and greatly superior to the other members of the same class. His history
is one of those narratives of struggle and suffering which so often have
been the lot of men of letters. Those who have been the teachers of the
world have too often been also its martyrs. The great peculiarity of
Diderot, as of Johnson, was his encyclopædic knowledge, and his
versatility in comprehending a variety of subjects. Less critical than
Voltaire, and less philosophical than Rousseau, he exceeded both as the
practical teacher. But in unbelief he unhappily advanced farther than
either; his temper lacked moral earnestness; and in later life he was an
atheist. A growth of unbelief may be traced in him: at first he was a
doubter, next he became a deist, lastly an atheist. In the first stage he
only translated English works, and even condemned some of the English
deists. His views seem gradually to have altered, probably under the
influence of Voltaire’s writings, and of the infidel books smuggled into
France; and he thenceforth assumed a tone bolder and marked by positive
disbelief. In 1746 he wrote his _Pensées Philosophiques_, intended to be
placed in opposition to the _Pensées_ of Pascal. Pascal, by a series of
sceptical propositions, had hoped to establish the necessity of
revelation. Diderot tried by the same method to show that this revelation
must be untrue.(549) The first portion of the propositions(550) bore upon
philosophy and natural religion, but at length he came to weaken the
proofs for the truth of Christianity, and controverted miracles, and the
truth of any system which reposes on miracles; yet even in this work he
did not evince the atheism which he subsequently avowed. It was soon after
the imprisonment in which he was involved by this book, that he projected
the plan of the magnificent work, the _Encyclopédie_, or universal
dictionary of human knowledge. Its object however was not only literary,
but also theological; for it was designed to circulate among all classes
new modes of thinking, which should be opposed to all that was
traditionary. Voltaire’s unbelief was merely destructive: this was
reconstructive and systematic. The religion of this great work was deism:
the philosophy of it was sensationalist and almost materialist; seeming
hardly to allow the existence of anything but mechanical beings. Soul was
absorbed in body; the inner world in the outer;—a tendency fostered by
physics. It was the view of things taken by the scientific mind, and lacks
the poetical and feeling elements of nature—a true type of the cold and
mechanical age which produced it. Diderot’s atheism is a still further
development of his unbelief. It is expressed in few of his writings, and
presents no subject of interest to us; save that it seeks to invalidate
the arguments for the being of a God, drawn from final causes. It has been
well observed, that the lesson to be derived from him(551) is, that the
mechanical view of the world is essentially atheistic; that whosoever will
admit no means of discovering God but common logic, cannot find him.
Diderot’s unbelief may be considered to embody that which resulted from
the abuse at once of erudition, physical science, and the sensational
theory in metaphysics.
Among the band of friends who from connexion with the Encyclopædia
acquired the name of Encyclopædists, was also Helvetius.(552) He was the
moralist of the sensational philosophy, one of those who applied the
philosophy of Condillac to morals. Each man’s tastes are so far affected
by circumstances, that it is possible that Helvetius’s exclusive
association with the selfish circles of the French society, which never
lived for the good of others, together with the perception of the
hollowness of the respect which persons paid him for his wealth and
influence, led him to regard self-love as the sole motive of conduct. His
philosophy is expressed in two works;(553) the one on the spirit, the
other on man: the former a theoretical view of human nature, the latter a
practical view of education and society. His primary position is, that man
owes all his superiority over animals to the superior organization of his
body. Starting from this point, he argues that all minds are originally
equal, and owe their variation to circumstances;(554) that all their
faculties and emotions are derivable from sensation; that pleasure is the
only good, and self-interest the true ground of morals and the framework
of individual and political right.(555)
If in Diderot we have met with atheism, and in Helvetius with the selfish
theory of morals; in the author of “the System of Nature” we meet with
utter materialism, and the two former evils as corollaries from it. This
work, which was published about 1774, though bearing a different author’s
name on the title, was probably the work of D’Holbach,(556) aided by
Diderot and Helvetius, and other members of the society which met at
D’Holbach’s house. It is a work of unquestionable talent and eloquence, in
which materialism, fatalism, and atheism, combine to form a view of human
nature which even Voltaire is said to have denounced.
