{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_52160/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_52160","id":"gutenberg_52160","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/52160","summary":null,"tags":["Category: History - Early Modern (c. 1450-1750)","Category: History - European","Category: History - Modern (1750+)","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Free thought -- History"],"text":"A SHORT HISTORY\n OF\n FREETHOUGHT\n\n ANCIENT AND MODERN\n\n\n BY\n JOHN M. ROBERTSON\n\n\n THIRD EDITION, REVISED AND EXPANDED\n IN TWO VOLUMES\n Vol. II\n\n\n (ISSUED FOR THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION, LIMITED)\n\n\n London:\n WATTS & CO.,\n JOHNSON'S COURT, FLEET STREET, E.C.\n\n 1915\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\nVOLUME II\n\n PAGE\n\nChap. XIII--The Rise of Modern Freethought (continued)\n\n \u00a7 4. England. Persecution and executions under Henry VIII,\n Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth. Charges of atheism. Lilly's\n polemic. Reginald Scot on witchcraft. The Family of\n Love. Hamond, Lewes, Kett. Apologetic literature. Influence\n of Machiavelli. Nashe's polemic. Marlowe, Raleigh, Harriott,\n Kyd. Protests of Pilkington and Hooker. Polemic of Bishop\n Morton. Shakespeare. The drama generally. Executions under\n James. Bacon. Suckling 1\n \u00a7 5. Popular Thought in Europe. Callidius. Flade. Wier. Coornhert.\n Grotius. Gorl\u00e6us. Zwicker. Koerbagh. Beverland. Socinianism.\n The case of Spain. Cervantes 32\n \u00a7 6. Scientific Thought. Copernicus. Giordano Bruno. Vanini.\n Galileo. The Aristotelian strife. Vives. Ramus. Descartes.\n Gassendi 41\n\n\nChap. XIV--British Freethought in the Seventeenth Century\n\n \u00a7 1. Lord Herbert of Cherbury. Hobbes. Selden 69\n \u00a7 2. The popular ferment: attempted suppression of heresy by\n Parliament. Lawrence Clarkson. The Levellers and Toleration.\n Forms of unbelief. The term \"rationalist.\" Propaganda against\n atheism. Culverwel. The Polemic of Henry More. Freethought at\n the Restoration. The case of Biddle. The protests of Howe,\n Stillingfleet, and Baxter. Freethought in Scotland. The\n argument of Mackenzie. English Apologetics of Casaubon,\n Ingelo, Temple, Wilkins, Tillotson, Cudworth, Boyle, and\n others. Martin Clifford. Emergence of Deism. Avowals of\n Archdeacon Parker, Sherlock, and South. Dryden. Discussion on\n miracles. Charles Blount. Leslie's polemic. Growth of\n apologetic literature. Toland. The Licensing Act 75\n \u00a7 3. Literary, scientific, and academic developments. Sir\n Thomas Browne. Jeremy Taylor. John Spencer. Joseph Glanvill.\n Cartesianism. Glisson. Influence of Gassendi.\n Resistance to Copernican theory. Lord Falkland. Colonel\n Fry. Locke. Bury. Temple. The Marquis of Halifax. Newton.\n Unitarianism. Penn. Firmin. Latitudinarianism. Tillotson.\n Dr. T. Burnet. Dr. B. Connor. John Craig. The\n \"rationalists\" 100\n\n\nChap. XV--French and Dutch Freethought in the Seventeenth Century\n\n 1. Influence of Montaigne and Charron. Gui Patin. Naud\u00e9. La\n Mothe le Vayer 117\n 2. Catholic Pyrrhonism 120\n 3. Descartes's influence. Boileau. Jesuit and royal hostility 121\n 4. Vogue of freethinking. Malherbe. Joan Fontanier. Th\u00e9ophile\n de Viau. Claude Petit. Corneille. Moli\u00e8re 122\n 5. Cyrano de Bergerac 123\n 6. Pascal's skepticism. Religious quarrels 124\n 7. Huet's skepticism 126\n 8. Cartesianism. Malebranche 128\n 9. Buffier. Scientific movements 130\n 10. Richard Simon. La Peyr\u00e8re 131\n 11. Dutch thought. Louis Meyer. Cartesian heresy 132\n 12. Spinoza 133\n 13. Biblical criticism. Spinozism. Deurhoff. B. Bekker 137\n 14. Bayle 139\n 15. Developments in France. The polemic of Abbadie. Persecution\n of Protestants. Fontenelle 141\n 16. St. Evremond. Regnard. La Bruy\u00e8re. Spread of\n skepticism. Fanaticism at court 143\n\n\nChap. XVI--British Freethought in the Eighteenth Century\n\n \u00a7 1. Toland. Blasphemy Law. Strifes among believers. Cudworth.\n Bishops Browne and Berkeley. Heresy in the Church. The\n Schools of Newton, Leibnitz, and Clarke. Hutchinson.\n Halley. Provincial deism. Saunderson. Simson. Literary\n orthodoxy. Addison. Steele. Berkeley. Swift. New deism.\n Shaftesbury. Trenchard. Unitarianism. Asgill. Coward.\n Dodwell. Whiston 147\n \u00a7 2. Anthony Collins. Bentley's attack. Mandeville. Woolston.\n Middleton. Deism at Oxford. Tindal. Middleton and\n Waterland 154\n \u00a7 3. Unitarianism: its spread among Presbyterians. Chubb.\n Hall. Elwall 159\n \u00a7 4. Berkeley's polemic. Lady Mary Montagu. Pope. Deism and\n Atheism. Coward. Strutt 162\n \u00a7 5. Parvish. Influence of Spinoza 167\n \u00a7 6. William Pitt. Morgan. Annet. Dodwell the Younger 169\n \u00a7 7. The work achieved by deism. The social situation. Recent\n disparagements and German testimony 170\n \u00a7 8. Arrest of English science. Hale. Burnet. Whiston.\n Woodward. Effects of Imperialism. Contrast with France.\n The mathematicians 176\n \u00a7 9. Supposed \"decay\" of deism. Butler. William Law. Hume 179\n \u00a7 10. Freethought in Scotland. Execution of Thomas Aikenhead.\n Confiscation of innovating books. Legislation against\n deism. Anstruther's and Halyburton's polemic. Strife\n over creeds. John Johnstone. William Dudgeon. Hutcheson.\n Leechman. Forbes. Miller. Kames. Smith. Ferguson.\n Church riots 181\n \u00a7 11. Freethought in Ireland. Lord Molesworth. Archbishop Synge.\n Bishop Clayton 188\n \u00a7 12. Situation in England in 1750. Richardson's lament.\n Middleton. Deism among the clergy. Sykes. The deistic\n evolution 190\n \u00a7 13. Materialism. La Mettrie. Shifting of the social centre:\n socio-political forces. Gray's avowal. Hume's estimate.\n Goldsmith's. The later deism. Bolingbroke 194\n \u00a7 14. Diderot's diagnosis. Influence of Voltaire. Chatterton.\n Low state of popular culture. Prosecutions of poor\n freethinkers. Jacob Ilive. Peter Annet. Later deistic\n literature. Unitarianism. Evanson. Tomkyns. Watts.\n Lardner. Priestley. Toulmin. D. Williams 198\n \u00a7 15. Gibbon. Spread of unbelief. The creed of the younger\n Pitt. Fox. Geology. Hutton. Cowper's and Paley's\n complaints. Erasmus Darwin. Mary Wollstonecraft 203\n \u00a7 16. Burns and Scotland 208\n \u00a7 17. Panic and reaction after the French Revolution. New\n aristocratic orthodoxy. Thomas Paine. New democratic\n freethought 209\n\n\nChap. XVII--French Freethought in the Eighteenth Century\n\n 1. Boulainvilliers. Strifes in the Church. F\u00e9nelon and Ramsay.\n Fanaticism at court. New freethinking. Gilbert. Tyssot de\n Patot. Deslandes. Persecution of Protestants 213\n 2. Output of apologetics 214\n 3. The political situation 216\n 4. Huard and Huet 216\n 5. Montesquieu 217\n 6. Jean Meslier 219\n 7. Freethinking priests. Pleas for toleration. Boindin 221\n 8. Voltaire 222\n 9. Errors as to the course of development 224\n 10. Voltaire's character and influence 229\n 11. Progress of tolerance. Marie Huber. Resistance of bigotry.\n De Prades. The Encyclop\u00e9die. Fontenelle as censor 233\n 12. Chronological outline of the literary movement 236\n 13. New politics. The less famous freethinkers: Burigny;\n Fontenelle; De Brosses; Meister; Vauvenargues; Mirabaud;\n Fr\u00e9ret 244\n 14. N.-A. Boulanger. Dumarsais. Pr\u00e9montval. Solidity of much\n of the French product 246\n 15. General anonymity of the freethinkers. The orthodox defence 250\n 16. The prominent freethinkers. Rousseau 253\n 17. Astruc 256\n 18. Freethought in the Acad\u00e9mie. Beginnings in classical\n research. Emergence of anti-clericalism. D'Argenson's\n notes 257\n 19. The affair of Pompignan 258\n 20. Marmontel's B\u00e9lisaire 259\n 21. The scientific movement: La Mettrie 260\n 22. Study of Nature. Fontenelle. Lenglet du Fresnoy. De\n Maillet's Telliamed. Mirabaud. Resistance of Voltaire to\n the new ideas. Switzerland. Buffon and the Church 262\n 23. Maupertuis. Diderot. Condillac. Robinet. Helv\u00e9tius 264\n 24. Diderot's doctrines and influence 267\n 25. D'Alembert and d'Holbach 271\n 26. Freethought and the Revolution 273\n 27. The conventional myth and the facts. Necker. Abb\u00e9 Gr\u00e9goire.\n The argument of Michelet. The legend of the Goddess of\n Reason. Sacrilege in the English and French Revolutions.\n H\u00e9bert. Danton. Chaumette. Clootz. The atheist Salaville 274\n 28. Religious and political forces of revolt. The polemic\n of Rivarol 280\n 29. The political causation. Rebellion in the ages of faith 281\n 30. The polemic of Mallet du Pan. Saner views of Barante.\n Freethinkers and orthodox in each political camp. Mably.\n Voltaire. D'Holbach. Rousseau. Diderot. Orthodoxy of the\n mass. The thesis of Chamfort 284\n 31. The reign of persecution 289\n 32. Orthodox lovers of tolerance 291\n 33. Napoleon 292\n\n\nChap. XVIII--German Freethought in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth\nCenturies\n\n 1. Moral Decline under Lutheranism. Freethought before the\n Thirty Years' War. Orthodox polemic. The movement of\n Matthias Knutzen 294\n 2. Influence of Spinoza. Stosch. Output of apologetics 297\n 3. Leibnitz 298\n 4. Pietism. Orthodox hostility. Spread of Rationalism 300\n 5. Thomasius 302\n 6. Dippel 304\n 7. T. L. Lau 305\n 8. Wolff 305\n 9. Freemasonry and freethinking. J. L. Schmidt. Martin Knutzen 306\n 10. J. C. Edelmann 307\n 11. Abbot Jerusalem 308\n 12. English and French influences. The scientific movement.\n Orthodox science. Haller. Rapid spread of rationalism 309\n 13. Frederick the Great 312\n 14. Mauvillon. Nicolai. Riem. Schade. Basedow. Eberhard.\n Steinbart. Spalding. Teller 315\n 15. Semler. T\u00f6llner. Academic rationalism 318\n 16. Bahrdt 320\n 17. Moses Mendelssohn. Lessing. Reimarus 322\n 18. Vogue of deism. Wieland. Cases of Isenbiehl and Steinbuhler.\n A secret society. Clerical rationalism. Schulz. The edict of\n Frederick William II. Persistence of skepticism. The\n Marokkanische Briefe. Mauvillon. Herder 329\n 19. Goethe 333\n 20. Schiller 336\n 21. Kant 337\n 22. Influence of Kant. The sequel. Hamann. Chr. A. Crusius.\n Platner. Beausobre the younger 345\n 23. Fichte. Philosophic strifes 349\n 24. Rationalism and conservatism in both camps 350\n 25. Austria. Jahn. Joseph II. Beethoven 351\n\n\nChap. XIX--Freethought in the Remaining European States\n\n \u00a7 1. Holland. Elizabeth Wolff. Leenhof. Booms. Influence of\n Bayle. Passerano. Lack of native freethought literature 352\n \u00a7 2. The Scandinavian States.\n\n 1. Course of the Reformation. Subsequent wars.\n Retrogression in Denmark 354\n 2. Holberg's Nicolas Klimius 355\n 3. Sweden. Queen Christina 357\n 4. Swedenborg 358\n 5. Upper-class indifference. Gustavus III. Kjellgren and\n Bellman. Torild. Retrogression in Sweden 359\n 6. Revival of thought in Denmark. Struensee. Mary\n Wollstonecraft's survey 361\n\n \u00a7 3. The Slavonic States.\n\n 1. Poland. Liszinski 362\n 2. Russia. Nikon. Peter the Great. Kantemir. Catherine 363\n\n \u00a7 4. Italy.\n\n 1. Decline under Spanish Rule. Naples 365\n 2. Vico 365\n 3. Subsequent scientific thought. General revival of\n freethought under French influence 367\n 4. Beccaria. Algarotti. Filangieri. Galiani. Genovesi.\n Alfieri. Bettinelli. Dandolo. Giannone. Algarotti and\n the Popes. The scientific revival. Progress and reaction\n in Tuscany. Effects of the French Revolution 368\n\n \u00a7 5. Spain and Portugal.\n\n 1. Progress under Bourbon rule in Spain. Aranda. D'Alba 372\n 2. Tyranny of the Inquisition. Aranda. Olavid\u00e8s 373\n 3. Duke of Almodobar. D'Azara. Ricla 373\n 4. The case of Samaniego 374\n 5. Bails. Cagnuelo. Centeno 375\n 6. Faxardo. Iriarte 375\n 7. Ista. Salas 376\n 8. Reaction after Charles III 376\n 9. Portugal. Pombal 377\n\n \u00a7 6. Switzerland.\n\n Socinianism and its sequel\u00e6. The Turrettini. Geneva and\n Rousseau. Burlamaqui. Spread of deism 378\n\n\nChap. XX--Early Freethought in the United States\n\n 1. Deism of the revolutionary statesmen 381\n 2. First traces of unbelief. Franklin 381\n 3. Jefferson. John Adams. Washington 382\n 4. Thomas Paine 383\n 5. Paine's treatment in America 384\n 6. Palmer. Houston. Deism and Unitarianism 385\n\n\nChap. XXI.--Freethought in the Nineteenth Century\n\n The Reaction. Tone in England. Clericalism in Italy and\n Spain. Movement in France and Germany 386\n The Forces of Renascence. International movement. Summary of\n critical forces. Developments of science. Lines of resistance 389\n\n Section 1.--Popular Propaganda and Culture\n\n 1. Democracy. Paine. Translations from the French 391\n 2. Huttman. Houston. Wedderburn 393\n 3. Pietist persecution. Richard Carlile. John Clarke.\n Robert Taylor. Charles Southwell. G. J. Holyoake.\n Women helpers 393\n 4. Hetherington. Operation of blasphemy law 395\n 5. Robert Owen 395\n 6. The reign of bigotry. Influence of Gibbon 398\n 7. Charles Bradlaugh and Secularism. Imprisonment of\n G. W. Foote. Treatment of Bradlaugh by Parliament.\n Resultant energy of secularist attack 399\n 8. New literary developments. Lecky. Conway. Winwood\n Reade. Spencer. Arnold. Mill. Clifford. Stephen.\n Amberley. New apologetics 402\n 9. Freethought in France. Social schemes. Fourier.\n Saint-Simon. Comte. Duruy and Sainte-Beuve 404\n 10. Bigotry in Spain. Popular freethought in Catholic\n countries. Journalism 406\n 11. Fluctuations in Germany. Persistence of religious\n liberalism. Marx and Socialism. Official orthodoxy 409\n 12. The Scandinavian States and Russia 412\n 13. \"Free-religious\" societies 413\n 14. Unitarianism in England and America 414\n 15. Clerical rationalism in Protestant countries.\n Switzerland. Holland. Dutch South Africa 415\n 16. Developments in Sweden 417\n 17. The United States. Ingersoll. Lincoln. Stephen\n Douglas. Frederick Douglass. Academic persecution.\n Changes of front 419\n\n Section 2.--Biblical Criticism\n\n 1. Rationalism in Germany. The Schleiermacher reaction:\n its heretical character. Orthodox hostility 420\n 2. Progress in both camps. Strauss's critical syncretism 423\n 3. Criticism of the Fourth Gospel 425\n 4. Strauss's achievement 425\n 5. Official reaction 426\n 6. Fresh advance. Schwegler. Bruno Bauer 426\n 7. Strauss's second Life of Jesus. His politics. His\n Voltaire and Old and New Faith. His total influence 428\n 8. Fluctuating progress of criticism. Important issues\n passed-by. Nork. Ghillany. Daumer. Ewerbeck. Colenso.\n Kuenen. Kalisch. Wellhausen 431\n 9. New Testament criticism. Baur. Zeller. Van Manen 434\n 10. Falling-off in German candidates for the ministry as in\n congregations. Official orthodox pressures 435\n 11. Attack and defence in England. The Tractarian reaction.\n Progress of criticism. Hennell. The United States:\n Parker. English publicists: F. W. Newman; R. W. Mackay;\n W. R. Greg. Translations. E. P. Meredith; Thomas Scott;\n W. R. Cassels 437\n 12. New Testament criticism in France. Renan and Havet 439\n\n Section 3.--Poetry and General Literature\n\n 1. The French literary reaction. Chateaubriand 440\n 2. Predominance of freethought in later belles lettres 441\n 3. B\u00e9ranger. De Musset. Victor Hugo. Leconte de Lisle. The\n critics. The reactionists 442\n 4. Poetry in England. Shelley. Coleridge. The romantic\n movement. Scott. Byron. Keats 443\n 5. Charles Lamb 445\n 6. Carlyle. Mill. Froude 447\n 7. Orthodoxy and conformity. Bain's view of Carlyle,\n Macaulay, and Lyell 448\n 8. The literary influence. Ruskin. Arnold. Intellectual\n preponderance of rationalism 450\n 9. English fiction from Miss Edgeworth to the present\n time 451\n 10. Richard Jefferies 452\n 11. Poetry since Shelley 452\n 12. American belles lettres 453\n 13. Leopardi. Carducci. Kleist. Heine 454\n 14. Russian belles lettres 456\n 15. The Scandinavian States 457\n\n Section 4.--The Natural Sciences\n\n 1. Progress in cosmology. Laplace and modern astronomy.\n Orthodox resistance. Leslie 457\n 2. Physiology in France. Cabanis 459\n 3. Physiology in England. Lawrence. Morgan 461\n 4. Geology after Hutton. Hugh Miller. Baden Powell 462\n 5. Darwin 464\n 6. Robert Chambers 464\n 7. Orthodox resistance. General advance 465\n 8. Triumph of evolutionism. Spencer. Clifford. Huxley 466\n\n Section 5.--The Sociological Sciences\n\n 1. Eighteenth-century sociology. Salverte. Charles\n Comte. Auguste Comte 468\n 2. Progress in England. Orthodoxy of Hallam. Carlyle.\n Grote. Thirlwall. Long 468\n 3. Sociology proper. Orthodox hostility 469\n 4. Mythology and anthropology. Tylor. Spencer. Avebury.\n Frazer 470\n\n Section 6.--Philosophy and Ethics\n\n 1. Fichte. Schelling. Hegel 471\n 2. Germany after Hegel. Schopenhauer. Hartmann 474\n 3. Feuerbach. Stirner 475\n 4. Arnold Ruge 478\n 5. B\u00fcchner 478\n 6. Philosophy in France. Maine de Biran. Cousin. Jouffroy 479\n 7. Movement of Lamennais 480\n 8. Comte and Comtism 483\n 9. Philosophy in Britain. Bentham. James Mill. Grote.\n Political rationalism 484\n 10. Hamilton. Mansel. Spencer 485\n 11. Semi-rationalism in the churches 487\n 12. J. S. Mill 489\n\n Section 7.--Modern Jewry\n\n Jewish influence in philosophy since Spinoza. Modern balance\n of tendencies 489\n\n Section 8.--The Oriental Civilizations\n\n Asiatic intellectual life. Japan. Discussions on Japanese\n psychosis. Fukuzawa. The recent Cult of the Emperor. China.\n India. Turkey. Greece 490\n\n\nConclusion 499\n\nIndex 503\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIII\n\nTHE RISE OF MODERN FREETHOUGHT--(Continued)\n\n\n\u00a7 4. England\n\nWhile France was thus passing from general fanaticism to a large\nmeasure of freethought, England was passing by a less tempestuous path\nto a hardly less advanced stage of opinion. It was indeed a bloody\nage; and in 1535 we have record of nineteen men and five women of\nHolland, apparently Anabaptists, who denied the \"humanity\" of Christ\nand rejected infant baptism and transubstantiation, being sentenced to\nbe burned alive--two suffering at Smithfield, and the rest at other\ntowns, by way of example. Others in Henry's reign suffered the same\npenalty for the same offence; and in 1538 a priest named Nicholson\nor Lambert, refusing on the King's personal pressure to recant,\nwas \"brent in Smithfield\" for denying the bodily presence in the\neucharist. [1] The first decades of \"Reformation\" in England truly\nsaw the opening of new vials of blood. More and Fisher and scores of\nlesser men died as Catholics for denying the King's \"supremacy\" in\nreligion; as many more for denying the Catholic tenets which the King\nheld to the last; and not a few by the consent of More and Fisher for\ntranslating or circulating the sacred books. Latimer, martyred under\nMary, had applauded the burning of the Anabaptists. One generation\nslew for denial of the humanity of Christ; the next for denial of his\ndivinity. Under Edward VI there were burned no Catholics, but several\nheretics, including Joan Bocher and a Dutch Unitarian, George Van Pare,\ndescribed as a man of saintly life. [2] Still the English evolution\nwas less destructive than the French or the German, and the comparative\nbloodlessness of the strife between Protestant and Catholic under Mary\n[3] and Elizabeth, the treatment of the Jesuit propaganda under the\nlatter queen as a political rather than a doctrinal question, [4]\nprevented any such vehemence of recoil from religious ideals as took\nplace in France. When in 1575 the law De h\u00e6retico comburendo, which\nhad slept for seventeen years, was set to work anew under Elizabeth,\nthe first victims were Dutch Anabaptists. Of a congregation of them\nat Aldgate, twenty-seven were imprisoned, of whom ten were burned,\nand the rest deported. Two others, John Wielmacker and Hendrich Ter\nWoort, were anti-Trinitarians, and were burned accordingly. Foxe\nappealed to the Queen to appoint any punishment short of death,\nor even that of hanging, rather than the horrible death by burning;\nbut in vain. \"All parties at the time concurred\" in approving the\ncourse taken. [5] Orthodoxy was rampant.\n\nUnbelief, as we have seen, however, there certainly was; and it is\nrecorded that Walter, Earl of Essex, on his deathbed at Dublin in 1576,\nmurmured that among his countrymen neither Popery nor Protestantism\nprevailed: \"there was nothing but infidelity, infidelity, infidelity;\natheism, atheism; no religion, no religion.\" [6] And when we turn aside\nfrom the beaten paths of Elizabethan literature we see clearly what is\npartly visible from those paths--a number of freethinking variations\nfrom the norm of faith. Ascham, as we saw, found some semblance of\natheism shockingly common among the travelled upper class of his day;\nand the testimonies continue. Edward Kirke, writing his \"glosses\"\nto Spenser's Shepherd's Calendar in 1578, observes that \"it was\nan old opinion, and yet is continued in some men's conceit, that\nmen of years have no fear of God at all, or not so much as younger\nfolk,\" experience having made them skeptical. Erasmus, he notes,\nin his Adages makes the proverb \"Nemo senex metuit Jovem\" signify\nmerely that \"old men are far from superstition and belief in false\nGods.\" But Kirke insists that, \"his great learning notwithstanding,\nit is too plain to be gainsaid that old men are much more inclined\nto such fond fooleries than younger men,\" [7] apparently meaning that\nelderly men in his day were commonly skeptical about divine providence.\n\nOther writers of the day do not limit unbelief to the aged. Lilly,\nin his Euphues (1578), referring to England in general or Oxford\nin particular as Athens, asks: \"Be there not many in Athens which\nthink there is no God, no redemption, no resurrection?\" Further, he\ncomplains that \"it was openly reported of an old man in Naples that\nthere was more lightness in Athens than in all Italy ... more Papists,\nmore Atheists, more sects, more schisms, than in all the monarchies\nin the world\"; [8] and he proceeds to frame an absurd dialogue of\n\"Euphues and Atheos,\" in which the latter, \"monstrous, yet tractable\nto be persuaded,\" [9] is converted with a burlesque facility. Lilly,\nwho writes as a man-of-the-world believer, is a poor witness as to the\natheistic arguments current; but those he cites are so much better than\nhis own, up to the point of terrified collapse on the atheist's part,\nthat he had doubtless heard them. The atheist speaks as a pantheist,\nidentifying deity with the universe; and readily meets a simple appeal\nto Scripture with the reply that \"whosoever denieth a godhead denieth\nalso the Scriptures which testifie of him.\" [10] But in one of his own\nplays, played in 1584, Lilly puts on the stage a glimpse of current\ncontroversy in a fashion which suggests that he had not remained so\ncontemptuously confident of the self-evident character of theism. In\nCampaspe (i, 3) he introduces, undramatically enough, Plato, Aristotle,\nCleanthes, Crates, and other philosophers, who converse concerning\n\"natural causes\" and \"supernatural effects.\" Aristotle is made to\nconfess that he \"cannot by natural reason give any reason of the\nebbing and flowing of the sea\"; and Plato contends against Cleanthes,\n\"searching for things which are not to be found,\" that \"there is no\nman so savage in whom resteth not this divine particle, that there\nis an omnipotent, eternal, and divine mover, which may be called\nGod.\" Cleanthes replies that \"that first mover, which you term God,\nis the instrument of all the movings which we attribute to Nature. The\nearth ... seasons ... fruits ... the whole firmament ... and whatsoever\nelse appeareth miraculous, what man almost of mean capacity but\ncan prove it natural.\" Nothing is concluded, and the debate is\nadjourned. Anaxarchus declares: \"I will take part with Aristotle,\nthat there is Natura naturans, and yet not God\"; while Crates rejoins:\n\"And I with Plato, that there is Deus optimus maximus, and not Nature.\"\n\nIt is a curious dialogue to put upon the stage, by the mouth of\nchildren-actors, and the arbitrary ascription to Aristotle of high\ntheistic views, in a scene in which he is expressly described by a\nfellow philosopher as a Naturalist, suggests that Lilly felt the\ndanger of giving offence by presenting the supreme philosopher\nas an atheist. It is evident, however, both from Euphues and from\nCampaspe, that naturalistic views were in some vogue, else they had\nnot been handled in the theatre and in a book essentially planned\nfor the general reader. But however firmly held, they could not be\ndirectly published; and a dozen years later, over thirty years after\nthe outburst of Ascham, we still find only a sporadic and unwritten\nfreethought, however abundant, going at times in fear of its life.\n\nPrivate discussion, indeed, there must have been, if there be any\ntruth in Bacon's phrase that \"atheists will ever be talking of that\nopinion, as if they ... would be glad to be strengthened by the\nconsent of others\" [11]--an argument which would make short work\nof the vast literature of apologetic theism--but even private talk\nhad need be cautious, and there could be no publication of atheistic\nopinions. Printed rationalism could go no further than such a protest\nagainst superstition as Reginald Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft\n(1584), which, however, is a sufficiently remarkable expression of\nreason in an age in which a Bodin held angrily by the delusion. [12]\nElizabeth was herself substantially irreligious, [13] and preferred\nto keep the clergy few in number and subordinate in influence; [14]\nbut her Ministers regarded the Church as part of the State system,\nand punished all open or at least aggressive heresy in the manner\nof the Inquisition. Yet the imported doctrine of the subjective\ncharacter of hell and heaven, [15] taken up by Marlowe, held its\nground, and is denounced by Stubbes in his Anatomie of Abuses [16]\n(1583); and other foreign philosophy of the same order found religious\nacceptance. A sect called the \"Family of Love,\" deriving from Holland\n(already \"a country fruitfull of heretics\"), [17] went so far as\nto hold that \"Christ doth not signify any one person, but a quality\nwhereof many are partakers\"--a doctrine which we have seen ascribed\nby Calvin to the libertins of Geneva a generation before; [18] but\nit does not appear that they were persecuted. [19] Some isolated\npropagandists, however, paid the last penalty. One Matthew Hamont\nor Hamond, a ploughwright, of Hetherset, was in 1579 tried by the\nBishop and Consistory of Norwich \"for that he denyed Christe,\" and,\nbeing found guilty, was burned, after having had his ears cut off,\n\"because he spake wordes of blasphemie against the Queen's Maiistie\nand others of her Counsell.\" [20] The victim would thus seem to have\nbeen given to violence of speech; but the record of his negations,\nwhich suggest developments from the Anabaptist movement, is none the\nless notable. In Stow's wording, [21] they run:--\n\n\n \"That the newe Testament and Gospell of Christe are but mere\n foolishnesse, a storie of menne, or rather a mere fable.\n\n \"Item, that man is restored to grace by the meere mercy of God,\n wythout the meane of Christ's bloud, death, and passion.\n\n \"Item, that Christe is not God, nor the Saviour of the world,\n but a meere man, a sinfull man, and an abhominable Idoll.\n\n \"Item, that al they that worshippe him are abhominable Idolaters;\n And that Christe did not rise agayne from death to life by the\n power of his Godhead, neither, that hee did ascende into Heaven.\n\n \"Item, that the holy Ghoste is not God, neither that there is\n any suche holy Ghoste.\n\n \"Item, that Baptisme is not necessarie in the Churche of God,\n neither the use of the sacrament of the body and bloude of Christ.\"\n\n\nThere is record also of a freethinker named John Lewes burned at the\nsame place in 1583 for \"denying the Godhead of Christ, and holding\nother detestable heresies,\" in the manner of Hamond. [22] In the same\nyear Elias Thacker and John Coping were hanged at St. Edmonsbury \"for\nspreading certaine bookes, seditiously penned by one Robert Browne\nagainst the Booke of Common Prayer\"; and \"their bookes so many as\ncould be found were burnt before them.\" [23] Further, one Peter Cole,\nan Ipswich tanner, was burned in 1587 (also at Norwich) for similar\ndoctrine; and Francis Kett, a young clergyman, ex-fellow of Corpus\nChristi College, Cambridge, was burned at the same place in 1589 for\nheresy of the Unitarian order. [24] Hamond and Cole seem, however,\nto have been in their own way religious men, [25] and Kett a devout\nmystic, with ideas of a Second Advent. [26] All founded on the Bible.\n\n\n Most surprising of all perhaps is the record of the trial of\n one John Hilton, clerk in holy orders, before the Upper House\n of Convocation on December 22, 1584, on the charge of having\n \"said in a sermon at St. Martin's-in-the-Fields that the Old and\n New Testaments are but fables.\" (Lansdowne MSS. British Museum,\n No. 982, fol. 46, cited by Prof. Storojenko, Life of Robert Greene,\n Eng. tr. in Grosart's \"Huth Library\" ed. of Greene's Works, i,\n 39, note.) As Hilton confessed to the charge and made abjuration,\n it may be surmised that he had spoken under the influence of\n liquor. Even on that view, however, such an episode tells of a\n considerable currency of unbelieving criticism.\n\n\nApart from constructive heresy, the perpetual religious dissensions\nof the time were sure to stimulate doubt; and there appeared quite\na number of treatises directed wholly or partly against explicit\nunbelief, as: The Faith of the Church Militant, translated from\nthe Latin of the Danish divine Hemming (1581), and addressed \"to\nthe confutation of the Jewes, Turks, Atheists, Papists, Hereticks,\nand all other adversaries of the truth whatsoever\"; \"The Touchstone\nof True Religion ... against the impietie of Atheists, Epicures,\nLibertines, Hippocrites, and Temporisours of these times\" (1590);\nAn Enemie to Atheisme, translated by T. Rogers from the Latin of\nAvenar (1591); the preacher Henry Smith's God's Arrow against Atheists\n(1593, rep. 1611); an English translation of the second volume of La\nPrimaudaye's L'Acad\u00e9mie Fran\u00e7aise, containing a refutation of atheistic\ndoctrine; and no fewer than three \"Treatises of the Nature of God\"--all\nanonymous, the third known to be by Bishop Thomas Morton--all appearing\nin the year 1599.\n\nAll this smoke--eight apologetic treatises in eighteen years--implies\nsome fire; and the translator of La Primaudaye, one \"T. B.,\" declares\nin his dedication that there has been a general growth of atheism\nin England and on the continent, which he traces to \"that Monster\nMachiavell.\" Among English atheists of that school he ranks the\ndramatist Robert Greene, who had died in 1592; and it has been argued,\nnot quite convincingly, that it was to Machiavelli that Greene had\npointed, in his death-bed recantation A Groatsworth of Wit (1592), as\nthe atheistic instructor of his friend Marlowe, [27] who introduces\n\"Machiavel\" as cynical prologist to his Jew of Malta. Greene's own\n\"atheism\" had been for the most part a matter of bluster and disorderly\nliving; and we find his zealously orthodox friend Thomas Nashe, in his\nStrange News (1592), calling the Puritan zealot who used the pseudonym\nof Martin Marprelate \"a mighty platformer of atheism\"; even as his\nown and Greene's enemy, Gabriel Harvey, called Nashe an atheist. [28]\nBut Nashe in his Christ's Tears over Jerusalem (1592), though he speaks\ncharacteristically of the \"atheistical Julian,\" discusses contemporary\natheism in a fashion descriptive of an actual growth of the opinion,\nconcerning which he alleges that there is no \"sect now in England so\nscattered [i.e., so widely spread] as atheisme.\" The \"outward atheist,\"\nhe declares, \"establishes reason as his God\"; and he offers some\nsufficiently primitive arguments by way of confutation. \"They follow\nthe Pironicks [i.e., Pyrrhonists], whose position and opinion it is\nthat there is no hell or misery but opinion. Impudently they persist\nin it, that the late discovered Indians show antiquities thousands\nbefore Adam.\" For the rest, they not only reject the miracles of Moses\nas mere natural expedients misrepresented, but treat the whole Bible\nas \"some late writers of our side\" treat the Apocrypha. And Nashe\ncomplains feelingly that while the atheists \"are special men of wit,\"\nand that \"the Romish seminaries have not allured unto them so many\ngood wits as atheism,\" the preachers who reply to them are men of\ndull understanding, the product of a system under which preferment is\ngiven to graduates on the score not of capacity but of mere gravity\nand solemnity. \"It is the superabundance of wit,\" declares Nashe,\n\"that makes atheists: will you then hope to beat them down with fusty\nbrown-bread dorbellism?\" [29] There had arisen, in short, a ferment of\nrationalism which was henceforth never to disappear from English life.\n\nIn 1593, indeed, we find atheism formally charged against two\nfamous men, Christopher Marlowe and Sir Walter Raleigh, of whom the\nfirst is documentarily connected with Kett, and the second in turn\nwith Marlowe. An official document, [30] preserved by some chance,\nreveals that Marlowe was given--whether or not over the wine-cup--to\nsingularly audacious derision of the received beliefs; and so explicit\nis the evidence that it is nearly certain he would have been executed\nfor blasphemy had he not been privately killed (1593) while the\nproceedings were pending. The \"atheism\" imputed to him is not made\nout in any detail; but many of the other utterances are notably in\nkeeping with Marlowe's daring temper; and they amount to unbelief\nof a stringent kind. In Doctor Faustus [31] he makes Mephistopheles\naffirm that \"Hell hath no limits ... but where we are is hell\"--a\ndoctrine which we have seen to be current before his time; and in\nhis private talk he had gone much further. Nashe doubtless had him\nin mind when he spoke of men of \"superabundance of wit.\" Not only\ndid he question, with Raleigh, the Biblical chronology: he affirmed\n\"That Moyses was but a juggler, and that one Heriots\" [i.e., Thomas\nHarriott, or Harriots, the astronomer, one of Raleigh's circle] \"can\ndo more than he\"; and concerning Jesus he used language incomparably\nmore offensive to orthodox feeling than that of Hamond and Kett. There\nis more in all this than a mere assimilation of Machiavelli; though\nthe further saying \"that the first beginning of religion was only\nto keep men in awe\"--put also by Greene [if not by Marlowe], with\nmuch force of versification, in the mouth of a villain-hero in the\nanonymous play of Selimus [32]--tells of that influence. Marlowe was\nindeed not the man to swear by any master without adding something of\nhis own. Atheism, however, is not inferrible from any of his works: on\nthe contrary, in the second part of his famous first play he makes his\nhero, described by the repentant Greene as the \"atheist Tamburlaine,\"\ndeclaim of deity with signal eloquence, though with a pantheistic cast\nof phrase. In another passage, a Moslem personage claims to be on the\nside of a Christ who would punish perjury; and in yet another the hero\nis made to trample under foot the pretensions of Mohammed. [33] It was\nprobably his imputation of perjury to Christian rulers in particular\nthat earned for Marlowe the malignant resentment which inspired the\nvarious edifying comments published after his unedifying death. Had\nhe not perished as he did in a tavern brawl, he might have had the\nnobler fate of a martyr.\n\nConcerning Raleigh, again, there is no shadow of proof of atheism,\nthough his circle, which included the Earls of Northumberland and\nOxford, was called a \"school of atheism\" in a Latin pamphlet by the\nJesuit Parsons, [34] published at Rome in 1593; and this reputation\nclung to him. It is matter of literary history, however, that he,\nlike Montaigne, had been influenced by the Hypotyposes of Sextus\nEmpiricus; [35] his short essay The Sceptick being a na\u00eff exposition\nof the thesis that \"the sceptick doth neither affirm neither deny any\nposition; but doubteth of it, and applyeth his Reason against that\nwhich is affirmed, or denied, to justifie his non-consenting.\" [36]\nThe essay itself, nevertheless, proceeds upon a set of wildly false\npropositions in natural history, concerning which the adventurous\nreasoner has no doubts whatever; and altogether we may be sure that\nhis artificial skepticism did not carry him far in philosophy. In\nthe Discovery of Guiana (1600) he declares that he is \"resolved\"\nof the truth of the stories of men whose heads grow beneath their\nshoulders; and in his History of the World (1603-16) he insists\nthat the stars and other celestial bodies \"incline the will by\nmediation of the sensitive appetite.\" [37] In other directions,\nhowever, he was less credulous. In the same History he points out,\nas Marlowe had done in talk, how incompatible was such a phenomenon\nas the mature civilization of ancient Egypt in the days of Abraham\nwith the orthodox chronology. [38] This, indeed, was heresy enough,\nthen and later, seeing that not only did Bishop Pearson, in 1659, in\na work on The Creed which has been circulated down to the nineteenth\ncentury, indignantly denounce all who departed from the figures in the\nmargin of the Bible; but Coleridge, a century and a half later, took\nthe very instance of Egyptian history as triumphantly establishing\nthe accuracy of the Bible record against the French atheists. [39]\nAs regards Raleigh's philosophy, the evidence goes to show only\nthat he was ready to read a Unitarian essay, presumably that already\nmentioned, supposed to be Kett's; and that he had intercourse with\nMarlowe and others (in particular his secretary, Harriott) known\nto be freethinkers. A prosecution begun against him on this score,\nat the time of the inquiry concerning Marlowe (when Raleigh was in\ndisgrace with the Queen), came to nothing. It had been led up to by\na translation of Parsons's pamphlet, which affirmed that his private\ngroup was known as \"Sir Walter Rawley's school of Atheisme,\" and that\ntherein \"both Moyses and our Savior, the Old and the New Testaments,\nare jested at, and the scholars taught among other things to spell God\nbackwards.\" [40] This seems to have been idle gossip, though it tells\nof unbelief somewhere; and Raleigh's own writings always indicate\n[41] belief in the Bible; though his dying speech and epitaph are\nnoticeably deistic. That he was a deist, given to free discussion,\nseems the probable truth.\n\nIn passing sentence at the close of Raleigh's trial for treason in\n1603, in which his guilt is at least no clearer than the inequity of\nthe proceedings, Lord Chief Justice Popham unscrupulously taunted him\nwith his reputation for heresy. \"You have been taxed by the world with\nthe defence of the most heathenish and blasphemous opinions, which\nI list not to repeat, because Christian ears cannot endure to hear\nthem, nor the authors and maintainers of them be suffered to live in\nany Christian commonwealth. You know what men said of Harpool.\" [42]\nIf the preface to his History of the World, written in the Tower,\nbe authentic, Raleigh was at due pains to make clear his belief in\ndeity, and to repudiate alike atheism and pantheism. \"I do also account\nit,\" he declares, \"an impiety monstrous, to confound God and Nature,\nbe it but in terms.\" [43] And he is no more tolerant than his judge\nwhen he discusses the question of the eternity of the universe, then\nthe crucial issue as between orthodoxy and doubt. \"Whosoever will\nmake choice rather to believe in eternal deformity [=want of form]\nor in eternal dead matter, than in eternal light and eternal life,\nlet eternal death be his reward. For it is a madness of that kind, as\nwanteth terms to express it.\" [44] Inasmuch as Aristotle was the great\nauthority for the denounced opinion, Raleigh is anti-Aristotelean. \"I\nshall never be persuaded that God hath shut up all light of learning\nwithin the lantern of Aristotle's brains.\" [45] But in the whole\npreface there is only one, and that a conventional, expression\nof belief in the Christian dogma of salvation; and as to that we\nmay note his own words: \"We are all in effect become comedians in\nreligion.\" [46] Still, untruthful as he certainly was, [47] we may\ntake him as a convinced theist of the experiential school, standing\nat the ordinary position of the deists of the next century.\n\nNotably enough, he anticipates the critical position of Hume as to\nreason and experience: \"That these and these be the causes of these\nand these effects, time hath taught us and not reason; and so hath\nexperience without art.\" [48] Such utterance, if not connected with\nprofessions of piety, might in those days give rise to such charges of\nunbelief as were so freely cast at him. But the charges seem to have\nbeen in large part mere expressions of the malignity which religion\nso normally fosters, and which can seldom have been more bitter than\nthen. Raleigh is no admirable type of rectitude; but he can hardly\nhave been a worse man than his orthodox enemies. And we must estimate\nsuch men in full view of the low standards of their age.\n\n\n The belief about Raleigh's atheism was so strong that we have\n Archbishop Abbot writing to Sir Thomas Roe on Feb. 19, 1618-1619,\n that Raleigh's end was due to his \"questioning\" of \"God's being\n and omnipotence.\" It is asserted by Francis Osborn, who had known\n Raleigh, that he got his title of Atheist from Queen Elizabeth. See\n the preface (Author to Reader) to Osborn's Miscellany of Sundry\n Essays, etc., in 7th ed. of his Works, 1673. As to atheism at\n Elizabeth's court see J. J. Tayler, Retrospect of Relig. Life of\n England, 2nd ed. p. 198, and ref. Lilly makes one of his characters\n write of the ladies at court that \"they never jar about matters\n of religion, because they never mean to reason of them\" (Euphues,\n Arber's ed. p. 194).\n\n A curious use was made of Raleigh's name and fame after his\n death for various purposes. In 1620 or 1621 appeared \"Vox\n Spiritus, or Sir Walter Rawleigh's Ghost; a Conference between\n Signr. Gondamier ... and Father Bauldwine\"--a \"seditious\" tract by\n one Captain Gainsford. It appears to have been reprinted in 1622 as\n \"Prosopoeia. Sir Walter Rawleigh's Ghost.\" Then in 1626 came a new\n treatise, \"Sir Walter Rawleigh's Ghost, or England's Forewarner,\"\n published in 1626 at Utrecht by Thomas Scott, an English minister\n there, who was assassinated in the same year. The title having\n thus had vogue, there was published in 1631 \"Rawleigh's Ghost, or,\n a Feigned Apparition of Syr Walter Rawleigh to a friend of his,\n for the translating into English the Booke of Leonard Lessius\n (that most learned man), entituled De Providentia Numinis et\n animi immortalitate, written against the Atheists and Polititians\n of these days.\" The translation of a Jesuit's treatise (1613)\n thus accredited purports to be by \"A. B.\" In a reprint of 1651\n the \"feigned\" disappears from the title-page; but \"Sir Walter\n Rawleigh's Ghost\" remains to attract readers; and the translation,\n now purporting to be by John Holden, who claims to have been a\n friend of Raleigh's, is dedicated to his son Carew. In the preface\n the Ghost adjures the translator (who professes to have heard him\n frequently praise the treatise of Lessius) to translate the work\n with Raleigh's name on the title, so as to clear his memory of\n \"a foul and most unjust aspersion of me for my presumed denial\n of a deity.\"\n\n The latest documentary evidence as to the case of Marlowe is\n produced by Mr. F. S. Boas in his article, \"New Light on Marlowe\n and Kyd,\" in the Fortnightly Review, February, 1899, reproduced\n in his edition of the works of Thomas Kyd (Clarendon Press,\n 1901). In addition to the formerly known data as to Marlowe's\n \"atheism,\" it is now established that Thomas Kyd, his fellow\n dramatist, was arrested on the same charge, and that there was\n found among his papers one containing \"vile hereticall conceiptes\n denyinge the divinity of Jhesus Christe our Saviour.\" This Kyd\n declared he had had from Marlowe, denying all sympathy with its\n view. Nevertheless, he was put to the torture. The paper, however,\n proves to be a vehement Unitarian argument on Scriptural grounds,\n and is much more likely to have been written by Francis Kett than\n by Marlowe. In the MSS. now brought to light, one Cholmeley, who\n \"confessed that he was persuaded by Marlowe's reasons to become an\n Atheiste,\" is represented by a spy as speaking \"all evil of the\n Counsell, saying that they are all Atheistes and Machiavillians,\n especially my Lord Admirall.\" The same \"atheist,\" who imputes\n atheism to others as a vice, is described as regretting he had\n not killed the Lord Treasurer, \"sayenge that he could never have\n done God better service.\"\n\n For the rest, the same spy tells that Cholmeley believed Marlowe\n was \"able to shewe more sound reasons for Atheisme than any\n devine in Englande is able to geve to prove devinitie, and that\n Marloe told him that he hath read the Atheist lecture to Sir\n Walter Raleigh and others.\" On the last point there is no further\n evidence, save that Sir Walter, his dependent Thomas Harriott,\n and Mr. Carewe Rawley, were on March 21, 1593-1594, charged upon\n sworn testimonies with holding \"impious opinions concerning God\n and Providence.\" There was, however, no prosecution. Harriott\n had published in 1588 a work on his travels in Virginia, at the\n close of which is a passage in the devoutest vein telling of his\n missionary labours (quoted by Mr. Boas, art. cited, p. 225). Yet by\n 1592 he had, with his master, a reputation for atheism; and that it\n was not wholly on the strength of his great scientific knowledge\n is suggested by the statement of Anthony \u00e0 Wood that he \"made a\n philosophical theology, wherein he cast off the Old Testament.\"\n\n Of this no trace remains; but it is established that he was\n a highly accomplished mathematician, much admired by Kepler;\n and that he \"applied the telescope to celestial purposes almost\n simultaneously with Galileo\" (art. Harriott in Dict. of Nat. Biog.;\n cp. art. in Encyc. Brit.). \"Harriott ... was the first who dared\n to say A=B in the form A - B = 0, one of the greatest sources of\n progress ever opened in algebra\" (Prof. A. De Morgan, Newton, his\n Friend and his Niece, 1885, p. 91). Further, he improved algebraic\n notation by the use of small italic letters in place of Roman\n capitals, and threw out the hypothesis of secondary planets as\n well as of stars invisible from their size and distance. \"He was\n the first to verify the results of Galileo.\" Rev. Baden Powell,\n Hist. of Nat. Philos. 1834, pp. 126, 168. Cp. Rigaud, as cited by\n Powell; Ellis's notes on Bacon, in Routledge's 1-vol. ed. 1905,\n pp. 674-76; and Storojenko, as above cited, p. 38, note.\n\n\nAgainst the aspersion of Harriott at Raleigh's trial may be cited the\nhigh panegyric of Chapman, who terms him \"my admired and soul-loved\nfriend, master of all essential and true knowledge,\" [49] and one\n\"whose judgment and knowledge, in all kinds, I know to be incomparable\nand bottomless, yea, to be admired as much as his most blameless\nlife, and the right sacred expense of his time, is to be honoured and\nreverenced\"; with a further \"affirmation of his clear unmatchedness\nin all manner of learning.\" [50]\n\nThe frequency of such traces of rationalism at this period is to\nbe understood in the light of the financial and other scandals of\nthe Reformation; the bitter strifes of Church and dissent; and the\nhorrors of the wars of religion in France, concerning which Bacon\nremarks in his essay Of Unity in Religion that the spectacle would\nhave made Lucretius \"seven times more Epicure and atheist than he\nwas.\" The proceedings against Raleigh and Kyd, accordingly, did\nnot check the spread of the private avowal of unbelief. A few years\nlater we find Hooker, in the Fifth Book of his Ecclesiastical Polity\n(1597), bitterly declaring that the unbelievers in the higher tenets\nof religion are much strengthened by the strifes of believers; [51]\nas a dozen years earlier Bishop Pilkington told of \"young whelps\"\nwho \"in corners make themselves merry with railing and scoffing\nat the holy scriptures.\" [52] And in the Treatise of the Nature of\nGod, by Bishop Thomas Morton (1599), a quasi-dialogue in which the\narguing is all on one side, the passive interlocutor indicates, in\nthe process of repudiating them, a full acquaintance with the pleas\nof those who \"would openly profess themselves to be of that [the\natheistic] judgment, and as far as they might without danger defend\nit by argument against any whatever.\" The pleas include the lack of\nmoral control in the world, the evidences of natural causation, the\nvarieties of religious belief, and the contradictions of Scripture. And\nsuch atheists, we are told, \"make nature their God.\" [53]\n\nFrom Hooker's account also it is clear that, at least with\ncomparatively patient clerics like himself, the freethinkers would\nat times deliberately press the question of theism, and avow the\nconviction that belief in God was \"a kind of harmless error, bred\nand confirmed by the sleights of wiser men.\" He further notes with\neven greater bitterness that some--an \"execrable crew\"--who were\nthemselves unbelievers, would in the old pagan manner argue for the\nfostering of religion as a matter of State policy, herein conning\nthe lesson of Machiavelli. For his own part Hooker was confessedly\nill-prepared to debate with the atheists, and his attitude was not\nfitted to shake their opinions. His one resource is the inevitable\nplea that atheists are such for the sake of throwing off all moral\nrestraint [54]--a theorem which could hardly be taken seriously by\nthose who knew the history of the English and French aristocracies,\nProtestant and Catholic, for the past hundred years. Hooker's own\nmeasure of rationalism, though remarkable as compared with previous\northodoxy, went no further than the application of the argument of\nPecock that reason must guide and control all resort to Scripture\nand authority; [55] and he came to it under stress of dispute, as a\nprinciple of accommodation for warring believers, not as an expression\nof any independent skepticism. When his pious antagonist Travers\ncited him as saying that \"his best author was his own reason\" [56]\nhe was prompt to reply that he meant \"true, sound, divine reason;\n... reason proper to that science whereby the things of God are\nknown; theological reason, which out of principles in Scripture that\nare plain, soundly deduceth more doubtful inferences.\" [57] Of the\napplication of rational criticism to Scriptural claims he had no\nidea. The unbelievers of his day were for him a frightful portent,\nmenacing all his plans of orthodox toleration; and he would have had\nthem put down by force--a course which in some cases, as we have seen,\nhad in that age been actually taken, and was always apt to be resorted\nto. But orthodoxy all the while had a sure support in the social\nand political conditions which made impossible the publication of\nrationalistic opinions. While the whole machinery of public doctrine\nremained in religious hands or under ecclesiastical control, the mass\nof men of all grades inevitably held by the traditional faith. What\nis remarkable is the amount of unbelief, either privately explicit\nor implicit in the higher literature, of which we have trace.\n\nAbove all there remains the great illustration of the rationalistic\nspirit of the English literary renascence of the sixteenth century--the\ndrama of Shakespeare. Of that it may confidently be said that every\nattempt to find for it a religious foundation has failed. [58]\nGervinus, while oddly suggesting that \"in not only not seeking a\nreference to religion in his works, but in systematically avoiding\nit even when opportunity offered,\" Shakespeare was keeping clear of\nan embroilment with the clergy, nevertheless pronounces the plays\nto be wholly secular in spirit. While contending that \"in action\nthe religious and divine in man is nothing else than the moral,\" the\nGerman critic admits that Shakespeare \"wholly discarded from his works\n... that which religion enjoins as to faith and opinion.\" [59] And,\nwhile refusing the inference of positive unbelief on the poet's part,\nhe pronounces that, \"Just as Bacon banished religion from science, so\ndid Shakespeare from art.... From Bacon's example it seems clear that\nShakespeare left religious matters unnoticed on the same grounds.\" [60]\nThe latest and weightiest criticism comes to the same conclusion;\nand it is only on presupposition that any other can be reached. One\nof the ablest of Shakespearean critics sums up that \"the Elizabethan\ndrama was almost wholly secular; and while Shakespeare was writing\nhe practically confined his view to the world of non-theological\nobservation and thought, so that he represents it in substantially\none and the same way whether the period of the story is pre-Christian\nor Christian.\"\n\n\n [Prof. A. C. Bradley, Shakespearean Tragedy, 2nd ed. p. 25. In\n the concluding pages of his lecture on Hamlet, Professor Bradley\n slightly modifies this statement, suggesting that the ghost is made\n to appear as \"the representative of the hidden ultimate power,\n the messenger of divine justice\" (p. 174). Here, it seems to the\n present writer, Professor Bradley obtrudes the chief error of\n his admirable book--the constant implication that Shakespeare\n planned his plays as moral wholes. The fact is that he found\n the ghost an integral part of the old play which he rewrote;\n and in making it, in Professor Bradley's words, \"so majestical\n a phantom,\" he was simply heightening the character as he does\n others in the play, and as was his habit in the presentment of a\n king. In his volume of lectures entitled Oxford Lectures on Poetry\n (1909), Professor Bradley goes more fully into the problem of\n Shakespeare's religion. Here he somewhat needlessly obscures the\n issue by contending (p. 349) that it is preposterous to suppose\n that Shakespeare was \"an ardent and devoted atheist or Brownist\n or Roman Catholic,\" and makes the most of the poet's sympathetic\n treatment of religious types and religious sentiments; but still\n sums up that he \"was not, in the distinctive sense of the word,\n a religious man,\" and that \"all was, for him, in the end, mystery\"\n (p. 353).]\n\n\nThis perhaps somewhat understates the case. The Elizabethan drama was\nnot wholly secular; [61] and certainly the dramatists individually\nwere not. Peele's David and Bethsabe is wholly Biblical in theme,\nand, though sensual in sentiment, substantially orthodox in spirit;\nand elsewhere he has many passages of Protestant and propagandist\nfervour. [62] Greene and Lodge give a highly Scriptural ring to their\nLooking-Glass for London; and Lodge, who uses religious expressions\nfreely in his early treatise, A Defence of Poetry, Music, and Stage\nPlays, [63] later translated Josephus. Kyd in Arden of Feversham [64]\naccepts the Christian view at the close, though The Spanish Tragedy\nis pagan; and the pre-Shakespearean King Leir and his Three Daughters\n(1594), probably the work of Kyd and Lodge, has long passages of\nspecifically Christian sentiment. Nashe, again, was a hot religious\ncontroversialist despite his Bohemian habits and his indecorous\nvein; Greene on his repentant deathbed was profusedly censorious\nof atheism; [65] Lilly, as we have seen, is combatively theistic\nin his Campaspe; while Jonson, as we shall see, girds at skeptics\nin Volpone and The Magnetick Lady, and further wrote a quantity of\ndevotional verse. Even the \"atheist\" Marlowe, as we saw, puts theistic\nsentiment into the mouth of his \"atheist Tamburlaine\"; and of Doctor\nFaustus, despite incidental heresy, the d\u00e9nouement is religiously\northodox. Thomas Heywood may even be pronounced a religious man, [66]\nas he was certainly a strong Protestant, [67] though an anti-Puritan;\nand his prose treatise The Hierarchy of the Blessed Angels (1635)\nexhibits a religious temperament. The same may be said of Dekker, who\nis recorded to have written at least the prologue and the epilogue\nfor a play on Pontius Pilate, [68] and is believed to be the author\nof the best scenes in The Virgin Martyr, in which he collaborated\nwith Massinger. He too uses supererogatory religious expressions,\n[69] and shows his warm Protestantism in The Whore of Babylon, as\nhe does his general religious sentiment in his treatise The Seven\nDeadly Sins. Chapman was certainly a devout theist, and probably\na Christian. In the \"domestic\" tragedy, A Warning for Fair Women\n(1599), which is conjecturally ascribed to Lodge, the conclusion is\non Christian lines, as in Arden; and the same holds of The Witch of\nEdmonton, by Dekker and others. Of none of these dramatists could it\nbe said, on the mere strength of his work, that he was \"agnostic,\"\nthough Marlowe was certainly a freethinker. The others were, first or\nlast, avowedly religious. Shakespeare, and Shakespeare alone, after\nMarlowe, is persistently non-religious in his handling of life. Lear,\nhis darkest tragedy, is predominantly pagan; and The Tempest, in\nits serener vein, is no less so. But indeed all the genuine plays\nalike ignore or tacitly negate the idea of immortality; even the\nconventional religious phrases of Macbeth being but incidental poetry.\n\nIn the words of a clerical historian, \"the religious phrases which\nare thinly scattered over his work are little more than expressions\nof a distant and imaginative reverence. And on the deeper grounds\nof religious faith his silence is significant.... The riddle of life\nand death ... he leaves ... a riddle to the last, without heeding the\ncommon theological solutions around him.\" [70] The practical wisdom\nin which he rose above his rivals no less than in dramatic and poetic\ngenius, kept him prudently reticent on his opinions, as it set him\nupon building his worldly fortunes while the others with hardly an\nexception lived in shallows and miseries. As so often happens, it was\namong the ill-balanced types that there was found the heedless courage\nto cry aloud what others thought; but Shakespeare's significant silence\nreminds us that the largest spirits of all could live in disregard\nof contemporary creeds. For, while there is no record of his having\nprivately avowed unbelief, and certainly no explicit utterance of it\nin his plays, [71] in no genuine work of his is there any more than\nbare dramatic conformity to current habits of religious speech; and\nthere is often significantly less. In Measure for Measure the Duke,\ncounselling as a friar the condemned Claudio, discusses the ultimate\nissues of life and death without a hint of Christian credence.\n\nSo silent is the dramatist on the ecclesiastical issues of his day\nthat Protestants and Catholics are enabled to go on indefinitely\nclaiming him as theirs; the latter dwelling on his generally kindly\ntreatment of friars; the former citing the fact that some Protestant\npreacher--evidently a prot\u00e9g\u00e9 of his daughter Susannah--was allowed\nlodging at his house. But the preacher was not very hospitably\ntreated; [72] and other clues fail. There is good reason to think that\nShakespeare was much influenced by Montaigne's Essays, read by him in\nFlorio's translation, which was issued when he was recasting the old\nHamlet; and the whole treatment of life in the great tragedies and\nserious comedies produced by him from that time forward is even more\ndefinitely untheological than Montaigne's own doctrine. [73] Nor can he\nbe supposed to have disregarded the current disputes as to fundamental\nbeliefs, implicating as they did his fellow-dramatists Marlowe, Kyd,\nand Greene. The treatise of De Mornay, of which Sir Philip Sidney began\nand Arthur Golding finished the translation, [74] was in his time\nwidely circulated in England; and its very inadequate argumentation\nmight well strengthen in him the anti-theological leaning.\n\n\nA serious misconception has been set up as to Shakespeare's cast\nof mind by the persistence of editors in including among his works\nwithout discrimination plays which are certainly not his, as the Henry\nVI group, to which he contributed little, and in particular the First\nPart, of which he wrote probably nothing. It is on the assumption that\nthat play is Shakespeare's work that Lecky (Rationalism in Europe,\ned. 1887, i, 105-106) speaks of \"that melancholy picture of Joan\nof Arc which is perhaps the darkest blot upon his genius.\" Now,\nwhatever passages Shakespeare may have contributed to the Second\nand Third Parts, it is certain that he has barely a scene in\nthe First, and that there is not a line from his hand in the La\nPucelle scenes. Many students think that Dr. Furnivall has even\ngone too far in saying that \"the only part ... to be put down to\nShakespeare is the Temple Garden scene of the red and white roses\"\n(Introd. to Leopold Shakespeare, p. xxxviii); so little is there to\nsuggest even the juvenile Shakespeare there. (The high proportion\nof double-endings is a ground for reckoning it a late sample of\nMarlowe, who in his posthumously published translation of Lucan had\napproached that proportion. Cp. the author's vol. on Titus Andronicus,\np. 190.) But that any critical and qualified reader can still hold\nhim to have written the worst of the play is unintelligible. The\nwhole work would be a \"blot on his genius\" in respect of its literary\nweakness. The doubt was raised long before Lecky wrote, and was made\ngood a generation ago. When Lecky further proceeds, with reference to\nthe witches in Macbeth, to say (id. note) that it is \"probable that\nShakespeare ... believed with an unfaltering faith in the reality\nof witchcraft,\" he strangely misreads that play. Nothing is clearer\nthan that it grounds Macbeth's action from the first in Macbeth's own\ncharacter and his wife's, employing the witch machinery (already used\nby Middleton) to meet the popular taste, but never once making the\nwitches really causal forces. An \"unfaltering\" believer in witchcraft\nwho wrote for the stage would surely have turned it to serious account\nin other tragedies. This Shakespeare never does. On Lecky's view, he\nis to be held as having believed in the fairy magic of the Midsummer\nNight's Dream and the Tempest, and in the actuality of such episodes\nas that of the ghost in Macbeth. But who for a moment supposes him to\nhave had any such belief? It is probable that the entire undertaking of\nMacbeth (1605?) and later of the Tempest (1610?) was due to a wish on\nthe part of the theatre management to please King James, whose belief\nin witchcraft and magic was notorious. Even the use of the Ghost in\nHamlet is an old stage expedient, common to the pre-Shakespearean\nplay and to others of Kyd's and Peele's. Shakespeare significantly\naltered the dying words of Hamlet from the \"heaven receive my soul\"\nof the old version to \"the rest is silence.\" The bequest of his soul\nto the Deity in his will is merely the regulation testamentary formula\nof the time. In his sonnets, which hint his personal cast if anything\ndoes, there is no real trace of religious creed or feeling. And it\nis clearly the hand of Fletcher, a no less sensual writer than Peele,\nthat penned the part of Henry VIII in which occurs the Protestant tag:\n\"In her [Elizabeth's] days ... God shall be truly known.\" [75]\n\n\nWhile, however, Shakespeare is notably naturalistic as compared with\nthe other Elizabethan dramatists, it remains true that their work in\nthe mass tells little of a habitually religious way of thinking. Apart\nfrom the plays above named, and from polemic passages and devotional\nutterances outside their plays, they hint as little of Christian\ndogma as of Christian asceticism. Hence, in fact, the general and\nbitter hostility of the Puritans to the stage. Even at and after\nShakespeare's death, the drama is substantially \"graceless.\" Jonson,\nwho was for a time a Catholic, but reverted to the Church of England,\ndisliked the Puritans, and in Bartholomew Fair derides them. The age\ndid not admit of a pietistic drama; and when there was a powerful\npietistic public, it made an end of drama altogether. To Elizabeth's\nreign probably belongs the Atheist's Tragedy of Cyril Tourneur, first\npublished in 1611, but evidently written in its author's early youth--a\ncoarse and worthless performance, full of extremely bad imitations of\nShakespeare. [76] But to the age of Elizabeth also belongs, perhaps,\nthe sententious tragedy of Mustapha by Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke,\nfirst surreptitiously published in 1609. A century and a half later\nthe deists were fond of quoting [77] the concluding Chorus Sacerdotum,\nbeginning:\n\n\n O wearisome condition of humanity,\n Born under one law, to another bound;\n Vainly begot, and yet forbidden vanity;\n Created sick, commanded to be sound:\n If nature did not take delight in blood,\n She would have made more easy ways to good.