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

[521] See the note of Pope and Warburton on the Dunciad, iv, 462. [522] See arts. in Dict. of Nat. Biog. [523] Reprinted at Amsterdam, 1712. [524] Essays as cited, p. 84. [525] Id. p. 30. [526] See Christianity not Founded on Argument (by Henry Dodwell, jr.), 1741, pp. 11, 34. Waterland, as cited by Bishop Hurst, treats the terms Reasonist and Rationalist as labels or nicknames of those who untruly profess to reason more scrupulously than other people. The former term may, however, have been set up as a result of Le Clerc's rendering of "the Logos," in John i, 1, by "Reason"--an argument to which Waterland repeatedly refers. [527] Prof. Strowski, who is concerned to prove that the freethinkers of the period were mostly men-about-town, claims Patin as a Frondeur (De Montaigne à Pascal, p. 215). But Patin's attitude in this matter was determined by his detestation of Mazarin, whom he regarded as an arch-scoundrel. Naudé's defence of the Massacre is forensic. [528] Lettres de Gui Patin, No. 188, édit. Reveillé-Parise, 1846, i, 364. [529] Cp. Reveillé-Parise, as cited, Notice sur Gui Patin, pp. xxiii-xxvii, and Bayle, art. Patin. [530] See the notices of him in Owen's Skeptics of the French Renaissance; and in Sainte-Beuve. Port Royal, iii, 180, etc. [531] De la Vertu des Payens, in t. v. of the 12mo ed. of OEuvres, 1669. [532] Hanotaux, Hist. du Cardinal de Richelieu, 1893, i, pref. p. 7. [533] Cp. Buckle, ch. viii, 1-vol. ed. pp. 305-10, 325-28. [534] See the good criticism of M. Hanotaux in Perrens, Les Libertins en France au xvii. siècle, p. 95 sq. [535] OEuvres, ed. 1669, v, 4 sq. Bellarmin, as Le Vayer shows, had similarly explained away Augustine. But the doctrine that heathen virtue was not true virtue had remained orthodox. [536] Ed. cited, iv, 125. [537] Id. pp. 123-24. [538] Tom. iii, 251. [539] He wrote very many, the final collection filling three volumes folio, and fifteen in duodecimo. The Cincq Dialogues faits à l'imitation des Anciens were pseudonymous, and are not included in the collected works. [540] "On le régarde comme le Plutarque de notre siècle" (Perrault, Les Hommes Illustres du XVIIe Siècle, éd. 1701, ii. 131). [541] Perrault, ii, 132. [542] Bayle, Dict. art. La Mothe le Vayer. Cp. introd. to L'Esprit de la Mothe le Vayer, par M. de M. C. D. S. P. D. L. (i.e. De Montlinot, chanoine de Saint Pierre de Lille), 1763, pp. xviii, xxi, xxvi. [543] M. Perrens, who endorses this criticism, does not note that some passages he quotes from the Dialogues, as to atheism being less disturbing to States than superstition, are borrowed from Bacon's essay Of Atheism, of which Le Vayer would read the Latin version. [544] Perrens, p. 132. [545] In French, 1631; in Latin, 1656, amended. [546] Translated into English in 1688, and into French, under the title Traité du Pyrrhonisme de l'église romaine, by N. Chalaire, Amsterdam, 1721. [547] Bouillier, Hist. de la Philos. cartésienne, 1854, i, 410 sq., 420 sq.; Lanson, Hist. de la litt. française, 5e édit. p. 396; Brunetière, Études Critiques, 3e série, p. 2; Buckle, 1-vol. ed. p. 338. Bouillier notes (i, 426) that the femmes savantes ridiculed by Molière are Cartesians. [548] Bouillier, i, 456; Lanson, p. 397. [549] Bouillier, i, 411 sq. [550] Id. p. 431 sq. [551] Id. p. 437 sq. [552] Id. pp. 449-50. [553] "Il disait très souvent," said Pascal's niece:--"Je ne puis pardonner