The indisputable fact that man, taking him as the Christian superstition has moulded him, has more vices, than any other animal whatsoever, and not a single virtue that may not be found in most of them, is rather a lame proof of his exclusive possession of the immortal item to which he pretends. That which was called "soul" in Platonism and Christianity, was precisely the _Pneuma_ of the Greeks, and the _Anima_ of the Latins, to which they attached no other meaning than simply the breath of life* in all animals; and as that is composed of elements which are eternal, immortality may, in this sense, be justly ascribed to it.| But mind or soul is not a thing of itself (res sui), but a consequence resulting from, and depending upon, animal organisation. In regard to the "_innate ideas_" which it has pleased our theological doctors to bestow upon the human mind, the better to adapt it for their own purpose, it would be quite as philosophical and true, to assert that a violin had innate music. This physical property called mind, the result of organisation, and, in degree, common to everything that has life, is, at birth, a tabula rasa, but acquires ideas as it grows to maturity, from the senses being acted upon by external objects, much in the same manner that the mechanically organised violin produces music, from the external action of the bow. * Its supposed existence after death is merely a fresh version of the ancient Metempsychosis. ** Aristotle maintained the eternity of matter, and did not believe that the governing power of the universe extended any particular providence to sublunary things. As for the immortality of the soul, or even the existence of any such thing, as taught in modern theology, it was quite inconsistent with his principles; yet he was, at one and the same tune, the master of theologians, and the chief of the Atheists.