A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume...

200 D’Holbach was the original of the character of Wolmar in Rousseau’s Nouvelle Héloïse, of whom Julie says that he “does good without recompense.” “I never saw a man more simply simple” was the verdict of Madame Geoffrin. Corr. litt. de Grimm (notice probably by Meister), ed. 1829–31, xiv, 291. ↑

201 Marmontel says of him that he “avoit tout lu et n’avoit jamais rien oublié d’interessant.” Mémoires, 1804, ii, 312. ↑

202 See a full list of his works (compiled by Julian Hibbert after the list given in the 1821 ed. of Diderot’s Works, xii, 115, and rep. in the 1829–31 ed. of Grimm and Diderot’s Correspondance, xiv, 293), prefixed to Watson’s ed. (1834 and later) of the English translation of the System of Nature. ↑

203 Morley, Diderot, p. 341. The chapter gives a good account of the book. Cp. Lange, i, 364 sq. (Eng. trans, ii, 26 sq.) as to its materialism. The best pages were said to be by Diderot (Corr. de Grimm, as cited, p. 289; the statement of Meister, who makes it also in his Éloge). Naigeon denied that Diderot had any part in the Système, but in 1820 there was published an edition with “notes and corrections” by Diderot. ↑

204 It is to be noted that the English translation (3 vols. 3rd ed. 1817; 4th ed. 1820) deliberately tampers with the language of the original to the extent of making it deistic. This perversion has been by oversight preserved in all the reprints. ↑

205 Mirabeau spoke of the Essai as “le livre le moins connu, et celui qui mérite le plus l’être.” Even the reprint of 1793 had become “extremely rare” in 1822. The book seems to have been specially disquieting to orthodoxy, and was hunted down accordingly. ↑

206 So Morley, p. 347. It does not occur to Lord Morley, and to the Comtists who take a similar tone, that in thus disparaging past thinkers they are really doing the thing they blame. ↑

207Lettres de Memmius à Cicéron (1771); Histoire de Jenni (1775). In the earlier article, Athée, in the Dictionnaire Philosophique, he speaks of having met in France very good physicists who were atheists. In his letter of September 26, 1770, to Madame Necker, he writes concerning the Système de la Nature: “Il est un peu honteux à notre nation que tant de gens aient embrassé si vite une opinion si ridicule.” And yet Prof. W. M. Sloane, of Columbia University, still writes of Voltaire, in the manner of English bishops, as “atheistical” (The French Revolution and Religious Reform, 1901, p. 26). ↑

208 Though in 1797 we have Maréchal’s Code d’une Société d’hommes sans Dieu, and in 1798 his Pensées libres sur les prêtres. ↑

209 Thus Dr. Cairns (Unbelief in the Eighteenth Century, p. 165) gravely argues that the French Revolution proves the inefficacy of theism without a Trinity to control conduct. He has omitted to compare the theistic bloodshed of the Revolution with the Trinitarian bloodshed of the Crusades, the papal suppression of the Albigenses, the Hussite wars, and other orthodox undertakings. ↑

210 The book was accorded the Monthyon prize by the French Academy. In translation (1788) it found a welcome in England among Churchmen by reason of its pro-Christian tone and its general vindication of religious institutions. The translation was the work of Mary Wollstonecraft. See Kegan Paul’s William Godwin, 1876, i, 193. Mrs. Dunlop, the friend of Burns, recommending its perusal to the poet, paid it a curious compliment: “He does not write like a sectary, hardly like a Christian, but yet while I read him, I like better my God, my neighbour, Monsieur Necker, and myself.” Robert Burns and Mrs. Dunlop, ed. by W. Wallace, 1898, p. 258. ↑

211 See Voltaire’s letters to Madame Necker, Corr. de Grimm, ed. 1829, vii, 23, 118. Of the lady, Grimm writes (p. 118): “Hypathie Necker passe sa vie avec des systématiques, mais elle est devote à sa manière. Elle voudrait être sincèrement hugenote, ou socinienne, ou déistique, ou plutôt, pour être quelque chose, elle prend le parti de ne se rendre compte sur rien.” “Hypathie” was Voltaire’s complimentary name for her. ↑

212 Cp. Aulard, Le Culte de la Raison et le Culte de l’Être Suprême, 1892, pp. 17–19. M. Gazier (Études sur l’histoire religieuse de la révolution française, 1877, pp. 48, 173, 189 sq.) speaks somewhat loosely of a prevailing anti-Christian feeling when actually citing only isolated instances, and giving proofs of a general orthodoxy. Yet he points out the complete misconception of Thiers on the subject (p. 202). ↑

