nsible and even extravagant; nevertheless some moderns have made no
difficulty about adopting this one and universal Soul that engulfs the
rest. It has met with only too much applause amongst the so-called
freethinkers, and M. de Preissac, a soldier and man of wit, who dabbled in
philosophy, at one time aired it publicly in his discourses. The System of
Pre-established Harmony is the one best qualified to cure this evil. For it
shows that there are of necessity substances which are simple and without
extension, scattered throughout all Nature; that these substances must
subsist independently of every other except God; and that they are never
wholly separated from organic body. Those who believe that souls capable of
feeling but incapable of reason are mortal, or who maintain that none but
reasoning souls can have feeling, offer a handle to the Monopsychites. For
it will ever be difficult to persuade men that beasts feel nothing; and
once the admission has been made that that which is capable of feeling can
die, it is difficult to found upon reason a proof of the immortality of our
souls.

11. I have made this short digression because it appeared to me seasonable
at a time when there is only too much tendency to overthrow natural
religion to its very foundations. I return then to the Averroists, who were
persuaded that their dogma was proved conclusively in accordance with
reason. As a result they declared that man's soul is, according to
philosophy, mortal, while they protested their acquiescence in Christian
theology, which declares the soul's immortality. But this distinction was
held suspect, and this divorce between faith and reason was vehemently
rejected by the prelates and the doctors of that time, and condemned in the
last Lateran Council under Leo X. On that occasion also, scholars were
urged to work for the removal of the difficulties that appeared to set
theology and philosophy at variance. The doctrine of their incompatibility
continued to hold its ground _incognito_. Pomponazzi was suspected of it,
although he declared himself otherwise; and that very sect of the
Averroists survived as a school. It is thought that Caesar Cremoninus, [81]
a philosopher famous in his time, was one of its mainstays. Andreas
Cisalpinus, a physician (and an author of merit who came nearest after
Michael Servetus to the discovery of the circulation of the blood), was
accused by Nicolas Taurel (in a book entitled _Alpes Caesae_) of