Spinoza's System of Philosophy to be without any principle or
foundation," and in the concluding article, Toland argues that "motion
is essential to matter, in answer to some remarks by a noble friend
on the above." In the fifteenth section of this argument, Toland thus
rebuts the allegation that were motion indissolubly connected with
matter, there must be extension without surface for motion or matter
to exert their respective powers upon. It is often used as an argument,
that if a vase was filled with any commodity to the utmost extent, where
would be the space for motion? We know that in a kettle of water, if
there is no outlet for the steam (which is the motion of the water,)
the kettle will burst. Toland says, "'You own most bodies are in actual
motion, which can be no argument that they have been always so, or that
there are not others in actual repose.' I grant that such a consequence
does not necessarily follow, though the thing may itself be true. But,
however, it may not be amiss to consider how far this actual motion
reaches, and is allowed, before we come to treat of rest. Though the
matter of the universe be everywhere the same, yet according to its
various modifications it is conceived to be divided into numberless
particular systems, vortices or whirlpools of matter; and these again
are subdivided into other systems greater or less, which depend oh one
another, as every one on the whole, in their centres, textures, frame,
and coherence. Our sun is the centre of one of the larger systems, which
contains a great many small ones within the sphere of its activity,
as all the planets which move about it; and these are subdivided into
lesser systems that depend on them, as his satelites wait upon
Jupiter, and the moon on the earth; the earth again is divided into the
atmosphere, ground, water, and other principal parts; these again into
the vegetable, animal, and mineral kingdoms. Now, as all these depend
in a link on one another, so their matter is mutually resolved into each
other, for earth, air, fire, and water are not only closely blended
and united, but likewise interchangeable, transformed in a perpetual
revolution: earth becoming water, water air, air ether, and so back
again in mixtures without end or number. The animals we destroy
contribute to preserve us, till we are destroyed to preserve other
things, and become parts of grass, or plants, or water, or air, or
something else that helps to make other animals, and they one another,
or other men, and these again into stone, or wood, or metals, or
minerals, or animals again, or become parts of all these and of a great
many other things, animals, or vegetables, daily consuming and devouring
each other--so true it is that everything lives by the destruction of
another. All the parts of the universe are in this constant motion of
destroying and begetting, of begetting and destroying, and the greater
systems are acknowledged to have their ceaseless movements as well
as the smallest particles, the very central globes of the vortices
revolving on their own axis, and every particle in the vortex
gravitating towards the centre. Our bodies, however we may flatter
ourselves, do not differ from those of other creatures, but like them
receive increase or diminution by nutrition or evacuation, by accretion,
transpiration, and other ways, giving some parts of ours to other
bodies, and receiving again of theirs, not altogether the same yesterday
as to-day, nor to continue the same to-morrow, being alive in a
perpetual flux like a river, and in the total dissolution of our system
at death to become parts of a thousand other things at once, our bodies
partly mixing with the dust and the water of the earth, partly exhaled
and evaporated into the air, flying to so many different places, mixing
and incorporating with numerous things.
"No parts of matter are bound to any one figure or form, losing and
changing their figures and forms continually, that is being in perpetual
motion, dipt, or worn, or ground to pieces, or dissolved by other parts,
acquiring their figures, and these theirs, and so on incessantly: earth,
air, fire, and water, iron, wood, and marble, plants and animals, being
rarefied, condensed, liquified, congealed, dissolved, coagulated, or
any other way resolved into one another. The whole face of the earth
exhibits those mutations every moment to our eyes, nothing continuing
one hour numerically the same; and these changes being but several kinds
of motion, are therefore the incontestable effects of universal action.
But the changes in the parts make no change in the universe; for it is
manifest that the continual alterations, successions, revolutions, and
transmutations of matter, cause no accession or diminution therein, no
more than any letter is added or lost in the alphabet by the endless
combinations and transpositions thereof into so many different words and
languages, for a thing no sooner quits one form than it puts on another,
leaving as it were the theatre in a certain dress, and appearing again
in a new one, which produces a perpetual youthfulness and vigor, without
any decay or decrepitness of the world, as some have falsely imagined,
contrary to reason and experience; the world, with all the parts and
kinds thereof, continuing at all times in the same condition."