à Descartes: il aurait bien voulu, dans toute sa philosophie, pouvoir se passer de Dieu; mais il n'a pu s'empêcher de lui accorder une chiquenade, pour mettre le monde en mouvement; après cela il n'a plus que faire de Dieu." Récit de Marguerite Perier ("De ce que j'ai ouï dire par M. Pascal, mon oncle"), rep. with Pensées, ed. 1853. pp. 38-39. [554] Bouillier, p. 453. [555] Id. p. 455 sq. [556] See Bouillier, i, 460 sq.; ii, 373 sq.; and introd. to OEuvres philos. du Père Buffier, 1846, p. 4; and cp. Rambaud, Hist. de la civilisation française, 6e édit. ii, 336. [557] Bouillier, i, 465. [558] Perrens, pp. 84-85. [559] Cp. Perrens, pp. 68-69, and refs. [560] Cp. Strowski, De Montaigne à Pascal, p. 141. [561] See Duvernet, Vie de Voltaire, ch. i, and note 1; and Perrens, pp. 74-80. [562] For all that is known of Petit see the Avertissement to Bibliophile Jacob's edition of Paris ridicule et burlesque au 17ième siècle, and refs. in Perrens, p. 153. After Petit's death, his friend Du Pelletier defended him as being a deist; but he seems in his youthful writings to have blasphemed at large, and he had been guilty of assassinating a young monk. He was burned, however, for blaspheming the Virgin. [563] Guizot, Corneille et son temps, ed. 1880, p. 200. The circle of the Hôtel Rambouillet were especially hostile. Cp. Palissot's note to Polyeucte, end. On the other hand, Corneille found it prudent to cancel four skeptical lines which he had originally put in the mouth of the pagan Severus, the sage of the piece. Perrens, Les Libertins, p. 140. [564] Under whom he studied in his youth with a number of other notably independent spirits, among them Cyrano de Bergerac. See Sainte-Beuve's essay on Molière, prefixed to the Hachette edition. Molière held by Gassendi as against Descartes. Bouillier, i, 542 sq. [565] Constant Coquelin, art. "Don Juan" in the International Review, September, 1903, p. 61--an acute and scholarly study. [566] "Molière is a freethinker to the marrow of his bones" (Perrens, p. 280). Cp. Lanson, p. 520; Fournier, Études sur Molière, 1885, pp. 122-23; Soury, Brêv. de l'hist. du matér. p. 384. "Ginguené," writes Sainte-Beuve, "a publié une brochure pour montrer Rabelais précurseur de la révolution française: c'étoit inutile à prouver sur Molière" (essay cited). [567] Act II, sc. iv. in OEuvres Comiques, etc., ed. Jacob, rep. by Garnier, pp. 426-27. [568] See Jacob's note in loc., ed. cited, p. 455. [569] E.g. his Lettre contre un Pédant (No. 13 of the Lettres Satiriques in ed. cited, p. 181), which, however, appears to have been mutilated in some editions; as one of the deistic sentences cited by M. Perrens, p. 247, does not appear in the reprint of Bibliophile Jacob. [570] E.g. the Histoire des Oiseaux in the Histoire Comique des états et empires du Soleil, ed. Jacob (Garnier), p. 278; and the Fragment de Physique (same vol.). [571] See the careful criticism of Perrens, pp. 248-50. [572] Bibliophile Jacob, pref. to ed. cited, pp. i-ii. [573] Perrens, p. 302. Compare Bossuet's earlier sermon for the Second Sunday of Advent, 1665, cited by Perrens, pp. 253-54, where he speaks with something like fury of the free discussion around him. [574] Cousin plausibly argues that Pascal began writing Pensées under the influence of a practice set up in her circle by Madame de Sablé. Mme. de Sablé, 5e édit. p. 124 sq. [575] It is to be remembered that the work as published contained