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

the poet, paid it a curious compliment: "He does not write like a sectary, hardly like a Christian, but yet while I read him, I like better my God, my neighbour, Monsieur Necker, and myself." Robert Burns and Mrs. Dunlop, ed. by W. Wallace, 1898, p. 258. [1136] See Voltaire's letters to Madame Necker, Corr. de Grimm, ed. 1829, vii, 23, 118. Of the lady, Grimm writes (p. 118): "Hypathie Necker passe sa vie avec des systématiques, mais elle est devote à sa manière. Elle voudrait être sincèrement hugenote, ou socinienne, ou déistique, ou plutôt, pour être quelque chose, elle prend le parti de ne se rendre compte sur rien." "Hypathie" was Voltaire's complimentary name for her. [1137] Cp. Aulard, Le Culte de la Raison et le Culte de l'Être Suprême, 1892, pp. 17-19. M. Gazier (Études sur l'histoire religieuse de la révolution française, 1877, pp. 48, 173, 189 sq.) speaks somewhat loosely of a prevailing anti-Christian feeling when actually citing only isolated instances, and giving proofs of a general orthodoxy. Yet he points out the complete misconception of Thiers on the subject (p. 202). [1138] Cp. Prof. W. M. Sloane, The French Revolution and Religious Reform, p. 43. [1139] Gazier, as cited, pp. 2, 4, 12, 19-21, 71, etc. [1140] Les Assemblées Provinciales sous Louis XVI, 1864, pref. pp. viii-ix. [1141] Gazier, L. ii, ch. i. [1142] Id. p. 67. [1143] Id. p. 69. [1144] Léonce de Lavergne, as cited. [1145] The authority of Turgot himself could be cited for the demand that the State clergy should accept the constitution of the State. Cp. Aulard, Le Culte de la Raison, p. 12; Tissot, Étude sur Turgot, 1878, p. 160. [1146] Gazier, p. 113. [1147] Aulard, Culte, pp. 19-20. [1148] Michelet, Hist. de la révolution française, ed. 8vo 1868 and later, i, 16. Cp. Proudhon's De la justice, 1858. [1149] "Tout jugement religieux ou politique est une contradiction flagrante dans une religion uniquement fondée sur un dogme étranger à la justice." Ed. cited, introd. p. 60. [1150] The grave misstatement of Michelet on this head is exposed by Aulard, Culte, p. 60. [1151] Yet it is customary among Christians to speak of this lady in the most opprobrious terms. The royalist (but malcontent) Marquis de Villeneuve, who had seen the Revolution in his youth, claimed in his old age to have afterwards "conversed with the Goddess Reason of Paris and with the Goddess Reason of Bourges" (where he became governor); but, though he twice alludes to those women, he says nothing whatever against their characters (De l'Agonie de la France, 1835, i, 3, 19). Prof. W. M. Sloane, with all his religious prejudice, is satisfied that the women chosen as Goddesses of Reason outside of Paris were "noted for their spotless character." Work cited, p. 198. [1152] Mémoires, ed. 1841, ii, 166. [1153] Père F.-J.-F. Fortin, Souvenirs, Auxerre, 1867, ii, 41. [1154] See the speech in Aulard, Culte, p. 240; and cp. pp. 79-85. [1155] "Le peuple aura des fêtes dans lesquelles il offrira de l'encens à l'Être Suprême, au maître de la nature, car nous n'avons pas voulu anéantir la superstition pour établir le règne de l'athéisme." Speech of Nov. 26, 1793, in the Moniteur. (Discours de Danton, ed. André Fribourg, 1910, p. 599.) [1156] Aulard, Culte, pp. 81-82. [1157] Concerning whom see Aulard, Culte, pp. 86-96. [1158] The Source, the Strength, and the True Spirit of Laws, Eng. tr. 1753, p. 6. [1159] E.g., in the Arrêt du Parlement of 9 juin, 1762, denouncing Rousseau's Émile as tending to make the royal authority odious and to destroy the principle of obedience; and in the Examen du Béllisaire de M. Marmontel, by Coger (Nouv. éd. augm. 1767, p. 45 sq. Cp. Marmontel's Mémoires, 1804, iii, 46, as to his being called ennemi du trône et de l'autel). This kind of invective was kept up against the philosophes to the moment of the Revolution. See for instance Le vrai religieux, Discours dédié à Madame Louise de France, par le R. P. C. A. 1787, p. 4: "Une philosophie orgueilleuse a renversé les limites sacrées que la main du Très-Haut avoit elle-même élevées. La raison de l'homme a osé sonder les décrets de Dieu.... Dans les accès de son ivresse, n'a-t-elle pas sapé les fondemens du trône et des lois," etc. [1160] Cp. the admissions of Curnier (Rivarol, sa vie et ses oeuvres, 1858, p. 149) in deprecation of Burke's wild likening of Rivarol's journalism to the Annals of Tacitus. [1161] OEuvres, ed. cited, pp. 136-40, 147-55. [1162] Cp. the critique of Sainte-Beuve, prefixed to ed. cited, pp. 14-17, and that of Arsène Houssaye, id. pp. 31-33. Mr. Saintsbury, though biassed to the side of the royalist, admits that "Rivarol hardly knows what sincerity is" (Miscellaneous Essays, 1892, p. 67). [1163] Charles Comte is thus partly inaccurate in saying (Traité de Législation, 1835, i, 72) that the charge against the philosophers began "on the day on which there was set up a government in France that sought to re-establish the abuses of which they had sought the destruction." What is true is that the charge, framed at once by the backers of the Old Régime, has always since done duty for reaction. [1164] Mémoires, ed. Jannet, iii, 313; iv, 70; v, 346, 348. [1165] Id. iii, 346-47. [1166] D'Argenson, noting in his old age how "on n'a jamais autant parlé de nation et d'État qu'aujourd'hui," how no such talk had been heard