*****
"But the species still continue by propagation, notwithstanding the decay
of the individuals, and the death of our bodies is but matter going
to be dressed in some new form; the impressions may vary, but the wax
continues still the same, and indeed death is in effect the very same
thins with our birth; for as to die is only to cease to be what we
formerly were, so to be born is to begin to be something which we were
not before. Considering the numberless successive generations that have
inhabited this globe, returning at death into the common mass of
the same, mixing with all the other parts thereof, and to this, the
incessant river-like flowing and transpiration of matter every
moment from the bodies of men while they live, as well as their daily
nourishment, inspiration of air, and other additions of matter to their
bulk; it seems probable that there is no particle of matter on the whole
earth which has not been a part of man. Nor is this reasoning confined
to our own species, but remains as true of every order of animals or
plants, or any other beings, since they have been all resolved into one
another by ceaseless revolutions, so that nothing is more certain than
that every material Thing is all Things, and that all Things are but
manifestations of one."
In his reply to Wotton, who attacks those "Letters to Serena," Toland
says they were addressed "to a lady, the most accomplished then in the
world." The name of the lady will probably, remain forever a mystery.
In 1718, he published the celebrated work "Nazarenus, or Jewish,
Gentile, and Mahometan Christianity," which caused an immense sensation
at the time it appeared, and led to his "Mangonentes" (1720,) a work
singularly profound and effective. In the same year he gave the world
"Tetradymus," containing "Hodegus, or the Pillar of Cloud and Fire,"
that guided the Israelites in the Wilderness, _not miraculous_, but a
thing equally practiced by other nations; and "Clidophorus, or of
the Exoteric and Esoteric Philosophy;" and "Hypatia." There is a long
preface to those books, "from under an elm in Bensbury (or Chebem's
camp,) on the 'warren at the south end of Wimbledon Common (1720.")
About this time "Pantheisticon" appeared, written as a caricature
on Church Liturgies, which Archdeacon Hare denounced as "downright
Atheism."
Along with the above, Toland wrote a multitude of small pamphlets; he
translated the fables of Æsop, and published a poem, entitled "Clito,"
which caused much excitement at the time; and, as it represented
Toland's ideal character, we reprinted it in the London Investigator.
His earlier political works were esteemed so valuable in the defence of
the Protestant succession, and advancing the interests of the Elector,
subsequently King of England, that in one of his visits paid to that
Court, he was presented by the Electress with miniature portraits of
herself and family.
The following is a catalogue of the works of Toland, which have never
yet been published, and the works in which they are mentioned:--
1. The History of Socrates (in the Life of Harrington.)
2. Systems of Divinity Exploded. An Epistolary Dissertation.
(Christianity not Mysterious.)
3. The History of the Canon of the New Testament. (Nazarenus.)
4. Repubiica Mosaica. (Nazarenus.)
5. A Treatise Concerning Tradition. (Tetradymus.)
There were several other works, part of them written, which passed into
the hands of Lord Molesworth (we believe,) part of which were published
(the "History of the Druid" and also "Giordano Bruno;") but whether
they exist at the present time or not, we are unable to say.
There is also great difficulty in deciding as to the manner of Toland's
life; of this, however, we are certain, that he caused great opposition
in his own day, and he was patronised by able man. He edited an edition
of Lord Shaftesbury's Letters, and published a work of that noble Lord's
surreptitiously; he mingled amongst the German Courts, and appeared
on terms of equality with the _elite_ of the philosophers and the
aristocracy. The brief memoir prefaced to one of his works is an
epistolary document addressed to a noble Lord. His acquaintance with
Locke, Shaftesbury, Collins, Molesworth, and Molyneux, must have
proceed-. ed from other causes than his genius, or why was Toland
exalted when Mandeville, Chubb, and the brave Woolston are never so much
as alluded to? We consider that there is a strong probability that
he was wealthy--or at least possessed of a moderate competence. His
abilities were of a curious order. He seemed to be one of a school which
rose about his time to advocate Freethought, but shackled by a
dogma. His collegiate education gave him an early liking for the dead
languages, and he carried out the notion of the ancients, that the
exoteric or esoteric methods were still in force. From a careful
perusal of the works of the "Fathers," and the contemporary books of the
heathens, he fancied that all the superstitions in the world differed
but in degree--that religion was but the organic cause of superstition,
the arguments made for it by the philosophers to propitiate the vulgar.
