>“Laplace went in state to Napoleon to accept a copy of his work, and the following account of the interview is well authenticated, and so characteristic of all the parties concerned that I quote it in full. Someone had told Napoleon that the book contained no mention of the name of God; Napoleon, who was fond of putting embarrassing questions, received it with the remark, ‘M. Laplace, they tell me you have written this large book on the system of the universe, and have never even mentioned its Creator.’ Laplace, who, though the most supple of politicians, was as stiff as a martyr on every point of his philosophy, drew himself up and answered bluntly, ‘Je n’avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là.’ ['I had no need of that hypothesis.'] Napoleon, greatly amused, told this reply to Lagrange, who exclaimed, ‘Ah! c’est une belle hypothèse; ça explique beaucoup de choses.’ ['Ah, it is a fine hypothesis; it explains so many things.']”
As Napoleon commented in April of 1817 during a conversation with Gourgaud who at the time was praising the Celestial Mechanics of Laplace:>“I often asked Laplace what he thought of God. He owned he was an atheist. Many crimes have been committed in the name of religion. Where is the soul of an infant? I cannot remember what I was before I was born; and what will become of my soul after my death? As to my body, it will become carrots or turnips. I have no dread of death. In the army I have seen many men suddenly perish who were once there talking with me.”
>The subject of the nature of the soul was a question that plagued Napoleon up until his last days. In fact, in 1820, a year before his death, Napoleon entered into yet another dialog with his personal physician Francois Antommarchi as to the whereabouts of the soul, during which time he commented again on his retrospect conversation with Laplace on God: ‘You do not believe it, you doctors are above such weakness. Tell me, you who know so well the human body, who have probed into all its ramifications, have you ever come across the soul under your scalpel? Where is it? In which organ?’ 'I hesitated to respond,' says Antommarchi. 'Come now, frankly, there is not a doctor who believes in God, is not that so?' 'No, Sire, they are ensnared by the demonstration, they accept the dictum of the mathematicians.' 'Eh, but the latter are generally religious. Your reply, however, recalls to me a curious remark. I was talking to Laplace , I was congratulating him upon a book he had just published and I asked him how it was that the name of God, which was so incessantly repeated in the writings of Lagrange, did not appear even once in his work. The reason,' he replied, 'is that I had not had occasion to make use of that hypothesis’.’
bumping because this thread is actually quality
>>18058379They're talking about God's existence with no metaphysics, no big bang, no nothing. To read this you'd think religion and atheism are all in service of humanity, not the other way around.
I do this with 4chan posts
>In the army I have seen many men suddenly perish who were once there talking with me.I suppose he had a long hard think about that on his new cold island home in the south Atlantic, but since he says this so nonchalantly I don't think the psychopath cared. The British are a great people, purveyors of justice and always acting for the greater good, they did the world a great favor removing this man from his seat of power.
>>18059104They did the right thing by letting him win for 10 years. It would've been wrong to disrupt such a tide. He was only great enough to rule Europe for that long though.
>>18057799Napoleon was a loser