under Louis XIV, and how he himself had developed on the subject, adds, "cela vient du parlement et des Anglois." He goes on to speak of a reissue of the translation of Locke on Civil Government, originally made by the Jansenists (Mémoires, iv, 189-90). [1167] Hallam, Lit. of Europe, ed. 1872, iii, 160-63. [1168] OEuvres diverses de Pierre Bayle, La Haye, 4 vols. fol. 1737, ii, 564 sq. [1169] This Critique appears in the very volume to which Coger refers for the Avis aux Réfugiéz. See Lett. viii, xiii, xvii, etc., vol. and ed. cited, pp. 36, 54, 71, etc. [1170] Cp. the survey of Aulard, Hist. polit. de la rév. française, 2e édit. 1903, pp. 2-23. [1171] Probably the work of a Jansenist. [1172] On the whole question of the growth of abstract revolutionary doctrine in politics cp. W. S. McKechnie on the De Jure Regni apud Scotos in the "George Buchanan" vol. of Glasgow Quatercentenary Studies, 1906, pp. 256-76; Gierke, Political Theories of the Middle Ages, Maitland's tr. 1900, p. 37 sq. [1173] Mallet actually reproaches the philosophes in the mass--while admitting the hostility of many of them to the Revolution--with "having accelerated French degeneration and depravation ... by rendering the conscience argumentative (raisonneuse), by substituting for duties inculcated by sentiment, tradition, and habit, the uncertain rules of the human reason and sophisms adapted to passions," etc., etc. (B. Mallet, as cited, p. 360). With all his natural vigour of mind, Mallet du Pan thus came to talk the language of the ordinary irrationalist of the Reaction. Certainly, if the stimulation of the habit of reasoning be a destructive course, the philosophes stand condemned. But as Christians had been reasoning as best they could, in an eternal series of vain disputes, for a millennium and a-half before the Revolution, with habitual appeal to the passions, the argument only proves how vacuous a Christian champion's reasoning can be. [1174] Art. in Mercure Britannique, No. 13, Feb. 21, 1799; cited by B. Mallet in Mallet du Pan and the French Revolution, 1902, App. p. 357. [1175] Id. p. 359. [1176] Tableau littéraire du dix-huitième siècle, 8e édit. pp. 112, 113. [1177] Id. p. 72. [1178] Work cited, p. 358. [1179] Id. p. 359. [1180] Cp. Morley, Diderot, p. 407. Lord Morley points to the phrase in another form in a letter of Voltaire's in 1761. It really derives from Jean Meslier, who quotes it from an unlettered man (Testament, i. 19). [1181] Rosenkranz, Diderot's Leben und Werke, 1866, ii, 380-81. [1182] As Lord Morley points out, Henri Martin absolutely reverses the purport of a passage in order to convict Diderot of justifying regicide. [1183] Mémoires, ed. Jannet, iv, 44, 51, 68, 69, 74, 91, 93, 101, 103. [1184] Mallet du Pan says he saw the MS., and knew Diderot to have received 10,000 livres tournois for his additions. This statement is incredible. But Meister is explicit, in his éloge, as to Diderot having written for the book much that he thought nobody would sign, whereas Raynal was ready to sign anything. [1185] Memoirs of Sir Samuel Romilly, 3rd ed. 1841, i, 46. [1186] When D'Argenson writes in 1752 (Mémoires, éd. Jannet, iv, 103) that he hears "only philosophes say, as if convinced, that even anarchy would be better" than the existing misgovernment, he makes no suggestion that they teach this. And he declares for his own part that everything is drifting to ruin: "nulle réformation ... nulle amélioration.... Tout tombe, par lambeaux." [1187] Aulard, Hist. polit. de la révol. p. 24. [1188] This is the sufficient comment on a perplexing page of Lord Morley's second monograph on Burke (pp. 110-11), which I have never been able to reconcile with the rest of his writing. [1189] Lecky, Hist. of England in the Eighteenth Century, small ed. vi, 263. [1190] D'Argenson notes this repeatedly, though in one passage he praises the Parlement as having alone made head against absolutism (déc. 1752; ed. cited, iv, 116). [1191] Maximes et Pensées, ed. 1856, p. 72. [1192] Id. pp. 73-74. [1193] Chamfort in another passage maintains against Soulavie that the Academy did much to develop the spirit of freedom in thought and politics. Id. p. 107. And this too is arguable, as we have seen. [1194] On this complicated issue, which cannot be here handled at any further length, see Prof. P. A. Wadia's essay The Philosophers and the French Revolution (Social Science Series, 1904), which, however, needs revision; and compare the argument of Nourrisson, J.-J. Rousseau et le Rousseauisme, 1903, ch. xx. [1195] Correspondance de Grimm, ed. cited, xiv, 5-6. Lettre de janv. 1788. [1196] Lettre de Voltaire à D'Alembert, 27 août, 1774. [1197] Histoire du mariage des prêtres en France, par M. Grégoire, ancien évêque de Blois, 1826, p. v. Compare the details in the Appendice to the Etudes of M. Gazier, before cited. That writer's account is the more decisive seeing that his bias is clerical, and that, writing before M. Aulard, he had to a considerable extent retained the old illusion as to the "decreeing of atheism" by the Convention (p. 313). See pp. 230-260 as to the readjustment effected by Grégoire, while the conservative clergy were still striving to undo the Revolution. [1198] Heroes and Hero-Worship: Napoleon. [1199] See the Sentiments de Napoléon sur le Christianisme: conversations recueillies à Sainte-Hélène par le Comte de Montholon,