\n\n\nIt is natural to suspect that the author of such lines was less\northodox than his own day had reputed him; and yet the whole of\nhis work shows him much pre-occupied with religion, though perhaps\nin a deistic spirit. But Brooke's introspective and undramatic\npoetry is an exception: the prevailing colour of the whole drama\nof the Shakespearean period is pre-Puritan and semi-pagan; and\nthe theological spirit of the next generation, intensified by King\nJames, was recognized by cultured foreigners as a change for the\nworse. [78] The spirit of free learning for the time was gone,\nexpelled by theological rancours; and when Selden ventured in\nhis History of Tythes (1618) to apply the method of dispassionate\nhistorical criticism to ecclesiastical matters he was compelled to\nmake a formal retractation. [79] Early Protestants had attacked, as a\npapal superstition, the doctrine that tithes were levied jure divino:\nProtestants had now come to regard as atheistic the hint that tithes\nwere levied otherwise. [80]\n\nNot that rationalism became extinct. The \"Italianate\" incredulity\nas to a future state, which Sir John Davies had sought to repel\nby his poem, Nosce Teipsum (1599), can hardly have been overthrown\neven by that remarkable production, which in the usual orthodox way\npronounces all doubters to be \"light and vicious persons,\" who,\n\"though they would, cannot quite be beasts.\" [81] And there were\nother forms of doubt. In 1602 appeared The Unmasking of the Politique\nAtheist, by J. H. [John Hull], Batchelor of Divinitie, which, however,\nis in the main a mere attempt to retort upon Catholics the charge of\natheism laid by them against Protestants. Soon after, in 1605, we find\nDr. John Dove producing a Confutation of Atheisme in the manner of\nprevious continental treatises, making the word \"atheism\" cover many\nshades of theism; and an essayist writing in 1608 asserts that, on\naccount of the self-seeking and corruption so common among churchmen,\n\"prophane Atheisme hath taken footing in the hearts of ignorant and\nsimple men.\" [82] The orthodox Ben Jonson, in his Volpone (1607),\nputs in the mouth of a fool [83] the lines:--\n\n\n And then, for your religion, profess none,\n But wonder at the diversity of all;\n And, for your part, protest, were there no other\n But simply the laws o' th' land, you would content you.\n Nic Machiavel and Monsieur Bodin both\n Were of this mind.\n\n\nBut the testimony is not the less significant; as is the account in\nThe Magnetick Lady (1632) of\n\n\n A young physician to the family\n That, letting God alone, ascribes to Nature\n More than her share; licentious in discourse,\n And in his life a profest voluptuary. [84]\n\n\nSuch statements of course prove merely a frequent coolness towards\nreligion, not a vogue of reasoned unbelief. But the existence\nof rationalizing heresy is attested by the burning of two men,\nBartholomew Legate and Edward Wightman, for avowing Unitarian views,\nin 1612. These, the last executions for heresy in England, were results\nof the theological zeal of King James, stimulated by the Calvinistic\nfanaticism of Archbishop Abbot, the predecessor of Laud.\n\nJames's career as a persecutor began characteristically in a meddlesome\nattack upon a professor in Holland. A German theologian of Socinian\nleanings, named Conrad Vorstius, professor at Steinfurth, had produced\nin 1606 a somewhat heretical treatise, De Deo, but had nevertheless\nbeen appointed in 1610 professor of theology at Leyden, in succession\nto Arminius. It was his acceptance of Arminian views, joined with\nhis repute as a scholar, [85] that secured him the invitation, which\nwas given without the knowledge that at a previous period he had been\noffered a similar appointment by the Socinians. In his Anti-Bellarminus\ncontractus, \"a brief refutation of the four tomes of Bellarmin,\"\nhe had taken the Arminian line, repudiating the Calvinist positions\nwhich, in the opinion of Arminius, could not be defended against\nthe Catholic attack. But he was too speculative and ratiocinative\nto be safe in an age in which the fear of spreading Socinianism\nand the hate of Calvinists towards Arminianism had set up a reign of\nterror. Vorstius was both \"unsettling\" and heterodox. His opinions were\n\"such as in our own day would certainly disqualify him from holding\nsuch an office in any Christian University\"; [86] and James, worked\nupon by Abbot, went so far as to make the appointment of Vorstius a\ndiplomatic question. The stadhouder Maurice and the bulk of the Dutch\nclergy being of his view, the more tolerant statesmen of Holland,\nand the mercantile aristocracy, yielded from motives of prudence, and\nVorstius was dismissed in order to save the English alliance. Remaining\nthenceforth without employment, he was further denounced in 1619 by\nthe Synod of Dort, and banished by the States General. Thereafter\nhe lived for two years in hiding; and soon after obtaining a refuge\nin Holstein, died, worn out by his troubles. In England, meantime,\nJames drew up with his own hands a catalogue of the heresies found\nby him in Vorstius's treatise, and caused the book to be burned in\nLondon and at the two Universities. [87]\n\nOn the heels of this amazing episode came the cases of Wightman\nand Legate. Finding, in a personal conversation, that Legate had\n\"ceased to pray to Christ,\" the King had him brought before the\nBishop of London's Consistory Court, which sentenced the heretic to\nNewgate. Being shortly released, he had the imprudence to threaten an\naction for false imprisonment, whereupon he was re-arrested. Chief\nJustice Coke held that, technically, the Consistory Court could\nnot sentence to burning; but Hobart and Bacon, the law officers of\nthe Crown, and other judges, were of opinion that it could. Legate,\naccordingly, was duly tried, sentenced, and burned at Smithfield; and\nWightman a few days later was similarly disposed of at Lichfield. [88]\n\nBacon's share in this matter is obscure, and has not been discussed by\neither his assailants or his vindicators. As for the general public,\nthe historian records that \"not a word was uttered against this\nhorrible cruelty. As we read over the brief contemporary notices\nwhich have reached us, we look in vain for the slightest intimation\nthat the death of these two men was regarded with any other feelings\nthan those with which the writers were accustomed to hear of the\nexecution of an ordinary murderer. If any remark was made, it was\nin praise of James for the devotion which he showed to the cause of\nGod.\" [89] That might have been reckoned on. It was not twenty years\nsince Hamond, Lewis, Cole, and Kett had been burned on similar grounds;\nand there had been no outcry then. For generations \"direness\" had been\ntoo familiar to men's thoughts to admit of their being shocked by a\njudicial murder or two the more. Catholic priests had been executed\nby the score: why not a pair of Unitarians? [90] Little had gone\non in the average intellectual life in the interim save religious\ndiscussion and Bibliolatry, and not from such culture could there\ncome any growth of human kindness or any clearer conception of the\nlaw of reciprocity. But, whether by force of recoil from a revival of\nthe fires of Smithfield or from a perception that mere cruelty did\nnot avail to destroy heresy, the theological ultima ratio was never\nagain resorted to on English ground.\n\nThough no public protest was made, the retrospective Fuller testifies\nthat \"such burning of heretics much startled common people, pitying\nall in pain, and prone to asperse justice itself with cruelty,\nbecause of the novelty (!) and hideousness of the punishment.\" [91]\nIt is noteworthy that within a few years of the burning of Legate\nand Wightman there appeared quite a cluster of treatises explicitly\ncontending for toleration. In 1614 came Religion's Peace: or, a Plea\nfor Liberty of Conscience, by Leonard Busher, the first English book of\nthe kind. In 1615 came Persecution for Religion Judged and Condemned;\nand in 1620 An Humble Supplication to the King's Majesty, pressing\nthe same doctrine. [92] There is no record of any outcry over these\nworks, though they are tolerably freespoken in their indictment of the\ncoercive school; and they had all to be reprinted a generation later,\ntheir point having never been carried; but it may be surmised that\ntheir appeal, which is substantially well reasoned from a secular\nas well as from a theological point of view, had something to do\nwith the abandonment of persecution unto death. Even King James,\nin opening the Parliament of 1614, professed to recognize that no\nreligion or heresy was ever extirpated by violence.\n\nThat an age of cruel repression of heresy had promoted unbelief\nis clear from the Atheomastix of Bishop Fotherby (1622), which\nnotes among other things that as a result of constant disputing\n\"the Scriptures (with many) have lost their authority, and are\nthought onely fit for the ignorant and idiote.\" [93] On this head\nthe bishop attempts no answer; and on his chosen theme he is perhaps\nthe worst of all apologists. His admission that there can be no \u00e0\npriori proof of deity [94] may be counted to him for candour; but the\nchildishness of his reasoning \u00e0 posteriori excludes the ascription\nof philosophic insight. He does but use the old pseudo-arguments of\nuniversal consent and design, with the simple device of translating\npolytheistic terms into monotheistic. All the while he makes the usual\nsuggestions that there are few or no atheists to convert, and these\nnot worth converting--this at a folio's length. The book tells only\nof difficulties evaded by vociferation. And while the growing stress\nof the strife between the ecclesiasticism of the Crown and the forces\nof nonconformity more and more thrust to the front religio-political\nissues, there began alongside of those strifes the new and powerful\npropaganda of deism, which, beginning with the Latin treatise, De\nVeritate, of Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1624), was gradually to leaven\nEnglish thought for over a century.\n\nFurther, there now came into play the manifold influence of\nFrancis Bacon, whose case illustrates perhaps more fully than any\nother the difficulties, alike external and internal, in the way of\nright thinking. Taken as a whole, his work is on account of those\ndifficulties divided against itself, insisting as he does alternately\non a strict critical method and on the subjection of reason to\nthe authority of revelation. He sounds a trumpet-call to a new and\nuniversal effort of free and circumspect intelligence; and on the\ninstant he stipulates for the prerogative of Scripture. Though only\none of many who assailed alike the methodic tyranny of Aristotelianism\n[95] and the methodless empiricism of the ordinary \"scientific\" thought\nof the past, he made his attack with a sustained and manifold force\nof insight and utterance which still entitles him to pre-eminence\nas the great critic of wrong methods and the herald of better. Yet\nhe not only transgresses often his own principal precepts in his\nscientific reasoning; he falls below several of his contemporaries and\npredecessors in respect of his formal insistence on the final supremacy\nof theology over reason, alike in physics and in ethics. Where Hooker\nis ostensibly seeking to widen the field of rational judgment on the\nside of creed, Bacon, the very champion of mental emancipation in\nthe abstract, declares the boundary to be fixed.\n\nOf those lapses from critical good faith, part of the explanation\nis to be found in the innate difficulty of vital innovation for\nall intelligences; part in the special pressures of the religious\nenvironment. On the latter head Bacon makes such frequent and emphatic\nprotest that we are bound to infer on his part a personal experience\nin his own day of the religious hostility which long followed his\nmemory. \"Generally,\" he wrote of himself in one fragment, \"he perceived\nin men of devout simplicity this opinion, that the secrets of nature\nwere the secrets of God, and part of that glory whereinto the mind of\nman if it seek to press shall be oppressed;... and on the other side,\nin men of a devout policy he noted an inclination to have the people\ndepend upon God the more when they are less acquainted with second\ncauses, and to have no stirring in philosophy, lest it may lead to\ninnovation in divinity or else should discover matter of further\ncontradiction to divinity\" [96]--a summary of the whole early history\nof the resistance to science. [97] In the works which he wrote at the\nheight of his powers, especially in his masterpiece, the Novum Organum\n(1620), where he comes closest to the problems of exact inquiry,\nhe specifies again and again both popular superstition and orthodox\ntheology as hindrances to scientific research, commenting on \"those\nwho out of faith and veneration mix their philosophy with theology\nand traditions,\" [98] and declaring that of the drawbacks science\nhad to contend with \"the corruption of philosophy by superstition and\nan admixture of theology is far the more widely spread, and does the\ngreatest harm, whether to entire systems or to their parts. For the\nhuman understanding is obnoxious to the influence of the imagination\nno less than to the influence of common notions.\" [99] In the same\npassage he exclaims at the \"extreme levity\" of those of the moderns who\nhave attempted to \"found a system of natural philosophy on the first\nchapter of Genesis, on the book of Job, and other parts of the sacred\nwritings\"; [100] and yet again, coupling as obstinate adversaries\nof Natural Philosophy \"superstition, and the blind and immoderate\nzeal of religion,\" he roundly affirms that \"by the simpleness of\ncertain divines access to any philosophy, however pure, is well nigh\nclosed.\" [101] These charges are repeatedly salved by such claims\nas that \"true religion\" puts no obstacles in the way of science;\n[102] that the book of Job runs much to natural philosophy; [103]\nand, in particular, in the last book of the De Augmentis Scientiarum,\nredacted after his disgrace, by the declaration--more emphatic than\nthose of the earlier Advancement of Learning--that \"Sacred Theology\nought to be derived from the word and oracles of God, and not from\nthe light of nature or the dictates of reason.\" [104] In this mood\nhe goes so far as to declare, with the thorough-going obscurantists,\nthat \"the more discordant and incredible the divine mystery is, the\nmore honour is shown to God in believing it, and the nobler is the\nvictory of faith.\"\n\n\n [It was probably such deliverances as these that led to the\n ascription to Bacon of The Christian Paradoxes, first published\n (surreptitiously), without author's name, in 1645. As has been\n shown by Dr. Grosart (Lord Bacon NOT the Author of \"The Christian\n Paradoxes,\" 1865) that treatise was really by Herbert Palmer,\n B.D., who published it in full in part ii of his Memorials\n of Godliness and Christianity, 5th ed. 1655. The argument\n drawn from this treatise as to Bacon's skepticism is a twofold\n mystification. The Paradoxes are the deliberate declaration of a\n pietist that he believes the dogmas of revelation without rational\n comprehension. The style is plainly not Bacon's; but Bacon had\n said the same thing in the sentence quoted above. Dr. Grosart's\n explosive defence against the criticism of Ritter (work cited,\n p. 14) is an illustration of the intellectual temper involved.]\n\n\nYet even in the calculated extravagance of this last pronouncement\nthere is a ground for question whether the fallen Chancellor, hoping\nto retrieve himself, and trying every device of his ripe sagacity to\navert opposition, was not straining his formal orthodoxy beyond his\nreal intellectual habit. As against such wholesale affirmation we have\nhis declarations that \"certain it is that God worketh nothing in nature\nbut by second causes,\" and that any pretence to the contrary \"is mere\nimposture as it were in favour towards God, and nothing else but to\noffer to the author of truth the unclean sacrifice of a lie\"; [105]\nhis repeated objection to the discussion of Final Causes; [106] his\nattack on Plato and Aristotle for rejecting the atheistic scientific\nmethod of Democritus; [107] his peremptory assertion that motion is a\nproperty of matter; [108] and his almost Democritean handling of the\nfinal problem, in which he insists that primal matter is, \"next to\nGod, the cause of causes, itself only without a cause.\" [109] Further,\nthough he speaks of Scriptural miracles in a conventional way, [110]\nhe drily pronounces in one passage that, \"as for narrations touching\nthe prodigies and miracles of religions, they are either not true or\nnot natural, and therefore impertinent for the story of nature.\" [111]\nFinally, as against the formal capitulation to theology at the close of\nthe De Augmentis, he has left standing in the first book of the Latin\nversion the ringing doctrine of the original Advancement of Learning\n(1605), that \"there is no power on earth which setteth up a throne\nor chair in the spirits and souls of men, and in their cogitations,\nimaginations, opinions, and beliefs, but knowledge and learning\";\n[112] and in his Wisdom of the Ancients [113] he has contrived to\nturn a crude myth into a subtle allegory in behalf of toleration.\n\nThus, despite his many resorts to and prostrations before the\nScriptures, the general effect of his writings in this regard is\nto set up in the minds of his readers the old semi-rationalistic\nequivoque of a \"two-fold truth\"; reminding us as they do that he \"did\nin the beginning separate the divine testimony from the human.\" When,\ntherefore, he announces that \"we know by faith\" that \"matter was\ncreated from nothing,\" [114] he has the air of juggling with his\nproblem; and his further suggestion as to the possibility of matter\nbeing endowed with a force of evolution, however cautiously put, is far\nremoved from orthodoxy. Accordingly, the charge of atheism--which he\nnotes as commonly brought against all who dwell solely on second causes\n[115]--was actually cast at his memory in the next generation. [116]\nIt was of course false: on the issue of theism he is continually\ndescanting with quite conventional unction; as in the familiar essay\non atheism. [117] His dismissal of final causes as \"barren\" meant\nmerely that the notion was barren of scientific result; [118] and he\nrefers the question to metaphysic. [119] But if his theism was of a\nkind disturbing to believers in a controlling Providence, as little\nwas it satisfactory to Christian fervour: and it can hardly be doubted\nthat the main stream of his argument made for a non-Biblical deism,\nif not for atheism; his dogmatic orthodoxies being undermined by his\nown scientific teaching.\n\n\n Lechler (Gesch. des englischen Deismus, pp. 23-25) notes that\n Bacon involuntarily made for deism. Cp. Amand Saintes, Hist. de\n la philos. de Kant, 1844, p. 69; and Kuno Fischer, Francis\n Bacon, Eng. tr. 1857, ch. xi, pp. 341-43. Dean Church (Bacon,\n in \"Men of Letters\" series, pp. 174, 205) insists that Bacon\n held by revelation and immortality; and can of course cite his\n profession of such belief, which is not to be disputed. (Cp. the\n careful judgment of Prof. Fowler in his Bacon, pp. 180-91, and\n his ed. of the Novum Organum, 1878, pp. 43-53.) But the tendency\n of the specific Baconian teaching is none the less to put these\n beliefs aside, and to overlay them with a naturalistic habit of\n mind. At the first remove from Bacon we have Hobbes.\n\n\nAs regards his intellectual inconsistencies, we can but say that they\nare such as meet us in men's thinking at every new turn. Though we\ncan see that Bacon's orthodoxy \"doth protest too much,\" with an eye\non king and commons and public opinion, we are not led to suppose\nthat he had ever in his heart cast off his inherited creed. He shows\nfrequent Christian prejudice in his references to pagans; and can\nwrite that \"To seek to extinguish anger utterly is but the bravery\nof the Stoics,\" [120] pretending that the Christian books are more\naccommodating, and ignoring the Sermon on the Mount. In arguing that\nthe \"religion of the heathen\" set men upon ending \"all inquisition\nof nature in metaphysical or theological discourse,\" and in charging\nthe Turks with a special tendency to \"ascribe ordinary effects to the\nimmediate workings of God,\" [121] he is playing not very scrupulously\non the vanity of his co-religionists. As he was only too well aware,\nboth tendencies ruled the Christian thought of his own day, and derive\ndirect from the sacred books--not from \"abuse,\" as he pretends. And\non the metaphysical as on the common-sense side of his thought he\nis self-contradictory, even as most men have been before and since,\nbecause judgment cannot easily fulfil the precepts it frames for\nitself in illuminated hours. Latter-day students have been impressed,\nas was Leibnitz, by the original insight with which Bacon negated the\npossibility of our forming any concrete conception of a primary form\nof matter, and insisted on its necessary transcendence of our powers\nof knowledge. [122] On the same principle he should have negated\nevery modal conception of the still more recondite Something which he\nput as antecedent to matter, and called God. [123] Yet in his normal\nthinking he seems to have been content with the commonplace formula\ngiven in his essay on Atheism--that we cannot suppose the totality of\nthings to be \"without a mind.\" He has here endorsed in its essentials\nwhat he elsewhere calls \"the heresy of the Anthropomorphites,\" [124]\nfailing to apply his own law in his philosophy, as elsewhere in his\nphysics. When, however, we realize that similar inconsistency is fallen\ninto after him by Spinoza, and wholly escaped perhaps by no thinker,\nwe are in a way to understand that with all his deflections from his\nown higher law Bacon may have profoundly and fruitfully influenced\nthe thought of the next generation, if not that of his own.\n\nThe fact of this influence has been somewhat obscured by the modern\ndispute as to whether he had any important influence on scientific\nprogress. [125] At first sight the old claim for him in that regard\nseems to be heavily discounted by the simple fact that he definitely\nrejected the Copernican system of astronomy. [126] Though, however,\nthis gravely emphasizes his fallibility, it does not cancel his\nservices as a stimulator of scientific thought. At that time only a few\nwere yet intelligently convinced Copernicans; and we have the record of\nhow, in Bacon's day, Harvey lost heavily in credit and in his medical\npractice by propounding his discovery of the circulation of the blood,\n[127] which, it is said, no physician over forty years old at that\ntime believed in. For the scientific men of that century--and only\namong them did Copernicanism find the slightest acceptance--it was\nthus no fatal shortcoming in Bacon to have failed to grasp the true\nscheme of sidereal motion, any more than it was in Galileo to be wrong\nabout the tides and comets. They could realize that it was precisely\nin astronomy, for lack of special study and expert knowledge, that\nBacon was least qualified to judge. Intellectual influence on science\nis not necessarily dependent on actual scientific achievement, though\nthat of course furthers and establishes it; and the fact of Bacon's\nimpact on the mind of the next age is abundantly proved by testimonies.\n\nFor a time the explicit tributes came chiefly from abroad;\nthough at all times, even in the first shock of his disgrace,\nthere were Englishmen perfectly convinced of his greatness. To\nthe winning of foreign favour he had specially addressed himself\nin his adversity. Grown wary in act as well as wise in theory, he\ndeleted from the Latin De Augmentis a whole series of passages of the\nAdvancement of Learning which disparaged Catholics and Catholicism;\n[128] and he had his reward in being appreciated by many Jesuit and\nother Catholic scholars. [129] But Protestants such as Comenius and\nLeibnitz were ere long more emphatic than any Catholics; [130] and at\nthe time of the Restoration we find Bacon enthusiastically praised\namong the more open-minded and scientifically biassed thinkers of\nEngland, who included some zealous Christians. [131] It was not that\nhis special \"method\" enabled them to reach important results with\nany new facility; its impracticability is now insisted on by friends\nas well as foes. [132] It was that he arraigned with extraordinary\npsychological insight and brilliance of phrase the mental vices which\nhad made discoveries so rare; the alternate self-complacency and\ndespair of the average indolent mind; the \"opinion of store\" which was\n\"cause of want\"; the timid or superstitious evasion of research. In\nall this he was using his own highest powers, his comprehension\nof human character and his genius for speech. And though his own\nscientific results were not to be compared with those of Galileo and\nDescartes, the wonderful range of his observation and his curiosity,\nthe unwearying zest of his scrutiny of well-nigh all the known fields\nof Nature, must have been an inspiration to multitudes of students\nbesides those who have recorded their debt to him. It is probable\nthat but for his literary genius, which though little discussed is\nof a very rare order, his influence would have been both narrower and\nless durable; but, being one of the great writers of the modern world,\nhe has swayed men down till our own day.\n\nCertain it is that alongside of his doctrine there persisted in\nEngland, apart from all printed utterance, a movement of deistic\nrationalism, of which the eighteenth century saw only the fuller\ndevelopment. Sir John Suckling (1609-1641), rewriting about 1637\nhis letter to the Earl of Dorset, An Account of Religion by Reason,\ntells how in a first sketch it \"had like to have made me an Atheist at\nCourt,\" and how \"the fear of Socinianism at this time renders every man\nthat offers to give an account of religion by reason, suspected to have\nnone at all\"; [133] but he also mentions that he knows it \"still to\nbe the opinion of good wits that the particular religion of Christians\nhas added little to the general religion of the world.\" [134] Himself a\nyoung man of talent, he offers quasi-rational reconciliations of faith\nwith reason which can have satisfied no real doubter, and can hardly\nhave failed to introduce doubt into the minds of some of his readers.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 5. Popular Thought in Europe\n\nOf popular freethought in the rest of Europe there is little to\nchronicle for a hundred and fifty years after the Reformation. The\nepoch-making work of Copernicus, published in 1543, had little or\nno immediate effect in Germany, where, as we have seen, physical\nand verbal strifes had begun with the ecclesiastical revolution,\nand were to continue to waste the nation's energy for a century. In\n1546, all attempts at ecclesiastical reconciliation having failed,\nthe emperor Charles V, in whom Melanchthon had seen a model monarch,\n[135] decided to put down the Protestant heresy by war. Luther had\njust died, apprehensive for his cause. Civil war now raged till the\npeace of Augsburg in 1555; whereafter Charles abdicated in favour\nof his son Philip. Here were in part the conditions which in France\nand elsewhere were later followed by a growth of rational unbelief;\nand there are some traces even at this time of partial skepticism in\nhigh places in the German world, notably in the case of the Emperor\nMaximilian II, who, \"grown up in the spirit of doubt,\" [136] would\nnever identify himself with either Protestants or Catholics. [137]\nBut in Germany there was still too little intellectual light, too\nlittle brooding over experience, to permit of the spread of such a\ntemper; and the balance of forces amounted only to a deadlock between\nthe ecclesiastical parties. Protestantism on the intellectual side,\nas already noted, had sunk into a bitter and barren polemic [138]\namong the reformers themselves; and many who had joined the movement\nreverted to Catholicism. [139] Meanwhile the teaching and preaching\nJesuits were zealously at work, turning the dissensions of the enemy\nto account, and contrasting its schism upon schism with the unity\nof the Church. But Protestantism was well welded to the financial\ninterest of the many princes and others who had acquired the Church\nlands confiscated at the Reformation; since a return to Catholicism\nwould mean the surrender of these. [140] Thus there wrought on the one\nside the organized spirit of anti-heresy [141] and on the other the\norganized spirit of Bibliolatry, neither gaining ground; and between\nthe two, intellectual life was paralysed. Protestantism saw no way\nof advance; and the prevailing temper began to be that of the Dark\nAges, expectant of the end of the world. [142] Superstition abounded,\nespecially the belief in witchcraft, now acted on with frightful\ncruelty throughout the whole Christian world; [143] and in the nature\nof the case Catholicism counted for nothing on the opposite side.\n\nThe only element of rationalism that one historian of culture can\ndetect is the tendency of the German moralists of the time to turn\nthe devil into an abstraction by identifying him with the different\naspects of human folly and vice. [144] There was, as a matter of fact,\na somewhat higher manifestation of the spirit of reason in the shape\nof some new protests against the superstition of sorcery. About 1560\na Catholic priest named Cornelius Loos Callidius was imprisoned by\na papal nuncio for declaring that witches' confessions were merely\nthe results of torture. Forced to retract, he was released; but again\noffended, and was again imprisoned, dying in time to escape the fate\nof a councillor of Tr\u00e8ves, named Flade, who was burned alive for\narguing, on the basis of an old canon (mistakenly named from the\nCouncil of Ancyra), that sorcery is an imaginary crime. [145] Such\nan infamy explains a great deal of the stagnation of many Christian\ngenerations. But courage was not extinct; and in 1563 there appeared\nthe famous John Wier's treatise on witchcraft, [146] a work which,\nthough fully adhering to the belief in the devil and things demoniac,\nargued against the notion that witches were conscious workers of\nevil. Wier [147] was a physician, and saw the problem partly as one\nin pathology. Other laymen, and even priests, as we have seen, had\nreacted still more strongly against the prevailing insanity; but it\nhad the authority of Luther on its side, and with the common people\nthe earlier protests counted for little.\n\nReactions against Protestant bigotry in Holland on other lines were\nnot much more successful, and indeed were not numerous. One of the\nmost interesting is that of Dirk Coornhert (1522-1590), who by his\nmanifold literary activities [148] became one of the founders of Dutch\nprose. In his youth Coornhert had visited Spain and Portugal, and had\nthere, it is said, seen an execution of victims of the Inquisition,\n[149] deriving thence the aversion to intolerance which stamped\nhis whole life's work. It does not appear, however, that any such\npeninsular experience was required, seeing that the Dutch Inquisition\nbecame abundantly active about the same period. Learning Latin\nat thirty, in order to read Augustine, he became a translator of\nCicero and--singularly enough--of Boccaccio. An engraver to trade,\nhe became first notary and later secretary to the burgomaster of\nHaarlem; and, failing to steer clear of the strifes of the time,\nwas arrested and imprisoned at the Hague in 1567. On his release\nhe sought safety at Kleef in Santen, whence he returned after the\ncapture of Brill to become secretary of the new national Government\nat Haarlem; but he had again to take to flight, and lived at Kleef\nfrom 1572 to 1577. In 1578 he debated at Leyden with two preachers of\nDelft on predestination, which he declared to be unscriptural; and was\nofficially ordered to keep silence. Thereupon he published a protest,\nand got into fresh trouble by drawing up, as notary, an appeal to\nthe Prince of Orange on behalf of his Catholic fellow-countrymen for\nfreedom of worship, and by holding another debate at the Hague. [150]\nAlways his master-ideal was that of toleration, in support of which\nhe wrote strongly against Beza and Calvin (this in a Latin treatise\npublished only after his death), declaring the persecution of heretics\nto be a crime in the kingdom of God; and it was as a moralist that he\ngave the lead to Arminius on the question of predestination. [151]\n\"Against Protestant and Catholic sacerdotalism and scholastic he\nset forth humanist world-wisdom and Biblical ethic,\" [152] to that\nend publishing a translation of Bo\u00ebthius (1585), and composing his\nchief work on Zedekunst (Ethics). Christianity, he insisted, lay not\nin profession or creed, but in practice. By way of restraining the\never-increasing malignity of theological strifes, he made the quaint\nproposal that the clergy should not be allowed to utter anything but\nthe actual words of the Scriptures, and that all works of theology\nshould be sequestrated. For these and other heteroclite suggestions\nhe was expelled from Delft (where he sought finally to settle, 1587)\nby the magistrates, at the instance of the preachers, but was allowed\nto die in peace at Gouda, where he wrote to the last. [153]\n\nAll the while, though he drew for doctrine on Plutarch, Cicero, Seneca,\nand Marcus Aurelius equally with the Bible, Coornhert habitually\nfounded on the latter as the final authority. [154] On no other footing\ncould any one in his age and country stand as a teacher. It was not\ntill after generations of furious intolerance that a larger outlook\nwas possible in the Netherlands; and the first steps towards it were\nnaturally taken independently of theology. Although Grotius figured\nfor a century as one of the chief exponents of Christian evidences,\nit is certain that his great work on the Law of War and Peace (1625)\nmade for a rationalistic conception of society. \"Modern historians\nof jurisprudence, like Lerminier and Bluntschli, represent it as the\ndistinctive merit of Grotius that he freed the science from bondage\nto theology.\" [155] The breach, indeed, is not direct, as theistic\nsanctions are paraded in the Prolegomena; but along with these goes\nthe avowal that natural ethic would be valid even were there no God,\nand--as against the formula of Horace, Utilitas justi mater--that\n\"the mother of natural right is human nature itself.\" [156]\n\nWhere Grotius, defender of the faith, figured as a heretic, unbelief\ncould not speak out, though there are traces of its underground\nlife. The charge of atheism was brought against the Excercitationes\nPhilosophic\u00e6 of Gorl\u00e6us, published in 1620; but, the book being\nposthumous, conclusions could not be tried. Views far short of\natheism, however, were dangerous to their holders; for the merely\nSocinian work of Voelkel, published at Amsterdam in 1642, was burned\nby order of the authorities, and a second impression shared the same\nfate. [157] In 1653 the States of Holland forbade the publication of\nall Unitarian books and all Socinian worship; and though the veto\nas to books was soon evaded, that on worship was enforced. [158]\nStill, Holland was relatively tolerant as beside other countries; and\nwhen the Unitarian physician Daniel Zwicker (1612-1678), of Dantzig,\nfound his own country too hot to hold him, he came to Holland (about\n1652) \"for security and convenience.\" [159] He was able to publish\nat Amsterdam in 1658 his Latin Irenicum Irenicorum, wherein he lays\ndown three principles for the settlement of Christian difficulties,\nthe first being \"the universal reason of mankind,\" while Scripture\nand tradition hold only the second and third places. His book is\na remarkable investigation of the rise of the doctrines of the\nLogos and the Trinity, which he traced to polytheism, making out\nthat the first Christians, whom he identified with the Nazarenes,\nregarded Jesus as a man. The book evoked many answers, and it\nis somewhat surprising that Zwicker escaped serious persecution,\ndying peacefully in Amsterdam in 1678, whereas writers much less\npronounced in their heresy incurred aggressive hostility. Descartes,\nas we shall see, during his stay in Holland was menaced by clerical\nfanaticism. Some fared worse. In the generation after Grotius, one\nKoerbagh, a doctor, for publishing (1668) a dictionary of definitions\ncontaining advanced ideas, had to fly from Amsterdam. At Culenberg he\ntranslated a Unitarian work and began another; but was betrayed, tried\nfor blasphemy, and sentenced to ten years' imprisonment, to be followed\nby ten years' banishment. He compromised by dying in prison within\nthe year. Even as late as 1678 the juri-consult Hadrian Beverland\n(afterwards appointed, through Isaac Vossius, to a lay office under\nthe Church of England) was imprisoned and struck off the rolls of\nLeyden University for his Peccatum Originale, in which he speculated\nerotically as to the nature of the sin of Adam and Eve. The book was\nfuriously answered, and publicly burned. [160] It was only after an\nage of such intolerance that Holland, at the end of the seventeenth\ncentury, began to become for England a model of freedom in opinion,\nas formerly in trade. And it seems to have been through Holland,\nin the latter part of the seventeenth century, that there came the\nfresh Unitarian impulse which led to the considerable spread of the\nmovement in England after the Revolution of 1688. [161]\n\nUnitarianism, which we have seen thus invading Holland somewhat\npersistently during half a century, was then as now impotent beyond\na certain point by reason of its divided allegiance, though it has\nalways had the support of some good minds. Its denial of the deity of\nJesus could not be made out without a certain superposing of reason\non Scripture; and yet to Scripture it always finally appealed. The\nmajority of men accepting such authority have always tended to\nbelieve more uncritically; and the majority of men who are habitually\ncritical will always repudiate the Scriptural jurisdiction. In\nPoland, accordingly, the movement, so flourishing in its earlier\nyears, was soon arrested, as we have seen, by the perception that\nit drove many Protestants back to Catholicism; among these being\npresumably a number whose critical insight showed them that there was\nno firm standing-ground between Catholicism and Naturalism. Every new\nadvance within the Unitarian pale terrified the main body, many of\nwhom were mere Arians, holding by the term Trinity, and merely making\nthe Son subordinate to the Father. Thus when one of their most learned\nministers, Simon Budny, followed in the steps of Ferencz Davides (whom\nwe have seen dying in prison in Transylvania in 1579), and represented\nJesus as a \"mere\" man, he was condemned by a synod (1582) and deposed\nfrom his office (1584). He recanted, and was reinstated, [162] but\nhis adherents seem to have been excommunicated. The sect thus formed\nwere termed Semi-Judaizers by another heretic, Martin Czechowicz, who\nhimself denied the pre-existence of Jesus, and made him only a species\nof demi-god; [163] yet Fausto Sozzini, better known as Faustus Socinus,\nwho also wrote against them, and who had worked with Biandrata to have\nDavides imprisoned, conceded that prayer to Christ was optional. [164]\n\nFaustus, who arrived in Poland in 1579, seems to have been moved\nto his strenuously \"moderate\" policy, which for a time unified the\nbulk of the party, mainly by a desire to keep on tolerable terms with\nProtestantism. That, however, did not serve him with the Catholics;\nand when the reaction set in he suffered severely at their hands. His\ntreatise, De Jesu Christu Servatore, created bitter resentment; and\nin 1598 the Catholic rabble of Cracow, led \"as usual by the students\nof the university,\" dragged him from his house. His life was saved\nonly by the strenuous efforts of the rector and two professors of\nthe university; and his library was destroyed, with his manuscripts,\nwhereof \"he particularly regretted a treatise which he had composed\nagainst the atheists\"; [165] though it is not recorded that the\natheists had ever menaced either his life or his property. He seems to\nhave been zealous against all heresy that outwent his own, preaching\npassive obedience in politics as emphatically as any churchman,\nand condemning alike the rising of the Dutch against Spanish rule\nand the resistance of the French Protestants to their king. [166]\n\nThis attitude may have had something to do with the better side\nof the ethical doctrines of the sect, which leant considerably to\nnon-resistance. Czechowicz (who was deposed by his fellow-Socinians\nfor schism) seems not only to have preached a patient endurance of\ninjuries, but to have meant it; [167] and to the Socinian sect belongs\nthe main credit of setting up a humane compromise on the doctrine\nof eternal punishment. [168] The time, of course, had not come for\nany favourable reception of such a compromise in Christendom; and\nit is noted of the German Socinian, Ernst Schoner (Sonerus), who\nwrote against the orthodox dogma, that his works are \"exceedingly\nscarce.\" [169] Unitarianism as a whole, indeed, made little headway\noutside of Poland and Transylvania.\n\nIn Spain, meantime, there was no recovery from the paralysis wrought\nby the combined tyranny of Church and Crown, incarnate in the\nInquisition. The monstrous multiplication of her clergy might alone\nhave sufficed to set up stagnation in her mental life; but, not content\nwith the turning of a vast multitude [170] of men and women away from\nthe ordinary work of life, her rulers set themselves to expatriate\nas many more on the score of heresy. A century after the expulsion\nof the Jews came the turn of the Moors, whose last hold in Spain,\nGranada, had been overthrown in 1492. Within a generation they had been\ndeprived of all exterior practice of their religion; [171] but that\ndid not suffice, and the Inquisition never left them alone. Harried,\npersecuted, compulsorily baptized, deprived of their Arabic books,\nthey repeatedly revolted, only to be beaten down. At length, in the\nopening years of the seventeenth century (1610-1613), under Philip III,\non the score that the great Armada had failed because heretics were\ntolerated at home, it was decided to expel the whole race; and now a\nmillion Moriscoes, among the most industrious inhabitants of Spain,\nwere driven the way of the Jews. It is needless here to recall the\nruinous effect upon the material life of Spain: [172] the aspect\nof the matter which specially concerns us is the consummation of\nthe policy of killing out all intellectual variation. The Moriscoes\nmay have counted for little in positive culture; but they were one\nof the last and most important factors of variation in the country;\nand when Spain was thus successively denuded of precisely the most\noriginal and energetic types among the Jewish, the Spanish, and the\nMoorish stocks, her mental arrest was complete.\n\nTo modern freethought, accordingly, she has till our own age\ncontributed practically nothing. Huarte seems to have had no Spanish\nsuccessors. The brilliant dramatic literature of the reigns of the\nthree Philips, which influenced the rising drama alike of France\nand England, is notably unintellectual, [173] dealing endlessly in\nplot and adventure, but yielding no great study of character, and\ncertainly doing nothing to further ethics. Calderon was a thorough\nfanatic, and became a priest; [174] Lope de Vega found solace under\nbereavement in zealously performing the duties of an Inquisitor; and\nwas so utterly swayed by the atrocious creed of persecution which\nwas blighting Spain that he joined in the general exultation over\nthe expulsion of the Moriscoes. Even the mind of Cervantes had not on\nthis side deepened beyond the average of his race and time; [175] his\nold wrongs at Moorish hands perhaps warping his better judgment. His\nhumorous and otherwise kindly spirit, so incongruously neighboured,\nmust indeed have counted for much in keeping life sweet in Spain\nin the succeeding centuries of bigotry and ignorance. But from the\nseventeenth century till the other day the brains were out, in the\nsense that genius was lacking. That species of variation had been too\neffectually extirpated during two centuries to assert itself until\nafter a similar duration of normal conditions. The \"immense advantage\nof religious unity,\" which even a modern Spanish historian [176] has\ndescribed as a gain balancing the economic loss from the expulsion of\nthe Moriscoes, was precisely the condition of minimum intellectual\nactivity--the unity of stagnation. No kind of ratiocinative thought\nwas allowed to raise its head. A Latin translation of the Hypotyposes\nof Sextus Empiricus had been permitted, or at least published, in\nCatholic France; but when Martin Martinez de Cantatapiedra, a learned\norientalist and professor of theology, ventured to do the same thing\nin Spain--doubtless with the idea of promoting faith by discouraging\nreason--he was haled before the Inquisition, and the book proscribed\n(1583). He was further charged with Lutheran leanings on the score\nthat he had a preference for the actual text of Scripture over that\nof the commentators. [177] In such an atmosphere it was natural that\nworks on mathematics, astronomy, and physics should be censured as\n\"favouring materialism and sometimes atheism.\" [178] It has been\nheld by one historian that at the death of Philip II there arose\nsome such sense of relief throughout Spain as was felt later in\nFrance at the death of Louis XIV; that \"the Spaniards now ventured\nto sport with the chains which they had not the power to break\";\nand that Cervantes profited by the change in conceiving and writing\nhis Don Quixote. [179] But the same historian had before seen that\n\"poetic freedom was circumscribed by the same shackles which fettered\nmoral liberty. Thoughts which could not be expressed without fear of\nthe dungeon and the stake were no longer materials for the poet to\nwork on. His imagination, instead of improving them into poetic ideas\n... had to be taught to reject them. But the eloquence of prose was\nmore completely bowed down under the inquisitorial yoke than poetry,\nbecause it was more closely allied to truth, which of all things\nwas the most dreaded.\" [180] Cervantes, Lope de Vega, and Calderon\nproved that within the iron wall of Catholic orthodoxy, in an age\nwhen conclusions were but slowly being tried between dogma and reason,\nthere could be a vigorous play of imaginative genius on the field of\nhuman nature; even as in Velasquez, sheltered by royal favour, the\ngenius of colour and portraiture could become incarnate. But after\nthese have passed away, the laws of social progress are revealed\nin the defect of all further Spanish genius. Even of Cervantes it\nis recorded--on very doubtful authority, however--that he said \"I\ncould have made Don Quixote much more amusing if it were not for the\nInquisition\"; and it is matter of history that a passage in his book\n[181] disparaging perfunctory works of charity was in 1619 ordered\nby the Holy Office to be expunged as impious and contrary to the faith.\n\n\n See H. E. Watts, Miguel de Cervantes, p. 167. Don Quixote was\n \"always under suspicion of the orthodox.\" Id. p. 166. Mr. Watts,\n saying nothing of Cervantes's approval of the expulsion of the\n Moriscoes, claims that his \"head was clear of the follies and\n extravagances of the reigning superstition\" (id. p. 231). But\n the case is truly summed up by Mr. Ormsby when he says: \"For one\n passage capable of being tortured into covert satire\" against\n things ecclesiastical, \"there are ten in Don Quixote and the\n novels that show--what indeed is very obvious from the little\n we know of his life and character--that Cervantes was a faithful\n son of the Church\" (tr. of Don Quixote, 1885, introd. i, 57).\n\n\nWhen the total intellectual life of a nation falls ever further\nin the rear of the world's movement, even the imaginative arts are\nstunted. Turkey excepted, the civilized nations of Europe which for\ntwo centuries have contributed the fewest great names to the world's\nbead-roll have been Spain, Austria, Portugal, Belgium, and Greece,\nall noted for their \"religious unity.\" And of all of these Spain is\nthe supreme instance of positive decadence, she having exhibited in\nthe first half of the sixteenth century a greater complex of energy\nthan any of the others. [182] The lesson is monumental.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 6. Scientific Thought\n\nIt remains to trace briefly the movement of scientific and speculative\nthought which constituted the transition between the Scholastic\nand the modern philosophy. It may be compendiously noted under the\nnames of Copernicus, Bruno, Vanini, Galileo, Ramus, Gassendi, Bacon,\nand Descartes.\n\nThe great performance of Copernicus (Nicolaus Koppernigk, 1473-1543),\ngiven to the world with an editor's treacherous preface as he lay\nparalysed on his deathbed, did not become a general possession for\nover a hundred years. The long reluctance of its author to let it be\npublished, despite the express invitation of a cardinal in the name of\nthe pope, was well founded in his knowledge of the strength of common\nprejudice; and perhaps partly in a sense of the scientific imperfection\nof his own case. [183] Only the special favour accorded to his first\nsketch at Rome--a favour which he had further carefully planned for\nin his dedicatory epistle to Pope Paul--saved his main treatise from\nprohibition till long after its work was done. [184] It was in fact,\nwith all its burden of traditional error, the most momentous challenge\nthat had yet been offered in the modern world to established beliefs,\nalike theological and lay, for it seemed to flout \"common sense\"\nas completely as it did the cosmogony of the sacred books. It was\nprobably from scraps of ancient lore current in Italy in his years\nof youthful study there that he first derived his idea; and in Italy\nnone had dared publicly to propound the geocentric theory. Its gradual\nvictory, therefore, is the first great modern instance of a triumph\nof reason over spontaneous and instilled prejudice; and Galileo's\naccount of his reception of it should be a classic document in the\nhistory of rationalism.\n\nIt was when he was a student in his teens that there came to Pisa\none Christianus Urstitius of Rostock, a follower of Copernicus,\nto lecture on the new doctrine. The young Galileo, being satisfied\nthat \"that opinion could be no other than a solemn madness,\" did\nnot attend; and those of his acquaintance who did made a jest of the\nmatter, all save one, \"very intelligent and wary,\" who told him that\n\"the business was not altogether to be laughed at.\" Thenceforth he\nbegan to inquire of Copernicans, with the result inevitable to such\na mind as his. \"Of as many as I examined I found not so much as one\nwho told me not that he had been a long time of the contrary opinion,\nbut to have changed it for this, as convinced by the strength of the\nreasons proving the same; and afterwards questioning them one by one,\nto see whether they were well possessed of the reasons of the other\nside, I found them all to be very ready and perfect in them, so that\nI could not truly say that they took this opinion out of ignorance,\nvanity, or to show the acuteness of their wits.\" On the other hand,\nthe opposing Aristoteleans and Ptolemeans had seldom even superficially\nstudied the Copernican system, and had in no case been converted from\nit. \"Whereupon, considering that there was no man who followed the\nopinion of Copernicus that had not been first on the contrary side,\nand that was not very well acquainted with the reasons of Aristotle and\nPtolemy, while, on the contrary, there was not one of the followers\nof Ptolemy that had ever been of the judgment of Copernicus, and\nhad left that to embrace this of Aristotle,\" he began to realize\nhow strong must be the reasons that thus drew men away from beliefs\n\"imbibed with their milk.\" [185] We can divine how slow would be the\nprogress of a doctrine which could only thus begin to find its way\ninto one of the most gifted scientific minds of the modern world. It\nwas only a minority of the \u00e9lite of the intellectual life who could\nreceive it, even after the lapse of a hundred years.\n\n\n The doctrine of the earth's two-fold motion, as we have seen,\n had actually been taught in the fifteenth century by Nicolaus of\n Cusa (1401-1464), who, instead of being prosecuted, was made a\n cardinal, so little was the question then considered (Ueberweg,\n ii, 23-24). See above, vol. i, p. 368, as to Pulci. Only very\n slowly did the work even of Copernicus make its impression. Green\n (Short History, ed. 1881, p. 297) makes first the mistake of\n stating that it influenced thought in the fifteenth century, and\n then the further mistake of saying that it was brought home to the\n general intelligence by Galileo and Kepler in the later years of\n the sixteenth century (id. p. 412). Galileo's European notoriety\n dates from 1616; his Dialogues of the Two Systems of the World\n appeared only in 1632; and his Dialogues of the New Sciences in\n 1638. Kepler's indecisive Mysterium Cosmographicum appeared only in\n 1597; his treatise on the motions of the planet Mars not till 1609.\n\n\nOne of the first to bring the new cosmological conception to bear on\nphilosophic thought was Giordano Bruno of Nola (1548-1600), whose\nlife and death of lonely chivalry have won him his place as the\ntypical martyr of modern freethought. [186] He may be conceived as a\nblending of the pantheistic and naturalistic lore of ancient Greece,\n[187] assimilated through the Florentine Platonists, with the spirit\nof modern science (itself a revival of the Greek) as it first takes\nfirm form in Copernicus, whose doctrine Bruno early and ardently\nembraced. Baptized Filippo, he took Giordano as his cloister-name\nwhen he entered the great convent of S. Domenico Maggiore at Naples\nin 1563, in his fifteenth year. No human being was ever more unfitly\nplaced among the Dominicans, punningly named the \"hounds of the Lord\"\n(domini canes) for their work as the corps of the Inquisition; and\nvery early in his cloister life he came near being formally proceeded\nagainst for showing disregard of sacred images, and making light of\nthe sanctity of the Virgin. [188] He passed his novitiate, however,\nwithout further trouble, and was fully ordained a priest in 1572,\nin his twenty-fourth year. Passing then through several Neapolitan\nmonasteries during a period of three years, he seems to have become\nnot a little of a freethinker on his return to his first cloister, as\nhe had already reached Arian opinions in regard to Christ, and soon\nproceeded to substitute a mystical and Pythagorean for the orthodox\nview of the Trinity. [189]\n\nFor the second time a \"process\" was begun against him, and he\ntook flight to Rome (1576), presenting himself at a convent of his\nOrder. News speedily came from Naples of the process against him,\nand of the discovery that he had possessed a volume of the works\nof Chrysostom and Jerome with the scholia of Erasmus--a prohibited\nthing. Only a few months before Bartolomeo Carranza, Bishop of Toledo,\nwho had won the praise of the Council of Trent for his index of\nprohibited books, had been condemned to abjure for the doctrine that\n\"the worship of the relics of the saints is of human institution,\"\nand had died in the same year at the convent to which Bruno had\nnow gone. Thus doubly warned, he threw off his priestly habit, and\nfled to the Genoese territory, [190] where, in the commune of Noli,\nhe taught grammar and astronomy. In 1578 he visited successively\nTurin, Venice, Padua, Bergamo, and Milan, resuming at the last-named\ntown his monk's habit. Thereafter he again returned to Turin,\npassing thence to Chamb\u00e9ry at the end of 1578, and thence to Geneva\nearly in 1579. [191] His wish, he said, was \"to live in liberty and\nsecurity\"; but for that he must first renounce his Dominican habit;\nother Italian refugees, of whom there were many at Geneva, helping\nhim to a layman's suit. Becoming a corrector of the press, he seems\nto have conformed externally to Calvinism; but after a stay of two\nand a-half months he published a short diatribe against one Antonio\nde La Faye, who professed philosophy at the Academy; and for this he\nwas arrested and sentenced to excommunication, while his bookseller\nwas subjected to one day's imprisonment and a fine. [192] After three\nweeks the excommunication was raised; but he nevertheless left Geneva,\nand afterwards spoke of Calvinism as the \"deformed religion.\" After\na few weeks' sojourn at Lyons he went to Toulouse, the very centre\nof inquisitional orthodoxy; and there, strangely enough, he was able\nto stay for more than a year, [193] taking his degree as Master of\nArts and becoming professor of astronomy. But the civil wars made\nToulouse unsafe; and at length, probably in 1581 or 1582, he reached\nParis, where for a time he lectured as professor extraordinary. [194]\nIn 1583 he reached England, where he remained till 1585, lecturing,\ndebating at Oxford on the Copernican theory, and publishing a number\nof his works, four of them dedicated to his patron Castelnau de\nMauvissi\u00e8re, the French ambassador. Oxford was then a stronghold\nof bigoted Aristotelianism, where bachelors and masters deviating\nfrom the master were fined, or, if openly hostile, expelled. [195]\nIn that camp Bruno was not welcome. But he had other shelter, at the\nFrench Embassy in London, and there he had notable acquaintances. He\nhad met Sir Philip Sidney at Milan in 1578; and his dialogue, Cena de\nle Ceneri, gives a vivid account of a discussion in which he took a\nleading part at a banquet given by Sir Fulke Greville. His picture of\n\"Oxford ignorance and English ill-manners\" [196] is not lenient; and\nthere is no reason to suppose that his doctrine was then assimilated\nby many; [197] but his stay in the household of Castelnau was one\nof the happiest periods of his chequered life. While in England he\nwrote no fewer than seven works, four of them dedicated to Castelnau,\nand two--the Heroic Fervours and the Expulsion of the Triumphant\nBeast--to Sir Philip Sidney.\n\nReturning to Paris on the recall of Castelnau in 1585, he made an\nattempt to reconcile himself to the Church, but it was fruitless;\nand thereafter he went his own way. After a public disputation at the\nuniversity in 1586, he set out on a new peregrination, visiting first\nMayence, Marburg, and Wittemberg. At Marburg he was refused leave to\ndebate; and at Wittemberg he seems to have been carefully conciliatory,\nas he not only matriculated but taught for over a year (1586-1588),\ntill the Calvinist party carried the day over the Lutheran. [198]\nThereafter he reached Prague, Helmstadt, Frankfort, and Zurich. At\nlength, on the fatal invitation of the Venetian youth Mocenigo, he\nre-entered Italian territory, where, in Venice, he was betrayed to\nthe Inquisition by his treacherous and worthless pupil. [199]\n\nWhat had been done for freethought by Bruno in his fourteen years of\nwandering, debating, and teaching through Europe it is impossible to\nestimate; but it is safe to say that he was one of the most powerful\nantagonists to orthodox unreason that had yet appeared. Of all men of\nhis time he had perhaps the least affinity with the Christian creed,\nwhich was repellent to him alike in the Catholic and the Protestant\nversions. The attempt to prove him a believer on the strength of\na non-autograph manuscript [200] is idle. His approbation of a\nreligion for the discipline of uncivilized peoples is put in terms\nof unbelief. [201] In the Spaccio della bestia trionfante he derides\nthe notion of a union of divine and human natures, and substantially\nproclaims a natural (theistic) religion, negating all \"revealed\"\nreligions alike. Where Boccaccio had accredited all the three leading\nreligions, Bruno disallows all with paganism, though he puts that\nabove Christianity. [202] And his disbelief grew more stringent with\nhis years. Among the heretical propositions charged against him by\nthe Inquisition were these: that there is transmigration of souls;\nthat magic is right and proper; that the Holy Spirit is the same thing\nas the soul of the world; that the world is eternal; that Moses, like\nthe Egyptians, wrought miracles by magic; that the sacred writings\nare but a romance (sogno); that the devil will be saved; that only\nthe Hebrews are descended from Adam, other men having descended from\nprogenitors created by God before Adam; that Christ was not God,\nbut was a notorious sorcerer (insigne mago), who, having deceived\nmen, was deservedly hanged, not crucified; that the prophets and\nthe apostles were bad men and sorcerers, and that many of them were\nhanged as such. The cruder of these propositions rest solely on the\nallegation of Mocenigo, and were warmly repudiated by Bruno: others\nare professedly drawn, always, of course, by forcing his language,\nbut not without some colourable pretext, from his two \"poems,\"\nDe triplice, minimo, et mensura, and De monade, numero et figura,\npublished at Frankfort in 1591, in the last year of his freedom. [203]\nBut the allusions in the Sigillus Sigillorum [204] to the weeping\nworship of a suffering Adonis, to the exhibition of suffering and\nmiserable Gods, to transpierced divinities, and to sham miracles,\nwere certainly intended to contemn the Christian system.\n\nAlike in the details of his propaganda and in the temper of his\nutterance, Bruno expresses from first to last the spirit of freethought\nand free speech. Libertas philosophica [205] is the breath of his\nnostrils; and by his life and his death alike he upholds the ideal\nfor men as no other before him did. The wariness of Rabelais and the\nnon-committal skepticism of Montaigne are alike alien to him; he is\ntoo lacking in reticence, too explosive, to give due heed even to\nthe common-sense amenities of life, much more to hedge his meaning\nwith safeguarding qualifications. And it was doubtless as much by\nthe contagion of his mood as by his lore that he impressed men.\n\nHis personal and literary influence was probably most powerful in\nrespect of his eager propaganda of the Copernican doctrine, which he\nof his own force vitally expanded and made part of a pantheistic\nconception of the universe. [206] Where Copernicus adhered by\nimplication to the idea of an external and limitary sphere--the last\nof the eight of the Ptolemaic theory--Bruno reverted boldly to the\ndoctrine of Anaximandros, and declared firmly for the infinity of\nspace and of the series of the worlds. In regard to biology he makes\nan equivalent advance, starting from the thought of Empedocles and\nLucretius, and substituting an idea of natural selection for that\nof creative providence. [207] The conception is definitely thought\nout, and marks him as one of the renovators of scientific no less\nthan of philosophic thought for the modern world; though the special\nparalysis of science under Christian theology kept his ideas on this\nside pretty much a dead letter for his own day. And indeed it was\nto the universal and not the particular that his thought chiefly\nand most enthusiastically turned. A philosophic poet rather than\na philosopher or man of science, he yet set abroad for the modern\nworld that conception of the physical infinity of the universe which,\nonce psychologically assimilated, makes an end of the medieval theory\nof things. On this head he was eagerly affirmative; and the merely\nPyrrhonic skeptics he assailed as he did the \"asinine\" orthodox,\nthough he insisted on doubt as the beginning of wisdom.\n\nOf his extensive literary output not much is stamped with lasting\nscientific fitness or literary charm; and some of his treatises, as\nthose on mnemonics, have no more value than the product of his didactic\nmodel, Raymond Lully. As a writer he is at his best in the sweeping\nexpatiation of his more general philosophic treatises, where he attains\na lifting ardour of inspiration, a fervour of soaring outlook, that\nputs him in the front rank of the thinkers of his age. And if his\nliterary character is at times open to severe criticism in respect\nof his lack of balance, sobriety, and self-command, his final courage\natones for such shortcomings.\n\nHis case, indeed, serves to remind us that at certain junctures it is\nonly the unbalanced types that aid humanity's advance. The perfectly\nprudent and self-sufficing man does not achieve revolutions, does\nnot revolt against tyrannies; he wisely adapts himself and subsists,\nletting the evil prevail as it may. It is the more impatient and\nunreticent, the eager and hot-brained--in a word, the faulty--who clash\nwith oppression and break a way for quieter spirits through the hedges\nof enthroned authority. The serenely contemplative spirit is rather\na possession than a possessor for his fellows; he may inform and\nenlighten, but is not in himself a countering or inspiriting force:\na Shelley avails more than a Goethe against tyrannous power. And it\nmay be that the battling enthusiast in his own way wins liberation\nfor himself from \"fear of fortune and death,\" as he wins for others\nliberty of action. [208] Even such a liberator, bearing other men's\ngriefs and taking stripes that they might be kept whole, was Bruno.