Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)

L'Homme machine [Man a Machine]

1748, 1749

"By its flattering pencil the cold skeleton of abstract reason assumes living and vermillion flesh; but it the sciences flourish, arts are embellished, woods speak, echoes sigh, rocks weep, marble breathes, and all the inanimate bodies are suddenly inspired with life."

[...] but still it is true that the imagination alone perceives, that it is it which represents all objects, with the words and figures that characterise them, and thus it is the imagination that is the soul, because it performs all its operations. By its flattering pencil the cold skeleton of abstract reason assumes living and vermillion flesh; but it the sciences flourish, arts are embellished, woods speak, echoes sigh, rocks weep, marble breathes, and all the inanimate bodies are suddenly inspired with life. 'Tis it that adds to the tenderness of an amorous heart the poignant taste of pleasures; it makes love bud in the cabinet of the philosopher, and dusty pedant: in fine it forms the scientific men as well as orators, and poets. Foolishly decried by some, and vainly extolled by others, by whom it has been alike misunderstood, it waits on the graces and liberal arts, and not only paints nature, but is also capable to measure it. The imagination perceives, reasons, judges, penetrates, compares, and dives into things. Is it possible it should so perfectly perceive the beauties of pictures set before it, without discovering their relations? [...]
(p. 29)

Visual Arts::Pencil Body::Skeleton Body::Flesh

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