matter not Pascal's. Cp. Brunetière, Études, iii, 46-47; and the editions of the Pensées by Faugère and Havet. [576] As to some of these see Perrens, pp. 158-69. They included the great Condé and some of the women in his circle; all of them unserious in their skepticism, and all "converted" when the physique gave the required cue. [577] Pensées, ed. Faugère, ii, 168-69. The "abêtira" comes from Montaigne. [578] Thus Mr. Owen treats Pascal as a skeptic, which philosophically he was, insofar as he really philosophized and did not merely catch at pleas for his emotional beliefs. "Les Pensées de Pascal," writes Prof. Le Dantec, "sont à mon avis le livre le plus capable de renforcer l'athéisme chez un athée" (L'Athéisme, 1906, pp. 24-25). They have in fact always had that effect. [579] De la Delicatesse, 1671, dial. v, p. 329, etc. [580] Vinet, Études sur Blaise Pascal, 3e édit. p. 267 sq. [581] Cp. the Éloge de Pascal by Bordas Demoulin in Didot ed. of the Lettres, 1854, pp. xxii-xxiii, and cit. from Saint-Beuve. Mark Pattison, it seems, held that the Jesuits had the best of the argument. See the Letters of Lord Acton to Mary Gladstone, 1904, p. 207. As regards the effect of Jansenism on belief, we find De Tocqueville pronouncing that "Le Jansenisme ouvrit ... la brêche par laquelle la philosophie du 18e siècle devait faire irruption" (Hist. philos. du règne de Louis XV, 1849, i, 2). This could truly be said of Pascal. [582] Cp. Voltaire's letter of 1768, cited by Morley, Voltaire, 4th ed. p. 159. [583] Cp. Owen, French Skeptics, pp. 762-63, 767. [584] This was expressly urged against Huet by Arnauld. See the Notice in Jourdain's ed. of the Logique de Port Royal, 1854, p. xi; Perrens, Les Libertins, p. 301; and Bouillier Hist. de la philos. cartésienne, 1854, i, 595-96, where are cited the letters of Arnauld (Nos. 830, 834, and 837 in OEuvres Compl. iii, 396, 404, 424) denouncing Huet's Pyrrhonism as "impious" and perfectly adapted to the purposes of the freethinkers. [585] Cp. Alexandre Westphal, Les Sources du Pentateuque, i (1888), pp. 64-68. [586] Huet himself incurred a charge of temerity in his handling of textual questions. Id. p. 66. [587] Pattison, Essays, 1889, i. 303-304. [588] Pattison, as cited. [589] "After all, a book [the Bible] cannot make a stand against the wild, living intellect of man." Newman, Apologia pro Vita Sua, 1st ed. p. 382; ed. 1875, p. 245. The same is said by Newman of religion in general (p. 243). [590] Pattison disparages it as colourless, a fault he charges on Jesuit Latin in general. But by most moderns the Latin style of Huet will be found pure and pleasant. [591] Pattison, Essays, i, 299. Cp. Bouillier, i, 595. [592] Fontenelle, Éloge sur Régis; Bouillier, Philos. cartés., i, 507. [593] Réponse to Huet's Censura philosophiæ cartes., 1691; Bouillier, i, 515. [594] Usage de la raison et de la foi, 1704, liv. i, ptie. i, ch. vii; Bouillier, p. 511. [595] Bouillier, i, 521-25. [596] Lettre de 10 août, 1677, No. 591, éd. Nodier. [597] Bouillier, ii, 10. [598] Méditations chrétiennes, ix, § 13. [599] Entretiens métaphysiques, viii. [600] Id. viii, ix. [601] Bouillier, ii, 33. So Kuno Fischer: "In brief, Malebranche's doctrine, rightly understood, is Spinoza's" (Descartes and his School, Eng. tr. 1890, p. 589. Cp. p. 542). [602] The work of Arnauld was reprinted in 1724 with a remarkable Approbation by Clavel, in which he eulogizes the style and the