A Short History of Freethought, Volume 2 11 – Robertson · Library Across
Freethought · History of freethought
A Short History of Freethought, Volume 2 11French Freethought in the Eighteenth Century (part 2)
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Freethought · History of freethought
A Short History of Freethought, Volume 2 11
French Freethought in the Eighteenth Century (part 2)
RobertsonEnglish
From about 1746 onwards, the rationalist movement in eighteenth-century France rapidly widens and deepens. The number of rationalistic writers, despite the press laws which in that age inflicted the indignity of imprisonment on half the men of letters, increased from decade to decade, and the rising prestige of the philosophes in connection with the Encyclopédie (1751-72) gave new courage to writers and printers. At once the ecclesiastical powers saw in the Encyclopédie a dangerous enemy; and in January, 1752, the Sorbonne condemned a thesis "To the celestial Jerusalem," by the Abbé de Prades. It had at first (1751) been received with official applause, but was found on study to breathe the spirit of the new work, to which the Abbé had contributed, and whose editor, Diderot, was his friend. Sooth to say, it contained not a little matter calculated to act as a solvent of faith. Under the form of a vindication of orthodox Catholicism, it negated alike Descartes and Leibnitz; and declared that the science of Newton and the Dutch physiologists was a better defence of religion than the theses of Clarke, Descartes, Cudworth, and Malebranche, which made for materialism. The handling, too, of the question of natural versus revealed religion, in which "theism" is declared to be superior to all religions si unam excipias veram, "if you except the one true," might well arouse distrust in a vigilant Catholic reader. The whole argument savours far more of the scientific comparative method than was natural in the work of an eighteenth-century seminarist; and the principle, "Either we are ocular witnesses of the facts or we know them only by hearsay," was plainly as dangerous to the Christian creed as to any other. According to Naigeon, the treatise was wholly the work of de Prades and another Abbé, Yvon; but it remains probable that Diderot inspired not a little of the reasoning; and the clericals, bent on putting down the Encyclopédie, professed to have discovered that he was the real author of the thesis. Either this belief or a desire to strike at the Encyclopédie through one of its collaborators was the motive of the absurdly belated censure. Such a fiasco evoked much derision from the philosophic party, particularly from Voltaire; and the Sorbonne compassed a new revenge. Soon after came the formal condemnation of the first two volumes of the Encyclopédie, of which the second had just appeared.
D'Argenson, watching in his vigilant retirement the course of things on all hands, sees in the episode a new and dangerous development, "the establishment of a veritable inquisition in France, of which the Jesuits joyfully take charge," though he repeatedly remarks also on the eagerness of the Jansenists to outgo the Jesuits. But soon the publication of the Encyclopédie is resumed; and in 1753 D'Argenson contentedly notes the official bestowal of "tacit permissions to print secretly" books which could not obtain formal authorization. The permission had been given first by the President Malesherbes; but even when that official lost the king's confidence the practice was continued by the lieutenant of police. Despite the staggering blow of the suppression of the Encyclopédie, the philosophes speedily triumphed. So great was the discontent even at court that soon (1752) Madame de Pompadour and some of the ministry invited D'Alembert and Diderot to resume their work, "observing a necessary reserve in all things touching religion and authority." Madame de Pompadour was in fact, as D'Alembert said at her death, "in her heart one of ours," as was D'Argenson. But D'Alembert, in a long private conference with D'Argenson, insisted that they must write in freedom like the English and the Prussians, or not at all. Already there was talk of suppressing the philosophic works of Condillac, which a few years before had gone uncondemned; and freedom must be preserved at any cost. "I acquiesce," writes the ex-Minister, "in these arguments."
Curiously enough, the freethinking Fontenelle, who for a time (the dates are elusive) held the office of royal censor, was more rigorous than other officials who had not his reputation for heterodoxy. One day he refused to pass a certain manuscript, and the author put the challenge: "You, sir, who have published the Histoire des Oracles, refuse me this?" "If I had been the censor of the Oracles," replied Fontenelle, "I should not have passed it." And he had cause for his caution. The unlucky Tercier, who, engrossed in "foreign affairs," had authorized the publication of the De l'Esprit of Helvétius, was compelled to resign the censorship, and severely rebuked by the Paris Parlement. But the culture-history of the period, like the political, was one of ups and downs. From time to time the philosophic party had friends at court, as in the persons of the Marquis D'Argenson, Malesherbes, and the Duc de Choiseul, of whom the last-named engineered the suppression of the Jesuits. Then there were checks to the forward movement in the press, as when, in 1770, Choiseul was forced to retire on the advent of Madame Du Barry. The output of freethinking books is after that year visibly curtailed. But nothing could arrest the forward movement of opinion.
