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

240Id. iii, 346–47. ↑

241 D’Argenson, noting in his old age how “on n’a jamais autant parlé de nation et d’État qu’aujourd’hui,” how no such talk had been heard under Louis XIV, and how he himself had developed on the subject, adds, “cela vient du parlement et des Anglois.” He goes on to speak of a reissue of the translation of Locke on Civil Government, originally made by the Jansenists (Mémoires, iv, 189–90). ↑

242 Hallam, Lit. of Europe, ed. 1872, iii, 160–63. ↑

243Œuvres diverses de Pierre Bayle, La Haye, 4 vols. fol. 1737, ii, 564 sq. ↑

244 This Critique appears in the very volume to which Coger refers for the Avis aux Réfugiéz. See Lett. viii, xiii, xvii, etc., vol. and ed. cited, pp. 36, 54, 71, etc. ↑

245 Cp. the survey of Aulard, Hist. polit. de la rév. française, 2e édit. 1903, pp. 2–23. ↑

246 Probably the work of a Jansenist. ↑

247 On the whole question of the growth of abstract revolutionary doctrine in politics cp. W. S. McKechnie on the De Jure Regni apud Scotos in the “George Buchanan” vol. of Glasgow Quatercentenary Studies, 1906, pp. 256–76; Gierke, Political Theories of the Middle Ages, Maitland’s tr. 1900, p. 37 sq. ↑

248 Mallet actually reproaches the philosophes in the mass—while admitting the hostility of many of them to the Revolution—with “having accelerated French degeneration and depravation ... by rendering the conscience argumentative (raisonneuse), by substituting for duties inculcated by sentiment, tradition, and habit, the uncertain rules of the human reason and sophisms adapted to passions,” etc., etc. (B. Mallet, as cited, p. 360). With all his natural vigour of mind, Mallet du Pan thus came to talk the language of the ordinary irrationalist of the Reaction. Certainly, if the stimulation of the habit of reasoning be a destructive course, the philosophes stand condemned. But as Christians had been reasoning as best they could, in an eternal series of vain disputes, for a millennium and a-half before the Revolution, with habitual appeal to the passions, the argument only proves how vacuous a Christian champion’s reasoning can be. ↑

249 Art. in Mercure Britannique, No. 13, Feb. 21, 1799; cited by B. Mallet in Mallet du Pan and the French Revolution, 1902, App. p. 357. ↑

250Id. p. 359. ↑

251Tableau littéraire du dix-huitième siècle, 8e édit. pp. 112, 113. ↑

252Id. p. 72. ↑

253 Work cited, p. 358. ↑

254Id. p. 359. ↑

255 Cp. Morley, Diderot, p. 407. Lord Morley points to the phrase in another form in a letter of Voltaire’s in 1761. It really derives from Jean Meslier, who quotes it from an unlettered man (Testament, i. 19). ↑

256 Rosenkranz, Diderot’s Leben und Werke, 1866, ii, 380–81. ↑

257 As Lord Morley points out, Henri Martin absolutely reverses the purport of a passage in order to convict Diderot of justifying regicide. ↑

258Mémoires, ed. Jannet, iv, 44, 51, 68, 69, 74, 91, 93, 101, 103. ↑

259 Mallet du Pan says he saw the MS., and knew Diderot to have received 10,000 livres tournois for his additions. This statement is incredible. But Meister is explicit, in his éloge, as to Diderot having written for the book much that he thought nobody would sign, whereas Raynal was ready to sign anything. ↑

260Memoirs of Sir Samuel Romilly, 3rd ed. 1841, i, 46. ↑

261 When D’Argenson writes in 1752 (Mémoires, éd. Jannet, iv, 103) that he hears “only philosophes say, as if convinced, that even anarchy would be better” than the existing misgovernment, he makes no suggestion that they teach this. And he declares for his own part that everything is drifting to ruin: “nulle réformation ... nulle amélioration.... Tout tombe, par lambeaux.” ↑

262 Aulard, Hist. polit. de la révol. p. 24. ↑

263 This is the sufficient comment on a perplexing page of Lord Morley’s second monograph on Burke (pp. 110–11), which I have never been able to reconcile with the rest of his writing. ↑

264 Lecky, Hist. of England in the Eighteenth Century, small ed. vi, 263. ↑

265 D’Argenson notes this repeatedly, though in one passage he praises the Parlement as having alone made head against absolutism (déc. 1752; ed. cited, iv, 116). ↑

266Maximes et Pensées, ed. 1856, p. 72. ↑

267Id. pp. 73–74. ↑

268 Chamfort in another passage maintains against Soulavie that the Academy did much to develop the spirit of freedom in thought and politics. Id. p. 107. And this too is arguable, as we have seen. ↑

269 On this complicated issue, which cannot be here handled at any further length, see Prof. P. A. Wadia’s essay The Philosophers and the French Revolution (Social Science Series, 1904), which, however, needs revision; and compare the argument of Nourrisson, J.-J. Rousseau et le Rousseauisme, 1903, ch. xx. ↑

270Correspondance de Grimm, ed. cited, xiv, 5–6. Lettre de janv. 1788. ↑

271 Lettre de Voltaire à D’Alembert, 27 août, 1774. ↑

272Histoire du mariage des prêtres en France, par M. Grégoire, ancien évêque de Blois, 1826, p. v. Compare the details in the Appendice to the Etudes of M. Gazier, before cited. That writer’s account is the more decisive seeing that his bias is clerical, and that, writing before M. Aulard, he had to a considerable extent retained the old illusion as to the “decreeing of atheism” by the Convention (p. 313). See pp. 230–260 as to the readjustment effected by Grégoire, while the conservative clergy were still striving to undo the Revolution. ↑

273Heroes and Hero-Worship: Napoleon. ↑

274 See the Sentiments de Napoléon sur le Christianisme: conversations recueillies à Sainte-Hélène par le Comte de Montholon, 1841. Many of the utterances here set forth are irreconcilable with Napoleon’s general tone. ↑

275 O’Meara, Napoléon en Exil, ed. Lacroix, 1897, ii, 39. ↑

276 Ph. Gonnard, Les origines de la légende Napoléonienne, 1906, p. 258. ↑

277Id. p. 260. ↑

278 Pasquier, cited by Rose, Life of Napoleon, ed. 1913, i, 282. The Concordat was bitterly resented by the freethinkers in the army. Id. p. 281. ↑

279 See Jules Barni’s Napoléon Ier. ed. 1870, p. 83, as to the amazing Catechism imposed by Napoleon on France in 1811. For the history of its preparation and imposition see De Labone, Paris sous Napoléon: La Religion, 1907, p. 100 sq. ↑