To say that God cannot make matter think is to say
the most insolently absurd thing that anyone has ever dared utter in the
privileged schools of lunacy. We are not certain that God has treated
matter like this; we are only certain that He can. But what matters all
that has been said and all that will be said about the soul? what does
it matter that it has been called entelechy, quintessence, flame, ether?
that it has been thought universal, uncreated, transmigrant, etc.?
In these matters that are inaccessible to the reason, what do these
romances of our uncertain imaginations matter? What does it matter that
the Fathers of the first four centuries thought the soul corporeal? What
does it matter that Tertullian, by a contradiction frequent in him, has
decided that it is simultaneously corporeal, formed and simple? We have
a thousand witnesses to ignorance, and not one that gives a glimmer of
probability.
How then are we so bold as to assert what the soul is? We know certainly
that we exist, that we feel, that we think. Do we want to take a step
beyond? we fall into a shadowy abyss; and in this abyss we are still so
madly reckless as to dispute whether this soul, of which we have not the
least idea, was made before us or with us, and whether it perishes or is
immortal.
The article SOUL, and all the articles of the nature of metaphysics,
must start by a sincere submission to the incontrovertible dogmas of
the Church.
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