This opinion could scarcely exist otherwise in a man who was accustomed
from his youth to dissect the creature above all others--before, during,
and after life; to hunt through all his organs without ever finding the
individual soul, which is indispensable to religious theory. When he
detected a cerebral centre, a nervous centre, and a centre for aerating
the blood--the first two so perfectly complementary that in the latter
years of his life he came to a conviction that the sense of hearing is
not absolutely necessary for hearing, nor the sense of sight for seeing,
and that the solar plexus could supply their place without any
possibility of doubt--Desplein, thus finding two souls in man, confirmed
his atheism by this fact, though it is no evidence against God. This man
died, it is said, in final impenitence, as do, unfortunately, many noble
geniuses, whom God may forgive.
The life of this man, great as he was, was marred by many meannesses, to
use the expression employed by his enemies, who were anxious to diminish
his glory, but which it would be more proper to call apparent
contradictions. Envious people and fools, having no knowledge of the
determinations by which superior spirits are moved, seize at once on
superficial inconsistencies, to formulate an accusation and so to pass
sentence on them.
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