This idea (in the main) was agreed to by Woolston, although his violent
"Discourses," which were addressed to the unlearned, contained within
them the germ of their intrinsic popularity. Yet even Woolston's works,
notwithstanding their bluff exterior, had something more within them
than what the people could appreciate, or even the present race of
Freethinkers can always understand; for underneath that unrivalled
vein of sarcasm, there was in every instance an esoteric view, which
comprehended the meaning by which the earlier Christians understood
the gospels, and rendered them on the same scale as the works of the
ancients. The renowned William Whiston was another who interpreted
Scripture in a similar manner. All those writers would have been
Swedenborgians if there had been no Freethought, while Whiston would
have been an Atheist had there been no representative of that school.
We do not consider Toland, then, as an absolute Deist. At that time the
age was not so far progressed as to admit a Biblical scholar into
the extreme advanced list; and when a man has spent the whole of his
childhood in a sectarian family, and his youth and early manhood in
a University, it is an impossibility to throw off at one struggle the
whole of his past ideas; he may be unfettered in thought, and valiant in
speech, still there is the encyclopædia of years hanging upon him as
a drag to that extreme development which he wishes, but cannot bring his
passions to follow. Not that we would by any means observe that Toland
was comparatively behind his age, but that even in his more daring works
he still had a vague idea of Scripture being partly inspired, although
overlaid with a mass of ecclesiastical verbiage.
It also seems a mystery how the works of Woolston could be condemned,
his person seized, while in the case of Toland we hear of nothing
but his works being burnt. Why was Convocation so idle? Why make idle
threats, and let their victim ramble at large! Was it because the one
had powerful friends and the other had none? or was it that in
the earlier portion of the career of Toland, the invisible hand of
Bolingbroke stayed the grasp of persecution? Or was Shaftesbury's memory
so esteemed, that hid friend was untouched! Those particulars we cannot
learn, but they will take rank with other parallel cases, as when the
same government prosecuted Paine, and gave Gibbon a sinecure, or nearer
our own times when a series of men were imprisoned for Atheism, and Sir
William Moles worth published similar sentiments without hindrance.
In the "History of the Soul's Immortality," Toland thus gives
the explanation respecting the exoteric and esoteric doctrines of
Pythagoras:--"Pythagoras himself did not believe the transmigration
which has made his name so famous to posterity; for in the internal or
secret doctrine he meant no more than the eternal revolution of forms
in matter, those ceaseless vicissitudes and alterations which turn
everything into all things, and all things into anything; as vegetables
and animals become part of us, we become part of them, and both become
parts of a thousand other things in the universe, each turning into
water, water into air, etc., and so back again in mixtures without end
or number. But in the external or popular doctrine he imposed on the
mob by an equivocal expression that they should become various kinds
of beasts after death, thereby to deter them the more effectually
from wickedness.... Though the poets embellished their pieces with the
opinion of the soul's immortality, yet a great number of them utterly
rejected it for Seneca was not single in saying:--
'Naught's after death, and death itself is naught,
Of a quick race, only the utmost goal;
Then may the saints lose all their hope of heaven,
And sinners quit their racky fears of hell.'"
We now dismiss John Toland from our view. He was one of the most honest,
brave, truthful, and scholastic of the old Deists. His memory will be
borne on the wings of centuries, and if ever a true millennium does
arise, the name of this sterling Freethinker will occupy one of the
brightest niches in its Pantheon of Worthies.
A. C.
COMPTE DE VOLNEY.
Constantine Francis Chasshboeuf, de Volney, was born on February 3rd,
1757, at Craon, in Anjou. His father, a distinguished advocate, not
wishing his son to bear the name of _Chasseboeuf_, resolved that he
should assume that of _Boisgirais_. With this name Constantine Francis
was first known in the world, studying at the College of Ancenis and
Angers. He afterwards commenced his Oriental travels, changing his name
to Volney.
