Chapter XXXVII: Conclusion (4)

[1025] The mystification in regard to this work is elaborate. It purports to be translated from an English version, declared in turn by its translator to be made "from the Greek." It is now commonly ascribed to Naigeon. (Maury, as cited, p. 317.) Its machinery, and its definite atheism, mark it as of the school of d'Holbach, though it is alleged to have been written by Fréret as early as 1722. It is however reprinted, with the Examen critique des Apologistes, in the 1796 edition of Fréret's works without comment; and Barbier was satisfied that it was the one genuine "philosophic" work ascribed to Fréret, but that it was redacted by Naigeon from imperfect MSS.

[1026] Notice sur Henri Meister, pref. to Lettres inédites de Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, 1903, p. 17.

[1027] "Deux nouveaux livres infernaux ... connus comme manuscrits depuis longtemps et gardés dans l'obscurité des portefeuilles...." Bachaumont, 22 mars, 1769.

[1028] Bachaumont, Mémoires Secrets, déc. 20, 1767.

[1029] Id. Jan. 18, 1768.

[1030] So Pidansat de Mairobert in his preface to the first ed. (1777) of the Mémoires Secrets of Bachaumont, continued by him. See pref. to the abridged ed. by Bibliophile Jacob.

[1031] As to the authorship see above, p. 241.

[1032] La Certitude des preuves du Christianisme (1767). 2e édit. 1768, Avertissement.

[1033] In the short essay Le Philosophe, which appeared in the Nouvelles Libertés de Penser, 1743 and 1750, and in the Recueil Philosophique, 1770. In the 1793 rep. of the Essai sur les préjugés (again rep. in 1822) it is unhesitatingly affirmed, on the strength of its title-page and the prefixed letter of Dumarsais, dated 1750, that that book is an expansion of the essay Le Philosophe, and that this was published in 1760. But Le Philosophe is an entirely different production, which to a certain extent criticizes les philosophes so-called. The Essai sur les préjugés published in 1770 is not the work of Dumarsais; it is a new work by d'Holbach. This was apparently known to Frederick, who in his rather angry criticism of the book writes that, whereas Dumarsais had always respected constituted authorities, others had "put out in his name, two years after he was dead and buried, a libel of which the veritable author could only be a schoolboy as new to the world as he was puzzle-headed." (Mélanges en vers et en prose de Frederic II, 1792, ii, 215). Dumarsais died in 1754, but I can find no good evidence that the Essai sur les préjugés was ever printed before 1770. As to d'Holbach's authorship see the OEuvres de Diderot, ed. 1821, xii, 115 sq.--passage copied in the 1829-31 ed. of the Correspondance littéraire of Grimm and Diderot, xiv, 293 sq. In a letter to D'Alembert dated Mars 27, 1773, Voltaire writes that in a newly-printed collection of treatises containing his own Lois de Minos is included "le philosophe de Dumarsais, qui n'a jamais été imprimé jusqu'à present." This seems to be a complete mistake.

[1034] Grimm (iv, 86) has some good stories of him. He announced one day that he had ound twenty-five fatal flaws in the story of the resurrection of Lazarus, the first being that the dead do not rise. His scholarly friend Nicolas Boindin (see above, p. 222) said: "Dumarsais is a Jansenist atheist; as for me, I am a Molinist atheist."

[1035] On two successive pages the title Messiah is declared to mean "simply one sent" and simply "anointed."

[1036] Like Buffier and Huard, however, he strives for a reform in spelling, dropping many doubled letters, and writing home, bone, acuse, fole, apelle, honête, afreux, etc.

[1037] Abriss einer Geschichte der Umwälzung welche seit 1750 auf dem Gebiete der Theologie in Deutschland statt gefunden, in Tholuck's Vermischte Schriften, 1839, ii, 5. The proposition is repeated pp. 24, 33.

[1038] The exceptions were books published outside of France.

[1039] Madame de Sévigné, for instance, declared that she would not let pass a year of her life without re-reading the second volume of Abbadie.

[1040] Le Déisme refuté par lui-même (largely a reply to Rousseau), 1765; 1770, Apologie de la religion chrétienne; 1773, La certitude des preuves du christianisme. In 1759 had appeared the Lettres sur le Déisme of the younger Salchi, professor at Lausanne. It deals chiefly with the English deists, and with D'Argens. As before noted, the Abbé Gauchat began in 1751 his Lettres Critiques, which in time ran to 15 volumes (1751-61). There were also two journals, Jesuit and Jansenist, which fought the philosophes (Lanson, p. 721); and sometimes even a manuscript was answered--e.g. the Réfutation du Celse moderne of the Abbé Gautier (1752), a reply to Mirabaud's unpublished Examen critique.

[1041] Alison, History of Europe, ed. 1849, i, 180-81.

[1042] The Jesuits were expelled from Portugal in 1759; from Bohemia and Denmark in 1766; from the whole dominions of Spain in 1767; from Genoa and Venice in the same year; and from Naples, Malta, and Parma in 1768. Officially suppressed in France in 1764, they were expelled thence in 1767. Pope Clement XIII strove to defend them; but in 1773 the Society was suppressed by papal bull by Clement XIV; whereafter they took refuge in Prussia and Russia, ruled by the freethinking Frederick and Catherine.

[1043] See the Correspondance de Grimm, ed. 1829-31, vii, 51 sq.

[1044] This apologetic work, after having been praised by the censor and registered with privilège du roi in November, 1772, was officially suppressed on Jan. 17, 1773, and, it would appear, reissued in that year.

[1045] Liv. i. ch. viii.

[1046] Bachaumont, juin 22; juillet 9, 20, 27; novembre 14, 1762.

[1047] Grimm notices Astruc's Dissertations sur l'immortalité, l'immaterialité, et la liberté de l'âme, published in 1755 (Corr. i, 438), but not his Conjectures. At his death (1766) he pronounces him "un des hommes les plus decriés de Paris," "Il passait pour fripon, fourbe, méchant, en un mot pour un très-malhonnête homme." "Il était violent et emporté, et d'une avarice sordide." Finally, he died "sans sacremens" after having "fait le dévot" and attached himself to the Jesuits in their day of power. Corr. v, 98. But Grimm was a man of many hates, and not the best of historians.

