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

infidèle, quoique le plus croyant de France." In 1768, after the Bélisaire scandal, he was refused permission to proceed with the publication of his Histoire ecclésiastique. [1002] This was de Prades's own view of the matter (Apologie, as cited, p. v); and D'Argenson repeatedly says as much. Mémoires, iv, 57, 65, 66, 74, 77. [1003] Rocquain, L'esprit revolutionnaire avant la révolution, 1878, pp. 149-51; Morley, Diderot, ch. v; D'Argenson, iv, 78. The decree of suppression was dated 13 fév. 1752. [1004] Mémoires, iv, 64, 74. [1005] Id. iv, 129, 140. [1006] Id. iv, 92-93. [1007] Maury, Hist. de l'ancienne Académie des Inscriptions, 1864, pp. 312-13. [1008] Journal historique de Barbier, 1847-56, iv, 304. [1009] Astruc, we learn from D'Alembert, connected their decline with the influence of the new opinions. "Ce ne sont pas les jansenistes qui tuent les jésuites, c'est l'Encyclopédie." "Le maroufle Astruc," adds D'Alembert, "est comme Pasquin, il parle quelquefois d'assez bon sens." Lettre à Voltaire. 4 mai, 1762. [1010] Cp. pref. (La Vie de Salvien) to French tr. of Salvian, 1734, p. lxix. I have seen MS. translations of Toland and Woolston. [1011] MS. statement, in eighteenth-century hand, on flyleaf of a copy of 1755 ed. of the Grands hommes, in the writer's possession. [1012] Lettre à D'Alembert, 16 Octobre, 1765. [1013] Of the works noted below, the majority appear or profess to have been printed at Amsterdam, though many bore the imprint Londres. All the freethinking books and translations ascribed to d'Holbach bore it. The Arétin of Abbé Dulaurens bore the imprint: "Rome, aux dépens de la Congrégation de l'Index." Mystifications concerning authorship have been as far as possible cleared up in the present edition. [1014] Given by Brunet, who is followed by Wheeler, as appearing in 1732, and as translated into English, under the title Dying Merrily, in 1745. But I possess an English translation of 1713 (pref. dated March 25), entitled A Philological Essay: or, Reflections on the Death of Freethinkers.... By Monsieur D----, of the Royal Academy of Sciences in France, and author of the Poetae Rusticantis Literatum Otium. Translated from the French by Mr. B----, with additions by the author, now in London, and the translator. [A note in a contemporary hand makes "B" Boyer.] Barbier gives 1712 for the first edition, 1732 for the second. Rep. 1755 and 1776. [1015] There is no sign of any such excitement in France over the translation as was aroused in England by the original; but an Examen du traité de la liberté de penser, by De Crousaz, was published at Amsterdam in 1718. [1016] This was probably meant to point to the Abbé de Marsy, who died in 1763. [1017] The Abbé Sepher ascribed this book to one Dupuis, a Royal Guardsman. [1018] This "prose poem" was not an intentional burlesque, as the ecclesiastical authorities alleged; but it did not stand for orthodoxy. See Grimm's Correspondance, i, 113. [1019] "A eu les honneurs de la brûlure, et toutes les censures cumulées des Facultés de Théologie, de la Sorbonne et des évêques." Bachaumont, déc. 23, 1763. Marsy, who was expelled from the Order of Jesuits, was of bad character, and was hotly denounced by Voltaire. [1020] See Grimm, Corr. v. 15. [1021] A second edition appeared within the year. "Quoique proscrit presque partout, et même en Hollande, c'est de là qu'il nous arrive." Bachaumont, déc. 27, 1764. [1022] Bachaumont, mai 7, 1767. [1023] "Se repand à Paris avec la permission de la police." Bachaumont, 13 fév. 1766. [1024] "Il est facile de se convaincre que les parties les plus importantes et les plus solides de cet ouvrage sont empruntées aux travaux de Burigny." L.