We ridicule the simplicity of some nations whose fashion is to bury provisions with the dead—­under the idea that this food might be useful and necessary to them in another life.  Is it more ridiculous or more absurd to believe that men will eat after death than to imagine that they will think; that they will have agreeable or disagreeable ideas; that they will enjoy; that they will suffer; that they will be conscious of sorrow or joy when the organs which produce sensations or ideas are dissolved and reduced to dust?  To claim that the souls of men will be happy or unhappy after the death of the body, is to pretend that man will be able to see without eyes, to hear without ears, to taste without a palate, to smell without a nose, and to feel without hands and without skin.  Nations who believe themselves very rational, adopt, nevertheless, such ideas.

CIII.—­INCONTESTABLE PROOFS AGAINST THE SPIRITUALITY OF THE SOUL.

The dogma of the immortality of the soul assumes that the soul is a simple substance, a spirit; but I will always ask, what is a spirit?  It is, you say, a substance deprived of expansion, incorruptible, and which has nothing in common with matter.  But if this is true, how came your soul into existence? how did it grow? how did it strengthen? how weaken itself, get out of order, and grow old with your body?  In reply to all these questions, you say that they are mysteries; but if they are mysteries, you understand nothing about them.  If you do not understand anything about them, how can you positively affirm anything about them?  In order to believe or to affirm anything, it is necessary at least to know what that consists of which we believe and which we affirm.  To believe in the existence of your immaterial soul, is to say that you are persuaded of the existence of a thing of which it is impossible for you to form any true idea; it is to believe in words without attaching any sense to them; to affirm that the thing is as you claim, is the highest folly or assumption.

CIV.—­THE ABSURDITY OF SUPERNATURAL CAUSES, WHICH THEOLOGIANS CONSTANTLY

CALL TO THEIR AID.

Are not theologians strange reasoners?  As soon as they can not guess the natural causes of things, they invent causes, which they call supernatural; they imagine them spirits, occult causes, inexplicable agents, or rather words much more obscure than the things which they attempt to explain.  Let us remain in nature when we desire to understand its phenomena; let us ignore the causes which are too delicate to be seized by our organs; and let us be assured that by seeking outside of nature we can never find the solution of nature’s problems.  Even upon the theological hypothesis—­that is to say, supposing an Almighty motor in matter—­what right have theologians to refuse their God the power to endow this matter with thought?  Would it be more difficult for Him to create combinations of matter from which results thought, than spirits which think?  At least, in supposing a substance endowed with thought, we could form some idea of the object of our thoughts, or of what thinks in us; while attributing thought to an immaterial being, it is impossible for us to form the least idea of it.