12. A new era of propaganda and struggle had visibly begun. In the earlier part of the century freethought had been disseminated largely by way of manuscripts and reprints of foreign books in translation; but from the middle onwards, despite denunciations and prohibitions, new books multiply. To the policy of tacit toleration imposed by Malesherbes a violent end was temporarily put in 1757, when the Jesuits obtained a proclamation of the death penalty against all writers who should attack the Christian religion, directly or indirectly. It was doubtless under the menace of this decree that Deslandes, before dying in 1757, caused to be drawn up by two notaries an acte by which he disavowed and denounced not only his Grands hommes morts en plaisantant but all his other works, whether printed or in MS., in which he had "laid down principles or sustained sentiments contrary to the spirit of religion." But in 1764, on the suppression of the Jesuits, there was a vigorous resumption of propaganda. "There are books," writes Voltaire in 1765, "of which forty years ago one would not have trusted the manuscript to one's friends, and of which there are now published six editions in eighteen months." Voltaire single-handed produced a library; and d'Holbach is credited with at least a dozen freethinking treatises, every one remarkable in its day. But there were many more combatants. The reputation of Voltaire has overshadowed even that of his leading contemporaries, and theirs and his have further obscured that of the lesser men; but a list of miscellaneous freethinking works by French writers during the century, up to the Revolution, will serve to show how general was the activity after 1750. It will be seen that very little was published in France in the period in which English deism was most fecund. A noticeable activity of publication begins about 1745. But it was when the long period of chronic warfare ended for France with the peace of Paris (1763); when she had lost India and North America; when she had suppressed the Jesuit order (1764); and when England had in the main turned from intellectual interests to the pursuit of empire and the development of manufacturing industry, that the released French intelligence turned with irresistible energy to the rational criticism of established opinions. The following table is thus symbolic of the whole century's development:--
1700. Lettre d'Hypocrate à Damagète, attributed to the Comte de Boulainvilliers. (Cologne.) Rep. in Bibliothèque Volante, Amsterdam, 1700. 1700. [Claude Gilbert.] Histoire de Calejava, ou de l'isle des hommes raisonnables, avec le parallèle de leur morale et du Christianisme. Dijon. Suppressed by the author: only one copy known to have escaped. 1704. [Gueudeville.] Dialogues de M. le Baron de la Houtan et d'un sauvage dans l'Amérique. (Amsterdam.) 1709. Lettre sur l'enthousiasme (Fr. tr. of Shaftesbury, by Samson). La Haye. 1710. [Tyssot de Patot, Symon.] Voyages et Avantures de Jaques Massé. (Bourdeaux.) 1710. Essai sur l'usage de la raillerie (Fr. tr. of Shaftesbury, by Van Effen). La Haye. 1712. [Deslandes, A. F. B.] Reflexions sur les grands hommes qui sont morts en plaisantant. (Amsterdam.) 1714. Discours sur la liberté de penser [French tr. of Collins's Discourse of Freethinking], traduit de l'anglois et augmenté d'une Lettre d'un Médecin Arabe. (Tr. by Henri Scheurléer and Jean Rousset.) [Rep. 1717.] 1719. [Vroes.] La Vie et l'Esprit de M. Benoît de Spinoza. 1720. Same work rep. under the double title: De tribus impostoribus: Des trois imposteurs. Frankfort on Main. 1724. [Lévesque de Burigny.] Histoire de la philosophie payenne. La Haye, 2 tom. 1730. [Bernard, J.-F.] Dialogues critiques et philosophiques. "Par l'Abbé de Charte-Livry." (Amsterdam.) Rep. 1735. 1731. Réfutation des erreurs de Benoît de Spinoza, par Fénelon, le P. Laury, benédictin, et Boulainvilliers, avec la vie de Spinoza ... par Colerus, etc. (collected and published by Lenglet du Fresnoy). Bruxelles (really Amsterdam). The treatise of Boulainvilliers is really a popular exposition. 1732. Re-issue of Deslandes's Réflexions. 1734. [Voltaire.] Lettres philosophiques. 4 edd. within the year. [Condemned to be burned. Publisher imprisoned.] 1734. [Longue, Louis-Pierre de.] Les Princesses Malabares, ou le Célibat Philosophique. Deistic allegory. [Condemned to be burned.] 1737. Marquis D'Argens. La Philosophie du Bon Sens. (Berlin: 8th edition, Dresden, 1754.) 1738. ----, Lettres Juives. 6 tom. (Berlin.) 1738. [Marie Huber.] Lettres sur la religion essentielle à l'homme, distingue de ce qui n'en est que l'accessoire. 2 tom. (Nominally London.) Rep. 1739 and 1756. 1739. ----, Suite to the foregoing, "servant de réponse aux objections," etc. Also Suite de la troisième partie. 1741. [Deslandes.] Pigmalion, ou la Statue animée. [Condemned to be burnt by Parlement of Dijon, 1742.] 1741. ----, De la Certitude des connaissances humaines ... traduit de l'anglais par F. A. D. L. V. 1743. Nouvelles libertés de penser. Amsterdam. [Edited by Dumarsais. Contains the first print of Fontenelle's Traité de la Liberté, Dumarsais's short essays Le Philosophe and De la raison, Mirabaud's Sentimens des philosophes sur la nature de l'âme, etc.] 1745. [Lieut. De la Serre.] La vraie religion traduite de l'Ecriture Sainte, par permission de Jean, Luc, Marc, et Matthieu. (Nominally Trévoux, "aux dépens des Pères de la Société de Jésus.") [Appeared later as Examen, etc. Condemned to be burnt by Parlement of Paris.]
This book was republished in the same year with "demontrée par" substituted in the title for "traduite de," and purporting to be "traduit de l'Anglais de Gilbert Burnet," with the imprint "Londres, G. Cock, 1745." It appeared again in 1761 as Examen de la religion dont on cherche l'éclaircissement de bonne foi. Attribué à M. de Saint-Evremont, traduit, etc., with the same imprint. It again bore the latter title when reprinted in 1763, and again in the Évangile de la Raison in 1764. Voltaire in 1763 declared it to be the work of Dumarsais, pronouncing it to be assuredly not in the style of Saint-Evremond (Grimm, iv, 85-88; Voltaire, Lettre à Damilaville, 6 déc. 1763), adding "mais il est fort tronqué et détestablement imprimé." This is true of the reprints in the Évangile de la Raison (1764, etc.), of one of which the present writer possesses a copy to which there has been appended in MS. a long section which had been lacking. The Évangile as a whole purports to be "Ouvrage posthume de M. D. M......y." But its first volume includes four pieces of Voltaire's, and his abridged Testament de Jean Meslier. Further, De la Serre is recorded to have claimed the authorship in writing on the eve of his death. Barbier, Dict. des Anonymes, 2e éd, No. 6158. He is said to have been hanged as a spy at Maestricht, April 11, 1748.