[1048] Cp. Maury, L'ancienne Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, 1864, pp. 55-56.

[1049] Voltaire's various stratagems to secure election are not to his credit. See Paul Mesnard, Histoire de l'académie française, 1857, pp. 68-74. But even Montesquieu is said to have resorted to some questionable devices for the same end. Id. p. 62.

[1050] Maury, L'ancienne Académie des inscriptions, pp. 54-55, 94, 308.

[1051] Id. p. 93.

[1052] Id. pp. 116-20.

[1053] Where he was lieutenant-général, and died in 1750.

[1054] Maury, pp. 53, 86-87.

[1055] Mémoires, ed. Jannet, iv, 181.

[1056] Cp. Mesnard, as cited, pp. 79-80.

[1057] Maury, p. 315.

[1058] Id. pp. 82-84. It is noteworthy that the orthodox Thomas, and not any of the philosophes, was the first to impeach the Government in academic discourses. Mesnard, pp. 82-84, 100 sq.

[1059] "L'excellent Pompignan," M. Lanson calls him, p. 723.

[1060] "Les provisions de sa charge pendant six mois en 1736." Voltaire, Lettre à Mme. D'Épinay, 13 juin, 1760. "Je le servis dans cette affaire," adds Voltaire.

[1061] Mesnard, pp. 67, 71, 73, 89.

[1062] Le Pauvre Diable, ouvrage en vers aisés de feu M. Vadé, mis en lumière par Catherine Vadé, sa cousine (falsely dated 1758); La Vanité; and Le Russe à Paris.

[1063] Mesnard, pp. 86-92.

[1064] Id. pp. 93-94.

[1065] Id. pp. 95-96.

[1066] Lanson, Hist. de la litt. française, p. 725.

[1067] The formal approval of a Sorbonnist was necessary. One refused it; another gave it. Marmontel, Mémoires, 1804, iii, 35-36.

[1068] Marmontel mentions that while he was still discussing a compromise with the syndic of the Sorbonne, 40,000 copies had been sold throughout Europe. Mémoires, iii, 39.

[1069] This satire was taken by the German freethinker Eberhard, in his New Apology for Socrates, as the actual publication of the Sorbonne. Barbier, Dict. des Ouvr. anon et Pseud., 2e édit., i, 468.

[1070] Published pseudonymously as a translation from the English: Histoire naturelle de l'âme, traduite de l'Anglais de M. Charp, par feu M. H----, de l'Académie des Sciences. À La Haye, 1745. Republished under the title Traité de l'Âme.

[1071] By Elie Luzac, to whom is ascribed the reply entitled L'Homme plus que Machine (1748 also). This is printed in the OEuvres philosophiques of La Mettrie as if it were his: and Lange (i, 420) seems to think it was. But the bibliographers ascribe it to Luzac, who was a man of culture and ability.

[1072] L'Homme Machine, ed. Assézat, 1865, p. 97; OEuv. philos. ed. 1774, iii, 51.

[1073] Lange, Gesch. des Materialismus, i, 362 sq. (Eng. tr. ii, 78-80); Soury, Bréviare de l'hist. du matérialisme, pp. 663, 666-68; Voltaire, Homélie sur l'athéisme, end. Frederick the Great, who gave La Mettrie harbourage, support, and friendship, and who was not a bad judge of men, wrote and read in the Berlin Academy the funeral éloge of La Mettrie, and pronounced him "une âme pure et un coeur serviable." By "pure" he meant sincere.

[1074] Salchi, Lettres sur le Déisme, 1759, pp. 177, 197, 239, 283 sq.

[1075] Huxley, essay on Darwin on the Origin of Species; R. P. A. ed. of Twelve Lectures and Essays, p. 94.

[1076] See the parallel passages in the Lettres Critiques of the Abbé Gauchat, vol. xv (1761), p. 192 sq.

[1077] See his essay Des Singularités de la Nature, ch. xii, and his Dissertation sur les changements arrivés dans notre globe.

[1078] Eng. tr. 1750.

[1079] Essay cited, p. 96. The criticism ignores the greater comprehensiveness of Robinet's survey of nature.

[1080] George-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, 1707-1788.

[1081] Lyell, Principles of Geology, 12th ed. 1875, i, 57-58.

[1082] Suite de l'Apologie de M. l'Abbé De Prades, 1752, p. 37 sq.

[1083] Dissertatio inauguralis metaphysica de universali naturæ systemate, published at Göttingen as the doctoral thesis of an imaginary Dr. Baumann, 1751. In French, 1753.

[1084] Soury, p. 579. The later speculations of Maupertuis by their extravagance discredited the earlier.

[1085] "Scheinbar bekämpft er Maupertuis desswegen, aber im geheimen stimmt er ihm bei"(Rosenkranz, i, 144).

[1086] It should be noted that by Condillac's avowal he was much aided by his friend Mdlle. Ferrand.

[1087] Cp. Réthoré, Condillac, ou l'empirisme et le rationalisme, 1864, ch. i.

[1088] Lange, ii, 27, 29; Soury, pp. 603-44.

[1089] Soury, pp. 596-600; Lange, ii, 27.

[1090] Oddly enough he became ultimately press censor! He lived till 1820, dying at Rennes at the age of 85.

[1091] This may best be translated Treatise on the Mind. The English translation of 1759 (rep. 1807) is entitled De l'Esprit: or, Essays on the Mind, etc.

[1092] Correspondance, ii, 262.

[1093] Id. p. 263.

[1094] Id. p. 293.

[1095] At the time the pietists declared that Diderot had collaborated in De l'Esprit. This was denied by Grimm, who affirmed that Diderot and Helvétius were little acquainted, and rarely met; but his Secretary, Meister, wrote in 1786 that the finest pages in the book were Diderot's. Id. p. 294, note. In his sketch À la mémoire de Diderot (1786, app. to Naigeon's Mémoires, 1821, p. 425, note), Meister speaks of a number of "belles pages," but does not particularize.

