10 LIFE AND DEATH. 



witty mockery of Bordeu/ 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 Attimtsin 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 im- 

 possible 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 



1 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." 



