous monuments of this belief of the Romans. It was from the force of this opinion profoundly engraved on all hearts, that so many Roman heroes and so many private citizens put themselves to death without the smallest scruple; they did not wait for a tyrant to deliver them into the hands of the executioner.
Even the most virtuous men, and the most thoroughly persuaded of the existence of a God, did not then hope any reward, nor did they fear any punishment. It has been seen in the article on "Apocrypha," that Clement himself, who was afterwards pope and saint, began with doubting what the first Christians said of another life, and that he consulted St. Peter at Cæsarea. We are very far from believing that St. Clement wrote the history which is attributed to him; but it shows what need mankind had of a precise revelation. All that can surprise us is that a tenet so repressing and so salutary should have left men a prey to so many horrible crimes, who have so short a time to live, and find themselves pressed between the eternities.
SECTION VII.
_Souls of Fools and Monsters._
A child, ill-formed, is born absolutely imbecile, has no ideas, lives without ideas; instances of this have been known. How shall this animal be defined? Doctors have said that it is something between man and beast; others have said that it is a sensitive soul, but not an intellectual soul: it eats, it drinks, it sleeps, it wakes, it has sensations, but it does not think.
Is there for it another life, or is there none? The case has been put, and has not yet been entirely resolved.
Some have said that this creature must have a soul, because its father and its mother had souls. But by this reasoning it would be proved that if it had come into the world without a nose, it should have the reputation of having one, because its father and its mother had one.
A woman is brought to bed: her infant has no chin; its forehead is flat and somewhat black, its eyes round, its nose thin and sharp; its countenance is not much unlike that of a swallow: yet the rest of his body is made like ours. It is decided by a majority of voices that it is a man, and possesses an immaterial soul; whereupon the parents have it baptized. But if this little ridiculous figure has pointed claws, and a mouth in the form of a beak, it is declared to be a monster; it has no soul; it is not baptized.
It is known, that in 1726, there was in London a woman who was brought to bed every eight days of a young rabbit. No difficulty was made of refusing baptism to this child, notwithstanding the epidemic folly which prevailed in London for three weeks, of believing that this poor jade actually brought forth wild rabbits. The surgeon who delivered her, named St. André, swore that nothing was more true; and he was believed. But what reason had the credulous for refusing a soul to this woman's offspring? She had a soul; her children must likewise have been furnished with souls, whether they had hands? or paws, whether they were born with a snout or with a face: cannot the Supreme Being vouchsafe the gift of thought and sensation to a little nondescript, born of a woman, with the figure of a rabbit, as well as a little nondescript born with the figure of a man? Will the soul which was ready to take up its abode in this woman's fœtus return unhoused?
It is very well observed by Locke, with regard to monsters, that immortality must not be attributed to the exterior of a body--that it has nothing to do with the figure. "This immortality," says he, "is no more attached to the form of one's face or breast than it is to the way in which one's beard is clipped or one's coat is cut."
He asks: What is the exact measure of deformity by which you can recognize whether an infant has a soul or not? What is the precise degree at which it is to be declared a monster and without a soul?
Again, it is asked: What would a soul be that should have none but chimerical ideas? There are some which never go beyond such. Are they worthy or unworthy? What is to be made of their pure spirit?
What are we to think of a child with two heads, which is otherwise well formed? Some say that it has two souls, because it is furnished with two pineal glands, with two callous substances, with two "_sensoria communia_." Others answer that there cannot be two souls, with but one breast and one navel.
In short, so many questions have been asked about this poor human soul, that if it were necessary to put an end to them all, such an examination of its own person would cause it the most insupportable annoyance. The same would happen to it as happened to Cardinal Polignac at a conclave: his steward, tired of having never been able to make him pass his accounts, took a journey to Rome, and went to the small window of his cell, laden with an immense bundle of papers; he read for nearly two hours; at last, finding that no answer was made, he thrust forward his head: the cardinal had been gone almost two hours. Our souls will be gone before their stewards have finished their statements; but let us be just before God--ignorant as both we and our stewards are.
See what is said on the soul in the "Letters of Memmius."
SECTION VIII.