[1096] De l'Esprit, Disc, iii, ch. 30.

[1097] Cp. Morley's criticism. Diderot, ed. 1884, pp. 331-32.

[1098] Beccaria's Letter to Morellet, cited in ch. i of J. A. Farrer's ed. of the Crimes and Punishments, p. 6. It is noteworthy that the partial reform effected earlier in England by Oglethorpe, on behalf of imprisoned debtors (1730-32), belongs to the time of propagandist deism there.

[1099] Morley, Diderot, p. 329.

[1100] Lettre à d'Alembert, 9 janvier, 1773.

[1101] Cp. Rosenkranz, Vorbericht, p. vi.

[1102] Cp. Morley, Diderot, ed. 1834, p. 32.

[1103] E.g. § 21.

[1104] A police agent seized the MS. in Diderot's library, and Diderot could not get it back. Malesherbes, the censor, kept it safe for him!

[1105] According to Naigeon (Mémoires, 1821, p. 131), three months and ten days.

[1106] The Lettre purports, like so many other books of that and the next generation, to be published "A Londres."

[1107] Diderot's daughter, in her memoir of him, speaks of his imprisonment in the Bastille as brought about through the resentment of a lady of whom he had spoken slightingly; and her husband left a statement in MS. to the same effect (printed at the end of the Mémoires by Naigeon). The lady is named as Madame Dupré de Saint-Maur, a mistress of the King, and the offence is said to have been committed in the story entitled Le Pigeon blanc. Howsoever this may have been, the prosecution was quite in the spirit of the period, and the earlier Pensées were made part of the case against him. See Delort, Hist. de la détention des philosophes, 1829, ii, 208-16. M. de Vandeul-Diderot testifies that the Marquis Du Chatelet, Governor of Vincennes, treated his prisoner very kindly. Buckle (1-vol. ed. p. 425) does not seem to have fully read the Lettre, which he describes as merely discussing the differentiation of thought and sensation among the blind.

[1108] His friend Meister (À la mémoire de Diderot, 1786, app. to Naigeon's Mémoires de Diderot, 1821, p. 424) writes as if Diderot had written the whole Apologie "in a few days." The third part, a reply to the pastoral of the Bishop of Auxerre, appeared separately as a Suite to the others.

[1109] Apologie, as cited, 2e partie, p. 87 sq.

[1110] Observations sur l'instruction pastorale de Mons. l'Évêque d'Auxerre, Berlin, 1752, p. 17.

[1111] Id. p. 102 sq.

[1112] Cp. Morley, Diderot, pp. 98-99.

[1113] Carlyle, Frederick, bk. xviii, ch. ix, end.

[1114] D'Argenson, Mémoires, iv, 188.

[1115] Carlyle, as cited.

[1116] "Quelle abominable homme!" he writes to Mdlle. Voland (15 juillet, 1759); and Lord Morley pronounces de Prades a rascal (Diderot, p. 98). Carlyle is inarticulate with disgust--but as much against the original heresy as against the treason to Frederick. As to that, Thiébault was convinced that de Prades was innocent and calumniated. Everybody at court, he declares, held the same view. Mes Souvenirs de vingt ans de séjour à Berlin, 2e édit. 1805, v, 402-404.

[1117] It is not clear how these are to be distinguished from the mutilations of the later volumes by his treacherous publisher Le Breton. Of this treachery the details are given by Grimm, Corr. litt. ed. 1829. vii, 144 sq.

[1118] Buckle's account of him (1-vol. ed. p. 426) as "burning with hatred against his persecutors" after his imprisonment is overdrawn. He was a poor hater.

[1119] Madame Diderot, says her daughter, was very upright as well as very religious, but her temper, "éternellement grondeur, faisait de notre intérieur un enfer, dont mon père était l'ange consolateur" (Letter to Meister, in Notice pref. to Lettres Inédites de Mme. de Staël à Henri Meister, 1903, p. 62).

[1120] "Hélas! disait mon excellent grand-père, j'ai deux fils: l'un sera sûrement un saint, et je crains bien que l'autre ne soit damné; mais je ne puis vivre avec le saint, et je suis très heureux du temps que je passe avec le damné" (Letter of Mme. de Vandeul, last cited). Freethinker as he was, his fellow-townsmen officially requested in 1780 to be allowed to pay for a portrait of him for public exhibition, and the bronze bust he sent them was placed in the hôtel de ville (MS. of M. de Vandeul-Diderot, as cited).

[1121] Madame de Vandeul states that this story was motived by the case of Diderot's sister, who died mad at the age of 27 or 28 (Letter above cited; Rosenkranz, i, 9).

[1122] Lettre de Voltaire à D'Alembert, 27 août, 1774.

[1123] Lettre de 2 décembre, 1757.

[1124] OEuvres posthumes de D'Alembert, 1799, i, 240.

[1125] D'Holbach was the original of the character of Wolmar in Rousseau's Nouvelle Héloïse, of whom Julie says that he "does good without recompense." "I never saw a man more simply simple" was the verdict of Madame Geoffrin. Corr. litt. de Grimm (notice probably by Meister), ed. 1829-31, xiv, 291.

[1126] Marmontel says of him that he "avoit tout lu et n'avoit jamais rien oublié d'interessant." Mémoires, 1804, ii, 312.

[1127] See a full list of his works (compiled by Julian Hibbert after the list given in the 1821 ed. of Diderot's Works, xii, 115, and rep. in the 1829-31 ed. of Grimm and Diderot's Correspondance, xiv, 293), prefixed to Watson's ed. (1834 and later) of the English translation of the System of Nature.

[1128] Morley, Diderot, p. 341. The chapter gives a good account of the book. Cp. Lange, i, 364 sq. (Eng. trans, ii, 26 sq.) as to its materialism. The best pages were said to be by Diderot (Corr. de Grimm, as cited, p. 289; the statement of Meister, who makes it also in his Éloge). Naigeon denied that Diderot had any part in the Système, but in 1820 there was published an edition with "notes and corrections" by Diderot.