1745. [La Mettrie.] Histoire naturelle de l'âme. [Condemned to be burnt, 1746.] Rep. as Traité de l'âme. 1746. [Diderot.] Pensées philosophiques. [Condemned to be burnt.] 1748. [P. Estève.] L'Origine de l'Univers expliquée par un principe de matière. (Berlin.) 1748. [Benoît de Maillet.] Telliamed, ou Entretiens d'un philosophe indien avec un missionaire français. (Printed privately, 1735; rep. 1755.) 1748. [La Mettrie.] L'Homme Machine. 1750. Nouvelles libertés de penser. Rep. 1751. [Mirabaud, J. B. de.] Le Monde, son origine et son antiquité. [Edited by the Abbé Le Maserier (who contributed the preface and the third part) and Dumarsais.] 1751. De Prades. Sorbonne Thesis. 1752. [Gouvest, J. H. Maubert de.] Lettres Iroquoises. "Irocopolis, chez les Vénérables." 2 tom. (Rep. 1769 as Lettres cherakésiennes.) 1752. [Génard, F.] L'École de l'homme, ou Parallèle des Portraits du siècle et des tableaux de l'écriture sainte. Amsterdam, 3 tom. [Author imprisoned.] 1753. [Baume-Desdossat, Canon of Avignon.] La Christiade. [Book suppressed. Author fined.] 1753. Maupertuis. Système de la nature. 1753. Astruc, Jean. Conjectures sur les mémoires originaux dont il parait que Moïse s'est servi pour composer le livre de la Genèse. Bruxelles. 1754. Prémontval, A. I. le Guay de. Le Diogène de d'Alembert, ou Pensées libres sur l'homme. Berlin. (2nd ed. enlarged, 1755.) 1754. Burigny, J. L. Théologie payenne. 2 tom. (New ed. of his Histoire de la philosophie, 1724.) 1754. [Diderot.] Pensées sur l'interpretation de la nature. 1754. Beausobre, L. de (the younger). Pyrrhonisme du Sage. Berlin. (Burned by Paris Parlement.) 1755. Recherches philosophiques sur la liberté de l'homme. Trans. of Collins's Philosophical Inquiry concerning Human Liberty. 1755. [Voltaire.] Poème Sur la loi naturelle. 1755. Analyse raisonnée de Bayle. 4 tom. [By the Abbé de Marsy. Suppressed. Continued in 1773, in 4 new vols., by Robinet.] 1755. Morelly. Code de la Nature. 1755. [Deleyre.] Analyse de la philosophie de Bacon. (Largely an exposition of Deleyre's own views.) 1757. Prémontval. Vues Philosophiques. (Amsterdam.)
In this year--apparently after one of vigilant repression--was pronounced the death penalty against all writers attacking religion. Hence a general suspension of publication. In 1764 the Jesuits were suppressed, and the policy of censorship was soon paralysed.
1758. Helvétius. De l'Esprit. (Authorized. Then condemned.) 1759. [Voltaire.] Candide. ("Genève.") 1759. Translation of Hume's Natural History of Religion and Philosophical Essays. (By Mérian.) Amsterdam. 1761. [N.-A. Boulanger. ] Recherches sur l'origine du despotisme oriental, et des superstitions. "Ouvrage posthume de Mr. D. J. D. P. E. C." 1761. Rep. of De la Serre's La vraie religion as Examen de la religion, etc. 1761. [D'Holbach.] Le Christianisme dévoilé. [Imprint: "Londres, 1756." Really printed at Nancy in 1761. Wrongly attributed to Boulanger and to Damilaville.] Rep. 1767 and 1777.
Grimm (Corr. inédite, 1829, p. 194) speaks in 1763 of this book in his notice of Boulanger, remarking that the title was apparently meant to suggest the author of L'Antiquité dévoilée, but that it was obviously by another hand. The Antiquité, in fact, was the concluding section of Boulanger's posthumous Despotisme Oriental (1761), and was not published till 1766. Grimm professed ignorance as to the authorship, but must have known it, as did Voltaire, who by way of mystification ascribed the book to Damilaville. See Barbier.
1762. Rousseau. Émile. [Publicly burned at Paris and at Geneva. Condemned by the Sorbonne.] 1762. Robinet, J. B. De la nature. Vol. i. (Vol. ii in 1764; iii and iv in 1766.) 1763. [Voltaire.] Saül. Genève. 1763. ---- Dialogue entre un Caloyer et un honnête homme. 1763. Rep. of De la Serres' Examen. 1764. Discours sur la liberté de penser. (Rep. of trans. of Collins.) 1764. [Voltaire.] Dictionnaire philosophique portatif. [First form of the Dictionnaire philosophique. Burned in 1765.] 1764. Lettres secrètes de M. de Voltaire. [Holland. Collection of tracts made by Robinet, against Voltaire's will.] 1764. [Voltaire.] Mélanges, 3 tom. Genève. 1764. [Dulaurens, Abbé H. J.] L'Arétin. 1764. L'Évangile de la Raison. Ouvrage posthume de M. D. M----y. [Ed. by Abbé Dulaurens; containing the Testament de Jean Meslier (greatly abridged and adapted by Voltaire); Voltaire's Catéchisme de l'honnête homme, Sermon des cinquante, etc.; the Examen de la religion, attribué à M. de St. Evremond; Rousseau's Vicaire Savoyard, from Émile; Dumarsais's Analyse de la religion chrétienne, etc. Rep. 1765 and 1766.] 1765. Recueil Nécessaire, avec L'Évangile de la Raison, 2 tom.
Rep. of parts of the Évangile. Rep. 1767, 1768, with Voltaire's Examen important de Milord Bolingbroke substituted for that of De la Serre (attribué a M. de St. Evremond), and with a revised set of extracts from Meslier.
1765. Castillon, J. L. Essai de philosophic morale. 1766. Boulanger, N. A. L'Antiquité dévoilée. 3 tom. [Recast by d'Holbach. Life of author by Diderot.] 1766. Voyage de Robertson aux terres australes. Traduit sur le Manuscrit Anglois. Amsterdam.
