Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)

L'Homme machine [Man a Machine]

1748, 1749

"As the string of a violin or harpsichord trembles and vibrates, so the fibres or strings of the brain struck by the undulating rays of sound, are excited to return or repeat the words that touched them."

As the string of a violin or harpsichord trembles and vibrates, so the fibres or strings of the brain struck by the undulating rays of sound, are excited to return or repeat the words that touched them. But as the structure of this organ is such, that when once the eye formed for vision has received the pictures of objects, the brain cannot help seeing their images and differences: in the same manner when the signs of these differences are marked or ingraved in the brain, the soul must necessarily examine their relations; and examination that would be impossible without the discovery of signs, or invention of languages. At that time when the world was almost mute, the soul was in regard of all objects as a man, who without having any idea of proportion, should look on a picture, or a piece of sculpture: or as a little child (for the soul was then in its infancy) who holding in his hand a parcel of straws or bits of wood, sees them in general in a vague superficial manner, without being able to count or distinguish them. [...]
(p. 26)

Music::Stringed Instrument::Strings Music::Violin Music::Harpsichord Motion::Vibration

Reading

4 entries in the ESTC. Published anonymously, translated into English in 1749 with printings in 1750 and 1752.

Text from Man a Machine. Translated from the French of the Marquiss D'Argens. (London: Printed for W. Owen, 1749). <Link to ECCO>

Reading Man a Machine and Man a Plant, trans. Richard A. Watson and Maya Rybalka (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994). Translation based on version from La Mettrie's Oeuvres philosophiques (Berlin: 1751).

07/16/2013