it a single sensitive being, or are there as many beings in it as there are grains of sand?  If every elementary atom is a sensitive being, how shall I conceive of that intimate communication by which one feels within the other, so that their two egos are blended in one?  Attraction may be a law of nature whose mystery is unknown to us; but at least we conceive that there is nothing in attraction acting in proportion to mass which is contrary to extension and divisibility.  Can you conceive of sensation in the same way?  The sensitive parts have extension, but the sensitive being is one and indivisible; he cannot be cut in two, he is a whole or he is nothing; therefore the sensitive being is not a material body.  I know not how our materialists understand it, but it seems to me that the same difficulties which have led them to reject thought, should have made them also reject feeling; and I see no reason why, when the first step has been taken, they should not take the second too; what more would it cost them?  Since they are certain they do not think, why do they dare to affirm that they feel?] in vain will he perplex me with his cunning arguments; I merely regard him as a dishonest sophist, who prefers to say that stones have feeling rather than that men have souls.

Suppose a deaf man denies the existence of sounds because he has never heard them.  I put before his eyes a stringed instrument and cause it to sound in unison by means of another instrument concealed from him; the deaf man sees the chord vibrate.  I tell him, “The sound makes it do that.”  “Not at all,” says he, “the string itself is the cause of the vibration; to vibrate in that way is a quality common to all bodies.”  “Then show me this vibration in other bodies,” I answer, “or at least show me its cause in this string.”  “I cannot,” replies the deaf man; “but because I do not understand how that string vibrates why should I try to explain it by means of your sounds, of which I have not the least idea?  It is explaining one obscure fact by means of a cause still more obscure.  Make me perceive your sounds; or I say there are no such things.”

The more I consider thought and the nature of the human mind, the more likeness I find between the arguments of the materialists and those of the deaf man.  Indeed, they are deaf to the inner voice which cries aloud to them, in a tone which can hardly be mistaken.  A machine does not think, there is neither movement nor form which can produce reflection; something within thee tries to break the bands which confine it; space is not thy measure, the whole universe does not suffice to contain thee; thy sentiments, thy desires, thy anxiety, thy pride itself, have another origin than this small body in which thou art imprisoned.