that those souls which one day shall be human souls, like those of other species, have been in the seed, and in the progenitors as far back as Adam, and have consequently existed since the beginning of things, always in a kind of organic body.  On this point it seems that M. Swammerdam, Father Malebranche, M. Bayle, Mr. Pitcairne, M. Hartsoeker and numerous other very able persons share my opinion.  This doctrine is also sufficiently confirmed by the microscope observations of M. Leeuwenhoek and other good observers.  But it also for divers reasons appears likely to me that they existed then as sentient or animal [173] souls only, endowed with perception and feeling, and devoid of reason.  Further I believe that they remained in this state up to the time of the generation of the man to whom they were to belong, but that then they received reason, whether there be a natural means of raising a sentient soul to the degree of a reasoning soul (a thing I find it difficult to imagine) or whether God may have given reason to this soul through some special operation, or (if you will) by a kind of transcreation.  This latter is easier to admit, inasmuch as revelation teaches much about other forms of immediate operation by God upon our souls.  This explanation appears to remove the obstacles that beset this matter in philosophy or theology.  For the difficulty of the origin of forms thus disappears completely; and besides it is much more appropriate to divine justice to give the soul, already corrupted physically or on the animal side by the sin of Adam, a new perfection which is reason, than to put a reasoning soul, by creation or otherwise, in a body wherein it is to be corrupted morally.

92.  Now the soul being once under the domination of sin, and ready to commit sin in actual fact as soon as the man is fit to exercise reason, a new question arises, to wit:  whether this tendency in a man who has not been regenerated by baptism suffices to damn him, even though he should never come to commit sin, as may happen, and happens often, whether he die before reaching years of discretion or he become dull of sense before he has made use of his reason.  St. Gregory of Nazianzos is supposed to have denied this (Orat. de Baptismo); but St. Augustine is for the affirmative, and maintains that original sin of itself is sufficient to earn the flames of hell, although this opinion is, to say the least, very harsh.  When I speak here of damnation or of hell, I mean pains, and not mere deprivation of supreme felicity; I mean poenam sensus, non damni.  Gregory of Rimini, General of the Augustinians, with a few others followed St. Augustine in opposition to the accepted opinion of the Schools of his time, and for that reason he was called the torturer of children, tortor infantum.  The Schoolmen, instead of sending them into the flames of hell, have assigned to them a special Limbo, where they do not suffer, and are only punished by privation of the beatific