-F. Alfred Maury, L'ancienne Académie des Incriptions et bellet-lettres, 1864, p. 316. Maury leaves it open question whether the compilation was made by Burigny or by Naigeon. The Abbé Bergier accepted it without hesitation as the work of Fréret, who was known to hold some heretical views. (Maury, p. 317.) Barbier confidently ascribes the work to Burigny. [1025] The mystification in regard to this work is elaborate. It purports to be translated from an English version, declared in turn by its translator to be made "from the Greek." It is now commonly ascribed to Naigeon. (Maury, as cited, p. 317.) Its machinery, and its definite atheism, mark it as of the school of d'Holbach, though it is alleged to have been written by Fréret as early as 1722. It is however reprinted, with the Examen critique des Apologistes, in the 1796 edition of Fréret's works without comment; and Barbier was satisfied that it was the one genuine "philosophic" work ascribed to Fréret, but that it was redacted by Naigeon from imperfect MSS. [1026] Notice sur Henri Meister, pref. to Lettres inédites de Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, 1903, p. 17. [1027] "Deux nouveaux livres infernaux ... connus comme manuscrits depuis longtemps et gardés dans l'obscurité des portefeuilles...." Bachaumont, 22 mars, 1769. [1028] Bachaumont, Mémoires Secrets, déc. 20, 1767. [1029] Id. Jan. 18, 1768. [1030] So Pidansat de Mairobert in his preface to the first ed. (1777) of the Mémoires Secrets of Bachaumont, continued by him. See pref. to the abridged ed. by Bibliophile Jacob. [1031] As to the authorship see above, p. 241. [1032] La Certitude des preuves du Christianisme (1767). 2e édit. 1768, Avertissement. [1033] In the short essay Le Philosophe, which appeared in the Nouvelles Libertés de Penser, 1743 and 1750, and in the Recueil Philosophique, 1770. In the 1793 rep. of the Essai sur les préjugés (again rep. in 1822) it is unhesitatingly affirmed, on the strength of its title-page and the prefixed letter of Dumarsais, dated 1750, that that book is an expansion of the essay Le Philosophe, and that this was published in 1760. But Le Philosophe is an entirely different production, which to a certain extent criticizes les philosophes so-called. The Essai sur les préjugés published in 1770 is not the work of Dumarsais; it is a new work by d'Holbach. This was apparently known to Frederick, who in his rather angry criticism of the book writes that, whereas Dumarsais had always respected constituted authorities, others had "put out in his name, two years after he was dead and buried, a libel of which the veritable author could only be a schoolboy as new to the world as he was puzzle-headed." (Mélanges en vers et en prose de Frederic II, 1792, ii, 215). Dumarsais died in 1754, but I can find no good evidence that the Essai sur les préjugés was ever printed before 1770. As to d'Holbach's authorship see the OEuvres de Diderot, ed. 1821, xii, 115 sq.--passage copied in the 1829-31 ed. of the Correspondance littéraire of Grimm and Diderot, xiv, 293 sq. In a letter to D'Alembert dated Mars 27, 1773, Voltaire writes that in a newly-printed collection of treatises containing his own Lois de Minos is included "le philosophe de Dumarsais, qui n'a jamais été imprimé jusqu'à present." This seems to be a complete mistake. [1034] Grimm (iv, 86) has some good stories of him. He announced one day that he had ound twenty-five fatal flaws in the story of the resurrection of Lazarus, the first being that the dead do not rise. His scholarly friend Nicolas Boindin (see above, p. 222) said: "Dumarsais is a Jansenist atheist; as for me, I am a Molinist atheist." [1035] On two successive pages the title Messiah is declared to mean "simply one sent" and simply "anointed." [1036] Like Buffier and Huard, however, he strives for a reform in spelling, dropping many doubled letters, and writing home, bone, acuse, fole, apelle, honête, afreux, etc. [1037] Abriss einer Geschichte der Umwälzung welche seit 1750 auf dem Gebiete der Theologie in Deutschland statt gefunden, in Tholuck's Vermischte Schriften, 1839, ii, 5. The proposition is repeated pp. 24, 33. [1038] The exceptions were books published outside of France. [1039] Madame de Sévigné, for instance, declared that she would not let pass a year of her life without re-reading the second volume of Abbadie. [1040] Le Déisme refuté par lui-même (largely a reply to Rousseau), 1765; 1770, Apologie de la religion chrétienne; 1773, La certitude des preuves du christianisme. In 1759 had appeared the Lettres sur le Déisme of the younger Salchi, professor at Lausanne. It deals chiefly with the English deists, and with D'Argens. As before noted, the Abbé Gauchat began in 1751 his Lettres Critiques, which in time ran to 15 volumes (1751-61). There were also two journals, Jesuit and Jansenist, which fought the philosophes (Lanson, p. 721); and sometimes even a manuscript was answered--e.g. the Réfutation du Celse moderne of the Abbé Gautier (1752), a reply to Mirabaud's unpublished Examen critique. [1041] Alison, History of Europe, ed. 1849, i, 180-81. [1042] The Jesuits were expelled from Portugal in 1759; from Bohemia and Denmark in 1766; from the whole dominions of Spain in 1767; from Genoa and Venice in the same year; and from Naples, Malta, and Parma in 1768. Officially suppressed in France in 1764, they were expelled thence in 1767. Pope Clement XIII strove to defend them; but in 1773 the Society was suppressed by papal bull by Clement XIV; whereafter they took refuge in Prussia and Russia, ruled by the freethinking Frederick and Catherine. [1043] See the Correspondance de Grimm, ed. 1829-31, vii, 51 sq. [1044] This apologetic work, after having been praised by the censor and registered with privilège du roi in November, 1772, was officially suppressed on Jan. 17, 1773, and, it would appear, reissued in that year. [1045] Liv. i. ch. viii. [1046] Bachaumont, juin 22; juillet 9, 20, 27; novembre 14, 1762. [1047] 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. [1048] Cp. Maury, L'ancienne Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, 1864, pp. 55-56. [1049] 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. [1050] Maury, L'ancienne Académie des inscriptions, pp. 54-55, 94, 308. [1051] Id. p. 93. [1052] Id. pp. 116-20. [1053] Where he was lieutenant-général, and died in 1750. [1054] Maury, pp. 53, 86-87. [1055] Mémoires, ed. Jannet, iv, 181. [1056] Cp. Mesnard, as cited, pp. 79-80. [1057] Maury, p. 315. [1058] Id. 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. [1059] "L'excellent Pompignan," M. Lanson calls him, p. 723. [1060] "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. [1061] Mesnard, pp. 67, 71, 73, 89. [1062] Le 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. [1063] Mesnard, pp. 86-92. [1064] Id. pp. 93-94. [1065] Id. pp. 95-96. [1066] Lanson, Hist. de la litt. française, p. 725. [1067] The formal approval of a Sorbonnist was necessary. One refused it; another gave it. Marmontel, Mémoires, 1804, iii, 35-36. [1068] 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. [1069] 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. [1070] 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. [1071] By Elie Luzac, to whom is ascribed the reply entitled L'Homme plus que Machine (1748 also). This is printed in the OEuvres 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. [1072] L'Homme Machine, ed. Assézat, 1865, p. 97; OEuv. philos. ed. 1774, iii, 51. [1073] 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 coeur serviable." By "pure" he meant sincere. [1074] Salchi, Lettres sur le Déisme, 1759, pp. 177, 197, 239, 283 sq. [1075] Huxley, essay on Darwin on the Origin of Species; R. P. A. ed. of Twelve Lectures and Essays, p. 94. [1076] See the parallel passages in the Lettres Critiques of the Abbé Gauchat, vol. xv (1761), p. 192 sq. [1077] See his essay Des Singularités de la Nature, ch. xii, and his Dissertation sur les changements arrivés dans notre globe. [1078] Eng. tr. 1750. [1079] Essay cited, p. 96. The criticism ignores the greater comprehensiveness of Robinet's survey of nature. [1080] George-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, 1707-1788. [1081] Lyell, Principles of Geology, 12th ed. 1875, i, 57-58. [1082] Suite de l'Apologie de M. l'Abbé De Prades, 1752, p. 37 sq. [1083] Dissertatio inauguralis metaphysica de universali naturæ systemate, published at Göttingen as the doctoral thesis of an imaginary Dr. Baumann, 1751. In French, 1753. [1084] Soury, p. 579. The later speculations of Maupertuis by their extravagance discredited the earlier. [1085] "Scheinbar bekämpft er Maupertuis desswegen, aber im geheimen stimmt er ihm bei"(Rosenkranz, i, 144). [1086] It should be noted that by Condillac's avowal he was much aided by his friend Mdlle. Ferrand. [1087] Cp. Réthoré, Condillac, ou l'empirisme et le rationalisme, 1864, ch. i. [1088] Lange, ii, 27, 29; Soury, pp. 603-44. [1089] Soury, pp. 596-600; Lange, ii, 27. [1090] Oddly enough he became