[1129] It is to be noted that the English translation (3 vols. 3rd ed. 1817; 4th ed. 1820) deliberately tampers with the language of the original to the extent of making it deistic. This perversion has been by oversight preserved in all the reprints.

[1130] Mirabeau spoke of the Essai as "le livre le moins connu, et celui qui mérite le plus l'être." Even the reprint of 1793 had become "extremely rare" in 1822. The book seems to have been specially disquieting to orthodoxy, and was hunted down accordingly.

[1131] So Morley, p. 347. It does not occur to Lord Morley, and to the Comtists who take a similar tone, that in thus disparaging past thinkers they are really doing the thing they blame.

[1132] Lettres de Memmius à Cicéron (1771); Histoire de Jenni (1775). In the earlier article, Athée, in the Dictionnaire Philosophique, he speaks of having met in France very good physicists who were atheists. In his letter of September 26, 1770, to Madame Necker, he writes concerning the Système de la Nature: "Il est un peu honteux à notre nation que tant de gens aient embrassé si vite une opinion si ridicule." And yet Prof. W. M. Sloane, of Columbia University, still writes of Voltaire, in the manner of English bishops, as "atheistical" (The French Revolution and Religious Reform, 1901, p. 26).

[1133] Though in 1797 we have Maréchal's Code d'une Société d'hommes sans Dieu, and in 1798 his Pensées libres sur les prêtres.

[1134] Thus Dr. Cairns (Unbelief in the Eighteenth Century, p. 165) gravely argues that the French Revolution proves the inefficacy of theism without a Trinity to control conduct. He has omitted to compare the theistic bloodshed of the Revolution with the Trinitarian bloodshed of the Crusades, the papal suppression of the Albigenses, the Hussite wars, and other orthodox undertakings.

[1135] The book was accorded the Monthyon prize by the French Academy. In translation (1788) it found a welcome in England among Churchmen by reason of its pro-Christian tone and its general vindication of religious institutions. The translation was the work of Mary Wollstonecraft. See Kegan Paul's William Godwin, 1876, i, 193. Mrs. Dunlop, the friend of Burns, recommending its perusal to 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, 1841. Many of the utterances here set forth are irreconcilable with Napoleon's general tone.

[1200] O'Meara, Napoléon en Exil, ed. Lacroix, 1897, ii, 39.

[1201] Ph. Gonnard, Les origines de la légende Napoléonienne, 1906, p. 258.

[1202] Id. p. 260.

[1203] Pasquier, cited by Rose, Life of Napoleon, ed. 1913, i, 282. The Concordat was bitterly resented by the freethinkers in the army. Id. p. 281.

[1204] See Jules Barni's Napoléon Ier. ed. 1870, p. 83, as to the amazing Catechism imposed by Napoleon on France in 1811. For the history of its preparation and imposition see De Labone, Paris sous Napoléon: La Religion, 1907, p. 100 sq.

[1205] As to the Napoleonic censorship of literature, cp. Madame de Staël, Considérations sur la révolution française, ptie. iv, ch. 16; Dix Années d'Exil, préf.; Welschinger, La Censure sous le premier Empire, 1882.

[1206] Las Cases, Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène, 19 août, 1816.

[1207] Mignet, Hist. de la révolution française, 4e édit. ii, 340.

[1208] Cp. Pusey, Histor. Enquiry into the Probable Causes of the Rationalist Character ... of the Theology of Germany, 1828, p. 79.

[1209] Bishop Hurst, History of Rationalism, ed. 1867, p. 56.

[1210] Id. pp. 57-58 (last ed. pp. 74-76), citing Tholuck, Deutsche Universitäten, i, 145-48, and Dowding, Life of Calixtus, pp. 132-33.

[1211] Pusey, p. 113.

[1212] Hurst, p. 59.

[1213] Cp. Buckle, 1-vol. ed. pp. 303-309. "The result of the Thirty Years' War was indifference, not only to the Confession, but to religion in general. Ever since that period, secular interests decidedly occupy the foreground" (Kahnis, Internal History of German Protestantism, Eng. tr. 1856, p. 21).

[1214] Quoted by Bishop Hurst, ed. cited, p. 60 (78).

[1215] Preservatio wider die Pest der heutigen Atheisten.

[1216] Dated from Rome; but this was a mystification.

[1217] Kahnis, p. 125; La Croze, Entretiens, 1711, p. 401.

[1218] Even Knutzen seems to have been influenced by Spinoza. Pünjer, Hist. of the Christ. Philos. of Religion, Eng. tr. i, 437. Pünjer, however, seems to have exaggerated the connection.

[1219] Cp. Lange, Gesch. des Materialismus, 3te Aufl. i, 318 (Eng. tr. ii, 35).

[1220] Epistolæ ad Spinozam et Responsiones, in Gfrörer, liii.

[1221] Colerus, Vie de Spinoza, in Gfrörer's ed. of the Opera, 1830, pp. lv, lvi.

[1222] Pünjer, as cited, i, 434-30: Lange, last cit. Lange notes that Genthe's Compendium de impostura religionum, which has been erroneously assigned to the sixteenth century, must belong to the period of Kortholt's work.

[1223] Pünjer, p. 439; Lange, last cit.; Tholuck, Kirch. Leben, 2 Abth. pp. 57-58.

[1224] It was nominally issued at Amsterdam, really at Berlin.

[1225] This writer gives (p. 12) a notable list of the forms of atheism: Atheismus directus, indirectus, formalis, virtualis, theoreticus, practicus, inchoatus, consummatus, subtilis, crassus, privativus, negativus, and so on, ad lib.

[1226] Cp. Buckle and his Critics, pp. 171-72; Pünjer, i, 515.

[1227] Letter cited by Dr. Latta. Leibniz, 1898, p. 2, note.

[1228] Philos. Schriften, ed. Gerhardt, i, 26; Martineau, Study of Spinoza, p. 77.

[1229] Letter to Thomas, December 23, 1670.

[1230] Quoted by Tholuck, as last cited, p. 61. Spener took the same tone.