The grand object of this work being to show that there is no God, the
first part is occupied by the most rigorous materialism, and is designed
to prove that there is no such thing as mind, nothing beyond the material
fabric,(557) which is maintained by simple and invariable laws; and that
the soul is a mode of organism,(558) the mere action of the body under
different functions. The freedom of the will(559) and immortality(560) are
accordingly denied. The first part having been directed to disprove the
existence of mind, the second part is designed against religion. The
author attributes the idea which man has formed of a first Cause to
fear,(561) generated through suffering; and attempts to show the
insufficiency of the _à priori_ argument in favour of a God,(562) omitting
the consideration of the arguments derived from final causes. Nature
becomes in his scheme a machine; man an organism; morality self-interest;
deity a fiction.
The work we have just named formed the crowning result of infidelity.(563)
Voltaire showed philosophy shrinking from the hard materialism, morality
from the fatalism, and religion from the atheism, to which they afterwards
attained. In these steps, as witnessed in the circle of intellect just
sketched, we see the ramification of the French sensational philosophy
pushed to its farthest limits.
The writers lately described, though in some degree eminent, do not, like
Voltaire, stand in the first rank of the French literary writers. Amid the
circle of unbelievers, however, another of the highest rank was found,
who, though he must be classed with the others, stood so apart in taste,
in sympathy, in purpose, and in belief, that the study of his life and
character is an interruption to the series of the materialist writers whom
we are describing. Rousseau(564) was not an atheist like Diderot, nor a
materialist like D’Holbach, nor a moralist of the selfish school like
Helvetius, nor a scoffer like Voltaire. We discover in him a spirit
endowed with deep feeling, and trained by much greater experience of life
and of internal sorrow. His writings also mark the period when French
philosophy ceased to attack the church, and found itself strong enough to
act against the state. The greater portion of his works lies out of the
range of our inquiry. Even his political writings, which indirectly
injured religion in the world of action by stimulating the revolutionary
hatred to the church, require notice only so far as they involved
principles fundamentally opposed to the teaching of revealed religion.
It was about the middle of the century(565) that Rousseau commenced the
“Political Essays” which made his name famous, and unhappily afterwards
formed as it were the very bible of the French revolution. Retaining
through life the preference for the simple institutions of the republic in
which he had been born, he saw in French society the abuses which
appertain to civilization; and, with somewhat of the same feeling which
Tacitus exhibits in his portraiture of the Germans, was led to study the
comparative advantages of a primitive and refined age, and to maintain the
paradox that the empire of corruption and inequality was to be regarded as
the artificial creation of civilization. Ignoring the natural sinfulness
and selfishness of the human race, he sought deliverance for mankind in
the return to a primeval state, in which all should be free, equal, and
independent. The inartificial state of society was the beau-ideal. And
from this philosophical origin he traced society in the historical
formation of an actual polity, describing how the social contract, while
subordinating individual liberty to the collective will of a society,
recompensed men by investing them with rights of civilization.
His doctrine was false theologically in its view of human nature; false
philosophically in attempting to investigate an historical question by
means of abstract metaphysical analysis; and false politically in drawing
the attention of men away from practical and possible schemes of reform to
visionary ones. It typified the movement of the French revolution in its
extravagant hopes and its errors, in its destructive, not its remedial
aspect.(566)
It was a few years later than the publication of these speculations that
Rousseau wrote his celebrated treatise on education, the _Emile_,(567)
which is the chief source for ascertaining his religious opinions. It has
been called the Cyropædia of modern times, an attempt to show the
education which a philosopher would give his pupil, in contradistinction
to the religious and Jesuit training common in Rousseau’s time.
