Note 1 — LA METTRIE’S RELATION TO HIS PREDECESSORS AND TO HIS SUCCESSORS.

The most direct source of La Mettrie’s work, if the physiological aspect of his system is set aside, is found in the philosophy of Descartes. In fact it sometimes seems as if La Mettrie’s materialism grew out of his insistence on the contradictory character of the dualistic system of Descartes. He criticises Descartes’s statement that the body and soul are absolutely independent, and takes great pains to show the dependence of the soul on the body. Yet though La Mettrie’s system may be opposed to that of Descartes1 from one point of view, from another point of view it seems to be a direct consequence of it. La Mettrie himself recognizes this relationship and feels that his doctrine that man is a machine, is a natural inference from Descartes’s teaching that animals are mere machines.2 Moreover La Mettrie carries on Descartes’s conception of the body as a machine, and many of his detailed discussions of the machinery of the body seem to have been drawn from Descartes.