[1231] Philos. Schriften, ed. Gerhardt, i, 34; ii, 563; Latta, p. 24; Martineau, p. 75. Cp. Refutation of Spinoza by Leibnitz, ed. by Foucher de Careil. Eng. tr. 1855.

[1232] His notable surmise as to gradation of species (see Latta, pp. 38-39) was taken up among the French materialists, but did not then modify current science.

[1233] The only lengthy treatise published by him in his lifetime.

[1234] M. A. Jacques, intr. to OEuvres de Leibniz, 1846, i, 54-57.

[1235] Cp. Tholuck, Das kirchliche Leben, as cited, 2 Abth. pp. 52-55. Kahnis, coinciding with Erdmann, pronounces that, although Leibnitz "acknowledges the God of the Christian faith, yet his system assigned to Him a very uncertain position only" (Int. Hist. of Ger. Protestantism, p. 26).

[1236] Cp. Pünjer, i, 509, as to his attitude on ritual.

[1237] Latta, as cited, p. 16; Vie de Leibnitz, par De Jaucourt, in ed. 1747 of the Essais de Théodicée, i, 235-39.

[1238] As to his virtual deism see Pünjer, i, 513-15. But he proposed to send Christian missionaries to the heathen. Tholuck, as last cited, p. 55.

[1239] Lettres entre Leibnitz et Clarke.

[1240] Discours de la conformité de la foi avec la raison, §§ 68-70; Essais sur la bonté de Dieu, etc., §§ 50, 61, 164, 180, 292-93.

[1241] The Nouveaux Essais sur l'Entendement humain, refuting Locke, appeared posthumously in 1765. Locke had treated his theistic critic with contempt. (Latta, p. 13.)

[1242] Amand Saintes, Hist. crit. du Rationalisme en Allemagne, 1841, ch. vi; Heinrich Schmid, Die Geschichte des Pietismus, 1863, ch. ii.

[1243] Saintes, p. 51; cp. Pusey, p. 105, as to "the want of resistance from the school of Pietists to the subsequent invasion of unbelief."

[1244] Hagenbach, German Rationalism, Eng. tr. 1865, p. 9.

[1245] Id. p. 39; Pusey, Histor. Enquiry into the Causes of German Rationalism, 1828, pp. 88, 97; Tholuck, Abriss einer Geschichte des Umwälzung ... seit 1750 auf dem Gebiete der Theologie in Deutschland, in Vermischte Schriften, 1839, ii, 5.

[1246] Pusey, pp. 86, 87, 98.

[1247] Cp. Pusey, pp. 37-38, 45, 48, 49, 53-54, 79, 101-109; Saintes, pp. 28, 79-80; Hagenbach, pp. 41, 72, 105.

[1248] Pusey, p. 110. Cp. Saintes, ch. vi.

[1249] Das kirchliche Leben, as cited, 2 Abth. p. 58.

[1250] Id. pp. 56-57.

[1251] Vol. i, p. 6.

[1252] H. Luden, Christian Thomasius nach seinen Schicksalen und Schriften dargestellt, 1805, p. 7.

[1253] Cp. Schmid, Geschichte des Pietismus, pp. 486-88.

[1254] Pufendorf's bulky treatise De Jure Naturæ et Gentium was published at Lund, where he was professor, in 1672. The shorter De Officio hominis et civis (also Lund, 1673) is a condensation and partly a vindication of the other, and this it was that convinced Thomasius. As to Pufendorf's part in the transition from theological to rational moral philosophy, see Hallam, Lit. of Europe, iv, 171-78. He is fairly to be bracketed with Cumberland; but Hallam hardly recognizes that it was the challenge of Hobbes that forced the change.

[1255] Freimüthige, lustige und ernsthafte, jedoch vernunft- und gesetzmässige Gedanken, oder Monatgespräche über allerhand, vornehmlich über neue Bücher. There had been an earlier Acta Eruditorum, in Latin, published at Leipzig, and a French Ephemerides savantes, Hamburg, 1686. Other German and French periodicals soon followed that of Thomasius. Luden, p. 162.

[1256] Schmid, pp. 488-92, gives a sketch of some of the contents.

[1257] Pusey, p. 86, note. It is surprising that Pusey does not make more account of Thomasius's naturalistic treatment of polygamy and suicide, which he showed to be not criminal in terms of natural law.

[1258] Compare Weber, Gesch. der deutschen Lit. § 81 (ed. 1880, pp. 90-91); Pusey, as cited, p. 114. note; Enfield's Hist. of Philos. (abst. of Brucker's Hist. crit. philos.), 1840. pp. 610-612; Ueberweg, ii, 115; and Schlegel's note in Reid's Mosheim, p. 790, with Karl Hillebrand, Six Lect. on the Hist. of German Thought, 1880, pp. 64-65. There is a modern monograph by A. Nicoladoni, Christian Thomasius; ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Aufklärung, 1888.

[1259] Baron de Bielfeld, Progrès des Allemands, 3e éd. 1767, i, 24. "Before Thomasius," writes Bielfeld, "an old woman could not have red eyes without running the risk of being accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake."

[1260] Schmid, pp. 493-97. Thomasius's principal writings on this theme were: Vom Recht evangelischen Fürsten in Mitteldingen (1692); Vom Recht evangelischen Fürsten in theologischen Streitigkeiten (1696); Vom Recht evangelischen Fürsten gegen Ketzer (1697).

[1261] Ec. Hist. 17 Cent. sect. ii, pt. ii, ch. i, §§ 11, 14. It is noteworthy that the Pietists at Halle did not scruple to ally themselves for a time with Thomasius, he being opposed to the orthodox party. Kahnis, Internal Hist. of Ger. Protestantism, p. 114.

[1262] Pusey, as cited, p. 121. Cp. p. 113.

[1263] Hagenbach, Kirchengeschichte des 18. und 19. Jahrh., 2te Aufl. i, 164. (This matter is not in the abridged translation.)

[1264] See the furious account of him by Mosheim, 17 C. sec. ii, pt. ii, ch. i, § 33.