dialectic of Arnauld, and expresses the hope that the book may "guérir, s'il se peut, d'une étrange préoccupation et d'une excessive confiance, ceux qui enseignent ou soutiennent comme evident ce qu'il y a de plus dangereux dans la nouvelle philosophie non-obstant les défenses faites par le feu Roi Louis XIV à l'Université d'Angers en l'année 1675 et à l'Université de Paris aux années 1691 et 1704 de le laisser enseigner ou soutenir." [603] Des vrayes et des fausses idées, ch. xxviii. [604] Recherche de la Vérité, liv. vi, ptie. ii, ch. iii. [605] This was the main theme of the finished Éloge of Fontenelle, and was acknowledged by Bayle, Daguesseau, Arnauld, Bossuet, Voltaire, and Diderot, none of whom agreed with him. Bouillier, ii, 19. Fontenelle opposed Malebranche's philosophy in his Doutes sur le système physique des causes occasionelles. Id. p. 575. [606] Cp. Bouillier, ii, 260-61. [607] He is not mentioned by Ueberweg, Lange, or Lewes. His importance in æsthetics, however, is recognized by some moderns, though he is not named in Mr. Bosanquet's History of Æsthetic. [608] Traité des premières vérités, 1724, §§ 521-31. [609] Bouillier, introd. to Buffier's OEuvres philosophiques, 1846, p. xiii. [610] Remarques sur les principes de la metaphysique de Locke, passages cited by Bouillier. [611] OEuvres, éd. Bouillier, p. 329. [612] Cp. Bouillier, Hist. de la philos. cartés., ii, 391. [613] Malebranche, Traité de Morale, liv. ii, ch. 10. Cp. Bouillier, i, 582, 588-90; ii, 23. [614] Cp. Westphal, Les Sources du Pentateuque, 1888, i, 67 sq. [615] Præadamitæ, sive Exercitatio super versibus 12, 13, 14 cap. 5, Epist. D. Pauli ad Romanos, Quibus inducuntur Primi Homines ante Adamum conditi. The notion of a pre-Adamite human race, as we saw, had been held by Bruno. (Above, p. 46.) [616] My copies of the Præadamitæ and Systema bear no place-imprint, but simply "Anno Salutis MDCLV." Both books seem to have been at once reprinted in 12mo. [617] Bayle, Dictionnaire, art. Peyrere. A correspondent of Bayle's concludes his account of "le Préadamite" thus: "Le Pereire étoit le meilleur homme du monde, le plus doux, et qui tranquillement croyoit fort peu de chose." There is a satirical account of him in the Lettres de Gui Patin, April 5,1658 (No. 454, ed. Reveillé-Parise, 1846, iii, 83), cited by Bayle. [618] See the account of his book by Mr. Lecky, Rationalism in Europe, i, 295-97. Rejecting as he did the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, he ranks with Hobbes and Spinoza among the pioneers of true criticism. Indeed, as his book seems to have been in MS. in 1645, he may precede Hobbes. Patin had heard of Peyrère's Præadamitæ as ready for printing in 1643. Let. 169, ed. cited, i, 297. [619] Kuno Fischer, Descartes and his School, pp. 254-68. [620] Colerus (i.e., Köhler), Vie de Spinoza, in Gfrörer's ed. of the Opera, pp. xlv-xlvii. [621] Cited by George Sinclar in pref. to Satan's Invisible World Discovered, 1685,rep. 1871. I have been unable to meet with a copy of Mastricht's book. [622] "Novitates Cartesianæ multis parasangas superunt Arminianas." [623] Nichols, Works of Arminius, 1824, i, 257 b (paging partly duplicated). [624] Cp. Bouillier, i, 293-94. [625] Colerus, Vie de Spinoza, in Gfrörer's ed. of Opera, p. xxv; Martineau, Study of Spinoza, 1882, pp. 20-22; Pollock, Spinoza, 2nd ed. 1899, pp. 10-14. [626] As set forth by Joel, Beiträge zur Gesch. der Philos., Breslau,