\n\nAnd though he quailed at the first shock of capture and torture,\nwhen the end came he vindicated human nature as worthily as could\nany quietist. It was a long-drawn test. Charged on the traitor's\ntestimony with many \"blasphemies,\" he denied them all, [209] but stood\nto his published writings [210] and vividly expounded his theories,\n[211] professing in the usual manner to believe in conformity with\nthe Church's teachings, whatever he might write on philosophy. It\nis impossible to trust the Inquisition records as to his words\nof self-humiliation; [212] though on the other hand no blame can\nrationally attach to anyone who, in his place, should try to deceive\nsuch enemies, morally on a level with hostile savages. It is certain\nthat the Inquisitors frequently wrung recantations by torture. [213]\n\nWhat is historically certain is that Bruno was not released, but sent\non to Rome, and was kept there in prison for seven years. He was not\nthe sort of heretic likely to be released; though the fact of his being\na Dominican, and the desire to maintain the Church's intellectual\ncredit, delayed so long his execution. Certainly not an atheist (he\ncalled himself in several of his book-titles Philotheus; he consigns\ninsano ateismo to perdition; [214] and his quasi-pantheism or monism\noften lapses into theistic modes), [215] he yet was from first to last\nessentially though not professedly anti-Christian in his view of the\nuniverse. If the Church had cause to fear any philosophic teaching,\nit was his, preached with the ardour of a prophet and the eloquence\nof a poet. His doctrine that the worlds in space are innumerable was\nas offensive to orthodox ears as his specific negations of Christian\ndogma, outgoing as it did the later idea of Kepler and Galileo. He had,\nmoreover, finally refused to make any fresh recantation; and the only\ndetailed document extant concerning his final trial describes him as\nsaying to his judges: \"With more fear, perchance, do you pass sentence\non me than I receive it.\" [216] According to all accessible records,\nhe was burned alive at Rome in February, 1600, in the Field of Flowers,\nnear where his statue now stands. As was probably customary, they tied\nhis tongue before leading him to the stake, lest he should speak to\nthe people; [217] and his martyrdom was an edifying spectacle for the\nvast multitude of pilgrims who had come from all parts of Christendom\nfor the jubilee of the pope. [218] At the stake, when he was at the\npoint of death, there was duly presented to him the crucifix, and he\nduly put it aside.\n\n\n An attempt has been made by Professor Desdouits in a pamphlet\n (La l\u00e9gende tragique de Jordano Bruno; Paris, 1885) to show that\n there is no evidence that Bruno was burned; and an anonymous\n writer in the Scottish Review (October, 1888, Art. II), rabidly\n hostile to Bruno, has maintained the same proposition. Doubt on\n the subject dates from Bayle. Its main ground is the fewness of\n the documentary records, of which, further, the genuineness is\n now called in question. But no good reason is shown for doubting\n them. They are three.\n\n 1. The Latin letter of Gaspar Schopp (Scioppius), dated February\n 17, 1600, is an eye-witness's account of the sentencing and\n burning of Bruno at that date. (See it in full, in the original\n Latin, in Berti, p. 461 sq., and in App. V to Frith, Life of\n Bruno, and partly translated in Prof. Adamson's lectures, as\n cited. It was rep. by Struvius in his Acta Literaria, tom. v,\n and by La Croze in his Entretiens sur divers sujets in 1711,\n p. 287.) It was not printed till 1621, but the grounds urged for\n its rejection are totally inadequate, and involve assumptions,\n which are themselves entirely unproved, as to what Scioppius was\n likely to do. Finally, no intelligible reason is suggested for\n the forging of such a document. The remarks of Prof. Desdouits\n on this head have no force whatever. The writer in the Scottish\n Review (p. 263, and note) suggests as \"at least as possible an\n hypothesis as any other that he [Bruno] was the author of the\n forged accounts of his own death.\" Comment is unnecessary.\n\n 2. There are preserved two extracts from Roman news-letters\n (Avvisi) of the time; one, dated February 12, 1600, commenting on\n the case; the other, dated February 19, relating the execution\n on the 17th. (See both in S. R., pp. 264-65. They were first\n printed by Berti in Documenti intorno a Giordano Bruno, Rome,\n 1880, and are reprinted in his Vita, ed. 1889, cap. xix; also\n by Levi, as cited.) Against these testimonies the sole plea is\n that they mis-state Bruno's opinions and the duration of his\n imprisonment--a test which would reduce to mythology the contents\n of most newspapers in our own day. The writer in the Scottish\n Review makes the suicidal suggestion that, inasmuch as the errors\n as to dates occur in Schopp's letter, \"the so-called Schopp\n was fabricated from these notices, or they from Schopp\"--thus\n admitting one to be historical.\n\n 3. There has been found, by a Catholic investigator, a double entry\n in the books of the Lay Brotherhood of San Giovanni Decollato,\n whose function was to minister to prisoners under capital sentence,\n giving a circumstantial account of Bruno's execution. (See it in\n S. R., pp. 266, 269, 270.) In this case, the main entry being dated\n \"1600. Thursday. February 16th,\" the anonymous writer argues that\n \"the whole thing resolves itself into a make-up,\" because February\n 16 was the Wednesday. The entry refers to the procedure of the\n Wednesday night and the Thursday morning; and such an error could\n easily occur in any case. Whatever may be one day proved, the\n cavils thus far count for nothing. All the while, the records\n as to Bruno remain in the hands of the Catholic authorities;\n but, despite the discredit constantly cast on the Church on the\n score of Bruno's execution, they offer no official denial of the\n common statement; while they do officially admit (S. R., p. 252)\n that on February 8 Bruno was sentenced as an \"obstinate heretic,\"\n and \"given over to the Secular Court.\" On the other hand, the\n episode is well vouched; and the argument from the silence of\n ambassadors' letters is so far void. No pretence is made of\n tracing Bruno anywhere after February, 1600.\n\n Since the foregoing note appeared in the first edition I have\n met with the essay of Mr. R. Copley Christie, \"Was Giordano\n Bruno Really Burned?\" (Macmillan's Magazine, October, 1885;\n rep. in Mr. Christie's Selected Essays and Papers, 1902). This\n is a crushing answer to the thesis of M. Desdouits, showing as\n it does clear grounds not only for affirming the genuineness\n of the letter of Scioppius, but for doubting the diligence\n of M. Desdouits. Mr. Christie points out (1) that in his book\n Ecclesiasticus, printed in 1612, Scioppius refers to the burning of\n Bruno almost in the words of his letter of 1600; (2) that in 1607\n Kepler wrote to a correspondent of the burning of Bruno, giving as\n his authority J. M. Wacker, who in 1600 was living at Rome as the\n imperial ambassador; and (3) that the tract Machiavellizatio, 1621,\n in which the letter of Scioppius was first printed, was well known\n in its day, being placed on the Index, and answered by two writers\n without eliciting any repudiation from Scioppius, who lived till\n 1649. As M. Desdouits staked his case on the absence of allusion to\n the subject before 1661 (overlooking even the allusion by Mersenne,\n in 1624, cited by Bayle), his theory may be taken as exploded.\n\n\nBruno has been zealously blackened by Catholic writers for the\nobscenity of some of his writing [219] and the alleged freedom of his\nlife--piquant charges, when we remember the life of the Papal Italy in\nwhich he was born. Lucilio Vanini (otherwise Julius C\u00e6sar Vanini), the\nnext martyr of freethought, also an Italian (b. at Taurisano, 1585),\nis open to the more relevant charges of an inordinate vanity and some\nduplicity. Figuring as a Carmelite friar, which he was not, he came\nto England (1612) and deceitfully professed to abjure Catholicism,\n[220] gaining, however, nothing by the step, and contriving to be\nreconciled to the Church, after being imprisoned for forty-nine days\non an unrecorded charge. Previously he had figured, like Bruno,\nas a wandering scholar at Amsterdam, Brussels, Cologne, Geneva,\nand Lyons; and afterwards he taught natural philosophy for a year\nat Genoa. His treatise, Amphitheatrum \u00c6terna Providenti\u00e6 (Lyons,\n1615), is professedly directed against \"ancient philosophers,\nAtheists, Epicureans, Peripatetics, and Stoics,\" and is ostensibly\nquite orthodox. [221] In one passage he untruthfully tells how, when\nimprisoned in England, he burned with the desire to shed his blood\nfor the Catholic Church. [222] In another, after declaring that some\nChristian doctors have argued very weakly against the Epicureans\non immortality, he avows that he, \"Christianus nomine cognomine\nCatholicus,\" could hardly have held the doctrine if he had not\nlearned it from the Church, \"the most certain and infallible mistress\nof truth.\" [223] As usual, the attack leaves us in doubt as to the\namount of real atheism current at the time. The preface asserts that\n\"Atheot\u00eato autem secta pestilentissima quotidie, latius et latius\nvires acquirit eundo,\" and there are various hostile allusions to\natheists in the text; [224] but the arguments cited from them are\nsuch as might be brought by deists against miracles and the Christian\ndoctrine of sin; and there is an allusion of the customary kind to\n\"Nicolaus Machiavellus Atheorum facile princeps,\" [225] which puts\nall in doubt. The later published Dialogues, De Admirandis Natur\u00e6\nArcanis, [226] while showing a freer critical spirit, would seem\nto be in part earlier in composition, if we can trust the printer's\npreface, which represents them as collected from various quarters,\nand published only with the reluctant consent of the author. [227]\nThis, of course, may be a mystification; in any case the Dialogues\ntwice mention the Amphitheatrum; and the fourth book, in which this\nmention occurs, may be taken on this and other grounds to set forth\nhis later ideas. Even the Dialogues, however, while discussing many\nquestions of creed and science in a free fashion, no less profess\northodoxy; and, while one passage is pantheistic, [228] they also\ndenounce atheism. [229] And whereas one passage does avow that the\nauthor in his Amphitheatrum had said many things he did not believe,\nthe context clearly suggests that the reference was not to the main\nargument, but to some of its dubious facts. [230] In any case, though\nthe title--chosen by the editors--speaks daringly enough of \"Nature,\nthe queen and goddess of mortals,\" Vanini cannot be shown to be an\natheist; [231] and the attacks upon him as an immoral writer are not\nany better supported. [232] The publication of the dialogues was in\nfact formally authorized by the Sorbonne, [233] and it does not even\nappear that when he was charged with atheism and blasphemy at Toulouse\nthat work was founded on, save in respect of its title. [234] The\ncharges rested on the testimony of a treacherous associate as to his\nprivate conversation; and, if true, it only amounted to proving his\npantheism, expressed in his use of the word \"Nature.\" At his trial he\nexpressly avowed and argued for theism. The judges, by one account,\ndid not agree. Yet he was convicted, by the voices of the majority,\nand burned alive (February 9, 1619) on the day of his sentence. Drawn\non a hurdle, in his shirt, with a placard on his shoulders inscribed\n\"Atheist and Blasphemer of the name of God,\" he went to his death\nwith a high heart, rejoicing, as he cried in Italian, to die like\na philosopher. [235] A Catholic historian, [236] who was present,\nsays he hardily declared that \"Jesus facing death sweated with fear:\nI die undaunted.\" But before burning him they tore out his tongue by\nthe roots; and the Christian historian is humorous over the victim's\nlong cry of agony. [237] No martyr ever faced death with a more\ndauntless courage than this\n\n\n Lonely antagonist of Destiny\n That went down scornful before many spears; [238]\n\n\nand if the man had all the faults falsely imputed to him, [239]\nhis death might shame his accusers.\n\nVanini, like Bruno, can now be recognized and understood as an Italian\nof vivacious temperament, studious without the student's calm, early\nlearned, alert in debate, fluent, imprudent, and ill-balanced. By\nhis own account he studied theology under the Carmelite Bartolomeo\nArgotti, phoenix of the preachers of the time; [240] but from the\nEnglish Carmelite, John Bacon, \"the prince of Averro\u00efsts,\" [241] he\ndeclares, he \"learned to swear only by Averro\u00ebs\"; and of Pomponazzi\nhe speaks as his master, and as \"prince of the philosophers of our\nage.\" [242] He has criticized both freely in his Amphitheatrum;\nbut whereas that work is a professed vindication of orthodoxy, we\nmay infer from the De Arcanis that the arguments of these skeptics,\nlike those of the contemporary atheists whom he had met in his travels,\nhad kept their hold on his thought even while he controverted them. For\nit cannot be disputed that the long passages which he quotes from the\n\"atheist at Amsterdam\" [243] are put with a zest and cogency which\nare not infused into the professed rebuttals, and are in themselves\nquite enough to arouse the anger and suspicion of a pious reader. A\nwriter who set forth so fully the acute arguments of unbelievers,\nunprintable by their authors, might well be suspected of writing at\nChristianity when he confuted the creeds of the pagans. As was noted\nlater of Fontenelle, he put arguments against oracles which endangered\nprophecy; his dismissal of sorcery as the dream of troubled brains\nappeals to reason and not to faith; and his disparagement of pagan\nmiracles logically bore upon the Christian.\n\nWhen he comes to the question of immortality he grows overtly\nirreverent. Asked by the interlocutor in the last dialogue to give\nhis views on the immortality of the soul, he begs to be excused,\nprotesting: \"I have vowed to my God that that question shall\nnot be handled by me till I become old, rich, and a German.\" And\nwithout overt irreverence he is ever and again unserious. Perfectly\ntransparent is the irony of the appeal, \"Let us give faith to the\nprescripts of the Church, and due honour to the sacrosanct Gregorian\napparitions,\" [244] and the protestation, \"I will not invalidate the\npowers of holy water, to which Alexander, Doctor and Pontifex of\nthe Christians, and interpreter of the divine will, accorded such\ncountless privileges.\" [245] And even in the Amphitheatrum, with\nall the parade of defending the faith, there is a plain balance of\ncogency on the side of the case for the attack, [246] and a notable\ndisposition to rely finally on lines of argument to which faith\ncould never give real welcome. The writer's mind, it is clear, was\nfamiliar with doubt. In the malice of orthodoxy there is sometimes an\ninstinctive perception of hostility; and though Vanini had written,\namong other things, [247] an Apologia pro lege mosa\u00efc\u00e2 et christian\u00e2,\nto which he often refers, and an Apologia pro concilio Tridentino,\nhe can be seen even in the hymn to deity with which he concludes his\nAmphitheatrum to have no part in evangelical Christianity.\n\nHe was in fact a deist with the inevitable leaning of the philosophic\ntheist to pantheism; and whatever he may have said to arouse priestly\nhatred at Toulouse, he was rather less of an atheist than Spinoza\nor Bruno or John Scotus. On his trial, [248] pressed as to his real\nbeliefs by judges who had doubtless challenged his identification\nof God with Nature, he passed from a profession of orthodox faith in\na trinity into a flowing discourse which could as well have availed\nfor a vindication of pantheism as for the proposition of a personal\nGod. Seeing a straw on the ground, he picked it up and talked of its\nhistory; and when brought back again from his affirmation of Deity to\nhis doctrine of Nature, he set forth the familiar orthodox theorem\nthat, while Nature wrought the succession of seeds and fruits,\nthere must have been a first seed which was created. It was the\nhabitual standing ground of theism; and they burned him all the\nsame. It remains an open question whether personal enmity on the\npart of the prosecuting official [249] or a real belief that he had\nuttered blasphemies against Jesus or Mary was the determining force,\nor whether even less motive sufficed. A vituperative Jesuit of that\nage sees intolerable freethinking in his suggestion of the unreality\nof demoniacal possession and the futility of exorcisms. [250] And for\nthat much they were not incapable of burning men in Catholic Toulouse\nin the days of Mary de Medici.\n\nThere are in fact reasons for surmizing that in the cases alike of\nBruno and of Vanini it was the attitude of the speculator towards\nscientific problems that primarily or mainly aroused distrust and anger\namong the theologians. Vanini is careful to speak equivocally of the\neternity of the universe; and though he makes a passing mention of\nKepler, [251] he does not name Copernicus. He had learned something\nfrom the fate of Bruno. Yet in the Dialogue De coeli forma et motore\n[252] he declares so explicitly for a naturalistic explanation of\nthe movements of the heavenly bodies that he must have aroused in\nsome orthodox readers such anger as was set up in Plato by a physical\ntheory of sun and stars. After an \u00e0 priori discussion on Aristotelian\nlines, the querist in the dialogue asks what may fitly be held, with\nan eye to religion, concerning the movements of the spheres. \"This,\"\nanswers Vanini, \"unless I am in error: the mass of the heaven is\nmoved in its proper gyratory way by the nature of its elements.\" \"How\nthen,\" asks the querist, \"are the heavens moved by certain and fixed\nlaws, unless divine minds, participating in the primal motion,\nthere operate?\" \"Where is the wonder?\" returns Vanini. \"Does not\na certain and fixed law of motion act in the most paltry clockwork\nmachines, made by a drunken German, even as there works silently in\na tertian and quartan fever a motion which comes and goes at fixed\nperiods without transgressing its line by a moment? The sea also at\ncertain and fixed times, by its nature, as you peripatetics affirm,\nis moved in progressions and regressions. No less, then, I affirm\nthe heaven to be forever carried by the same motion in virtue of\nits nature (a sua pura forma) and not to be moved by the will of\nintelligence.\" And the disciple assents. Kepler had seen fit, either\nin sincerity or of prudence, to leave \"divine minds\" in the planets;\nand Vanini's negation, though not accompanied by any assertion of\nthe motion of the earth, was enough to provoke the minds which had\nonly three years before put Copernicus on the Index, and challenged\nGalileo for venting his doctrine.\n\nIt is at this stage that we begin to realize the full play of the\nCounter-Reformation, as against the spirit of science. The movement\nof mere theological and ecclesiastical heresy had visibly begun to\nrecede in the world of mind, and in its stead, alike in Protestant\nand in Catholic lands, there was emerging a new activity of scientific\nresearch, vaguely menacing to all theistic faith. Kepler represented\nit in Germany, Harriott and Harvey and Gilbert and Bacon in England;\nfrom Italy had come of late the portents of Bruno and Galileo;\neven Spain yielded the Examen de Ingenios of Huarte (1575), where\nwith due protestation of theism the physicist insists upon natural\ncausation; and now Vanini was exhibiting the same incorrigible zest\nfor a naturalistic explanation of all things. His dialogues are\nfull of such questionings; the mere metaphysic and theosophy of\nthe Amphitheatrum are being superseded by discussions on physical\nand physiological phenomena. It was for this, doubtless, that the\nDe Arcanis won the special vogue over which the Jesuit Garasse was\nangrily exclaiming ten years later. [253] Not merely the doubts cast\nupon sorcery and diabolical possession, but the whole drift, often\nenough erratic, of the inquiry as to how things in nature came about,\ncaught the curiosity of the time, soon to be stimulated by more potent\nand better-governed minds than that of the ill-starred Vanini. And\nfor every new inquirer there would be a hostile zealot in the Church,\nwhere the anti-intellectual instinct was now so much more potent than\nit had been in the days before Luther, when heresy was diagnosed only\nas a danger to revenue.\n\nIt was with Galileo that there began the practical application\nof the Copernican theory to astronomy, and, indeed, the decisive\ndemonstration of its truth. With him, accordingly, began the positive\nrejection of the Copernican theory by the Church; for thus far it had\nnever been officially vetoed--having indeed been generally treated\nas a wild absurdity. Almost immediately after the publication of\nGalileo's Sidereus Nuncius (1610) his name is found in the papers\nof the Inquisition, with that of Cremonini of Padua, as a subject of\ninvestigation. [254] The juxtaposition is noteworthy. Cremonini was\nan Aristotelian, with Averro\u00efst leanings, and reputed an atheist;\n[255] and it was presumably on this score that the Inquisition was\nlooking into his case. At the same time, as an Aristotelian he was\nstrongly opposed to Galileo, and is said to have been one of those\nwho refused to look through Galileo's telescope. [256] Galileo, on\nthe other hand, was ostensibly a good Catholic; but his discovery\nof the moons of Jupiter was a signal confirmation of the Copernican\ntheory, and the new status at once given to that made a corresponding\ncommotion in the Church. Thus he had against him both the unbelieving\npedants of the schools and the typical priests.\n\n\nIn his book the great discoverer had said nothing explicitly on the\nsubject of the Copernican theory; but in lectures and conversations\nhe had freely avowed his belief in it; and the implications of the\npublished treatise were clear to all thinkers. [257] And though,\nwhen he visited Rome in 1611, he was well received by Pope Paul V,\nand his discoveries were favourably reported of by the four scientific\nexperts nominated at the request of Cardinal Bellarmin to examine them,\n[258] it only needed that the Biblical cry should be raised to change\nthe situation. The Church still contained men individually open to\nnew scientific ideas; but she was then more than ever dominated\nby the forces of tradition; and as soon as those forces had been\npractically evoked his prosecution was bound to follow. The cry of\n\"religion in danger\" silenced the saner men at Rome.\n\nThe fashion in which Galileo's sidereal discoveries were met is indeed\ntypical of the whole history of freethought. The clergy pointed to the\nstory of Joshua stopping the sun and moon; the average layman scouted\nthe new theory as plain folly; and typical schoolmen insisted that\n\"the heavens are unchangeable,\" and that there was no authority in\nAristotle for the new assertions. With such minds the man of science\nhad to argue, and in deference to such he had at length to affect to\ndoubt his own demonstrations. [259] The Catholic Reaction had finally\ncreated as bitter a spirit of hostility to free science in the Church\nas existed among the Protestants; and in Italy even those who saw the\nmoons of Jupiter through his telescope dared not avow what they had\nseen. [260] It was therefore an unfortunate step on Galileo's part to\ngo from Padua, which was under the rule of Venice, then anti-papal,\n[261] to Tuscany, on the invitation of the Grand Duke. When in 1613\nhe published his treatise on the solar spots, definitely upholding\nCopernicus against Jesuits and Aristotelians, trouble became\ninevitable; and his letter [262] to his pupil, Father Castelli,\nprofessor of mathematics at Pisa, discussing the Biblical argument\nwith which they had both been met, at once evoked an explosion when\ncirculated by Castelli. New trouble arose when Galileo in 1615 wrote\nhis apology in the form of a letter to his patroness the Dowager Grand\nDuchess Cristina of Tuscany, extracts from which became current. An\noutcry of ignorant Dominican monks [263] sufficed to set at work the\nmachinery of the Index, [264] the first result of which (1616) was to\nput on the list of condemned books the great treatise of Copernicus,\npublished seventy-three years before. Galileo personally escaped for\nthe present through the friendly intervention of the Pope, Paul V, on\nthe appeal of his patron, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, apparently on the\nground that he had not publicly taught the Copernican theory. It would\nseem as if some of the heads of the Church were at heart Copernicans;\n[265] but they were in any case obliged to disown a doctrine felt by\nso many others to be subversive of the Church's authority.\n\n\n See the details of the procedure in Domenico Berti, Il Processo\n Originale de Galileo Galilei, ed. 1878, cap. iv; in Fahie,\n ch. viii; and in Gebler, ch. vi. The last-cited writer claims\n to show that, of two records of the \"admonition\" to Galileo,\n one, the more stringent in its terms, was false, though made at\n the date it bears, to permit of subsequent proceedings against\n Galileo. But the whole thesis is otiose. It is admitted (Gebler,\n p. 89) that Galileo was admonished \"not to defend or hold the\n Copernican doctrine.\" Gebler contends, however, that this was not\n a command to keep \"entire silence,\" and that therefore Galileo\n is not justly to be charged with having disobeyed the injunction\n of the Inquisition when, in his Dialogues on the Two Principal\n Systems of the World, the Ptolemaic and Copernican (1632),\n he dealt dialectically with the subject, neither affirming nor\n denying, but treating both theories as hypotheses. But the real\n issue is not Galileo's cautious disobedience (see Gebler's own\n admissions, p. 149) to an irrational decree, but the crime of\n the Church in silencing him. It is not likely that the \"enemies\"\n of Galileo, as Gebler supposes (pp. 90, 338), anticipated his\n later dialectical handling of the subject, and so falsified the\n decision of the Inquisition against him in 1616. Gebler had at\n first adopted the German theory that the absolute command to\n silence was forged in 1632; and, finding the document certainly\n belonged to 1616, framed the new theory, quite unnecessarily,\n to save Galileo's credit. The two records are quite in the\n spirit and manner of Inquisitorial diplomacy. As Berti remarks,\n \"the Holy Office proceeded with much heedlessness (legerezza)\n and much confusion\" in 1616. Its first judgment, in either form,\n merely emphasizes the guilt of the second. Cp. Fahie, pp. 167-69.\n\n\nThus officially \"admonished\" for his heresy, but not punished, in\n1616, Galileo kept silence for some years, till in 1618 he published\nhis (erroneous) theory of the tides, which he sent with an ironical\nepistle to the friendly Archduke Leopold of Austria, professing\nto be propounding a mere dream, disallowed by the official veto on\nCopernicus. [266] This, however, did him less harm than his essay Il\nSaggiatore (\"The Scales\"), in which he opposed the Jesuit Grassi on the\nquestion of comets. Receiving the imprimatur in 1623, it was dedicated\nto the new pope, Urban VIII, who, as the Cardinal Maffeo Barberini,\nhad been Galileo's friend. The latter could now hope for freedom of\nspeech, as he had all along had a number of friends at the papal court,\nbesides many priests, among his admirers and disciples. But the enmity\nof the Jesuits countervailed all. They did not succeed in procuring a\ncensure of the Saggiatore, though that subtly vindicates the Copernican\nsystem while professing to hold it disproved by the fiat of the Church;\n[267] but when, venturing further, he after another lapse of years\nproduced his Dialogues on the Two Systems, for which he obtained\nthe papal imprimatur in 1632, they caught him in their net. Having\nconstant access to the pope, they contrived to make him believe that\nGalileo had ridiculed him in one of the personages of his Dialogues. It\nwas quite false; but one of the pope's anti-Copernican arguments was\nthere unconsciously made light of; and his wounded vanity was probably\na main factor in the impeachment which followed. [268] His Holiness\nprofessed to have been deceived into granting the imprimatur; [269]\na Special Commission was set on foot; the proceedings of 1616 were\nraked up; and Galileo was again summoned to Rome. He was old and frail,\nand sent medical certificates of his unfitness for such travel; but\nit was insisted on, and as under the papal tyranny there was no help,\nhe accordingly made the journey. After many delays he was tried, and,\non his formal abjuration, sentenced to formal imprisonment (1633)\nfor teaching the \"absurd\" and \"false doctrine\" of the motion of the\nearth and the non-motion of the sun from east to west. In this case\nthe pope, whatever were his motives, acted as a hot anti-Copernican,\nexpressing his personal opinion on the question again and again, and\nalways in an anti-Copernican sense. In both cases, however, the popes,\nwhile agreeing to the verdict, abstained from officially ratifying it,\n[270] so that, in proceeding to force Galileo to abjure his doctrine,\nthe Inquisition technically exceeded its powers--a circumstance\nin which some Catholics appear to find comfort. Seeing that three\nof the ten cardinals named in the preamble to the sentence did not\nsign, it has been inferred that they dissented; but there is no good\nreason to suppose that either the pope or they wilfully abstained\nfrom signing. They had gained their point--the humiliation of the\ngreat discoverer.\n\n\n Compare Gebler, p. 241; Private Life, p. 257, quoting\n Tiraboschi. For an exposure of the many perversions of the facts\n as to Galileo by Catholic writers see Parchappe, Galil\u00e9e, sa\n vie, etc., 2e Partie. To such straits has the Catholic Church\n been reduced in this matter that part of its defence of the\n treatment of Galileo is the plea that he unwarrantably asserted\n that the fixity of the sun and the motion of the earth were\n taught in the Scriptures. Sir Robert Inglis is quoted as having\n maintained this view in England in 1824 (Mendham, The Literary\n Policy of the Church of Rome, 2nd ed. 1830, p. 176), and the\n same proposition was maintained in 1850 by a Roman cardinal. See\n Galileo e l'Inquisizione, by Monsignor Marini, Roma, 1850, pp. 1,\n 53-54, etc. Had Galileo really taught as is there asserted, he\n would only have been assenting to what his priestly opponents\n constantly dinned in his ears. But in point of fact he had not so\n assented; for in his letter to Castelli (see Gebler, pp. 46-50)\n he had earnestly deprecated the argument from the Bible, urging\n that, though Scripture could not err, its interpreters might\n misunderstand it; and even going so far as to argue, with much\n ingenuity, that the story of Joshua, literally interpreted,\n could be made to harmonize with the Copernican theory, but not\n at all with the Ptolemaic.\n\n The thesis revived by Monsignor Marini deserves to rank as the\n highest flight of absurdity and effrontery in the entire discussion\n (cp. Berti, Giordano Bruno, 1889, p. 306, note). Every step in\n both procedures of the Inquisition insists on the falsity and\n the anti-scriptural character of the doctrine that the earth\n moves round the sun (see Berti, Il Processo, p. 115 sq.; Gebler,\n pp. 76-77, 230-34); and never once is it hinted that Galileo's\n error lay in ascribing to the Bible the doctrine of the earth's\n fixity. In the Roman Index of 1664 the works of Galileo and\n Copernicus are alike vetoed, with all other writings affirming\n the movement of the earth and the stability of the sun; and in\n the Index of 1704 are included libri omnes docentes mobilitatem\n terrae et immobilitatem solis (Putnam, The Censorship of the\n Church of Rome, 1906-1907, i, 308, 312).\n\n\nThe stories of his being tortured and blinded, and saying \"Still\nit moves,\" are indeed myths. [271] The broken-spirited old man was\nin no mood so to speak; he was, moreover, in all respects save his\nscience, an orthodox Catholic, [272] and as such not likely to defy\nthe Church to its face. In reality he was formally in the custody\nof the Inquisition--and this not in a cell, but in the house of an\nofficial--for only twenty-two days. After the sentence he was again\nformally detained for some seventeen days in the Villa Medici, but\nwas then allowed to return to his own rural home at Acatri, [273]\non condition that he lived in solitude, receiving no visitors. He\nwas thus much more truly a prisoner than the so-called \"prisoner of\nthe Vatican\" in our own day. The worst part of the sentence, however,\nwas the placing of all his works, published and unpublished, on the\nIndex Expurgatorius, and the gag thus laid on all utterance of rational\nscientific thought in Italy--an evil of incalculable influence. \"The\nlack of liberty and speculation,\" writes a careful Italian student,\n\"was the cause of the death first of the Accademia dei Lincei, an\ninstitution unique in its time; then of the Accademia del Cimento. Thus\nItaly, after the marvellous period of vigorous native civilization\nin the thirteenth century, after a second period of civilization\nless native but still its own, as being Latin, saw itself arrested\non the threshold of a third and not less splendid period. Vexations\nand prohibitions expelled courage, spontaneity, and universality from\nthe national mind; literary style became uncertain, indeterminate;\nand, forbidden to treat of government, science, or religion,\nturned to things frivolous and fruitless. For the great academies,\ninstituted to renovate and further the study of natural philosophy,\nwere substituted small ones without any such aim. Intellectual energy,\nthe love of research and of objective truth, greatness of feeling and\nnobility of character, all suffered. Nothing so injures a people as\nthe compulsion to express or conceal its thought solely from motives\nof fear. The nation in which those conditions were set up became\nintellectually inferior to those in which it was possible to pass\nfreely in the vast regions of knowledge. Her culture grew restricted,\ndevoid of originality, vaporous, umbratile; there arose habits of\nservility and dissimulation; great books, great men, great purposes\nwere denaturalized.\" [274]\n\nIt was thus in the other countries of Europe that Galileo's teaching\nbore its fruit, for he speedily got his condemned Dialogues published\nin Latin by the Elzevirs; and in 1638, also at the hands of the\nElzevirs, appeared his Dialogues of the New Sciences [i.e., of\nmechanics and motion], the \"foundation of mechanical physics.\" By\nthis time he was totally blind, and then only, when physicians could\nnot help him save by prolonging his life, was he allowed to live under\nstrict surveillance in Florence, needing a special indulgence from the\nInquisition to permit him even to go to church at Easter. The desire of\nhis last blind days, to have with him his best-beloved pupil, Father\nCastelli, was granted only under rigid limitation and supervision,\nthough even the papacy could not keep from him the plaudits of the\nthinkers of Europe. Finally he passed away in his rural \"prison\"--after\nfive years of blindness--in 1642, the year of Newton's birth. At that\ntime his doctrines were under anathema in Italy, and known elsewhere\nonly to a few. Hobbes in 1634 tried in vain to procure for the Earl of\nNewcastle a copy of the earlier Dialogues in London, and wrote: \"It\nis not possible to get it for money.... I hear say it is called-in,\nin Italy, as a book that will do more hurt to their religion than\nall the books of Luther and Calvin, such opposition they think is\nbetween their religion and natural reason.\" [275] Not till 1757\ndid the papacy permit other books teaching the Copernican system;\nin 1765 Galileo was still under ban; not until 1822 was permission\ngiven to treat the theory as true; and not until 1835 was the work\nof Copernicus withdrawn from the Index. [276]\n\nWhile modern science was thus being placed on its special basis, a\ncontinuous resistance was being made in the schools to the dogmatism\nwhich held the mutilated lore of Aristotle as the sum of human\nwisdom. Like the ecclesiastical revolution, this had been protracted\nthrough centuries. Aristotelianism, whether theistic or pantheistic,\nwhether orthodox or heterodox, [277] had become a dogmatism like\nanother, a code that vetoed revision, a fetter laid on the mind. Even\nas a negation of Christian superstition it had become impotent, for the\nPeripatetics were not only ready to make common cause with the Jesuits\nagainst Galileo, as we have seen; some of them were content even to\njoin in the appeal to the Bible. [278] The result of such uncritical\npartisanship was that the immense service of Aristotle to mental\nlife--the comprehensive grasp which gave him his long supremacy as\nagainst rival system-makers, and makes him still so much more important\nthan any of the thinkers who in the sixteenth century revolted against\nhim--was by opponents disregarded and denied, though the range and\ndepth of his influence are apparent in all the polemic against him,\nnotably in that of Bacon, who is constantly citing him, and relates\nhis reasoning to him, however antagonistically, at every turn.\n\nNaturally, the less sacrosanct dogmatism was the more freely\nassailed; and in the sixteenth century the attacks became numerous\nand vehement. Luther was a furious anti-Aristotelian, [279] as were\nalso some Calvinists; but in 1570 we find Beza declaring to Ramus\n[280] that \"the Genevese have decreed, once and for ever, that they\nwill never, neither in logic nor in any other branch of learning,\nturn away from the teaching of Aristotle.\" At Oxford the same code\nheld. [281] In Italy, Telesio, who notably anticipates the tone\nof Bacon as to natural science, and is largely followed by him,\ninfluenced Bruno in the anti-Aristotelian direction, [282] though\nit was in a long line from Aristotle that he got his principle\nof the eternity of the universe. The Spaniard Ludovicus Vives, too\n(1492-1540), pronounced by Lange one of the clearest heads of his age,\nhad insisted on progress beyond Aristotle in the spirit of naturalist\nscience. [283] But the typical anti-Aristotelian of the century was\nRamus (Pierre de la Ram\u00e9e, 1515-1572), whose long and strenuous battle\nagainst the ruling school at Paris brought him to his death in the\nMassacre of St. Bartholomew. [284] Ramus hardily laid it down that\n\"there is no authority over reason, but reason ought to be queen and\nruler over authority.\" [285] Such a message was of more value than\nhis imperfect attempt to supersede the Aristotelian logic. Bacon, who\ncarried on in England the warfare against the Aristotelian tradition,\nnever ventured so to express himself as against the theological\ntyranny in particular, though, as we have seen, the general energy and\nvividness of his argumentation gave him an influence which undermined\nthe orthodoxies to which he professed to conform. On the other hand,\nhe did no such service to exact science as was rendered in his day by\nKepler and Galileo and their English emulators; and his full didactic\ninfluence came much later into play.\n\nLike fallacies to Bacon's may be found in Descartes, whose\nseventeenth-century reputation as a champion of theism proved mainly\nthe eagerness of theists for a plausible defence. Already in his own\nday his arguments were logically confuted by both Gassendi and Hobbes;\nand his partial success with theists was a success of partisanism. It\nwas primarily in respect of his habitual appeal to reason and argument,\nin disregard of the assumptions of faith, and secondarily in respect of\nhis real scientific work, that he counts for freethought. Ultimately\nhis method undermined his creed; and it is not too much to say of\nhim that, next to Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo, [286] he laid a\ngood part of the foundation of modern philosophy and science, [287]\nGassendi largely aiding. Though he never does justice to Galileo,\nfrom his fear of provoking the Church, it can hardly be doubted that\nhe owes to him in large part the early determination of his mind to\nscientific methods; for it is difficult to believe that the account\nhe gives of his mental development in the Discours de la M\u00e9thode\n(1637) is biographically true. It is rather the schemed statement,\nby a ripened mind, of how it might best have been developed. Nor did\nDescartes, any more than Bacon, live up to the intellectual idea he\nhad framed. All through his life he anxiously sought to propitiate\nthe Church; [288] and his scientific as well as his philosophic work\nwas hampered in consequence. In England Henry More, who latterly\nrecoiled from his philosophy, still thought his physics had been\nspoiled by fear of the Church, declaring that the imprisonment of\nGalileo \"frighted Des Cartes into such a distorted description of\nmotion that no man's reason could make good sense of it, nor modesty\npermit him to fancy anything nonsense in so excellent an author.\" [289]\n\nBut nonetheless the unusual rationalism of Descartes's method,\navowedly aiming at the uprooting of all his own prejudices [290]\nas a first step to truth, displeased the Jesuits, and could not\nescape the hostile attention of the Protestant theologians of Holland,\nwhere Descartes passed so many years of his life. Despite his constant\ntheism, accordingly, he had at length to withdraw. [291] A Jesuit, P\u00e8re\nBourdin, sought to have the Discours de la M\u00e9thode at once condemned by\nthe French clergy, but the attempt failed for the time being. France\nwas just then, in fact, the most freethinking part of Europe; [292]\nand Descartes, though not so unsparing with his prejudices as he\nset out to be, was the greatest innovator in philosophy that had\narisen in the Christian era. He made real scientific discoveries,\ntoo, where Bacon only inspired an approach and schemed a wandering\nroad to them. He first effectively applied algebra to geometry;\nhe first scientifically explained the rainbow; he at once accepted\nand founded on Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood,\nwhich most physiologists of the day derided; and he welcomed Aselli's\ndiscovery of the lacteals, which was rejected by Harvey. [293] And\nthough as regards religion his timorous conformities deprive him\nof any heroic status, it is perhaps not too much to pronounce him\n\"the great reformer and liberator of the European intellect.\" [294]\nOne not given to warm sympathy with freethought has avowed that \"the\ncommon root of modern philosophy is the doubt which is alike Baconian\nand Cartesian.\" [295]\n\nOnly less important, in some regards, was the influence of Pierre\nGassend or Gassendi (1592-1655), who, living his life as a canon of\nthe Church, reverted in his doctrine to the philosophy of Epicurus,\nalike in physics and ethics. [296] It seems clear that he never had\nany religious leanings, but simply entered the Church on the advice of\nfriends who pointed out to him how much better a provision it gave,\nin income and leisure, than the professorship he held in his youth\nat the university of Aix. [297] Professing like Descartes a strict\nsubmission to the Church, he yet set forth a theory of things which\nhad in all ages been recognized as fundamentally irreconcilable with\nthe Christian creed; and his substantial exemption from penalties\nis to be set down to his position, his prudence, and his careful\nconformities. The correspondent of Galileo and Kepler, he was\nthe friend of La Mothe le Vayer and Naud\u00e9; and Gui Patin was his\nphysician and intimate. [298] Strong as a physicist and astronomer\nwhere Descartes was weak, he divides with him and Galileo the credit\nof practically renewing natural philosophy; Newton being Gassendist\nrather than Cartesian. [299] Indeed, Gassendi's youthful attack\non the Aristotelian physics (1624) makes him the predecessor of\nDescartes; and he expressly opposed his contemporary on points of\nphysics and metaphysics on which he thought him chimerical, and so\npromoted unbelief where Descartes made for orthodoxy. [300] Of the\ncriticisms on his M\u00e9ditations to which Descartes published replies,\nthose of Gassendi are, with the partial exception of those of Hobbes,\ndistinctly the most searching and sustained. The later position\nof Hume, indeed, is explicitly taken up in the first objection of\nCrat\u00e9rus; [301] but the persistent pressure of Gassendi on the theistic\nand spiritistic assumptions of Descartes reads like the reasoning of\na modern atheist. [302] Yet the works of Descartes were in time placed\non the Index, condemned by the king's council, and even vetoed in the\nuniversities, while those of Gassendi were not, though his early work\non Aristotelianism had to be stopped after the first volume because\nof the anger it aroused. [303] Himself one of the most abstemious of\nmen, [304] like his master Epicurus (of whom he wrote a Life, 1647),\nhe attracted disciples of another temperamental cast as well as many\nof his own; and as usual his system is associated with the former,\nwho are duly vilified by orthodoxy, although certainly no worse than\nthe average orthodox.\n\nAmong his other practical services to rationalism was a curious\nexperiment, made in a village of the Lower Alps, by way of\ninvestigating the doctrine of witchcraft. A drug prepared by one\nsorcerer was administered to others of the craft in presence of\nwitnesses. It threw them into a deep sleep, on awakening from which\nthey declared that they had been at a witches' Sabbath. As they had\nnever left their beds, the experiment went far to discredit the\nsuperstition. [305] One significant result of the experiment was\nseen in the course later taken by Colbert in overriding a decision\nof the Parlement of Rouen as to witchcraft (1670). That Parlement\nproposed to burn fourteen sorcerers. Colbert, who had doubtless read\nMontaigne as well as Gassendi, gave Montaigne's prescription that\nthe culprits should be dosed with hellebore--a medicine for brain\ndisturbance. [306] In 1672, finally, the king issued a declaration\nforbidding the tribunals to admit charges of mere sorcery; [307]\nand any future condemnations were on the score of blasphemy and\npoisoning. Yet further, in the section of his posthumous Syntagma\nPhilosophicum (1658) entitled De Effectibus Siderum, [308] Gassendi\ndealt the first great blow on the rationalist side to the venerable\ncreed of astrology, assailed often, but to little purpose, from the\nside of faith; bringing to his task, indeed, more asperity than he is\ncommonly credited with, but also a stringent scientific and logical\nmethod, lacking in the polemic of the churchmen, who had attacked\nastrology mainly because it ignored revelation. It is sobering to\nremember, however, that he was one of those who could not assimilate\nHarvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood, which Descartes\nat once adopted and propounded.\n\nSuch anomalies meet us many times in the history of scientific as of\nother lines of thought; and the residual lesson is the recognition\nthat progress is infinitely multiplex in its causation. Nothing\nis more vital in this regard than scientific truth, which is as a\nlight-house in seas of speculation; and those who, like Galileo and\nDescartes, add to the world's exact knowledge, perform a specific\nservice not matched by that of the Bacons, who urge right method\nwithout applying it. Yet in that kind also an incalculable influence\nhas been wielded. Many minds can accept scientific truths without being\nthereby led to scientific ways of thought; and thus the reasoners and\nspeculators, the Brunos and the Vaninis, play their fruitful part, as\ndo the mentors who turn men's eyes on their own vices of intellectual\nhabit. And in respect of creeds and philosophies, finally, it is\nnot so much sheer soundness of result as educativeness of method,\neffectual appeal to the thinking faculty and to the spirit of reason,\nthat determines a thinker's influence. This kind of impact we shall\nfind historically to be the service done by Descartes to European\nthought for a hundred years.\n\nFrom Descartes, then, as regards philosophy, more than from any\nprofessed thinker of his day, but also from the other thinkers we have\nnoted, from the reactions of scientific discovery, from the terrible\nexperience of the potency of religion as a breeder of strife and its\nimpotence as a curber of evil, and from the practical freethinking\nof the more open-minded of that age in general, derives the great\nrationalistic movement, which, taking clear literary form first in\nthe seventeenth century, has with some fluctuations broadened and\ndeepened down to our own day.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIV\n\nBRITISH FREETHOUGHT IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY\n\n\n\u00a7 1\n\nThe propagandist literature of deism begins with an English\ndiplomatist, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, the friend of Bacon, who stood\nin the full stream of the current freethought of England and France\n[309] in the first quarter of the seventeenth century. English deism,\nas literature, is thus at its very outset affiliated with French;\nall of its elements, critical and ethical, are germinal in Bodin,\nMontaigne, and Charron, each and all of whom had a direct influence\non English thought; and we shall find later French thought, as in\nthe cases of Gassendi, Bayle, Simon, St. Evremond, and Voltaire,\nalternately influenced by and reacting on English. But, apart from\nthe undeveloped rationalism of the Elizabethan period, which never\nfound literary expression, the French ferment seems to have given\nthe first effective impulse; though it is to be remembered that about\nthe same time the wars of religion in Germany, following on an age of\ntheological uproar, had developed a common temper of indifferentism\nwhich would react on the thinking of men of affairs in France.\n\nWe have seen the state of upper-class and middle-class opinion\nin France about 1624. It was in Paris in that year that Herbert\npublished his De Veritate, after acting for five years as the English\nambassador at the French court--an office from which he was recalled\nin the same year. [310] By his own account the book had been \"begun\nby me in England, and formed there in all its principal parts,\" [311]\nbut finished at Paris. He had, however, gone to France in 1608, and\nhad served in various continental wars in the years following; and it\nwas presumably in these years, not in his youth in England, that he\nhad formed the remarkable opinions set forth in his epoch-making book.\n\nHitherto deism had been represented by unpublished arguments\ndisingenuously dealt with in published answers; henceforth there\nslowly grows up a deistic literature. Herbert was a powerful and\naudacious nobleman, with a weak king; and he could venture on a\npublication which would have cost an ordinary man dear. Yet even\nhe saw fit to publish in Latin; and he avowed hesitations. [312]\nThe most puzzling thing about it is his declaration that Grotius\nand the German theologian Tielenus, having read the book in MS.,\nexhorted him \"earnestly to print and publish it.\" It is difficult\nto believe that they had gathered its substance. Herbert's work\nhas two aspects, a philosophical and a political, and in both it\nis remarkable. [313] Like the Discours de la M\u00e9thode of Descartes,\nwhich was to appear thirteen years later, it is inspired by an\noriginal determination to get at the rational grounds of conviction;\nand in Herbert's case the overweening self-esteem which disfigures\nhis Autobiography seems to have been motive force for the production\nof a book signally recalcitrant to authority. Where Bacon attacks\nAristotelianism and the habits of mind it had engendered, Herbert\ncounters the whole conception of revelation in religion. Rejecting\ntacitly the theological basis of current philosophy, he divides the\nhuman mind into four faculties--Natural Instinct, Internal Sense,\nExternal Sense, and the Discursive faculty--through one or other of\nwhich all our knowledge emerges. Of course, like Descartes, he makes\nthe first the verification of his idea of God, pronouncing that to\nbe primary, independent, and universally entertained, and therefore\nnot lawfully to be disputed (already a contradiction in terms);\nbut, inasmuch as scriptural revelation has no place in the process,\nthe position is conspicuously more advanced than that of Bacon in\nthe De Augmentis, published the year before, and even than that\nof Locke, sixty years later. On the question of concrete religion\nHerbert is still more aggressive. His argument [314] is, in brief,\nthat no professed revelation can have a decisive claim to rational\nacceptance; that none escapes sectarian dispute in its own field;\nthat, as each one misses most of the human race, none seems to be\ndivine; and that human reason can do for morals all that any one of\nthem does. The negative generalities of Montaigne here pass into a\npositive anti-Christian argument; for Herbert goes on to pronounce\nthe doctrine of forgiveness for faith immoral.\n\nLike all pioneers, Herbert falls into some inconsistencies on his\nown part; the most flagrant being his claim to have had a sign from\nheaven--that is, a private and special revelation--encouraging him\nto publish his book. [315] But his criticism is nonetheless telling\nand persuasive so far as it goes, and remains valid to this day. Nor\ndo his later and posthumous works [316] add to it in essentials,\nthough they do much to construct the deistic case on historical\nlines. The De religione gentilium in particular is a noteworthy study\nof pre-Christian religions, apparently motived by doubt or challenge\nas to his theorem of the universality of the God-idea. It proves only\nracial universality without agreement; but it is so far a scholarly\nbeginning of rational hierology. The English Dialogue between a\nTeacher and his Pupil, which seems to have been the first form of the\nReligio Gentilium, [317] is a characteristic expression of his whole\nway of thought, and was doubtless left unpublished for the prudential\nreasons which led him to put all his published works in Latin. But the\nfact that the Latin quotations are translated shows that the book had\nbeen planned for publication--a risk which he did wisely to shun. The\nremarkable thing is that his Latin books were so little debated, the De\nVeritate being nowhere discussed before Culverwel. [318] Baxter in 1672\ncould say that Herbert, \"never having been answered, might be thought\nunanswerable\"; [319] and his own \"answer\" is merely theological.\n\nThe next great freethinking figure in England is Thomas Hobbes\n(1588-1679), the most important thinker of his age, after Descartes,\nand hardly less influential. But the purpose of Hobbes being always\nsubstantially political and regulative, his unfaith in the current\nreligion is only incidentally revealed in the writings in which he\nseeks to show the need for keeping it under monarchic control. [320]\nHobbes is in fact the anti-Presbyterian or anti-Puritan philosopher;\nand to discredit anarchic religion in the eyes of the majority he is\nobliged to speak as a judicial Churchman. Yet nothing is more certain\nthan that he was no orthodox Christian; and even his professed theism\nresolves itself somewhat easily into virtual agnosticism on logical\npressure. No thought of prudence could withhold him from showing,\nin a discussion on words, that he held the doctrine of the Logos\nto be meaningless. [321] Of atheism he was repeatedly accused by\nboth royalists and rebels; and his answer was forensic rather than\nfervent, alike as to his scripturalism, his Christianity, and his\nimpersonal conception of Deity. [322] Reviving as he did the ancient\nrationalistic doctrine of the eternity of the world, [323] he gave\na clear footing for atheism as against the Jud\u00e6o-Christian view. In\naffirming \"one God eternal\" of whom men \"cannot have any idea in\ntheir mind, answerable to his nature,\" he was negating all creeds. He\nexpressly contends, it is true, for the principle of a Providence;\nbut it is hard to believe that he laid any store by prayer, public or\nprivate; and it would appear that whatever thoughtful atheism there\nwas in England in the latter part of the century looked to him as\nits philosopher, insofar as it did not derive from Spinoza. [324]\nNor could the Naturalist school of that day desire a better, terser,\nor more drastic scientific definition of religion than Hobbes gave\nthem: \"Fear of power invisible, feigned by the mind or imagined from\ntales publicly allowed, Religion; not allowed, Superstition.\" [325]\nAs the Churchmen readily saw, his insistence on identifying the\nreligion of a country with its law plainly implied that no religion\nis any more \"revealed\" than another. With him too begins (1651) the\npublic criticism of the Bible on literary or documentary grounds;\n[326] though, as we have seen, this had already gone far in private;\n[327] and he gave a new lead, partly as against Descartes, to a\nmaterialistic philosophy. [328] His replies to the theistic and\nspiritistic reasonings of Descartes's M\u00e9ditations are, like those\nof Gassendi, unrefuted and irrefutable; and they are fundamentally\nmaterialistic in their drift. [329] He was, in fact, in a special\nand peculiar degree for his age, a freethinker; and so deep was his\nintellectual hostility to the clergy of all species that he could not\nforego enraging those of his own political side by his sarcasms. [330]\nHere he is in marked contrast with Descartes, who dissembled his\nopinion about Copernicus and Galileo for peace' sake, [331] and was\nthe close friend of the apologist Mersenne down to his death. [332]\n\nWith the partial exception of the more refined and graceful Pecock,\nHobbes has of all English thinkers down to his period the clearest\nand hardest head for all purposes of reasoning, save in the single\nfield of mathematics, where he meddled without mastery; and against the\ntheologians of his time his argumentation is as a two-edged sword. That\nsuch a man should have been resolutely on the side of the king in\nthe Civil War is one of the proofs of the essential fanaticism and\narbitrariness of the orthodox Puritans, who plotted more harm to the\nheresies they disliked than was ever wreaked on themselves. Hobbes\ncame near enough being clerically ostracized among the royalists; but\namong the earlier Puritans, or under an Independent Puritan Parliament\nat any time, he would have stood a fair chance of execution. It was\ndoubtless largely due to the anti-persecuting influence of Cromwell,\nas well as to his having ostensibly deserted the royalists, that Hobbes\nwas allowed to settle quietly in England after making his submission\nto the Rump Parliament in 1651. In 1666 his Leviathan and De Cive were\ntogether condemned by the Restoration Parliament in its grotesque\npanic of piety after the Great Fire of London; and it was actually\nproposed to revive against him the writ de heretico comburendo; [333]\nbut Charles II protected and pensioned him, though he was forbidden\nto publish anything further on burning questions, and Leviathan was\nnot permitted in his lifetime to be republished in English. [334]\nHe was thus for his generation the typical \"infidel,\" the royalist\nclergy being perhaps his bitterest enemies. His spontaneous hostility\nto fanaticism shaped his literary career, which began in 1628 with a\ntranslation of Thucydides, undertaken by way of showing the dangers\nof democracy. Next came the De Cive (Paris, 1642), written when he\nwas already an elderly man; and thenceforth the Civil War tinges his\nwhole temper.\n\nIt is in fact by way of a revolt against all theological ethic,\nas demonstrably a source of civil anarchy, that Hobbes formulates\na strictly civic or legalist ethic, denying the supremacy of\nan abstract or \u00e0 priori natural moral law (though he founded on\nnatural law), as well as rejecting all supernatural illumination\nof the conscience. [335] In the Church of Rome itself there had\ninevitably arisen the practice of Casuistry, in which to a certain\nextent ethics had to be rationally studied; and early Protestant\nCasuistry, repudiating the authority of the priest, had to rely still\nmore on reason.\n\n\n Compare Whewell, Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy,\n ed. 1862, pp. 25-38, where it is affirmed that, after the\n Reformation, \"Since the assertions of the teacher had no inherent\n authority, he was obliged to give his proofs as well as his\n results,\" and \"the determination of cases was replaced by the\n discipline of conscience\" (p. 29). There is an interesting\n progression in English Protestant casuistry from W. Perkins\n (1558-1602) and W. Ames (pub. 1630), through Bishops Hall and\n Sanderson, to Jeremy Taylor. Mosheim (17 Cent. sec. ii, pt. ii, \u00a7\n 9) pronounces Ames \"the first among the Reformed who attempted to\n elucidate and arrange the science of morals as distinct from that\n of dogmatics.\" See biog. notes on Perkins and Ames in Whewell,\n pp. 27-29, and Reid's Mosheim, p. 681.\n\n\nBut Hobbes passed in two strides to the position that natural morality\nis a set of demonstrable inferences as to what adjustments promote\ngeneral well-being; and further that there is no practical code\nof right and wrong apart from positive social law. [336] He thus\npractically introduced once for all into modern Christendom the\nfundamental dilemma of rationalistic ethics, not only positing the\nproblem for his age, [337] but anticipating it as handled in later\ntimes. [338]\n\nHow far his rationalism was ahead of that of his age may be\nrealized by comparing his positions with those of John Selden,\nthe most learned and, outside of philosophy, one of the shrewdest\nof the men of that generation. Selden was sometimes spoken of by\nthe Hobbists as a freethinker; and his Table Talk contains some\nsallies which would startle the orthodox if publicly delivered;\n[339] but not only is there explicit testimony by his associates\nas to his orthodoxy: [340] his own treatise, De Jure Naturali et\nGentium juxta disciplinam Ebr\u00e6orum, maintains the ground that the\n\"Law of Nature\" which underlies the variants of the Laws of Nations\nis limited to the precepts and traditions set forth in the Talmud\nas delivered by Noah to his posterity. [341] Le Clerc said of the\nwork, justly enough, that in it \"Selden only copies the Rabbins, and\nscarcely ever reasons.\" It is likely enough that the furious outcry\nagainst Selden for his strictly historical investigation of tithes,\nand the humiliation of apology forced upon him in that connection\nin 1618, [342] made him specially chary ever afterwards of any\nsemblance of a denial of the plenary truth of theological tradition;\nbut there is no reason to think that he had ever really transcended\nthe Biblical view of the world's order. He illustrates, in fact,\nthe extent to which a scholar could in that day be anti-clerical\nwithout being rationalistic. Like the bulk of the Parliamentarians,\nthough without their fanaticism, he was thoroughly opposed to the\npolitical pretensions of the Church, [343] desiring however to leave\nepiscopacy alone, as a matter outside of legislation, when the House\nof Commons abolished it. Yet he spoke of the name of Puritan as one\nwhich he \"trusted he was not either mad enough or foolish enough to\ndeserve.\" [344] There were thus in the Parliamentary party men of very\ndifferent shades of opinion. The largest party, perhaps, was that of\nthe fanatics who, as Mrs. Hutchinson--herself fanatical enough--tells\nconcerning her husband, \"would not allow him to be religious because\nhis hair was not in their cut.\" [345] Next in strength were the more\nor less orthodox but anti-clerical and less pious Scripturalists,\nof whom Selden was the most illustrious. By far the smallest group of\nall were the freethinkers, men of their type being as often repelled\nby the zealotry of the Puritans as by the sacerdotalism of the State\nclergy. The Rebellion, in short, though it evoked rationalism, was not\nevoked by it. Like all religious strifes--like the vaster Thirty Years'\nWar in contemporary Germany--it generated both doubt and indifferentism\nin men who would otherwise have remained undisturbed in orthodoxy.