Barbier (Dict. des Ouvr. Anon., 2e éd. iii, 437) has a note concerning this Voyage which pleasantly illustrates the strategy that went on in the issue of freethinking books. An ex-censor of the period, he tells us, wrote a note on the original edition pointing out that it contains (pp. 145-54) a tirade against "Parlements." This passage was "suppressed to obtain permission to bring the book into France," and a new passage attacking the Encyclopédistes under the name of Pansophistes was inserted at another point. The ex-censor had a copy of an edition of 1767, in 12mo, better printed than the first and on better paper. In this, at p. 87, line 30, begins the attack on the Encyclopédistes, which continues to p. 93.
If this is accurate, there has taken place a double mystification. I possess a copy dated 1767, in 12mo, in which no page has so many as 30 lines, and in which there has been no typographical change whatever in pp. 87-93, where there is no mention of Encyclopédistes. But pp. 145-54 are clearly a typographical substitution, in different type, with fewer lines to the page. Here there is a narrative about the Pansophistes of the imaginary "Australie"; but while it begins with enigmatic satire it ends by praising them for bringing about a great intellectual and social reform.
If the censure was induced to pass the book as it is in this edition by this insertion, it was either very heedless or very indulgent. There is a sweeping attack on the papacy (pp. 91-99), and another on the Jesuits (pp. 100-102); and it leans a good deal towards republicanism. But on a balance, though clearly anti-clerical, it is rather socio-political than freethinking in its criticism. The words on the title-page, traduit sur le manuscrit anglois, are of course pure mystification. It is a romance of the Utopia school, and criticizes English conditions as well as French.
1766. De Prades. Abrégé de l'histoire ecclésiastique de Fleury. (Berlin.) Pref. by Frederick the Great. (Rep. 1767.) 1766. [Burigny.] Examen critique des Apologistes de la religion chrétienne. Published (by Naigeon ?) under the name of Fréret. [Twice rep. in 1767. Condemned to be burnt, 1770.] 1766. [Voltaire.] Le philosophe ignorant. 1766. [Abbé Millot.] Histoire philosophique de l'homme. [Naturalistic theory of human beginnings.] 1767. Castillon. Almanach Philosophique. 1767. Doutes sur la religion (attributed to Gueroult de Pival), suivi de l'Analyse du Traité théologique-politique de Spinoza (by Boulainvilliers). [Rep. with additions in 1792 under the title Doutes sur les religions révélées, adressés à Voltaire, par Émilie du Chatelet. Ouvrage posthume.] 1767. [Dulaurens.] L'antipapisme révélé. 1767. Lettre de Thrasybule à Leucippe. [Published under the name of Fréret (d. 1749). Written or edited by Naigeon. ] 1767. [D'Holbach.] L'Imposture sacerdotale, ou Recueil de pièces sur la clergé, traduites de l'anglois. 1767. [Voltaire.] Collection des lettres sur les miracles. 1767. ---- Examen important de milord Bolingbroke. 1767. Marmontel. Bélisaire. (Censured by the Sorbonne.) 1767. [Damilaville.] L'honnêtetê théologique. 1767. Reprint of Le Christianisme dévoilé. [Condemned to be burnt, 1768 and 1770.] 1767. [Voltaire.] Questions sur les Miracles. Par un Proposant. 1767. Seconde partie of the Recherches sur l'origine du despotisme. 1768. Meister, J. H. De l'origine des principes religieux.
Author banished from his native town, Zurich, "in perpetuity" (decree rescinded in 1772), and book publicly burned there by the hangman. Meister published a modified edition at Zurich in 1769. Orig. rep. in the Recueil Philosophique, 1770.
1768. Catalogue raisonné des esprits forts, depuis le curé Rabelais jusqu'au curé Meslier. 1768. [D'Holbach.] La Contagion sacrée, ou histoire naturelle de la superstition. [Condemned to be burnt, 1770.] 1768. ---- Lettres philosophiques sur l'origine des préjugés, etc., traduites de l'anglois (of Toland). 1768. ---- Lettres à Eugénie, ou preservatif contre les préjugés. 2 tom. 1768. ---- Théologie Portative. "Par l'abbé Bernier." [Also burnt, 1776.] 1768. Traité des trois Imposteurs. (See 1719 and 1720.) Rep. 1775, 1777, 1793. 1768. Naigeon, J. A. Le militaire philosophe. [Adaptation of a MS. The last chapter by d'Holbach.] 1768. D'Argens. OEuvres complètes, 24 tom. Berlin. 1768. Examen des prophéties qui servent de fondement à la religion chrétienne (tr. from Collins by d'Holbach). 1768. Robinet. Considérations philosophiques. 1769-1780. L'Évangile du jour. 18 tom. Series of pieces, chiefly by Voltaire. 1769. [Diderot. Also ascribed to Castillon.] Histoire générale des dogmes et opinions philosophiques ... tirée du Dictionnaire encyclopédique. Londres, 3 tom. 1769. [Mirabaud.] Opinions des anciens sur les juifs, and Réflexions impartiales sur l'Évangile (rep. in 1777 as Examen critique du Nouveau Testament). 1769. [Isoard-Delisle, otherwise Delisle de Sales.] De la Philosophie de la Nature. 6 tom. [Author imprisoned. Book condemned to be burnt, 1775.] 1769. [Seguier de Saint-Brisson.] Traité des Droits de Génie, dans lequel on examine si la connoissance de la verité est avantageuse aux hommes et possible au philosophe. "Carolsrouhe," 1769. [A strictly naturalistic-ethical theory of society. Contains an attack on the doctrine of Rousseau, in Émile, on the usefulness of religious error.] 1769. L'enfer détruit, traduit de l'Anglois [by d'Holbach.] 1770. [D'Holbach.] Histoire critique de Jésus Christ. 1770. ---- Examen critique de la vie et des ouvrages de Saint Paul (tr. from English of Peter Annet). 1770. ---- Essai sur les Préjugés. (Not by Dumarsais, whose name on the title-page is a mystification.) 1770. ---- Système de la Nature. 2 tom. 1770. Recueil Philosophique. 2 tom. [Edited by Naigeon. Contains a rep. of Dumarsais's essays Le Philosophe and De la raison, an extract from Tindal, essays by Vauvenargues and Fréret (or Fontenelle), three by Mirabaud, Diderot's Pensées sur la religion, several essays by d'Holbach, Meister's De l'origine des principes religieux, etc.] 1770. Analyse de Bayle. Rep. of the four vols. of De Marsy, with four more by Robinet. 1770. L'Esprit du Judaisme. (Trans. from Collins by d'Holbach.) 1770. Raynal (with Diderot and others). Histoire philosophique des deux Indes. Containing atheistic arguments by Diderot. [Suppressed, 1772.]
