And Bouvard tapped him lightly on the stomach.

"Make an end of it, then," said Pecuchet.

Then, coming to Condillac:

"'Our thoughts are not metamorphoses of sensation. It causes them, puts
them in play. In order to put them in play a motive power is necessary,
for matter of itself cannot produce movement.' And I found that in your
Voltaire," Pecuchet added, making a low bow to him.

Thus they repeated again and again the same arguments, each treating the
other's opinion with contempt, without persuading his companion that his
own was right.

But philosophy elevated them in their own estimation. They recalled with
disdain their agricultural and political preoccupations.

At present they were disgusted with the museum. They would have asked
nothing better than to sell the articles of _virtu_ contained in it. So
they passed on to the second chapter: "Faculties of the Soul."

"'They are three in number, no more: that of feeling, that of knowing,
and that of willing.

"'In the faculty of feeling we should distinguish physical sensibility
from moral sensibility. Physical sensations are naturally classified
into five species, being transmitted through the medium of the senses.
The facts of moral sensibility, on the contrary, owe nothing to the
body. What is there in common between the pleasure of Archimedes in
discovering the laws of weight and the filthy gratification of Apicius
in devouring a wild-boar's head?

"'This moral sensibility has five _genera_, and its second genus, moral
desires, is divided into five species, and the phenomena of the fourth
genus, affection, are subdivided into two other species, amongst which
is the love of oneself--a legitimate propensity, no doubt, but one
which, when it becomes exaggerated, takes the name of egoism.

"'In the faculty of knowing we find rational perception, in which there
are two principal movements and four degrees.

"'Abstraction may present perils to whimsical minds.

"'Memory brings us into contact with the past, as foresight does with
the future.

"'Imagination is rather a special faculty, _sui generis_.'"

So many intricacies in order to demonstrate platitudes, the pedantic
tone of the author, and the monotony of his forms of expression--"We are
prepared to acknowledge it," "Far from us be the thought," "Let us
interrogate our consciousness"--the sempiternal eulogy on Dugald
Stewart; in short, all this verbiage, disgusted them so much that,
jumping ove