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.He took a child at the moment ofbirth; he followed step by step the progress of its understanding; henoted what it had in common with the beasts, and the ways in whichit is superior to them, and above all he paid attention to his ownobservations, the awareness of his own ideas.Said he, I will leave to those who know more than I the discus-sion about whether the soul exists before or only after the body hasbeen created; but I admit that the soul allotted to me is one of thosecoarse ones that does not always think, and I even have the misfor-tune to be unable to understand that it is more necessary to the soulto be thinking constantly than it is for the body to be constantly inmotion. As for me, on this matter I boast that I am as stupid as Locke.Noone will ever make me believe that I am always thinking; and I amnot more disposed than was he to imagine that a few weeks after myconception I had a soul full of wisdom, knowing then thousands of 13_Voltaire_Letter13 1/10/07 12:45 PM Page 43Thirteenth Letter, On Mr.Locke 43things that I forgot as I was being born, and that I uselessly possessedin utero knowledge that escaped me just when I could have used it,and that I have never been able to regain.Having demolished innate ideas and renounced the folly ofbelieving that we are always thinking, Locke demonstrated that allour ideas come to us through the senses, examined our simplest andmost complex ideas, traced the mind of man in all its operations, andshowed how imperfect are all human tongues and how we misuseterms at every turn.He comes at last to think of the breadth, or rather the limits, ofhuman knowledge.It is in this chapter that he dares modestly to pro-pose: We will never, perhaps, be able to know whether a purelymaterial being can think.This wise remark has seemed to more than one theologian a scan-dalous assertion that the soul is material and mortal.Some Englishmen, devout in their own way, sounded the alarm.Superstitious men affect society as cowards affect an army: they arefilled with panic and terror and provoke it in others.Some cried thatLocke wished to overturn religion, but religion did not enter intothis debate; it was a purely philosophical matter, completely inde-pendent of faith and revelation; it was simply a question of examin-ing, without bitterness, whether there is some contradiction betweensaying matter can think and God can make matter capable of thought.6But too often theologians begin by saying that God is insulted if onedoes not agree with them.They are too much like the bad poetswho, because Despréaux was mocking them, insisted that he wasinsulting the king.7Doctor Stillingfleet gained a reputation as a moderate theologiansimply because he did not explicitly attack Locke.8 He jousted withLocke and was defeated, for his reasoning was that of a rector andLocke argued as a philosopher, aware of the strength and weaknessof human intelligence, and as one who used weapons whose temperhe understood.If I dared to speak after Mr.Locke about so difficult a subject, Iwould say: Men have disagreed about the nature and the immortali-ty of the soul for a long time.It is impossible to demonstrate itsimmortality, since its nature is still in dispute, and one must under-stand a created being thoroughly before knowing whether or not itis immortal.Human reason alone is so incapable of demonstratingthe immortality of the soul that religion was obliged to reveal thistruth to us.Universal well-being requires that we believe the soul tobe immortal; faith requires us so to believe: nothing more is needed, 13_Voltaire_Letter13 1/10/07 12:45 PM Page 4444 Philosophical Lettersand the matter has been decided.The same cannot be said of thenature of the soul.Religion does not care what substance it is madeof as long as it is virtuous; it is a clock given to us to regulate, but themaker did not tell us what the gears are made of.I am a body and I think; I know no more.Shall I attribute to someunknown cause what I can so easily explain by the only secondarycause that I know? Here all the Scholastics stop me, arguing and say-ing: The body consists only of extension and solidity, and it can haveonly movement and form.Now, movement and form, extension andsolidity cannot make a thought, thus the soul cannot be material. Allthis fine argument, so often repeated, can be summed up thus: I donot know what matter is; I can guess at some of its properties.Now Ido not in the least know whether these properties can be joined tothought; thus, because I know nothing, I positively assert that mattercannot think. This clearly is Scholastic reasoning.Locke wouldmodestly say to these gentlemen, Admit at least that you are as igno-rant as I, that neither your imagination nor mine can conceive how abody can have ideas; and are you then better able to understand howany substance, whatever it may be, can have ideas? You know neithermatter nor spirit; how dare you to assert something? The superstitious come next and say that we must, for the sake oftheir souls, burn those who suspect that one can think with the bodyalone.But what would they say if it were they to be condemned forheresy? Indeed, unless he was possessed by impious folly, who woulddare to assert that the Creator is incapable of giving to matter boththought and feeling? Behold, I pray you, the difficulties to which yousubject yourselves, you who dare to put limits on the power of theCreator! Animals have the same organs as we, the same feelings, thesame perceptions; they have memory, they can put some thoughtstogether.If God were not able to animate matter and give it feelings,one thing or the other must be true: either that animals are simplymachines, or that they have a true soul.9It seems to me almost proven that animals are not simplymachines.Here is my proof: God gave them precisely the sameorgans of sense as ours; thus, if they feel no sensations, God hasmade something useless
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