Voltaire

“ Has anyone discovered by what art his ideas are traced in his brain, and issue from it at his command? Feeble automata, moved by the invisible hand which directs us on the stage of this world, which of us has ever perceived the thread which guides us?
We dare to put in question, whether the intelligent soul is spirit or matter; whether it is created before us, or proceeds from nothing at our birth; whether, after animating us for a day on this earth, it lives after us in eternity. ”

“ Be not scandalized at the muzzle of the beast, but revere the face of the angel. Thus spoke this madman; but a fanatic of another sect replied to the first fanatic: It is thou who art the beast, and I who am the angel.
Now who will judge this process, and decide between these two inspired personages? The reasonable and impartial man who is learned in a science which is not that of words; the man divested of prejudice, and a lover of truth and of justice; the man, in fine, who is not a beast, and who pretends not to be an angel. ”

“ If the religion he announces be true, will violence and insolence render it more so? Do you put yourself in a rage, when you say that it is necessary to be mild, patient, beneficent, just, and to fulfil all the duties of society? No; because everyone is of your own opinion. Why, then, do you abuse your brother when preaching to him a mysterious system of metaphysics? Because his opinion irritates your self-love. You are so proud as to require your brother to submit his intelligence to yours; humbled pride produces the wrath ”

“ Does not a thinking being, inhabiting a star of the Milky Way, owe him the same homage as the thinking being on this little globe where we are? Light is the same to the dog-star as to us; morality, too, must be the same.
If a feeling and thinking being in the dog-star is born of a tender father and mother, who have labored for his welfare, he owes them as much love and duty as we here owe to our parents. If any one in the Milky Way sees another lame and indigent, and does not relieve him, though able to do it, he is guilty in the sight of every globe. ”

“ But how do you know that the first principles of matter are divisible and figurable? It is very likely that they are not; whole sects of philosophers assert that the elements of matter have neither figure nor extent. You triumphantly exclaim: Thought is neither wood, nor stone, nor sand, nor metal; therefore, thought belongs not to matter. Weak and presumptuous reasoners! Gravitation is neither wood, nor sand, nor metal, nor stone; nor is motion, or vegetation, or life, any of all these; yet life, vegetation, motion, gravitation, are given to matter. ”

“ We must inquire, therefore, whether this principle or plan tends clearly to increase commerce and population. It is certain that the possessor of an estate will cultivate his own inheritance better than that of another. The spirit of property doubles a man's strength. He labors for himself and his family both with more vigor and pleasure than he would for a master. The slave, who is in the power of another, has but little inclination for marriage; he often shudders even at the thought of producing slaves like himself. His industry is damped; his soul is brutalized ”

“ With constraint there is no virtue, and without virtue no religion. Make me a slave and I shall be the worse for it.
Even the sovereign has no right to employ force to lead men to religion, which essentially presumes choice and liberty. My opinions are no more dependent on authority than my sickness or my health.
In a word, to unravel all the contradictions in which books on the canon law abound, and to adjust our ideas in respect to the ecclesiastical ministry, let us endeavor, in the midst of a thousand ambiguities, to determine what is the Church. ”

“ To say that God cannot give thought to matter, is to say the most insolently absurd thing that has ever been advanced in the privileged schools of madness and folly. We are not assured that God has done this; we are only assured that He can do it. But of what avail is all that has been said, or all that will be said, about the soul? ”

“ How, then, shall we be bold enough to affirm what the soul is? We know certainly that we exist, that we feel, that we think. Seek we to advance one step further—we fall into an abyss of darkness; and in this abyss, we have still the foolish temerity to dispute whether this soul, of which we have not the least idea, is made before us or with us, and whether it is perishable or immortal?
The article on "Soul," and all articles belonging to metaphysics, should begin with a sincere submission to the indubitable tenets of the Church. Revelation is doubtless much better than philosophy. ”

“ The laborer who has waked without chagrin, and fed without excess, sleeps sound and tranquil, and dreams disturb him not; so long as he is in this state, he seldom remembers having a dream—a truth which I have fully ascertained on my estate in Herefordshire. Every dream of a forcible nature is produced by some excess, either in the passions of the soul, or the nourishment of the body; it seems as if nature intended to punish us for them, by suggesting ideas, and making us think in spite of ourselves. ”

“ No, the philosophers will say; there is in this vegetation something other than ordinary motion; there is a secret power which all plants have of drawing to themselves the juices which nourish them; and this power cannot be explained by any system of mechanics; it is a gift which God has made to matter, and the nature of which neither you nor we comprehend.
After disputing thus, our reasoners at length discover animals. Oh, oh! say they, after a long examination, here are beings organized like ourselves. It is indisputable that they have memory, and often more than we have. ”

“ The bishop, having written four volumes to demonstrate that the Jewish law proposed neither pains nor rewards after death, has never been able to answer his adversaries in a very satisfactory manner. They said to him: "Either Moses knew this dogma, and so deceived the Jews by not communicating it, or he did not know it, in which case he did not know enough to found a good religion. Indeed, if the religion had been good why should it have been abolished? A true religion must be for all times and all places; it must be as the light of the sun, enlightening all nations and generations." ”

“ How is it, that while the eyes see not, the ears hear not, we notwithstanding understand in our dreams? The hound renews the chase in a dream: he barks, follows his prey, and is in at the death. The poet composes verses in his sleep; the mathematician examines his diagram; and the metaphysician reasons well or ill; of all which there are striking examples.
Are they only the organs of the machine which act? Is it the pure soul, submitted to the empire of the senses, enjoying its faculties at liberty? ”

“ England furnished a grand example to the sixteenth century by enfranchising the lands possessed by the church and the monks. Nothing could be more odious and nothing more pernicious than the before prevailing practice of men, who had voluntarily bound themselves, by the rules of their order, to a life of humility and poverty, becoming complete masters of the very finest estates in the kingdom, and treating their brethren of mankind as mere useful animals, as no better than beasts to bear their burdens. ”

“ Let us see if thy reason alone can have given thee light enough by which to conclude, without supernatural aid, that thou hast a soul.
The first philosophers, whether Chaldæans or Egyptians, said: There must be something within us which produces our thoughts; that something must be very subtile; it is a breath; it is fire; it is ether; it is a quintessence; it is a slender likeness; it is an antelechia; it is a number; it is a harmony. Lastly, according to the divine Plato, it is a compound of the same and the other. "It is atoms which think in us," said Epicurus, after Democrites. ”

“ All the first fathers of the Church believed the soul to be corporeal. It is impossible for us limited beings to know whether our intelligence is substance or faculty: we cannot thoroughly know either the extended being, or the thinking beings, or the mechanism of thought.
We exclaim to you, with the ever to be revered Gassendi and Locke, that we know nothing by ourselves of the secrets of the Creator. And are you gods, who know everything? We repeat to you, that you cannot know the nature and distinction of the soul but by revelation. ”