ultimately press censor! He lived till 1820, dying at Rennes at the age of 85. [1091] This may best be translated Treatise on the Mind. The English translation of 1759 (rep. 1807) is entitled De l'Esprit: or, Essays on the Mind, etc. [1092] Correspondance, ii, 262. [1093] Id. p. 263. [1094] Id. p. 293. [1095] At the time the pietists declared that Diderot had collaborated in De l'Esprit. This was denied by Grimm, who affirmed that Diderot and Helvétius were little acquainted, and rarely met; but his Secretary, Meister, wrote in 1786 that the finest pages in the book were Diderot's. Id. p. 294, note. In his sketch À la mémoire de Diderot (1786, app. to Naigeon's Mémoires, 1821, p. 425, note), Meister speaks of a number of "belles pages," but does not particularize. [1096] De l'Esprit, Disc, iii, ch. 30. [1097] Cp. Morley's criticism. Diderot, ed. 1884, pp. 331-32. [1098] Beccaria's Letter to Morellet, cited in ch. i of J. A. Farrer's ed. of the Crimes and Punishments, p. 6. It is noteworthy that the partial reform effected earlier in England by Oglethorpe, on behalf of imprisoned debtors (1730-32), belongs to the time of propagandist deism there. [1099] Morley, Diderot, p. 329. [1100] Lettre à d'Alembert, 9 janvier, 1773. [1101] Cp. Rosenkranz, Vorbericht, p. vi. [1102] Cp. Morley, Diderot, ed. 1834, p. 32. [1103] E.g. § 21. [1104] A police agent seized the MS. in Diderot's library, and Diderot could not get it back. Malesherbes, the censor, kept it safe for him! [1105] According to Naigeon (Mémoires, 1821, p. 131), three months and ten days. [1106] The Lettre purports, like so many other books of that and the next generation, to be published "A Londres." [1107] Diderot's daughter, in her memoir of him, speaks of his imprisonment in the Bastille as brought about through the resentment of a lady of whom he had spoken slightingly; and her husband left a statement in MS. to the same effect (printed at the end of the Mémoires by Naigeon). The lady is named as Madame Dupré de Saint-Maur, a mistress of the King, and the offence is said to have been committed in the story entitled Le Pigeon blanc. Howsoever this may have been, the prosecution was quite in the spirit of the period, and the earlier Pensées were made part of the case against him. See Delort, Hist. de la détention des philosophes, 1829, ii, 208-16. M. de Vandeul-Diderot testifies that the Marquis Du Chatelet, Governor of Vincennes, treated his prisoner very kindly. Buckle (1-vol. ed. p. 425) does not seem to have fully read the Lettre, which he describes as merely discussing the differentiation of thought and sensation among the blind. [1108] His friend Meister (À la mémoire de Diderot, 1786, app. to Naigeon's Mémoires de Diderot, 1821, p. 424) writes as if Diderot had written the whole Apologie "in a few days." The third part, a reply to the pastoral of the Bishop of Auxerre, appeared separately as a Suite to the others. [1109] Apologie, as cited, 2e partie, p. 87 sq. [1110] Observations sur l'instruction pastorale de Mons. l'Évêque d'Auxerre, Berlin, 1752, p. 17. [1111] Id. p. 102 sq. [1112] Cp. Morley, Diderot, pp. 98-99. [1113] Carlyle, Frederick, bk. xviii, ch. ix, end. [1114] D'Argenson, Mémoires, iv, 188. [1115] Carlyle, as cited. [1116] "Quelle abominable homme!" he writes to Mdlle. Voland (15 juillet, 1759); and Lord Morley pronounces de Prades a rascal (Diderot, p. 98). Carlyle is inarticulate with disgust--but as much against the original heresy as against the treason to Frederick. As to that, Thiébault was convinced that de Prades was innocent and calumniated. Everybody at court, he declares, held the same view. Mes Souvenirs de vingt ans de séjour à Berlin, 2e édit. 1805, v, 402-404. [1117] It is not clear how these are to be distinguished from the mutilations of the later volumes by his treacherous publisher Le Breton. Of this treachery the details are given by Grimm, Corr. litt. ed. 1829. vii, 144 sq. [1118] Buckle's account of him (1-vol. ed. p. 426) as "burning with hatred against his persecutors" after his imprisonment is overdrawn. He was a poor hater. [1119] Madame Diderot, says her daughter, was very upright as well as very religious, but her temper, "éternellement grondeur, faisait de notre intérieur un enfer, dont