active particles, of which the different kinds are in different states of equilibrium, these are minerals, inorganic substances, marble, lime, air, water and coal.[14] I form humus out of this, “I sow peas, beans and cabbages;” plants find their nourishment in the humus, and “I find my nourishment in the plants.”  At every meal, within me, and through me, inanimate matter becomes animate; “I convert it into flesh.  I animalize it.  I render it sensitive.”  It harbors latent, imperfect sensibility rendered perfect and made manifest.  Organization is the cause, and life and sensation are the effects; I need no spiritual monad to account for effects since I am in possession of the cause.  “Look at this egg, with which all schools of theology and all the temples of the earth can be overthrown.  What is this egg?  An inanimate mass previous to the introduction of the germ.  And what is it after the introduction of the germ?  An insensible mass, an inert fluid.”  Add heat to it, keep it in an oven, and let the operation continue of itself, and we have a chicken, that is to say, “sensibility, life, memory, conscience, passions and thought.”  That which you call soul is the nervous center in which all sensitive chords concentrate.  Their vibrations produce sensations; a quickened or reviving sensation is memory; our ideas are the result of sensations, memory and signs.  Matter, accordingly, is not the work of an intelligence, but matter, through its own arrangement, produces intelligence.  Let us fix intelligence where it is, in the organized body; we must not detach it from its support to perch it in the sky on an imaginary throne.  This disproportionate conception, once introduced into our minds, ends in perverting the natural play of our sentiments, and, like a monstrous parasite, abstracts for itself all our substance.[15] The first interest of a sane person is to get rid of it, to discard every superstition, every “fear of invisible powers."[16] —­ Then only can he establish a moral order of things and distinguish “the natural law.”  The sky consisting of empty space, we have no need to seek commands from on high.  Let us look down to the ground; let us consider man in himself, as he appears in the eyes of the naturalist, namely, an organized body, a sensitive animal possessing wants, appetites and instincts.  Not only are these indestructible but they are legitimate.  Let us throw open the prison in which prejudice confines them; let us give them free air and space; let them be displayed in all their strength and all will go well.  According to Diderot,[17] a lasting marriage is an abuse, being “the tyranny of a man who has converted the possession of a woman into property.”  Purity is an invention and conventional, like a dress;[18] happiness and morals go together only in countries where instinct is sanctioned; as in Tahiti, for instance, where marriage lasts but a month, often only a day, and sometimes a quarter of an hour, where, in the