_Different Opinions Criticised--Apology for Locke._
I must acknowledge, that when I examined the infallible Aristotle, the evangelical doctor, and the divine Plato, I took all these epithets for nicknames. In all the philosophers who have spoken of the human soul, I have found only blind men, full of babble and temerity, striving to persuade themselves that they have an eagle eye; and others, curious and foolish, believing them on their word, and imagining that they see something too.
[Illustration: John Locke.]
I shall not feign to rank Descartes and Malebranche with these teachers of error. The former assures us that the soul of man is a substance, whose essence is to think, which is always thinking, and which, in the mother's womb, is occupied with fine metaphysical ideas and general axioms, which it afterwards forgets.
As for Father Malebranche, he is quite persuaded that we see all in God--and he has found partisans: for the most extravagant fables are those which are the best received by the weak imaginations of men. Various philosophers then had written the romance of the soul: at length, a wise man modestly wrote its history. Of this history I am about to give an abridgment, according to the conception I have formed of it. I very well know that all the world will not agree with Locke's ideas; it is not unlikely, that against Descartes and Malebranche, Locke was right, but that against the Sorbonne he was wrong: I speak according to the lights of philosophy, not according to the relations of the faith.
It is not for me to think otherwise than humanly; theologians decide divinely, which is quite another thing: reason and faith are of contrary natures. In a word, here follows a short abstract of Locke, which I would censure, if I were a theologian, but which I adopt for a moment, simply as a hypothesis--a conjecture of philosophy. Humanly speaking, the question is: What is the soul?
1. The word "soul" is one of those which everyone pronounces without understanding it; we understand only those things of which we have an idea; we have no idea of soul--spirit; therefore we do not understand it.
2. We have then been pleased to give the name of soul to the faculty of feeling and thinking, as we have given that of life to the faculty of living, and that of will to the faculty of willing.
Reasoners have come and said: Man is composed of matter and spirit: matter is extended and divisible; spirit is neither extended nor divisible; therefore, say they, it is of another nature. This is a joining together of beings which are not made for each other, and which God unites in spite of their nature. We see little of the body, we see nothing of the soul; it has no parts, therefore it is eternal; it has ideas pure and spiritual, therefore it does not receive them from matter; nor does it receive them from itself, therefore God gives them to it, and it brings with it at its birth the ideas of God, infinity, and all general ideas.
Still humanly speaking, I answer these gentlemen that they are very knowing. They tell us, first, that there is a soul, and then what that soul must be. They pronounce the word "matter," and then plainly decide what it is. And I say to them: You have no knowledge either of spirit or of matter. By spirit you can imagine only the faculty of thinking; by matter you can understand only a certain assemblage of qualities, colors, extents, and solidities, which it has pleased you to call matter; and you have assigned limits to matter and to the soul, even before you are sure of the existence of either the one or the other.
As for matter, you gravely teach that it has only extent and solidity; and I tell you modestly, that it is capable of a thousand properties about which neither you nor I know anything. You say that the soul is indivisible, eternal; and here you assume that which is in question. You are much like the regent of a college, who, having never in his life seen a clock, should all at once have an English repeater put into his hands. This man, a good peripatetic, is struck by the exactness with which the hands mark the time, and still more astonished that a button, pressed by the finger, should sound precisely the hour marked by the hand. My philosopher will not fail to prove that there is in this machine a soul which governs it and directs its springs. He learnedly demonstrates his opinion by the simile of the angels who keep the celestial spheres in motion; and in the class he forms fine theses, maintained on the souls of watches. One of his scholars opens the watch, and nothing is found but springs; yet the system of the soul of watches is still maintained, and is considered as demonstrated. I am that scholar, opening the watch called man; but instead of boldly defining what we do not understand, I endeavor to examine by degrees what we wish to know.
Let us take an infant at the moment of its birth, and follow, step by step, the progress of its understanding. You do me the honor of informing me that God took the trouble of creating a soul, to go and take up its abode in this body when about six weeks old; that this soul, on its arrival, is provided with metaphysical ideas--having consequently a very clear knowledge of spirit, of abstract ideas, of infinity--being, in short, a very knowing person. But unfortunately it quits the uterus in the uttermost ignorance: for eighteen months it knows nothing but its nurse's teat; and when at the age of twenty years an attempt is made to bring back to this soul's recollection all the scientific ideas which it had when it entered its body, it is often too dull of apprehension to conceive any one of them. There are whole nations which have never had so much as one of these ideas. What, in truth, were the souls of Descartes and Malebranche thinking of, when they imagined such reveries? Let us then follow the idea of the child, without stopping at the imaginings of the philosophers.