At the age of seventeen, finding himself his own master, and possessed
of £50 a-year, inherited from his mother, he went to Paris, in order
to study the sciences, preferring the study of medicine and physiology,
although giving great attention to history and the ancient languages.
On inheriting a legacy of £240, he visited Egypt and Syria, starting on
foot, a knapsack on his back, a gun on his shoulder, and his £240, in
gold, concealed in a belt. When he arrived in Egypt, he shut himself up
for eight months in a Coptic monastery, in order to learn Arabic; after
which he commenced his travels through Egypt and Syria, returning to
France after an absence of four years, and publishing his "Voyage en
Egypte et en Syrie," which was acknowledged by the French army, on their
conquering Egypt, to be the only book "that had never deceived them."
The French Government named him Director of Commerce and Agriculture in
Corsica, but being elected a deputy of the tiers-etat of the Senechausse
of Anjou, he resigned the government appointment, holding the maxim,
that a national deputy ought not in any way to be a pensioner. He
opposed all secret deliberations, and wished to admit the constituents
and the citizens. He was made secretary on the 23rd of November, 1790,
and in the debates, which arose upon the power of the king to determine
peace and war, Volney proposed and carried the resolution that "The
French nation renounces from this moment the undertaking any war tending
to increase their territory." In 1792, he accompanied Pozzo di Borgo
to Corsica, in compliance with invitations from many influential
inhabitants, who sought his information. In Corsica he became acquainted
with Napoleon Buonaparte, who was then an artillery officer; and some
years after, hearing that Buonaparte had obtained the command of the
army of Italy, Volney exclaimed, "If circumstances favor him, we shall
see the head of a Cæesar upon the shoulders of an Alexander." When
Volney returned to Paris, he published an "Account of the State of
Corsica." He was afterwards appointed Professor of History, attracting
large audiences; but the Normal School being suppressed, he embarked for
the United States of America, in 1795. He was received by Washington,
who bestowed publicly on him marks of honor and friendship. In 1798,
Volney returned to France, and gave up to his mother-in-law the property
which he was entitled to from the death of his father, which had
just occurred. During his absence, he had been chosen a member of the
Institute. Buonaparte also, on Volney's return, tried to win his esteem
and assistance, soliciting him as colleague in the consulship. But
he refused the co-operation, as also the office of Minister of the
Interior.
Seldom do men find so many inducements to "accept office" as was offered
to Volney; and seldom do men appear who are disinterested enough to
reject the inducements then held out to him. Although he refused to work
_with_ the ruling powers of that day, he ever ceased to work _for_ the
_people!_ He occupied himself till the last year of his life in giving
to the world that literature which will never be forgotten.
It would be impossible to notice all the works written by such an
indefatigable thinker as the "_heretic_" of our sketch. We ought to
mention, however, that subsequently to his being made Peer of France,
by Louis XVIII.; and when there existed an intention of crowning
Louis, Volney published "The History of Samuel, the inventor of Royal
Coronations." This book represents Samuel as an impostor, Saul as the
blind instrument of sacerdotal cunning, and David as an ambitious youth.
In September, 1791, Volney presented to the Assembly "The Ruins,
or Meditations on the Revolutions of Empires," a book which will
immortalize him in the memory of Freethinkers. The originality of style,
and the eloquence of expression, cannot fail to interest all who read
it. We give the following extracts, from the above work, but as it
contains so much that ought to be read, we must return to the subject in
another number:--
"Legislators, friends of evidence and of truth!
"That the subject of which we treat should be involved in so many
clouds, is by no means astonishing, since, beside the difficulties
that are peculiar to it, thought itself has, till this moment, ever had
shackles imposed upon it, and free inquiry, by the intolerance of
every religious system, been interdicted. But now that thought is
unrestrained, and may develope all its powers, we will expose in the
face of day, and submit to the common judgment of assembled nations,
such rational truths as unprejudiced minds have by long and laborious
study discovered: and this, not with the design of imposing them as a
creed, but from a desire of provoking new lights, and obtaining better
information.
