The Good Brahmin and an Old Woman- B L Gautam

What is this matter? Voltaire says, I have seen that which is called matter, both at the star Sirius, and as the smallest atom which can be perceived with the microscope; and I
do not know what this matter is. He tells a story in his famous work (Romances), the story of The Good Brahmin who says, I wish I had never been born. Why so? asked
Voltaire. The Brahmin replied, I have been studying these forty years, and I find that it has been so much time lost.. I believe that I am composed of matter, but I have never
been able to satisfy myself what it is that produces thought. I am even ignorant whether my understanding is a simple faculty like that of walking or digesting, or if I think with my
head in the same manner as I take hold of things with my hands. I talk a great deal, and when I have done speaking I remain confounded and ashamed of what I have said.
The same day Voltaire had a conversation with an old woman, a neighbor of the Brahmin. He asked her if she had ever been unhappy for not understanding how her soul was
made? The old woman did not even comprehend the question.
She had not, for the briefest moment in her life, had a thought about these subjects with which the good Brahmin had so tormented himself. She believed in the bottom of her
heart in the metamorphoses of Vishnu, and provided she could get some of the sacred water of the Ganges in which to make her ablutions, she thought herself the happiest of
women. Struck with the happiness of this poor creature, Voltaire returned to his Brahmin philosopher and thus addressed him: Are you not ashamed to be thus miserable when,
not fifty yards from you, there is an old automaton who thinks of nothing and lives, contended? You are right, the Brahmin replied, I have said to myself a thousand times that
I should be happy if I were but as ignorant as my old neighbor; and yet it is happiness which I dont desire. This reply of the Brahmin made a greater impression on Voltaire
than anything that had passed.