A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume 2 of 2 by J. M. Robertson

Saint-Evremond, [673] who, exiled from France for his politics, maintained both in London and in Paris, by his writings, a leadership in polite letters. In England he greatly influenced young men like Bolingbroke; and a translation (attributed to Dryden) of one of his writings seems to have given Bishop Butler the provocation to the first and weakest chapter of his Analogy. [674] As to his skepticism there was no doubt in his own day; and his compliments to Christianity are much on a par with those paid later by the equally conforming and unbelieving Shaftesbury, whom he also anticipated in his persuasive advocacy of toleration. [675] Regnard, the dramatist, had a similar private repute as an "Epicurean." And even among the nominally orthodox writers of the time in France a subtle skepticism touches nearly all opinion. La Bruyère is almost the only lay classic of the period who is pronouncedly religious; and his essay on the freethinkers, [676] against whom his reasoning is so forcibly feeble, testifies to their numbers and to the stress of debate set up by them. Even he, too, writes as a deist against atheists, hardly as a believing Christian. If he were a believer he certainly found no comfort in his faith: whatever were his capacity for good feeling, no great writer of his age betrays such bitterness of spirit, such suffering from the brutalities of life, such utter disillusionment, such unfaith in men. And a certain doubt is cast upon all his professions of opinion by the sombre avowal: "A man born a Christian and a Frenchman finds himself constrained [677] in satire: the great subjects are forbidden him: he takes them up at times, and then turns aside to little things, which he elevates by his ... genius and his style." [678] M. Lanson remarks that "we must not let ourselves be abused by the last chapter [Des esprits forts], a collection of philosophic reflections and reasonings, where La Bruyère mingles Plato, Descartes, and Pascal in a vague Christian spiritualism. This chapter, evidently sincere, but without individuality, and containing only the reflex of the thoughts of others, is not a conclusion to which the whole work conducts. It marks, on the contrary, the lack of conclusion and of general views. What is more, with the chapter On the Sovereign, placed in the middle of the volume, it is destined to disarm the temporal and spiritual powers, to serve as passport for the independent freedom of observation in the rest of the Caractères" (p. 599). On this it may be remarked that the essay in question is not so much Christian as theistic; but the suggestion as to the object is plausible. Taine (Essais de critique et d'histoire, ed. 1901) first remarks (p. 11) on the "christianisme" of the essay, and then decides (p. 12) that "he merely exposes in brief and imperious style the reasonings of the school of Descartes." It should be noted, however, that in this essay La Bruyère does not scruple to write: "If all religion is a respectful fear of God, what is to be thought of those who dare to wound him in his most living image, which is the sovereign?" (§ 27 in ed. Walckenaer, p. 578. Pascal holds the same tone. Vie, par Madame Perier.) This appears first in the fourth edition; and many other passages were inserted in that and later issues: the whole is an inharmonious mosaic. Concerning La Bruyère, the truth would seem to be that the inconsequences in the structure of his essays were symptomatic of variability in his moods and opinions. Taine and Lanson are struck by the premonitions of the revolution in his famous picture of the peasants, and other passages; and the latter remarks (p. 603) that "the points touched by La Bruyère are precisely those where the writers of the next age undermined the old order: La Bruyère is already philosophe in the sense which Voltaire and Diderot gave to that term." But we cannot be sure that the plunges into convention were not real swervings of a vacillating spirit. It is difficult otherwise to explain his recorded approbation of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The Dialogues sur le Quiétisme, published posthumously under his name (1699), appear to be spurious. This was emphatically asserted by contemporaries (Sentiments critiques sur les Caractères de M. de la Bruyère, 1701, p. 447; Apologie de M. de la Bruyère, 1701, p. 357, both cited by Walckenaer) who on other points were in opposition. Baron Walckenaer (Étude, ed. cited, p. 76 sq.) pronounces that they were the work of Elliès du Pin, a doctor of the Sorbonne, and gives good reasons for the attribution. The Abbé d'Olivet in his Histoire de l'Académie française declares that La Bruyère only drafted them, and that du Pin edited them; but the internal evidence is against their containing anything of La Bruyère's draught. They are indeed so feeble that no admirer cares to accept them as his. (Cp. note to Suard's Notice sur la personne et les écrits de la Bruyère, in Didot ed. 1865, p. 20.) Written against Madame Guyon, they were not worth his while. If the apologetics of Huet and Pascal, Bossuet and Fénelon, had any influence on the rationalistic spirit, it was but in the direction of making it more circumspect, never of driving it out. It is significant that whereas in the year of the issue of the Demonstratio the Duchesse d'Orléans could write that "every young man either is or affects to be an atheist," Le Vassor wrote in 1688: "People talk only of reason, of good taste, of force of mind, of the advantage of those who can raise themselves above the prejudices of education and of the society in which one is born. Pyrrhonism is the fashion in many things: men say that rectitude of mind consists in 'not believing lightly' and in being 'ready to doubt.'" [679] Pascal and Huet between them had only multiplied doubters. On both lines, obviously, freethought was the gainer; and in a Jesuit treatise, Le Monde condamné par luymesme, published in 1695, the Préface contre l'incrédulité des libertins sets out with the avowal that "to draw the condemnation of the world out of its own mouth, it is necessary to attack first the incredulity of the unbelievers (libertins), who compose the main part of it, and who under some appearance of Christianity conceal a mind either Judaic [read deistic] or pagan." Such was France to a religious eye at the height of the Catholic triumph over Protestantism. The statement that the libertins formed the majority of "the world" is of course a furious extravagance. But there must have been a good deal of unbelief to have moved a priest to such an explosion. And the unbelief must have been as much a product of revulsion from religious savagery as a result of direct critical impulse, for there was as yet no circulation of positively freethinking literature. For a time, indeed, there was a general falling away in French intellectual prestige, [680] the result, not of the mere "protective spirit" in literature, as is sometimes argued, but of the immense diversion of national energy under Louis XIV to militarism; [681] and the freethinkers lost some of the confidence as well as some of the competence they had exhibited in the days of Molière. [682] There had been too little solid thinking done to preclude a reaction when the king, led by Madame de Maintenon, went about to atone for his debaucheries by an old age of piety. "The king had been put in such fear of hell that he believed that all who had not been instructed by the Jesuits were damned. To ruin anyone it was necessary only to say, 'He is a Huguenot, or a Jansenist,' and the thing was done." [683] In this state of things there spread in France the revived doctrine or temper of Quietism, set up by the Spanish priest, Miguel de Molinos (1640-1697), whose Spiritual Guide, published in Spanish in 1675, appeared in 1681 in Italian at Rome, where he was a highly influential confessor. It was soon translated into Latin, French, and Dutch. In 1685 he was cited before the Inquisition; in 1687 the book was condemned to be burned, and he was compelled to retract sixty-eight propositions declared to be heretical; whereafter, nonetheless, he was imprisoned till his death in 1696. In France, whence the attack on him had begun, his teaching made many converts, notably Madame Guyon, and may be said to have created a measure of religious revival. But when Fénelon took it up (1697), modifying the terminology of Molinos to evade the official condemnation, he was bitterly attacked by Bossuet as putting forth doctrine incompatible with Christianity; the prelates fought for two years; and finally the Pope condemned Fénelon's book, whereupon he submitted, limiting his polemic to attacks on the Jansenists. Thus the gloomy orthodoxy of the court and the mysticism of the new school alike failed to affect the general intelligence; there was no real building up of belief; and the forward movement at length recommenced.