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 2\n\nWhen, however, we turn from the higher literary propaganda to the\nverbal and other transitory debates of the period of the Rebellion,\nwe realize how much partial rationalism had hitherto subsisted\nwithout notice. In that immense ferment some very advanced opinions,\nsuch as quasi-Anarchism in politics [346] and anti-Scripturalism\nin religion, were more or less directly professed. In January,\n1646 (N.S.), the authorities of the City of London, alarmed at\nthe unheard-of amount of discussion, petitioned Parliament to put\ndown all private meetings; [347] and on February 6, 1646 (N.S.),\na solemn fast, or \"day of publique humiliation,\" was proclaimed on\nthe score of the increase of \"errors, heresies, and blasphemies.\" On\nthe same grounds, the Presbyterian party in Parliament pressed an\n\"Ordinance for the suppression of Blasphemies and Heresies,\" which,\nlong held back by Vane and Cromwell, was carried in their despite in\n1648, by large majorities, when the royalists renewed hostilities. It\nenacted the death penalty against all who should deny the doctrine of\nthe Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the inspiration of the Bible,\na day of judgment, or a future state; and prescribed imprisonment\nfor Arminianism, rejection of infant baptism, anti-Sabbatarianism,\nanti-Presbyterianism, or defence of the doctrine of Purgatory or the\nuse of images. [348] And of aggressive heresy there are some noteworthy\ntraces. In a pamphlet entitled \"Hell Broke Loose: a Catalogue of the\nmany spreading Errors, Heresies, and Blasphemies of these Times,\nfor which we are to be humbled\" (March 9, 1646, N.S.), the first\nentry--and in the similar Catalogue in Edwards's Gangr\u00e6na, the second\nentry--is a citation of the notable thesis, \"That the Scripture,\nwhether a true manuscript or no, whether Hebrew, Greek, or English,\nis but humane, and not able to discover a divine God.\" [349] This\nis cited from \"The Pilgrimage of the Saints, by Lawrence Clarkson,\"\npresumably the Lawrence Clarkson who for his book The Single Eye was\nsentenced by resolution of Parliament on September 27, 1650, to be\nimprisoned, the book being burned by the common hangman. [350] He is\nfurther cited as teaching that even unbaptized persons may preach and\nbaptize. Of the other heresies cited the principal is the old denial\nof a future life, and especially of a physical and future hell. In\ngeneral the heresy is pietistic or antinomian; but we have also the\ndeclaration \"that right Reason is the rule of Faith, and that we are to\nbelieve the Scriptures and the doctrine of the Trinity, Incarnation,\nResurrection, so far as we see them to be agreeable to reason and no\nfurther.\" Concerning Jesus there are various heresies, from simple\nUnitarianism to contemptuous disparagement, with the stipulation for\na \"Christ formed in us.\" But though there are cases of unquotable\nor ribald blasphemy there is little trace of scholarly criticism\nof the Bible, of reasoning against miracles or the inconsistencies\nof Scripture, as apart from the doctrine of deity. Nonetheless, it\nis very credible that \"multitudes, unsettled ... have changed their\nfaith, either to Scepticisme, to doubt of everything, or Atheisme,\nto believe nothing.\" [351]\n\nAgainst the furious intolerance of the Puritan legislature some pleaded\nwith new zeal for tolerance all round; arguing that certainty on\narticles of faith and points of religion was impossible--a doctrine\npromptly classed as a bad heresy. [352] The plea that toleration\nwould mean concord was met by the confident and not unfounded retort\nthat the \"sectaries\" would themselves persecute if they could. [353]\nBut this could hardly have been true of all. Notable among the new\nparties were the Levellers, who insisted that the State should leave\nreligion entirely alone, tolerating all creeds, including even atheism;\nand who put forward a new and striking ethic, grounding on \"universal\nreason\" the right of all men to the soil. [354] In the strictly\ntheological field the most striking innovation, apart from simple\nUnitarianism, is the denial of the eternity or even the existence of\nfuture torments--a position first taken up, as we have seen, either\nby the continental Socinians or by the unnamed English heretics of the\nTudor period, who passed on their heresy to the time of Marlowe. [355]\nIn this connection the learned booklet [356] entitled Of the Torments\nof Hell: the foundations and pillars thereof discover'd, search'd,\nshaken, and removed (1658) was rightly thought worth translating into\nFrench by d'Holbach over a century later. [357] It is an argument on\nscriptural lines, denying that the conception of a place of eternal\ntorment is either scriptural or credible; and pointing out that many\nhad explained it in a \"spiritual\" sense.\n\nHumane feeling of this kind counted for much in the ferment; but a\ncontrary hate was no less abundant. The Presbyterian Thomas Edwards,\nwho in a vociferous passion of fear and zeal set himself to catalogue\nthe host of heresies that threatened to overwhelm the times, speaks\nof \"monsters\" unheard-of theretofore, \"now common among us--as\ndenying the Scriptures, pleading for a toleration of all religions\nand worships, yea, for blasphemy, and denying there is a God.\" [358]\n\"A Toleration,\" he declares, \"is the grand design of the Devil, his\nmasterpiece and chief engine\"; \"every day now brings forth books for\na Toleration.\" [359] Among the 180 sects named by him [360] there\nwere \"Libertines,\" \"Antiscripturists,\" \"Skeptics and Questionists,\"\n[361] who held nothing save the doctrine of free speech and liberty of\nconscience; [362] as well as Socinians, Arians, and Anti-trinitarians;\nand he speaks of serious men who had not only abandoned their religious\nbeliefs, but sought to persuade others to do the same. [363] Under\nthe rule of Cromwell, tolerant as he was of Christian sectarianism,\nand even of Unitarianism as represented by Biddle, the more advanced\nheresies would get small liberty; though that of Thomas Muggleton and\nJohn Reeve, which took shape about 1651 as the Muggletonian sect, does\nnot seem to have been molested. Muggleton, a mystic, could teach that\nthere was no devil or evil spirit, save in \"man's spirit of unclean\nreason and cursed imagination\"; [364] but it was only privately that\nsuch men as Henry Marten and Thomas Chaloner, the regicides, could\navow themselves to be of \"the natural religion.\" The statement of\nBishop Burnet, following Clarendon, that \"many of the republicans\nbegan to profess deism,\" cannot be taken literally, though it is\nbroadly intelligible that \"almost all of them were for destroying\nall clergymen ... and for leaving religion free, as they called it,\nwithout either encouragement or restraint.\"\n\n\n See Burnet's History of His Own Time, bk. i, ed. 1838, p. 43. The\n phrase, \"They were for pulling down the churches,\" again, cannot\n be taken literally. Of those who \"pretended to little or no\n religion and acted only upon the principles of civil liberty,\"\n Burnet goes on to name Sidney, Henry Nevill, Marten, Wildman, and\n Harrington. The last was certainly of Hobbes's way of thinking in\n philosophy (Croom Robertson, Hobbes, p. 223, note); but Wildman\n was one of the signers of the Anabaptist petition to Charles II\n in 1658 (Clarendon, Hist. of the Rebellion, bk. xv, ed. 1843,\n p. 855). As to Marten and Chaloner, see Carlyle's Cromwell,\n iii, 194; and articles in Nat. Dict. of Biog. Vaughan (Hist. of\n England, 1840, ii, 477, note) speaks of Walwyn and Overton as\n \"among the freethinkers of the times of the Commonwealth.\" They\n were, however, Biblicists, not unbelievers. Prof. Gardiner\n (Hist. of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, ii, 253, citing a\n News-letter in the Clarendon MSS.) finds record in 1653 of \"a man\n [who] preached flat atheism in Westminster Hall, uninterrupted by\n the soldiers of the guard\"; but this obviously counts for little.\n\n\nBetween the advance in speculation forced on by the disputes\nthemselves, and the usual revolt against the theological spirit\nafter a long and ferocious display of it, there spread even under\nthe Commonwealth a new temper of secularity. On the one hand, the\ntemperamental distaste for theology, antinomian or other, took form\nin the private associations for scientific research which were the\nantecedents of the Royal Society. On the other hand, the spirit of\nreligious doubt spread widely in the middle and upper classes; and\nbetween the dislike of the Roundheads for the established clergy and\nthe anger of the Cavaliers against all Puritanism there was fostered\nthat \"contempt of the clergy\" which had become a clerical scandal\nat the Restoration and was to remain so for about a century. [365]\nTheir social status was in general low, and their financial position\nbad; and these circumstances, possible only in a time of weakened\nreligious belief, necessarily tended to further the process of mental\nchange. Within the sphere of orthodoxy, it operated openly. It is\nnoteworthy that the term \"rationalist\" emerges as the label of a\nsect of Independents or Presbyterians who declare that \"What their\nreason dictates to them in church or State stands for good, until\nthey be convinced with better.\" [366] The \"rationalism,\" so-called,\nof that generation remained ostensibly scriptural; but on other lines\nthought went further. Of atheism there are at this stage only dubious\nbiographical and controversial traces, such as Mrs. Hutchinson's\ncharacterization of a Nottingham physician, possibly a deist, as a\n\"horrible atheist,\" [367] and the Rev. John Dove's Confutation of\nAtheism (1640), which does not bear out its title. Ephraim Pagitt, in\nhis Heresiography (1644), speaks loosely of an \"atheistical sect who\naffirm that men's soules sleep with them until the day of judgment\";\nand tells of some alleged atheist merely that he \"mocked and jeared\nat Christ's Incarnation.\" [368] Similarly a work, entitled Dispute\nbetwixt an Atheist and a Christian (1646), shows the existence not\nof atheists but of deists, and the deist in the dialogue is a Fleming.\n\nMore trustworthy is the allusion in Nathaniel Culverwel's Discourse of\nthe Light of Nature (written in 1646, published posthumously in 1652)\nto \"those lumps and dunghills of all sects ... that young and upstart\ngeneration of gross anti-scripturalists, that have a powder-plot\nagainst the Gospel, that would very compendiously behead all Christian\nreligion at one blow, a device which old and ordinary heretics were\nnever acquainted withal.\" [369] The reference is presumably to the\nfollowers of Lawrence Clarkson. Yet even here we have no mention of\natheism, which is treated as something almost impossible. Indeed, the\nvery course of arguing in favour of a \"Light of Nature\" seems to have\nbrought suspicion on Culverwel himself, who shows a noticeable liking\nfor Herbert of Cherbury. [370] He is, however, as may be inferred from\nhis angry tone towards anti-scripturalists, substantially orthodox,\nand not very important.\n\n\n It is contended for Culverwel by modern admirers (ed. cited,\n p. xxi) that he deserves the praise given by Hallam to the later\n Bishop Cumberland as \"the first Christian writer who sought to\n establish systematically the principle of moral right independent\n of revelation.\" [See above, p. 74, the similar tribute of Mosheim\n to Ames.] But Culverwel does not really make this attempt. His\n proposition is that reason, \"the candle of the Lord,\" discovers\n \"that all the moral law is founded in natural and common light,\n in the light of reason, and that there is nothing in the mysteries\n of the Gospel contrary to the light of reason\" (Introd. end);\n yet he contends not only that faith transcends reason, but that\n Abraham's attempt to slay his son was a dutiful obeying of \"the\n God of nature\" (pp. 225-26). He does not achieve the simple step of\n noting that the recognition of revelation as such must be performed\n by reason, and thus makes no advance on the position of Bacon,\n much less on those of Pecock and Hooker. His object, indeed, was\n not to justify orthodoxy by reason against rationalistic unbelief,\n but to make a case for reason in theology against the Lutherans\n and others who, \"because Socinus has burnt his wings at this candle\n of the Lord,\" scouted all use of it (Introd.). Culverwel, however,\n was one of the learned group in Emanuel College, Cambridge, whose\n tradition developed in the next generation into Latitudinarianism;\n and he may be taken as a learned type of a number of the clergy\n who were led by the abundant discussion all around them into\n professing and encouraging a ratiocinative habit of mind. Thus\n we find Dean Stuart, Clerk of the Closet to Charles I, devoting\n one of his short homilies to Jerome's text, Tentemus animas qu\u00e6\n deficiunt a fide naturalibus rationibus adjurare. \"It is not\n enough,\" he writes, \"for you to rest in an imaginary faith, and\n easiness in beleeving, except yee know also what and why and how\n you come to that beleef. Implicite beleevers, ignorant beleevers,\n the adversary may swallow, but the understanding beleever hee must\n chaw, and pick bones before hee come to assimilate him, and make\n him like himself. The implicite beleever stands in an open field,\n and the enemy will ride over him easily: the understanding beleever\n is in a fenced town.\" (Catholique Divinity, 1657, pp. 133-34--a\n work written many years earlier.)\n\n\nThe discourse on Atheism, again, in the posthumous works of John\nSmith of Cambridge (d. 1652), is entirely retrospective; but soon\nanother note is sounded. As early as 1652, the year after the issue\nof Hobbes's Leviathan, the prolific Walter Charleton, who had been\nphysician to the king, published a book entitled The Darkness of\nAtheism Expelled by the Light of Nature, wherein he asserted that\nEngland \"hath of late produced and doth ... foster more swarms of\natheistical monsters ... than any age, than any Nation hath been\ninfested withal.\" In the following year Henry More, the Cambridge\nPlatonist, published his Antidote against Atheism. The flamboyant\ndedication to Viscountess Conway affirms that the existence of God\nis \"as clearly demonstrable as any theorem in mathematicks\"; but,\nthe reverend author adds, \"considering the state of things as they\nare, I cannot but pronounce that there is more necessity of this my\nAntidote than I could wish there were.\" At the close of the preface he\npleasantly explains that he will use no Biblical arguments, but talk\nto the atheist as a \"mere Naturalist\"; inasmuch as \"he that converses\nwith a barbarian must discourse to him in his own language,\" and \"he\nthat would gain upon the more weak and sunk minds of sensual mortals\nis to accommodate himself to their capacity, who, like the bat and\nowl, can see nowhere so well as in the shady glimmerings of their\ntwilight.\" Then, after some elementary play with the design argument,\nthe entire Third Book of forty-six folio pages is devoted to a parade\nof old wives' tales of witches and witchcraft, witches' sabbaths,\napparitions, commotions by devils, ghosts, incubi, polter-geists--the\nwhole vulgar medley of the peasant superstitions of Europe.\n\nIt is not that the Platonist does violence to his own philosophic\ntastes by way of influencing the \"bats and owls\" of atheism. This\nmass of superstition is his own special pabulum. In the preface he has\nannounced that, while he may abstain from the use of the Scriptures,\nnothing shall restrain him from telling what he knows of spirits. \"I\nam so cautious and circumspect,\" he claims, \"that I make use of no\nnarrations that either the avarice of the priest or the credulity\nand fancifulness of the melancholist may render suspected.\" As for\nthe unbelievers, \"their confident ignorance shall never dash me out\nof confidence with my well-grounded knowledge; for I have been no\ncareless inquirer into these things.\" It is after a polter-geist\ntale of the crassest description that he announces that it was\nstrictly investigated and attested by \"that excellently-learned and\nnoble gentleman, Mr. E. Boyle,\" who avowed \"that all his settled\nindisposedness to believe strange things was overcome by this special\nconviction.\" [371] And the section ends with the proposition:\n\"Assuredly that saying is not more true in politick, No Bishop,\nno King, than this in metaphysicks, No Spirit, no God.\" Such was\nthe mentality of some of the most eminent and scholarly Christian\napologists of the time. It seems safe to conclude that the Platonist\nmade few converts.\n\nMore avowed that he wrote without having read previous apologists;\nand others were similarly spontaneous in the defence of the faith. In\n1654 there is noted [372] a treatise called Atheismus Vapulans, by\nWilliam Towers, whose message can in part be inferred from his title;\n[373] and in 1657 Charleton issued his Immortality of the Human Soul\ndemonstrated by the Light of Nature, wherein the argument, which\nsays nothing of revelation, is so singularly unconfident, and so much\nbroken in upon by excursus, as to leave it doubtful whether the author\nwas more lacking in dialectic skill or in conviction. And still the\ntraces of unbelief multiply. Baxter and Howe were agreed, in 1658,\nthat there were both \"infidels and papists\" at work around them; and in\n1659 Howe writes: \"I know some leading men are not Christians.\" [374]\n\"Seekers, Vanists, and Behmenists\" are specified as groups to which\nboth infidels and papists attach themselves. And Howe, recognizing\nhow religious strifes promote unbelief, bears witness \"What a cloudy,\nwavering, uncertain, lank, spiritless thing is the faith of Christians\nin this age become!... Most content themselves to profess it only as\nthe religion of their country.\" [375]\n\nAlongside of all this vindication of Christianity there was going on\nconstant and cruel persecution of heretic Christians. The Unitarian\nJohn Biddle, master of the Gloucester Grammar School, was dismissed\nfor his denial of the Trinity; and in 1647 he was imprisoned, and\nhis book burned by the hangman. In 1654 he was again imprisoned; and\nin 1655 he was banished to the Scilly Islands. Returning to London\nafter the Restoration, he was again arrested, and died in gaol in\n1662. [376] Under the Commonwealth (1656) James Naylor, the Quaker,\nnarrowly escaped death for blasphemy, but was whipped through the\nstreets, pilloried, bored through the tongue with a hot iron, branded\nin the forehead, and sent to hard labour in prison. Many hundreds of\nQuakers were imprisoned and more or less cruelly handled.\n\nFrom the Origines Sacr\u00e6 (1662) of Stillingfleet, nevertheless,\nit would appear that both deism and atheism were becoming more and\nmore common. [377] He states that \"the most popular pretences of\nthe atheists of our age have been the irreconcilableness of the\naccount of times in Scripture with that of the learned and ancient\nheathen nations, the inconsistency of the belief of the Scriptures\nwith the principles of reason; and the account which may be given\nof the origin of things from the principles of philosophy without\nthe Scriptures.\" These positions are at least as natural to deists\nas to atheists; and Stillingfleet is later found protesting against\nthe policy of some professed Christians who give up the argument from\nmiracles as valueless. [378] His whole treatise, in short, assumes the\nneed for meeting a very widespread unbelief in the Bible, though it\nrarely deals with the atheism of which it so constantly speaks. After\nthe Restoration, naturally, all the new tendencies were greatly\nreinforced, [379] alike by the attitude of the king and his companions,\nall influenced by French culture, and by the general reaction against\nPuritanism. Whatever ways of thought had been characteristic of the\nPuritans were now in more or less complete disfavour; the belief in\nwitchcraft was scouted as much on this ground as on any other; [380]\nand the deistic doctrines found a ready audience among royalists,\nwhose enemies had been above all things Bibliolaters.\n\n\n There is evidence that Charles II, at least up to the time of\n his becoming a Catholic, and probably even to the end, was at\n heart a deist. See Burnet's History of his Own Time, ed. 1838,\n pp. 61, 175, and notes; and cp. refs. in Buckle, 3-vol. ed. i,\n 362, note; 1-vol. ed. p. 205. St. Evremond, who knew him and\n many of his associates, affirmed expressly that Charles's creed\n \"\u00e9toit seulement ce qui passe vulgairement, quoiqu' injustement,\n pour une extinction totale de Religion: je veux dire le D\u00e9isme\"\n (OEuvres m\u00e9l\u00e9es: t. viii of OEuvres, ed. 1714, p. 354). His\n opinion, St. Evremond admits, was the result of simple recognition\n of the actualities of religious life, not of reading, or of much\n reflection. And his adoption of Catholicism, in St. Evremond's\n opinion, was purely political. He saw that Catholicism made much\n more than Protestantism for kingly power, and that his Catholic\n subjects were the most subservient.\n\n\nWe gather this, however, still from the apologetic treatises and\nthe historians, not from new deistic literature; for in virtue of\nthe Press Licensing Act, passed on behalf of the Church in 1662, no\nheretical book could be printed; so that Herbert was thus far the only\nprofessed deistic writer in the field, and Hobbes the only other of\nsimilar influence. Baxter, writing in 1655 on The Unreasonableness of\nInfidelity, handles chiefly Anabaptists; and in his Reformed Pastor\n(1656), though he avows that \"the common ignorant people,\" seeing\nthe endless strifes of the clergy, \"are hardened by us against\nall religion,\" the only specific unbelief he mentions is that of\n\"the devil's own agents, the unhappy Socinians,\" who had written\n\"so many treatises for ... unity and peace.\" [381] But in his Reasons\nof the Christian Religion, issued in 1667, he thinks fit to prove the\nexistence of God and a future state, and the truth and the supernatural\ncharacter of the Christian religion. Any deist or atheist who took the\ntrouble to read through it would have been rewarded by the discovery\nthat the learned author has annihilated his own case. In his first\npart he affirms: \"If there were no life of Retribution after this,\nObedience to God would be finally men's loss and ruine: But Obedience\nto God shall not be finally men's loss and ruine: Ergo, there is\nanother life.\" [382] In the second part he writes that \"Man's personal\ninterest is an unfit rule and measure of God's goodness\"; [383] and,\ngoing on to meet the new argument against Christianity based on the\ninference that an infinity of stars are inhabited, he writes:--\n\n\n Ask any man who knoweth these things whether all this earth be any\n more in comparison of the whole creation than one Prison is to a\n Kingdom or Empire, or the paring of one nail ... in comparison\n of the whole body. And if God should cast off all this earth,\n and use all the sinners in it as they deserve, it is no more sign\n of a want of benignity or mercy in him than it is for a King to\n cast one subject of a million into a jail ... or than it is to\n pare a man's nails, or cut off a wart, or a hair, or to pull out\n a rotten aking tooth. [384]\n\n\nThus the second part absolutely destroys one of the fundamental\npositions of the first. No semblance of levity on the part of the\nfreethinkers could compare with the profound intellectual insincerity\nof such a propaganda as this; and that deism and atheism continued to\ngain ground is proved by the multitude of apologetic treatises. Even\nin church-ridden Scotland they were found necessary; at least the\nyoung advocate George Mackenzie, afterwards to be famous as the\n\"bluidy Mackenzie\" of the time of persecution, thought it expedient\nto make his first appearance in literature with a Religio Stoici\n(1663), wherein he sets out with a refutation of atheism. It is\ndifficult to believe that his counsel to Christians to watch the\n\"horror-creating beds of dying atheists\" [385]--a false pretence as\nit stands--represented any knowledge whatever of professed atheism\nin his own country; and his discussion of the subject is wholly on\nthe conventional lines--notably so when he uses the customary plea,\nlater associated with Pascal, that the theist runs no risk even if\nthere is no future life, whereas the atheist runs a tremendous risk\nif there is one; [386] but when he writes of \"that mystery why the\ngreatest wits are most frequently the greatest atheists,\" [387] he\nmust be presumed to refer at least to deists. And other passages show\nthat he had listened to freethinking arguments. Thus he speaks [388]\nof those who \"detract from Scripture by attributing the production\nof miracles to natural causes\"; and again [389] of those who \"contend\nthat the Scriptures are written in a mean and low style; are in some\nplaces too mysterious, in others too obscure; contain many things\nincredible, many repetitions, and many contradictions.\" His own\nanswers are conspicuously weak. In the latter passage he continues:\n\"But those miscreants should consider that much of the Scripture's\nnative splendour is impaired by its translators\"; and as to miracles\nhe makes the inept answer that if secondary causes were in operation\nthey acted by God's will; going on later to suggest on his own part\nthat prophecy may be not a miraculous gift, but \"a natural (though the\nhighest) perfection of our human nature.\" [390] Apart from his weak\ndialectic, he writes in general with cleverness and literary finish,\nbut without any note of sincerity; and his profession of concern that\nreason should be respected in theology [391] is as little acted on in\nhis later life as his protest against persecution. [392] The inference\nfrom the whole essay is that in Scotland, as in England, the civil\nwar had brought up a considerable crop of reasoned unbelief; and that\nMackenzie, professed defender of the faith as he was at twenty-five,\nand official persecutor of nonconformists as he afterwards became, met\nwith a good deal of it in his cultured circle. In his later booklet,\nReason: an Essay (1690), he speaks of the \"ridiculous and impudent\nextravagance of some who ... take pains to persuade themselves and\nothers that there is not a God.\" [393] He further coarsely asperses\nall atheists as debauchees, [394] though he avows that \"Infidelity\nis not the cause of false reasoning, because such as are not atheists\nreason falsely.\"\n\nWhen anti-theistic thought could subsist in the ecclesiastical climate\nof Puritan Scotland, it must have flourished somewhat in England. In\n1667 appeared A Philosophicall Essay towards an eviction of the Being\nand Attributes of God, etc., of which the preface proclaims \"the bold\nand horrid pride of Atheists and Epicures\" who \"have laboured to\nintroduce into the world a general Atheism, or at least a doubtful\nSkepticisme in matters of Religion.\" In 1668 was published Meric\nCasaubon's treatise, Of Credulity and Incredulity in things Natural,\nCivil, and Divine, assailing not only \"the Sadducism of these times\nin denying spirits, witches,\" etc., but \"Epicurus ... and the juggling\nand false dealing lately used to bring Atheism into Credit\"--a thrust\nat Gassendi. A similar polemic is entombed in a ponderous folio\n\"romance\" entitled Bentivolio and Urania, by Nathaniel Ingelo, D.D.,\na fellow first of Emanuel College, and afterwards of Queen's College,\nCambridge (1660; 4th ed. amended, 1682). The second part, edifyingly\ndedicated to the Earl of Lauderdale, one of the worst men of his day,\nundertakes to handle the \"Atheists, Epicureans, and Skepticks\"; and\nin the preface the atheists are duly vituperated; while Epicurus is\ndescribed as a gross sensualist, in terms of the legend, and the\nskeptics as \"resigned to the slavery of vice.\" In the sixth book\nthe atheists are allowed a momentary hearing in defence of their\n\"horrid absurdities,\" from which it appears that there were current\narguments alike anthropological and metaphysical against theism. The\nmost competent part of the author's own argument, which is unlimited\nas to space, is that which controverts the thesis of the invention\nof religious beliefs by \"politicians\" [395]--a notion first put in\ncurrency, as we have seen, by those who insisted on the expediency\nand value of such inventions; as, Polybius among the ancients, and\nMachiavelli among the moderns; and further by Christian priests,\nwho described all non-Christian religions as human inventions.\n\nDr. Ingelo's folio seems to have had many readers; but he avowedly did\nnot look for converts; and defences of the faith on a less formidable\nscale were multiplied. A \"Person of Honour\" (Sir Charles Wolseley)\nproduced in 1669 an essay on The Unreasonableness of Atheism made\nManifest, which, without supplying any valid arguments, gives some\nexplanation of the growth of unbelief in terms of the political and\nother antecedents; [396] and in 1670 appeared Richard Barthogge's\nDivine Goodness Explicated and Vindicated from the Exceptions of the\nAtheists. Baxter in 1671 [397] complains that \"infidels are grown\nso numerous and so audacious, and look so big and talk so loud\";\nand still the process continues. In 1672 Sir William Temple writes\nindignantly of \"those who would pass for wits in our age by saying\nthings which, David tells us, the fool said in his heart.\" [398]\nIn the same year appeared The Reasonableness of Scripture-Belief,\nby Sir Charles Wolseley, and The Atheist Silenced, by one J. M.;\nin 1674, Dr. Thomas Good's Firmianus et Dubitantius, or Dialogues\nconcerning Atheism, Infidelity, and Popery; in 1675, the posthumous\ntreatise of Bishop Wilkins (d. 1672), Of the Principles and Duties\nof Natural Religion, with a preface by Tillotson; and a Brevis\nDemonstratio, with the modest sub-title, \"The Truth of Christian\nReligion Demonstrated by Reasons the best that have yet been out in\nEnglish\"; in 1677, Bishop Stillingfleet's Letter to a Deist; and in\n1678 the massive work of Cudworth on The True Intellectual System of\nthe Universe attacking atheism (not deism) on philosophic lines which\nsadly compromised the learned author. [399] English dialectic being\nfound insufficient, there was even produced in 1679 a translation by\nthe Rev. Joshua Bonhome of the French L'Ath\u00e9isme Convaincu of David\nDersdon, published twenty years before.\n\nAll of these works explicitly avow the abundance of unbelief;\nTillotson, himself accused of it, pronounces the age \"miserably overrun\nwith Skepticism and Infidelity\"; and Wilkins, avowing that these\ntendencies are common \"not only among sensual men of the vulgar sort,\nbut even among those who pretend to a more than ordinary measure of\nwit and learning,\" attempts to meet them by a purely deistic argument,\nwith a claim for Christianity appended, as if he were concerned chiefly\nto rebut atheism, and held his own Christianity on a very rationalistic\ntenure. The fact was that the orthodox clergy were as hard put to it\nto repel religious antinomianism on the one hand as to repel atheism\non the other; and no small part of the deistic movement seems to have\nbeen set up by the reaction against pious lawlessness. [400] Thus\nwe have Tillotson, writing as Dean of Canterbury, driven to plead\nin his preface to the work of Wilkins that \"it is a great mistake\"\nto think the obligation of moral duties \"doth solely depend upon the\nrevelation of God's will made to us in the Holy Scriptures.\" It was\nsuch reasoning that brought upon him the charge of freethinking.\n\nIf it be now possible to form any accurate picture of the state of\nbelief in the latter part of the seventeenth century, it may perhaps\nbe done by recognizing three categories of temperament or mental\nproclivity. First we have to reckon with the great mass of people\nheld to religious observance by hebetude, [401] devoid of the deeper\nmystical impulse or psychic bias which exhibited itself on the one\nhand among the dissenters who partly preserved the \"enthusiasms\"\nof the Commonwealth period, and on the other among the more cultured\npietists of the Church who, banning \"enthusiasm\" in its stronger forms,\ncultivated a certain \"enthusiasm\" of their own. Religionists of the\nlatter type were ministered to by superstitious mystics like Henry\nMore, who, even when undertaking to \"prove\" the existence of God and\nthe separate existence of the soul by argument and by demonology,\ntaught them to cultivate a \"warranted enthusiasm,\" and to \"endeavour\nafter a certain principle more noble and inward than reason itself,\nand without which reason will falter, or at least reach but to mean\nand frivolous things\" ... \"something in me while I thus speak, which\nI must confess is of so retruse a nature that I want a name for it,\nunless I should adventure to term it divine sagacity, which is the\nfirst rise of successful reason, especially in matters of great\ncomprehension and moment.\" [402] There was small psychic difference\nbetween this dubiously draped affirmation of the \"inner light\" and\nthe more orotund proclamations of it by the dissenters who, for a\nconsiderable section of the people, still carried on the tradition of\nrapturous pietism; and the dissenters were not always at a disadvantage\nin that faculty for rhetoric which has generally been a main factor\nin doctrinal religion. [403]\n\nFrom the popular and the eclectic pietist alike the generality of the\nAnglican clergy stood aloof; and among them, in turn, a rationalistic\nand anti-mythical habit of mind in a manner joined men who were divided\nin their beliefs. The clergymen who wrote lawyer-like treatises against\nschism were akin in psychosis to those who, in their distaste for the\nparade of inspiration, veered towards deism. Tillotson was not the\nonly man reputed to have done so: fervid dissenters declared that many\nof the established clergy paid \"more respect to the light of reason\nthan to the light of the Scriptures,\" and further \"left Christ out of\ntheir religion, disowned imputed righteousness, derided the operations\nof the holy spirit as the empty pretences of enthusiasts.\" [404]\nOf men of this temperament, some would open dialectic batteries\nagainst dissent; while others, of a more searching proclivity,\nwould tend to construct for themselves a rationalistic creed out\nof the current medley of theological and philosophic doctrine. The\ngreat mass of course maintained an allegiance of habit to the main\nformulas of the faith, putting quasi-rational aspects on the trinity,\nprovidence, redemption, and the future life, very much as the adherents\nof political parties normally vindicate their supposed principles;\nand there was a good deal of surviving temperamental piety even in\nthe Restoration period. [405] But the outstanding feature of the age,\nas contrasted with previous periods, was the increasing commonness\nof the skeptical or rationalistic attitude in general society. Sir\nCharles Wolseley protests [406] that \"Irreligion, 'tis true, in its\npractice hath still been the companion of every age, but its open and\npublic defence seems the peculiar of this\"; adding that \"most of the\nbad principles of this age are of no earlier a date than one very ill\nbook, and indeed but the spawn of the Leviathan.\" This, as we have\nseen, is a delusion; but the influence of Hobbes was a potent factor.\n\nAll the while, the censorship of the press, which was one of the\nmeans by which the clerical party under Charles combated heresy,\nprevented any new and outspoken writing on the deistic side. The\nTreatise of Humane [i.e. Human] Reason (1674) [407] of Martin\nClifford, a scholarly man-about-town, [408] who was made Master\nof the Charterhouse, went indeed to the bottom of the question of\nauthority by showing, as Spinoza had done shortly before, [409] that\nthe acceptance of authority is itself in the last resort grounded in\nreason. The author makes no overt attack on religion, and professes\nChristian belief, but points out that many modern wars had been\non subjects of religion, and elaborates a skilful argument on the\ngain to be derived from toleration. Reason alone, fairly used, will\nbring a man to the Christian faith: he who denies this cannot be a\nChristian. As for schism, it is created not by variation in belief,\nbut by the refusal to tolerate it. This ingenious and well-written\ntreatise speedily elicited three replies, all pronouncing it a\npernicious work. Dr. Laney, Bishop of Ely, is reported to have\ndeclared that book and author might fitly be burned together; [410]\nand Dr. Isaac Watts, while praising it for \"many useful notions,\"\nfound it \"exalt reason as the rule of religion as well as the guide,\nto a degree very dangerous.\" [411] Its actual effect seems to have been\nto restrain the persecution of dissenters. [412] In 1680, three years\nafter Clifford's death, there appeared An Apology for a Treatise of\nHumane Reason, by Albertus Warren, wherein one of the attacks, entitled\nPlain Dealing, by a Cambridge scholar, is specially answered. [413]\nThis helped to evoke the anonymous Discourse of Things above Reason\n(1681), by Robert Boyle, the distinguished author of The Sceptical\nChemist, whom we have seen backing up Henry More in acceptance of\nthe grossest of ignorant superstitions. The most notable thing about\nthe Discourse is that it anticipates Berkeley's argument against\nfreethinking mathematicians. [414]\n\nThe stress of new discussion is further to be gathered from the\nwork of Howe, On the Reconcilableness of God's Prescience of the\nSins of Men with the Wisdom and Sincerity of his Counsels and\nExhortations, produced in 1677 at Boyle's request. As a modern\nadmirer admits that the thesis was a hopeless one, [415] it is not\nto be supposed that it did much to lessen doubt in its own day. The\npreface to Stillingfleet's Letter to a Deist (1677), which for\nthe first time brings that appellation into prominence in English\ncontroversy, tacitly abandoning the usual ascription of atheism to\nall unbelievers, avows that \"a mean esteem of the Scriptures and the\nChristian Religion\" has become very common \"among the Skepticks of\nthis Age,\" and complains very much, as Butler did sixty years later,\nof the spirit of \"Raillery and Buffoonery\" in which the matter was\ntoo commonly approached. The \"Letter\" shows that a multitude of the\ninconsistencies and other blemishes of the Old Testament were being\nkeenly discussed; and it cannot be said that the Bishop's vindication\nwas well calculated to check the tendency. Indeed, we have the angry\nand reiterated declaration of Archdeacon Parker, writing in 1681,\nthat \"the ignorant and the unlearned among ourselves are become the\ngreatest pretenders to skepticism; and it is the common people that\nnowadays set up for Skepticism and Infidelity\"; that \"Atheism and\nIrreligion are at length become as common as Vice and Debauchery\";\nand that \"Plebeans and Mechanicks have philosophized themselves\ninto Principles of Impiety, and read their Lectures of Atheism in\nthe Streets and Highways. And they are able to demonstrate out of\nthe Leviathan that there is no God nor Providence,\" and so on. [416]\nAs the Archdeacon's method of refutation consists mainly in abuse,\nhe doubtless had the usual measure of success. A similar order of\ndialectic is employed by Dr. Sherlock in his Practical Discourse of\nReligious Assemblies (1681). The opening section is addressed to the\n\"speculative atheists,\" here described as receding from the principles\nof their \"great Master, Mr. Hobbs,\" who, \"though he had no great\nopinion of religion in itself, yet thought it something considerable\nwhen it became the law of the nation.\" Such atheists, the reverend\nwriter notes, when it is urged on them that all mankind worship \"some\nGod or other,\" reply that such an argument is as good for polytheism\nand idolatry as for monotheism; so, after formally inviting them to\n\"cure their souls of that fatal and mortal disease, which makes them\nbeasts here and devils hereafter,\" and lamenting that he is not dealing\nwith \"reasonable men,\" he bethinks him that \"the laws of conversation\nrequire us to treat all men with just respects,\" and admits that there\nhave been \"some few wise and cautious atheists.\" To such, accordingly,\nhe suggests that the atheist has already a great advantage in a world\nmorally restrained by religion, where he is under no such restraint,\nand that, \"if he should by his wit and learning proselyte a whole\nnation to atheism, Hell would break loose on Earth, and he might soon\nfind himself exposed to all those violences and injuries which he\nnow securely practises.\" For the rest, they had better not affront\nGod, who may after all exist, and be able to revenge himself. [417]\nAnd so forth.\n\nOf deists as such, Sherlock has nothing to say beyond treating\nas \"practical atheists\" men who admit the existence of God, yet\nnever go to church, though \"religious worship is nothing else but\na public acknowledgment of God.\" Their non-attendance \"is as great,\nif not a greater affront to God, and contempt of him, than atheism\nitself.\" [418] But the reverend writer's strongest resentment is\naroused by the spectacle of freethinkers asking for liberty of thought.\n\n\n \"It is a fulsome and nauseous thing,\" he breathlessly protests,\n \"to see the atheists and infidels of our days to turn great\n reformers of religion, to set up a mighty cry for liberty of\n conscience. For whatever reformation of religion may be needful\n at this time, whatever liberty of conscience may be fit to be\n granted, yet what have these men to do to meddle with it; those\n who think religion a mere fable, and God to be an Utopian prince,\n and conscience a man of clouts set up for a scarecrow to fright\n such silly creatures from their beloved enjoyments, and hell and\n heaven to be forged in the same mint with the poet's Styx and\n Acheron and Elysian Fields? We are like to see blessed times,\n if such men had but the reforming of religion.\" [419]\n\n\nDr Sherlock was not going to do good if the devil bade him.\n\nThe faith had a wittier champion in South; but he, in a Westminster\nAbbey sermon of 1684-5, [420] mournfully declares that\n\n\n \"The weakness of our church discipline since its restoration,\n whereby it has been scarce able to get any hold on men's\n consciences, and much less able to keep it; and the great\n prevalence of that atheistical doctrine of the Leviathan; and\n the unhappy propagation of Erastianism; these things (I say)\n with some others have been the sad and fatal causes that have\n loosed the bands of conscience and eaten out the very heart and\n sense of Christianity among us, to that degree, that there is now\n scarce any religious tye or restraint upon persons, but merely\n from those faint remainders of natural conscience, which God\n will be sure to keep alive upon the hearts of men, as long as\n they are men, for the great ends of his own providence, whether\n they will or no. So that, were it not for this sole obstacle,\n religion is not now so much in danger of being divided and torn\n piecemeal by sects and factions, as of being at once devoured\n by atheism. Which being so, let none wonder that irreligion is\n accounted policy when it is grown even to a fashion; and passes\n for wit, with some, as well as for wisdom with others.\"\n\n\nHow general was the ferment of discussion may be gathered from\nDryden's Religio Laici (1682), addressed to the youthful Henry\nDickinson, translator of P\u00e8re Richard Simon's Critical History of\nthe Old Testament (Fr. 1678). The French scholar was suspect to begin\nwith; and Bishop Burnet tells that Richard Hampden (grandson of the\npatriot), who was connected with the Rye House Plot and committed\nsuicide in the reign of William and Mary, had been \"much corrupted\"\nin his religious principles by Simon's conversation at Paris. In\nthe poem, Dryden recognizes the upsetting tendency of the treatise,\nalbeit he terms it \"matchless\":--\n\n\n For some, who have his secret meaning guessed,\n Have found our author not too much a priest;\n\n\nand his flowing disquisition, which starts from poetic contempt of\nreason and ends in prosaic advice to keep quiet about its findings,\nleaves the matter at that. The hopelessly confused but musical passage:\n\n\n Dim as the borrowed beams of moon and stars,\n To lonely, weary, wandering travellers,\n Is Reason to the soul,\n\n\nbegins the poem; but the poet thinks it necessary both in his preface\nand in his piece to argue with the deists in a fashion which must\nhave entertained them as much as it embarrassed the more thoughtful\northodox, his simple thesis being that all ideas of deity were d\u00e9bris\nfrom the primeval revelation to Noah, and that natural reason could\nnever have attained to a God-idea at all. And even at that, as regards\nthe Herbertian argument:\n\n\n No supernatural worship can be true,\n Because a general law is that alone\n Which must to all and everywhere be known:\n\n\nhe confesses that\n\n\n Of all objections this indeed is chief\n To startle reason, stagger frail belief;\n\n\nand feebly proceeds to argue away the worst meaning of the creed of\n\"the good old man\" Athanasius. Finally, we have a fatherly appeal\nfor peace and quietness among the sects:--\n\n\n And after hearing what our Church can say,\n If still our reason runs another way,\n That private reason 'tis more just to curb\n Than by disputes the public peace disturb;\n For points obscure are of small use to learn,\n But common quiet is mankind's concern.\n\n\nIt must have been the general disbelief in Dryden's sincerity on\nreligious matters that caused the ascription to him of various\nfreethinking treatises, for there is no decisive evidence that he\nwas ever pronouncedly heterodox. His attitude to rationalism in the\nReligio Laici is indeed that of one who either could not see the scope\nof the problem or was determined not to indicate his recognition of it;\nand on the latter view the insincerity of both poem and preface would\nbe exorbitant. By his nominal hostility to deism, however, Dryden did\nfreethought a service of some importance. After his antagonism had\nbeen proclaimed, no one could plausibly associate freethinking with\nlicentiousness, in which Dryden so far exceeded nearly every poet\nand dramatist of his age that the non-juror Jeremy Collier was free\nto single him out as the representative of theatrical lubricity. But\nin simple justice it must also be avowed that of all the opponents\nof deism in that day he is one of the least embittered, and that his\namiable superficiality of argument must have tended to stimulate the\nclaims of reason.\n\n\n The late Dr. Verrall, a keen but unprejudiced critic, sums up as\n regards Dryden's religious poetry in general that \"What is clear\n is that he had a marked dislike of clergy of all sorts, as such\";\n that \"the main points of Deism are noted in Religio Laici (46-61);\n and that \"his creed was presumably some sort of Deism\" (Lectures\n on Dryden, 1914, pp. 148-50). Further, \"The State of Innocence is\n really deistic and not Christian in tone: in his play of Tyrannic\n Love, the religion of St. Catharine may be mere philosophy\";\n and though the poet in his preface to that play protests that his\n \"outward conversation shall never be justly taxed with the note of\n atheism or profaneness,\" the disclaimer \"proves nothing as to his\n positive belief: Deism is not profane.\" In Absalom and Achitophel,\n again, the \"coarse satire on Transubstantiation (118 ff.) shows\n rather religious insensibility than hostile theology,\" though\n \"the poem shows his dislike of liberty and private judgment\n (49-50).\" Of the Religio Laici the critic asks: \"Now in all\n this, is there any religion at all?\" The poem \"might well be\n dismissed as mere politics but for its astounding commencement\"\n (p. 155). The critic unexpectedly fails to note that the admired\n commencement is an insoluble confusion of metaphors.\n\n\nHow far the process of reasoning had gone among quiet thinking people\nbefore the Revolution may be gathered from the essay entitled Miracles\nno Violations of the Laws of Nature, published in 1683. [421] Its\nthesis is that put explicitly by Montaigne and implicitly by Bacon,\nthat Ignorance is the only worker of miracles; in other words, \"that\nthe power of God and the power of Nature are one and the same\"--a\nsimple and straightforward way of putting a conception which Cudworth\nhad put circuitously and less courageously a few years before. No\nScriptural miracle is challenged qua event. \"Among the many miracles\nrelated to be done in favour of the Israelites,\" says the writer,\n\"there is (I think) no one that can be apodictically demonstrated to\nbe repugnant to th' establisht Order of Nature\"; [422] and he calmly\naccepts the Biblical account of the first rainbow, explaining it as\npassing for a miracle merely because it was the first. He takes his\nmotto from Pliny: \"Quid non miraculo est, cum primum in notitiam\nvenit?\" [423] This is, however, a preliminary strategy; as is the\nopening reminder that \"most of the ancient Fathers ... and of the\nmost learned Theologues among the moderns\" hold that the Scriptures\nas regards natural things do not design to instruct men in physics but\n\"aim only to excite pious affections in their breasts.\"\n\nWe accordingly reach the position that the Scripture \"many times\nspeaks of natural things, yea even of God himself, very improperly,\nas aiming to affect and occupy the imagination of men, not to\nconvince their reason.\" Many Scriptural narratives, therefore, \"are\neither delivered poetically or related according to the preconceived\nopinions and prejudices of the writer.\" \"Wherefore we here absolutely\nconclude that all the events that are truly related in the Scripture\nto have come to pass, proceeded necessarily ... according to the\nimmutable Laws of Nature; and that if anything be found which can\nbe apodictically demonstrated to be repugnant to those laws ... we\nmay safely and piously believe the same not to have been dictated\nby divine inspiration, but impiously added to the sacred volume by\nsacrilegious men; for whatever is against Nature is against Reason;\nand whatever is against Reason is absurd, and therefore also to be\nrejected and refuted.\" [424]\n\nLest this should be found too hard a doctrine there is added, \u00e0propos\nof Joshua's staying of the sun and moon, a literary solution which has\noften done duty in later times. \"To interpret Scripture-miracles, and\nto understand from the narrations of them how they really happened,\n'tis necessary to know the opinions of those who first reported\nthem ... otherwise we shall confound ... things which have really\nhappen'd with things purely imaginary, and which were only prophetic\nrepresentations. For in Scripture many things are related as real, and\nwhich were also believ'd to be real even by the relators themselves,\nthat notwithstanding were only representations form'd in the brain,\nand merely imaginary--as that God, the Supreme Being, descended from\nheaven ... upon Mount Sinai...; that Elias ascended to heaven in\na fiery chariot ... which were only representations accommodated to\ntheir opinions who deliver'd them down to us.\" [425] Such argumentation\nhad to prepare the way for Hume's Essay Of Miracles, half a century\nlater; and concerning both reasoners it is to be remembered that\ntheir thought was to be \"infidelity\" for centuries after them. It\nneeded real freethinking, then, to produce such doctrine in the days\nof the Rye House Plot.\n\nMeanwhile, during an accidental lapse of the press laws, the deist\nCharles Blount [426] (1654-1693) had produced with his father's help\nhis Anima Mundi (1679), in which there is set forth a measure of\ncautious unbelief; following it up (1680) by his much more pronounced\nessay, Great is Diana of the Ephesians, a keen attack on the principle\nof revelation and clericalism in general, and his translation [from\nthe Latin version] of Philostratus's Life of Apollonius of Tyana, so\nannotated [427] as to be an ingenious counterblast to the Christian\nclaims, and so prefaced as to be an open challenge to orthodoxy. The\nbook was condemned to be burnt; and only the influence of Blount's\nfamily, [428] probably, prevented his being prosecuted. The propaganda,\nhowever, was resumed by Blount and his friends in small tracts, and\nafter his suicide [429] in 1693 these were collected as the Oracles of\nReason (1693), his collected works (without the Apollonius) appearing\nin 1695. By this time the political tension of the Revolution of 1688\nwas over; Le Clerc's work on the inspiration of the Old Testament,\nraising many doubts as to the authorship of the Pentateuch, had been\ntranslated in 1690; Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (1670) had\nbeen translated into English in 1689, and had impressed in a similar\nsense a number of scholars; his Ethica had given a new direction to\nthe theistic controversy; the Boyle Lecture had been established for\nthe confutation of unbelievers; and after the political convulsion of\n1688 has subsided it rains refutations. Atheism is now so fiercely\nattacked, and with such specific arguments--as in Bentley's Boyle\nLectures (1692), Edwards's Thoughts concerning the Causes of Atheism\n(1695), and many other treatises--that there can be no question as\nto the private vogue of atheistic or agnostic opinions. If we are to\njudge solely from the apologetic literature, it was more common than\ndeism. Yet it seems impossible to doubt that there were ten deists\nfor one atheist. Bentley's admission that he never met an explicit\natheist [430] suggests that much of the atheism warred against was\ntentative. It was only the deists who could venture on open avowals;\nand the replies to them were most discussed.\n\nMuch account was made of one of the most compendious, the Short and\nEasy Method with the Deists (1697), by the nonjuror Charles Leslie;\nbut this handy argument (which is really adopted without acknowledgment\nfrom an apologetic treatise by a French Protestant refugee, published\nin 1688 [431]) was not only much bantered by deists, but was sharply\ncensured as incompetent by the French Protestant Le Clerc; [432]\nand many other disputants had to come to the rescue. A partial list\nwill suffice to show the rate of increase of the ferment:--\n\n\n1683. Dr. Rust, Discourse on the Use of Reason in ... Religion,\n against Enthusiasts and Deists.\n1685. Duke of Buckingham, A Short Discourse upon the Reasonableness\n of men's having a religion or worship of God.\n1685. The Atheist Unmask'd. By a Person of Honour.\n1688. Peter Allix, D.D. Reflexions, etc., as above cited.\n1691. Archbishop Tenison, The Folly of Atheism.\n1691. Discourse of Natural and Revealed Religion.\n1691. John Ray, Wisdom of God manifested in the Works of the\n Creation. (Many reprints.)\n1692. C. Ellis, The Folly of Atheism Demonstrated.\n1692. Bentley's Sermons on Atheism. (First Boyle Lectures.)\n1693. Archbishop Davies, An Anatomy of Atheism. A poem.\n1693. A Conference between an Atheist and his Friend.\n1694. J. Goodman, A Winter Evening Conference between Neighbours.\n1694. Bishop Kidder, A Demonstration of the Messias. (Boyle Lect.)\n1695. John Locke, The Reasonableness of Christianity.\n1695. John Edwards, B.D., Some Thoughts concerning the Several Causes\n and occasions of Atheism. (Directed against Locke.)\n1696. An Account of the Growth of Deism in England.\n1696. Reflections on a Pamphlet, etc. (the last named).\n1696. Sir C. Wolseley, The Unreasonableness of Atheism Demonstrated.\n (Rep.)\n1696. Dr. Nichols' Conference with a Theist. Pt. I. (Answer to\n Blount.)\n1696. J. Edwards, D.D., A Demonstration of the Evidence and\n Providence of God.\n1696. E. Pelling, Discourse ... on the Existence of God. (Pt. II in\n 1705).\n1697. Stephen Eye, A Discourse concerning Natural and Revealed\n Religion.\n1697. Bishop Gastrell, The Certainty and Necessity of Religion.\n (Boyle Lect.)\n1697. H. Prideaux, Discourse vindicating Christianity, etc.\n1697. C. Leslie, A Short and Easy Method with the Deists.\n1698. Dr. J. Harris, A Refutation of Atheistical Objections. (Boyle\n Lect.)\n1698. Thos. Emes, The Atheist turned Deist, and the Deist turned\n Christian.\n1699. C. Lidgould, Proclamation against Atheism, etc.\n1699. J. Bradley, An Impartial View of the Truth of Christianity.\n (Answer to Blount.)\n1700. Bishop Bradford, The Credibility of the Christian Revelation.\n (Boyle Lect.)\n1700. Rev. P. Berault, Discourses on the Trinity, Atheism, etc.\n1701. T. Knaggs, Against Atheism.\n1701. W. Scot, Discourses concerning the wisdom and goodness of God.\n1702. A Confutation of Atheism.\n1702. Dr. Stanhope, The Truth and Excellency of the Christian\n Religion. (Boyle Lect.)\n1704. An Antidote of Atheism. (? Reprint of More).\n1705. Translation of Herbert's Ancient Religion of the Gentiles.\n1705. Charles Gildon, The Deist's Manual (a recantation).\n1705. Ed. Pelling, Discourse concerning the existence of God. Part\n II.\n1705. Dr. Samuel Clarke, A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes\n of God, etc. (Boyle Lect. of 1704.)\n1706. A Preservative against Atheism and Infidelity.\n1706. Th. Wise, B.D., A Confutation of the Reason and Philosophy of\n Atheism (recast and abridgment of Cudworth).\n1706. T. Oldfield, Mille Testes; against the Atheists, Deists, and\n Skepticks.\n1706. The Case of Deism fully and fairly stated, with Dialogue, etc.\n1707. Dr. J. Hancock, Arguments to prove the Being of a God. (Boyle\n Lect.)\n\n\nStill there was no new deistic literature apart from Toland's\nChristianity not Mysterious (1696) and his unauthorized issue (of\ncourse without author's name) of Shaftesbury's Inquiry Concerning\nVirtue in 1699; and in that there is little direct conflict with\northodoxy, though it plainly enough implied that scripturalism\nwould injuriously affect morals. It seems at that date, perhaps\nthrough the author's objection to its circulation, to have attracted\nlittle attention; but he tells that it incurred hostility. [433]\nBlount's famous stratagem of 1693 [434] had led to the dropping\nof the official censorship of the press, the Licensing Act having\nbeen renewed for only two years in 1693 and dropped in 1695; but\nafter the prompt issue of Blount's collected works in that year,\nand the appearance of Toland's Christianity not Mysterious in the\nnext, the new and comprehensive Blasphemy Law of 1697 [435] served\nsufficiently to terrorize writers and printers in that regard for the\ntime being. [436] Bare denial of the Trinity, of the truth of the\nChristian religion, or of the divine authority of the Scriptures,\nwas made punishable by disability for any civil office; and on a\nsecond offence by three years' imprisonment, with withdrawal of all\nlegal rights. The first clear gain from the freedom of the press was\nthus simply a cheapening of books in general. By the Licensing Act\nof Charles II, and by a separate patent, the Stationers' Company had\na monopoly of printing and selling all classical authors; and while\ntheir editions were disgracefully bad, the importers of the excellent\neditions printed in Holland had to pay them a penalty of 6s. 8d. on\neach copy. [437] By the same Act, passed under clerical influence,\nthe number even of master printers and letter-founders had been\nreduced, and the number of presses and apprentices strictly limited;\nand the total effect of the monopolies was that when Dutch-printed\nbooks were imported in exchange for English, the latter sold more\ncheaply at Amsterdam than they did in London, the English consumer,\nof course, bearing the burden. [438] The immediate effect, therefore,\nof the lapse of the Licensing Act must have been to cheapen greatly\nall foreign books by removal of duties, and at the same time to cheapen\nEnglish books by leaving printing free. It will be seen above that the\noutput of treatises against freethought at once increases in 1696. But\nthe revolution of 1688, like the Great Rebellion, had doubtless given\na new stimulus to freethinking; and the total effect of freer trade\nin books, even with a veto on \"blasphemy,\" could only be to further\nit. This was ere long to be made plain.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 3\n\nAlongside of the more popular and native influences, there were at work\nothers, foreign and more academic; and even in professedly orthodox\nwriters there are signs of the influence of deistic thought. Thus Sir\nThomas Browne's Religio Medici (written about 1634, published 1642)\nhas been repeatedly characterized [439] as tending to promote deism\nby its tone and method; and there can be no question that it assumes\na great prevalence of critical unbelief, to which its attitude is an\nodd combination of humorous cynicism and tranquil dogmatism, often\nrecalling Montaigne, [440] and at times anticipating Emerson. There\nis little savour of confident belief in the smiling maxim that \"to\nconfirm and establish our belief 'tis best to argue with judgments\nbelow our own\"; or in the avowal, \"In divinity I love to keep the road;\nand though not in an implicit yet an humble faith, follow the great\nwheel of the Church, by which I move.\" [441] The pose of the typical\nbeliever: \"I can answer all the objections of Satan and my rebellious\nreason with that odd resolution I learned of Tertullian, Certum est\nquia impossibile est,\" [442] tells in his case of no anxious hours; and\nsuch smiling incuriousness is not conducive to conviction in others,\nespecially when followed by a recital of some of the many insoluble\ndilemmas of Scripture. When he reasons he is merely self-subversive,\nas in the saying, \"'Tis not a ridiculous devotion to say a prayer\nbefore a game at tables; for even in sortileges and matters of\ngreatest uncertainty there is a settled and pre-ordered course of\neffects\"; [443] and after remarking that the notions of Fortune and\nastral influence \"have perverted the devotion of many into atheism,\"\nhe proceeds to avow that his many doubts never inclined him \"to any\npoint of infidelity or desperate positions of atheism; for I have been\nthese many years of opinion there never was any.\" [444] Yet in his\nlater treatise on Vulgar Errors (1645) he devotes a chapter [445] to\nthe activities of Satan in instilling the belief that \"there is no God\nat all ... that the necessity of his entity dependeth upon ours...;\nthat the natural truth of God is an artificial erection of Man,\nand the Creator himself but a subtile invention of the Creature.\" He\nfurther notes as coming from the same source \"a secondary and deductive\nAtheism--that although men concede there is a God, yet should they\ndeny his providence. And therefore assertions have flown about,\nthat he intendeth only the care of the species or common natures,\nbut letteth loose the guard of individuals, and single existences\ntherein.\" [446] Browne now asserts merely that \"many there are who\ncannot conceive that there was ever any absolute Atheist,\" and does\nnot clearly affirm that Satan labours wholly in vain. The broad fact\nremains that he avows \"reason is a rebel unto faith\"; and in the\nVulgar Errors he shows in his own reasoning much of the practical\nplay of the new skepticism. [447] Yet it is finally on record that in\n1664, on the trial of two women for witchcraft, Browne declared that\nthe fits suffered from by the children said to have been bewitched\n\"were natural, but heightened by the devil's co-operating with the\nmalice of the witches, at whose instance he did the villainies.\" [448]\nThis amazing deliverance is believed to have \"turned the scale\" in the\nminds of the jury against the poor women, and they were sentenced by\nthe sitting judge, Sir Matthew Hale, to be hanged. It would seem that\nin Browne's latter years the irrational element in him, never long\ndormant, overpowered the rational. The judgment is a sad one to have\nto pass on one of the greatest masters of prose in any language. In\nother men, happily, the progression was different.\n\nThe opening even of Jeremy Taylor's Ductor Dubitantium, so far as\nit goes, falls little short of the deistic position. [449] A new\nvein of rationalism, too, is opened in the theological field by the\ngreat Cambridge scholar John Spencer, whose Discourse concerning\nProdigies (1663; 2nd ed. 1665), though quite orthodox in its main\npositions, has in part the effect of a plea for naturalism as against\nsupernaturalism. Spencer's great work, De legibus Hebr\u00e6orum (1685), is,\napart from Spinoza, the most scientific view of Hebrew institutions\nproduced before the rise of German theological rationalism in the\nlatter part of the eighteenth century. Holding most of the Jewish rites\nto have been planned by the deity as substitutes for or safeguards\nagainst those of the Gentiles which they resembled, he unconsciously\nlaid, with Herbert, the foundations of comparative hierology, bringing\nto the work a learning which is still serviceable to scholars. [450]\nAnd there were yet other new departures by clerical writers, who of\ncourse exhibit the difficulty of attaining a consistent rationalism.