Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-1751)

L'Homme machine [Man a Machine]

1748, 1749

"And where is the wonder that the body when in health should be subservient, for how can it resist that torrent of blood, and all those spirits which are ready to force obedience, the will having for its ministers an invisible army of fluids, always ready to receive its orders, and as quick as lightening in the execution of them!"

..] since certain traces of the brain likewise excite the same itching, and create the same inclinations; why should we make a difference, or endeavour to make two things of what is apparently but one? It is ridiculous to exclaim against the dominion of the will. For one order which it gives, a hundred times does it come under the yoke. And where is the wonder that the body when in health should be subservient, for how can it resist that torrent of blood, and all those spirits which are ready to force obedience, the will having for its ministers an invisible army of fluids, always ready to receive its orders, and as quick as lightening in the execution of them! But as it is by the nerves that the power of the will is exercis'd, so it it likewise by them that it is oftentimes check'd. Can the highest efforts of the will alone, bring aid to the exhausted new married lover, of the greatest warmth of desire bring back his fallen vigour? [...]
(p. 64)

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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