here! The blindness is man's; but the power, whose is it? To whom
shall we ascribe it, unless it be to Him who sees what man does not
see, and performs in him what passes his understanding? It is to no
purpose my mind is willing to move the bodies that surround it, and
which it knows very distinctly; for none of them stirs, and it has
not power to move the least atom by its will. There is but one
single body, which some superior Power must have made its property.
With respect to this body, my mind is but willing, and all the
springs of that machine, which are unknown to it, move in time and
in concert to obey him. St. Augustin, who made these reflections,
has expressed them excellently well. "The inward parts of our
bodies," says he, "cannot be living but by our souls; but our souls
animate them far more easily than they can know them. . . . The
soul knows not the body which is subject to it. . . . It does not
know why it does not move the nerves but when it pleases; and why,
on the contrary, the pulsation of veins goes on without
interruption, whether the mind will or no. It knows not which is
the first part of the body it moves immediately, in order thereby to
move all the rest. . . . It does not know why it feels in spite of
itself, and moves the members only when it pleases. It is the mind
does these things in the body. But how comes it to pass it neither
knows what she does, nor in what manner it performs it? Those who
learn, anatomy," continues that father, "are taught by others what
passes within, and is performed by themselves. Why," says he, "do I
know, without being taught, that there is in the sky, at a
prodigious distance from me, a sun and stars; and why have I
occasion for a master to learn where motion begins? . . . When I
move my finger, I know not how what I perform within myself is
performed. We are too far above, and cannot comprehend ourselves."