Man’s vanity persuades him that he is the sole center of the universe; he creates for himself a world and a God; he thinks himself of sufficient consequence to derange nature at his will, but he reasons as an atheist when the question of other animals is involved.  Does he not imagine that the individuals different from his species are automatons unworthy of the cares of universal Providence, and that the beasts can not be the objects of its justice and kindness?  Mortals consider fortunate or unfortunate events, health or sickness, life and death, abundance or famine, as rewards or punishments for the use or misuse of the liberty which they arrogate to themselves.  Do they reason on this principle when animals are taken into consideration?  No; although they see them under a just God enjoy and suffer, be healthy and sick, live and die, like themselves, it does not enter their mind to ask what crimes these beasts have committed in order to cause the displeasure of the Arbiter of nature.  Philosophers, blinded by their theological prejudices, in order to disembarrass themselves, have gone so far as to pretend that beasts have no feelings!

Will men never renounce their foolish pretensions?  Will they not recognize that nature was not made for them?  Will they not see that this nature has placed on equal footing all the beings which she produced?  Will they not see that all organized beings are equally made to be born and to die, to enjoy and to suffer?  Finally, instead of priding themselves preposterously on their mental faculties, are they not compelled to admit that they often render them more unhappy than the beasts, in which we find neither opinions, prejudices, vanities, nor the weaknesses which decide at every moment the well-being of men?

C.—­What is the soul?  We know nothing about it.  If this pretended soul was of another essence from that of the body, their union would be impossible.

The superiority which men arrogate to themselves over other animals, is principally founded upon the opinion of possessing exclusively an immortal soul.  But as soon as we ask what this soul is, they begin to stammer.  It is an unknown substance; it is a secret force distinguished from their bodies; it is a spirit of which they can form no idea.  Ask them how this spirit, which they suppose like their God, totally deprived of a physical substance, could combine itself with their material bodies?  They will tell you that they know nothing about it; that it is a mystery to them; that this combination is the effect of the Almighty power.  These are the clear ideas which men form of the hidden, or, rather, imaginary substance which they consider the motor of all their actions!  If the soul is a substance essentially different from the body, and which can have no affinity with it,