The day that his mother was brought to bed of him and his soul, there were born in the house a dog, a cat, and a canary bird. At the end of eighteen months I make the dog an excellent hunter; in a year the canary bird whistles an air; in six weeks the cat is master of its profession; and the child, at the end of four years, does nothing. I, a gross person, witnessing this prodigious difference, and never having seen a child, think at first that the cat, the dog, and the canary are very intelligent creatures, and that the infant is an automaton. However, by little and little, I perceive that this child has ideas and memory, that he has the same passions as these animals; and then I acknowledge that he is, like them, a rational creature. He communicates to me different ideas by some words which he has learned, in like manner as my dog, by diversified cries, makes known to me exactly his different wants. I perceive at the age of six or seven years the child combines in his little brain almost as many ideas as my hound in his; and at length, as he grows older, he acquires an infinite variety of knowledge. Then what am I to think of him? Shall I believe that he is of a nature altogether different? Undoubtedly not; for you see on one hand an idiot, and on the other a Newton; yet you assert that they are of one and the same nature--that there is no difference but that of greater and less. The better to assure myself of the verisimilitude of my probable opinion, I examine the dog and the child both waking and sleeping--I have them each bled immediately; then their ideas seem to escape with their blood. In this state I call them--they do not answer; and if I draw from them a few more ounces, my two machines, which before had ideas in great plenty and passions of every kind, have no longer any feeling. I next examine my two animals while they sleep; I perceive that the dog, after eating too much, has dreams; he hunts and cries after the game; my youngster, in the same state, talks to his mistress and makes love in his dreams. If both have eaten moderately, I observe that neither of them dream; in short, I see that the faculties of feeling, perceiving, and expressing their ideas unfold themselves gradually, and also become weaker by degrees. I discover many more affinities between them than between any man of strong mind and one absolutely imbecile. What opinion then shall I entertain of their nature? That which every people at first imagined, before Egyptian policy asserted the spirituality, the immortality, of the soul. I shall even suspect that Archimedes and a mole are but different varieties of the same species--as an oak and a grain of mustard are formed by the same principles, though the one is a large tree and the other the seed of a small plant. I shall believe that God has given portions of intelligence to portions of matter organized for thinking; I shall believe that matter has sensations in proportion to the fineness of its senses, that it is they which proportion them to the measure of our ideas; I shall believe that the oyster in its shell has fewer sensations and senses, because its soul being attached to its shell, five senses would not at all be useful to it. There are many animals with only two senses; we have five--which are very few. It is to be believed that in other worlds there are other animals enjoying twenty or thirty senses, and that other species, yet more perfect, have senses to infinity.
Such, it appears to me, is the most natural way of reasoning on the matter--that is, of guessing and inspecting with certainty. A long time elapsed before men were ingenious enough to imagine an unknown being, which is ourselves, which does all in us, which is not altogether ourselves, and which lives after us. Nor was so bold an idea adopted all at once. At first this word "soul" signifies life, and was common to us and the other animals; then our pride made us a soul apart, and caused us to imagine a substantial form for other creatures. This human pride asks: What then is that power of perceiving and feeling, which in man is called soul, and in the brute instinct? I will satisfy this demand when the natural philosophers shall have informed me what is sound, light, space, body, time. I will say, in the spirit of the wise Locke: Philosophy consists in stopping when the torch of physical science fails us. I observe the effects of nature; but I freely own that of first principles I have no more conception than you have. All I do know is that I ought not to attribute to several causes--especially to unknown causes--that which I can attribute to a known cause; now I can attribute to my body the faculty of thinking and feeling; therefore I ought not to seek this faculty of thinking and feeling in another substance, called soul or spirit, of which I cannot have the smallest idea. You exclaim against this proposition. Do you then think it irreligious to dare to say that the body can think? But what would you say, Locke would answer, if you yourselves were found guilty of irreligion in thus daring to set bounds to the power of God? What man upon earth can affirm, without absurd impiety, that it is impossible for God to give to matter sensation and thought? Weak and presumptuous that you are! you boldly advance that matter does not think, because you do not conceive how matter of any kind should think.