The Works of Voltaire, Vol. IV of XLIII. Romances, Vol. III of III, and A Treatise on Toleration. · Voltaire
SECOND COLLOQUY.
LUCRETIUS.—I begin to recognize a Supreme Being, inaccessible to our senses, and proved by our reason, who made the world, and preserves it; but with regard to what I have said of the soul, in my third book, which has been so much admired by all the learned men of Rome, I hardly think you can oblige me to alter my opinion. POSIDONIUS.—You say: “_Idque situm media regione in pectoris hæret._”—“The mind is in the middle of the breast.”—But, when you composed your beautiful verses, did you never make any effort of the head? When you speak of the orators Cicero and Mark Antony, do you not say that they had good heads? And were you to say that they had good breasts, would not people imagine that you were talking of their voice and lungs? LUCRETIUS.—Are you not convinced, from experience, that the feelings of joy, of sorrow, and of fear, are formed about the heart? _Hic exultat enim pavor ac metus; hæc loca circum Lætitiæ mulcent._ For there our passions live, our joy, our fear, And hope. Do you not feel your heart dilate or contract itself on the hearing of good or bad news? Is it not possessed of some secret springs of a yielding and elastic quality? This, therefore, must be the seat of the soul.
POSIDONIUS.—There are two nerves which proceed from the brain, pass through the heart and stomach, reach to the parts of generation, and communicate motion to them; but would you therefore say, that the human mind resides in the parts of generation? LUCRETIUS.—No; I dare not say so. But though I should place the soul in the head, instead of placing it in the breast, my principles will still subsist: the soul will still be an infinitely subtile matter, resembling the elementary fire that animates the whole machine. POSIDONIUS.—And why do you imagine that a subtile matter can have thoughts and sentiments of itself? LUCRETIUS.—Because I experience it; because all the parts of my body, when touched, presently feel the impression; because this feeling is diffused through my whole machine; because it could not be diffused through it but by a matter of a very subtile nature, and of a very rapid motion; because I am a body, and one body cannot be affected but by another; because the interior part of my body could not be penetrated but by very small corpuscles; and, in consequence, my soul must be an assemblage of these corpuscles. POSIDONIUS.—We have already agreed, in our first colloquy, that it is extremely improbable that a rock could compose the “Iliad.” Will a ray of the sun be more capable of composing it? Suppose this ray a hundred thousand times more subtile and rapid than usual, will this light, or this tenuity of parts, produce thoughts and sentiments?
LUCRETIUS.—Perhaps it may, when placed in organs properly prepared. POSIDONIUS.—You are perpetually reduced to your _perhaps_. Fire, of itself, is no more capable of thinking than ice. Should I suppose that it is fire that thinks, perceives, and wills in you, you would then be forced to acknowledge that it is not by its own virtue that it has either will, thought, or perception. LUCRETIUS.—No; these sensations will be produced not by its own virtue, but by the assemblage of the fire, and of my organs. POSIDONIUS.—How can you imagine that two bodies, neither of which can think apart, should be able to produce thought, when joined together? LUCRETIUS.—In the same manner as a tree and earth, when taken separately, do not produce fruit, but do so when the tree is planted in the earth. POSIDONIUS.—The comparison is only specious. This tree has in it the seeds of fruit: we plainly perceive them in the buds, and the moisture of the earth unfolds the substance of these fruits. Fire, therefore, must possess in itself the seeds of thought, and the organs of the body serve only to develop these seeds. LUCRETIUS.—And do you find anything impossible in this? POSIDONIUS.—I find that this fire, this highly refined matter, is as devoid of the faculty of thinking as a stone. The production of a being must have something similar to that which produced it; but thought, will, and perception have nothing similar to fiery matter.
LUCRETIUS.—Two bodies, struck against each other, produce motion, and yet this motion has nothing similar to the two bodies; it has none of their three dimensions, nor has it any figure. A being, therefore, may have nothing similar to that which produced it, and, in consequence, thought may spring from an assemblage of two bodies which have no thought. POSIDONIUS.—This comparison likewise is more specious than just. I see nothing but matter in two bodies in motion: I only see bodies passing from one place to another. But when we reason together I see no matter in your ideas, or in my own. I shall only observe that I can no more conceive how one body has the power of moving another, than I can comprehend the manner of my having ideas. To me both are equally inexplicable, and both equally prove the existence and the power of a Supreme Being, the author of thought and motion. LUCRETIUS.—If our soul is not a subtile fire, an ethereal quintessence, what is it? POSIDONIUS.—Neither you nor I know aught of the matter. I will tell you plainly what it is not; but I cannot tell you what it actually is. I see that it is a power lodged in my body; that I did not give myself this power; and, in consequence, that it must have come from a Being superior to myself.
