my opinion. This
doctrine is also sufficiently confirmed by the microscope observations of
M. Leeuwenhoek and other good observers. But it also for divers reasons
appears likely to me that they existed then as sentient or animal [173]
souls only, endowed with perception and feeling, and devoid of reason.
Further I believe that they remained in this state up to the time of the
generation of the man to whom they were to belong, but that then they
received reason, whether there be a natural means of raising a sentient
soul to the degree of a reasoning soul (a thing I find it difficult to
imagine) or whether God may have given reason to this soul through some
special operation, or (if you will) by a kind of _transcreation_. This
latter is easier to admit, inasmuch as revelation teaches much about other
forms of immediate operation by God upon our souls. This explanation
appears to remove the obstacles that beset this matter in philosophy or
theology. For the difficulty of the origin of forms thus disappears
completely; and besides it is much more appropriate to divine justice to
give the soul, already corrupted _physically_ or on the animal side by the
sin of Adam, a new perfection which is reason, than to put a reasoning
soul, by creation or otherwise, in a body wherein it is to be corrupted
_morally_.

92. Now the soul being once under the domination of sin, and ready to
commit sin in actual fact as soon as the man is fit to exercise reason, a
new question arises, to wit: whether this tendency in a man who has not
been regenerated by baptism suffices to damn him, even though he should
never come to commit sin, as may happen, and happens often, whether he die
before reaching years of discretion or he become dull of sense before he
has made use of his reason. St. Gregory of Nazianzos is supposed to have
denied this (_Orat. de Baptismo_); but St. Augustine is for the
affirmative, and maintains that original sin of itself is sufficient to
earn the flames of hell, although this opinion is, to say the least, very
harsh. When I speak here of damnation or of hell, I mean pains, and not
mere deprivation of supreme felicity; I mean _poenam sensus, non damni_.
Gregory of Rimini, General of the Augustinians, with a few others followed
St. Augustine in opposition to the accepted opinion of the Schools of his
time, and for that reason he was called the torturer of children, _tortor
infantum_. The Schoolmen, instead of sending them i