Note 86 — NOTES.1

“[Descartes] understood animal nature; he was the first to prove completely that animals are pure machines.” Contrast this with La Mettrie’s former reference in “L’histoire naturelle de l’âme” to “this absurd system ‘that animals are pure machines.’ Such a laughable opinion,” he adds, “has never gained admittance among philosophers.... Experience does not prove the faculty of feeling any less in animals than in men.”100 It is evident that La Mettrie’s opposition to this ‘absurd system’ was based upon his insistence on the similarity of men and animals. In “L’homme machine” he argues from the same premiss, that animals are machines, that men are like animals, and that therefore men also are machines.