In this year there were condemned to be burned seven freethinking works: d'Holbach's Contagion Sacrée; Voltaire's Dieu et les Hommes; the French translation (undated) of Woolston's Discourses on the Miracles of Jesus Christ; Fréret's (really Burigny's) Examen critique de la religion chrétienne; an Examen impartial des principales religions du monde, undated; d'Holbach's Christianisme dévoilé; and his Système de la Nature.
1772. Le Bon Sens. [Adaptation from Meslier by Diderot and d'Holbach. Condemned to be burnt, 1774.] 1772. De la nature humaine. [Trans. of Hobbes by d'Holbach.] 1773. Helvétius. De l'Homme. Ouvrage posthume. 2 tom. [Condemned to be burnt, Jan. 10, 1774. Rep. 1775.] 1773. Carra, J. L. Système de la Raison, ou le prophète philosophe. 1773. [Burigny (?).] Recherches sur les miracles. 1773. [D'Holbach.] La politique naturelle. 2 tom. 1773. ----. Système Sociale. 3 tom. 1774. Abauzit, F. Réflexions impartiales sur les Évangiles, suivies d'un essai sur l'Apocalypse. (Abauzit died 1767.) 1774. [Condorcet.] Lettres d'un Théologien. (Atheistic.) 1774. New edition of Theologie Portative. 2 tom. [Condemned to be burnt.] 1775. [Voltaire.] Histoire de Jenni, ou Le Sage et l'Athée. [Attack on atheism.] 1776. [D'Holbach.] La morale universelle. 3 tom. 1776. ---- Ethocratie. 1777. Examen critique du Nouveau Testament, "par M. Fréret." [Not by Fréret. A rep. of Mirabaud's Réflexions impartiales sur l'Évangile, 1769, which was probably written about 1750, being replied to in the Réfutation du Celse moderne of the Abbé Gautier, 1752 and 1765.] 1777. Carra. Esprit de la morale et de la philosophie. 1778. Barthez, P. J. Nouveaux éléments de la science de l'homme. 1779. Vie d'Apollonius de Tyane par Philostrate, avec les commentaires donnés en anglois par Charles Blount sur les deux premiers livres. [Trans. by J.-F. Salvemini de Castillon, Berlin.] Amsterdam, 4 tom. (In addition to Blount's pref. and notes there is a scoffing dedication to Pope Clement XIV.) 1780. Duvernet, Abbé Th. J. L'Intolérance religieuse. 1780. Clootz, Anacharsis. La Certitude des preuves du Mahométisme. [Reply by way of parody to Bergier's work, noted on p. 250.] 1780. Second ed. of Raynal's Histoire philosophique, with additions. (Condemned to be burnt, 1781.) 1781. Maréchal, Sylvain. Le nouveau Lucrèce. 1783. Brissot de Warville. Lettres philosophiques sur S. Paul. 1784. Doray de Longrais. Faustin, ou le siècle philosophique. 1784. Pougens, M. C. J. de. Récréations de philosophie et de morale. 1785. Maréchal. Livre échappé au Déluge. [Author dismissed.] 1787. Marquis Pastoret. Zoroastre, Confucius, et Mahomet. 1788. Meister. De la morale naturelle. 1788. Pastoret. Moïse considéré comme legislateur et comme moraliste. 1788. Maréchal. Almanach des honnêtes gens. [Author imprisoned; book burnt.] 1789. Volney. Les Ruines des Empires. 1789. Duvernet, Abbé. Les Dévotions de Madame de Betzamooth. 1789. Cerutti (Jesuit Father). Bréviaire Philosophique, ou Histoire du Judaisme, du Christianisme, et du Déisme. 1791-3. Naigeon. Dictionnaire de la philosophie ancienne et moderne. 1795. Dupuis. De l'origine de tous les Cultes. 5 tom. 1795. La Fable de Christ dévoilée; ou Lettre du muphti de Constantinople à Jean Ange Braschy, muphti de Rome. 1797. Rep. of d'Holbach's Contagion sacrée, with notes by Lemaire. 1798. Maréchal. Pensées libres sur les prêtres. A Rome, et se trouve à Paris, chez les Marchands de Nouveautés. L'An Ier de la Raison, et VI de la République Française.
13. It will be noted that after 1770--coincidently, indeed, with a renewed restraint upon the press--there is a notable falling-off in the freethinking output. Rationalism had now permeated educated France; and, for different but analogous reasons, the stress of discussion gradually shifted as it had done in England. France in 1760 stood to the religious problem somewhat as England did in 1730, repeating the deistic evolution with a difference. By that time England was committed to the new paths of imperialism and commercialism; whereas France, thrown back on the life of ideas and on her own politico-economic problems, went on producing the abundant propaganda we have noted, and, alongside of it, an independent propaganda of economics and politics. At the end of 1767, the leading French diarist notes that "there is formed at Paris a new sect, called the Economists," and names its leading personages, Quesnay, Mirabeau the elder, the Abbé Baudeau, Mercier de la Rivière, and Turgot. These developed the doctrine of agricultural or "real" production which so stimulated and influenced Adam Smith. But immediately afterwards the diarist notes a rival sect, the school of Forbonnais, who founded mainly on the importance of commerce and manufactures. Each "sect" had its journal. The intellectual ferment had inevitably fructified thought upon economic as upon historical, religious, and scientific problems; and there was in operation a fourfold movement, all tending to make possible the immense disintegration of the State which began in 1789. After the Economists came the "Patriots," who directed towards the actual political machine the spirit of investigation and reform. And the whole effective movement is not unplausibly to be dated from the fall of the Jesuits in 1764. Inevitably the forces interacted: Montesquieu and Rousseau alike dealt with both the religious and the social issues; d'Holbach in his first polemic, the Christianisme dévoilé, opens the stern impeachment of kings and rulers which he develops so powerfully in the Essai sur les Préjugés; and the Encyclopédie sent its search-rays over all the fields of inquiry. But of the manifold work done by the French intellect in the second and third generations of the eighteenth century, the most copious and the most widely influential body of writings that can be put under one category is that of which we have above made a chronological conspectus.