In examining the religious education to be given to the young, he
introduces a Savoyard vicar, the original of which his own early travels
had suggested to him, to narrate the history of his convictions, and
explain the nature of his creed. This creed is deism, and bears a very
striking resemblance to that taught by the English deists. Rejecting
tradition and philosophy,(568) the vicar grounds his creed on reason, the
interior light. Commencing with sensation, he shows how step by step we
arrive at the doctrine of the being and attributes of one God. Though he
does not reject the argument from final causes, he seems to lay more
stress on the metaphysical argument of the necessity of the divine
existence. He first proves the existence of personality and will,(569) and
uses this idea for the purpose of exploring the outer world; arguing that
matter is inert and not self-active, he regards matter in motion as
indicating force, and therefore volition; uniformity in its motion as
proving a law, and therefore an intelligent will,(570) in which wisdom,
power, and goodness combine.(571) This being is God, to whom man is
subject. The universe is universal order. The physical evil therein
originates in our vices, the moral in our free will.(572)
Having established the being of a God, he next proceeds to give reasons
for believing in immortality. He bases it on the fact of the goodness of
God, which leads Him to recompense with happiness the suffering good; and
he disbelieves the eternity of punishment for the bad.(573) Having fixed
the objects of belief, he next lays down the rule of duty in conscience,
which he regards as an innate and infallible guide.(574) After thus
establishing natural religion, he proceeds to criticise revealed, arguing
its want of irrefragable evidence,(575) the discrepant(576) opinions in
reference to it, the improbability of portions of its history;(577)
attacking strongly the external evidence of prophecy and miracles; the
former on the alleged want of proof of agreement between prophecy and its
fulfilment; the latter on the ground of the alleged circle, that miracles
are made to prove doctrine, and doctrine miracles.(578) He accordingly
rejects the idea of Christianity being necessary to salvation; but renders
a tribute of praise to its moral precepts, and regards the gospels, though
partly fictitious, as containing indestructible moral truths; and
concludes with the well-known comparison of Socrates to Christ, showing
the stupendous superiority of the death and example of the latter. “If the
death of Socrates,” he says, “was that of a sage, that of Jesus was that
of a God.”(579)
It would have been thought that such teaching as this would hardly have
excited a legal prosecution, in comparison with the more violent attacks
that were made on religion: but the wide reputation and fascinating style
of the author, the extraordinary ability of the work, above all the fact
that many of the previous infidel doctrines had been published without the
writers’ names, were the means of subjecting him to persecution which they
escaped. Voltaire and the infidel party were indignant at Rousseau’s
partial acceptance of Christianity. The French clergy were angry at his
rejection of the remainder. The parliament ordered the book to be burned,
and the author to be imprisoned. Rousseau had to seek refuge in
Switzerland, and there defended his views of Christianity and miracles in
a series of celebrated letters, which in their political effects have been
compared with the letters of Junius. Driven out from Switzerland, he found
a shelter in England, with Hume; and, until he could safely return to
France, employed his time in writing his _Confessions_;(580)—the
celebrated work, a mixture of romance and fact, which takes its place in
the first rank of autobiographies,—a sad witness to the desperate
wickedness of the human heart, and to the impotence of even a high moral
creed, which we know Rousseau elsewhere expressed,(581) in creating
morality, without Christian motives to give practical efficacy to it.
Such was Rousseau, an enemy of artificial society, of Roman catholic
education, and of supernatural revelation; yet far removed from Voltaire
and the other infidels, both in tone and literary character.(582) While
Voltaire aimed only to destroy, Rousseau sought to reconstruct. Voltaire
was a flippant, hasty reviler of Christianity, without originality in the
material of his works, without depth of soul: Rousseau was serious, fresh,
full of pathos. Voltaire either had no creed, or thought one unimportant,
and was actuated by malignant hatred against Judaism and Christianity:
Rousseau had a firm creed, and spoke with decency of the religion which he
rejected. Voltaire was devoid of taste for ancient literature, witty under
a mask, a selfish sycophant to the ancient political régime: Rousseau
never denied the authorship of his writings, was democratic in tastes, and
was the means of exciting a love for antiquity. Finally rejecting to a
great degree the sensational philosophy; rising above it in heart, if not
in thought, Rousseau taught a spiritual philosophy, destined to bear fruit
when the dreams of the revolution had passed. He stands alone however at
present in this respect, like Montesquieu in politics(583) and Buffon in
science; and the course of our history again brings before us men who must
be classed with the materialists that preceded him.