"Chiefs and instructors of the people! you are not ignorant of the
profound obscurity in which the nature, origin, and history of the
dogmas you teach are enveloped. Imposed by force and authority,
inculcated by education, maintained by the influence of example, they
were perpetuated from age to age, and habit and inattention strengthened
their empire. But if man, enlightened by experience and reflection,
summon to the bar of mature examination the prejudices of his infancy,
he presently discovers a multitude of incongruities and contradictions,
which awaken his sagacity, and call forth the exertion of his reasoning
powers.
"At first, remarking the various and opposite creeds into which nations
are divided, we are led boldly to reject the infallibility claimed
by each; and arming ourselves alternately with their reciprocal
pretensions, to conceive that the senses and the understanding,
emanating directly from God, are a law not less sacred, and a guide not
less sure, than the indirect and contradictory codes of the prophets.
"If we proceed to examine the texture of the codes themselves, we shall
observe that their pretended divine laws, that is to say, laws immutable
and eternal, have risen from the complexion of times, of places, and
of persons; that these codes issue one from another in a kind of
genealogical order, mutually borrowing a common and similar fund of
ideas, which _every_ institutor modifies agreeably to his fancy.
"If we ascend to the source of those ideas, we shall find that it is
lost in the night of time, in the infancy of nations, in the very origin
of the world, to which they claim alliance: and there, immersed in
the obscurity of chaos, and the fabulous empire of tradition, they are
attended with so many prodigies as to be seemingly inaccessible to the
human understanding. But this prodigious state of things gives birth to
a ray of reasoning, that resolves the difficulty; for if the miracles
held out in systems of religion have actually existed; if, for instance,
metamorphoses, apparitions and the conversations of one or more Gods,
recorded in the sacred books of the Hindoos, the Hebrews, and the
Parses, are indeed events in real history, it follows that nature in
those times was perfectly unlike the nature that we are acquainted with
now; that men of the present age are totally different from the men that
formerly existed; but, consequently, that we ought not to trouble our
heads about them.
"On the contrary, if those miraculous facts have had no real existence
in the physical order of things, they must be regarded solely as
productions of the human intellect: and the nature of man, at this
day, capable of making the most fantastic combinations, explains the
phenomenon of those monsters in history. The only difficulty is to
ascertain how and for what purpose the imagination invented them. If we
examine with attention the subjects that are exhibited by them, if
we analyze the ideas which they combine and associate, and weigh with
accuracy all their concomitant circumstances, we shall find a solution
perfectly conformable to the laws of nature. Those fabulous stories have
a figurative sense different from their apparent one; they are founded
on simple and physical facts; but these facts being ill-conceived and
erroneously represented, have been disfigured and changed from their
original nature by accidental causes dependent on the human mind, by the
confusion of signs made use of in the representation of objects, by the
equivocation of words, the defect of language, and the imperfection of
writing. These Gods, for example, who act such singular parts in every
system, are no other than the physical powers of nature, the elements,
the winds, the meteors, the stars, all which have been personified by
the necessary mechanism of language, and the manner in which objects
are conceived by the understanding. Their life, their manners, their
actions, are only the operation of the same powers, and the whole of
their pretended history no more than a description of their various
phenomena, traced by the first naturalist that observed them, but taken
in a contrary sense by the vulgar, who did not understand it, or by
succeeding generations, who forgot it. In a word, all the theological
dogmas respecting the origin of the world, the nature of God, the
revelation of his laws, the manifestation of his person, are but
recitals of astronomical facts, figurative and emblematical narratives
of the motion and influence of the heavenly bodies. The very idea
itself of the divinity, which is at present so obscure, abstracted, and
metaphysical, was in its origin merely a composite of the powers of the
material universe, considered sometimes analytically, as they appear
in their agents and their phenomena, and sometimes synthetically, as
forming one whole, and exhibiting an harmonious revelation in all its
parts. Thus the name of God has been bestowed sometimes upon the wind,
upon fire, water, and the elements; sometimes upon the sun, the stars,
the planets, and their influences; sometimes upon the universe at large,
and the matter of which the world is composed; sometimes upon abstract
and metaphysical properties, such as space, duration, motion, and
intelligence; but in every instance, the idea of a Deity has not flowed
from the miraculous revelation of an invisible world, but has been
the natural result of human reflection, has followed the progress and
undergone the changes of the successive improvement of intellect, and
has had for its subject the visible universe and its different agents.