213 Cp. Prof. W. M. Sloane, The French Revolution and Religious Reform, p. 43. ↑

214 Gazier, as cited, pp. 2, 4, 12, 19–21, 71, etc. ↑

215Les Assemblées Provinciales sous Louis XVI, 1864, pref. pp. viii–ix. ↑

216 Gazier, L. ii, ch. i. ↑

217Id. p. 67. ↑

218Id. p. 69. ↑

219 Léonce de Lavergne, as cited. ↑

220 The authority of Turgot himself could be cited for the demand that the State clergy should accept the constitution of the State. Cp. Aulard, Le Culte de la Raison, p. 12; Tissot, Étude sur Turgot, 1878, p. 160. ↑

221 Gazier, p. 113. ↑

222 Aulard, Culte, pp. 19–20. ↑

223 Michelet, Hist. de la révolution française, ed. 8vo 1868 and later, i, 16. Cp. Proudhon’s De la justice, 1858. ↑

224 “Tout jugement religieux ou politique est une contradiction flagrante dans une religion uniquement fondée sur un dogme étranger à la justice.” Ed. cited, introd. p. 60. ↑

225 The grave misstatement of Michelet on this head is exposed by Aulard, Culte, p. 60. ↑

226 Yet it is customary among Christians to speak of this lady in the most opprobrious terms. The royalist (but malcontent) Marquis de Villeneuve, who had seen the Revolution in his youth, claimed in his old age to have afterwards “conversed with the Goddess Reason of Paris and with the Goddess Reason of Bourges” (where he became governor); but, though he twice alludes to those women, he says nothing whatever against their characters (De l’Agonie de la France, 1835, i, 3, 19). Prof. W. M. Sloane, with all his religious prejudice, is satisfied that the women chosen as Goddesses of Reason outside of Paris were “noted for their spotless character.” Work cited, p. 198. ↑

227Mémoires, ed. 1841, ii, 166. ↑

228 Père F.-J.-F. Fortin, Souvenirs, Auxerre, 1867, ii, 41. ↑

229 See the speech in Aulard, Culte, p. 240; and cp. pp. 79–85. ↑

230 “Le peuple aura des fêtes dans lesquelles il offrira de l’encens à l’Être Suprême, au maître de la nature, car nous n’avons pas voulu anéantir la superstition pour établir le règne de l’athéisme.” Speech of Nov. 26, 1793, in the Moniteur. (Discours de Danton, ed. André Fribourg, 1910, p. 599.) ↑

231 Aulard, Culte, pp. 81–82. ↑

232 Concerning whom see Aulard, Culte, pp. 86–96. ↑

233The Source, the Strength, and the True Spirit of Laws, Eng. tr. 1753, p. 6. ↑

234E.g., in the Arrêt du Parlement of 9 juin, 1762, denouncing Rousseau’s Émile as tending to make the royal authority odious and to destroy the principle of obedience; and in the Examen du Béllisaire de M. Marmontel, by Coger (Nouv. éd. augm. 1767, p. 45 sq. Cp. Marmontel’s Mémoires, 1804, iii, 46, as to his being called ennemi du trône et de l’autel). This kind of invective was kept up against the philosophes to the moment of the Revolution. See for instance Le vrai religieux, Discours dédié à Madame Louise de France, par le R. P. C. A. 1787, p. 4: “Une philosophie orgueilleuse a renversé les limites sacrées que la main du Très-Haut avoit elle-même élevées. La raison de l’homme a osé sonder les décrets de Dieu.... Dans les accès de son ivresse, n’a-t-elle pas sapé les fondemens du trône et des lois,” etc. ↑

235 Cp. the admissions of Curnier (Rivarol, sa vie et ses œuvres, 1858, p. 149) in deprecation of Burke’s wild likening of Rivarol’s journalism to the Annals of Tacitus. ↑

236Œuvres, ed. cited, pp. 136–40, 147–55. ↑

237 Cp. the critique of Sainte-Beuve, prefixed to ed. cited, pp. 14–17, and that of Arsène Houssaye, id. pp. 31–33. Mr. Saintsbury, though biassed to the side of the royalist, admits that “Rivarol hardly knows what sincerity is” (Miscellaneous Essays, 1892, p. 67). ↑

238 Charles Comte is thus partly inaccurate in saying (Traité de Législation, 1835, i, 72) that the charge against the philosophers began “on the day on which there was set up a government in France that sought to re-establish the abuses of which they had sought the destruction.” What is true is that the charge, framed at once by the backers of the Old Régime, has always since done duty for reaction. ↑

239Mémoires, ed. Jannet, iii, 313; iv, 70; v, 346, 348. ↑