\n\nOne clergyman, Joseph Glanvill, is found publishing a treatise on The\nVanity of Dogmatizing (1661; amended in 1665 under the title Scepsis\nScientifica), [451] wherein, with careful reservation of religion,\nthe spirit of critical science is applied to the ordinary processes\nof opinion with much energy, and the \"mechanical philosophy\" of\nDescartes is embraced with zeal. Following Raleigh and Hobbes, [452]\nGlanvill also puts the positive view of causation [453] afterwards\nfully developed by Hume. [454] Yet he not only vetoed all innovation\nin \"divinity,\" but held stoutly by the crudest forms of the belief in\nwitchcraft, and was with Henry More its chief English champion in his\nday against rational disbelief. [455] In religion he had so little\nof the skeptical faculty that he declared \"Our religious foundations\nare fastened at the pillars of the intellectual world, and the grand\narticles of our belief as demonstrable as geometry. Nor will ever\neither the subtile attempts of the resolved Atheist, or the passionate\nhurricanes of the wild enthusiast, any more be able to prevail against\nthe reason our faith is built on, than the blustering winds to blow out\nthe Sun.\" [456] He had his due reward in being philosophically assailed\nby the Catholic priest Thomas White as a promoter of skepticism,\n[457] and by an Anglican clergyman, wroth with the Royal Society and\nall its works, as an infidel and an atheist. [458]\n\nThis was as true as clerical charges of the kind usually were in the\nperiod. But without any animus or violence of interpretation, a reader\nof Glanvill's visitation sermon on The Agreement of Reason and Religion\n[459] might have inferred that he was a deist. It sets forth that\n\"religion primarily and mainly consists in worship and vertue,\" and\nthat it \"in a secondary sense consists in some principles relating to\nthe worship of God, and of his Son, in the ways of devout and vertuous\nliving\"; Christianity having \"superadded\" baptism and the Lord's\nSupper to \"the religion of mankind.\" Apart from his obsession as to\nwitchcraft--and perhaps even as to that--Glanvill seems to have grown\nmore and more rationalistic in his later years. The Scepsis omits\nsome of the credulous flights of the Vanity of Dogmatizing; [460]\nthe re-written version in the collected Essays omits such dithyrambs\nas that above quoted; and the sermon in its revised form sets out with\nthe emphatic declaration: \"There is not anything that I know which hath\ndone more mischief to religion than the disparaging of reason under\npretence of respect and favour to it; for hereby the very foundations\nof Christian faith have been undermined, and the world prepared for\natheism. And if reason must not be heard, the Being of a God and the\nauthority of Scripture can neither be proved nor defended; and so our\nfaith drops to the ground like an house that hath no foundation.\" Such\nreasoning could not but be suspect to the orthodoxy of the age.\n\nApart from the influence of Hobbes, who, like Descartes, shaped his\nthinking from the starting-point of Galileo, the Cartesian philosophy\nplayed in England a great transitional part. At the university of\nCambridge it was already naturalized; [461] and the influence of\nGlanvill, who was an active member of the Royal Society, must have\ncarried it further. The remarkable treatise of the anatomist Glisson,\n[462] De natura substanti\u00e6 energetica (1672), suggests the influence\nof either Descartes or Gassendi; and it is remarkable that the\nclerical moralist Cumberland, writing his Disquisitio de legibus\nNatur\u00e6 (1672) in reply to Hobbes, not only takes up a utilitarian\nposition akin to Hobbes's own, and expressly avoids any appeal\nto the theological doctrine of future punishments, but introduces\nphysiology into his ethic to the extent of partially figuring as an\nethical materialist. [463] In regard to Gassendi's direct influence it\nhas to be noted that in 1659 there appeared The Vanity of Judiciary\nAstrology, translated by \"A Person of Quality,\" from P. Gassendus;\nand further that, as is remarked by Reid, Locke borrowed more from\nGassendi than from any other writer. [464]\n\n\n [It is stated by Sir Leslie Stephen (English Thought in\n the Eighteenth Century, 2nd ed. i, 32) that in England the\n philosophy of Descartes made no distinguished disciples;\n and that John Norris \"seems to be the only exception to\n the general indifference.\" This overlooks (1) Glanvill, who\n constantly cites and applauds Descartes (Scepsis Scientifica,\n passim). (2) In Henry More's Divine Dialogues, again (1668),\n one of the disputants is made to speak (Dial. i, ch. xxiv) of\n \"that admired wit Descartes\"; and he later praises him even when\n passing censure (above, p. 65). More had been one of the admirers\n in his youth, and changed his view (cp. Ward's Life of Dr. Henry\n More, pp. 63-64). But his first letter to Descartes begins: \"Quanta\n voluptate perfusus est animus meus, Vir clarissime, scriptis tuis\n legendis, nemo quisquam pr\u00e6ter te unum potest conjectare.\" (3)\n There was published in 1670 a translation of Des Fourneillis's\n letter in defence of the Cartesian system, with Fran\u00e7ois Bayle's\n General System of the Cartesian Philosophy. (4) The continual\n objections to the atheistic tendency of Descartes throughout\n Cudworth's True Intellectual System imply anything but \"general\n indifference\"; and (5) Barrow's tone in venturing to oppose him\n (cit. in Whewell's Philosophy of Discovery, 1860, p. 179) pays\n tribute to his great influence. (6) Molyneux, in the preface to\n his translation of the Six Metaphysical Meditations of Descartes\n in 1680, speaks of him as \"this excellent philosopher\" and \"this\n prodigious man.\" (7) Maxwell, in a note to his translation (1727)\n of Bishop Cumberland's Disquisitio de legibus Natur\u00e6, remarks that\n the doctrine of a universal plenum was accepted from the Cartesian\n philosophy by Cumberland, \"in whose time that philosophy prevailed\n much\" (p. 120). See again (8) Clarke's Answer to Butler's Fifth\n Letter (1718) as to the \"universal prevalence\" of Descartes's\n notions in natural philosophy. (9) The Scottish Lord President\n Forbes (d. 1747) summed up that \"Descartes's romance kept entire\n possession of men's belief for fully fifty years\" (Works, ii,\n 132). (10) And his fellow-judge, Sir William Anstruther, in his\n \"Discourse against Atheism\" (Essays, Moral and Divine, 1701,\n pp. 6, 8, 9), cites with much approval the theistic argument of\n \"the celebrated Descartes\" as \"the last evidences which appeared\n upon the stage of learning\" in that connection.\n\n Cp. Berkeley, Siris, \u00a7 331. Of Berkeley himself, Professor Adamson\n writes (Encyc. Brit. iii, 589) that \"Descartes and Locke ... are\n his real masters in speculation.\" The Cartesian view of the\n eternity and infinity of matter had further become an accepted\n ground for \"philosophical atheists\" in England before the end\n of the century (Molyneux, in Familiar Letters of Locke and his\n Friends, 1708, p. 46). As to the many writers who charged Descartes\n with promoting atheism, see Mosheim's notes in Harrison's ed. of\n Cudworth's Intellectual System, i, 275-76; Clarke, as above cited;\n Leibnitz's letter to Philip, cited by Latta, Leibnitz, 1898,\n p. 8, note; and Brewster's Memoirs of Newton, ii, 315.\n\n Sir Leslie Stephen seems to have followed, under a misapprehension,\n Whewell, who contends merely that the Cartesian doctrine\n of vortices was never widely accepted in England (Philos. of\n Discovery, pp. 177-78; cp. Hist. of the Induct. Sciences, ed. 1857,\n ii, 107, 147-48). Buckle was perhaps similarly misled when he\n wrote in his note-book: \"Descartes was never popular in England\"\n (Misc. Works, abridged ed. i, 269). Whewell himself mentions that\n Clarke, soon after taking his degree at Cambridge, \"was actively\n engaged in introducing into the academic course of study, first,\n the philosophy of Descartes in its best form, and, next, the\n philosophy of Newton\" (Lectures on Moral Philosophy, ed. 1862,\n pp. 97-98). And Professor Fowler, in correcting his first remarks\n on the point, decides that \"many of the mathematical teachers at\n Cambridge continued to teach the Cartesian system for some time\n after the publication of Newton's Principia\" (ed. of Nov. Org.,\n p. xi).\n\n\nIt is clear, however, that insofar as new science set up a direct\nconflict with Scriptural assumptions it gained ground but slowly and\nindirectly. It is difficult to-day to realize with what difficulty the\nCopernican and Galilean doctrine of the earth's rotation and movement\nround the sun found acceptance even among studious men. We have seen\nthat Bacon finally rejected it. And as Professor Masson points out,\n[465] not only does Milton seem uncertain to the last concerning\nthe truth of the Copernican system, but his friends and literary\nassociates, the \"Smectymnuans,\" in their answer to Bishop Hall's\nHumble Remonstrance (1641), had pointed to the Copernican doctrine as\nan unquestioned instance of a supreme absurdity. Glanvill, remarking\nin 1665 that \"it is generally opinion'd that the Earth rests as the\nworld's centre,\" avows that \"for a man to go about to counter-argue\nthis belief is as fruitless as to whistle against the winds. I shall\nnot undertake to maintain the paradox that confronts this almost\nCatholic opinion. Its assertion would be entertained with the hoot\nof the rabble; the very mention of it as possible, is among the most\nridiculous.\" [466] All he ventures to do is to show that the senses do\nnot really vouch the ordinary view. Not till the eighteenth century,\nprobably, did the common run of educated people anywhere accept the\nscientific teaching.\n\nOn the other hand, however, there was growing up not a little Socinian\nand other Unitarianism, for some variety of which we have seen two men\nburned in 1612. Church measures had been taken against the importation\nof Socinian books as early as 1640. The famous Lord Falkland,\nslain in the Civil War, is supposed to have leant to that opinion;\n[467] and Chillingworth, whose Religion of Protestants (1637) was\nalready a remarkable application of rational tests to ecclesiastical\nquestions in defiance of patristic authority, [468] seems in his old\nage to have turned Socinian. [469] Violent attacks on the Trinity are\nnoted among the heresies of 1646. [470] Colonel John Fry, one of the\nregicides, who in Parliament was accused of rejecting the Trinity,\ncleared himself by explaining that he simply objected to the terms\n\"persons\" and \"subsistence,\" but was one of those who sought to help\nthe persecuted Unitarian Biddle. In 1652 the Parliament ordered the\ndestruction of a certain Socinian Catechism; and by 1655 the heresy\nseems to have become common. [471] It is now certain that Milton was\nsubstantially a Unitarian, [472] and that Locke and Newton were at\nheart no less so. [473]\n\nThe temper of the Unitarian school appears perhaps at its best in\nthe anonymous Rational Catechism published in 1686. It purports to\nbe \"an instructive conference between a father and his son,\" and is\ndedicated by the father to his two daughters. The \"Catechism\" rises\nabove the common run of its species in that it is really a dialogue,\nin which the r\u00f4les are at times reversed, and the catechumen is\npermitted to think and speak for himself. The exposition is entirely\nunevangelical. Right religion is declared to consist in right conduct;\nand while the actuality of the Christian record is maintained on\nargued grounds, on the lines of Grotius and Parker, the doctrine of\nsalvation by faith is strictly excluded, future happiness being posited\nas the reward of good life, not of faith. There is no negation, the\nauthor's object being avowedly peace and conciliation; but the Epistle\nDedicatory declares that religious reasoners have hitherto \"failed in\ntheir foundation-work. They have too much slighted that philosophy\nwhich is the natural religion of all men; and which, being natural,\nmust needs be universal and eternal: and upon which therefore, or at\nleast in conformity with which, all instituted and revealed religion\nmust be supposed to be built.\" We have here in effect the position\ntaken up by Toland ten years later; and, in germ, the principle which\ndeveloped deism, albeit in connection with an affirmation of the truth\nof the Christian records. Of the central Christian doctrine there is\nno acceptance, though there is laudation of Jesus; and reprints after\n1695 bore the motto, from Locke: [474] \"As the foundation of virtue,\nthere ought very earnestly to be imprinted on the mind of a young man\na true notion of God, as of the independent supreme Being, Author,\nand Maker of all things: And, consequent to this, instil into him a\nlove and reverence of this supreme Being.\" We are already more than\nhalf-way from Unitarianism to deism.\n\nIndeed, the theism of Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding\nundermined even his Unitarian Scripturalism, inasmuch as it denies,\nalbeit confusedly, that revelation can ever override reason. In\none passage he declares that \"reason is natural revelation,\" while\n\"revelation is natural reason enlarged by a new set of discoveries\ncommunicated by God immediately, which reason vouchsafes the truth\nof.\" [475] This compromise appears to be borrowed from Spinoza,\nwho had put it with similar vagueness in his great Tractatus, [476]\nof which pre-eminent work Locke cannot have been ignorant, though he\nprotested himself little read in the works of Hobbes and Spinoza,\n\"those justly decried names.\" [477] The Tractatus being translated\ninto English in the same year with the publication of the Essay, its\ninfluence would concur with Locke's in a widened circle of readers;\nand the substantially naturalistic doctrine of both books inevitably\npromoted the deistic movement. We have Locke's own avowal that he\nhad many doubts as to the Biblical narratives; [478] and he never\nattempts to remove the doubts of others. Since, however, his doctrine\nprovided a sphere for revelation on the territory of ignorance, giving\nit prerogative where its assertions were outside knowledge, it counted\nsubstantially for Unitarianism insofar as it did not lead to deism.\n\n\n See the Essay, bk. iv, ch. xviii. Locke's treatment of revelation\n may be said to be the last and most attenuated form of the\n doctrine of \"two-fold truth.\" On his principle, any proposition\n in a professed revelation that was not provable or disprovable by\n reason and knowledge must pass as true. His final position, that\n \"whatever is divine revelation ought to overrule all our opinions\"\n (bk. iv, ch. xviii, \u00a7 10), is tolerably elastic, inasmuch as he\n really reserves the question of the actuality of revelation. Thus\n he evades the central issue. Naturally he was by critical\n foreigners classed as a deist. Cp. Gostwick, German Culture and\n Christianity, 1882, p. 36. The German historian Tennemann sums up\n that Clarke wrote his apologetic works because \"the consequences\n of the empiricism of Locke had become so decidedly favourable to\n the cause of atheism, skepticism, materialism, and irreligion\"\n (Manual of the Hist. of Philos. Eng. tr. Bohn ed. \u00a7 349).\n\n\nIn his \"practical\" treatise on The Reasonableness of Christianity\n(1695) Locke played a similar part. It was inspired by the genuine\nconcern for social peace which had moved him to write an essay on\nToleration as early as 1667, [479] and to produce from 1685 onwards\nhis famous Letters on Toleration, by far the most persuasive appeal\nof the kind that had yet been produced; [480] all the more successful\nso far as it went, doubtless, because the first Letter ended with\na memorable capitulation to bigotry: \"Lastly, those are not at all\nto be tolerated who deny the being of God. Promises, covenants,\nand oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold\nupon an atheist. The taking away of God, though but even in thought,\ndissolves all. Besides, also, those that by their atheism undermine\nand destroy all religion can have no pretence of religion whereupon to\nchallenge the privilege of a toleration.\" This handsome endorsement of\nthe religion which had repeatedly \"dissolved all\" in a pandemonium\nof internecine hate, as compared with the one heresy which had\nnever broken treaties or shed blood, is presumably more of a prudent\nsurrender to normal fanaticism than an expression of the philosopher's\nown state of mind; [481] and his treatise on The Reasonableness of\nChristianity is an attempt to limit religion to a humane ethic, with\nsacraments and mysteries reduced to ceremonies, while claiming that\nthe gospel ethic was \"now with divine authority established into a\nlegible law, far surpassing all that philosophy and human reason had\nattained to.\" [482] Its effect was, however, to promote rationalism\nwithout doing much to mitigate the fanaticism of belief.\n\n\n Locke's practical position has been fairly summed up by Prof. Bain:\n \"Locke proposed, in his Reasonableness of Christianity, to\n ascertain the exact meaning of Christianity, by casting aside all\n the glosses of commentators and divines, and applying his own\n unassisted judgment to spell out its teachings.... The fallacy\n of his position obviously was that he could not strip himself\n of his education and acquired notions.... He seemed unconscious\n of the necessity of trying to make allowance for his unavoidable\n prepossessions. In consequence, he simply fell into an old groove\n of received doctrines; and these he handled under the set purpose\n of simplifying the fundamentals of Christianity to the utmost. Such\n purpose was not the result of his Bible study, but of his wish\n to overcome the political difficulties of the time. He found, by\n keeping close to the Gospels and making proper selections from\n the Epistles, that the belief in Christ as the Messiah could\n be shown to be the central fact of the Christian faith; that\n the other main doctrines followed out of this by a process of\n reasoning; and that, as all minds might not perform the process\n alike, these doctrines could not be essential to the practice of\n Christianity. He got out of the difficulty of framing a creed,\n as many others have done, by simply using Scripture language,\n without subjecting it to any very strict definition; certainly\n without the operation of stripping the meaning of its words,\n to see what it amounted to. That his short and easy method was\n not very successful the history of the deistical controversy\n sufficiently proves\" (Practical Essays, pp. 226-27).\n\n\nThat Locke was felt to have injured orthodoxy is further proved by the\nmany attacks made on him from the orthodox side. Even the first Letter\non Toleration elicited retorts, one of which claims to demonstrate\n\"the Absurdity and Impiety of an Absolute Toleration.\" [483] On his\npositive teachings he was assailed by Bishop Stillingfleet; by the\nRev. John Milner, B.D.; by the Rev. John Morris; by William Carrol;\nand by the Rev. John Edwards, B.D.; [484] his only assailant with a\nrationalistic repute being Dr. Thomas Burnet. Some attacked him on his\nEssays; some on his Reasonableness of Christianity; orthodoxy finding\nin both the same tendency to \"subvert the nature and use of divine\nrevelation and faith.\" [485] In the opinion of the Rev. Mr. Bolde,\nwho defended him in Some Considerations published in 1699, the hostile\nclericals had treated him \"with a rudeness peculiar to some who make a\nprofession of the Christian religion, and seem to pride themselves in\nbeing the clergy of the Church of England.\" [486] This is especially\ntrue of Edwards, a notably ignoble type; [487] but hardly of Milner,\nwhose later Account of Mr. Lock's Religion out of his Own Writings,\nand in his Own Words (1700), pressed him shrewdly on the score of\nhis \"Socinianism.\" In the eyes of a pietist like William Law, again,\nLocke's conception of the infant mind as a tabula rasa was \"dangerous\nto religion,\" besides being philosophically false. [488] Yet Locke\nagreed with Law [489] that moral obligation is dependent solely on\nthe will of God--a doctrine denounced by the deist Shaftesbury as\nthe negation of morality.\n\n\n See the Inquiry concerning Virtue or Merit, pt. iii, \u00a7 2; and the\n Letters to a Student, under date June 3, 1709 (p. 403 in Rand's\n Life, Letters, etc., of Shaftesbury, 1900). The extraordinary\n letter of Newton to Locke, written just after or during a spell\n of insanity, first apologizes for having believed that Locke\n \"endeavoured to embroil me with women and by other means,\"\n and goes on to beg pardon \"for representing that you struck at\n the root of morality, in a principle you laid down in your book\n of ideas.\" In his subsequent letter, replying to that of Locke\n granting forgiveness and gently asking for details, he writes:\n \"What I said of your book I remember not.\" (Letters of September\n 16 and October 5, 1693, given in Fox Bourne's Life of Locke, ii,\n 226-27, and Sir D. Brewster's Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton, 1855,\n ii, 148-51.) Newton, who had been on very friendly terms with\n Locke, must have been repeating, when his mind was disordered,\n criticisms otherwise current. After printing in full the letters\n above cited, Brewster insists, on his principle of sacrificing\n all other considerations to Newton's glory (cp. De Morgan, Newton:\n his Friend: and his Niece, 1885, pp. 99-111), that all the while\n Newton was \"in the full possession of his mental powers.\" The\n whole diction of the first letter tells the contrary. If we are\n not to suppose that Newton had been temporarily insane, we must\n think of his judgment as even less rational, apart from physics,\n than it is seen to be in his dissertations on prophecy. Certainly\n Newton was at all times apt to be suspicious of his friends to\n the point of moral disease (see his attack on Montague, in his\n letter to Locke of January 26, 1691-1692; in Fox Bourne, ii,\n 218; and cp. De Morgan, as cited, p. 146); but the letter to\n Locke indicates a point at which the normal malady had upset the\n mental balance. It remains, nevertheless, part of the evidence\n as to bitter orthodox criticism of Locke.\n\n\nOn the whole, it is clear, the effect of his work, especially\nof his naturalistic psychology, was to make for rationalism;\nand his compromises furthered instead of checking the movement\nof unbelief. His ideal of practical and undogmatic Christianity,\nindeed, was hardly distinguishable from that of Hobbes, [490] and,\nas previously set forth by the Rev. Arthur Bury in his Naked Gospel\n(1690), was so repugnant to the Church that that book was burned at\nOxford as heretical. [491] Locke's position as a believing Christian\nwas indeed extremely weak, and could easily have been demolished by\na competent deist, such as Collins, [492] or a skeptical dogmatist\nwho could control his temper and avoid the gross misrepresentation\nso often resorted to by Locke's orthodox enemies. But by the deists\nhe was valued as an auxiliary, and by many latitudinarian Christians\nas a helper towards a rationalistic if not a logical compromise.\n\nRationalism of one or the other tint, in fact, seems to have spread\nin all directions. Deism was ascribed to some of the most eminent\npublic men. Bishop Burnet has a violent passage on Sir William Temple,\nto the effect that \"He had a true judgment in affairs, and very good\nprinciples with relation to government, but in nothing else. He seemed\nto think that things are as they were from all eternity; at least he\nthought religion was only for the mob. He was a great admirer of the\nsect of Confucius in China, who were atheists themselves, but left\nreligion to the rabble.\" [493] The praise of Confucius is the note of\ndeism; and Burnet rightly held that no orthodox Christian in those\ndays would sound it. Other prominent men revealed their religious\nliberalism. The accomplished and influential George Savile, Marquis of\nHalifax, often spoken of as a deist, and even as an atheist, by his\ncontemporaries, [494] appears clearly from his own writings to have\nbeen either that or a Unitarian; [495] and it is not improbable that\nthe similar gossip concerning Lord Keeper Somers was substantially\ntrue. [496]\n\nThat Sir Isaac Newton was \"some kind of Unitarian\" [497] is proved by\ndocuments long withheld from publication, and disclosed only in the\nsecond edition of Sir David Brewster's Memoirs. There is indeed no\nquestion that he remained a mere scripturalist, handling the texts as\nsuch, [498] and wasting much time in vain interpretations of Daniel\nand the Apocalypse. [499] Temperamentally, also, he was averse to\nanything like bold discussion, declaring that \"those at Cambridge\nought not to judge and censure their superiors, but to obey and honour\nthem, according to the law and the doctrine of passive obedience\"\n[500]--this after he had sat on the Convention which deposed James\nII. In no aspect, indeed, apart from his supreme scientific genius,\ndoes he appear as morally [501] or intellectually pre-eminent;\nand even on the side of science he was limited by his theological\npresuppositions, as when he rejected the nebular hypothesis, writing\nto Bentley that \"the growth of new systems out of old ones, without\nthe mediation of a Divine power, seems to me apparently absurd.\" [502]\nThere is therefore more than usual absurdity in the proclamation of\nhis pious biographer that \"the apostle of infidelity cowers beneath\nthe implied rebuke\" [503] of his orthodoxy. The very anxiety shown\nby Newton and his friends [504] to checkmate \"the infidels\" is a\nproof that his religious work was not scientific even in inception,\nbut the expression of his neurotic side; and the attempt of some of\nhis scientific admirers to show that his religious researches belong\nsolely to the years of his decline is a corresponding oversight. Newton\nwas always pathologically prepossessed on the side of his religion,\nand subordinated his science to his theology even in the Principia. It\nis therefore all the more significant of the set of opinion in his\nday that, tied as he was to Scriptural interpretations, he drew away\nfrom orthodox dogma as to the Trinity. Not only does he show himself a\ndestructive critic of Trinitarian texts and an opponent of Athanasius\n[505]: he expressly formulates the propositions (1) that \"there is\none God the Father ... and one mediator between God and man, the man\nChrist Jesus\"; (2) that \"the Father is the invisible God whom no eye\nhath seen or can see. All other beings are sometimes visible\"; and\n(3) that \"the Father hath life in himself, and hath given the Son to\nhave life in himself.\" [506] Such opinions, of course, could not be\npublished: under the Act of 1697 they would have made Newton liable\nto loss of office and all civil rights. In his own day, therefore,\nhis opinions were rather gossipped-of than known; [507] but insofar as\nhis heresy was realized, it must have wrought much more for unbelief\nthan could be achieved for orthodoxy by his surprisingly commonplace\nstrictures on atheism, which show the ordinary inability to see what\natheism means.\n\nThe argument of his Short Scheme of True Religion brackets atheism\nwith idolatry, and goes on: \"Atheism is so senseless and odious to\nmankind that it never had many professors. Can it be by accident that\nall birds, beasts, and men have their right side and left side alike\nshaped (except in their bowels), and just two eyes, and no more,\non either side of the face?\" etc. (Brewster, ii, 347). The logical\nimplication is that a monstrous organism, with the sides unlike,\nrepresents \"accident,\" and that in that case there has either been\nno causation or no \"purpose\" by Omnipotence. It is only fair to\nremember that no avowedly \"atheistic\" argument could in Newton's\nday find publication; but his remarks are those of a man who had\nnever contemplated philosophically the negation of his own religious\nsentiment at the point in question. Brewster, whose judgment and\ngood faith are alike precarious, writes that \"When Voltaire asserted\nthat Sir Isaac explained the prophecies in the same manner as those\nwho went before him, he only exhibited his ignorance of what Newton\nwrote, and what others had written\" (ii, 331, note; 355). The writer\ndid not understand what he censured. Voltaire meant that Newton's\ntreatment of prophecy is on the same plane of credulity as that of\nhis orthodox predecessors.\n\nEven within the sphere of the Church the Unitarian tendency,\nwith or without deistic introduction, was traceable. Archbishop\nTillotson (d. 1694) was often accused of Socinianism; and in the\nnext generation was smilingly spoken of by Anthony Collins as a\nleading Freethinker. The pious Dr. Hickes had in fact declared\nof the Archbishop that \"he caused several to turn atheists and\nridicule the priesthood and religion.\" [508] The heresy must have\nbeen encouraged even within the Church by the scandal which broke out\nwhen Dean Sherlock's Vindication of Trinitarianism (1690), written\nin reply to a widely-circulated antitrinitarian compilation, [509]\nwas attacked by Dean South [510] as the work of a Tritheist. The\nplea of Dr. Wallis, Locke's old teacher, that a doctrine of \"three\nsomewhats\"--he objected to the term \"persons\"--in one God was as\nreasonable as the concept of three dimensions, [511] was of course\nonly a heresy the more. Outside the Church, William Penn, the great\nQuaker, held a partially Unitarian attitude; [512] and the first of\nhis many imprisonments was on a charge of \"blasphemy and heresy\" in\nrespect of his treatise The Sandy Foundation Shaken, which denied (1)\nthat there were in the One God \"three distinct and separate persons\";\n(2) the doctrine of the need of \"plenary satisfaction\"; and (3) the\njustification of sinners by \"an imputative righteousness.\" But though\nmany of the early Quakers seem to have shunned the doctrine of the\nTrinity, Penn really affirmed the divinity of Christ, and was not\na Socinian but a Sabellian in his theology. Positive Unitarianism\nall the while was being pushed by a number of tracts which escaped\nprosecution, being prudently handled by Locke's friend, Thomas\nFirmin. [513] A new impulse had been given to Unitarianism by the\nlearning and critical energy of the Prussian Dr. Zwicker, who had\nsettled in Holland; [514] and among those Englishmen whom his works\nhad found ready for agreement was Gilbert Clerke (b. 1641), who, like\nseveral later heretics, was educated at Sidney College, Cambridge. In\n1695 he published a Unitarian work entitled Anti-Nicenismus, and\ntwo other tracts in Latin, all replying to the orthodox polemic of\nDr. Bull, against whom another Unitarian had written Considerations\non the Explications of the Doctrine of the Trinity in 1694, bitterly\nresenting his violence. [515] In 1695 appeared yet another treatise of\nthe same school, The Judgment of the Fathers concerning the Doctrine\nof the Trinity. Much was thus done on Unitarian lines to prepare an\naudience for the deists of the next reign. [516] But the most effective\ninfluence was probably the ludicrous strife of the orthodox clergy\nas to what orthodoxy was. The fray over the doctrine of the Trinity\nwaxed so furious, and the discredit cast on orthodoxy was so serious,\n[517] that in the year 1700 an Act of Parliament was passed forbidding\nthe publication of any more works on the subject.\n\nMeanwhile the so-called Latitudinarians, [518] all the while aiming\nas they did at a non-dogmatic Christianity, served as a connecting\nmedium for the different forms of liberal thought; and a new element of\ncritical disintegration was introduced by a speculative treatment of\nGenesis in the Arch\u00e6ologi\u00e6 Philosophi\u00e6 (1692) of Dr. Thomas Burnet,\na professedly orthodox scholar, Master of the Charterhouse and\nchaplain in ordinary to King William, who nevertheless treated the\nCreation and Fall stories as allegories, and threw doubt on the Mosaic\nauthorship of parts of the Pentateuch. Though the book was dedicated\nto the king, it aroused so much clerical hostility that the king was\nobliged to dismiss him from his post at court. [519] His ideas were\npartly popularized through a translation of two of his chapters,\nwith a vindicatory letter, in Blount's Oracles of Reason (1695);\nand that they had considerable vogue may be gathered from the Essay\ntowards a Vindication of the Vulgar Exposition of the Mosaic History\nof the Fall of Adam, by John Witty, published in 1705. Burnet, who\npublished three sets of anonymous Remarks on the philosophy of Locke\n(1697-1699), criticizing its sensationist basis, figured after his\ndeath (1715), in posthumous publications, as a heretical theologian\nin other regards; and then played his part in the general deistic\nmovement; but his allegorical view of Genesis does not seem to have\nseriously affected speculation in his time, the bulk of the debate\nturning on his earlier Telluris Theoria Sacra (1681; trans. 1684),\nto which there were many rejoinders, both scientific and orthodox. On\nthis side he is unimportant, his science being wholly imaginative;\nand in the competition between his Theory and J. Woodward's Essay\ntowards a Natural History of the Earth (1695) nothing was achieved\nfor scientific progress.\n\nMuch more remarkable, but outside of popular discussion, were the\nEvangelium medici (1697) of Dr. B. Connor, wherein the gospel miracles\nwere explained away, on lines later associated with German rationalism,\nas natural phenomena; and the curious treatise of Newton's friend,\nJohn Craig, [520] Theologi\u00e6 christian\u00e6 principia mathematica (1699),\nwherein it is argued that all evidence grows progressively less valid\nin course of time; [521] and that accordingly the Christian religion\nwill cease to be believed about the year 3144, when probably will occur\nthe Second Coming. Connor, when attacked, protested his orthodoxy;\nCraig held successively two prebends of the Church of England; [522]\nand both lived and died unmolested, probably because they had the\nprudence to write in Latin, and maintained gravity of style. About this\ntime, further, the title of \"Rationalist\" made some fresh headway as a\ndesignation, not of unbelievers, but of believers who sought to ground\nthemselves on reason. Such books as those of Clifford and Boyle tell\nof much discussion as to the efficacy of \"reason\" in religious things;\nand in 1686, as above noted, there appears A Rational Catechism, [523]\na substantially Unitarian production, notable for its aloofness from\nevangelical feeling, despite its many references to Biblical texts in\nsupport of its propositions. In the Essays Moral and Divine of the\nScotch judge, Sir William Anstruther, published in 1701, there is\na reference to \"those who arrogantly term themselves Rationalists\"\n[524] in the sense of claiming to find Christianity not only, as\nLocke put it, a reasonable religion, but one making no strain upon\nfaith. Already the term had become potentially one of vituperation,\nand it is applied by the learned judge to \"the wicked reprehended by\nthe Psalmist.\" [525] Forty years later, however, it was still applied\nrather to the Christian who claimed to believe upon rational grounds\nthan to the deist or unbeliever; [526] and it was to have a still\nlonger lease of life in Germany as a name for theologians who believed\nin \"Scripture\" on condition that all miracles were explained away.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XV\n\nFRENCH AND DUTCH FREETHOUGHT IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY\n\n\n1. We have seen France, in the first quarter of the seventeenth\ncentury, pervaded in its upper classes by a freethought partly\nborn of the knowledge that religion counted for little but harm\nin public affairs, partly the result of such argumentation as had\nbeen thrown out by Montaigne and codified by Charron. That it was\nnot the freethinking of mere idle men of the world is clear when\nwe note the names and writings of La Mothe le Vayer (1588-1672),\nGui Patin (1601-1671), and Gabriel Naud\u00e9 (1600-1653), all scholars,\nall heretics of the skeptical and rationalistic order. The last\ntwo indeed, sided with the Catholics in politics, Patin approving\nof the Fronde, and Naud\u00e9 of the Massacre, on which ground they are\nsometimes claimed as believers. [527] But though in the nature of\nthe case their inclusion on the side of freethought is not to be\nzealously contended for, they must be classed in terms of the balance\nof testimony. Patin was the admiring friend of Gassendi; and though\nhe was never explicitly heretical, and indeed wrote of Socinianism\nas a pestilent doctrine, [528] his habit of irony and the risk of\nwritten avowals to correspondents must be kept in view in deciding\non his cast of mind. He is constantly anti-clerical; [529] and the\ngerminal skepticism of Montaigne and Charron clearly persists in him.\n\n\n It is true that, as one critic puts it, such rationalists were not\n \"quite clear whither they were bound. At first sight,\" he adds,\n \"no one looks more negative than Gui Patin.... He was always\n congratulating himself on being 'delivered from the nightmare';\n and he rivals the eighteenth century in the scorn he pours on\n priests, monks, and especially 'that black Loyolitic scum from\n Spain' which called itself the Society of Jesus. Yet Patin was\n no freethinker. Skeptics who made game of the kernel of religion\n came quite as much under the lash of his tongue as bigots who\n dared defend its husks. His letters end with the characteristic\n confession: 'Credo in Deum, Christum crucifixum, etc.; ... De\n minimis non curat pr\u00e6tor'\" (Viscount St. Cyres in Cambridge\n Modern History, v, 73). But the last statement is an error, and\n Patin did not attack Gassendi, though he did Descartes. He says\n of Rabelais: \"C'\u00e9toit un homme qui se moquoit de tout; en verit\u00e9\n il y a bien des choses dont on doit raisonnablement se moquer\n ... elles sont presque tous remplies de vanit\u00e9, d'imposture et\n d'ignorance: ceux qui sont un peu philosophes ne doivent-ils\n pas s'en moquer?\" (Lett. 485, \u00e9d. cited, iii, 148). Again he\n writes that \"la vie humaine n'est qu'un bureau de rencontre et\n un th\u00e9\u00e2tre sur lesquels domine la fortune\" (Lett. 726, iii,\n 620). This is pure Montaigne. The formula cited by Viscount\n St. Cyres is neither a general nor a final conclusion to the\n letters of Patin. It occurs, I think, only once (18 juillet, 1642,\n \u00e0 M. Belin) in the 836 letters, and not at the end of that one\n (Lett. 55, \u00e9d. cited, i, 90).\n\n Concerning his friend Naud\u00e9, Patin writes: \"Je suis fort de\n l'avis de feu M. Naud\u00e9, qui disoit qu'il y avait quatre choses\n dont il se fallait garder, afin de n'\u00eatre point tromp\u00e9, savoir,\n de proph\u00e9ties, de miracles, de r\u00e9v\u00e9lations, et d'apparitions\"\n (Lett. 353, \u00e9d. cited, ii, 490). Again, he writes of a symposium\n of Naud\u00e9, Gassendi, and himself: \"Peut-\u00eatre, tous trois, gu\u00e9ris\n de loup-garou et delivr\u00e9s du mal des scrupules, qui est le\n tyran des consciences, nous irons peut-\u00eatre jusque fort pr\u00e8s du\n sanctuaire. Je fis l'an pass\u00e9 ce voyage de Gentilly avec M. Naud\u00e9,\n moi seul avec lui t\u00eate-\u00e0-t\u00eate; il n'y avait point de t\u00e9moins,\n aussi n'y en falloit-il point: nous y parl\u00e2mes fort librement de\n tout, sans que personne en ait \u00e9t\u00e9 scandalis\u00e9\" (Lett. 362, ii,\n 508). This seems tolerably freethinking.\n\n All that the Christian editor cares to claim upon the latter\n passage is that assuredly \"l'unit\u00e9 de Dieu, l'immortalit\u00e9 de l'\u00e2me,\n l'\u00e9galit\u00e9 des hommes devant la loi, ces verit\u00e9s fondamentales de\n la raison et consacr\u00e9es par le Christianisme, y \u00e9taient plac\u00e9es au\n premier rang\" in the discussion. As to the skepticism of Naud\u00e9 the\n editor remarks: \"Ce qu'il y a de remarquable, c'est que Gui Patin\n soutenait que son ami ... avait puis\u00e9 son opinion, en g\u00e9n\u00e9ral tr\u00e8s\n peu orthodoxe, en Italie, pendant le long s\u00e9jour qu'il fit dans\n ce pays avec le cardinal Bagni\" (ii, 490; cp. Lett. 816; iii, 758,\n where Naud\u00e9 is again cited as making small account of religion).\n\n\nCertainly Patin and Naud\u00e9 are of less importance for freethought than\nLa Mothe le Vayer. That scholar, a \"Conseiller d'Estat ordinaire,\"\ntutor of the brother of Louis XIV, and one of the early members of\nthe new Academy founded by Richelieu, is an interesting figure [530]\nin the history of culture, being a skeptic of the school of Sextus\nEmpiricus, and practically a great friend of tolerance. Standing\nin favour with Richelieu, he wrote at that statesman's suggestion a\ntreatise On the Virtue of the Heathen, [531] justifying toleration by\npagan example--a course which raises the question whether Richelieu\nhimself was not strongly touched by the rationalism of his age. If it\nbe true that the great Cardinal \"believed as all the world did in his\ntime,\" [532] there is little more to be said; for unbelief, as we have\nseen, was already abundant, and even somewhat fashionable. Certainly no\necclesiastic in high power ever followed a less ecclesiastical policy;\n[533] and from the date of his appointment as Minister to Louis\nXIII (1624), for forty years, there was no burning of heretics or\nunbelievers in France. If he was orthodox, it was very passively. [534]\n\nAnd Le Vayer's way of handling the dicta of St. Augustine and Thomas\nAquinas as to the virtues of unbelievers being merely vices is for\nits time so hardy that the Cardinal's protection alone can explain its\nimmunity from censure. St. Augustine and St. Thomas, says the critic\ncalmly, had regard merely to eternal happiness, which virtue alone\ncan obtain for no one. They are, therefore, to be always interpreted\nin this special sense. And so at the very outset the ground is\nsummarily cleared of orthodox obstacles. [535] The Petit discours\nchr\u00e9tien sur l'immortalit\u00e9 de l'\u00e2me, also addressed to Richelieu,\ntells of a good deal of current unbelief on that subject; and the\nepistle dedicatory professes pain over the \"philosopher of our day\n[Vanini] who has had the impiety to write that, unless one is very\nold, very rich, and a German, one should never expatiate on this\nsubject.\" But on the very threshold of the discourse, again, the\nskeptic tranquilly suggests that there would be \"perhaps something\nunreasonable\" in following Augustine's precept, so popular in later\ntimes, that the problem of immortality should be solved by the dictates\nof religion and feeling, not of \"uncertain\" reason. \"Why,\" he asks,\n\"should the soul be her own judge?\" [536] And he shows a distinct\nappreciation of the avowal of Augustine in his Retractationes that\nhis own book on the Immortality of the Soul was so obscure to him\nthat in many places he himself could not understand it. [537] The\n\"Little Christian Discourse\" is, in fact, not Christian at all;\nand its arguments are but dialectic exercises, on a par with those\nof the Discours sceptique sur la musique which follows. He was,\nin short, a skeptic by temperament; and his Preface d'une histoire\n[538] shows his mind to have played on the \"Mississippi of falsehood\ncalled history\" very much as did that of Bayle in a later generation.\n\nLe Vayer's Dialogues of Oratius Tubero (1633) is philosophically\nhis most important work; [539] but its tranquil Pyrrhonism was\nnot calculated to affect greatly the current thought of his day;\nand he ranked rather as a man of all-round learning [540] than as\na polemist, being reputed \"a little contradictory, but in no way\nbigoted or obstinate, all opinions being to him nearly indifferent,\nexcepting those of which faith does not permit us to doubt.\" [541]\nThe last phrase tells of the fact that it affects to negate: Le Vayer's\ngeneral skepticism was well known. [542] He was not indeed an original\nthinker, most of his ideas being echoes from the skeptics of antiquity;\n[543] and it has been not unjustly said of him that he is rather of\nthe sixteenth century than of the seventeenth. [544]\n\n2. On the other hand, the resort on the part of the Catholics to a\nskeptical method, as against both Protestants and freethinkers, which\nwe have seen originating soon after the issue of Montaigne's Essais,\nseems to have become more and more common; and this process must rank\nas in some degree a product of skeptical thought of a more sincere\nsort. In any case it was turned vigorously, even recklessly, against\nthe Protestants. Thus we find Daill\u00e9, at the outset of his work On\nthe True Use of the Fathers, [545] complaining that when Protestants\nquote the Scriptures some Romanists at once ask \"whence and in what\nway those books may be known to be really written by the prophets\nand apostles whose names and titles they bear.\" This challenge,\nrashly incurred by Luther and Calvin in their pronouncements on the\nCanon, later Protestants did not as a rule attempt to meet, save in\nthe fashion of La Placette, who in his work De insanibili Ecclesi\u00e6\nRoman\u00e6 Scepticismo (1688) [546] undertakes to show that Romanists\nthemselves are without any grounds of certitude for the authority of\nthe Church. It was indeed certain that the Catholic method would make\nmore skeptics than it won.\n\n3. Between the negative development of the doctrine of Montaigne and\nthe vogue of upper-class deism, the philosophy of Descartes, with\nits careful profession of submission to the Church, had at first an\neasy reception; and on the appearance of the Discours de la M\u00e9thode\n(1637) it speedily affected the whole thought of France; the women\nof the leisured class, now much given to literature, being among\nits students. [547] From the first the Jansenists, who were the most\nserious religious thinkers of the time, accepted the Cartesian system\nas in the main soundly Christian; and its founder's authority had some\nsuch influence in keeping up the prestige of orthodoxy as had that of\nLocke later in England. Boileau, who wrote a satire in defence of the\nsystem when it was persecuted after Descartes's death, is named among\nthose whom he so influenced. [548] But a merely external influence\nof this kind could not counteract the fundamental rationalism of\nDescartes's thought, and the whole social and intellectual tendency\ntowards a secular view of life. Soon, indeed, Descartes became\nsuspect, partly by reason of the hostile activities of the Jesuits,\nwho opposed him because the Jansenists generally held by him, though he\nhad been a Jesuit pupil, and had always some adherents in that order;\n[549] partly by reason of the inherent naturalism of his system. That\nhis doctrine was incompatible with the eucharist was the standing\ncharge against it, [550] and his defence was not found satisfactory,\n[551] though his orthodox followers obtained from Queen Christina a\ndeclaration that he had been largely instrumental in converting her\nto Catholicism. [552] Pascal reproached him with having done his best\nto do without God in his system; [553] and this seems to have been\nthe common clerical impression. Thirteen years after his death, in\n1663, his work was placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, under\na modified censure, [554] and in 1671 a royal order was obtained\nunder which his philosophy was proscribed in all the universities\nof France. [555] Cartesian professors and cur\u00e9s were persecuted and\nexiled, or compelled to recant; among the victims being P\u00e8re Lami of\nthe Congregation of the Oratory and P\u00e8re Andr\u00e9 the Jesuit; [556] and\nthe Oratorians were in 1678 forced to undergo the humiliation of not\nonly renouncing Descartes and all his works, but of abjuring their\nformer Cartesian declarations, in order to preserve their corporate\nexistence. [557] Precisely in this period of official reaction,\nhowever, there was going on not merely an academic but a social\ndevelopment of a rationalistic kind, in which the persecuted philosophy\nplayed its part, even though some freethinkers disparaged it.\n\n4. The general tendency is revealed on the one hand by the series\nof treatises from eminent Churchmen, defending the faith against\nunpublished attacks, and on the other hand by the prevailing tone in\nbelles lettres. Malherbe, the literary dictator of the first quarter\nof the century, had died in 1628 with the character of a scoffer;\n[558] and the fashion now lasted till the latter half of the reign of\nLouis XIV. In 1621, two years after the burning of Vanini, a young man\nnamed Jean Fontanier had been burned alive on the Place de Gr\u00e8ve at\nParis, apparently for the doctrines laid down by him in a manuscript\nentitled Le Tr\u00e9sor Inestimable, written on deistic and anti-Catholic\nlines. [559] He was said to have been successively Protestant,\nCatholic, Turk, Jew, and atheist; and had conducted himself like one\nof shaken mind. [560] But the cases of the poet Th\u00e9ophile de Viau,\nwho about 1623 suffered prosecution on a charge of impiety, [561] and\nof his companions Berthelot and Colletet--who like him were condemned\nbut set free by royal favour--appear to be the only others of the kind\nfor over a generation. Frivolity of tone sufficed to ward off legal\npursuit. It was in 1665, some years after the death of Mazarin, who had\nmaintained Richelieu's policy of tolerance, that Claude Petit was burnt\nat Paris for \"impious pieces\"; [562] and even then there was no general\nreversion to orthodoxy, the upper-class tone remaining, as in the age\nof Richelieu and Mazarin, more or less unbelieving. When Corneille\nhad introduced a touch of Christian zeal into his Polyeucte (1643)\nhe had given general offence to the dilettants of both sexes. [563]\nMoli\u00e8re, again, the disciple of Gassendi [564] and \"the very genius\nof reason,\" [565] was unquestionably an unbeliever; [566] and only\nthe personal protection of Louis XIV, which after all could not avail\nto support such a play as Tartufe against the fury of the bigots,\nenabled him to sustain himself at all against them.\n\n5. Equally freethinking was his brilliant predecessor and early\ncomrade, Cyrano de Bergerac (1620-1655), who did not fear to indicate\nhis frame of mind in one of his dramas. In La Mort d'Agrippine\nhe puts in the mouth of Sejanus, as was said by a contemporary,\n\"horrible things against the Gods,\" notably the phrase, \"whom men\nmade, and who did not make men,\" [567] which, however, generally\npassed as an attack on polytheism; and though there was certainly\nno blasphemous intention in the phrase, Frappons, voil\u00e0 l'hostie\n[= hostia, victim], some pretended to regard it as an insult to the\nCatholic host. [568] At times Cyrano writes like a deist; [569] but\nin so many other passages does he hold the language of a convinced\nmaterialist, and of a scoffer at that, [570] that he can hardly be\ntaken seriously on the former head. [571] In short, he was one of\nthe first of the hardy freethinkers who, under the tolerant rule of\nRichelieu and Mazarin, gave clear voice to the newer spirit. Under\nany other government, he would have been in danger of his life: as it\nwas, he was menaced with prosecutions; his Agrippine was forbidden;\nthe first edition of his P\u00e9dant jou\u00e9 was confiscated; during his\nlast illness there was an attempt to seize his manuscripts; and\ndown till the time of the Revolution the editions of his works were\neagerly bought up and destroyed by zealots. [572] His recent literary\nrehabilitation thus hardly serves to realize his importance in the\nhistory of freethought. Between Cyrano and Moli\u00e8re it would appear\nthat there was little less of rationalistic ferment in the France of\ntheir day than in England. Bossuet avows in a letter to Huet in 1678\nthat impiety and unbelief abound more than ever before. [573]\n\n6. Even in the apologetic reasoning of the greatest French prose\nwriter of that age, Pascal, we have the most pregnant testimony to\nthe prevalence of unbelief; for not only were the fragments preserved\nas Pens\u00e9es (1670), however originated, [574] developed as part of a\nplanned defence of religion against contemporary rationalism, [575]\nbut they themselves show their author profoundly unable to believe\nsave by a desperate abnegation of reason, though he perpetually\ncommits the gross fallacy of trusting to reason to prove that reason\nis untrustworthy. His work is thus one continuous paralogism, in\nwhich reason is disparaged merely to make way for a parade of bad\nreasoning. The case of Pascal is that of Berkeley with a difference:\nthe latter suffered from hypochondria, but reacted with nervous energy;\nPascal, a physical degenerate, prematurely profound, was prematurely\nold; and his pietism in its final form is the expression of the\nphysical collapse.\n\n\n This is disputed by M. Lanson, an always weighty authority. He\n writes (p. 464) that Pascal was \"neither mad nor ill\" when\n he gave himself up wholly to religion. But ill he certainly\n was. He had chronically suffered from intense pains in the head\n from his eighteenth year; and M. Lanson admits (p. 451) that\n the Pens\u00e9es were written in intervals of acute suffering. This\n indeed understates the case. Pascal several times told his family\n that since the age of eighteen he had never passed a day without\n pain. His sister, Madame Perier, in her biographical sketch, speaks\n of him as suffering \"continual and ever-increasing maladies,\" and\n avows that the four last years of his life, in which he penned the\n fragments called Pens\u00e9es, \"were but a continual languishment.\" The\n Port Royal preface of 1670 says the same thing, speaking of the\n \"four years of languor and malady in which he wrote all we have of\n the book he planned,\" and calling the Pens\u00e9es \"the feeble essays\n of a sick man.\" Cp. Pascal's Pri\u00e8re pour demander \u00e0 Dieu le bon\n usage des maladies: and Owen French Skeptics, pp. 746, 784.\n\n\nDoubtless the levity and licence of the libertins in high places [576]\nconfirmed him in his revolt against unbelief; but his own credence was\nan act rather of despairing emotion than of rational conviction. The\nman who advised doubters to make a habit of causing masses to be said\nand following religious rites, on the score that cela vous fera croire\net vous ab\u00eatira--\"that will make you believe and will stupefy you\"\n[577]--was a pathological case; and though the whole Jansenist\nmovement latterly stood for a reaction against freethinking, it\ncan hardly be doubted that the Pens\u00e9es generally acted as a solvent\nrather than as a sustainer of religious beliefs. [578] This charge\nwas made against them immediately on their publication by the Abb\u00e9\nde Villars, who pointed out that they did the reverse of what they\nclaimed to do in the matter of appealing to the heart and to good\nsense, since they set forth all the ordinary arguments of Pyrrhonism,\ndenied that the existence of God could be established by reason or\nphilosophy, and staked the case on a \"wager\" which shocked good sense\nand feeling alike. \"Have you resolved,\" asks this critic in dialogue,\n\"to make atheists on pretext of combatting them?\" [579]\n\nThe same question arises concerning the famous Lettres Provinciales\n(1656), written by Pascal in defence of Arnauld against the persecution\nof the Jesuits, who carried on in Arnauld's case their campaign against\nJansen, whom they charged with mis-stating the doctrine of Augustine in\nhis great work expounding that Father. Once more the Catholic Church\nwas swerving from its own established doctrine of predestination, the\nSpanish Jesuit Molina having set up a new movement in the Pelagian or\nArminian direction. The cause of the Jansenists has been represented\nas that of freedom of thought and speech; [580] and this it relatively\nwas insofar as Jansen and Arnauld sought for a hearing, while the\nJesuit-ridden Sorbonne strove to silence and punish them. Pascal had\nto go from printer to printer as his Letters succeeded each other, the\nfirst three being successively prosecuted by the clerical authorities;\nand in their collected form they found publicity only by being printed\nat Rouen and published at Amsterdam, with the rubric of Cologne. All\nthe while Jansenism claimed to be strict orthodoxy; and it was in\nvirtue only of the irreducible element of rationalism in Pascal\nthat the school of Port Royal made for freethought in any higher or\nmore general sense. Indeed, between his own reputation for piety and\nthat of the Jansenists for orthodoxy, the Provincial Letters have a\nconventional standing as orthodox compositions. It is strange, however,\nthat those who charge upon the satire of the later philosophers the\ndownfall of Catholicism in France should not realize the plain tendency\nof these brilliant satires to discredit the entire authority of the\nChurch, and, further, by their own dogmatic weaknesses, to put all\ndogma alike under suspicion. [581] Few thoughtful men can now read\nthe Provinciales without being impressed by the utter absurdity of\nthe problem over which the entire religious intelligence of a great\nnation was engrossed.\n\nIt was, in fact, the endless wrangles of the religious factions\nover unintelligible issues that more than any other single cause\nfostered the unbelief previously set up by religious wars; [582]\nand Pascal's writings only deepened the trouble. Even Bossuet, in\nhis History of the Variations of the Protestant Churches (1688), did\nbut throw a new light on the hollowness of the grounds of religion;\nand for thoughtful readers gave a lead rather to atheism than to\nCatholicism. The converts it would make to the Catholic Church would\nbe precisely those whose adherence was of least value, since they\nhad not even the temperamental basis which, rather than argument,\nkept Bossuet a believer, and were Catholics only for lack of courage\nto put all religion aside. When \"variation\" was put as a sign of error\nby a Churchman the bulk of whose life was spent in bitter strifes with\nsections of his own Church, critical people were hardly likely to be\nconfirmed in the faith. Within ten years of writing his book against\nthe Protestants, Bossuet was engaged in an acrid controversy with\nF\u00e9nelon, his fellow prelate and fellow demonstrator of the existence\nand attributes of God, accusing him of holding unchristian positions;\nand both prelates were always fighting their fellow-churchmen the\nJansenists. If the variations of Protestants helped Catholicism,\nthose of Catholics must have helped unbelief.\n\n7. A similar fatality attended the labours of the learned Huet, Bishop\nof Avranches, whose Demonstratio Evangelica (1678) is remarkable (with\nBoyle's Discourse of Things above Reason) as anticipating Berkeley in\nthe argument from the arbitrariness of mathematical assumptions. He\ntoo, by that and by his later works, made for sheer philosophical\nskepticism, [583] always a dangerous basis for orthodoxy. [584]\nSuch an evolution, on the part of a man of uncommon intellectual\nenergy, challenges attention, the more so seeing that it typifies\na good deal of thinking within the Catholic pale, on lines already\nnoted as following on the debate with Protestantism. Honestly pious\nby bent of mind, but always occupied with processes of reasoning\nand research, Huet leant more and more, as he grew in years, to\nthe skeptical defence against the pressures of Protestantism and\nrationalism, at once following and furthering the tendency of his\nage. That the skeptical method is a last weapon of defence can be\nseen from the temper in which the demonstrator assails Spinoza,\nwhom he abuses, without naming him, in the fashion of his day, and\nto whose arguments concerning the authorship of the Pentateuch he\nmakes singularly feeble answers. [585] They are too worthless to\nhave satisfied himself; and it is easy to see how he was driven to\nseek a more plausible rebuttal. [586] A distinguished English critic,\nnoting the general movement, pronounces, justly enough, that Huet took\nup philosophy \"not as an end, but as a means--not for its own sake,\nbut for the support of religion\"; and then adds that his attitude is\nthus quite different from Pascal's. [587] But the two cases are really\non a level. Pascal too was driven to philosophy in reaction against\nincredulity; and though Pascal's work is of a more bitter and morbid\nintensity, Huet also had in him that psychic craving for a supernatural\nsupport which is the essence of latter-day religion. And if we credit\nthis spirit to Pascal and to Huet, as we do to Newman, we must suppose\nthat it partly touched the whole movement of pro-Catholic skepticism\nwhich has been above noted as following on the Reformation. It is\nascribing to it as a whole too much of calculation and strategy to\nsay of its combatants that \"they conceived the desperate design of\nfirst ruining the territory they were prepared to evacuate; before\nphilosophy was handed over to the philosophers the old Aristotelean\ncitadel was to be blown into the air.\" [588] In reality they caught,\nas religious men will, with passion rather than with policy, at any\nplea that might seem fitted to beat down the presumption of \"the wild,\nliving intellect of man\"; [589] and their skepticism had a certain\nsincerity inasmuch as, trained to uncritical belief, they had never\nfound for themselves the grounds of rational certitude.\n\nInasmuch too as Protestantism had no such ground, and rationalism\nwas still far from having cleared its bases, Huet, as things went,\nwas within his moral rights when he set forth his transcendentalist\nskepticism in his Qu\u00e6stiones Alnetan\u00e6 in 1690. Though written in very\nlimpid Latin, [590] that work attracted practically no attention;\nand though, having a repute for provincialism in his French style,\nHuet was loth to resort to the vernacular, he did devote his spare\nhours through a number of his latter years to preparing his Trait\u00e9\nPhilosophique de la faiblesse de l'esprit humain, which, dying in 1722,\nhe left to be published posthumously (1723). The outcry against his\ncriticism of Descartes and his Demonstratio had indisposed him for\nfurther personal strife; but he was determined to leave a completed\nmessage. Thus it came about that a sincere and devoted Catholic\nbishop \"left, as his last legacy to his fellow-men, a work of the\nmost outrageous skepticism.\" [591]\n\n8. Meanwhile the philosophy of Descartes, if less strictly propitious\nto science at some points than that of Gassendi, was both directly and\nindirectly making for the activity of reason. In virtue of its formal\n\"spiritualism,\" it found access where any clearly materialistic\ndoctrine would have been tabooed; so that we find the Cartesian\necclesiastic R\u00e9gis not only eagerly listened to and acclaimed at\nToulouse in 1665, but offered a civic pension by the magistrates\n[592]--this within two years of the placing of Descartes's works on\nthe Index. After arousing a similar enthusiasm at Montpellier and\nat Paris, R\u00e9gis was silenced by the Archbishop, whereupon he set\nhimself to develop the Cartesian philosophy in his study. The result\nwas that he ultimately went beyond his master, openly rejecting the\nidea of creation out of nothing, [593] and finally following Locke\nin rejecting the innate ideas which Descartes had affirmed. [594]\nAnother young Churchman, Desgabets, developing from Descartes and his\npupil Malebranche, combined with their \"spiritist\" doctrine much of\nthe virtual materialism of Gassendi, arriving at a kind of pantheism,\nand at a courageous pantheistic ethic, wherein God is recognized as\nthe author alike of good and evil [595]--a doctrine which we find even\ngetting a hearing in general society, and noticed in the correspondence\nof Madame de S\u00e9vign\u00e9 in 1677. [596]\n\nMalebranche's treatise De la Recherche de la V\u00e9rit\u00e9 (1674) was in fact\na development of Descartes which on the one hand sought to connect\nhis doctrine of innate ideas with his God-idea, and on the other hand\nheaded the whole system towards pantheism. The tendency had arisen\nbefore him in the congregation of the Oratory, to which he belonged,\nand in which the Cartesian philosophy had so spread that when, in\n1678, the alarmed superiors proposed to eradicate it, they were told\nby the members that, \"If Cartesianism is a plague, there are two\nhundred of us who are infected.\" [597] But if Cartesianism alarmed\nthe official orthodox, Malebranche wrought a deeper disintegration\nof the faith. In his old age his young disciple De Mairan, who had\ndeeply studied Spinoza, pressed him fatally hard on the virtual\ncoincidence of his philosophy with that of the more thoroughgoing\npantheist; and Malebranche indignantly repudiated all agreement with\n\"the miserable Spinoza,\" [598] \"the atheist,\" [599] whose system he\npronounced \"a frightful and ridiculous chimera.\" [600] \"Nevertheless,\nit was towards this chimera that Malebranche tended.