We have stated that by the middle of the century the infidel writers
turned their attention from the attack on the church to that on the state;
and had already made such impression on the government, that it joined
them in expelling the Jesuits.(584) For more than a quarter of a century
before the revolution the literary writers were infidel. At length the
evils of the state grew incurable, and the storm of the revolution burst.
It is possible in the present age to take a much more dispassionate view
of that vast event than was taken by contemporaries.(585) It can now be
adjusted to its true historic perspective, and its function in the scheme
of history can be clearly perceived. The vastness of the movement
consisted in this, that it was at once political, social, and
religious.(586) It aimed at redressing the grievances under which France
had suffered, and reconstructing society with guarantees for future
liberty. It sought not merely to destroy the feudalism which had outlived
its time, and to equalize the unfair distribution of the public burdens,
as means to accommodate society to modern wants; but it tried to effect
these changes among a people whose minds were fully persuaded both that
the privileges of particular classes and the existence of an established
religion were the chief causes of the public misfortune. When so many
movements combined, the catastrophe was intensified. It is indeed possible
now to see that in the end the solid advantages of the revolution were
reaped, while the mischief was temporary; but the severity of the storm
while it lasted was increased by the infidel views with which society had
become impregnated. For the revolution attempted to embody in its
political aspect those poetical but wild theories of society which
sceptical students had taught; and was founded on the false assumption of
the perfectibility of man, and the perfect goodness of human nature,
except as depraved by human government.
At first, under the National Assembly,(587) the attack was only made on
the property of the church; but on the establishment of the Convention,
when the nation had become frantic at the alarm of foreign invasion, to
which the king and clergy were supposed to be instrumental, the monarchy
was overthrown, and religion also was declared obsolete. The municipality
and many of the bishops abjured Christianity; the churches were stripped;
the images of the Saviour trampled under foot; and a fête was held in
November 1793,(588) in which an opera-dancer, impersonating Reason as a
goddess, was introduced into the Convention, and then led in procession to
the cathedral of Notre Dâme; and there, elevated on the high altar, took
the place of deity, and received adoration from the audience. The services
of religion were abandoned; the churches were closed; the sabbath was
abolished; and the calendar altered. On all the public cemeteries the
inscription was placed, “Death is an eternal sleep.” Robespierre himself
saw the necessity for the public recognition of the being of a God; and
after the fall of the Girondists, obtained an edict for that purpose
shortly before his death, in 1794; which event marks the return of society
from atheism and materialism back to deism.(589) When the horrors of the
dictatorship of Robespierre closed, and a regular government was
established under the Directory, the priests obtained liberty to reopen
the churches provided they maintained them at their own expense.(590) But
the great majority of the people lived wholly without God in the world;
while some sought refuge in the extravagant creed of a deist sect called
the Theophilanthropists.(591) Nor was it till the year 1802 that Napoleon
was able, and even then amid much opposition, to reestablish the
Sunday.(592) Christianity was then reinaugurated by a public ceremony(593)
in the cathedral, polluted eight years before by the blasphemy of the
goddess of Reason. But the total cessation of religious instruction
snapped asunder a chain of faith which had descended unbroken from the
first ages; and to this must be ascribed the irreligious mode of spending
the Sunday in French society.
The reign of atheism in religion was fortified by a philosophy; and the
works of one infidel writer preserve the expression of the view which it
took of Christianity and religion. As soon as the excitement of the
revolution allowed leisure to return to the study of mental facts, there
arose the extreme form of sensationalism, which was called (in a different
meaning from the present popular use of the term) Ideology, (24). Cabanis
and Destutt de Tracy are the best exponents of its physiological and
psychological aspects; and the well-known Volney of its moral and
religious side. Starting from the principles of Condillac and Helvetius,
that the very faculties as well as ideas are derived from sensation, and
moral rules from self-love, it almost reaches the same point as D’Holbach.