Of these works the merit is of course very various; but the total effect of the propaganda was formidable, and some of the treatises are extremely effective. The Examen critique of Burigny, for instance, which quickly won a wide circulation when printed, is one of the most telling attacks thus far made on the Christian system, raising as it does most of the issues fought over by modern criticism. It tells indeed of a whole generation of private investigation and debate; and the Abbé Bergier, assuming it to be the work of Fréret, in whose name it is published, avows that its author "has written it in the same style as his academic dissertations: he has spread over it the same erudition; he seems to have read everything and mastered everything." Perhaps not the least effective part of the book is the chapter which asks: "Are men more perfect since the coming of Jesus Christ?"; and it is here that the clerical reply is most feeble. The critic cites the claims made by apologists as to the betterment of life by Christianity, and then contrasts with those claims the thousand-and-one lamentations by Christian writers over the utter badness of all the life around them. Bergier in reply follows the tactic habitually employed in the same difficulty to-day: he ignores the fact that his own apologists have been claiming a vast betterment, and contends that religion is not to be blamed for the evils it condemns. Not by such furtive sophistry could the Church turn the attack, which, as Bergier bitterly observes, was being made by Voltaire in a new book every year.
As always, the weaker side of the critical propaganda is its effort at reconstruction. As in England, so in France, the faithful accused the critics of "pulling down without building up," when in point of fact their chief error was to build up--that is, to rewrite the history of human thought--before they had the required materials, or had even mastered those which existed. Thus Voltaire and Rousseau alike framed à priori syntheses of the origins of religion and society. But there were closer thinkers than they in the rationalistic ranks. Fontenelle's essay De l'origine des fables, though not wholly exempt from error, admittedly lays aright the foundations of mythology and hierology; and De Brosses in his treatise Du Culte des dieux fétiches (1760) does a similar service on the side of anthropology. Meister's essay De l'origine des principes religieux is full of insight and breadth; and, despite some errors due to the backwardness of anthropology, essentially scientific in temper and standpoint. His later essay, De la morale naturelle, shows the same independence and fineness of speculation, seeming indeed to tell of a character which missed fame by reason of over-delicacy of fibre and lack of the driving force which marked the foremost men of that tempestuous time. Vauvenargues's essay De la suffisance de la religion naturelle is no less clinching, granted its deism. So, on the side of philosophy, Mirabaud, who was secretary of the Académie from 1742 to 1755, handles the problem of the relation of deism to ethics--if the posthumous essays in the Recueil philosophique be indeed his--in a much more philosophic fashion than does Voltaire, arguing unanswerably for the ultimate self-dependence of morals. The Lettre de Thrasybule à Leucippe, ascribed to Fréret, again, is a notably skilful attack on theism.
14. One of the most remarkable of the company in some respects is Nicolas-Antoine Boulanger (1722-1759), of whom Diderot gives a vivid account in a sketch prefixed to the posthumous L'Antiquité dévoilée par ses usages (1766). At the Collège de Beauvais, Boulanger was so little stimulated by his scholastic teachers that they looked for nothing from him in his maturity. When, however, at the age of seventeen, he began to study mathematics and architecture, his faculties began to develop; and the life, first of a military engineer in 1743-44, and later in the service of the notable department of Roads and Bridges--the most efficient of all State services under Louis XV--made him an independent and energetic thinker. The chronic spectacle of the corvée, the forced labour of peasants on the roads, moved him to indignation; but he sought peace in manifold study, the engineer's contact with nature arousing in him all manner of speculations, geological and sociological. Seeking for historic light, he mastered Latin, which he had failed to do at school, reading widely and voraciously; and when the Latins failed to yield him the light he craved he systematically mastered Greek, reading the Greeks as hungrily and with as little satisfaction. Then he turned indefatigably to Hebrew, Syriac, and Arabic, gleaning at best verbal clues which at length he wrought into a large, loose, imaginative yet immensely erudite schema of ancient social evolution, in which the physicist's pioneer study of the structure and development of the globe controls the anthropologist's guesswork as to the beginnings of human society. The whole is set forth in the bulky posthumous work Recherches sur l'origine du despotisme oriental (1761), and in the further treatise L'antiquité dévoilée (3 tom. 1766), which is but the concluding section of the first-named.
It all yields nothing to modern science; the unwearying research is all carried on, as it were, in the dark; and the sleepless brain of the pioneer can but weave webs of impermanent speculation from masses of unsifted and unmanageable material. Powers which to-day, on a prepared ground of ascertained science, might yield the greatest results, were wasted in a gigantic effort to build a social science out of the chaos of undeciphered antiquity, natural and human. But the man is nonetheless morally memorable. Diderot pictures him with a head Socratically ugly, simple and innocent of life, gentle though vivacious, reading Rabbinical Hebrew in his walks on the high roads, suffering all his life from "domestic persecution," "little contradictory though infinitely learned," and capable of passing in a moment, on the stimulus of a new idea, into a state of profound and entranced absorption. Diderot is always enthusiastically generous in praise; but in reading and reviewing Boulanger's work we can hardly refuse assent to his friend's claim that "if ever man has shown in his career the true characters of genius, it was he." His immense research was all compassed in a life of thirty-seven years, occupied throughout in an active profession; and the diction in which he sets forth his imaginative construction of the past reveals a constant intensity of thought rarely combined with scholarly knowledge. But it was an age of concentrated energy, carrying in its womb the Revolution. The perusal of Boulanger is a sufficient safeguard against the long-cherished hallucination that the French freethinking of his age was but a sparkle of raillery.
