SECT.  XLVII.  The Power of the Soul over the Body is not only Supreme or Absolute, but Blind at the same time.

But that power, which is so supreme and absolute, is blind at the same time.  The most simple and ignorant peasant knows how to move his body as well as a philosopher the most skilled in anatomy.  The mind of a peasant commands his nerves, muscles, and tendons, which he knows not, and which he never heard of.  He finds them without knowing how to distinguish them, or knowing where they lie; he calls precisely upon such as he has occasion for, nor does he mistake one for the other.  If a rope-dancer, for instance, does but will, the spirits instantly run with impetuousness, sometimes to certain nerves, sometimes to others—all which distend or slacken in due time.  Ask him which of them he set a-going, and which way he begun to move them?  He will not so much as understand what you mean.  He is an absolute stranger to what he has done in all the inward springs of his machine.  The lute-player, who is perfectly well acquainted with all the strings of his instrument, who sees them with his eyes, and touches them one after another with his fingers, yet mistakes them sometimes.  But the soul that governs the machine of man’s body moves all its springs in time, without seeing or discerning them, without being acquainted with their figure, situation, or strength, and yet it never mistakes.  What prodigy is here!  My mind commands what it knows not, and cannot see; what neither has, nor is capable of any knowledge.  And yet it is infallibly obeyed.  How much blindness and how much power at once is 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.”