what has given it this sensation? It is a material soul,
that is to say that it is matter which gives sensation to matter; they
cannot issue from this circle.

Listen to other brutes reasoning about the brutes; their soul is a
spiritual soul which dies with the body; but what proof have you of it?
what idea have you of this spiritual soul, which, in truth, has feeling,
memory, and its measure of ideas and ingenuity; but which will never be
able to know what a child of six knows? On what ground do you imagine
that this being, which is not body, dies with the body? The greatest
fools are those who have advanced that this soul is neither body nor
spirit. There is a fine system. By spirit we can understand only some
unknown thing which is not body. Thus these gentlemen's system comes
back to this, that the animals' soul is a substance which is neither
body nor something which is not body.

Whence can come so many contradictory errors? From the habit men have
always had of examining what a thing is, before knowing if it exists.
The clapper, the valve of a bellows, is called in French the "soul" of a
bellows. What is this soul? It is a name that I have given to this valve
which falls, lets air enter, rises again, and thrusts it through a pipe,
when I make the bellows move.

There is not there a distinct soul in the machine: but what makes
animals' bellows move? I have already told you, what makes the stars
move. The philosopher who said, "_Deus est anima brutorum_," was right;
but he should go further.

_ANTIQUITY_

Have you sometimes seen in a village Pierre Aoudri and his wife
Peronelle wishing to go before their neighbours in the procession? "Our
grandfathers," they say, "were tolling the bells before those who jostle
us to-day owned even a pig-sty."

The vanity of Pierre Aoudri, his wife and his neighbours, knows nothing
more about it. Their minds kindle. The quarrel is important; honour is
in question. Proofs are necessary. A scholar who sings in the choir,
discovers an old rusty iron pot, marked with an "A," first letter of the
name of the potter who made the pot. Pierre Aoudri persuades himself
that it was his ancestors' helmet. In this way was Caesar descended from
a hero and from the goddess Venus. Such is the history of nations; such
is, within very small margins, the knowledge of early antiquity.

The scholars of Armenia _demonstrate_ that the terrestrial paradise was
in their land. Some profound Sw