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

century, pervaded in its upper classes by a freethought partly born of the knowledge that religion counted for little but harm in public affairs, partly the result of such argumentation as had been thrown out by Montaigne and codified by Charron. That it was not the freethinking of mere idle men of the world is clear when we note the names and writings of La Mothe le Vayer (1588-1672), Gui Patin (1601-1671), and Gabriel Naudé (1600-1653), all scholars, all heretics of the skeptical and rationalistic order. The last two indeed, sided with the Catholics in politics, Patin approving of the Fronde, and Naudé of the Massacre, on which ground they are sometimes claimed as believers. [527] But though in the nature of the case their inclusion on the side of freethought is not to be zealously contended for, they must be classed in terms of the balance of testimony. Patin was the admiring friend of Gassendi; and though he was never explicitly heretical, and indeed wrote of Socinianism as a pestilent doctrine, [528] his habit of irony and the risk of written avowals to correspondents must be kept in view in deciding on his cast of mind. He is constantly anti-clerical; [529] and the germinal skepticism of Montaigne and Charron clearly persists in him. It is true that, as one critic puts it, such rationalists were not "quite clear whither they were bound. At first sight," he adds, "no one looks more negative than Gui Patin.... He was always congratulating himself on being 'delivered from the nightmare'; and he rivals the eighteenth century in the scorn he pours on priests, monks, and especially 'that black Loyolitic scum from Spain' which called itself the Society of Jesus. Yet Patin was no freethinker. Skeptics who made game of the kernel of religion came quite as much under the lash of his tongue as bigots who dared defend its husks. His letters end with the characteristic confession: 'Credo in Deum, Christum crucifixum, etc.; ... De minimis non curat prætor'" (Viscount St. Cyres in Cambridge Modern History, v, 73). But the last statement is an error, and Patin did not attack Gassendi, though he did Descartes. He says of Rabelais: "C'étoit un homme qui se moquoit de tout; en verité il y a bien des choses dont on doit raisonnablement se moquer ... elles sont presque tous remplies de vanité, d'imposture et d'ignorance: ceux qui sont un peu philosophes ne doivent-ils pas s'en moquer?" (Lett. 485, éd. cited, iii, 148). Again he writes that "la vie humaine n'est qu'un bureau de rencontre et un théâtre sur lesquels domine la fortune" (Lett. 726, iii, 620). This is pure Montaigne. The formula cited by Viscount St. Cyres is neither a general nor a final conclusion to the letters of Patin. It occurs, I think, only once (18 juillet, 1642, à M. Belin) in the 836 letters, and not at the end of that one (Lett. 55, éd. cited, i, 90). Concerning his friend Naudé, Patin writes: "Je suis fort de l'avis de feu M. Naudé, qui disoit qu'il y avait quatre choses dont il se fallait garder, afin de n'être point trompé, savoir, de prophéties, de miracles, de révélations, et d'apparitions" (Lett. 353, éd. cited, ii, 490). Again, he writes of a symposium of Naudé, Gassendi, and himself: "Peut-être, tous trois, guéris de loup-garou et delivrés du mal des scrupules, qui est le tyran des consciences, nous irons peut-être jusque fort près du sanctuaire. Je fis l'an passé ce voyage de Gentilly avec M. Naudé, moi seul avec lui tête-à-tête; il n'y avait point de témoins, aussi n'y en falloit-il point: nous y parlâmes fort librement de tout, sans que personne en ait été scandalisé" (Lett. 362, ii, 508). This seems tolerably freethinking. All that the Christian editor cares to claim upon the latter passage is that assuredly "l'unité de Dieu, l'immortalité de l'âme, l'égalité des hommes devant la loi, ces verités fondamentales de la raison et consacrées par le Christianisme, y étaient placées au premier rang" in the discussion. As to the skepticism of Naudé the editor remarks: "Ce qu'il y a de remarquable, c'est que Gui Patin soutenait que son ami ... avait puisé son opinion, en général très peu orthodoxe, en Italie, pendant le long séjour qu'il fit dans ce pays avec le cardinal Bagni" (ii, 490; cp. Lett. 816; iii, 758, where Naudé is again cited as making small account of religion). Certainly Patin and Naudé are of less importance for freethought than La Mothe le Vayer. That scholar, a "Conseiller d'Estat ordinaire," tutor of the brother of Louis XIV, and one of the early members of the new Academy founded by Richelieu, is an interesting figure [530] in the history of culture, being a skeptic of the school of Sextus Empiricus, and practically a great friend of tolerance. Standing in favour with Richelieu, he wrote at that statesman's suggestion a treatise On the Virtue of the Heathen, [531] justifying toleration by pagan example--a course which raises the question whether Richelieu himself was not strongly touched by the rationalism of his age. If it be true that the great Cardinal "believed as all the world did in his time," [532] there is little more to be said; for unbelief, as we have seen, was already abundant, and even somewhat fashionable. Certainly no ecclesiastic in high power ever followed a less ecclesiastical policy; [533] and from the date of his appointment as Minister to Louis XIII (1624), for forty years, there was no burning of heretics or unbelievers in France. If he was orthodox, it was very passively. [534] And Le Vayer's way of handling the dicta of St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas as to the virtues of unbelievers being merely vices is for its time so hardy that the Cardinal's protection alone can explain its immunity from censure. St. Augustine and St. Thomas, says the critic calmly, had regard merely to eternal happiness, which virtue alone can obtain for no one. They are, therefore, to be always interpreted in this special sense. And so at the very outset the ground is summarily cleared of orthodox obstacles. [535] The Petit discours chrétien sur l'immortalité de l'âme, also addressed to Richelieu, tells of a good deal of current unbelief on that subject; and the epistle dedicatory professes pain over the "philosopher of our day [Vanini] who has had the impiety to write that, unless one is very old, very rich, and a German, one should never expatiate on this subject." But on the very threshold of the discourse, again, the skeptic tranquilly suggests that there would be "perhaps something unreasonable" in following Augustine's precept, so popular in later times, that the problem of immortality should be solved by the dictates of religion and feeling, not of "uncertain" reason. "Why," he asks, "should the soul be her own judge?" [536] And he shows a distinct appreciation of the avowal of Augustine in his Retractationes that his own book on the Immortality of the Soul was so obscure to him that in many places he himself could not understand it. [537] The "Little Christian Discourse" is, in fact, not Christian at all; and its arguments are but dialectic exercises, on a par with those of the Discours sceptique sur la musique which follows. He was, in short, a skeptic by temperament; and his Preface d'une histoire [538] shows his mind to have played on the "Mississippi of falsehood called history" very much as did that of Bayle in a later generation. Le Vayer's Dialogues of Oratius Tubero (1633) is philosophically his most important work; [539] but its tranquil Pyrrhonism was not calculated to affect greatly the current thought of his day; and he ranked rather as a man of all-round learning [540] than as a polemist, being reputed "a little contradictory, but in no way bigoted or obstinate, all opinions being to him nearly indifferent, excepting those of which faith does not permit us to doubt." [541] The last phrase tells of the fact that it affects to negate: Le Vayer's general skepticism was well known. [542] He was not indeed an original thinker, most of his ideas being echoes from the skeptics of antiquity; [543] and it has been not unjustly said of him that he is rather of the sixteenth century than of the seventeenth. [544]