\" [601] On all\nhands the new development set up new strife; and Malebranche, who\ndisliked controversy, found himself embroiled alike with Jansenists\nand Jesuits, with orthodox and with innovating Cartesians, and with his\nown Spinozistic disciples. The Jansenist Arnauld attacked his book in\na long and stringent treatise, Des vrayes at des fausses id\u00e9es (1683),\n[602] accumulating denials and contradictions with a cold tenacity\nof ratiocination which never lapsed into passion, and was all the\nmore destructive. For the Jansenists Malebranche was a danger to the\nfaith in the ratio of his exaltation of it, inasmuch as reference of\nthe most ordinary beliefs back to \"faith\" left them no ground upon\nwhich to argue up to faith. [603] This seems to have been a common\nfeeling among his readers. For the same reason he made no appeal to\nmen of science. He would have no recognition of secondary causes,\nthe acceptance of which he declared to be a dangerous relapse into\npaganism. [604] There was thus no scientific principle in the new\ndoctrine which could enable it to solve the problems or absorb the\nsystems of other schools. Locke was as little moved by it as were the\nJansenists. Malebranche won readers everywhere by his charm of style;\n[605] but he was as much of a disturber as of a reconciler. The very\ncontroversies which he set up made for disintegration; and F\u00e9nelon\nfound it necessary to \"refute\" Malebranche as well as Spinoza, and\ndid his censure with as great severity as Arnauld's. [606] The mere\nfact that Malebranche put aside miracles in the name of divine law\nwas fatal from the point of view of orthodoxy.\n\n9. Yet another philosophic figure of the reign of Louis XIV, the Jesuit\nP\u00e8re Buffier (1661-1737), deserves a passing notice here--out of his\nchronological order--though the historians of philosophy have mostly\nignored him. [607] He is indeed of no permanent philosophic importance,\nbeing a precursor of the Scottish school of Reid, nourished on Locke,\nand somewhat on Descartes; but he is significant for the element\nof practical rationalism which pervades his reasoning, and which\nrecommended him to Voltaire, Reid, and Destutt de Tracy. On the\nquestion of \"primary truths in theology\" he declares so boldly for\nthe authority of revelation in all dogmas which pass comprehension,\nand for the non-concern of theology with any process of rational proof,\n[608] that it is hardly possible to suppose him a believer. On those\nprinciples, Islam has exactly the same authority as Christianity. In\nhis metaphysic \"he rejects all the ontological proofs of the existence\nof God, and, among others, the proof of Descartes from infinitude:\nhe maintains that the idea of God is not innate, and that it can\nbe reached only from consideration of the order of nature.\" [609]\nHe is thus as much of a force for deism as was his master, Locke;\nand he outgoes him in point of rationalism when he puts the primary\nethic of reciprocity as a universally recognized truth, [610] where\nLocke had helplessly fallen back on \"the will of God.\" On the other\nhand he censures Descartes for not admitting the equal validity of\nother tests with that of primary consciousness, thus in effect putting\nhimself in line with Gassendi. For the rest, his Examen des pr\u00e9jug\u00e9s\nvulgaires, the most popular of his works, is so full of practical\nrationalism, and declares among other things so strongly in favour\nof free discussion, that its influence must have been wholly in the\ndirection of freethought. \"Give me,\" he makes one of his disputants\nsay, \"a nation where they do not dispute, do not contest: it will be,\nI assure you, a very stupid and a very ignorant nation.\" [611] Such\nreasoning could hardly please the Jesuits, [612] and must have pleased\nfreethinkers. And yet Buffier, like Gassendi, in virtue of his clerical\nstatus and his purely professional orthodoxy, escaped all persecution.\n\nWhile an evolving Cartesianism, modified by the thought of Locke and\nthe critical evolution of that, was thus reacting on thought in all\ndirections, the primary and proper impulse of Descartes and Locke\nwas doing on the Continent what that of Bacon had already done in\nEngland--setting men on actual scientific observation and experiment,\nand turning them from traditionalism of every kind. The more religious\nminds, as Malebranche, set their faces almost fanatically against\nerudition, thus making an enemy of the all-learned Huet, [613]\nbut on the other hand preparing the way for the scientific age. For\nthe rest we find the influence of Descartes at work in heresies at\nwhich he had not hinted. Finally we shall see it taking deep root in\nHolland, furthering a rationalistic view of the Bible and of popular\nsuperstitions.\n\n10. Yet another new departure was made in the France of Louis XIV\nby the scholarly performance of Richard Simon (1638-1712), who was\nas regards the Scriptural texts what Spencer of Cambridge was as\nregards the culture-history of the Hebrews, one of the founders of\nmodern methodical criticism. It was as a devout Catholic refuting\nProtestants, and a champion of the Bible against Spinoza, that\nSimon began his work; but, more sincerely critical than Huet, he\nreached views more akin to those of Spinoza than to those of the\nChurch. [614] The congregation of the Oratory, where Simon laid the\nfoundations of his learning, was so little inclined to his critical\nviews that he decided to leave it; and though persuaded to stay,\nand to become for a time a professor of philosophy at Julli, he at\nlength broke with the Order. Then, from his native town of Dieppe,\ncame his strenuous series of critical works--L'histoire critique du\nVieux Testament (1678), which among other things decisively impugned\nthe Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch; the Histoire critique du\ntexte du Nouveau Testament (Rotterdam, 1689); numerous other volumes\nof critical studies on texts, versions, and commentators; and finally\na French translation of the New Testament with notes. His Biblioth\u00e8que\nCritique (4 vols. under the name of Saint-Jore) was suppressed by an\norder in council; the translation was condemned by Bossuet and the\nArchbishop of Paris; and the two first-named works were suppressed by\nthe Parlement of Paris and attacked by a host of orthodox scholars;\nbut they were translated promptly into Latin and English; and they\ngave a new breadth of footing to the deistic argument, though Simon\nalways wrote as an avowed believer.\n\nBefore Simon, the Protestant Isaac la Peyr\u00e8re, the friend of La\nMothe le Vayer and Gassendi, and the librarian of Cond\u00e9, had fired\na somewhat startling shot at the Pentateuch in his Pr\u00e6adamit\u00e6 [615]\nand Systema Theologica ex Pr\u00e6-adamitarum Hypothesi (both 1655: printed\nin Holland [616]), for which he was imprisoned at Brussels, with the\nresult that he recanted and joined the Church of Rome, going to the\nPope in person to receive absolution, and publishing an Epistola ad\nPhilotimum (Frankfort, 1658), in which he professed to explain his\nreasons for abjuring at once his Calvinism and his treatise. It\nis clear that all this was done to save his skin, for there is\nexplicit testimony that he held firmly by his Preadamite doctrine\nto the end of his life, despite the seven or eight confutations of\nhis work published in 1656. [617] Were it not for his constructive\ntheses--especially his idea that Adam was a real person, but simply\nthe father of the Hebrews and not of the human race--he would deserve\nto rank high among the scientific pioneers of modern rationalism,\nfor his negative work is shrewd and sound. Like so many other early\nrationalists, collectively accused of \"destroying without replacing,\"\nhe erred precisely in his eagerness to build up, for his negations\nhave all become accepted truths. [618] As it is, he may be ranked,\nafter Toland, as a main founder of the older rationalism, developed\nchiefly in Germany, which sought to reduce as many miracles as possible\nto natural events misunderstood. But he was too far before his time to\nwin a fair hearing. Where Simon laid a cautious scholarly foundation,\nPeyr\u00e8re suddenly challenged immemorial beliefs, and failed accordingly.\n\n11. Such an evolution could not occur in France without affecting the\nneighbouring civilization of Holland. We have seen Dutch life at the\nbeginning of the seventeenth century full of Protestant fanaticism\nand sectarian strife; and in the time of Descartes these elements,\nespecially on the Calvinist side, were strong enough virtually to\ndrive him out of Holland (1647) after nineteen years' residence. [619]\nHe had, however, made disciples; and his doctrine bore fruit, finding\ndoubtless some old soil ready. Thus in 1666 one of his disciples, the\nAmsterdam physician Louis Meyer, published a work entitled Philosophia\nSacrae Scripturae Interpres, [620] in which, after formally affirming\nthat the Scripture is the infallible Word of God, he proceeds to argue\nthat the interpretation of the Word must be made by the human reason,\nand accordingly sets aside all meanings which are irreconcilable\ntherewith, reducing them to allegories or tropes. Apart from this,\nthere is somewhat strong evidence that in Holland in the second\nhalf of the century Cartesianism was in large part identified with\na widespread movement of rationalism, of a sufficiently pronounced\nkind. Peter von Mastricht, Professor of Theology at Utrecht, published\nin 1677 a Latin treatise, Novitatum Cartesianarum Gangr\u00e6na, in which\nhe made out a list of fifty-six anti-Christian propositions maintained\nby Cartesians. Among them are these: That the divine essence, also\nthat of angels, and that of the soul, consists only in Cogitation;\nThat philosophy is not subservient to divinity, and is no less certain\nand no less revealed; That in things natural, moral, and practical,\nand also in matters of faith, the Scripture speaks according to the\nerroneous notions of the vulgar; That the mystery of the Trinity may\nbe demonstrated by natural reason; That the first chaos was able of\nitself to produce all things material; That the world has a soul;\nand that it may be infinite in extent. [621] The theologian was thus\nvisibly justified in maintaining that the \"novelties\" of Cartesianism\noutwent by a long way those of Arminianism. [622] It had in fact\nestablished a new point of view; seeing that Arminius had claimed\nfor theology all the supremacy ever accorded to it in the Church. [623]\n\n12. As Meyer was one of the most intimate friends of Spinoza, being\nwith him at death, and became the editor of his posthumous works,\nit can hardly be doubted that his treatise, which preceded Spinoza's\nTractatus by four years, influenced the great Jew, who speedily\neclipsed him. [624] Spinoza, however (1632-1677), was first led\nto rationalize by his Amsterdam friend and teacher, Van den Ende,\na scientific materialist, hostile to all religion; [625] and it\nwas while under his influence that he was excommunicated by his\nfather's synagogue. From the first, apparently, Spinoza's thought\nwas shaped partly by the medieval Hebrew philosophy [626] (which, as\nwe have seen, combined Aristotelean and Saracen influences), partly\nby the teaching of Bruno, though he modified and corrected that at\nvarious points. [627] Later he was deeply influenced by Descartes,\nwhom he specially expounded for a pupil in a tractate. [628] Here\nhe endorses Descartes's doctrine of freewill, which he was later\nto repudiate and overthrow. But he drew from Descartes his retained\nprinciple that evil is not a real existence. In a much less degree he\nwas influenced by Bacon, whose psychology he ultimately condemned;\nbut from Hobbes he took not only his rationalistic attitude towards\n\"revelation,\" but his doctrine of ecclesiastical subordination. [629]\nFinally evolving his own conceptions, he produced a philosophic system\nwhich was destined to affect all European thought, remaining the while\nquietly occupied with the handicraft of lens-grinding by which he\nearned his livelihood. The Grand Pensionary of the Netherlands, John\nde Witt, seems to have been in full sympathy with the young heretic,\non whom he conferred a small pension before he had published anything\nsave his Cartesian Principia (1663).\n\nThe much more daring and powerful Tractatus Theologico-Politicus\n(1670 [630]) was promptly condemned by a Dutch clerical synod, along\nwith Hobbes's Leviathan, which it greatly surpassed in the matter of\ncriticism of the scriptural text. It was the most stringent censure\nof supernaturalism that had thus far appeared in any modern language;\nand its preface is an even more mordant attack on popular religion and\nclericalism than the main body of the work. What seems to-day an odd\ncompromise--the reservation of supra-rational authority for revelation,\nalongside of unqualified claims for the freedom of reason [631]--was\nbut an adaptation of the old scholastic formula of \"twofold truth,\"\nand was perhaps at the time the possible maximum of open rationalism\nin regard to the current creed, since both Bacon and Locke, as we have\nseen, were fain to resort to it. As revealed in his letters, Spinoza\nin almost all things stood at the point of view of the cultivated\nrationalism of two centuries later. He believed in a historical Jesus,\nrejecting the Resurrection; [632] disbelieved in ghosts and spirits;\n[633] rejected miracles; [634] and refused to think of God as ever\nangry; [635] avowing that he could not understand the Scriptures, and\nhad been able to learn nothing from them as to God's attributes. [636]\nThe Tractatus could not go so far; but it went far enough to horrify\nmany who counted themselves latitudinarian. It was only in Holland\nthat so aggressive a criticism of Christian faith and practice could\nthen appear; and even there neither publisher nor author dared avow\nhimself. Spinoza even vetoed a translation into Dutch, foreseeing\nthat such a book would be placed under an interdict. [637] It was\nas much an appeal for freedom of thought (libertas philosophandi)\nas a demonstration of rational truth; and Spinoza dexterously pointed\n(c. 20) to the social effects of the religious liberty already enjoyed\nin Amsterdam as a reason for carrying liberty further. There can\nbe no question that it powerfully furthered alike the deistic and\nthe Unitarian movements in England from the year of its appearance;\nand, though the States-General felt bound formally to prohibit it on\nthe issue of the second edition in 1674, its effect in Holland was\nprobably as great as elsewhere: at least there seems to have gone on\nthere from this time a rapid modification of the old orthodoxy.\n\nStill more profound, probably, was the effect of the posthumous Ethica\n(1677), which he had been prevented from publishing in his lifetime,\n[638] and which not only propounded in parts an absolute pantheism (=\natheism [639]), but definitely grounded ethics in human nature. If\nmore were needed to arouse theological rage, it was to be found\nin the repeated and insistent criticism of the moral and mental\nperversity of the defenders of the faith [640]--a position not\nindeed quite consistent with the primary teaching of the treatise on\nthe subject of Will, of which it denies the entity in the ordinary\nsense. Spinoza was here reverting to the practical attitude of Bacon,\nwhich, under a partial misconception, he had repudiated; and he did\nnot formally solve the contradiction. His purpose was to confute the\nordinary orthodox dogma that unbelief is wilful sin; and to retort\nthe charge without reconciling it with the thesis was to impair\nthe philosophic argument. [641] It was not on that score, however,\nthat it was resented, but as an unpardonable attack on orthodoxy,\nnot to be atoned for by any words about the spirit of Christ. [642]\nThe discussion went deep and far. A reply to the Tractatus which\nappeared in 1674, by an Utrecht professor (then dead), is spoken of\nby Spinoza with contempt; [643] but abler discussion followed, though\nthe assailants mostly fell foul of each other. Franz Cuper or Kuyper\nof Amsterdam, who in 1676 published an Arcana Atheismi Revelata,\nprofessedly refuting Spinoza's Tractatus, was charged with writing\nin bad faith and with being on Spinoza's side--an accusation which\nhe promptly retorted on other critics, apparently with justice. [644]\n\n\n The able treatise of Prof. E. E. Powell on Spinoza and Religion\n is open to demur at one point--its reiterated dictum that\n Spinoza's character was marred by \"lack of moral courage\"\n (p. 44). This expression is later in a measure retreated from:\n after \"his habitual attitude of timid caution,\" we have: \"Spinoza's\n timidity, or, if you will, his peaceable disposition.\" If the\n last-cited concession is to stand, the other phrases should be\n withdrawn. Moral courage, like every other human attribute,\n is to be estimated comparatively; and the test-question here\n is: Did any other writer in Spinoza's day venture further than\n he? Moral courage is not identical with the fanaticism which\n invites destruction; fanaticism supplies a motive which dispenses\n with courage, though it operates as courage might. But refusal to\n challenge destruction gratuitously does not imply lack of courage,\n though of course it may be thereby motived. A quite brave man,\n it has been noted, will quietly shun a gratuitous risk where\n one who is \"afraid of being afraid\" may face it. When all is\n said, Spinoza was one of the most daring writers of his day;\n and his ethic made it no more a dereliction of duty for him to\n avoid provoking arrest and capital punishment than it is for\n either a Protestant or a rationalist to refrain from courting\n death by openly defying Catholic beliefs before a Catholic\n mob in Spain. It is easy for any of us to-day to be far more\n explicit than Spinoza was. It is doubtful whether any of us,\n if we had lived in his day and were capable of going as far in\n heresy, would have run such risks as he did in publishing the\n Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. For those who have lived much in\n his society, it should be difficult to doubt that, if allowed, he\n would have dared death on the night of the mob-murder of the De\n Witts. The formerly suppressed proof of his very plain speaking\n on the subject of prayer, and his indications of aversion to\n the practice of grace before meals (Powell, pp. 323-25) show\n lack even of prudence on his part. Prof. Powell is certainly\n entitled to censure those recent writers who have wilfully kept\n up a mystification as to Spinoza's religiosity; but their lack\n of courage or candour does not justify an imputation of the same\n kind upon him. That Spinoza was \"no saint\" (Powell, p. 43) is\n true in the remote sense that he was not incapable of anger. But\n it would be hard to find a Christian who would compare with him\n in general nobility of character. The proposition that he was not\n \"in any sense religious\" (id. ib.) seems open to verbal challenge.\n\n\n13. The appearance in 1678 of a Dutch treatise \"against all sorts of\natheists,\" [645] and in 1681, at Amsterdam, of an attack in French on\nSpinoza's Scriptural criticism, [646] points to a movement outside of\nthe clerical and scholarly class. All along, indeed, the atmosphere of\nthe Arminian or \"Remonstrant\" School in Holland must have been fairly\nliberal. [647] Already in 1685 Locke's friend Le Clerc had taken up\nthe position of Hobbes and Spinoza and Simon on the Pentateuch in his\nSentimens de quelques th\u00e9ologiens de Hollande (translated into English\nand published in 1690 as \"Five Letters Concerning the Inspiration of\nthe Holy Scriptures\"). [648] And although Le Clerc always remained\nsomething of a Scripturalist, and refused to go the way of Spinoza,\nhe had courage enough to revive an ancient heresy by urging, in his\ncommentary on the fourth Gospel (1701), that \"the Logos\" should be\nrendered \"Reason\"--an idea which he probably derived from the Unitarian\nZwicker without realizing how far it could take him. His ultimate\nrecantation, on the subject of the authorship of the Pentateuch,\nserved only to weaken his credit with freethinkers, and came too late\nto arrest the intellectual movement which he had forwarded.\n\nA rationalizing spirit had now begun to spread widely in Holland; and\nwithin twenty years of Spinoza's death there had arisen a Dutch sect,\nled by Pontiaan van Hattem, a pastor at Philipsland, which blended\nSpinozism with evangelicalism in such a way as to incur the anathema of\nthe Church. [649] In the time of the English Civil War the fear of the\nopponents of the new multitude of sects was that England should become\n\"another Amsterdam.\" [650] This very multiplicity tended to promote\ndoubt; and in 1713 we find Anthony Collins [651] pointing to Holland\nas a country where freedom to think has undermined superstition to a\nremarkable degree. During his stay, in the previous generation, Locke\nhad found a measure of liberal theology, in harmony with his own; but\nin those days downright heresy was still dangerous. Deurhoff (d. 1717),\nwho translated Descartes and was accused of Spinozism, though he\nstrongly attacked it, [652] had at one time to fly Holland, though\nby his writings he founded a pantheistic sect known as Deurhovians;\nand Balthasar Bekker, a Cartesian, persecuted first for Socinianism,\nincurred so much odium by publishing in 1691 a treatise denying the\nreality of witchcraft that he had to give up his office as a preacher.\n\n\n Cp. art. in Biographie Universelle, and Mosheim, 17 Cent. pt. ii,\n ch. ii, \u00a7 35, and notes in Reid's ed. Bekker was not the first\n to combat demonology on scriptural grounds; Arnold Geulincx,\n of Leyden, and the French Protestant refugee Daillon having\n less confidently put the view before him, the latter in his\n Daimonologia, 1687 (trans. in English, 1723), and the former in\n his system of ethics. Gassendi, as we saw, had notably discredited\n witchcraft a generation earlier; Reginald Scot had impugned its\n actuality in 1584; and Wier, still earlier, in 1563. And even\n before the Reformation the learned King Christian II of Denmark\n (deposed 1523) had vetoed witch-burning in his dominions. (Allen,\n Hist. de Danemark, French tr. 1878, i, 281.) As Scot's Discoverie\n had been translated into Dutch in 1609, Bekker probably had\n a lead from him. Glanvill's Blow at Modern Sadducism (1688),\n reproduced in Sadducismus Triumphatus, undertakes to answer some\n objections of the kind later urged by Bekker; and the discussion\n was practically international. Bekker's treatise, entitled De\n Betooverte Wereld, was translated into English--first in 1695,\n from the French, under the title The World Bewitched (only 1\n vol. published), and again in 1700 as The World turned upside\n down. In the French translation, Le Monde Enchant\u00e9 (4 tom. 1694),\n it had a great vogue. A refutation was published in English in\n An Historical Treatise of Spirits, by J. Beaumont, in 1705. It is\n noteworthy that Bekker was included as one of \"four modern sages\n (vier neuer Welt-Weisen)\" with Descartes, Hobbes, and Spinoza,\n in a German folio tractate (hostile) of 1702.\n\n\n14. No greater service was rendered in that age to the spread of\nrational views than that embodied in the great Dictionnaire Historique\net Critique [653] of Pierre Bayle (1647-1706), who, born in France,\nbut driven out by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, spent the\nbest part of his life and did his main work at Rotterdam. Persecuted\nthere for his freethinking, to the extent of having to give up his\nprofessorship, he yet produced a virtual encyclopedia for freethinkers\nin his incomparable Dictionary, baffling hostility by the Pyrrhonian\nimpartiality with which he handled all religious questions. In his\nyouth, when sent by his Protestant father to study at Toulouse,\nhe had been temporarily converted, as was the young Gibbon later,\nto Catholicism; [654] and the retrospect of that experience seems\nin Bayle's case, as in Gibbon's, to have been a permanent motive\nto practical skepticism. [655] But, again, in the one case as in\nthe other, skepticism was fortified by abundant knowledge. Bayle\nhad read everything and mastered every controversy, and was thereby\nthe better able to seem to have no convictions of his own. But even\napart from the notable defence of the character of atheists dropped by\nhim in the famous Pens\u00e9es diverses sur la Com\u00e8te (1682), and in the\n\u00c9claircissements in which he defended it, it is abundantly evident\nthat he was an unbeliever. The only alternative view is that he\nwas strictly or philosophically a skeptic, reaching no conclusions\nfor himself; but this is excluded by the whole management of his\nexpositions. [656] It is recorded that it was his vehement description\nof himself as a Protestant \"in the full force of the term,\" accompanied\nwith a quotation from Lucretius, that set the clerical diplomatist\nPolignac upon re-reading the Roman atheist and writing his poem\nAnti-Lucretius. [657] Bayle's ostensible Pyrrhonism was simply the\ntactic forced on him by his conditions; and it was the positive\nunbelievers who specially delighted in his volumes. He laid down no\ncosmic doctrines, but he illuminated all; and his air of repudiating\nsuch views as Spinoza's had the effect rather of forcing Spinozists\nto leave neutral ground than of rehabilitating orthodoxy.\n\nOn one theme he spoke without any semblance of doubt. Above all\nmen who had yet written he is the champion of toleration. [658] At\na time when in England the school of Locke still held that atheism\nmust not be tolerated, he would accept no such position, insisting\nthat error as such is not culpable, and that, save in the case of\na sect positively inciting to violence and disorder, all punishment\nof opinion is irrational and unjust. [659] On this theme, moved by\nthe memory of his own life of exile and the atrocious persecution\nof the Protestants of France, he lost his normal imperturbability,\nas in his Letter to an Abb\u00e9 (if it be really his), entitled Ce que\nc'est que la France toute catholique sous le r\u00e8gne de Louis le Grand,\nin which a controlled passion of accusation makes every sentence bite\nlike an acid, leaving a mark that no dialectic can efface. But it was\nnot only from Catholicism that he suffered, and not only to Catholics\nthat his message was addressed. One of his most malignant enemies\nwas the Protestant Jurieu, who it was that succeeded in having him\ndeprived of his chair of philosophy and history at Rotterdam (1693)\non the score of the freethinking of his Pens\u00e9es sur la Com\u00e8te. This\nwrong cast a shadow over his life, reducing him to financial straits\nin which he had to curtail greatly the plan of his Dictionary. Further,\nit moved him to some inconsistent censure of the political writings of\nFrench Protestant refugees [660]--Jurieu being the reputed author of a\nviolent attack on the rule of Louis XIV, under the title Les Soupirs de\nla France esclave qui aspire apr\u00e8s la libert\u00e9 (1689). [661] Yet again,\nthe malicious Jurieu induced the Consistory of Rotterdam to censure\nthe Dictionary on the score of the tone and tendency of the article\n\"David\" and the renewed vindications of atheists.\n\nBut nothing could turn Bayle from his loyalty to reason and toleration;\nand the malice of the bigots could not deprive him of his literary\nvogue, which was in the ratio of his unparalleled industry. As a mere\nwriter he is admirable: save in point of sheer wit, of which, however,\nhe has not a little, he is to this day as readable as Voltaire. By\nforce of unfailing lucidity, wisdom, and knowledge, he made the\nconquest of literary Europe; and fifty years after his death we find\nthe Jesuit Delamare in his (anonymous) apologetic treatise, La Foi\njustifi\u00e9e de tout reproche de contradiction avec la raison (1761),\nspeaking of him to the deists as \"their theologian, their doctor,\ntheir oracle.\" [662] He was indeed no less; and his serene exposure\nof the historic failure of Christianity was all the more deadly as\ncoming from a master of theological history.\n\n15. Meantime, Spinoza had reinforced the critical movement in France,\n[663] where decline of belief can be seen proceeding after as before\nthe definite adoption of pietistic courses by the king, under the\ninfluence of Madame de Maintenon. Abbadie, writing his Trait\u00e9 de\nla verit\u00e9 de la religion chr\u00e9tienne at Berlin in 1684, speaks of an\n\"infinity\" of prejudiced deists as against the \"infinity\" of prejudiced\nbelievers [664]--evidently thinking of northern Europeans in general;\nand he strives hard to refute both Hobbes and Spinoza on points\nof Biblical criticism. In France he could not turn the tide. That\nradical distrust of religious motives and illumination which can be\nseen growing up in every country in modern Europe where religion led\nto war, was bound to be strengthened by the spectacle of the reformed\nsensualist harrying heresy in his own kingdom in the intervals of\nhis wars with his neighbours. The crowning folly of the revocation of\nthe Edict of Nantes [665] (1685), forcing the flight from France of\nsome three hundred thousand industrious [666] and educated inhabitants\nfor the offence of Protestantism, was as mad a blow to religion as to\nthe State. Less paralysing to economic life than the similar policy\nof the Church against the Moriscoes in Spain, it is no less striking\na proof of the paralysis of practical judgment to which unreasoning\nfaith and systematic ecclesiasticism can lead. Orthodoxy in France was\nas ecstatic in its praise of the act as had been that of Spain in the\ncase of the expulsion of the Moriscoes. The deed is not to be laid at\nthe single door of the king or of any of his advisers, male or female:\nthe act which deprived France of a vast host of her soundest citizens\nwas applauded by nearly all cultured Catholicism. [667] Not merely the\nbishops, Bossuet and F\u00e9nelon [668] and Masillon, but the Jansenist\nArnauld; not merely the female devotees, Mademoiselle de Scud\u00e9ry\nand Madame Deshouli\u00e8res, but Racine, La Bruy\u00e8re, and the senile la\nFontaine--all extolled the senseless deed. The not over-pious Madame de\nS\u00e9vign\u00e9 was delighted with the \"dragonnades,\" declaring that \"nothing\ncould be finer: no king has done or will do anything more memorable\";\nthe still less mystical Bussy, author of the Histoire amoureuse des\nGaules, was moved to pious exultation; and the dying Chancelier le\nTellier, on signing the edict of revocation, repeated the legendary\ncry of Simeon, Nunc dimitte servum tuum, Domine! To this pass had the\nCatholic creed and discipline brought the mind of France. Only the\nmen of affairs, nourished upon realities--the Vaubans, Saint Simons,\nand Catinats--realized the insanity of the action, which Colbert\n(d. 1683) would never have allowed to come to birth.\n\nThe triumphers, doubtless, did not contemplate the expatriation of the\nmyriads of Protestants who escaped over the frontiers in the closing\nyears of the century in spite of all the efforts of the royal police,\n\"carrying with them,\" as a later French historian writes, \"our arts,\nthe secrets of our manufactures, and their hatred of the king.\" The\nCatholics, as deep in civics as in science, thought only of the\nhumiliation and subjection of the heretics--doubtless feeling that\nthey were getting a revenge against Protestantism for the Test Act and\nthe atrocities of the Popish Plot mania in England. The blow recoiled\non their country. Within a generation, their children were enduring\nthe agonies of utter defeat at the hands of a coalition of Protestant\nnations every one of which had been strengthened by the piously exiled\nsons of France; and in the midst of their mortal struggle the revolted\nProtestants of the C\u00e9vennes so furiously assailed from the rear that\nthe drain upon the king's forces precipitated the loss of their hold\non Germany.\n\nFor every Protestant who crossed the frontiers between 1685 and 1700,\nperhaps, a Catholic neared or crossed the line between indifferentism\nand active doubt. The steady advance of science all the while\ninfallibly undermined faith; and hardly was the bolt launched against\nthe Protestants when new sapping and mining was going on. Fontenelle\n(1657-1757), whose Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds (1686)\npopularized for the elegant world the new cosmology, cannot but\nhave undermined dogmatic faith in some directions; above all by\nhis graceful and skilful Histoire des Oracles (also 1686), where\n\"the argumentation passes beyond the thesis advanced. All that he\nsays of oracles could be said of miracles.\" [669] The Jesuits found\nthe book essentially \"impious\"; and a French culture-historian sees\nin it \"the first attack which directs the scientific spirit against\nthe foundations of Christianity. All the purely philosophic arguments\nwith which religion has been assailed are in principle in the work of\nFontenelle.\" [670] In his abstract thinking he was no less radical,\nand his Trait\u00e9 de la Libert\u00e9 [671] established so well the determinist\nposition that it was decisively held by the majority of the French\nfreethinkers who followed. Living to his hundredth year, he could\njoin hands with the freethought of Gassendi and Voltaire, [672]\nDescartes and Diderot. Yet we shall find him later, in his official\ncapacity of censor of literature, refusing to pass heretical books,\non principles that would have vetoed his own. He is in fact a type of\nthe freethought of the age of Louis XIV--Epicurean in the common sense,\nunheroic, resolute only to evade penalties, guiltless of over-zeal. Not\nin that age could men generate an enthusiasm for truth.\n\n16. Of the new Epicureans, the most famous in his day was\nSaint-Evremond, [673] who, exiled from France for his politics,\nmaintained both in London and in Paris, by his writings, a leadership\nin polite letters. In England he greatly influenced young men like\nBolingbroke; and a translation (attributed to Dryden) of one of his\nwritings seems to have given Bishop Butler the provocation to the\nfirst and weakest chapter of his Analogy. [674] As to his skepticism\nthere was no doubt in his own day; and his compliments to Christianity\nare much on a par with those paid later by the equally conforming and\nunbelieving Shaftesbury, whom he also anticipated in his persuasive\nadvocacy of toleration. [675] Regnard, the dramatist, had a similar\nprivate repute as an \"Epicurean.\" And even among the nominally orthodox\nwriters of the time in France a subtle skepticism touches nearly all\nopinion. La Bruy\u00e8re is almost the only lay classic of the period\nwho is pronouncedly religious; and his essay on the freethinkers,\n[676] against whom his reasoning is so forcibly feeble, testifies to\ntheir numbers and to the stress of debate set up by them. Even he, too,\nwrites as a deist against atheists, hardly as a believing Christian. If\nhe were a believer he certainly found no comfort in his faith: whatever\nwere his capacity for good feeling, no great writer of his age betrays\nsuch bitterness of spirit, such suffering from the brutalities of life,\nsuch utter disillusionment, such unfaith in men. And a certain doubt\nis cast upon all his professions of opinion by the sombre avowal:\n\"A man born a Christian and a Frenchman finds himself constrained\n[677] in satire: the great subjects are forbidden him: he takes them\nup at times, and then turns aside to little things, which he elevates\nby his ... genius and his style.\" [678]\n\n\n M. Lanson remarks that \"we must not let ourselves be abused by\n the last chapter [Des esprits forts], a collection of philosophic\n reflections and reasonings, where La Bruy\u00e8re mingles Plato,\n Descartes, and Pascal in a vague Christian spiritualism. This\n chapter, evidently sincere, but without individuality, and\n containing only the reflex of the thoughts of others, is not a\n conclusion to which the whole work conducts. It marks, on the\n contrary, the lack of conclusion and of general views. What is\n more, with the chapter On the Sovereign, placed in the middle of\n the volume, it is destined to disarm the temporal and spiritual\n powers, to serve as passport for the independent freedom of\n observation in the rest of the Caract\u00e8res\" (p. 599).\n\n On this it may be remarked that the essay in question is not so\n much Christian as theistic; but the suggestion as to the object\n is plausible. Taine (Essais de critique et d'histoire, ed. 1901)\n first remarks (p. 11) on the \"christianisme\" of the essay, and then\n decides (p. 12) that \"he merely exposes in brief and imperious\n style the reasonings of the school of Descartes.\" It should be\n noted, however, that in this essay La Bruy\u00e8re does not scruple to\n write: \"If all religion is a respectful fear of God, what is to be\n thought of those who dare to wound him in his most living image,\n which is the sovereign?\" (\u00a7 27 in ed. Walckenaer, p. 578. Pascal\n holds the same tone. Vie, par Madame Perier.) This appears first\n in the fourth edition; and many other passages were inserted in\n that and later issues: the whole is an inharmonious mosaic.\n\n Concerning La Bruy\u00e8re, the truth would seem to be that the\n inconsequences in the structure of his essays were symptomatic of\n variability in his moods and opinions. Taine and Lanson are struck\n by the premonitions of the revolution in his famous picture of\n the peasants, and other passages; and the latter remarks (p. 603)\n that \"the points touched by La Bruy\u00e8re are precisely those where\n the writers of the next age undermined the old order: La Bruy\u00e8re\n is already philosophe in the sense which Voltaire and Diderot\n gave to that term.\" But we cannot be sure that the plunges into\n convention were not real swervings of a vacillating spirit. It\n is difficult otherwise to explain his recorded approbation of\n the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.\n\n The Dialogues sur le Qui\u00e9tisme, published posthumously under his\n name (1699), appear to be spurious. This was emphatically asserted\n by contemporaries (Sentiments critiques sur les Caract\u00e8res de\n M. de la Bruy\u00e8re, 1701, p. 447; Apologie de M. de la Bruy\u00e8re,\n 1701, p. 357, both cited by Walckenaer) who on other points\n were in opposition. Baron Walckenaer (\u00c9tude, ed. cited, p. 76\n sq.) pronounces that they were the work of Elli\u00e8s du Pin, a doctor\n of the Sorbonne, and gives good reasons for the attribution. The\n Abb\u00e9 d'Olivet in his Histoire de l'Acad\u00e9mie fran\u00e7aise declares that\n La Bruy\u00e8re only drafted them, and that du Pin edited them; but\n the internal evidence is against their containing anything of La\n Bruy\u00e8re's draught. They are indeed so feeble that no admirer cares\n to accept them as his. (Cp. note to Suard's Notice sur la personne\n et les \u00e9crits de la Bruy\u00e8re, in Didot ed. 1865, p. 20.) Written\n against Madame Guyon, they were not worth his while.\n\n\nIf the apologetics of Huet and Pascal, Bossuet and F\u00e9nelon, had any\ninfluence on the rationalistic spirit, it was but in the direction of\nmaking it more circumspect, never of driving it out. It is significant\nthat whereas in the year of the issue of the Demonstratio the Duchesse\nd'Orl\u00e9ans could write that \"every young man either is or affects to\nbe an atheist,\" Le Vassor wrote in 1688: \"People talk only of reason,\nof good taste, of force of mind, of the advantage of those who can\nraise themselves above the prejudices of education and of the society\nin which one is born. Pyrrhonism is the fashion in many things: men\nsay that rectitude of mind consists in 'not believing lightly' and\nin being 'ready to doubt.'\" [679] Pascal and Huet between them had\nonly multiplied doubters. On both lines, obviously, freethought was\nthe gainer; and in a Jesuit treatise, Le Monde condamn\u00e9 par luymesme,\npublished in 1695, the Pr\u00e9face contre l'incr\u00e9dulit\u00e9 des libertins sets\nout with the avowal that \"to draw the condemnation of the world out\nof its own mouth, it is necessary to attack first the incredulity of\nthe unbelievers (libertins), who compose the main part of it, and who\nunder some appearance of Christianity conceal a mind either Judaic\n[read deistic] or pagan.\" Such was France to a religious eye at the\nheight of the Catholic triumph over Protestantism. The statement that\nthe libertins formed the majority of \"the world\" is of course a furious\nextravagance. But there must have been a good deal of unbelief to have\nmoved a priest to such an explosion. And the unbelief must have been\nas much a product of revulsion from religious savagery as a result\nof direct critical impulse, for there was as yet no circulation\nof positively freethinking literature. For a time, indeed, there\nwas a general falling away in French intellectual prestige, [680]\nthe result, not of the mere \"protective spirit\" in literature, as\nis sometimes argued, but of the immense diversion of national energy\nunder Louis XIV to militarism; [681] and the freethinkers lost some\nof the confidence as well as some of the competence they had exhibited\nin the days of Moli\u00e8re. [682] There had been too little solid thinking\ndone to preclude a reaction when the king, led by Madame de Maintenon,\nwent about to atone for his debaucheries by an old age of piety. \"The\nking had been put in such fear of hell that he believed that all who\nhad not been instructed by the Jesuits were damned. To ruin anyone\nit was necessary only to say, 'He is a Huguenot, or a Jansenist,'\nand the thing was done.\" [683] In this state of things there spread\nin France the revived doctrine or temper of Quietism, set up by the\nSpanish priest, Miguel de Molinos (1640-1697), whose Spiritual Guide,\npublished in Spanish in 1675, appeared in 1681 in Italian at Rome,\nwhere he was a highly influential confessor. It was soon translated\ninto Latin, French, and Dutch. In 1685 he was cited before the\nInquisition; in 1687 the book was condemned to be burned, and he\nwas compelled to retract sixty-eight propositions declared to be\nheretical; whereafter, nonetheless, he was imprisoned till his death\nin 1696. In France, whence the attack on him had begun, his teaching\nmade many converts, notably Madame Guyon, and may be said to have\ncreated a measure of religious revival. But when F\u00e9nelon took it up\n(1697), modifying the terminology of Molinos to evade the official\ncondemnation, he was bitterly attacked by Bossuet as putting forth\ndoctrine incompatible with Christianity; the prelates fought for two\nyears; and finally the Pope condemned F\u00e9nelon's book, whereupon he\nsubmitted, limiting his polemic to attacks on the Jansenists. Thus\nthe gloomy orthodoxy of the court and the mysticism of the new school\nalike failed to affect the general intelligence; there was no real\nbuilding up of belief; and the forward movement at length recommenced.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XVI\n\nBRITISH FREETHOUGHT IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY\n\n\n\u00a7 1\n\nIt appears from our survey that the \"deistic movement,\" commonly\nassigned to the eighteenth century, had been abundantly prepared\nfor in the seventeenth, which, in turn, was but developing ideas\ncurrent in the sixteenth. When, in 1696, John Toland published his\nChristianity Not Mysterious, the sensation it made was due not so\nmuch to any unheard-of boldness in its thought as to the simple fact\nthat deistic ideas had thus found their way into print. [684] So far\nthe deistic position was explicitly represented in English literature\nonly by the works of Herbert, Hobbes, and Blount; and of these only\nthe first (who wrote in Latin) and the third had put the case at any\nlength. Against the deists or atheists of the school of Hobbes, and\nthe Scriptural Unitarians who thought with Newton and Locke, there\nstood arrayed the great mass of orthodox intolerance which clamoured\nfor the violent suppression of every sort of \"infidelity.\" It was\nthis feeling, of which the army of ignorant rural clergy were the\nspokesmen, that found vent in the Blasphemy Act of 1697. The new\nliterary growth dating from the time of Toland is the evidence of\nthe richness of the rationalistic soil already created. Thinking men\ncraved a new atmosphere. Locke's Reasonableness of Christianity is an\nunsuccessful compromise: Toland's book begins a new propagandist era.\n\nToland's treatise, [685] heretical as it was, professed to be a\ndefence of the faith, and avowedly founded on Locke's anonymous\nReasonableness of Christianity, its young author being on terms of\nacquaintance with the philosopher. [686] He claimed, in fact, to take\nfor granted \"the Divinity of the New Testament,\" and to \"demonstrate\nthe verity of divine revelation against atheists and all enemies of\nrevealed religion,\" from whom, accordingly, he expected to receive no\nquarter. Brought up, as he declared, \"from my cradle, in the grossest\nsuperstition and idolatry,\" he had been divinely led to make use of\nhis own reason; and he assured his Christian readers of his perfect\nsincerity in \"defending the true religion.\" [687] Twenty years later,\nhis primary positions were hardly to be distinguished from those of\nratiocinative champions of the creed, save in respect that he was\nchallenging orthodoxy where they were replying to unbelievers. Toland,\nhowever, lacked alike the timidity and the prudence which so safely\nguided Locke in his latter years; and though his argument was only\na logical and outspoken extension of Locke's position, to the end\nof showing that there was nothing supra-rational in Christianity of\nLocke's type, it separated him from \"respectable\" society in England\nand Ireland for the rest of his life. The book was \"presented\" by the\nGrand Juries of Middlesex and Dublin; [688] the dissenters in Dublin\nbeing chiefly active in denouncing it--with or without knowledge\nof its contents; [689] half-a-dozen answers appeared; and when in\n1698 Toland produced another, entitled Amyntor, showing the infirm\nfoundation of the Christian canon, there was again a speedy crop of\nreplies. Despite the oversights inevitable to such pioneer work, this\nopens, from the side of freethought, the era of documentary criticism\nof the New Testament; and in some of his later freethinking books,\nas the Nazarenus (1718) and the Pantheisticon (1720), he continues to\nshow himself in advance of his time in \"opening new windows\" for his\nmind. [690] The latter work represents in particular the influence\nof Spinoza, whom he had formerly criticized somewhat forcibly [691]\nfor his failure to recognize that motion is inherent in matter. On\nthat head he lays down [692] the doctrine that \"motion is but matter\nunder a certain consideration\"--an essentially \"materialist\" position,\nderiving from the pre-Socratic Greeks, and incidentally affirmed by\nBacon. [693] He was not exactly an industrious student or writer;\nbut he had scholarly knowledge and instinct, and several of his works\nshow close study of Bayle.\n\nAs regards his more original views on Christian origins, he is not\nimpressive to the modern reader; but theses which to-day stand for\nlittle were in their own day important. Thus in his Hodegus (pt. i of\nthe Tetradymus, 1720) it is elaborately argued that the \"pillar of\nfire by night and of cloud by day\" was no miracle, but the regular\nprocedure of guides in deserts, where night marches are the rule;\nthe \"cloud\" being simply the smoke of the vanguard's fire, which by\nnight flared red. Later criticism decides that the whole narrative\nof the Exodus is myth. Toland's method, however, was relatively so\nadvanced that it had not been abandoned by theological \"rationalists\" a\ncentury later. Of that movement he must be ranked an energetic pioneer:\nthough he lacked somewhat the strength of character that in his day\nwas peculiarly needed to sustain a freethinker. Much of his later life\nwas spent abroad; and his Letters to Serena (1704) show him permitted\nto discourse to the Queen of Prussia on such topics as the origin\nand force of prejudice, the history of the doctrine of immortality,\nand the origin of idolatry. He pays his correspondent the compliment\nof treating his topics with much learning; and his manner of assuming\nher own orthodoxy in regard to revelation could have served as a model\nto Gibbon. [694] But, despite such distinguished patronage, his life\nwas largely passed in poverty, cheerfully endured, [695] with only\nchronic help from well-to-do sympathizers, such as Shaftesbury, who\nwas not over-sympathetic. When it is noted that down to 1761 there\nhad appeared no fewer than fifty-four answers to his first book,\n[696] his importance as an intellectual influence may be realized.\n\nA certain amount of evasion was forced upon Toland by the Blasphemy\nLaw of 1697; inferentially, however, he was a thorough deist until\nhe became pantheist; and the discussion over his books showed that\nviews essentially deistic were held even among his antagonists. One,\nan Irish bishop, got into trouble by setting forth a notion of\ndeity which squared with that of Hobbes. [697] The whole of our\npresent subject, indeed, is much complicated by the distribution\nof heretical views among the nominally orthodox, and of orthodox\nviews among heretics. [698] Thus the school of Cudworth, zealous\nagainst atheism, was less truly theistic than that of Blount, [699]\nwho, following Hobbes, pointed out that to deny to God a continual\npersonal and providential control of human affairs was to hold to\natheism under the name of theism; [700] whereas Cudworth, the champion\nof theism against the atheists, entangled himself hopelessly [701]\nin a theory which made deity endow Nature with \"plastic\" powers and\nleave it to its own evolution. The position was serenely demolished\nby Bayle, [702] as against Le Clerc, who sought to defend it; and\nin England the clerical outcry was so general that Cudworth gave\nup authorship. [703] Over the same crux, in Ireland, Bishop Browne\nand Bishop Berkeley accused each other of promoting atheism; and\nArchbishop King was embroiled in the dispute. [704] On the other hand,\nthe theistic Descartes had laid down a \"mechanical\" theory of the\nuniverse which perfectly comported with atheism, and partly promoted\nthat way of thinking; [705] and a selection from Gassendi's ethical\nwritings, translated into English [706] (1699), wrought in the same\ndirection. The Church itself contained Cartesians and Cudworthians,\nSocinians and deists. [707] Each group, further, had inner differences\nas to free-will [708] and Providence; and the theistic schools of\nNewton, Clarke, and Leibnitz rejected each other's philosophies as well\nas that of Descartes. Leibnitz complained grimly that Newton and his\nfollowers had \"a very odd opinion concerning the Work of God,\" making\nthe universe an imperfect machine, which the deity had frequently to\nmend; and treating space as an organ by which God perceives things,\nwhich are thus regarded as not produced or maintained by him. [709]\nNewton's principles of explanation, he insisted, were those of\nthe materialists. [710] John Hutchinson, a professor at Cambridge,\nin his Treatise of Power, Essential and Mechanical, also bitterly\nassailed Newton as a deistical and anti-scriptural sophist. [711]\nClarke, on the other hand, declared that the philosophy of Leibnitz\nwas \"tending to banish God from the world.\" [712] Alongside of such\ninternecine strife, it was not surprising that the great astronomer\nHalley, who accepted Newton's principles in physics, was commonly\nreputed an atheist; and that the freethinkers pitted his name in that\nconnection against Newton's. [713] As it was he who first suggested\n[714] the idea of the total motion of the entire solar system in\nspace--described by a modern pietist as \"this great cosmical truth,\nthe grandest in astronomy\" [715]--they were not ill justified. It can\nhardly be doubted that if intellectual England could have been polled\nin 1710, under no restraints from economic, social, and legal pressure,\nsome form of rationalism inconsistent with Christianity would have\nbeen found to be nearly as common as orthodoxy. In outlying provinces,\nin Devon and Cornwall, in Ulster, in Edinburgh and Glasgow, as well as\nin the metropolis, the pressure of deism on the popular creed evoked\nexpressions of Arian and Socinian thought among the clergy. [716]\nIt was, in fact, the various restraints under notice that determined\nthe outward fortunes of belief and unbelief, and have substantially\ndetermined them since. When the devout Whiston was deposed from\nhis professorship for his Arianism, and the unbelieving Saunderson\nwas put in his place, [717] and when Simson was suspended from his\nministerial functions in Glasgow, [718] the lesson was learned that\noutward conformity was the sufficient way to income. [719]\n\nHard as it was, however, to kick against the pricks of law and\nprejudice, it is clear that many in the upper and middle classes\nprivately did so. The clerical and the new popular literature of\nthe time prove this abundantly. In the Tatler and its successors,\n[720] the decorous Addison and the indecorous Steele, neither of\nthem a competent thinker, frigidly or furiously asperse the new\ntribe of freethinkers; while the evangelically pious Berkeley and\nthe extremely unevangelical Swift rival each other in the malice of\ntheir attacks on those who rejected their creed. Berkeley, a man of\nphilosophic genius but intense prepossessions, maintained Christianity\non grounds which are the negation of philosophy. [721] Swift, the\ngenius of neurotic misanthropy, who, in the words of Macaulay, \"though\nhe had no religion, had a great deal of professional spirit,\" [722]\nfought venomously for the creed of salvation. And still the deists\nmultiplied. In the Earl of Shaftesbury [723] they had a satirist with a\nfiner and keener weapon than was wielded by either Steele or Addison,\nand a much better temper than was owned by Swift or Berkeley. He did\nnot venture to parade his unbelief: to do so was positively dangerous;\nbut his thrusts at faith left little doubt as to his theory. He was at\nonce dealt with by the orthodox as an enemy, and as promptly adopted\nby the deists as a champion, important no less for his ability than\nfor his rank. Nor, indeed, is he lacking in boldness in comparison\nwith contemporary writers. The anonymous pamphlet entitled The Natural\nHistory of Superstition, by the deist John Trenchard, M.P. (1709),\ndoes not venture on overt heresy. But Shaftesbury's Letter Concerning\nEnthusiasm (1708), his Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour (1709),\nand his treatise The Moralists (1709), had need be anonymous because\nof their essential hostility to the reigning religious ethic.\n\nSuch polemic marks a new stage in rationalistic propaganda. Swift,\nwriting in 1709, angrily proposes to \"prevent the publishing of\nsuch pernicious works as under pretence of freethinking endeavour to\noverthrow those tenets in religion which have been held inviolable\nin almost all ages.\" [724] But his further protest that \"the doctrine\nof the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the immortality of the soul,\nand even the truth of all revelation, are daily exploded and denied in\nbooks openly printed,\" points mainly to the Unitarian propaganda. Among\nfreethinkers he names, in his Argument Against Abolishing Christianity\n(1708), Asgill, Coward, Toland, and Tindal. But the first was\nan ultra-Christian; the second was a Christian upholder of the\nthesis that spirit is not immaterial; and the last, at that date,\nhad published only his Four Discourses (collected in 1709) and his\nRights of the Christian Church, which are anti-clerical, but not\nanti-Christian. Prof. Henry Dodwell, who about 1673 published Two\nLetters of Advice, I, For the Susception of Holy Orders; II, For\nStudies Theological, especially such as are Rational, and in 1706\nan Epistolary Discourse Concerning the Soul's Natural Mortality,\nmaintaining the doctrine of conditional immortality, [725] which he\nmade dependent on baptism in the apostolical succession, was a devout\nChristian; and no writer of that date went further. Dodwell is in fact\nblamed by Bishop Burnet for stirring up fanaticism against lay-baptism\namong dissenters. [726] It would appear that Swift spoke mainly from\nhearsay, and on the strength of the conversational freethinking so\ncommon in society. [727] But the anonymous essays of Shaftesbury\nwhich were issued in 1709 might be the immediate provocation of his\noutbreak. [728]\n\nAn official picture of the situation is formally drawn in A\nRepresentation of the Present State of Religion, with regard to the\nlate excessive growth of infidelity, heresy, and profaneness, drawn\nup by the Upper House of Convocation of the province of Canterbury\nin 1711. [729] This sets forth, as a result of the disorders of\nthe Rebellion, a growth of all manner of unbelief and profanity,\nincluding denial of inspiration and the authority of the canon;\nthe likening of Christian miracles to heathen fables; the treating\nof all religious mysteries as absurd speculations; Arianism and\nSocinianism and scoffing at the doctrine of the Trinity; denial of\nnatural immortality; Erastianism; mockery of baptism and the Lord's\nSupper; decrying of all priests as impostors; the collecting and\nreprinting of infidel works; and publication of mock catechisms. It\nis explained that all such printing has greatly increased \"since\nthe expiration of the Act for restraining the press\"; and mention\nis made of an Arian work just published to which the author has put\nhis name, and which he has dedicated to the Convocation itself. This\nwas the first volume of Whiston's Primitive Christianity Revived, the\nwork of a devout eccentric, who had just before been deprived of his\nprofessorship at Cambridge for his orally avowed heresy. Whiston, whose\ncause was championed, and whose clerical opponents were lampooned,\nin an indecorous but vigorous sketch, The Tryal of William Whiston,\nClerk, for defaming and denying the Holy Trinity, before the Lord\nChief Justice Reason (1712; 3rd ed. 1740), always remained perfectly\ndevout in his Arian orthodoxy; but his and his friends' arguments\nwere rather better fitted to make deists than to persuade Christians;\nand Convocation's appeal for a new Act \"restraining the present\nexcessive and scandalous liberty of printing wicked books at home,\nand importing the like from abroad\" was not responded to. There was\nno love lost between Bolingbroke and Shaftesbury; but the government\nin which the former, a known deist, was Secretary of State, could\nhardly undertake to suppress the works of the latter.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 2\n\nDeism had been thus made in a manner fashionable [730] when, in 1713,\nAnthony Collins (1676-1729) began a new development by his Discourse\nof Freethinking. He had previously published a notably freethinking\nEssay Concerning the Use of Reason (1707), albeit without specific\nimpeachment of the reigning creed; carried on a discussion with\nClarke on the question of the immateriality of the soul; and issued\ntreatises entitled Priestcraft in Perfection (1709, dealing with the\nhistory of the Thirty-nine Articles) [731] and A Vindication of the\nDivine Attributes (1710), exposing the Hobbesian theism of Archbishop\nKing on lines followed twenty years later by Berkeley in his Minute\nPhilosopher. But none of these works aroused such a tumult as the\nDiscourse of Freethinking, which may be said to sum up and unify\nthe drift not only of previous English freethinking, but of the\ngreat contribution of Bayle, whose learning and temper influence\nall English deism from Shaftesbury onwards. [732] Collins's book,\nhowever, was unique in its outspokenness. To the reader of to-day,\nindeed, it is no very aggressive performance: the writer was a man\nof imperturbable amenity and genuine kindliness of nature; and his\nstyle is the completest possible contrast to that of the furious\nreplies it elicited. It was to Collins that Locke wrote, in 1703:\n\"Believe it, my good friend, to love truth for truth's sake is the\nprincipal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot\nof all other virtues; and, if I mistake not, you have as much of it\nas I ever met with in anybody.\" [733] The Discourse does no discredit\nto this uncommon encomium, being a luminous and learned plea for the\nconditions under which alone truth can be prosperously studied, and\nthe habits of mind which alone can attain it. Of the many replies, the\nmost notorious is that of Bentley writing as Phileleutherus Lipsiensis,\na performance which, on the strength of its author's reputation for\nscholarship, has been uncritically applauded by not a few critics,\nof whom some of the most eminent do not appear to have read Collins's\ntreatise. [734] Bentley's is in reality pre-eminent only for insolence\nand bad faith, the latter complicated by lapses of scholarship hardly\ncredible on its author's part.\n\n\n See the details in Dynamics of Religion, ch. vii. I am compelled\n to call attention to the uncritical verdict given on this matter by\n the late Sir Leslie Stephen, who asserts (English Thought, i, 206)\n that Bentley convicts Collins of \"unworthy shuffling\" in respect\n of his claim that freethinking had \"banished the devil.\" Bentley\n affirmed that this had been the work, not of the freethinkers,\n but of \"the Royal Society, the Boyles and the Newtons\"; and\n Sir Leslie comments that \"nothing could be more true.\" Nothing\n could be more untrue. As we have seen (above p. 82), Boyle was\n a convinced believer in demonology; and Newton did absolutely\n nothing to disperse it. Glanvill, a Royal Society man, had been\n a vehement supporter of the belief in witchcraft; and the Society\n as such never meddled with the matter. As to Collins's claim for\n the virtue of freethinking, Sir Leslie strangely misses the point\n that Collins meant by the word not unbelief, but free inquiry. He\n could not have meant to say that Holland was full of deists. In\n Collins's sense of the word, the Royal Society's work in general\n was freethinking work.\n\n\nOne mistranslation which appears to have been a printer's error,\nand one mis-spelling of a Greek name, are the only heads on which\nBentley confutes his author. He had, in fact, neither the kind of\nknowledge nor the candour that could fit him to handle the problems\nraised. It was Bentley's cue to represent Collins as an atheist,\nthough he was a very pronounced deist; [735] and in the first uproar\nCollins thought it well to fly to Holland to avoid arrest. [736] But\ndeism was too general to permit of such a representative being exiled;\nand he returned to study quietly, leaving Bentley's vituperation and\nprevarication unanswered, with the other attacks made upon him. In\n1715 he published his brief but masterly Inquiry Concerning Human\nLiberty--anonymous, like all his works--which remains unsurpassed as\na statement of the case for Determinism. [737]\n\nThe welcome given to Bentley's attack upon Collins by the orthodox\nwas warm in proportion to their sense of the general inadequacy of the\napologetics on their side. Amid the common swarm of voluble futilities\nput forth by Churchmen, the strident vehemence as well as the erudite\nrepute of the old scholar were fitted at least to attract the attention\nof lay readers in general. Most of the contemporary vindications of the\nfaith, however, were fitted only to move intelligent men to new doubt\nor mere contempt. A sample of the current defence against deism is\nthe treatise of Joseph Smith on The Unreasonableness of Deism, or, the\nCertainty of a Divine Revelation, etc. 1720, where deists in general\nare called \"the Wicked and Unhappy men we have to deal with\": [738]\nand the argumentation consists in alleging that a good God must reveal\nhimself, and that if the miracle stories of the New Testament had been\nfalse the Jews would have exposed and discarded them. Against such\nnugatory traditionalism, the criticism of Collins shone with the spirit\nof science. Not till 1723 did he publish his next work, A Discourse of\nthe Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion, a weighty attack on\nthe argument from prophecy, to which the replies numbered thirty-five;\non which followed in 1727 his Scheme of Literal Prophecy Considered,\na reply to criticisms. The former work was pronounced by Warburton\none of the most plausible ever written against Christianity, and he\nmight well say so. It faced the argument from prophecy not merely\nwith the skepticism of the ordinary deist, but with that weapon of\ncritical analysis of which the use had been briefly shown by Hobbes\nand Spinoza. Apparently for the first time, he pointed out that the\n\"virgin prophecy\" in Isaiah had a plain reference to contemporary\nand not to future events; he showed that the \"out of Egypt\" prophecy\nreferred to the Hebrew past; and he revived the ancient demonstration\nof Porphyry that the Book of Daniel is Maccabean. The general dilemma\nput by Collins--that either the prophecies must be reduced, textually\nand otherwise, to non-prophetic utterances, or Christianity must give\nup prophetic claims--has never since been solved.