[1265] Hagenbach, last cit. p. 169.

[1266] Noack, Die Freidenker in der Religion, Th. iii, Kap. 1; Bruno Bauer, Einfluss des englischen Quäkerthums auf die deutsche Cultur und auf das englisch-russische Projekt einer Weltkirche, 1878, pp. 41-44.

[1267] Pref. to French tr. of the Meditationes, 1770, pp. xii-xvii. Lau died in 1740.

[1268] Tholuck, Abriss, as cited, p. 10.

[1269] Trans. in English, 1750.

[1270] Hagenbach, tr. pp. 35-36; Saintes, p. 61; Kahnis, as cited, p. 114.

[1271] Hagenbach, pp. 37-39. It is to be observed (Tholuck, Abriss, p. 23) that the Wolffian philosophy was reinstated in Prussia by royal mandate in 1739, a year before the accession of Frederick the Great. But we know that Frederick championed him.

[1272] Tholuck, Abriss, as cited, p. 5.

[1273] Tholuck, Abriss, as cited, p. 6.

[1274] Kahnis, p. 55.

[1275] Pünjer, i, 544. Cp. Tholuck, Abriss, pp. 19-22.

[1276] Tholuck, Abriss, p. 22. Schmid was for a time supposed to be the author of the Wolfenbüttel Fragments of Reimarus (below, p. 327).

[1277] Unpartheyische Kirchen- und Ketzerhistorie, 1699-1700, 2 tom. fol.--fuller ed. 3 tom. fol. 1740. Compare Mosheim's angry account of it with Murdock's note in defence: Reid's ed. p. 804. Bruno Bauer describes it as epoch-making (Einfluss des englischen Quäkerthums, p. 42). This history had a great influence on Goethe in his teens, leading him, he says, to the conviction that he, like so many other men, should have a religion of his own, which he goes on to describe. It was a re-hash of Gnosticism. (Wahrheit und Dichtung, B. viii; Werke, ed. 1866, xi, 344 sq.)

[1278] Cp. Hagenbach, Kirchengeschichte, i, 171: Pünjer, i, 279.

[1279] Die Göttlichkeit der Vernunft.

[1280] Noack, Th. iii, Kap. 2: Saintes, pp. 85-86; Pünjer, p. 442. It is interesting to find Edelmann supplying a formula latterly utilized by the so-called "New Theology" in England--the thesis that "the reality of everything which exists is God," and that there can therefore be no atheists, since he who recognizes the universe recognizes God.

[1281] Naigeon, by altering the words of Diderot, caused him to appear one of the exceptions; but he was not. See Rosenkranz, Diderot's Leben und Werke. Vorb. p. vii.

[1282] Kahnis, pp. 128-29. Edelmann's Life was written by Pratje. Historische Nachrichten von Edelmann's Leben, 1755. It gives a list of replies to his writings (p. 205 sq.). Apropos of the first issue of Strauss's Leben Jesu, a volume of Erinnerungen of Edelmann was published at Clausthal in 1839 by W. Elster; and Strauss in his Dogmatik avowed the pleasure with which he had made the acquaintance of so interesting a writer. A collection of extracts from Edelmann's works, entitled Der neu eröffnete Edelmann, was published at Bern in 1847; and the Unschuldige Wahrheiten was reprinted in 1846. His Autobiography, written in 1752, was published in 1849.

[1283] Betrachtungen über die vornehmsten Wahrheiten der Religion. Another apologetic work of the period marked by rational moderation and tolerance was the Vertheidigten Glauben der Christen of the Berlin court-preacher A. W. F. Sack (1754).

[1284] Art. by Wagenmann in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie.

[1285] Hagenbach, Kirchengeschichte, i, 355.

[1286] Pünjer, i, 542.

[1287] Kurz, Hist. of the Christian Church from the Reformation, Eng. tr. ii, 274. A Jesuit, A. Merz, wrote four replies to Jerusalem. One was entitled Frag ob durch die biblische Simplicität allein ein Freydenker oder Deist bekehret ... werden könne ("Can a Freethinker or Deist be converted by Biblical Simplicity alone?"), 1775.

[1288] Cp. Hagenbach, i, 353; tr. p. 120. Jerusalem was the father of the gifted youth whose suicide (1775) moved Goethe to write The Sorrows of Werther, a false presentment of the real personality, which stirred Lessing (his affectionate friend) to publish a volume of the dead youth's essays, in vindication of his character. The father had considerable influence in purifying German style. Cp. Goethe, Wahrheit und Dichtung, Th. ii, B. vii; Werke, ed. 1866. xi, 272; and Hagenbach, i, 354.

[1289] Goethe, as last cited, pp. 268-69.

[1290] Lechler, Gesch. des englischen Deismus, pp. 447-52. The translations began with that of Tindal (1741), which made a great sensation.

[1291] Pusey, pp. 125, 127, citing Twesten; Gostwick, German Culture and Christianity, p. 36, citing Ernesti. Thorschmid's Freidenker Bibliothek, issued in 1765-67, collected both translations and refutations. Lechler, p. 451.

[1292] Lange, Gesch. des Materialismus, i. 405 (Eng. tr. ii, 146-47).

[1293] Lange, i, 347, 399 (Eng. tr. ii, 76, 137).

[1294] Lange, i, 396-97 (ii, 134-35).

[1295] Goethe tells of having seen in his boyhood, at Frankfort, an irreligious French romance publicly burned, and of having his interest in the book thereby awakened. But this seems to have been during the French occupation. (Wahrheit und Dichtung, B. iv; Werke, xi, 146.)

[1296] Id. B. iv, end.

[1297] Translated into English 1780; 2nd ed. 1793. The translator claims for Haller great learning (2nd ed. p. xix). He seems in reality to have had very little, as he represents that Jesus in his day "was the only teacher who recommended chastity to men" (p. 82).

[1298] Rettung der Offenbarung gegen die Einwürfe der Freigeister. Haller wrote under a similar title, 1775-76.

[1299] Baur, Gesch. der christl. Kirche, iv, 599.

[1300] Gostwick, p. 15.

