Chapter XVII (continued 1)
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Robertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
Source notes
120 Liv. i. ch. viii. ↑
121 Bachaumont, juin 22; juillet 9, 20, 27; novembre 14, 1762. ↑
122 Grimm notices Astruc’s Dissertations sur l’immortalité, l’immaterialité, et la liberté de l’âme, published in 1755 (Corr. i, 438), but not his Conjectures. At his death (1766) he pronounces him “un des hommes les plus decriés de Paris,” “Il passait pour fripon, fourbe, méchant, en un mot pour un très-malhonnête homme.” “Il était violent et emporté, et d’une avarice sordide.” Finally, he died “sans sacremens” after having “fait le dévot” and attached himself to the Jesuits in their day of power. Corr. v, 98. But Grimm was a man of many hates, and not the best of historians. ↑
123 Cp. Maury, L’ancienne Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, 1864, pp. 55–56. ↑
124 Voltaire’s various stratagems to secure election are not to his credit. See Paul Mesnard, Histoire de l’académie française, 1857, pp. 68–74. But even Montesquieu is said to have resorted to some questionable devices for the same end. Id. p. 62. ↑
125 Maury, L’ancienne Académie des inscriptions, pp. 54–55, 94, 308. ↑
126Id. p. 93. ↑
127Id. pp. 116–20. ↑
128 Where he was lieutenant-général, and died in 1750. ↑
129 Maury, pp. 53, 86–87. ↑
130Mémoires, ed. Jannet, iv, 181. ↑
131 Cp. Mesnard, as cited, pp. 79–80. ↑
132 Maury, p. 315. ↑
133Id. pp. 82–84. It is noteworthy that the orthodox Thomas, and not any of the philosophes, was the first to impeach the Government in academic discourses. Mesnard, pp. 82–84, 100 sq. ↑
134 “L’excellent Pompignan,” M. Lanson calls him, p. 723. ↑
135 “Les provisions de sa charge pendant six mois en 1736.” Voltaire, Lettre à Mme. D’Épinay, 13 juin, 1760. “Je le servis dans cette affaire,” adds Voltaire. ↑
136 Mesnard, pp. 67, 71, 73, 89. ↑
137Le Pauvre Diable, ouvrage en vers aisés de feu M. Vadé, mis en lumière par Catherine Vadé, sa cousine (falsely dated 1758); La Vanité; and Le Russe à Paris. ↑
138 Mesnard, pp. 86–92. ↑
139Id. pp. 93–94. ↑
140Id. pp. 95–96. ↑
141 Lanson, Hist. de la litt. française, p. 725. ↑
142 The formal approval of a Sorbonnist was necessary. One refused it; another gave it. Marmontel, Mémoires, 1804, iii, 35–36. ↑
143 Marmontel mentions that while he was still discussing a compromise with the syndic of the Sorbonne, 40,000 copies had been sold throughout Europe. Mémoires, iii, 39. ↑
144 This satire was taken by the German freethinker Eberhard, in his New Apology for Socrates, as the actual publication of the Sorbonne. Barbier, Dict. des Ouvr. anon et Pseud., 2e édit., i, 468. ↑
145 Published pseudonymously as a translation from the English: Histoire naturelle de l’âme, traduite de l’Anglais de M. Charp, par feu M. H——, de l’Académie des Sciences. À La Haye, 1745. Republished under the title Traité de l’Âme. ↑
146 By Elie Luzac, to whom is ascribed the reply entitled L’Homme plus que Machine (1748 also). This is printed in the Œuvres philosophiques of La Mettrie as if it were his: and Lange (i, 420) seems to think it was. But the bibliographers ascribe it to Luzac, who was a man of culture and ability. ↑
147L’Homme Machine, ed. Assézat, 1865, p. 97; Œuv. philos. ed. 1774, iii, 51. ↑
148 Lange, Gesch. des Materialismus, i, 362 sq. (Eng. tr. ii, 78–80); Soury, Bréviare de l’hist. du matérialisme, pp. 663, 666–68; Voltaire, Homélie sur l’athéisme, end. Frederick the Great, who gave La Mettrie harbourage, support, and friendship, and who was not a bad judge of men, wrote and read in the Berlin Academy the funeral éloge of La Mettrie, and pronounced him “une âme pure et un cœur serviable.” By “pure” he meant sincere. ↑
149 Salchi, Lettres sur le Déisme, 1759, pp. 177, 197, 239, 283 sq. ↑
150 Huxley, essay on Darwin on the Origin of Species; R. P. A. ed. of Twelve Lectures and Essays, p. 94. ↑
151 See the parallel passages in the Lettres Critiques of the Abbé Gauchat, vol. xv (1761), p. 192 sq. ↑
152 See his essay Des Singularités de la Nature, ch. xii, and his Dissertation sur les changements arrivés dans notre globe. ↑
153 Eng. tr. 1750. ↑
154 Essay cited, p. 96. The criticism ignores the greater comprehensiveness of Robinet’s survey of nature. ↑
155 George-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, 1707–1788. ↑
156 Lyell, Principles of Geology, 12th ed. 1875, i, 57–58. ↑
157Suite de l’Apologie de M. l’Abbé De Prades, 1752, p. 37 sq. ↑
158Dissertatio inauguralis metaphysica de universali naturæ systemate, published at Göttingen as the doctoral thesis of an imaginary Dr. Baumann, 1751. In French, 1753. ↑
159 Soury, p. 579. The later speculations of Maupertuis by their extravagance discredited the earlier. ↑