\n\nThe deistic movement was now in full flood, the acute Mandeville\n[739] having issued in 1720 his Free Thoughts on Religion, and in\n1723 a freshly-expanded edition of his very anti-evangelical Fable of\nthe Bees; while an eccentric ex-clergyman, Thomas Woolston, who had\nalready lost his fellowship of Sidney-Sussex College, Cambridge, for\nvagaries of doctrine and action, contributed in 1726-28 his freshly\nreasoned but heedlessly ribald Discourses on Miracles. Voltaire, who\nwas in England in 1728, tells that thirty thousand copies were sold;\n[740] while sixty pamphlets were written in opposition. Woolston's\nwere indeed well fitted to arouse wrath and rejoinder. The dialectic\nagainst the argument from miracles in general, and the irrelevance\nor nullity of certain miracles in particular, is really cogent,\nand anticipates at points the thought of the nineteenth century. But\nWoolston was of the tribe who can argue no issue without jesting, and\nwho stamp levity on every cause by force of innate whimsicality. Thus\nhe could best sway the light-hearted when his cause called for the\nwinning-over of the earnest. Arguments that might have been made\nconvincing were made to pass as banter, and serious spirits were\nrepelled. It was during this debate that Conyers Middleton, Fellow\nof Trinity College, Cambridge, produced his Letter from Rome (1729),\nwherein the part of paganism in Christianity is so set forth as to\ncarry inference further than the argument ostensibly goes. In that\nyear the heads of Oxford University publicly lamented the spread of\nopen deism among the students; and the proclamation did nothing to\ncheck the contagion. In Fogg's Weekly Journal of July 4, 1730, it is\nannounced that \"one of the principal colleges in Oxford has of late\nbeen infested with deists; and that three deistical students have been\nexpelled; and a fourth has had his degree deferred two years, during\nwhich he is to be closely confined in college; and, among other things,\nis to translate Leslie's Short and Easy Method with the Deists.\" [741]\nIt is not hard to divine the effect of such exegetic methods. In 1731,\nthe author of an apologetic pamphlet in reply to Woolston laments that\neven at the universities young men \"too often\" become tainted with\n\"infidelity\"; and, on the other hand, directing his battery against\nthose who \"causelessly profess to build their skeptical notions\"\non the writings of Locke, he complains of Dr. Holdsworth and other\nacademic polemists who had sought to rob orthodoxy of the credit of\nsuch a champion as Locke by \"consigning him over to that class of\nfreethinkers and skeptics to which he was an adversary.\" [742]\n\nWith the most famous work of Matthew Tindal, [743] Christianity\nas Old as Creation (1730), the excitement seems to have reached\nhigh-water mark. Here was vivacity without flippancy, and argument\nwithout irrelevant mirth; and the work elicited from first to last\nover a hundred and fifty replies, at home and abroad. Tindal's thesis\nis that the idea of a good God involved that of a simple, perfect,\nand universal religion, which must always have existed among mankind,\nand must have essentially consisted in moral conduct. Christianity,\ninsofar as it is true, must therefore be a statement of this primordial\nreligion; and moral reason must be the test, not tradition or\nScripture. One of the first replies was the Vindication of Scripture\nby Waterland, to which Middleton promptly offered a biting retort in a\nLetter to Dr. Waterland (1731) that serves to show the slightness of\nits author's faith. After demolishing Waterland's case as calculated\nrather to arouse than to allay skepticism, he undertakes to offer\na better reply of his own. It is to the simple effect that some\nreligion is necessary to mankind in modern as in ancient times; that\nChristianity meets the need very well; and that to set up reason\nin its place is \"impracticable\" and \"the attempt therefore foolish\nand irrational,\" in addition to being \"criminal and immoral,\" when\npolitically considered. [744] Such legalist criticism, if seriously\nmeant, was hardly likely to discredit Tindal's book. Its directness\nand simplicity of appeal to what passed for theistic common-sense were\nindeed fitted to give it the widest audience yet won by any deist;\nand its anti-clericalism would carry it far among his fellow Whigs\nto begin with. [745] One tract of the period, dedicated to the Queen\nRegent, complains that \"the present raging infidelity threatens an\nuniversal infection,\" and that it is not confined to the capital, but\n\"is disseminated even to the confines of your kingdom.\" [746] Tindal,\nlike Collins, wrote anonymously, and so escaped prosecution, dying in\n1733, when the second part of his book, left ready for publication, was\ndeliberately destroyed by Bishop Gibson, into whose hands it came. In\n1736 he and Shaftesbury are described by an orthodox apologist as the\n\"two oracles of deism.\" [747]\n\nWoolston, who put his name to his books, after being arrested in May,\n1728, and released on bail, was prosecuted in 1729 on the charge of\nblasphemy, in that he had derided the gospel miracles and represented\nJesus alternately as an impostor, a sorcerer, and a magician. His\nfriendly counsel ingeniously argued that Woolston had aimed at\nsafeguarding Christianity by returning to the allegorical method of\nthe early Fathers; and that he had shown his reverence for Jesus and\nreligion by many specific expressions; but the jury took a simpler\nview, and, without leaving the court, found Woolston guilty. He was\nsentenced to pay a fine of \u00a3100, to suffer a year's imprisonment,\nand either to find surety for his future good conduct or pay or give\nsureties for \u00a32,000. [748] He is commonly said to have paid the penalty\nof imprisonment for the rest of his life (d. 1733), being unable to\npay the fine of \u00a3100; but Voltaire positively asserts that \"nothing\nis more false\" than the statement that he died in prison; adding:\n\"Several of my friends have seen him in his house: he died there, at\nliberty.\" [749] The solution of the conflict seems to be that he lived\nin his own house \"in the rules of\" the King's Bench Prison--that is,\nin the precincts, and under technical supervision. [750] In any case,\nhe was sentenced; and the punishment was the measure of the anger felt\nat the continuous advance of deistic opinions, or at least against\nhostile criticism of the Scriptures.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 3\n\nUnitarianism, formerly a hated heresy, was now in comparison leniently\ntreated, because of its deference to Scriptural authority. Where\nthe deists rejected all revelation, Unitarianism held by the Bible,\ncalling only for a revision of the central Christian dogma. It\nhad indeed gained much theological ground in the past quarter of\na century. Nothing is more instructive in the culture-history\nof the period than the rapidity with which the Presbyterian\nsuccession of clergy passed from violent Calvinism, by way of\n\"Baxterian\" Arminianism, to Arianism, and thence in many cases to\nUnitarianism. First they virtually adopted the creed of the detested\nLaud, whom their fathers had hated for it; then they passed step by\nstep to a heresy for which their fathers had slain men. A closely\nsimilar process took place in Geneva, where Servetus after death\ntriumphed over his slayer. [751] In 1691, after a generation of\ncommon suffering, a precarious union was effected between the English\nPresbyterians, now mostly semi-Arminians, and the Independents, still\nmostly Calvinists: but in 1694 it was dissolved. [752] Thereafter\nthe former body, largely endowed by the will of Lady Hewley in 1710,\nbecame as regards its Trust Deeds the freest of all the English sects\nin matters of doctrine. [753] The recognition of past changes had made\ntheir clergy chary of a rigid subscription. Naturally the movement did\nnot gain in popularity as it fell away from fanaticism; but the decline\nof Nonconformity in the first half of the eighteenth century was common\nto all the sects, and did not specially affect the Presbyterians. Of\nthe many \"free\" churches established in England and Wales after the\nAct of Toleration (1689), about half were extinct in 1715; [754] and\nof the Presbyterian churches the number in Yorkshire alone fell from\nfifty-nine in 1715 to a little over forty in 1730. [755] Economic\ncauses were probably the main ones. The State-endowed parish priest\nhad an enduring advantage over his rival. But the Hewley endowment\ngave a certain economic basis to the Presbyterians; and the concern\nfor scholarship which had always marked their body kept them more open\nto intellectual influences than the ostensibly more free-minded and\ncertainly more democratic sectaries of the Independent and Baptist\nbodies. [756]\n\nThe result was that, with free Trust Deeds, the Presbyterians openly\nexhibited a tendency which was latent in all the other churches. In\n1719, at a special assembly of Presbyterian ministers at Salters'\nHall, it was decided by a majority of 73 to 69 that subscription to\nthe orthodox doctrine of the Trinity should no longer be demanded of\ncandidates for the ministry. [757] Of the 73, the majority professed to\nbe themselves orthodox; but there was no question that antitrinitarian\nopinions had become common, especially in Devonshire, where the heresy\ncase of Mr. Peirce of Exeter had brought the matter to a crisis. [758]\nFrom this date \"Arian\" opinions spread more rapidly in the dwindling\ndenomination, shading yet further into Unitarianism, step for step with\nthe deistic movement in the Church. \"In less than half a century the\ndoctrines of the great founders of Presbyterianism could scarcely be\nheard from any Presbyterian pulpit in England.\" [759] \"In the English\nPresbyterian ministry the process was from Arian opinions to those\ncalled Unitarian ... by a gradual sliding,\" even as the transition had\nbeen made from Calvinism to Arminianism in the previous century. [760]\n\nPresbyterianism having thus come pretty much into line with\nAnglicanism on the old question of predestination, while still\nholding fast by Scriptural standards as against the deists, the\nold stress of Anglican dislike had slackened, despite the rise of\nthe new heretical element. Unitarian arguments were now forthcoming\nfrom quarters not associated with dissent, as in the case of Thomas\nChubb's first treatise, The Supremacy of the Father Asserted (1715),\ncourteously dedicated \"To the Reverend the Clergy, and in particular\nto the Right Reverend Gilbert Lord Bishop of Sarum, our vigilant\nand laborious Diocesan.\" Chubb (1679-1747) had been trained to\nglove-making, and, as his opponents took care to record, acted\nalso as a tallow-chandler; [761] and the good literary quality of\nhis work made some sensation in an England which had not learned to\nthink respectfully of Bunyan. Chubb's impulse to write had come from\nthe perusal of Whiston's Primitive Christianity Revived, in 1711,\nand that single-minded Arian published his book for him.\n\nThe Unitarians would naturally repudiate all connection with such a\nperformance as A Sober Reply to Mr. Higgs's Merry Arguments from the\nLight of Nature for the Tritheistic Doctrine of the Trinity, which was\ncondemned by the House of Lords on February 12, 1720, to be burnt,\nas having \"in a daring, impious manner, ridiculed the doctrine of\nthe Trinity and all revealed religion.\" Its author, Joseph Hall, a\nserjeant-at-arms to the King, seems to have undergone no punishment,\nand more decorous antitrinitarians received public countenance. Thus\nthe Unitarian Edward Elwall, [762] who had published a book called\nA True Testimony for God and his Sacred Law (1724), for which he was\nprosecuted at Stafford in 1726, was allowed by the judge to argue his\ncause fully, and was unconditionally acquitted, to the displeasure\nof the clergy.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 4\n\nAnti-scriptural writers could not hope for such toleration, being\ndoubly odious to the Church. Berkeley, in 1721, had complained bitterly\n[763] of the general indifference to religion, which his writings had\ndone nothing to alter; and in 1736 he angrily demanded that blasphemy\nshould be punished like high treason. [764] His Minute Philosopher\n(1732) betrays throughout his angry consciousness of the vogue of\nfreethinking after twenty years of resistance from his profession;\nand that performance is singularly ill fitted to alter the opinions\nof unbelievers. In his earlier papers attacking them he had put a\nstress of malice that, in a mind of his calibre, is startling even\nto the student of religious history. [765] It reveals him as no less\npossessed by the passion of creed than the most ignorant priest of\nhis Church. For him all freethinkers were detested disturbers of his\nemotional life; and of the best of them, as Collins, Shaftesbury,\nand Spinoza, he speaks with positive fury. In the Minute Philosopher,\nhalf-conscious of the wrongness of his temper, he sets himself to\nmake the unbelievers figure in dialogue as ignorant, pretentious,\nand coarse-natured; while his own mouthpieces are meant to be benign,\nurbane, wise, and persuasive. Yet in the very pages so planned he\nunwittingly reveals that the freethinkers whom he goes about to\ncaricature were commonly good-natured in tone, while he becomes as\nvirulent as ever in his eagerness to discredit them. Not a paragraph in\nthe book attains to the spirit of judgment or fairness; all is special\npleading, overstrained and embittered sarcasm, rankling animus. Gifted\nalike for literature and for philosophy, keen of vision in economic\nproblems where the mass of men were short-sighted, he was flawed on the\nside of his faith by the hysteria to which it always stirred him. No\nman was less qualified to write a well-balanced dialogue as between\nhis own side and its opponents. To candour he never attains, unless\nit be in the sense that his passion recoils on his own case. Even\nwhile setting up ninepins of ill-put \"infidel\" argument to knock down,\nhe elaborates futilities of rebuttal, indicating to every attentive\nreader the slightness of his rational basis.\n\nOn the strength of this performance he might fitly be termed the most\nill-conditioned sophist of his age, were it not for the perception\nthat religious feeling in him has become a pathological phase, and\nthat he suffers incomparably more from his own passions than he can\ninflict on his enemies by his eager thrusts at them. More than almost\nany gifted pietist of modern times he sets us wondering at the power\nof creed in certain cases to overgrow judgment and turn to naught\nthe rarest faculties. No man in Berkeley's day had a finer natural\nlucidity and suppleness of intelligence; yet perhaps no polemist on\nhis side did less either to make converts or to establish a sound\nintellectual practice. Plain men on the freethinking side he must\neither have bewildered by his metaphysic or revolted by his spite;\nwhile to the more efficient minds he stood revealed as a kind of\ninspired child, rapt in the construction and manipulation of a set\nof brilliant sophisms which availed as much for any other creed as\nfor his own. To the armoury of Christian apologetic now growing up\nin England he contributed a special form of the skeptical argument:\nfreethinkers, he declared, made certain arbitrary or irrational\nassumptions in accepting Newton's doctrine of fluxions, and it was only\ntheir prejudice that prevented them from being similarly accommodating\nto Christian mysteries. [766] It is a kind of argument dear to minds\npre-convinced and incapable of a logical revision, but worse than\ninept as against opponents; and it availed no more in Berkeley's\nhands than it had done in those of Huet. [767] To theosophy, indeed,\nBerkeley rendered a more successful service in presenting it with the\nno better formula of \"existence [i.e., in consciousness] dependent upon\nconsciousness\"--a verbalism which has served the purposes of theology\nin the philosophic schools down till our own day. For his, however,\nthe popular polemic value of such a theorem must have been sufficiently\ncountervailed by his vehement championship of the doctrine of passive\nobedience in its most extreme form--\"that loyalty is a virtue or moral\nduty; and disloyalty or rebellion, in the most strict and proper sense,\na vice or crime against the law of nature.\" [768]\n\nIt belonged to the overstrung temperament of Berkeley that, like\na nervous artist, he should figure to himself all his freethinking\nantagonists as personally odious, himself growing odious under the\nobsession; and he solemnly asserts, in his Discourse to Magistrates,\nthat there had been \"lately set up within this city of Dublin\" an\n\"execrable fraternity of blasphemers,\" calling themselves \"blasters,\"\nand forming \"a distinct society, whereof the proper and avowed business\nshall be to shock all serious Christians by the most impious and\nhorrid blasphemies, uttered in the most public manner.\" [769] There\nappears to be not a grain of truth in this astonishing assertion,\nto which no subsequent historian has paid the slightest attention. In\na period in which freethinking books had been again and again burned\nin Dublin by the public hangman, such a society could be projected\nonly in a nightmare; and Berkeley's hallucination may serve as a\nsign of the extent to which his judgment had been deranged by his\npassions. [770] His forensic temper is really on a level with that\nof the most incompetent swashbucklers on his side.\n\nWhen educated Christians could be so habitually envenomed as was\nBerkeley, there was doubtless a measure of contrary heat among English\nunbelievers; but, apart altogether from what could be described as\nblasphemy, unbelief abounded in the most cultured society of the\nday. Bolingbroke's rationalism had been privately well known; and so\ndistinguished a personage as the brilliant and scholarly Lady Mary\nWortley Montagu, hated by Pope, is one of the reputed freethinkers\nof her time. [771] In the very year of the publication of Berkeley's\nMinute Philosopher, the first two epistles of the Essay on Man of\nhis own friend and admirer, Pope, gave a new currency to the form\nof optimistic deism created by Shaftesbury, and later elaborated by\nBolingbroke. Pope was always anxiously hostile in his allusions to the\nprofessed freethinkers [772]--among whom Bolingbroke only posthumously\nenrolled himself--and in private he specially aspersed Shaftesbury,\nfrom whom he had taken so much; [773] but his prudential tactic gave\nall the more currency to the virtual deism he enunciated. Given out\nwithout any critical allusion to Christianity, and put forward as a\nvindication of the ways of God to men, it gave to heresy, albeit in\na philosophically incoherent exposition, the status of a well-bred\npiety. A good authority pronounces that \"the Essay on Man did more to\nspread English deism in France than all the works of Shaftesbury\";\n[774] and we have explicit testimony that the poet privately avowed\nthe deistic view of things. [775]\n\n\n The line of the Essay which now reads:\n\n\n The soul, uneasy and confined from home,\n\n\n originally ran \"at home\"; but, says Warton, \"this expression\n seeming to exclude a future existence, as, to speak the plain\n truth, it was intended to do, it was altered\"--presumably\n by Warburton. (Warton's Essay on Pope, 4th ed. ii, 67.) The\n Spinozistic or pantheistic character of much of the Essay\n on Man was noted by various critics, in particular by the\n French Academician De Crousaz (Examen de l'Essay de M. Pope sur\n l'Homme, 1748, p. 90, etc.) After promising to justify the ways\n of God to man, writes Crousaz (p. 33), Pope turns round and\n justifies man, leaving God charged with all men's sins. When\n the younger Racine, writing to the Chevalier Ramsay in 1742,\n charged the Essay with irreligion, Pope wrote him repudiating\n alike Spinoza and Leibnitz. (Warton, ii, 121.) In 1755, however,\n the Abb\u00e9 Gauchat renewed the attack, declaring that the Essay\n was \"neither Christian nor philosophic\" (Lettres Critiques, i,\n 346). Warburton at first charged the poem with rank atheism, and\n afterwards vindicated it in his manner. (Warton, i, 125.) But in\n Germany, in the youth of Goethe, we find the Essay regarded by\n Christians as an unequivocally deistic poem. (Goethe's Wahrheit\n und Dichtung, Th. II, B. vii: Werke, ed. 1866, xi, 263.) And\n by a modern Christian polemist the Essay is described as \"the\n best positive result of English deism in the eighteenth century\"\n (Gostwick, German Culture and Christianity, 1882, p. 31).\n\n\nIn point of fact, deism was the fashionable way of thinking among\ncultured people. Though Voltaire testifies from personal knowledge\nthat there were in England in his day many principled atheists, [776]\nthere was little overt atheism, [777] whether by reason of the special\nodium attaching to that way of thought, or of a real production of\ntheistic belief by the concurrence of the deistic propaganda on this\nhead with that of the clergy, themselves in so many cases deists. [778]\nBishop Burnet, in the Conclusion to the History of his Own Time,\npronounces that \"there are few atheists, but many infidels, who are\nindeed very little better than the atheists.\" Collins observed that\nnobody had doubted the existence of God until the Boyle lecturers\nbegan to prove it; and Clarke had more than justified the jest by\narguing, in his Boyle Lectures for 1705, that all deism logically\nleads to atheism. But though the apologists roused much discussion on\nthe theistic issue, the stress of the apologetic literature passed\nfrom the theme of atheism to that of deism. Shaftesbury's early\nInquiry Concerning Virtue had assumed the existence of a good deal\nof atheism; but his later writings, and those of his school, do not\nindicate much atheistic opposition. [779] Even the revived discussion\non the immateriality and immortality of the soul--which began with\nthe Grand Essay of Dr. William Coward, [780] in 1704, and was taken\nup, as we have seen, by the non-juror Dodwell [781]--was conducted\non either orthodox or deistic lines. Coward wrote as a professed\nChristian, [782] to maintain, \"against impostures of philosophy,\"\nthat \"matter and motion must be the foundation of thought in men\nand brutes.\" Collins maintained against Clarke the proposition that\nmatter is capable of thought; and Samuel Strutt (\"of the Temple\"),\nwhose Philosophical Inquiry into the Physical Spring of Human Actions,\nand the Immediate Cause of Thinking (1732), is a most tersely cogent\nsequence of materialistic argument, never raises any question of\ndeity. The result was that the problem of \"materialism\" was virtually\ndropped, Strutt's essay in particular passing into general oblivion.\n\n\n It was replied to, however, with the Inquiry of Collins, as late\n as 1760, by a Christian controversialist who admits Strutt to\n have been \"a gentleman of an excellent genius for philosophical\n inquiries, and a close reasoner from those principles he laid\n down\" (An Essay towards demonstrating the Immateriality and Free\n Agency of the Soul, 1760, p. 94). The Rev. Mr. Monk, in his Life\n of Bentley (2nd ed. 1833, ii, 391), absurdly speaks of Strutt as\n having \"dressed up the arguments of Lord Herbert of Cherbury and\n other enemies of religion in a new shape.\" The reverend gentleman\n cannot have paid any attention to the arguments either of Herbert\n or of Strutt, which have no more in common than those of Toland\n and Hume. Strutt's book was much too closely reasoned to be\n popular. His name was for the time, however, associated with a\n famous scandal at Cambridge University. When in 1739 proceedings\n were taken against what was described as an \"atheistical society\"\n there, Strutt was spoken of as its \"oracle.\" One of the members\n was Paul Whitehead, satirized by Pope. Another, Tinkler Ducket,\n a Fellow of Caius College, in holy orders, was prosecuted in the\n Vice-Chancellor's Court on the twofold charge of proselytizing for\n atheism and of attempting to seduce a \"female.\" In his defence he\n explained that he had been for some time \"once more a believer in\n God and Christianity\"; but was nevertheless expelled. See Monk's\n Life of Bentley, as cited, ii, 391 sq.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 5\n\nNo less marked is the failure to develop the \"higher criticism\" from\nthe notable start made in 1739 in the very remarkable Inquiry into\nthe Jewish and Christian Revelations by Samuel Parvish, who made the\nvital discovery that Deuteronomy is a product of the seventh century\nB.C. [783] His book, which is in the form of a dialogue between a\nChristian and a Japanese, went into a second edition (1746); but his\nidea struck too deep for the critical faculty of that age, and not\ntill the nineteenth century was the clue found again by De Wette, in\nGermany. [784] Parvish came at the end of the main deistic movement,\n[785] and by that time the more open-minded men had come to a point of\nview from which it did not greatly matter when Deuteronomy was written,\nor precisely how a cultus was built up; while orthodoxy could not dream\nof abandoning its view of inspiration. There was thus an arrest alike\nof historical criticism and of the higher philosophic thought under\nthe stress of the concrete disputes over ethics, miracles, prophecy,\nand politics; and a habit of taking deity for granted became normal,\nwith the result that when the weak point was pressed upon by Law and\nButler there was a sense of blankness on both sides. But among men\ntheistically inclined, the argument of Tindal against revelationism\nwas extremely telling, and it had more literary impressiveness\nthan any writing on the orthodox side before Butler. By this time\nthe philosophic influence of Spinoza--seen as early as 1699 in\nShaftesbury's Inquiry Concerning Virtue, [786] and avowed by Clarke\nwhen he addressed his Demonstration (1705) \"more particularly in\nanswer to Mr. Hobbs, Spinoza, and their followers\"--had spread among\nthe studious class, greatly reinforcing the deistic movement; so that\nin 1732 Berkeley, who ranked him among \"weak and wicked writers,\"\ndescribed him as \"the great leader of our modern infidels.\"\n\n\n See the Minute Philosopher, Dial. vii, \u00a7 29. Similarly Leland,\n in the Supplement (1756) to his View of the Deistical Writers\n (afterwards incorporated as Letter VI), speaks of Spinoza as \"the\n most applauded doctor of modern atheism.\" Sir Leslie Stephen's\n opinion (English Thought, i, 33), that \"few of the deists,\n probably,\" read Spinoza, seems to be thus outweighed. If they\n did not in great numbers read the Ethica, they certainly read the\n Tractatus and the letters. As early as 1677 we find Stillingfleet,\n in the preface to his Letter to a Deist, speaking of Spinoza as\n \"a late author [who] I hear is mightily in vogue among many who\n cry up anything on the atheistical side, though never so weak\n and trifling\"; and further of a mooted proposal to translate the\n Tractatus Theologico-Politicus into English. A translation was\n published in 1689. In 1685 the Scotch Professor George Sinclar,\n in the \"Preface to the Reader\" of his Satan's Invisible World\n Discovered, writes that \"There are a monstrous rabble of men,\n who following the Hobbesian and Spinosian principles, slight\n religion and undervalue the Scripture,\" etc. In Gildon's work of\n recantation, The Deist's Manual (1705, p. 192), the indifferent\n Pleonexus, who \"took more delight in bags than in books,\"\n and demurs to accumulating the latter, avows that he has a few,\n among them being Hobbes and Spinoza. Evelyn, writing about 1680-90,\n speaks of \"that infamous book, the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus,\"\n as \"a wretched obstacle to the searchers of holy truth\" (The\n History of Religion, 1850, p. xxvii). Cp. Halyburton, Natural\n Religion Insufficient, Edinburgh, 1714, p. 31, as to the \"great\n vogue among our young Gentry and Students\" of Hobbes, Spinoza,\n and others.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 6\n\nAmong the deists of the upper classes was the young William Pitt,\nafterwards Lord Chatham, if, as has been alleged, it was he who in\n1733, two years before he entered Parliament, contributed to the\nLondon Journal a \"Letter on Superstition,\" the work of a pronounced\nfreethinker. [787] On the other hand, such deistic writing as that\nwith which Chubb, in a multitude of tracts, followed up his early\nUnitarian essay of 1715, brought an ethical \"Christian rationalism\"\nwithin the range of the unscholarly many. Thomas Morgan (d. 1741),\na physician, began in the Moral Philosopher, 1739-1740, [788] to\nsketch a rationalistic theory of Christian origins, besides putting\nthe critical case with new completeness. Morgan had been at one time a\ndissenting minister at Frome, Somerset, and had been dismissed because\nof his deistical opinions. Towards the Jehovah and the ethic of the\nOld Testament he holds, however, the attitude rather of an ancient\nGnostic than of a modern rationalist; and in his philosophy he is\neither a very \"godly\" deist or a pantheist miscarried. [789]\n\nAt the same time Peter Annet (1693-1769), a schoolmaster and\ninventor of a system of shorthand, widened the propaganda in other\ndirections. He seems to have been the first freethought lecturer, for\nhis first pamphlet, Judging for Ourselves: or, Freethinking the Great\nDuty of Religion, \"By P. A., Minister of the Gospel\" (1739), consists\nof \"Two Lectures delivered at Plaisterers' Hall.\" Through all his\npropaganda, of which the more notable portions are his Supernaturals\nExamined and a series of controversies on the Resurrection, there runs\na train of shrewd critical sense, put forth in crisp and vivacious\nEnglish, which made him a popular force. What he lacked was the\ndue gravity and dignity for the handling of such a theme as the\nreversal of a nation's faith. Like Woolston, he is facetious where\nhe should be serious; entertaining where he had need be impressive;\nprovocative where he should have aimed at persuasion. We cannot say\nwhat types he influenced, or how deep his influence went: it appears\nonly that he swayed many whose suffrages weighed little. At length,\nwhen in 1761 he issued nine numbers of The Free Inquirer, in which\nhe attacked the Pentateuch with much insight and cogency, but with\na certain want of rational balance (shown also in his treatise,\nSocial Bliss Considered, 1749), he was made a victim of the then\nstrengthened spirit of persecution, being sentenced to stand thrice\nin the pillory with the label \"For Blasphemy,\" and to suffer a year's\nhard labour. Nevertheless, he was popular enough to start a school\non his release.\n\nSuch popularity, of course, was alien to the literary and social\ntraditions of the century; and from the literary point of view the main\nline of deistic propaganda, as apart from the essays and treatises of\nHume and the posthumous works of Bolingbroke, ends with the younger\nHenry Dodwell's (anonymous) ironical essay, Christianity not Founded\non Argument (1741). So rigorously congruous is the reasoning of that\nbrilliant treatise that some have not quite unjustifiably taken it\nfor the work of a dogmatic believer, standing at some such position\nas that taken up before him by Huet, and in recent times by Cardinal\nNewman. [790] He argues, for instance, not merely that reason can yield\nnone of the confidence which belongs to true faith, but that it cannot\nduly strengthen the moral will against temptations. [791] But the book\nat once elicited a number of replies, all treating it unhesitatingly\nas an anti-Christian work; and Leland assails it as bitterly as he\ndoes any openly freethinking treatise. [792] Its thesis might have\nbeen seriously supported by reference to the intellectual history\nof the preceding thirty years, wherein much argument had certainly\nfailed to establish the reigning creed or to discredit the unbelievers.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 7\n\nOf the work done by English deism thus far, it may suffice to say that\nwithin two generations it had more profoundly altered the intellectual\ntemper of educated men than any religious movement had ever done in\nthe same time. This appears above all from the literature produced\nby orthodoxy in reply, where the mere defensive resort to reasoning,\napart from the accounts of current rationalism, outgoes anything\nin the previous history of literature. The whole evolution is a\nremarkable instance of the effect on intellectual progress of the\ndiversion of a nation's general energy from war and intense political\nfaction to mental activities. A similar diversion had taken place\nat the Restoration, to be followed by a return to civil and foreign\nstrife, which arrested it. It was in the closing years of Anne, and\nin the steady r\u00e9gime of Walpole under the first two Georges, that the\nferment worked at its height. Collins's Discourse of Freethinking was\nsynchronous with the Peace of Utrecht: the era of war re-opened in\n1739, much against the will of Walpole, who resigned in 1742. Home and\nforeign wars thereafter became common; and in 1751 Clive opened the\nperiod of imperialistic expansion, determining national developments\non that main line, concurrently with that of the new industry. Could\nthe discussion have been continuous--could England have remained what\nshe was in the main deistic period, a workshop of investigation and\na battleground of ideas--all European development might have been\nindefinitely hastened. But the deists, for the most part educated\nmen appealing to educated men or to the shrewdest readers among the\nartisans, had not learned to reckon with the greater social forces;\nand beyond a certain point they could not affect England's intellectual\ndestinies.\n\nIt is worse than idle to argue that \"the true cause of the decay of\ndeism is to be sought in its internal weakness,\" in the sense that\n\"it was not rooted in the deepest convictions, nor associated with\nthe most powerful emotions of its adherents.\" [793] No such charge\ncan be even partially proved. The deists were at least as much in\nearnest as two-thirds of the clergy: the determining difference,\nin this regard, was the economic basis of the latter, and their\nsocial hold of an ignorant population. The clergy, who could not\nargue the deists down in the court of culture, had in their own\njurisdiction the great mass of the uneducated lower classes, and\nthe great mass of the women of all classes, whom the ideals of the\nage kept uneducated, with a difference. And while the more cultured\nclergy were themselves in large measure deists, the majority, in\nthe country parishes, remained uncritical and unreflective, caring\nlittle even to cultivate belief among their flocks. The \"contempt of\nthe clergy\" which had subsisted from the middle of the seventeenth\ncentury (if, indeed, it should not be dated from the middle of the\nsixteenth) meant among other things that popular culture remained on\na lower plane. With the multitude remaining a ready hotbed for new\n\"enthusiasm,\" and the women of the middle and upper orders no less\nready nurturers of new generations of young believers, the work of\nemancipation was but begun when deism was made \"fashionable.\" And with\nEngland on the way to a new era at once of industrial and imperial\nexpansion, in which the energies that for a generation had made her\na leader of European thought were diverted to arms and to commerce,\nthe critical and rationalizing work of the deistical generation could\nnot go on as it had begun. That generation left its specific mark\non the statute-book in a complete repeal of the old laws relating to\nwitchcraft; [794] on literature in a whole library of propaganda and\napology; on moral and historic science in a new movement of humanism,\nwhich was to find its check in the French Revolution.\n\nHow it affected the general intelligence for good may be partly\ngathered from a comparison of the common English political\nattitudes towards Ireland in the first and the last quarters of\nthe century. Under William was wrought the arrest of Irish industry\nand commerce, begun after the Restoration; under Anne were enacted\nthe penal laws against Catholics--as signal an example of religious\niniquity as can well be found in all history. By the middle of the\ncentury these laws had become anachronisms for all save bigots.\n\n\n \"The wave of freethought that was spreading over Europe and\n permeating its literature had not failed to affect Ireland.... An\n atmosphere of skepticism was fatal to the Penal Code. What element\n of religious persecution there had been in it had long ceased to be\n operative\" (R. Dunlop, in Camb. Mod. Hist. vi, 489). Macaulay's\n testimony on this head is noteworthy: \"The philosophy of the\n eighteenth century had purified English Whiggism of the deep\n taint of intolerance which had been contracted during a long and\n close alliance with the Puritanism of the eighteenth century\"\n (History, ch. xvii, end).\n\n\nThe denunciations of the penal laws by Arthur Young in 1780 [795]\nare the outcome of two generations of deistic thinking; the spirit\nof religion has been ousted by judgment. [796] Could that spirit have\nhad freer play, less hindrance from blind passion, later history would\nhave been a happier record. But for reasons lying in the environment\nas well as in its own standpoint, deism was not destined to rise on\ncontinuous stepping-stones to social dominion.\n\n\n Currency has been given to a misconception of intellectual history\n by the authoritative statement that in the deistic controversy\n \"all that was intellectually venerable in England\" appeared\n \"on the side of Christianity\" (Sir Leslie Stephen, English\n Thought in the Eighteenth Century, i, 86). The same thing,\n in effect, is said by Lecky: \"It was to repel these [deistic]\n attacks ['upon the miracles'] that the evidential school arose,\n and the annals of religious controversy narrate few more complete\n victories than they achieved\" (Rise and Influence of Rationalism,\n pop. ed. i, 175). The proposition seems to be an echo of orthodox\n historiography, as Buckle had before written in his note-book:\n \"In England skepticism made no head. Such men as Toland and\n Tindal, Collins, Shaftesbury, Woolston, were no match for Clarke,\n Warburton, and Lardner. They could make no head till the time\n of Middleton\" (Misc. Works, abridged ed. i, 321)--a strain\n of assertion which clearly proceeds on no close study of the\n period. In the first place, all the writing on the freethinking\n side was done under peril of Blasphemy Laws, and under menace of\n all the calumny and ostracism that in Christian society follow\n on advanced heresy; while the orthodox side could draw on the\n entire clerical profession, over ten thousand strong, and trained\n for and pledged to defence of the faith. Yet, when all is said,\n the ordinary list of deists amply suffices to disprove Sir\n L. Stephen's phrase. His \"intellectually venerable\" list runs:\n Bentley, Locke, Berkeley, Clarke, Butler, Waterland, Warburton,\n Sherlock, Gibson, Conybeare, Smalbroke, Leslie, Law, Leland,\n Lardner, Foster, Doddridge, Lyttelton, Barrington, Addison, Pope,\n Swift. He might have added Newton and Boyle. Sykes, [797] Balguy,\n Stebbing, and a \"host of others,\" he declares to be \"now for the\n most part as much forgotten as their victims\"; Young and Blackmore\n he admits to be in similar case. It is expressly told of Doddridge,\n he might have added, that whereas that well-meaning apologist\n put before his students at Northampton the ablest writings both\n for and against Christianity, leaving them to draw their own\n conclusions, many of his pupils, \"on leaving his institution,\n became confirmed Arians and Socinians\" (Nichols in App. P to Life\n of Arminius--Works of Arminius, 1825, i, 223-25). This hardly\n spells success. [798] All told, the list includes only three or\n four men of any permanent interest as thinkers, apart from Newton;\n and only three or four more important as writers. The description\n of Waterland, [799] Warburton, [800] Smalbroke, [801] Sherlock,\n Leslie, and half-a-dozen more as \"intellectually venerable\"\n is grotesque; even Bentley is a strange subject for veneration.\n\n On the other hand, the list of \"the despised deists,\" who \"make\n but a poor show when compared with this imposing list,\" runs thus:\n Herbert, Hobbes, Blount, Halley (well known to be an unbeliever,\n though he did not write on the subject), Toland, Shaftesbury,\n Collins, Mandeville, Tindal, Chubb, Morgan, Dodwell, Middleton,\n Hume, Bolingbroke, Gibbon. It would be interesting to know on\n what principles this group is excluded from the intellectual\n veneration so liberally allotted to the other. It is nothing\n to the purpose that Shaftesbury and Mandeville wrote \"covertly\"\n and \"indirectly.\" The law and the conditions compelled them to do\n so. It is still more beside the case to say that \"Hume can scarcely\n be reckoned among the deists. He is already [when?] emerging\n into a higher atmosphere.\" Hume wrote explicitly as a deist;\n and only in his posthumous Dialogues did he pass on to the\n atheistic position. At no time, moreover, was he \"on the side of\n Christianity.\" On the other hand, Locke and Clarke and Pope were\n clearly \"emerging into a higher atmosphere\" than Christianity,\n since Locke is commonly reckoned by the culture-historians,\n and even by Sir Leslie Stephen, as making for deism; Pope was\n the pupil of Bolingbroke, and wrote as such; and Clarke was\n shunned as an Arian. Newton, again, was a Unitarian, and Leibnitz\n accused his system of making for irreligion. It would be hard\n to show, further, who are the \"forgotten victims\" of Balguy and\n the rest. Balguy criticized Shaftesbury, whose name is still a\n good deal better known than Balguy's. The main line of deists is\n pretty well remembered. And if we pair off Hume against Berkeley,\n Hobbes against Locke, Middleton (as historical critic) against\n Bentley, Shaftesbury against Addison, Mandeville against Swift,\n Bolingbroke against Butler, Collins against Clarke, Herbert against\n Lyttelton, Tindal against Waterland, and Gibbon against--shall\n we say?--Warburton, it hardly appears that the overplus of merit\n goes as Sir Leslie Stephen alleges, even if we leave Newton,\n with brain unhinged, standing against Halley. The statement that\n the deists \"are but a ragged regiment,\" and that \"in speculative\n ability most of them were children by the side of their ablest\n antagonists,\" is simply unintelligible unless the names of all\n the ablest deists are left out. Locke, be it remembered, did not\n live to meet the main deistic attack on Christianity; and Sir\n Leslie admits the weakness of his pro-Christian performance.\n\n The bases of Sir Leslie Stephen's verdict may be tested by his\n remarks that \"Collins, a respectable country gentleman, showed\n considerable acuteness; Toland, a poor denizen of Grub Street, and\n Tindal, a Fellow of All Souls, made a certain display of learning,\n and succeeded in planting some effective arguments.\" Elsewhere\n (pp. 217-227) Sir Leslie admits that Collins had the best of the\n argument against his \"venerable\" opponents on Prophecy; and Huxley\n credits him with equal success in the argument with Clarke. The\n work of Collins on Human Liberty, praised by a long series of\n students and experts, and entirely above the capacity of Bentley,\n is philosophically as durable as any portion of Locke, who made\n Collins his chosen friend and trustee, and who did not live to\n meet his anti-Biblical arguments. Tindal, who had also won Locke's\n high praise by his political essays, profoundly influenced such\n a student as Laukhard (Lechler, p. 451). And Toland, whom even\n Mr. A. S. Farrar (Bampton Lectures, p. 179) admitted to possess\n \"much originality and learning,\" has struck Lange as a notable\n thinker, though he was a poor man. Leibnitz, who answered him,\n praises his acuteness, as does Pusey, who further admits the\n uncommon ability of Morgan and Collins (Histor. Enq. into German\n Rationalism, 1828, p. 126). It is time that the conventional\n English standards in these matters should be abandoned by modern\n rationalists.\n\n The unfortunate effect of Sir Leslie Stephen's dictum is\n seen in the assertion of Prof. H\u00f6ffding (Hist. of Modern\n Philos. Eng. tr. 1900, i, 403), that Sir Leslie \"rightly remarks\n of the English deists that they were altogether inferior to their\n adversaries\"; and further (p. 405), that by the later deists,\n \"Collins, Tindal, Morgan, etc., the dispute as to miracles\n was carried on with great violence.\" It is here evident that\n Prof. H\u00f6ffding has not read the writers he depreciates, for those\n he names were far from being violent. Had he known the literature,\n he would have named Woolston, not Collins and Tindal and Morgan. He\n is merely echoing, without inquiring for himself, a judgment which\n he regards as authoritative. In the same passage he declares that\n \"only one of all the men formerly known as the 'English deists'\n [Toland] has rendered contributions of any value to the history\n of thought.\" If this is said with a knowledge of the works of\n Collins, Shaftesbury, and Mandeville, it argues a sad lack of\n critical judgment. But there is reason to infer here also that\n Prof. H\u00f6ffding writes in ignorance of the literature he discusses.\n\n While some professed rationalists thus belittle a series of\n pioneers who did so much to make later rationalism possible, some\n eminent theologians do them justice. Thus does Prof. Cheyne begin\n his series of lectures on Founders of Old Testament Criticism\n (1893): \"A well-known and honoured representative of progressive\n German orthodoxy (J. A. Dorner) has set a fine example of\n historical candour by admitting the obligations of his country to\n a much-disliked form of English heterodoxy. He says that English\n deism, which found so many apt disciples in Germany, 'by clearing\n away dead matter, prepared the way for a reconstruction of theology\n from the very depths of the heart's beliefs, and also subjected\n man's nature to stricter observation.' [802] This, however, as it\n appears to me, is a very inadequate description of the facts. It\n was not merely a new constructive stage of German theoretic\n theology, and a keener psychological investigation, for which deism\n helped to prepare the way, but also a great movement, which has in\n our own day become in a strict sense international, concerned with\n the literary and historical criticism of the Scriptures. Beyond\n all doubt, the Biblical discussions which abound in the works of\n the deists and their opponents contributed in no slight degree\n to the development of that semi-apologetic criticism of the\n Old Testament of which J. D. Michaelis, and in some degree even\n Eichhorn, were leading representatives.... It is indeed singular\n that deism should have passed away in England without having\n produced a great critical movement among ourselves.\" Not quite\n so singular, perhaps, when we note that in our own day Sir Leslie\n Stephen and Lecky and Prof. H\u00f6ffding could sum up the work of the\n deists without a glance at what it meant for Biblical criticism.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 8\n\nIf we were to set up a theory of intellectual possibilities from\nwhat has actually taken place in the history of thought, and without\nregard to the economic and political conditions above mentioned, we\nmight reason that deism failed permanently to overthrow the current\ncreed because it was not properly preceded by discipline in natural\nscience. There might well be stagnation in the higher criticism of\nthe Hebrew Scriptures when all natural science was still coloured\nby them. In nothing, perhaps, is the danger of Sacred Books more\nfully exemplified than in their influence for the suppression of\ntrue scientific thought. A hundredfold more potently than the faiths\nof ancient Greece has that of Christendom blocked the way to all\nintellectually vital discovery. If even the fame and the pietism\nof Newton could not save him from the charge of promoting atheism,\nmuch less could obscure men hope to set up any view of natural things\nwhich clashed with pulpit prejudice. But the harm lay deeper, inasmuch\nas the ground was preoccupied by pseudo-scientific theories which\nwere at best fanciful modifications of the myths of Genesis. Types\nof these performances are the treatise of Sir Matthew Hale on The\nPrimitive Origination of Mankind (1685); Dr. Thomas Burnet's Sacred\nTheory of the Earth (1680-1689); and Whiston's New Theory of the\nEarth (1696)--all devoid of scientific value; Hale's work being\npre-Newtonian; Burnet's anti-Newtonian, though partly critical as\nregards the sources of the Pentateuch; and Whiston's a combination\nof Newton and myth with his own quaint speculations. Even the Natural\nHistory of the Earth of Prof. John Woodward (1695), after recognizing\nthat fossils were really prehistoric remains, decided that they were\ndeposited by the Deluge. [803]\n\nWoodward's book is in its own way instructive as regards the history\nof opinion. A \"Professor of Physick\" in Gresham College, F.C.P.,\nand F.R.S., he goes about his work in a methodical and ostensibly\nscientific fashion, colligates the phenomena, examines temperately\nthe hypotheses of the many previous inquirers, and shows no violence\nof orthodox prepossession. He claims to have considered Moses \"only\nas an historian,\" and to give him credit finally because he finds his\nnarrative \"punctually true.\" [804] He had before him an abundance of\nfacts irreconcilable with the explanation offered by the Flood story;\nyet he actually adds to that myth a thesis of universal decomposition\nand dissolution of the earth's strata by the flood's action [805]--a\nhypothesis far more extravagant than any of those he dismissed. With\nall his method and scrutiny he had remained possessed by the tradition,\nand could not cast it off. It would seem as if such a book, reducing\nthe tradition to an absurdity, was bound at least to put its more\nthoughtful readers on the right track. But the legend remained in\npossession of the general intelligence as of Woodward's; and beyond\nhis standpoint science made little advance for many years. Moral and\nhistorical criticism, then, as regards some main issues, had gone\nfurther than scientific; and men's thinking on certain problems of\ncosmic philosophy was thus arrested for lack of due basis or discipline\nin experiential science.\n\nThe final account of the arrest of exact Biblical criticism in the\neighteenth century, however, is that which explains also the arrest\nof the sciences. English energy, broadly speaking, was diverted\ninto other channels. In the age of Chatham it became more and\nmore military and industrial, imperialist and commercial; and the\nscientific work of Newton was considerably less developed by English\nhands than was the critical work of the first deists. Long before\nthe French Revolution, mathematical and astronomical science were\nbeing advanced by French minds, the English doing nothing. Lagrange\nand Euler, Clairaut and D'Alembert, carried on the task, till Laplace\nconsummated it in his great theory, which is to Newton's what Newton's\nwas to that of Copernicus. It was Frenchmen, freethinkers to a man,\nwho built up the new astronomy, while England was producing only\neulogies of Newton's greatness. \"No British name is ever mentioned\nin the list of mathematicians who followed Newton in his brilliant\ncareer and completed the magnificent edifice of which he laid the\nfoundation.\" [806] \"Scotland contributed her Maclaurin, but England\nno European name.\" [807] Throughout the latter half of the eighteenth\ncentury \"there was hardly an individual in this country who possessed\nan intimate acquaintance with the methods of investigation which had\nconducted the foreign mathematicians to so many sublime results.\" [808]\n\"The English mathematicians seem to have been so dazzled with the\nsplendour of Newton's discoveries that they never conceived them\ncapable of being extended or improved upon\"; [809] and Newton's\nname was all the while vaunted, unwarrantably enough, as being on\nthe side of Christian orthodoxy. Halley's great hypothesis of the\nmotion of the solar system in space, put forward in 1718, borne out\nby Cassini and Le Monnier, was left to be established by Mayer of\nG\u00f6ttingen. [810] There was nothing specially incidental to deism,\nthen, in the non-development of the higher criticism in England\nafter Collins and Parvish, or in the lull of critical speculation\nin the latter half of the century. It was part of a general social\nreadjustment in which English attention was turned from the mental\nlife to the physical, from intension of thought to extension of empire.\n\n\n Playfair (as cited, p. 39; Brewster, Memoirs of Newton, i,\n 348, note) puts forward the theory that the progress of the\n higher science in France was due to the \"small pensions and great\n honours\" bestowed on scientific men by the Academy of Sciences. The\n lack of such an institution in England he traces to \"mercantile\n prejudices,\" without explaining these in their turn. They are\n to be understood as the consequences of the special expansion\n of commercial and industrial life in England in the eighteenth\n century, when France, on the contrary, losing India and North\n America, had her energies in a proportional degree thrown back on\n the life of the mind. French freethought, it will be observed,\n expanded with science, while in England there occurred, not\n a spontaneous reversion to orthodoxy any more than a surrender\n of the doctrine of Newton, but a general turning of attention in\n other directions. It is significant that the most important names\n in the literature of deism after 1740 are those of Hume and Smith,\n late products of the intellectual atmosphere of pre-industrial\n Scotland; of Bolingbroke, an aristocrat of the deistic generation,\n long an exile in France, who left his works to be published after\n his death; and of Gibbon, who also breathed the intellectual air\n of France.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 9\n\nIt has been commonly assumed that after Chubb and Morgan the\ndeistic movement in England \"decayed,\" or \"passed into skepticism\"\nwith Hume; and that the decay was mainly owing to the persuasive\neffect of Bishop Butler's Analogy (1736). [811] This appears to be\na complete misconception, arising out of the habit of looking to\nthe mere succession of books without considering their vogue and the\naccompanying social conditions. Butler's book had very little influence\ntill long after his death, [812] being indeed very ill-fitted to turn\ncontemporary deists to Christianity. It does but develop one form of\nthe skeptical argument for faith, as Berkeley had developed another;\nand that form of reasoning never does attain to anything better\nthan a success of despair. The main argument being that natural\nreligion is open to the same objections as revealed, on the score\n(1) of the inconsistency of Nature with divine benevolence, and\n(2) that we must be guided in opinion as in conduct by probability,\na Mohammedan could as well use the theorem for the Koran as could\na Christian for the Bible; and the argument against the justice of\nNature tended logically to atheism. But the deists had left to them\nthe resource of our modern theists--that of surmising a beneficence\nabove human comprehension; and it is clear that if Butler made any\nconverts they must have been of a very unenthusiastic kind. It is\ntherefore safe to say with Pattison that \"To whatever causes is\nto be attributed the decline of deism from 1750 onwards, the books\npolemically written against it cannot be reckoned among them.\" [813]\n\nOn the other hand, even deists who were affected by the plea that the\nBible need not be more consistent and satisfactory than Nature, could\nfind refuge in Unitarianism, a creed which, as industriously propounded\nby Priestley [814] towards the end of the century, made a numerical\nprogress out of all proportion to that of orthodoxy. The argument\nof William Law, [815] again, which insisted on the irreconcilability\nof the course of things with human reason, and called for an abject\nsubmission to revelation, could appeal only to minds already thus\nprostrate. Both his and Butler's methods, in fact, prepared the way\nfor Hume. And in the year 1741, five years after the issue of the\nAnalogy and seven before the issue of Hume's Essay on Miracles, we\nfind the thesis of that essay tersely affirmed in a note to Book II\nof an anonymous translation (ascribed to T. Francklin) of Cicero's\nDe Natura Deorum.\n\n\n The passage is worth comparing with Hume: \"Hence we see what\n little credit ought to be paid to facts said to be done out\n of the ordinary course of nature. These miracles [cutting the\n whetstone, etc., related by Cicero, De Div. i, c. xvii] are well\n attested. They were recorded in the annals of a great people,\n believed by many learned and otherwise sagacious persons, and\n received as religious truths by the populace; but the testimonies\n of ancient records, the credulity of some learned men, and the\n implicit faith of the vulgar, can never prove that to have been,\n which is impossible in the nature of things ever to be.\" M. Tullius\n Cicero Of the Nature of the Gods ... with Notes, London, 1741,\n p. 85. It does not appear to have been noted that in regard to\n this as to another of his best-known theses, Hume develops a\n proposition laid down before him.\n\n\nWhat Hume did was to elaborate the skeptical argument with a power\nand fullness which forced attention once for all, alike in England\nand on the Continent. It is not to be supposed, however, that\nHume's philosophy, insofar as it was strictly skeptical--that is,\nsuspensory--drew away deists from their former attitude of confidence\nto one of absolute doubt. Nor did Hume ever aim at such a result. What\nhe did was to countermine the mines of Berkeley and others, who,\nfinding their supra-rational dogmas set aside by rationalism, deistic\nor atheistic, sought to discredit at once deistic and atheistic\nphilosophies based on study of the external world, and to establish\ntheir creed anew on the basis of their subjective consciousness. As\nagainst that method, Hume showed the futility of all apriorism\nalike, destroying the sham skepticism of the Christian theists by\nforcing their method to its conclusions. If the universe was to be\nreduced to a mere contingent of consciousness, he calmly showed,\nconsciousness itself was as easily reducible, on the same principles,\nto a mere series of states. Idealistic skepticism, having disposed\nof the universe, must make short work of the hypostatized process\nof perception. Hume, knowing that strict skepticism is practically\nnull in life, counted on leaving the ground cleared for experiential\nrationalism. And he did, insofar as he was read. His essay, Of Miracles\n(with the rest of the Inquiries of 1748-1751, which recast his early\nTreatise of Human Nature, 1739), posits a principle valid against all\nsupernaturalism whatever; while his Natural History of Religion (1757),\nthough affirming deism, rejected the theory of a primordial monotheism,\nand laid the basis of the science of Comparative Hierology. [816]\nFinally, his posthumous Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion\n(1779) admit, though indirectly, the untenableness of deism, and\nfall back decisively upon the atheistic or agnostic position. [817]\nLike Descartes, he lacked the heroic fibre; but like him he recast\nphilosophy for modern Europe; and its subsequent course is but a\ndevelopment of or a reaction against his work.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 10\n\nIt is remarkable that this development of opinion took place in\nthat part of the British Islands where religious fanaticism had gone\nfurthest, and speech and thought were socially least free. Freethought\nin Scotland before the middle of the seventeenth century can have\nexisted only as a thing furtive and accursed; and though, as we have\nseen from the Religio Stoici of Sir George Mackenzie, unbelief had\nemerged in some abundance at or before the Restoration, only wealthy\nmen could dare openly to avow their deism. [818] Early in 1697 the\nclergy had actually succeeded in getting a lad of eighteen, Thomas\nAikenhead, hanged for professing deism in general, and in particular\nfor calling the Old Testament \"Ezra's Fables,\" ridiculing the doctrines\nof the Trinity and the Incarnation, and expressing the hope and\nbelief that Christianity would be extinct within a century. [819]\nThe spirit of the prosecution may be gathered from the facts that\nthe boy broke down and pleaded penitence, [820] and that the statute\nenacted the capital penalty only for obstinately persisting in the\ndenial of any of the persons of the Trinity. [821] He had talked\nrecklessly against the current creed among youths about his own age,\none of whom was in Locke's opinion \"the decoy who gave him the books\nand made him speak as he did.\" [822] It would appear that a victim\nwas very much wanted; and Aikenhead was not allowed the help of a\ncounsel. It is characteristic of the deadening effect of dogmatic\nreligion on the heart that an act of such brutish cruelty elicited\nno cry of horror from any Christian writer. At this date the clergy\nwere hounding on the Privy Council to new activity in trying witches;\nand all works of supposed heretical tendency imported from England\nwere confiscated in the Edinburgh shops, among them being Thomas\nBurnet's Sacred Theory of the Earth. [823] Scottish intellectual\ndevelopment had in fact been arrested by the Reformation, so that,\nsave for Napier's Logarithms (1614) and such a political treatise as\nRutherford's Lex Rex (1644), the nation of Dunbar and Lyndsay produced\nfor two centuries no secular literature of the least value, and not\neven a theology of any enduring interest. Deism, accordingly, seems in\nthe latter half of the seventeenth and the early part of the eighteenth\ncentury to have made fully as much progress in Scotland as in England;\nand the bigoted clergy could offer little intellectual resistance.\n\n\n As early as 1696 the Scottish General Assembly, with theological\n candour, passed an Act \"against the Atheistical opinions of\n the Deists.\" (Abridgment of the Acts of the General Assemblies,\n 1721, pp. 16, 76; Cunningham, Hist. of the Ch. of Scotland, ii,\n 313.) The opinions specified were \"The denying of all revealed\n religion, the grand mysteries of the gospels ... the resurrection\n of the dead, and, in a word, the certainty and authority of\n Scripture revelation; as also, their asserting that there must\n be a mathematical evidence for each purpose ... and that Natural\n Light is sufficient to Salvation.\" All this is deism, pure and\n simple. But Sir W. Anstruther (a judge in the Court of Session),\n in the preface to his Essays Moral and Divine, Edinburgh, 1710,\n speaks of \"the spreading contagion of atheism, which threatens the\n ruin of our excellent and holy religion.\" To atheism he devotes\n two essays; and neither in these nor in one on the Incarnation\n does he discuss deism, the arguments he handles being really\n atheistic. Scottish freethought would seem thus to have gone\n further than English at the period in question.\n\n As to the prevalence of deism, however, see the posthumous\n work of Prof. Halyburton, of St. Andrews, Natural Religion\n Insufficient (Edinburgh, 1714), Epist. of Recom.; pref. pp. 25,\n 27, and pp. 8, 15, 19, 23, 31, etc. Halyburton's treatise is\n interesting as showing the psychological state of argumentative\n Scotch orthodoxy in his day. He professes to repel the deistical\n argument throughout by reason; he follows Huet, and concurs with\n Berkeley in contending that mathematics involves anti-rational\n assumptions; and he takes entire satisfaction in the execution\n of the lad Aikenhead for deism. Yet in a second treatise, An\n Essay Concerning the Nature of Faith, he contends, as against\n Locke and the \"Rationalists,\" that the power to believe in the\n word of God is \"expressly deny'd to man in his natural estate,\"\n and is a supernatural gift. Thus the Calvinists, like Baxter,\n were at bottom absolutely insincere in their profession to act\n upon reason, while insolently charging insincerity on others.\n\n\nEven apart from deism there had arisen a widespread aversion to\ndogmatic theology and formal creeds, so that an apologist of 1715\nspeaks of his day as \"a time when creeds and Confessions of Faith are\nso generally decried, and not only exposed to contempt, as useless\ninventions ... but are loaded by many writers of distinguished wit\nand learning with the most fatal and dangerous consequences.