[1301] Wahrheit und Dichtung, B. viii; Werke, xi, 329.

[1302] Schlosser, Hist. of Eighteenth Cent., Eng. tr. 1843. i, 150; Hagenbach, tr. p. 66.

[1303] Hagenbach, tr. p. 63.

[1304] Id., Kirchengeschichte, i, 232.

[1305] Kahnis, p. 43; Tholuck, Abriss, p. 34.

[1306] See the extracts of Büchner, Zwei gekrönte Freidenker, 1890, pp. 45-47.

[1307] Thiébault, Mes Souvenirs de Vingt Ans de Séjour à Berlin, 2e édit. 1805, i, 126-28. See i, 355-56, ii, 78-82, as to the baselessness of the stories (e.g., Pusey, Histor. Inq. into Ger. Rationalism, p. 123) that Frederick changed his views in old age. Thiébault, a strict Catholic, is emphatic in his negation: "The persons who assert that [his principles] became more religious ... have either lied or been themselves mistaken." Carlyle naturally detests Thiébault. The rumour may have arisen out of the fact that in his Examen critique du Système de la Nature Frederick counter-argues d'Holbach's impeachment of Christianity. The attack on kings gave him a fellow-feeling with the Church.

[1308] Cp. the argument of Faure, Hist. de Saint Louis, 1866, i, 242-43; ii, 597.

[1309] Examen de l'Essai sur les préjugés, 1769. See the passage in Lévy-Bruhl, L'Allemagne depuis Leibniz, p. 89).

[1310] G. Weber, Gesch. der deutschen Literatur, 11te Aufl. p. 99.

[1311] Zur Gesch. der Relig. und Philos. in Deutschland--Werke, ed. 1876, iii, 63-64. Goethe's blame (W. und D., B. vii) is passed on purely literary grounds.

[1312] Hagenbach, tr. pp. 103-104; Cairns, p. 177.

[1313] This post he left to become secretary of the Academy of Painting.

[1314] Cited by Pünjer, i, 545-46.

[1315] Id. p. 546.

[1316] Hagenbach, tr. pp. 100-103; Saintes, pp. 91-92; Pünjer, p. 536; Noack, Th. iii, Kap. 7.

[1317] Hagenbach, Kirchengeschichte, i, 298, 351.

[1318] Id. i, 294 sq.

[1319] The book is remembered in France by reason of Eberhard's amusing mistake of treating as a serious production of the Sorbonne the skit in which Turgot derided the Sorbonne's findings against Marmontel's Bélisaire.

[1320] Hagenbach, tr. p. 109.

[1321] Eberhard, however, is respectfully treated by Lessing in his discussion on Leibnitz's view as to eternal punishment.

[1322] Noack, Th. iii, Kap. 8.

[1323] Saintes, pp. 92-93.

[1324] Cp. Hagenbach, Kirchengeschichte, i, 348, 363.

[1325] Id. i, 367; tr. pp. 124-25; Saintes, p. 94; Kahnis, p. 45. Pusey (150-51, note) speaks of Teller and Spalding as belonging, with Nicolai, Mendelssohn, and others, to a "secret institute, whose object was to remodel religion and alter the form of government." This seems to be a fantasy.

[1326] So Steffens, cited by Hagenbach, tr. p. 124.

[1327] P. Gastrow, Joh. Salomo Semler, 1905, p. 45. See Pusey, 140-41, note, for Semler's account of the rigid and unreasoning orthodoxy against which he reacted. (Citing Semler's Lebenschreibung, ii, 121-61.) Semler, however, records that Baumgarten, one of the theological professors at Halle, would in expansive moods defend theism and make light of theology (Lebenschreibung, i, 103 ). Cp. Tholuck, Abriss, as cited, pp. 12, 18. Pusey notes that "many of the principal innovators had been pupils of Baumgarten" (p. 132, citing Niemeyer).

[1328] Cp. Dr. G. Karo, Johann Salomo Semler, 1905, p. 25; Saintes, pp. 129-31.

[1329] Cp. Gostwick, p. 51; Pünjer, i, 561.

[1330] Karo, p. 44.

[1331] Cp. Saintes, p. 132 sq.

[1332] Cp. Karo, pp. 3, 8, 16, 28.

[1333] Over a hundred and seventy in all. Pünjer, i, 560; Gastrow, p. 637.

[1334] Karo, pp. 5-6.

[1335] Gastrow, p. 223.

[1336] Pusey, p. 142; A. S. Farrar, Crit. Hist. of Freethought, p. 313.

[1337] Cp. Karo, p. 5 sq.; Stäudlin, cited by Tholuck, Abriss, p. 39.

[1338] Kahnis. p. 116.

[1339] Wahre Gründe wanum Gott die Offenbarung nicht mit augenscheinlichen Beweisen versehen hat.

[1340] Die Göttliche Eingebung, 1771.

[1341] Beweis das Gott die Menschen bereits durch seine Offenbarung in der Natur zur Seligkeit fuhre.

[1342] Gostwick, p. 53; Pünjer, i, 546, note.

[1343] Cp. Kahnis, pp. 132-36, as to Bahrdt's early morals.

[1344] Geschichte seines Lebens, etc. 1700-91, iv, 119.

[1345] See below, p. 331.

[1346] Geschichte seines Lebens, Kap. 22; ii, 223 sq.

[1347] Baur, Gesch. der chr. Kirche, iv. 597.

[1348] Translated into English in 1789.

[1349] Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, Abschn. I--Werke, 1838 p. 239 (Eng. tr. 1838, pp. 50-51); Rousseau, Contrat Social, liv, iv, ch. viii, near end; Locke, as cited above, p. 117. Cp. Bartholmèss, Hist. crit. des doctr. relig. de la philos. moderne, 1855, i, 145; Baur, as last cited.

[1350] See his Werke, ed. 1866, v, 317--Aus dem Briefe, die neueste Literatur betreffend, 49ter Brief.