Mental science was approached from the physiological side, and so viewed
that mind seemed to be made a property of brain.(594)
The chief work in which Volney expresses his unbelief is entitled the
“Ruins, or Meditations on the Revolutions of Empires.”(595) It is a poem
in prose. Volney imagines himself falling into a meditation, amid the
ruins of Palmyra, on the fall of empires.(596) The phantom of the ruins
appears, and, entering into converse with him, causes him to see the
kingdoms of the world, and guides him in the solution of the mysteries
which puzzle him.(597) It unveils to him the view of nature as a system of
laws, and of man as a being gifted with self-love. It traces the origin of
society in a manner not unlike Rousseau,(598) and refers the source of
evil to self-love; states the cause of ancient prosperity and decline, and
draws the moral lesson from the past.(599) While Volney is despondent at
the prospect of the future, a vision is unveiled to him of a new age. It
is of a nation ridding itself of privileged classes, and arming itself
when its young liberties were threatened by foreign powers.(600) It is an
apocalyptic vision of France in his time. Then suddenly the vision
changes, and an assembly of the nations of the world is gathered as in one
common arena, to ascertain how they may arrive at unity and peace.(601)
Their differences are illustrated by the discrepant opinions which they
utter on religion; and the origin of each religion on the earth is
traced.(602) It is here that Volney makes his speaker convey his own
scepticism. He tracks the origin of the religious ideas(603) through the
worship prompted by fear of the physical elements(604) and the stars(605)
to that of symbols or idols,(606) with its accompanying mysteries and
orders of priests; and then onward through dualism(607) to the belief of
an unseen world;(608) then through mythology(609) and pantheism(610) to
the belief in a Creator;(611) next, to Judaism(612) as the worship of the
soul of the world; and lastly, through the Persian(613) and Hindu(614)
systems to Christianity,(615) which he attempts to show to be the worship
of the sun under the cabalistic names of Christ and Jesus. Availing
himself of some of the fragments of mythology which such writers as
Eusebius have preserved, and with a faint perception of the nature of
mythology, he tries to resolve the narrative of the fall of man into solar
mythology; and, pointing to contact with the Persians at the captivity as
the source from which the Jews borrowed their ideas of a symbolic system,
he regards the incarnation and life of Christ as the mistaken
literalization on the part of contemporaries of their preconceived
opinions. The conclusions to which Volney makes his interlocutor come(616)
is, that nothing can be true, nothing be a ground of peace and union,
which is not visible to the senses. Truth is conformity with sensations.
The book is interesting as a work of art; but its analysis of Christianity
is so shocking, that its absurdity alone prevents its becoming dangerous.
It is the most unblushing attempt to resolve the noblest of effects into
the most absurd of origins; and embodies in the consideration of religion
the school of philosophy which he represented.
We have now completed the history of unbelief in France during the
eighteenth century. We have seen how literature gradually emancipated
itself from the power of the court, and, under the influence of a
sceptical stimulus received from the importation of English free thought,
was changed into political and ecclesiastical antipathy, and acquired a
mastery over the public mind, until it involved the state, the church, and
Christianity, in a common ruin. History offers no parallel instance of the
victory of unbelief, through the power of the pen, nor of the union of the
political with the theological movement, and of the intimate connexion of
both with the current philosophy of the time.
The theological movement has contributed nothing of permanent literary
value. The few apologies written were unimportant; and the thoughts of
those who attacked Christianity were neither new nor characterised by
depth. Their criticism was shallow, and was marked by the feature of which
traces were observed in a few English authors, the disposition to charge
imposture on the writers of the holy scriptures; so that they not only
failed to appreciate the literary excellence of the works, but scarcely
even allowed the possibility of unintentional deception on the part of the
writers. The doubts were chiefly the reproduction of the English point of
view, with the addition of a few physical difficulties;(617) protests of
free thought against dogma in natural science. The view entertained
concerning deity was eventually grovelling; the greatness of nature seemed
to inspire no reverence. Unbelief gradually lost hold of monotheism; and
in doing so never ascended in grandeur to the idea of pantheism, but fell
into blank atheism. The theoretical morality of the English deists, even
when depending on expedience, was noble; but in place of it the French
school presented the lowest form of theory which ethical science has ever
stated, and which finds its refutation with the philosophy that gave it
birth.