A satirical work mocking the Cartesians and the question of soul and logic. Bougeant suggested that the animals took the souls of the wicked; this allusion, however ironic, to the transmigration of souls led to exile by the Jesuits from the college of La Flèche. The work was a great success in Europe, and is above all an attack on Descartes' mechanical design.

Guillaume Hyacinthe Bougeant, born on 4 November 1690 in Quimper and died on 7 January 1743 in Paris, was a French Jesuit priest, writer and playwright, very involved - in a theatrical manner - in polemics with the Jansenists.