[1351] If Lessing's life were sketched in the spirit in which orthodoxy has handled that of Bahrdt, it could be made unedifying enough. Even Goethe remarks that Lessing "enjoyed himself in a disorderly tavern life" (Wahrheit und Dichtung, B. vii); and all that Hagenbach maliciously charges against Basedow in the way of irregularity of study is true of him. On that and other points, usually glossed over, see the sketch in Taylor's Historic Survey of German Poetry, 1830, i, 332-37. All the while, Lessing is an essentially sound-hearted and estimable personality; and he would probably have been the last man to echo the tone of the orthodox towards the personal life of the freethinkers who went further in unbelief than he.

[1352] E.g. his fable The Bull and the Calf (Fabeln, ii, 5), à propos of the clergy and Bayle.

[1353] Sime, Life of Lessing, 1877, i, 102.

[1354] E.g. his early notice of Diderot's Lettre sur les Aveugles. Sime, i, 94.

[1355] Dramaturgie, Stück 7.

[1356] Sime, i, 103-109.

[1357] Sime, i, 73, 107; ii, 253.

[1358] In his Gedanke über die Herrnhuter, written in 1750. See Adolf Stahr's Lessing, sein Leben und seine Werke, 7te Aufl. ii, 183 sq.

[1359] Julian Schmidt puts the case sympathetically: "He had learned in his father's house what value the pastoral function may have for the culture of the people. He was bibelfest, instructed in the history of his church, Protestant in spirit, full of genuine reverence for Luther, full of high respect for historical Christianity, though on reading the Fathers he could say hard things of the Church." Gesch. der deutschen Litteratur von Leibniz bis auf unsere Zeit, ii (1886), 326.

[1360] Taylor, as cited, p. 361.

[1361] Sime, i, 73.

[1362] See Lessing's rather crude comedy, Der Freigeist, and Sime's Life, i, 41-42, 72, 77.

[1363] Cp. his letters to his brother of which extracts are given by Sime, ii, 191-92.

[1364] Sime, ii, 188.

[1365] As to the authorship see Saintes, pp. 101-102; and Sime's Life of Lessing, i, 261-62, where the counter-claim is rejected.

[1366] Zur Geschichte und Literatur, aus dem 4ten Beitr.--Werke, vi. 142 sq. See also in his Theologische Streitschriften the Axiomata written against Pastor Goeze. Cp. Schwarz, Lessing als Theologe, 1854, pp. 146, 151; and Pusey, as cited, p. 51. note.

[1367] Compare the regrets of Pusey (pp. 51, 153), Cairns (p. 195), Hagenbach (pp. 89-97), and Saintes (p. 100).

[1368] Sämmtliche Schriften, ed. Lachmann, 1857, xi (2), 248. Sime (ii, 190) mistranslates this passage; and Schmidt (ii, 326) mutilates it by omissions. Fontanes (Le Christianisme moderne: Étude sur Lessing, 1867, p. 171) paraphrases it very loosely.

[1369] Sime, ii, 190.

[1370] Stahr, ii, 239; Sime, ii. 189.

[1371] See Sime, ii, 222, 233: Stahr, ii, 254. Hettner, an admirer, calls the early Christianity of Reason a piece of sophistical dialectic. Litteraturgeschichte des 18ten Jahrhunderts, ed. 1872, iii. 588-89.

[1372] Stahr, ii, 243. Lessing said the report to this effect was a lie; but this and other mystifications appear to have been by way of fulfilling his promise of secrecy to the Reimarus family. Cairns, pp. 203, 209. Cp. Farrar, Crit. Hist. of Freethought, note 29.

[1373] See it analysed by Bartholmèss, Hist. crit. des doctr. relig. de la philos. moderne, i, 147-67; and by Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historic Jesus (trans. of Von Reimarus zu Wrede), 1910.

[1374] Gostwick, p. 47; Bartholmèss, i, 166. His book was translated into English (The Principal Truths of Natural Religion Defended and Illustrated) in 1766; into Dutch in 1758; in part into French in 1768; and seven editions of the original had appeared by 1798.

[1375] Stahr, ii, 241-44.

[1376] Id. ii, 245.

[1377] The statement that, in Lessing's age, "in north Germany men were able to think and write freely" (Conybeare, Hist. of N. T. Crit., p. 80) is thus seen to be highly misleading.

[1378] Von dem Zwecke, Jesus und seiner Jünger, Braunschweig, 1778.

[1379] Taylor, Histor. Survey of German Poetry, i, 365.

[1380] Stahr, ii, 253-54.

[1381] Cp. Introd. to Willis's trans. of Nathan. The play is sometimes attacked as being grossly unfair to Christianity. (E.g. Crouslé, Lessing, 1863, p. 206.) The answer to this complaint is given by Sime, ii, 252 sq.

[1382] See Cairns, Appendix, Note I; Willis, Spinoza, pp. 149-62; Sime, ii, 299-303; and Stahr, ii, 219-30, giving the testimony of Jacobi. Cp. Pünjer, i, 564-85. But Heine laughingly adjures Moses Mendelssohn, who grieved so intensely over Lessing's Spinozism, to rest quiet in his grave: "Thy Lessing was indeed on the way to that terrible error ... but the Highest, the Father in Heaven, saved him in time by death. He died a good deist, like thee and Nicolai and Teller and the Universal German Library" (Zur Gesch. der Rel. und Philos. in Deutschland, B. ii, near end.--Werke, ed. 1876, iii. 69).

[1383] See in Stahr, ii, 184-85. the various characterizations of his indefinite philosophy. Stahr's own account of him as anticipating the moral philosophy of Kant is as overstrained as the others. Gastrow, an admirer, expresses wonder (Johann Salomo Semler, p. 188) at the indifference of Lessing to the critical philosophy in general.

[1384] Sime, ii, ch. xxix, gives a good survey.

[1385] Letter to his brother, Feb., 1778.

[1386] Strauss, Das Leben Jesu (the second) Einleitung, § 14.

[1387] Hurst, History of Rationalism, 3rd ed. p. 130. "It was a popular belief, as an organ of pious opinion announced to its readers, that at his death the devil came and carried him away like a second Faust." Sime, ii, 330.