1768.
For many years this work has been known under the title of _Letters to
Eugenia_. The secretive character of those, however, into whose hands
the manuscript at first fell; the singular and yet actual pleasure that
is caused generally enough in the minds of all men by the exclusive
possession of any object whatever; that kind of torpor, servitude,
and terror in which the tyrannical power of the priests then held
all minds--even those who by the superiority of their talents ought
naturally to be the least disposed to bend under the odious yoke of the
clergy,--all these circumstances united contributed so much to stifle in
its birth, if I may so express myself, this important manuscript,
that for a long time it was supposed to be lost; so much did those who
possessed it keep it carefully concealed, and so constantly did they
refuse to allow a copy to be taken. The manuscripts, indeed, were so
scarce, even in the libraries of the curious, that the late M. De Boze,
whose pleasure it was to collect the rarest works belonging to every
species of literature, could never succeed in acquiring a copy of the
_Letters to Eugenia_, and in his time there were only three in Paris;
it may have been from design, _propter metum Judaeorum;_* it may have
been there were actually no more known.
* On account of fear of the Jews, or, in other words, the
intolerant clergy of the despotic government.
It is not till within five or six years that MSS. of these letters have
become more common; and there is reason to believe that they are now
considerably multiplied, since the copy from which this edition is
printed has been revised and corrected by collation with six others,
that have been collected without any great difficulty. Unhappily, all
these copies swarm with faults, which corrupt the sense, and comprehend
many variations, but which also, to use the language of the Biblical
critics, have served sometimes to discover and to fix the true reading!
More often, however, they have rendered it more uncertain than it was
before what one ought to be followed--a new proof of the multiplicity
of copies, because the more numerous are the manuscripts of a work, the
more they differ from each other, as any one may be fully convinced by
consulting those of the _Letter of Thrasybulus to Leucippus_, and the
various readings of the New Testament collected by the learned Mill, and
which amount to more than thirty thousand.
However this may be, we have spared no pains to reestablish the text in
all its purity; and we venture to say, that, with the exception of four
or five passages, which we found corrupted in all the manuscripts that
we had an opportunity to collate, and which we have amended to the best
of our ability, the edition of these letters that we now offer to the
reader will probably conform almost exactly with the original manuscript
of the author.
With regard to the author's name and quality we can offer nothing but
conjectures. The only particulars of his life upon which there is a
general agreement are, that he lived upon terms of great intimacy
with the Marquis de la Fare, the Abbe de Chaulieu, the Abbe Terrasson,
Fontenelle, M. de Lassere, &c. The late MM. Du Marsais and Falconnet
have often been heard to declare that these letters were composed by
some one belonging to the school of Seaux. All that we can pronounce
with certainty is the fact, that it is only necessary to read the work
to be entirely convinced the author was a man of extensive knowledge,
and one who had meditated profoundly concerning the matters upon which
he has treated. His style is clear, simple, easy, and in which we may
remark a certain urbanity, that leads us to be sure that he was not an
obscure individual, nor one to whom good company and polished society
were unfamiliar. But what especially distinguishes this work, and which
should endear it to all good and virtuous people, is the signal honesty
which pervades and characterizes it from the very beginning to the end.
It is impossible to read it without conceiving the highest idea of the
author's probity, whoever he may have been--without desiring to have
had him for a friend, to have lived with him, and, in a word, without
rendering justice to the rectitude of his intentions, even when we
do not approve of his sentiments. The love of virtue, universal
benevolence, respect to the laws, an inviolable attachment to the duties
of morality, and, in fine, all that can contribute to render men
better, is strongly recommended in these Letters. If, on the one hand
he completely overthrows the ruinous edifice of Christianity, it is
to erect, on the other hand, the immovable foundations of a system
of morality legitimately established upon the nature of man, upon his
physical wants, and upon his social relations--a base infinitely better
and more solid than that of religion, because sooner or later the lie
is discovered, rejected, and necessarily drags with it what served
to sustain it. On the contrary, the truth subsists eternally, and
consolidates itself as it grows old: _Opinionum commenta delet dies,
naturae judicia confirmat._*
The motto affixed to many of the manuscript copies of these Letters
proves that the worthy man to whom we owe them did not desire to be
known as their author, and that it was neither the love of reputation,
nor the thirst of glory, nor the ambition of being distinguished by bold
opinions, which the priests, and the satellites subjected to them by
ignorance, denominate _impieties_, which guided his pen. It was only the
desire of doing good to his fellow-beings by enlightening them, which
actuated him, and the wish to uproot, so to speak, religion itself, as
being the source of all the woes which have afflicted mankind for so
many ages. This is the motto of which we spoke:--
"Si j'ai raison, qu'importe a qui je suis?"
(If reason's mine, no matter who I am.)
* "Time effaces the comments of opinion, but it confirms the
judgments of nature."--Cicero.
It is a verse of Corneille, whose application is exceedingly
appropriate, and which should be upon the frontispiece of all books of
this nature.
We are unable to say any thing more certain concerning the person to
whom our author has addressed his work. It appears, however, from
many circumstances in these Letters, that she was not a supposititious
marchioness, like her of the _Worlds_ of M. de Fontenelle, and that they
have really been written to a woman as distinguished by her rank as by
her manners. Perhaps she was a lady of the school of the Temple, or of
Seaux. But these details, in reality, as well as those which concern
the name and the life of our author, the date of his birth, that of his
death, &c., are of little importance, and could only serve to satisfy
the vain curiosity of some idle readers, who avidiously collect these
kind of anecdotes, who receive from them a kind of existence in the
world, and who feel more satisfaction from being instructed in them
than from the discovery of a truth. I know that they endeavor to justify
their curiosity by saying that when a person reads a book which creates
a public sensation, and with which he is himself much pleased, it is
natural he should desire to know to whom a grateful homage should be
addressed. In this case the desire is so much the more unreasonable
because it cannot be satisfied; first, because when death and
proscription is the penalty, there has never been and there never will
be a man of letters so imprudent, and, to speak plainly, so strangely
daring, as to publish, or during his life to allow a book to be printed,
in which he tramples under foot temples, altars, and the statues of the
gods, and where he attacks without any disguise the most consecrated
religious opinions; secondly, because it is a matter of public notoriety
that all the works of this character which have appeared for many years
are the secret testaments of numbers of great men, obliged during their
lives to conceal their light under a bushel, whose heads death
has withdrawn from the fury of persecutors, and whose cold ashes,
consequently, do not hear in the tomb either the importunate and
denunciatory cries of the superstitious, or the just eulogiums of
the friends of truth; thirdly and lastly, _because this curiosity, so
unfortunately entertained, may compromise in the most cruel manner the
repose, the fortune, and the liberty of the relatives and friends of the
authors of these bold books!_ This single consideration ought, then,
to determine those hazarders of conjectures, if they have really
good intentions, to wrap in the inmost folds of their hearts whatever
suspicions they may entertain concerning the author, however true or
false they may be, and to turn their inquiring spirits to a use more
beneficial for both themselves and others.