Even among some rationalists, however, who are content to take hearsay report on these matters, there appears still to subsist a notion that the main body of the French freethinkers of the eighteenth century were mere scoffers, proceeding upon no basis of knowledge and with no concern for research. Such an opinion is possible only to those who have not examined their work. To say nothing more of the effort of Boulanger, an erudition much more exact than Voltaire's and a deeper insight than his and Rousseau's into the causation of primitive religion inspires the writings of men like Burigny and Fréret on the one hand, and Fontenelle and Meister on the other. The philosophic reach of Diderot, one of the most convinced opponents of the ruling religion, was recognized by Goethe. And no critic of the "philosophes" handled more uncompromisingly than did Dumarsais the vanity of the assumption that a man became a philosopher by merely setting himself in opposition to orthodox belief. Dumarsais, long scholastically famous for his youthful treatise Des Tropes, lived up to his standard, whatever some of the more eminent philosophes may have done, being found eminently lovable by pietists who knew him; while for D'Alembert he was "the La Fontaine of the philosophers" in virtue of his lucid simplicity of style. The Analyse de la religion chrétienne printed under his name in some editions of the Évangile de la Raison has been pronounced supposititious. It seems to be the work of at least two hands of different degrees of instruction; but, apart from some errors due to one of these, it does him no discredit, being a vigorous criticism of Scriptural contradictions and anomalies, such as a "Jansenist atheist" might well compose, though it makes the usual profession of deistic belief.
Later polemic works, inspired by those above noticed, reproduce some of their arguments, but with an advance in literary skill, as in the anonymous Bon Sens given forth (1772) by Diderot and d'Holbach as the work of Jean Meslier, but really an independent compilation, embodying other arguments with his, and putting the whole with a concision and brilliancy to which he could make no approach. Prémontval, a bad writer, contrives nonetheless to say many pungent things of a deistic order in his Diogène de d'Alembert, and, following Marie Huber, puts forward the formula of religion versus theology, which has done so much duty in the nineteenth century. Of the whole literature it is not too much to say that it covered cogently most of the important grounds of latter-day debate, from the questions of revelation and the doctrine of torments to the bases of ethics and the problem of deity; and it would be hard to show that the nineteenth century has handled the main issues with more sincerity, lucidity, or logic than were attained by Frenchmen in the eighteenth. To-day, no doubt, in the light of a century and a-half of scientific, historic, and philosophic accumulation, the rationalist case is put with more profundity and accuracy by many writers than it could be in the eighteenth century. But we have to weigh the freethinkers of that age against their opponents, and the French performers against those of other countries, to make a fair estimate. When this is done their credit is safe. When German and other writers say with Tholuck that "unbelief entered Germany not by the weapons of mere wit and scoffing as in France; it grounded itself on learned research," they merely prove their ignorance of French culture-history. An abundance of learned research in France preceded the triumphant campaign of Voltaire, who did most of the witty writing on the subject; and whose light artillery was to the last reinforced by the heavier guns of d'Holbach. It is only in the analysis of the historical problem by the newer tests of anthropology and hierology, and in the light of latterly discovered documents, that our generation has made much advance on the strenuous pioneers of the age of Voltaire. And even in the field of anthropology the sound thinking of Fontenelle and De Brosses long preceded any equally valid work by rationalists in Germany; though Spencer of Cambridge had preceded them in his work of constructive orthodoxy.
15. Though the bibliographers claim to have traced the authorship in most cases, such works were in the first instance generally published anonymously, as were those of Voltaire, d'Holbach, and the leading freethinkers; and the clerical policy of suppression had the result of leaving them generally unanswered, save in anonymous writings, when they nevertheless got into private circulation. It was generally impolitic that an official answer should appear to a book which was officially held not to exist; so that the orthodox defence was long confined mainly to the classic performances of Pascal, Bossuet, Huet, Fénelon, and some outsiders such as the Protestant Abbadie, who settled first in Berlin and later in London. The polemic of every one of the writers named is a work of ability; even that of Abbadie (Traité de la Vérité de la religion chrétienne, 1684), though now little known, was in its day much esteemed. In the age of Louis XIV those classic answers to unbelief were by believers held to be conclusive; and thus far the French defence was certainly more thorough and philosophical than the English. But French freethought, which in Herbert's day had given the lead to English, now drew new energy from the English growth; and the general arguments of the old apologists did not explicitly meet the new attack. Their books having been written to meet the mostly unpublished objections of previous generations, the Church through its chosen policy had the air of utter inability to confute the newer propaganda, though some apologetic treatises of fair power did appear, in particular those of the Abbé Bergier. By the avowal of a Christian historian, "So low had the talents of the once illustrious Church of France fallen that in the latter part of the eighteenth century, when Christianity itself was assailed, not one champion of note appeared in its ranks; and when the convocation of the clergy, in 1770, published their famous anathema against the dangers of unbelief, and offered rewards for the best essays in defence of the Christian faith, the productions called forth were so despicable that they sensibly injured the cause of religion."