mon père était l'ange consolateur" (Letter to Meister, in Notice pref. to Lettres Inédites de Mme. de Staël à Henri Meister, 1903, p. 62). [1120] "Hélas! disait mon excellent grand-père, j'ai deux fils: l'un sera sûrement un saint, et je crains bien que l'autre ne soit damné; mais je ne puis vivre avec le saint, et je suis très heureux du temps que je passe avec le damné" (Letter of Mme. de Vandeul, last cited). Freethinker as he was, his fellow-townsmen officially requested in 1780 to be allowed to pay for a portrait of him for public exhibition, and the bronze bust he sent them was placed in the hôtel de ville (MS. of M. de Vandeul-Diderot, as cited). [1121] Madame de Vandeul states that this story was motived by the case of Diderot's sister, who died mad at the age of 27 or 28 (Letter above cited; Rosenkranz, i, 9). [1122] Lettre de Voltaire à D'Alembert, 27 août, 1774. [1123] Lettre de 2 décembre, 1757. [1124] OEuvres posthumes de D'Alembert, 1799, i, 240. [1125] D'Holbach was the original of the character of Wolmar in Rousseau's Nouvelle Héloïse, of whom Julie says that he "does good without recompense." "I never saw a man more simply simple" was the verdict of Madame Geoffrin. Corr. litt. de Grimm (notice probably by Meister), ed. 1829-31, xiv, 291. [1126] Marmontel says of him that he "avoit tout lu et n'avoit jamais rien oublié d'interessant." Mémoires, 1804, ii, 312. [1127] See a full list of his works (compiled by Julian Hibbert after the list given in the 1821 ed. of Diderot's Works, xii, 115, and rep. in the 1829-31 ed. of Grimm and Diderot's Correspondance, xiv, 293), prefixed to Watson's ed. (1834 and later) of the English translation of the System of Nature. [1128] Morley, Diderot, p. 341. The chapter gives a good account of the book. Cp. Lange, i, 364 sq. (Eng. trans, ii, 26 sq.) as to its materialism. The best pages were said to be by Diderot (Corr. de Grimm, as cited, p. 289; the statement of Meister, who makes it also in his Éloge). Naigeon denied that Diderot had any part in the Système, but in 1820 there was published an edition with "notes and corrections" by Diderot. [1129] It is to be noted that the English translation (3 vols. 3rd ed. 1817; 4th ed. 1820) deliberately tampers with the language of the original to the extent of making it deistic. This perversion has been by oversight preserved in all the reprints. [1130] Mirabeau spoke of the Essai as "le livre le moins connu, et celui qui mérite le plus l'être." Even the reprint of 1793 had become "extremely rare" in 1822. The book seems to have been specially disquieting to orthodoxy, and was hunted down accordingly. [1131] So Morley, p. 347. It does not occur to Lord Morley, and to the Comtists who take a similar tone, that in thus disparaging past thinkers they are really doing the thing they blame. [1132] Lettres de Memmius à Cicéron (1771); Histoire de Jenni (1775). In the earlier article, Athée, in the Dictionnaire Philosophique, he speaks of having met in France very good physicists who were atheists. In his letter of September 26, 1770, to Madame Necker, he writes concerning the Système de la Nature: "Il est un peu honteux à notre nation que tant de gens aient embrassé si vite une opinion si ridicule." And yet Prof. W. M. Sloane, of Columbia University, still writes of Voltaire, in the manner of English bishops, as "atheistical" (The French Revolution and Religious Reform, 1901, p. 26). [1133] Though in 1797 we have Maréchal's Code d'une Société d'hommes sans Dieu, and in 1798 his Pensées libres sur les prêtres. [1134] Thus Dr. Cairns (Unbelief in the Eighteenth Century, p. 165) gravely argues that the French Revolution proves the inefficacy of theism without a Trinity to control conduct. He has omitted to compare the theistic bloodshed of the Revolution with the Trinitarian bloodshed of the Crusades, the papal suppression of the Albigenses, the Hussite wars, and other orthodox undertakings. [1135] The book was accorded the Monthyon prize by the French Academy. In translation (1788) it found a welcome in England among Churchmen by reason of its pro-Christian tone and its general vindication of religious institutions. The translation was the work of Mary Wollstonecraft. See Kegan Paul's William Godwin, 1876, i,