>>The army surgeon De la Mettrie's exhaustive materialism is the
culmination of a tradition in Enlightenment thought that begins so
oddly with Descartes assertion that 'animals are (soulless) machines'
(circa 1630?). At the time Piron met Rameau a century later, Rameau was
writing a never to be performed first opera, Samson , with Voltaire,
whose contribution to the debate about mechanism and the soul was the
wonderfully enigmatic 'God is the soul or animals', an aphorism that in
context of their theatrical collaboration gives  an evocative twist to
the phrase 'deus ex machina'<<


"Here I Come to Save the Day!!!"  -- Mighty Mouse  [the soulless]

"Here I Come to Save the Day!!!"  -- Andy Kaufman
(see also "Man on the Moon" where Kaufman is played by Jim Carrey, doing 
this)