CV.—­IT IS FALSE THAT MATERIALISM CAN BE DEBASING TO THE HUMAN RACE.

Materialism, it is objected, makes of man a mere machine, which is considered very debasing to the human race.  But will the human race be more honored when it can be said that man acts by the secret impulsions of a spirit, or a certain something which animates him without his knowing how?  It is easy to perceive that the superiority which is given to mind over matter, or to the soul over the body, is based upon the ignorance of the nature of this soul; while we are more familiarized with matter or the body, which we imagine we know, and of which we believe we have understood the springs; but the most simple movements of our bodies are, for every thinking man, enigmas as difficult to divine as thought.

CVI.—­CONTINUATION.

The esteem which so many people have for the spiritual substance, appears to result from the impossibility they find in defining it in an intelligible way.  The contempt which our metaphysicians show for matter, comes from the fact that “familiarity breeds contempt.”  When they tell us that the soul is more excellent and noble than the body, they tell us nothing, except that what they know nothing about must be more beautiful than that of which they have some faint ideas.

CVII.—­THE DOGMA OF ANOTHER LIFE IS USEFUL BUT FOR THOSE WHO PROFIT BY IT AT THE EXPENSE OF THE CREDULOUS PUBLIC.

We are constantly told of the usefulness of the dogma of life hereafter.  It is pretended that even if it should be a fiction, it is advantageous, because it imposes upon men and leads them to virtue.  But is it true that this dogma renders men wiser and more virtuous?  The nations where this fiction is established, are they remarkable for the morality of their conduct?  Is not the visible world always preferred to the invisible world?  If those who are charged to instruct and to govern men had themselves enlightenment and virtue, they would govern them far better by realities than by vain chimeras; but deceitful, ambitious, and corrupt, the legislators found it everywhere easier to put the nations to sleep by fables than to teach them truths; than to develop their reason; than to excite them to virtue by sensible and real motives; than to govern them in a reasonable way.

Theologians, no doubt, have had reasons for making the soul immaterial.  They needed souls and chimeras to populate the imaginary regions which they have discovered in the other life.  Material souls would have been subjected, like all bodies, to dissolution.  Moreover, if men believe that everything is to perish with the body, the geographers of the other world would evidently lose the chance of guiding their souls to this unknown abode.  They would draw no profits from the hopes with which they feast them, and from the terrors with which they take care to overwhelm them.  If the future is of no real utility to the human race, it is at least of the greatest advantage to those who take upon themselves the responsibility of conducting mankind thither.