The freethinking attack, in fact, had now become overwhelming. After the suppression of the Jesuit Order (1764) the press grew practically more and more free; and when, after the accession of Pope Clement XIV (1769), the freethinking books circulated with less and less restraint, Bergier extended his attack on deism, and deists and clerics joined in answering the atheistic Système de la Nature of d'Holbach. But by this time the deistic books were legion, and the political battle over the taxation of Church property had become the more pressing problem, especially seeing that the mass of the people remained conforming. The manifesto of the clergy in 1770 was accompanied by an address to the king "On the evil results of liberty of thought and printing," following up a previous appeal by the pope; and in consideration of the donation by the clergy of sixteen million livres the Government recommended the Parlement of Paris to proceed against impious books. There seems accordingly to have been some hindrance to publication for a year or two; but in 1772 appeared the Bon Sens of d'Holbach and Diderot; and there was no further serious check, the Jesuits being disbanded by the pope in 1773.
The English view that French orthodoxy made a "bad" defence to the freethinking attack as compared with what was done in England (Sir J. F. Stephen, Horæ Sabbaticæ, 2nd. ser. p. 281; Alison, as cited above) proceeds on some misconception of the circumstances, which, as has been shown, were substantially different in the two countries. Could the English clergy have resorted to official suppression of deistic literature, they too would doubtless have done so. Swift and Berkeley bitterly desired to. But the view that the English defence was relatively "good," and that Butler's in particular was decisive, is also, as we have seen, fallacious. In Sir Leslie Stephen's analysis, as apart from his preamble, the orthodox defence is exhibited as generally weak, and often absurd. Nothing could be more futile than the three "Pastoral Letters" published by the Bishop of London (1728, 1730, 1731) as counterblasts to the freethinking books of this period. In France the defence began sooner, and was more profound and even more methodical. Pascal at least went deeper, and Bossuet (in his Discours sur l'Histoire Universelle) more widely, into certain inward and outward problems of the controversy than did any of the English apologists; Huet produced, in his Demonstratio Evangelica, one of the most methodical of all the defensive treatises of the time; Abbadie, as before noted, gave great satisfaction, and certainly grappled zealously with Hobbes and Spinoza; Allix, though no great dialectician, gave a lead to English apologetics against the deists (above, p. 97), and was even adapted by Paley; and Fénelon, though his Traité de l'Existence et des Attributs de Dieu (1712) and Lettres sur la Religion (1716) are not very powerful processes of reasoning, contributed through his reproduced conversations (1710) with Ramsay a set of arguments at least as plausible as anything on the English side, and, what is more notable, marked by an amenity which almost no English apologist attained.
The ground had been thus very fully covered by the defence in France before the main battle in England began; and when a new French campaign commenced with Voltaire, the defence against that incomparable attack, so far as the system allowed of any, was probably as good as it could have been made in England, save insofar as the Protestants gave up modern miracles, while most of the Catholics claimed them for their Church. Counterblasts such as the essay of Linguet, Le Fanatisme des Philosophes (1764), were but general indictments of rationalism; and other apologetic treatises, as we saw, handled only the most prominent books on the other side. It should be noted, too, that as late as 1764 the police made it almost impossible to obtain in Paris works of Voltaire recently printed in Holland (Grimm, vii, 123, 133, 434). But, as Paley admitted with reference to Gibbon ("Who can refute a sneer?"), the new attack was in any case very hard to meet. A sneer is not hard to refute when it is unfounded, inasmuch as it implies a proposition, which can be rebutted or turned by another sneer. The Anglican Church had been well enough pleased by the polemic sneers of Swift and Berkeley; but the other side had the heavier guns, and of the mass of defences produced in England nothing remains save in the neat compilation of Paley. Alison's whole avowal might equally well apply to anything produced in England as against Voltaire. The skeptical line of argument for faith had been already employed by Huet and Pascal and Fénelon, with visibly small success; Berkeley had achieved nothing with it as against English deism; and Butler had no such effect in his day in England as to induce French Catholics to use him. (He does not appear to have been translated into French till 1821.)
An Oratorian priest, again, translated the anti-deistic essays of President Forbes; and the Pensées Theologiques relatives aux erreurs du temps of Père Jamin (1768; 4e édit. 1773) were thought worthy of being translated into German, poor as they were. With their empty affirmation of authority they suggest so much blank cartridge, which could avail nothing with thinking men; and here doubtless the English defence makes a better impression. But, on the other hand, Voltaire circulated widely in England, and was no better answered there than in France. His attack was, in truth, at many points peculiarly baffling, were it only by its inimitable wit. The English replies to Spinoza, again, were as entirely inefficient or deficient as the French; the only intelligent English answers to Hume on Miracles (the replies on other issues were of no account) made use of the French investigations of the Jansenist miracles; and the replies to Gibbon were in general ignominious failures.
Finally, though the deeper reasonings of Diderot were over the heads alike of the French and the English clergy, the Système de la Nature of d'Holbach was met skilfully enough at many points by G. J. Holland (1772), who, though not a Frenchman, wrote excellent French, and supplied for French readers a very respectable rejoinder; whereas in England there was practically none. In this case, of course, the defence was deistic; as was that of Voltaire, who criticized d'Holbach as Bolingbroke attacked Spinoza and Hobbes. But the Examen du Matérialisme of the Abbé Bergier (1771), who was a member of the Academy of Sciences, was at least as good as anything that could then have been done in the Church of England; and the same may be said of his reply to Fréret's (really Burigny's) Examen. It is certainly poor enough; but Bishop Watson used some of its arguments for his reply to Paine. Broadly speaking, as we have said, much more of French than of English intelligence had been turned to the dispute in the third quarter of the century. In England, political and industrial discussion relieved the pressure on creed; in France, before the Revolution, the whole habit of absolutism tended to restrict discussion to questions of creed; and the attack would in any case have had the best of it, because it embodied all the critical forces hitherto available. The controversy thus went much further than the pre-Humian issues raised in England; and the English orthodoxy of the end of the century was, in comparison, intellectually as weak as politically and socially it was strong. In France, from the first, the greater intellectual freedom in social intercourse, exemplified in the readiness of women to declare themselves freethinkers (cp. Jamin, as cited, ch. xix, § 1), would have made the task of the apologists harder even had they been more competent.
