witty mockery of Bordeu,[1] in 1742, it began to decay. We must, however, point out that an attempt to revive this theory was made in 1878 by a well-known doctor of the last generation, E. Chauffard. While preserving the essential features of the theory, this learned physician proposed to bring it into harmony with modern science, and to free it from all the reproaches which had been levelled at it.
The Animism of E. Chauffard.—These reproaches were numerous. The most serious is of a philosophic nature. It rises from the difficulty of conceiving a direct and immediate action of the soul, considered as a spiritual principle, upon the matter of the body. There is such an abyss—hewn by the philosophic mind itself—between soul and body, that it is impossible to imagine any relation between them. We can only get a glimpse of how the soul might become an instrument of action.
This was the problem which sorely tried the genius of Leibniz. Descartes, in earlier days, attacked it vigorously, like an Alexander cutting the Gordian knot. He separated the soul from the body, and made of the latter a pure machine in the government of which the soul had no part. He attributed all the known manifestations of vital activity to inanimate forces. Leibniz, also, was compelled to reject all action, all contact, all direct relation, every real bond between soul and body, and to imagine between them
- ↑ In a thesis presented in 1742 at Montpellier, Bordeu, then only twenty years of age, made game of the tasks imposed by animists on the Soul, "which has to moisten the lips when required;" or, "whose anger produces the symptoms of certain diseases;" or again, "which is prevented by the consequences of original sin from guiding and directing the body."