LUCRETIUS.—You did not give yourself life; you received it from your father; from whom, likewise, together with life, you received the faculty of thinking, as he had received both from his father, and so on backwards to infinity. You no more know the true principle of life than you do that of thought. This succession of living and thinking beings has always existed. POSIDONIUS.—I plainly see that you are always obliged to abandon the system of Epicurus, and that you dare no longer maintain that the declination of atoms produced thought. I have already, in our last colloquy, refuted the eternal succession of sensible and thinking beings. I showed you that, if there are material beings capable of thinking by their own power, thought must necessarily be an attribute essential to all matter; that, if matter thought necessarily, and by its own virtue, all matter must of course think: but this is not the case, and therefore it is impossible to maintain a succession of material beings, who, of themselves, possess the faculty of thinking. LUCRETIUS.—Notwithstanding this reasoning, which you repeat, it is certain that a father communicates a soul to his son at the same time that he forms his body. This soul and this body grow together; they gradually acquire strength; they are subject to calamities, and to the infirmities of old age. The decay of our strength draws along with it that of our judgment; the effect at last ceases with the cause, and the soul vanishes like smoke into air.
_Præterea, gigni pariter cum corpore, & una_ _Crescere sentimus, pariterque senescere mentem._ _Nam velet infirmo pueri, teneroque vagantur_ _Corpore, sic animi sequitur sententia tenuis._ _Inde ubi robustis adolevit viribus ætas,_ _Consilium quoque majus, & auctior est animi vis._ _Post ubi jam validis quassatum est viribus ævi_ _Corpus, & obtusis ceciderunt viribus artus:_ _Claudicat ingenium delirat linguaque, mensque;_ _Omnia deficiunt, atque uno tempore desunt,_ _Ergo dissolvi quoque convenit omnem animai_ _Naturam, ceu fumus in altas aeris auras:_ _Quandoquidem gigni pariter, pariterque videmus_ _Crescere, & (ut docui) simul ævo fessa fatiscit._ Besides, ’tis plain that souls are born, and grow; And all by age decay, as bodies do; To prove this truth: in infants, minds appear Infirm, and tender as their bodies are: In man, the mind is strong; when age prevails, And the quick vigor of each member fails, The mind’s powers, too, decrease, and waste apace; And grave and reverend folly takes the place. ’Tis likely then the soul and mind must die; Like smoke in air, its scattered atoms fly; Since all these proofs have shown, these reasons told, ’Tis with the body born, grows strong, and old. —CREECH. POSIDONIUS.—These, to be sure, are very fine verses; but do you thereby inform me of the nature of the soul? LUCRETIUS.—No; I only give you its history, and I reason with probability.
POSIDONIUS.—Where is the probability of a father’s communicating to his son the faculty of thinking? LUCRETIUS.—Do you not daily see children resembling their fathers in their inclinations, as well as in their features? POSIDONIUS.—But does not a father, in begetting his son, act as a blind agent? Does he pretend, when he enjoys his wife, to make a soul, or to make thoughts? Do either of them know the manner in which a child is formed in the mother’s womb? Must we not, in this case, have recourse to a superior cause, as well as in all the other operations of nature which we have examined? Must you not see, if you are in earnest, that men give themselves nothing, but are under the hand of an absolute master? LUCRETIUS.—If you know more of the matter than I do, tell me what the soul is. POSIDONIUS.—I do not pretend to know what it is more than you. Let us endeavor to enlighten each other. Tell me, first, what is vegetation. LUCRETIUS.—It is an internal motion, that carries the moisture of the earth into plants, makes them grow, unfolds their fruits, expands their leaves, etc. POSIDONIUS.—Surely you do not think that there is a being called _Vegetation_ that performs these wonders? LUCRETIUS.—Who ever thought so? POSIDONIUS.—From our former colloquy you ought to conclude that the tree did not give vegetation to itself.
LUCRETIUS.—I am forced to allow it. POSIDONIUS.—Tell me next what life is. LUCRETIUS.—It is vegetation joined with perception in an organized body. POSIDONIUS.—And is there not a being called life, that gives perception to an organized body? LUCRETIUS.—Doubtless vegetation and life are words which signify things that live and vegetate. POSIDONIUS.—If a tree and an animal cannot give themselves life and vegetation, can you give yourself thoughts? LUCRETIUS.—I think I can, for I think of whatever I please. My intention was to converse with you about metaphysics, and I have done so. POSIDONIUS.—You think that you are master of your ideas; do you know, then, what thoughts you will have in an hour, or in a quarter of an hour? LUCRETIUS.—I must own that I do not. POSIDONIUS.—You frequently have ideas in your sleep; you make verses in a dream: Cæsar takes cities: I resolve problems; and hounds pursue the stag in their dreams. Ideas, therefore, come to us independently of our own will; they are given us by a Superior Being. LUCRETIUS.—In what manner do you mean? Do you suppose that the Supreme Being is continually employed in communicating ideas; or that he created incorporeal substances, which were afterwards capable of forming ideas of themselves, sometimes with the assistance of the senses, and sometimes without it? Are these substances formed at the moment of the animal’s conception? Or are they formed before its conception? Do they wait for bodies, in order to insinuate themselves into them? or are they not lodged there till the animal is capable of receiving them? Or, in fine, is it in the Supreme Being that every animated being sees the ideas of things? What is your opinion?
POSIDONIUS.—When you tell me how our will produces an instantaneous motion in our bodies, how your arm obeys your will, how we receive life, how food digests in the stomach, and how corn is transformed into blood, I will then tell you how we have ideas. With regard to all these particulars I frankly confess my ignorance. The world, perhaps, may one day obtain new lights; but from the time of Thales to the present age we have not had any. All we can do is to be sensible of our own weakness, to acknowledge an Almighty Being, and to be upon our guard against these systems.
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