The Soul of Man
Table of Contents
We must begin with the soul of man, because all our knowledge depends on it.
After considering its nature and its effects, we will arrive at its author.
When we know who he is and how he created all the things that are in the world, we will note what is most certain about the other creatures.
We will examine how our senses perceive things, and how our knowledge becomes false or true.
Then I will place before your eyes the works of man on corporeal objects.
After having struck you with admiration at the sight of the most powerful machines, the rarest automata, the most specious visions, and the most subtle tricks that art can invent, I will reveal their secrets to you, which are so simple that you will henceforth admire nothing in the works of our hands.
After that, I will come to the works of nature, and, after having shown you the cause of all its changes, the diversity of its qualities, and the reason why the soul of plants and animals differs from ours, I will give you the architecture of sensible things to consider.
The phenomena of the sky observed, and the certain conclusions that can be drawn from them, deduced, I will rise to the soundest conjectures about what man cannot determine positively, to try to account for the relation of sensible things to intellectual ones, and of both to the Creator, of the immortality of creatures, and of their state after the consummation of the ages.
Part 2 will be about all the sciences. We choose from each what is most solid.
We will propose a method to push them much further, and to find for ourselves, with an ordinary mind, what the most subtle can discover.
We next distinguish good from evil, virtue and vice.
This is like the imagination of children being a blank slate on which our ideas, which are like the vivid image of objects, must be painted.
The senses, the inclinations of the mind, teachers, and intelligence are the various painters who can do this work, and among them, those least suited to succeed begin it; that is to say, imperfect senses, blind instinct, and foolish nurses.
Finally comes the best of all, intelligence; and yet is it still necessary for it to undergo an apprenticeship of several years, and follow the example of its teachers for a long time, before daring to rectify a single one of their errors?
That, in my opinion, is one of the main causes of the difficulty we have in attaining science. Our senses, in fact, perceive only what is most crude and common; our instinct is entirely corrupted; and as for teachers, although one can certainly find good ones, they cannot, however, force us to have faith in their reasoning, and to acknowledge it before having examined it with our intelligence, which alone has the power to do so.
But it is like a skilled painter, who, called upon to put the finishing touches on a painting sketched by apprentices, could employ all the rules of art in vain, correcting little by little, now one stroke, now another, finally adding all that is missing, yet could not prevent great flaws from remaining, because in the beginning the painting would have been poorly outlined, the figures misplaced, and the proportions observed with little rigor.
Your comparison perfectly sets before our eyes the first obstacle that stops us; but you do not show the way to avoid it. Now, according to me, here it is: just as your painter would have done better, after erasing all the strokes of the painting, to start it entirely anew, than to waste his time correcting it; likewise, all men who have reached the age when intelligence begins to be in its strength should form the design of erasing from their imagination all the inaccurate ideas that have been engraved there until then, and seriously apply all the forces of their intelligence to form new ones. Certainly, if this means did not lead them to perfection, at least they would no longer have the right to blame the weakness of the senses and the errors of nature.
That would be the best way if one could easily employ it; but you are not unaware that the first opinions that our imagination has received remain so deeply imprinted there that our will alone, if it did not implore the aid of some strong reasons, could not succeed in erasing them.
It is precisely some of these reasons that I intend to teach you; and if you want to derive some benefit from this conversation, you must lend me all your attention, and let me converse with Polyamander, so that I can begin by overturning all his acquired knowledge.
Indeed, since it is not enough to satisfy him, it can only be bad, and I compare it to a poorly constructed building whose foundations are not solid enough. I know of no better remedy than to demolish it and overturn it from top to bottom, in order to erect a new one. For I do not want to be numbered among those unskilled artisans who only apply themselves to restoring old works, because at bottom they are incapable of completing new ones. But, Polyamander, while we are occupied in destroying this edifice, we can at the same time lay the foundations that can serve our purpose, and prepare the most solid material to succeed in it; provided that you are willing to examine with me which, of all the truths that men can know, are the most certain and the easiest to know.
Is there anyone who doubts that sensible things (by which I mean those that are seen and touched) are much more certain than others? For my part, I would be very surprised if you showed me as clearly some of the things that are said about God and our soul.
That is nevertheless what I hope to do, and it seems surprising to me that men are credulous enough to base their knowledge on the certainty of the senses, when there is no one who is unaware that they sometimes deceive us, and that we have good reasons to always distrust them, since once they were able to lead us into error.
The senses sometimes deceive us when they suffer, thus a sick person believes that all food is bitter; when they are too far from the object, thus the stars never appear to us as large as they really are; in general, when they do not act freely according to their nature.
But all their errors are easy to recognize, and do not prevent me from being persuaded that I see you, that we are walking in a garden, that the sun is shining, in a word, that everything my senses usually offer me is true.