\" [824]\nThis writer admits the intense bitterness of the theological disputes\nof the time; [825] and he speaks, on the other hand, of seeing \"the\nmost sacred mysteries of godliness impudently denied and impugned\"\nby some, while the \"distinguishing doctrines of Christianity are by\nothers treacherously undermined, subtilized into an airy phantom,\nor at least doubted, if not disclaimed.\" [826] His references are\nprobably to works published in England, notably those of Locke, Toland,\nShaftesbury, and Collins, since in Scotland no such literature could\nthen be published; but he doubtless has an eye to Scottish opinion.\n\nWhile, however, the rationalism of the time could not take book\nform, there are clear traces of its existence among educated men,\neven apart from the general complaints of the apologists. Thus the\nProfessor of Medicine at Glasgow University in the opening years of\nthe eighteenth century, John Johnston, was a known freethinker. [827]\nIn the way of moderate or Christian rationalism, the teaching of the\nprosecuted Simson seems to have counted for something, seeing that\nFrancis Hutcheson at least imbibed from him \"liberal\" views about\nfuture punishment and the salvation of the heathen, which gave much\noffence in the Presbyterian pulpit in Ulster. [828] And Hutcheson's\nlater vindication of the ethical system of Shaftesbury in his Inquiry\nConcerning the Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725) must have tended\nto attract attention in Scotland to the Characteristics after his\ninstalment as a Professor at Glasgow. In an English pamphlet, in 1732,\nhe was satirized as introducing Shaftesbury's system into a University,\n[829] and it was from the Shaftesbury camp that the first literary\nexpression of freethought in Scotland was sent forth. A young Scotch\ndeist of that school, William Dudgeon, published in 1732 a dialogue\nentitled The State of the Moral World Considered, wherein the\noptimistic position was taken up with uncommon explicitness; and in\n1739 the same writer printed A Catechism Founded upon Experience and\nReason, prefaced by an Introductory Letter on Natural Religion, which\ntakes a distinctly anti-clerical attitude. The Catechism answers to\nits title, save insofar as it is \u00e0 priori in its theism and optimistic\nin its ethic, as is another work of its author in the same year, A\nView of the Necessarian or Best Scheme, defending the Shaftesburyan\ndoctrine against the criticism of Crousaz on Pope's Essay. Still more\nheterodox is his little volume of Philosophical Letters Concerning\nthe Being and Attributes of God (1737), where the doctrine goes far\ntowards pantheism. All this propaganda seems to have elicited only\none printed reply--an attack on his first treatise in 1732. In the\nletter prefaced to his Catechism, however, he tells that \"the bare\nsuspicion of my not believing the opinions in fashion in our country\nhath already caused me sufficient trouble.\" [830] His case had in fact\nbeen raised in the Church courts, the proceedings going through many\nstages in the years 1732-36; but in the end no decision was taken,\n[831] and the special stress of his rationalism in 1739 doubtless\nowes something alike to the prosecution and to its collapse. Despite\nsuch hostility, he must privately have had fair support. [832]\n\nThe prosecution of Hutcheson before the Glasgow Presbytery in 1738\nreveals vividly the theological temper of the time. He was indicted\nfor teaching to his students \"the following two false and dangerous\ndoctrines: first, that the standard of moral goodness was the promotion\nof the happiness of others; and, second, that we could have a knowledge\nof good and evil without and prior to a knowledge of God.\" [833] There\nhas been a natural disposition on the orthodox side to suppress the\nfact that such teachings were ever ecclesiastically denounced as false,\ndangerous, and irreligious; and the prosecution seems to have had no\neffect beyond intensifying the devotion of Hutcheson's students. Among\nthem was Adam Smith, of whom it has justly been said that, \"if he was\nany man's disciple, he was Hutcheson's,\" inasmuch as he derived from\nhis teacher the bases alike of his moral and political philosophy and\nof his deistic optimism. [834] Another prosecution soon afterwards\nshowed that the new influences were vitally affecting thought within\nthe Church itself. Hutcheson's friend Leechman, whom he and his party\ncontrived to elect as professor of theology in Glasgow University,\nwas in turn proceeded against (1743-44) for a sermon on Prayer, which\nHutcheson and his sympathizers pronounced \"noble,\" [835] but which\n\"resolved the efficacy of prayer into its reflex influence on the\nmind of the worshipper\" [836]--a theorem which has chronically made\nits appearance in the Scottish Church ever since, still ranking as\na heresy, after having brought a clerical prosecution in the last\ncentury on at least one divine, Prof. William Knight, and rousing a\nscandal against another, the late Dr. Robert Wallace. [837]\n\nLeechman in turn held his ground, and later became Principal of\nhis University; but still the orthodox in Scotland fought bitterly\nagainst every semblance of rationalism. Even the anti-deistic essays\nof Lord-President Forbes of Culloden, head of the Court of Session,\nwhen collected [838] and posthumously published, were offensive to the\nChurch as laying undue stress on reason; as accepting the heterodox\nBiblical theories of Dr. John Hutchinson; and as making the awkward\nadmission that \"the freethinkers, with all their perversity, generally\nare sensible of the social duties, and act up to them better than\nothers do who in other respects think more justly than they.\" [839]\nSuch an utterance from such a dignitary told of a profound change;\nand, largely through the influence of Hutcheson and Leechman on a\ngeneration of students, the educated Scotland of the latter half\nof the eighteenth century was in large part either \"Moderate\" or\ndeistic. After generations of barren controversy, [840] the very\naridity of the Presbyterian life intensified the recoil among the\neducated classes to philosophical and historical interests, leading to\nthe performances of Hume, Smith, Robertson, Millar, Ferguson, and yet\nothers, all rationalists in method and sociologists in their interests.\n\nOf these, Millar, one of Smith's favourite pupils, and a table-talker\nof \"magical vivacity,\" [841] was known to be rationalistic in a high\ndegree; [842] while Smith and Ferguson were certainly deists, as was\nHenry Home (the judge, Lord Kames), who had the distinction of being\nattacked along with his friend Hume in the General Assembly of the\nChurch of Scotland in 1755-56. Home wrote expressly to controvert Hume,\nalike as to utilitarianism and the idea of causation; but his book,\nEssays on Morality and Natural Religion (published anonymously,\n1751), handled the thorny question of free-will in such fashion\nas to give no less offence than Hume had done; and the orthodox\nbracketed him with the subject of his criticism. His doctrine was\nindeed singular, its purport being that there can be no free-will,\nbut that the deity has for wise purposes implanted in men the feeling\nthat their wills are free. The fact of his having been made a judge of\nthe Court of Session since writing his book had probably something to\ndo with the rejection of the whole subject by the General Assembly,\nand afterwards by the Edinburgh Presbytery; but there had evidently\narisen a certain diffidence in the Church, which would be assiduously\npromoted by \"moderates\" such as Principal Robertson, the historian. It\nis noteworthy that, while Home and Hume thus escaped, the other Home,\nJohn, who wrote the then admired tragedy of Douglas, was soon after\nforced to resign his position as a minister of the Church for that\nauthorship, deism having apparently more friends in the fold than\ndrama. [843] While the theatre was thus being treated as a place of\nsin, many of the churches in Scotland were the scenes of repeated\nSunday riots. A new manner of psalm-singing had been introduced, and\nit frequently happened that the congregations divided into two parties,\neach singing in its own way, till they came to blows. According to one\nof Hume's biographers, unbelievers were at this period wont to go to\nchurch to see the fun. [844] Naturally orthodoxy did not gain ground.\n\nIn the case of Adam Smith we have one of the leading instances of the\ndivorce between culture and creed in the Scotland of that age. His\nintellectual tendencies, primed by Hutcheson, were already revealing\nthemselves when, seeking for something worth study in the unstudious\nOxford of his day, he was found by some suspicious supervisor reading\nHume's Treatise of Human Nature. The book was seized and the student\nscolded. [845] When, in 1751, he became Professor of Moral Philosophy\nin Glasgow University, he aroused orthodox comment by abandoning the\nSunday class on Christian Evidences set up by Hutcheson, and still\nfurther, it is said, by petitioning the Senatus to be allowed to\nbe relieved of the duty of opening his class with prayer. [846] The\npermission was not given; and the compulsory prayers were \"thought\nto savour strongly of natural religion\"; while the lectures on\nNatural Theology, which were part of the work of the chair, were\nsaid to lead \"presumptuous striplings\" to hold that \"the great\ntruths of theology, together with the duties which man owes to\nGod and his neighbours, may be discovered by the light of nature\nwithout any special revelation.\" [847] Smith was thus well founded\nin rationalism before he became personally acquainted with Voltaire\nand the other French freethinkers; and the pious contemporary who\ndeplores his associations avows that neither before nor after his\nFrench tour was his religious creed ever \"properly ascertained.\" [848]\nIt is clear, however, that it steadily developed in a rationalistic\ndirection. In the Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) the prevailing\nvein of theistic optimism is sufficiently uncritical; but even there\nthere emerges an apparent doubt on the doctrine of a future state,\nand positive hostility to certain ecclesiastical forms of it. [849]\nIn the sixth edition, which he prepared for the press in 1790, he\ndeleted the passage which pronounced the doctrine of the Atonement\nto be in harmony with natural ethics. [850] But most noteworthy of\nall is his handling of the question of religious establishments in\nthe Wealth of Nations. [851] It is so completely naturalistic that\nonly the habit of taking the Christian religion for granted could make\nmen miss seeing that its account of the conditions of the rise of new\ncults applied to that in its origin no less than to the rise of any\nof its sects. As a whole, the argument might form part of Gibbon's\nfifteenth chapter. And even allowing for the slowness of the average\nbeliever to see the application of a general sociological law to his\nown system, there must be inferred a great change in the intellectual\nclimate of Scottish life before we can account for Smith's general\npopularity at home as well as abroad after his handling of \"enthusiasm\nand superstition\" in the Wealth of Nations. The fact stands out that\nthe two most eminent thinkers in Scotland in the latter half of the\neighteenth century were non-Christians, [852] and that their most\nintellectual associates were in general sympathy with them.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 11\n\nIn Ireland, at least in Dublin, during the earlier part of the\ncentury, there occurred, on a smaller scale, a similar movement of\nrationalism, also largely associated with Shaftesbury. In Dublin\ntowards the close of the seventeenth century we have seen Molyneux,\nthe friend and correspondent of Locke, interested in \"freethought,\"\nalbeit much scared by the imprudence of Toland. At the same period\nthere germinated a growth of Unitarianism, which was even more fiercely\npersecuted than that of Toland's deism. The Rev. Thomas Emlyn, an\nEnglishman, co-pastor of the Protestant Dissenting Congregation of\nWood Street (now Strand Street), Dublin, was found by a Presbyterian\nand a Baptist to be heretical on the subject of the Trinity, and\nwas indicted in 1702 for blasphemy. He was sentenced to two years'\nimprisonment and a fine of \u00a31,000, which was partly commuted on his\nrelease. He protested that South and Sherlock and other writers on the\nTrinitarian controversy might have been as justly prosecuted as he;\nbut Irish Protestant orthodoxy was of a keener scent than English,\nand Emlyn was fain, when released, to return to his native land. [853]\nHis colleague Boyse, like many other Churchmen, wished that the unhappy\ntrinitarian controversy \"were buried in silence,\" but was careful to\nconform doctrinally. More advanced thinkers had double reason to be\nreticent. As usual, however, persecution provoked the growth it sought\nto stifle; and after the passing of the Irish Toleration Act of 1719,\na more liberal measure than the English, there developed in Ulster,\nand even in Dublin, a Unitarian movement akin to that proceeding\nin England. [854] In the next generation we find in the same city\na coterie of Shaftesburyans, centring around Lord Molesworth,\nthe friend of Hutcheson, a man of affairs devoted to intellectual\ninterests. It was within a few years of his meeting Molesworth that\nHutcheson produced his Inquiry, championing Shaftesbury's ideas;\n[855] and other literary men were similarly influenced. It is even\nsuggested that Hutcheson's clerical friend Synge, whom we have seen\n[856] in 1713 attempting a ratiocinative answer to the unbelief\nhe declared to be abundant around him, was not only influenced by\nShaftesbury through Molesworth, but latterly \"avoided publication\nlest his opinions should prejudice his career in the Church.\" [857]\nAfter the death of Molesworth, in 1725, the movement he set up seems\nto have languished; [858] but, as we have seen, there were among the\nIrish bishops men given to philosophic controversy, and the influence\nof Berkeley cannot have been wholly obscurantist. When in 1756 we\nread of the Arian Bishop Clayton [859] proposing in the Irish House\nof Lords to drop the Nicene and Athanasian creeds, we realize that in\nIreland thought was far from stagnant. The heretic bishop, however,\ndied (February, 1758) just as he was about to be prosecuted for the\nanti-Athanasian heresies of his last book; and thenceforth Ireland\nplays no noticeable part in the development of rationalism, political\ninterests soon taking the place of religious, with the result that\northodoxy recovered ground.\n\nIt cannot be doubted that the spectacle of religious wickedness\npresented by the operation of the odious penal laws against Catholics,\nand the temper of the Protestant Ascendancy party in religious matters,\nhad bred rational skepticism in Ireland in the usual way. Molesworth\nstands out in Irish history as a founder of a new and saner patriotism;\nand his doctrines would specially appeal to men of a secular and\ncritical way of thinking. Heretical bishops imply heretical laymen. But\nthe environment was unpropitious to dispassionate thinking. The\nvery relaxation of the Penal Code favoured a reversion to \"moderate\"\northodoxy; and the new political strifes of the last quarter of the\ncentury, destined as they were to be reopened in the next, determined\nthe course of Irish culture in another way.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 12\n\nIn England, meanwhile, there was beginning the redistribution of\nenergies which can be seen to have prepared for the intellectual and\npolitical reaction of the end of the century. There had been no such\nvictory of faith as is supposed to have been wrought by the forensic\ntheorem of Butler. An orthodox German observer, making a close inquest\nabout 1750, cites the British Magazine as stating in 1749 that half\nthe educated people were then deists; and he, after full inquiry,\nagrees. [860] In the same year, Richardson speaks tragically in\nthe Postscriptum to Clarissa of seeing \"skepticism and infidelity\nopenly avowed, and even endeavoured to be propagated from the press;\nthe great doctrines of the gospel brought into question\"; and he\ndescribes himself as \"seeking to steal in with a disguised plea for\nreligion.\" Instead of being destroyed by the clerical defence, the\ndeistic movement had really penetrated the Church, which was become\nas rationalistic in its methods as its function would permit, and the\neducated classes, which had arrived at a state of compromise. Pope,\nthe chief poet of the preceding generation, had been visibly deistic\nin his thinking; as Dryden had inferribly been before him; and to such\nliterary prestige was added the prestige of scholarship. The academic\nConyers Middleton, whose Letter from Rome had told so heavily against\nChristianity in exposing the pagan derivations of much of Catholicism,\nand who had further damaged the doctrine of inspiration in his\nanonymous Letter to Dr. Waterland (1731), while professing to refute\nTindal, had carried to yet further lengths his service to the critical\nspirit. In his famous Free Inquiry into the miracles of post-apostolic\nChristianity (1749), again professing to strike at Rome, he had laid\nthe foundations of a new structure of comparative criticism, and had\ngiven permanent grounds for rejecting the miracles of the sacred books.\n\nMiddleton's book appeared a year after Hume's essay Of Miracles, and\nit made out no such philosophic case as Hume's against the concept of\nmiracle; but it created at once, by its literary brilliance and its\ncogent argument, a sensation such as had thus far been made neither\nby Hume's philosophic argument nor by Francklin's anticipation of\nthat. [861] Middleton had duly safeguarded himself by positing the\ncertainty of the gospel miracles and of those wrought by the Apostles,\non the old principle [862] that prodigies were divinely arranged\nso far forth as was necessary to establish Christianity, but no\nfurther. \"The history of the gospel,\" he writes, \"I hope may be true,\nthough the history of the Church be fabulous.\" [863] But his argument\nagainst post-Apostolic miracles is so strictly naturalistic that no\nvigilant reader could fail to realize its fuller bearing upon all\nmiracles whatsoever. With Hume and Francklin, he insisted that facts\nincredible in themselves could not be established by any amount or kind\nof testimony; and he suggested no measure of comparative credibility\nas between the two orders of miracle. With the deists in general,\nhe argued that knowledge \"either of the ways or will of the Creator\"\nwas to be had only through study of \"that revelation which he made of\nhimself from the beginning in the beautiful fabric of this visible\nworld.\" [864] An antagonist accordingly wrote that his theses were:\n\"First, that there were no miracles wrought in the primitive Church;\nSecondly, that all the primitive fathers were fools or knaves, and most\nof them both one and the other. And it is easy to observe, the whole\ntenor of your argument tends to prove, Thirdly, that no miracles were\nwrought by Christ or his apostles; and Fourthly, that these too were\nfools or knaves, or both.\" [865] A more temperate opponent pressed the\nsame point in less explosive language. Citing Middleton's demand for\nan inductive method, this critic asks with much point: \"What does he\nmean by 'deserting the path of Nature and experience,' but giving in\nto the belief of any miracles, and acknowledging the reality of events\ncontrary to the known effects of the established Laws of Nature?\" [866]\n\nNo other answer was seriously possible. In the very act of\nostentatiously terming Tindal an \"infidel,\" Middleton describes an\nanswer made to him by the apologist Chapman as a sample of a kind of\nwriting which did \"more hurt and discredit\" to Christianity \"than\nall the attacks of its open adversaries.\" [867] In support of the\nmiracles of the gospel and the apostolic history he offers merely\nconventional pleas: against the miracles related by the Fathers he\nbrings to bear an incessant battery of destructive criticism. We may\nsum up that by the middle of the eighteenth century the essentials\nof the Christian creed, openly challenged for a generation by avowed\ndeists, were abandoned by not a few scholars within the pale of the\nChurch, of whom Middleton was merely the least reticent. After his\ndeath was published his Vindication of the Inquiry (1751); and in his\ncollected works (1752) was included his Reflections on the Variations\nor Inconsistencies which are found among the Four Evangelists, wherein\nit is demonstrated that \"the belief of the inspiration and absolute\ninfallibility of the evangelists seems to be more absurd than even that\nof transubstantiation itself.\" [868] The main grounds of orthodoxy were\nthus put in doubt in the name of a critical orthodoxy. In short, the\ndeistic movement had done what it lay in it to do. The old evangelical\nor pietistic view of life was discredited among instructed people,\nand in this sense it was Christianity that had \"decayed.\" Its later\nrecovery was economic, not intellectual.\n\n\n Thus Skelton writes in 1751 that \"our modern apologists for\n Christianity often defend it on deistical principles\" (Deism\n Revealed, pref. p. xii. Cp. vol. ii, pp. 234, 237). See also\n Sir Leslie Stephen as cited above, p. 149, note; and Gostwick,\n German Culture and Christianity, 1882, pp. 33-36.\n\n An interesting instance of liberalizing orthodoxy is furnished\n by the Rev. Arthur Ashley Sykes, who contributed many volumes to\n the general deistic discussion, some of them anonymously. In the\n preface to his Essay on the Truth of the Christian Religion (1732;\n 2nd ed. enlarged, 1755) Sykes remarks that \"since ... systematical\n opinions have been received and embraced in such a manner that it\n has not been safe to contradict them, the burden of vindicating\n Christianity has been very much increased. Its friends have been\n much embarrassed through fear of speaking against local truths; and\n its adversaries have so successfully attacked those weaknesses that\n Christianity itself has been deemed indefensible, when in reality\n the follies of Christians alone have been so.\" Were Christians left\n to the simple doctrines of Christ and the Apostles, he contends,\n Infidelity could make no converts. And at the close of the book\n he writes: \"Would to God that Christians would be content with the\n plainness and simplicity of the gospel.... That they would not vend\n under the name of evangelical truth the absurd and contradictory\n schemes of ignorant or wicked men! That they would part with that\n load of rubbish which makes thinking men almost sink under the\n weight, and gives too great a handle for Infidelity!\" Such writing\n could not give satisfaction to the ecclesiastical authorities;\n and as little could Sykes's remarkable admission (The Principles\n and Connection of Natural and Revealed Religion, 1740, p. 242):\n \"When the advantages of revelation are to be specified, I cannot\n conceive that it should be maintained as necessary to fix a rule\n of morality. For what one principle of morality is there which\n the heathen moralists had not asserted or maintained? Before ever\n any revelation is offered to mankind they are supposed to be so\n well acquainted with moral truths as from them to judge of the\n truth of the revelation itself.\" Again he writes:--\n\n \"Nor can revelation be necessary to ascertain religion. For\n religion consisting in nothing but doing our duties from a sense\n of the being of God, revelation is not necessary to this end,\n unless it be said that we cannot know that there is a God, and what\n our duties are, without it. Reason will teach us that there is a\n God ... that we are to be just and charitable to our neighbours;\n that we are to be temperate and sober in ourselves\" (id. p. 244).\n\n This is simple Shaftesburyan deism, and all that the apologist\n goes on to contend for is that revelation \"contains motives and\n reasons for the practice of what is right, more and different\n from what natural reason without this help can suggest.\" He seems,\n however, to have believed in miracles, though an anonymous Essay\n on the Nature, Design, and Origin of Sacrifices (1748) which\n is ascribed to him quietly undermines the whole evangelical\n doctrine. Throughout, he is remarkable for the amenity of his\n tone towards \"infidels.\"\n\n Balguy, a man of less ability, is notably latitudinarian in\n his theology. In the very act of criticizing the deists, he\n complains of Locke's arbitrariness in deriving morality from the\n will of God. Religion, he argues, is so derived, but morality is\n inherent in the whole nature of things, and is the same for God\n and men. This position, common to the school of Clarke, is at\n bottom that of Shaftesbury and the Naturalists. All that Balguy\n says for religion is that a doctrine of rewards and punishments\n is necessary to stimulate the average moral sense; and that the\n Christian story of the condescension of Omnipotence in coming to\n earth and suffering misery for man's sake ought to overwhelm the\n imagination! (See A Letter to a Deist, 2nd ed. 1730, pp. 5, 14,\n 15, 31; Foundation of Moral Goodness, pt. ii, 1729, p. 41 sq.)\n\n\nThe next intellectual step in natural course would have been a\nrevision of the deistic assumptions, insofar, that is, as certain\npositive assumptions were common to the deists. But, as we have seen,\ncertain fresh issues were raised as among the deists themselves. In\naddition to those above noted, there was the profoundly important one\nas to ethics. Shaftesbury, who rejected the religious basis, held\na creed of optimism; and this optimism was assailed by Mandeville,\nwho in consequence was opposed as warmly by the deist Hutcheson\nand others as by Law and Berkeley. To grapple with this problem,\nand with the underlying cosmic problem, there was needed at least as\nmuch general mental activity as went to the antecedent discussion; and\nthe main activity of the nation was now being otherwise directed. The\nnegative process, the impeachment of Christian supernaturalism, had\nbeen accomplished so far as the current arguments went. Toland and\nCollins had fought the battle of free discussion, forcing ratiocination\non the Church; Collins had shaken the creed of prophecy; Shaftesbury\nhad impugned the religious conception of morals; and Mandeville\nhad done so more profoundly, laying the foundations of scientific\nutilitarianism. [869] So effective had been the utilitarian propaganda\nin general that the orthodox Brown (author of the once famous Estimate\nof the life of his countrymen), in his criticism of Shaftesbury (1751),\nwrote as a pure utilitarian against an inconsistent one, and defended\nChristianity on strictly utilitarian lines. Woolston, following up\nCollins, had shaken the faith in New Testament miracles; Middleton\nhad done it afresh with all the decorum that Woolston lacked; and\nHume had laid down with masterly clearness the philosophic principle\nwhich rebuts all attempts to prove miracles as such. [870] Tindal\nhad clinched the case for \"natural\" theism as against revelationism;\nand the later deists, notably Morgan, had to some extent combined\nthese results. [871] This literature was generally distributed;\nand so far the case had been thrashed out.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 13\n\nTo carry intellectual progress much further there was needed a\ngeneral movement of scientific study and a reform in education. The\ntranslation of La Mettrie's Man a Machine (1749) [872] found a public\nno better prepared for the problems he raised than that addressed by\nStrutt eighteen years before; and the reply of Luzac, Man More than a\nMachine, in the preface to which the translator (1752) declared that\n\"irreligion and infidelity overspread the land,\" probably satisfied\nwhat appetite there was for such a discussion. There had begun a\nchange in the prevailing mental life, a diversion of interest from\nideas as such to political and mercantile interests. The middle and\nlatter part of the eighteenth century is the period of the rise of (1)\nthe new machine industries, and (2) the new imperialistic policy of\nChatham. [873] Both alike withdrew men from problems of mere belief,\nwhether theological or scientific. [874] That the reaction was not\none of mere fatigue over deism we have already seen. It was a general\ndiversion of energy, analogous to what had previously taken place in\nFrance in the reign of Louis XIV. As the poet Gray, himself orthodox,\nput the case in 1754, \"the mode of freethinking has given place to\nthe mode of not thinking at all.\" [875] In Hume's opinion the general\npitch of national intelligence south of the Tweed was lowered. [876]\nThis state of things of course was favourable to religious revival;\nbut what took place was rather a new growth of emotional pietism\nin the new industrial masses (the population being now on a rapid\nincrease), under the ministry of the Wesleys and Whitefield, and a\nfurther growth of similar religion in the new provincial middle-class\nthat grew up on the industrial basis. The universities all the while\nwere at the lowest ebb of culture, but officially rabid against\nphilosophic freethinking. [877]\n\nIt would be a great mistake, however, to suppose that all this meant\na dying out of deism among the educated classes. The statement of\nGoldsmith, about 1760, that deists in general \"have been driven\ninto a confession of the necessity of revelation, or an open\navowal of atheism,\" [878] is not to be taken seriously. Goldsmith,\nwhose own orthodoxy is very doubtful, had a whimsical theory that\nskepticism, though it might not injure morals, has a \"manifest\ntendency to subvert the literary merits\" of any country; [879]\nand argued accordingly. Deism, remaining fashionable, did but fall\npartly into the background of living interests, the more concrete\nissues of politics and the new imaginative literature occupying the\nforeground. It was early in the reign of George III that Sir William\nBlackstone, having had the curiosity to listen in succession to\nthe preaching of every clergyman in London, \"did not hear a single\ndiscourse which had more Christianity in it than the writings of\nCicero,\" and declared that it would have been impossible for him to\ndiscover from what he heard whether the preacher were a follower of\nConfucius, of Mahomet, or of Christ. [880] When the Church was thus\ndeistic, the educated laity can have been no less so. The literary\nstatus of deism after 1750 was really higher than ever. It was now\nrepresented by Hume; by Adam Smith (Moral Sentiments, 1759); by the\nscholarship of Conyers Middleton; and by the posthumous works (1752-54)\nof Lord Bolingbroke, who, albeit more of a debater than a thinker,\ndebated often with masterly skill, in a style unmatched for harmony and\nenergetic grace, which had already won him a great literary prestige,\nthough the visible insincerity of his character, and the habit of\nbrowbeating, always countervailed his charm. His influence, commonly\nbelittled, was much greater than writers like Johnson would admit;\nand it went deep. Voltaire, who had been his intimate, tells [881]\nthat he had known some young pupils of Bolingbroke who altogether\ndenied the historic actuality of the Gospel Jesus--a stretch of\ncriticism beyond the assimilative power of that age.\n\nHis motive to write for posthumous publication, however, seems\nrather to have been the venting of his tumultuous feelings than\nany philosophic purpose. An overweening deist, he is yet at much\npains to disparage the \u00e0 priori argument for deism, bestowing some\nof his most violent epithets on Dr. Samuel Clarke, who seems to\nhave exasperated him in politics. But his castigation of \"divines\"\nis tolerably impartial on that side; and he is largely concerned to\ndeprive them of grounds for their functions, though he finally insists\nthat churches are necessary for purposes of public moral teaching. His\nown teachings represent an effort to rationalize deism. The God\nwhom he affirms is to be conceived or described only as omnipotent\nand omniscient (or all-wise), not as good or benevolent any more\nthan as vindictive. Thus he had assimilated part of the Spinozistic\nand the atheistic case against anthropomorphism, while still using\nanthropomorphic language on the score that \"we must speak of God after\nthe manner of men.\" Beyond this point he compromises to the extent\nof denying special while admitting collective or social providences;\nthough he is positive in his denial of the actuality or the moral\nneed of a future state. As to morals he takes the ordinary deistic\nline, putting the innate \"law of nature\" as the sufficient and only\nrevelation by the deity to his creatures. On the basis of that inner\ntestimony he rejects the Old Testament as utterly unworthy of deity,\nbut endorses the universal morality found in the gospels, while\nrejecting their theology. It was very much the deism of Voltaire,\nsave that it made more concessions to anti-theistic logic.\n\nThe weak side of Bolingbroke's polemic was its inconsistency--a flaw\nderiving from his character. In the spirit of a partisan debater he\nthrew out at any point any criticism that appeared for the moment\nplausible; and, having no scientific basis or saving rectitude,\nwould elsewhere take up another and a contradictory position. Careful\nantagonists could thus discredit him by mere collation of his own\nutterances. [882] But, the enemy being no more consistent than he,\nhis influence was not seriously affected in the world of ordinary\nreaders; and much of his attack on \"divines,\" on dogmas, and on\nOld Testament morality must have appealed to many, thus carrying\non the discredit of orthodoxy in general. Leland devoted to him an\nentire volume of his View of the Principal Deistical Writers, and in\nall bestows more space upon him than on all the others together--a\nsufficient indication of his vogue.\n\n\n In his lifetime, however, Bolingbroke had been extremely careful\n to avoid compromising himself. Mr. Arthur Hassall, in his\n generally excellent monograph on Bolingbroke (Statesmen Series,\n 1889, p. 226), writes, in answer to the attack of Johnson,\n that \"Bolingbroke, during his lifetime, had never scrupled to\n publish criticisms, remarkable for their freedom, on religious\n subjects.\" I cannot gather to what he refers; and Mr. Walter\n Sichel, in his copious biography (2 vols. 1901-1902), indicates no\n such publications. The Letters on the Study and Use of History,\n which contain (Lett. iii, sect. 2) a skeptical discussion of\n the Pentateuch as history, though written in 1735-36, were only\n posthumously published, in 1752. The Examen Important de Milord\n Bolingbroke, produced by Voltaire in 1767, but dated 1736,\n is Voltaire's own work, based on Bolingbroke. In his letter to\n Swift of September 12, 1724 (Swift's Works, Scott's ed. 1824,\n xvi, 448-49), Bolingbroke angrily repudiates the title of esprit\n fort, declaring, in the very temper in which pious posterity has\n aspersed himself, that \"such are the pests of society, because\n they endeavour to loosen the bands of it.... I therefore not\n only disown, but I detest, this character.\" In this letter he\n even affects to believe in \"the truth of the divine revelation\n of Christianity.\" He began to write his essays, it is true,\n before his withdrawal to France in 1735, but with no intention\n of speedily publishing them. In his Letter to Mr. Pope (published\n with the Letter to Wyndham, 1753), p. 481, he writes: \"I have been\n a martyr of faction in politics, and have no vocation to be so\n in philosophy.\" Cp. pp. 485-86. It is thus a complete blunder on\n the part of Bagehot to say (Literary Studies, Hutton's ed. iii,\n 137) that Butler's Analogy, published in 1736, was \"designed as\n a confutation of Shaftesbury and Bolingbroke.\" It is even said\n (Warton, Essay on Pope, 4th ed. ii, 294-95) that Pope did not\n know Bolingbroke's real opinions; but Pope's untruthfulness was\n such as to discredit such a statement. Cp. Bolingbroke's Letter\n as cited, p. 521, and his Philosophical Works, 8vo-ed. 1754, ii,\n 405. It is noteworthy that a volume of controversial sermons\n entitled A Preservative against unsettled notions and Want of\n Principles in Religion, so entirely stupid in its apologetics as\n to be at times positively entertaining, was published in 1715\n by Joseph Trapp, M.A., \"Chaplain to the Right Honble. The Lord\n Viscount Bolingbroke.\"\n\n In seeking to estimate Bolingbroke's posthumous influence we have\n to remember that after the publication of his works the orthodox\n members of his own party, who otherwise would have forgiven him\n all his vices and insincerities, have held him up to hatred. Scott,\n for instance, founding on Bolingbroke's own dishonest denunciation\n of freethinkers as men seeking to loosen the bands of society,\n pronounced his arrangement for the posthumous issue of his works\n \"an act of wickedness more purely diabolical than any hitherto upon\n record in the history of any age or nation\" (Note to Bolingbroke's\n letter above cited in Swift's Works, xvi, 450). It would be an\n error, on the other hand, to class him among either the great\n sociologists or the great philosophers. Mr. Sichel undertakes to\n show (vol. ii, ch. x) that Bolingbroke had stimulated Gibbon to a\n considerable extent in his treatment of early Christianity. This\n is in itself quite probable, and some of the parallels cited are\n noteworthy; but Mr. Sichel, who always writes as a panegyrist,\n makes no attempt to trace the common French sources for both. He\n does show that Voltaire manipulated Bolingbroke's opinions\n in reproducing them. But he does not critically recognize the\n incoherence of Bolingbroke's eloquent treatises. Mr. Hassall's\n summary is nearer the truth; but that in turn does not note how\n well fitted was Bolingbroke's swift and graceful declamation to\n do its work with the general public, which (if it accepted him\n at all) would make small account of self-contradiction.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 14\n\nIn view of such a reinforcement of its propaganda, deism could not\nbe regarded as in the least degree written down. In 1765, in fact, we\nfind Diderot recounting, on the authority of d'Holbach, who had just\nreturned from a visit to this country, that \"the Christian religion is\nnearly extinct in England. The deists are innumerable; there are almost\nno atheists; those who are so conceal it. An atheist and a scoundrel\nare almost synonymous terms for them.\" [883] Nor did the output of\ndeistic literature end with the posthumous works of Bolingbroke. These\nwere followed by translations of the new writings of Voltaire, [884]\nwho had assimilated the whole propaganda of English deism, and gave it\nout anew with a wit and brilliancy hitherto unknown in argumentative\nand critical literature. The freethinking of the third quarter of\nthe century, though kept secondary to more pressing questions, was\nthus at least as deeply rooted and as convinced as that of the first\nquarter; and it was probably not much less common among educated men,\nthough new social influences caused it to be more decried.\n\nThe hapless Chatterton, fatally precocious, a boy in years and\nexperience of life, a man in understanding at seventeen, incurred\nposthumous obloquy more for his \"infidelity\" than for the harmless\nliterary forgeries which reveal his poetic affinity to a less prosaic\nage. It is a memorable fact that this first recovery of the lost note\nof imaginative poetry in that \"age of prose and reason\" is the exploit\nof a boy whose mind was as independently \"freethinking\" on current\nreligion as it was original even in its imitative reversion to the\npoetics of the past. Turning away from the impossible mythicism and\nmysticism of the Tudor and Stuart literatures, as from the fanaticism\nof the Puritans, the changing English world after the Restoration had\nlet fall the artistic possession of imaginative feeling and style\nwhich was the true glory of the time of Renascence. The ill-strung\ngenius of Chatterton seems to have been the first to reunite the\nsense of romantic beauty with the spirit of critical reason. He was a\nconvinced deist, avowing in his verse, in his pathetic will (1770), in\na late letter, and at times in his talk, that he was \"no Christian,\"\nand contemning the ethic of Scripture history and the absurdity of\nliteral inspiration. [885] Many there must have been who went as far,\nwith less courage of avowal.\n\nWhat was lacking to the age, once more, was a social foundation on\nwhich it could not only endure but develop. In a nation of which the\nmajority had no intellectual culture, such a foundation could not\nexist. Green exaggerates [886] when he writes that \"schools there\nwere none, save the grammar schools of Edward and Elizabeth\"; [887]\nbut by another account only twelve public schools were founded in the\nlong reign of George III; [888] and, as a result of the indifference\nof two generations, masses of the people \"were ignorant and brutal\nto a degree which it is hard to conceive.\" [889] A great increase of\npopulation had followed on the growth of towns and the development\nof commerce and manufactures even between 1700 and 1760; [890]\nand thereafter the multiplication was still more rapid. There was\nthus a positive fall in the culture standards of the majority of the\npeople. According to Massey, \"hardly any tradesman in 1760 had more\ninstruction than qualified him to add up a bill\"; and \"a labourer,\nmechanic, or domestic servant who could read or write possessed a rare\naccomplishment.\" [891] As for the Charity Schools established between\n1700 and 1750, their express object was to rear humble tradesmen and\ndomestics, not to educate in the proper sense of the term.\n\nIn the view of life which accepted this state of things the educated\ndeists seem to have shared; at least, there is no record of any\nagitation by them for betterment. The state of political thought was\ntypified in the struggle over \"Wilkes and Liberty,\" from which cool\ntemperaments like Hume's turned away in contempt; and it is significant\nthat poor men were persecuted for freethinking while the better-placed\nwent free. Jacob Ilive, for denying in a pamphlet (1753) the truth of\nrevelation, was pilloried thrice, and sent to hard labour for three\nyears. In 1754 the Grand Jury of Middlesex \"presented\" the editor and\npublisher of Bolingbroke's posthumous works [892]--a distinction that\nin the previous generation had been bestowed on Mandeville's Fable of\nthe Bees; and in 1761, as before noted, Peter Annet, aged seventy, was\npilloried twice and sent to prison for discrediting the Pentateuch;\nas if that were a more serious offence than his former attacks on\nthe gospels and on St. Paul. The personal influence of George III,\nfurther, told everywhere against freethinking; and the revival of\npenalties would have checked publishing even if there had been no\nwithdrawal of interest to politics.\n\n\n Yet more or less freethinking treatises did appear at intervals\n in addition to the works of the better-known writers, such as\n Bolingbroke and Hume, after the period commonly marked as that\n of the \"decline of deism.\" In the list may be included a few by\n Unitarians, who at this stage were doing critical work. Like\n a number of the earlier works above mentioned, the following\n (save Evanson) are overlooked in Sir Leslie Stephen's survey:--\n\n\n 1746. Essay on Natural Religion. Falsely attributed to Dryden.\n 1746. Deism fairly stated and fully vindicated, etc. Anon.\n 1749. J. G. Cooper, Life of Socrates.\n 1750. John Dove, A Creed founded on Truth and Common Sense.\n 1750. The British Oracle. (Two numbers only.)\n 1752. The Pillars of Priestcraft and Orthodoxy Shaken. Four vols.\n of freethinking pamphlets, collected (and some written) by\n Thomas Gordon, formerly secretary to Trenchard. Edited by\n R. Barron. (Rep. 1768.)\n 1765. W. Dudgeon, Philosophical Works (reprints of those of 1732,\n -4, -7, -9, above mentioned). Privately printed--at\n Glasgow?\n 1772. E. Evanson, The Doctrines of a Trinity and the\n Incarnation, etc.\n 1773. ---- Three Discourses (1. Upon the Man after God's own\n Heart; 2. Upon the Faith of Abraham; 3. Upon the Seal of\n the Foundation of God).\n 1777. ---- Letter to Bishop Hurd.\n 1781. W. Nicholson, The Doubts of the Infidels. (Rep. by R.\n Carlile.)\n 1782. W. Turner, Answer to Dr. Priestley's Letters to a\n Philosophical Unbeliever.\n 1785. Dr. G. Hoggart Toulmin, The Antiquity and Duration of the\n World.\n 1789. ---- The Eternity of the Universe. [893] (Rep. 1825.)\n 1789. Dr. T. Cooper, Tracts, Ethical, Theological, and Political.\n 1792. E. Evanson, The Dissonance of the Four Evangelists.\n (Rep. 1805.)\n 1795. Dr. J. A. O'Keefe, On the Progress of the Human\n Understanding.\n 1797. John C. Davies, The Scripturian's Creed. Prosecuted and\n imprisoned. (Book rep. 1822 and 1839.)\n\n\nOf the work here noted a considerable amount was done by Unitarians,\nEvanson being of that persuasion, though at the time of writing his\nearlier Unitarian works he was an Anglican vicar. [894] During the\nfirst half of the eighteenth century, despite the movement at the\nend of the seventeenth, specific anti-Trinitarianism was not much in\nevidence, the deistic controversy holding the foreground. But gradually\nUnitarianism made fresh headway. One dissenting clergyman, Martin\nTomkyns, who had been dismissed by his congregation at Stoke Newington\nfor his \"Arian or Unitarian opinions,\" published in 1722 A Sober Appeal\nto a Turk or an Indian, concerning the plain sense of the Trinity,\nin reply to the treatise of Dr. Isaac Watts on The Christian Doctrine\nof the Trinity. A second edition of Tomkyns's book appeared in 1748,\nwith a further reply to Watts's Dissertations of 1724. The result seems\nto have been an unsettlement of the orthodoxy of the hymn-writer. There\nis express testimony from Dr. Lardner, a very trustworthy witness, that\nWatts in his latter years, \"before he was seized with an imbecility\nof his faculties,\" was substantially a Unitarian. His special papers\non the subject were suppressed by his executors; but the full text\nof his Solemn Address to the Great and Blessed God goes far to bear\nout Lardner's express assertion. [895] Other prominent religionists\nwere more outspoken. The most distinguished names associated with the\nposition were those of Lardner and Priestley, of whom the former,\ntrained as a simple \"dissenter,\" avowedly reached his conclusions\nwithout much reference to Socinian literature; [896] and the second,\nwho was similarly educated, no less independently gave up the doctrines\nof the Atonement and the Trinity, passing later from the Arian to the\nSocinian position after reading Lardner's Letter on the Logos. [897]\nAs Priestley derived his determinism from Collins, [898] it would\nappear that the deistical movement had set up a general habit of\nreasoning which thus wrought even on Christians who, like Lardner and\nPriestley, undertook to rebut the objections of unbelievers to their\nfaith. A generally rationalistic influence is to be noted in the works\nof the Unitarian Antip\u00e6dobaptist Dr. Joshua Toulmin, author of lives\nof Socinus (1777) and Biddle (1789), and many other solid works,\nincluding a sermon on \"The Injustice of classing Unitarians with\nDeists and Infidels\" (1797). In his case the \"classing\" was certainly\ninconvenient. In 1791 the effigy of Paine was burned before his door,\nand his windows broken. His house was saved by being closely guarded;\nbut his businesses of schoolkeeping and bookselling had to be given\nup. It thus becomes intelligible how, after a period in which Dissent,\ncontemned by the State Church, learned to criticize that Church's\ncreed, there emerged in England towards the close of the eighteenth\ncentury a fresh movement of specific Unitarianism.\n\nEvanson and Toulmin were scholarly writers, though without the large\nlearning of Lardner and the propagandist energy and reputation of\nPriestley; and the Unitarian movement, in a quiet fashion, made a\nnumerical progress out of all proportion to that of orthodoxy. It\nowed much of its immunity at this stage, doubtless, to the large\nelement of tacit deism in the Church; and apart from the scholarly\nwork of Lardner both Priestley and Evanson did something for New\nTestament criticism, as well as towards the clearing-up of Christian\norigins. Evanson was actually prosecuted in 1773, on local initiative,\nfor a sermon of Unitarian character delivered by him in the parish\nchurch of Tewkesbury on Easter-Day of 1771; and, what is much more\nremarkable, members of his congregation, at a single defence-meeting\nin an inn, collected \u00a3150 to meet his costs. [899] Five years later he\nhad given up the belief in eternal punishment, though continuing to\nbelieve in \"long protracted\" misery for sinners. [900] Still later,\nafter producing his Dissonance, he became uncommonly drastic in his\nhandling of the Canon. He lived well into the nineteenth century,\nand published in 1805 a vigorous tractate, Second Thoughts on\nthe Trinity, recommended to the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of\nGloucester. In that he treats the First Gospel as a forgery of the\nsecond century. The method is indiscriminating, and the author lays\nmuch uncritical stress upon prophecy. On the whole, the Unitarian\ncontribution to rational thought, then as later, was secondary\nor ancillary, though on the side of historical investigation it\nwas important. Lardner's candour is as uncommon as his learning;\nand Priestley [901] and Evanson have a solvent virtue. [902] In all\nthree the limitation lies in the fixed adherence to the concept of\nrevelation, which withheld them from radical rationalism even as it did\nfrom Arianism. Evanson's ultra-orthodox acceptance of the Apocalypse is\nsignificant of his limitations; and Priestley's calibre is indicated\nby his life-long refusal to accept the true scientific inference from\nhis own discovery of oxygen. A more pronounced evolution was that of\nthe Welsh deist David Williams, who, after publishing two volumes of\nSermons on Religious Hypocrisy (1774), gave up his post as a dissenting\npreacher, and, in conjunction with Franklin and other freethinkers,\nopened a short-lived deistic chapel in Margaret Street, London (1776),\nwhere there was used a \"Liturgy on the Universal Principles of Religion\nand Morality.\" [903]\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 15\n\nOn the other hand, apart from the revival of popular religion under\nWhitefield and Wesley, which won multitudes of the people whom no\nhigher culture could reach, there was no recovery of educated belief\nupon intellectual lines; though there was a steady detachment of\nenergy to the new activities of conquest and commerce which mark the\nsecond half of the eighteenth century in England. On this state of\nthings supervened the massive performance of the greatest historical\nwriter England had yet produced. Gibbon, educated not by Oxford but\nby the recent scholarly literature of France, had as a mere boy seen,\non reading Bossuet, the theoretic weakness of Protestantism, and\nhad straightway professed Romanism. Shaken as to that by a skilled\nSwiss Protestant, he speedily became a rationalist pure and simple,\nwith as little of the dregs of deism in him as any writer of his\nage; and his great work begins, or rather signalizes (since Hume\nand Robertson preceded him), a new era of historical writing, not\nmerely by its sociological treatment of the rise of Christianity,\nbut by its absolutely anti-theological handling of all things.\n\nThe importance of the new approach may be at once measured by the\nzeal of the opposition. In no case, perhaps, has the essentially\npassional character of religious resistance to new thought been more\nvividly shown than in that of the contemporary attacks upon Gibbon's\nHistory. There is not to be found in controversial literature such\nanother annihilating rejoinder as was made by Gibbon to the clerical\nzealots who undertook to confound him on points of scholarship,\nhistory, and ratiocination. The contrast between the mostly spiteful\nincompetence of the attack and the finished mastery of the reply\nput the faith at a disadvantage from which it never intellectually\nrecovered, though other forces reinstated it socially. By the admission\nof Macaulay, who thought Gibbon \"most unfair\" to religion, the whole\ntroup of his assailants are now \"utterly forgotten\"; and those orthodox\ncommentators who later sought to improve on their criticism have in\nturn, with a notable uniformity, been rebutted by their successors;\ntill Gibbon's critical section ranks as the first systematically\nscientific handling of the problem of the rise of Christianity. He\ncan be seen to have profited by all the relevant deistic work done\nbefore him, learning alike from Toland, from Middleton, and from\nBolingbroke; though his acknowledgments are mostly paid to respectable\nProtestants and Catholics, as Basnage, Beausobre, Lardner, Mosheim,\nand Tillemont; and the sheer solidity of the work has sustained it\nagainst a hundred years of hostile comment. [904] While Gibbon was\nthus earning for his country a new literary distinction, the orthodox\ninterest was concerned above all things to convict him of ignorance,\nincompetence, and dishonesty; and Davis, the one of his assailants\nwho most fully manifested all of these qualities, and who will long\nbe remembered solely from Gibbon's deadly exposure, was rewarded\nwith a royal pension. Another, Apthorp, received an archiepiscopal\nliving; while Chelsum, the one who almost alone wrote against him\nlike a gentleman, got nothing. But no cabal could avail to prevent\nthe instant recognition, at home and abroad, of the advent of a new\nmaster in history; and in the worst times of reaction which followed,\nthe History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire impassively\ndefied the claims of the ruling creed.\n\nIn a literary world which was eagerly reading Gibbon [905] and\nVoltaire, [906] there was a peculiar absurdity in Burke's famous\nquestion (1790) as to \"Who now reads Bolingbroke\" and the rest of\nthe older deists. [907] The fashionable public was actually reading\nBolingbroke even then; [908] and the work of the older deists was being\ndone with new incisiveness and thoroughness by their successors. [909]\nIn the unstudious world of politics, if the readers were few the\nindifferentists were many. Evanson could truthfully write to Bishop\nHurd in 1777 that \"That general unbelief of revealed religion among\nthe higher orders of our countrymen, which, however your Lordship and I\nmight differ in our manner of accounting for it, is too notorious for\neither of us to doubt of, hath, by a necessary consequence, produced\nin the majority of our present legislators an absolute indifference\ntowards religious questions of every kind.\" [910] Beside Burke in\nParliament, all the while, was the Prime Minister, William Pitt the\nyounger, an agnostic deist.\n\n\n Whether or not the elder Pitt was a deist, the younger gave\n very plain signs of being at least no more. Gladstone (Studies\n subsidiary to the Works of Bishop Butler, ed. 1896, pp. 30-33) has\n sought to discredit the recorded testimony of Wilberforce (Life of\n Wilberforce, 1838, i, 98) that Pitt told him \"Bishop Butler's work\n raised in his mind more doubts than it had answered.\" Gladstone\n points to another passage in Wilberforce's diary which states that\n Pitt \"commended Butler's Analogy\" (Life, i, 90). But the context\n shows that Pitt had commended the book for the express purpose of\n turning Wilberforce's mind from its evangelical bias. Wilberforce\n was never a deist, and the purpose accordingly could not have\n been to make him orthodox. The two testimonies are thus perfectly\n consistent; especially when we note the further statement credibly\n reported to have been made by Wilberforce (Life, i, 95), that\n Pitt later \"tried to reason me out of my convictions.\" We have\n yet further the emphatic declaration of Pitt's niece, Lady Hester\n Stanhope, that he \"never went to church in his life ... never even\n talked about religion\" (Memoirs of Lady Hester Stanhope, 1845, iii,\n 166-67). This was said in emphatic denial of the genuineness of\n the unctuous death-bed speech put in Pitt's mouth by Gifford. Lady\n Hester's high veracity is accredited by her physician (Travels\n of Lady Hester Stanhope, 1846, i, pref. p. 11). No such character\n can be given to the conventional English biography of the period.\n\n We have further to note the circumstantial account by Wilberforce\n in his letter to the Rev. S. Gisborne immediately after Pitt's\n death (Correspondence, 1840, ii, 69-70), giving the details he\n had had in confidence from the Bishop of Lincoln. They are to\n the effect that, after some demur on Pitt's part (\"that he was\n not worthy to offer up any prayer, or was too weak,\") the Bishop\n prayed with him once. Wilberforce adds his \"fear\" that \"no further\n religious intercourse took place before or after, and I own I\n thought what was inserted in the papers impossible to be true.\"\n\n\nThere is clear testimony that Charles James Fox, Pitt's illustrious\nrival, was no more of a believer than he, [911] though equally careful\nto make no profession of unbelief. And it was Fox who, above all the\nEnglish statesmen of his day, fought the battle of religious toleration\n[912]--a service which finally puts him above Burke, and atones for\nmany levities of political action.\n\nAmong thinking men too the nascent science of geology was setting up\na new criticism of \"revelation\"--this twenty years before the issue of\nthe epoch-making works of Hutton. [913] In England the impulse seems to\nhave come from the writings of the Abb\u00e9 Langlet du Fresnoy, De Maillet,\nand Mirabaud, challenging the Biblical account of the antiquity of the\nearth. The new phase of \"infidelity\" was of course furiously denounced,\none of the most angry and most absurd of its opponents being the poet\nCowper. [914] Still rationalism persisted. Paley, writing in 1786,\nprotests that \"Infidelity is now served up in every shape that is\nlikely to allure, surprise, or beguile the imagination, in a fable,\na tale, a novel, or a poem, in interspersed or broken hints, remote\nand oblique surmises, in books of travel, of philosophy, of natural\nhistory--in a word, in any form rather than that of a professed\nand regular disquisition.\" [915] The orthodox Dr. J. Ogilvie, in\nthe introduction to his Inquiry into the Causes of the Infidelity\nand Skepticism of the Times (1783), begins: \"That the opinions of\nthe deists and skeptics have spread more universally during a part\nof the last century and in the present than at any former \u00e6ra since\nthe resurrection of letters, is a truth to which the friends and the\nenemies of religion will give their suffrage without hesitation.\" In\nshort, until the general reversal of all progress which followed on\nthe French Revolution, there had been no such change of opinion as\nBurke alleged.\n\nOne of the most popular poets and writers of the day was the\ncelebrated Erasmus Darwin, a deist, whose Zoonomia (1794) brought on\nhim the charge of atheism, as it well might. However he might poetize\nabout the Creator, Dr. Darwin in his verse and prose alike laid the\nfoundations of the doctrines of the transmutation of species and\nthe aqueous origin of simple forms of life which evolved into higher\nforms; though the idea of the descent of man from a simian species\nhad been broached before him by Buffon and Helv\u00e9tius in France, and\nLords Kames and Monboddo in Scotland. The idea of a Natura naturans\nwas indeed ancient; but it has been authoritatively said of Erasmus\nDarwin that \"he was the first who proposed and consistently carried\nout a well-rounded theory with regard to the development of the living\nworld--a merit which shines forth more brilliantly when we compare it\nwith the vacillating and confused attempts of Buffon, Linn\u00e6us, and\nGoethe. It is the idea of a power working from within the organisms\nto improve their natural position\" [916]--the idea which, developed\nby Lamarck, was modified by the great Darwin of the nineteenth century\ninto the doctrine of natural selection.\n\nAnd in the closing years of the century there arose a new promise of\nhigher life in the apparition of Mary Wollstonecraft, ill-starred but\nnoble, whose Letters on Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796) show her\nto have been a freethinking deist of remarkable original faculty,\n[917] and whose Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) was the\nfirst great plea for the emancipation of her sex.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 16\n\nEven in rural Scotland, the vogue of the poetry of Burns told of\ngerminal doubt. To say nothing of his mordant satires on pietistic\ntypes--notably Holy Willie's Prayer, his masterpiece in that\nline--Burns even in his avowed poems [918] shows small regard for\northodox beliefs; and his letters reveal him as substantially a deist,\nshading into a Unitarian. Such pieces as A Prayer in the prospect of\nDeath, and A Prayer under the pressure of Violent Anguish, are plainly\nunevangelical; [919] and the allusions to Jesus in his letters, even\nwhen writing to Mrs. Maclehose, who desired to bring him to confession,\nexclude orthodox belief, [920] though they suggest Unitarianism. He\nfrequently refers to religion in his letters, yet so constantly\nrestricts himself to the affirmation of a belief in a benevolent God\nand in a future state that he cannot be supposed to have held the\nfurther beliefs which his orthodox correspondents would wish him to\nexpress. A rationalistic habit is shown even in his professions of\nbelief, as here: \"Still I am a very sincere believer in the Bible;\nbut I am drawn by the conviction of a man, not the halter of an ass\";\n[921] and in the passage: \"Though I have no objection to what the\nChristian system tells us of another world, yet I own I am partial to\nthose proofs and ideas of it which we have wrought out of our own heads\nand hearts.\" [922] Withal, Burns always claimed to be \"religious,\"\nand was so even in a somewhat conventional sense. The lines:\n\n\n An atheist-laugh's a poor exchange\n For Deity offended [923]\n\n\nexhibit a sufficiently commonplace conception of Omnipotence; and\nthere is no sign that the poet ever did any hard thinking on the\nproblem. But, emotionalist of genius as he was, his influence as\na satirist and mitigator of the crudities and barbarities of Scots\nreligion has been incalculably great, and underlies all popular culture\nprogress in Scotland since his time. Constantly aspersed in his own\nday and world as an \"infidel,\" he yet from the first conquered the\ndevotion of the mass of his countrymen; though he would have been\nmore potent for intellectual liberation if he had been by them more\nintelligently read. Few of them now, probably, realize that their\nadored poet was either a deist or a Unitarian--presumably the former.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 17\n\nWith the infelicity in prediction which is so much commoner with him\nthan the \"prescience\" for which he is praised, Burke had announced that\nthe whole deist school \"repose in lasting oblivion.\" The proposition\nwould be much more true of 999 out of every thousand writers on behalf\nof Christianity. It is characteristic of Burke, however, that he does\nnot name Shaftesbury, a Whig nobleman of the sacred period. [924] A\nseeming justice was given to Burke's phrase by the undoubted reaction\nwhich took place immediately afterwards. In the vast panic which\nfollowed on the French Revolution, the multitude of mediocre minds\nin the middle and upper classes, formerly deistic or indifferent,\ntook fright at unbelief as something now visibly connected with\ndemocracy and regicide; new money endowments were rapidly bestowed\non the Church; and orthodoxy became fashionable on political grounds\njust as skepticism had become fashionable at the Restoration. Class\ninterest and political prejudice wrought much in both cases; only\nin opposite directions. Democracy was no longer Bibliolatrous,\ntherefore aristocracy was fain to became so, or at least to grow\nrespectful towards the Church as a means of social control. Gibbon,\nin his closing years, went with the stream. And as religious wars\nhave always tended to discredit religion, so a war partly associated\nwith the freethinking of the French revolutionists tended to discredit\nfreethought. The brutish wrecking of Priestley's house and library and\nchapel by a mob at Birmingham in 1791 was but an extreme manifestation\nof a reaction which affected every form of mental life. But while\nPriestley went to die in the United States, another English exile,\ntemporarily returned thence to his native land, was opening a new era\nof popular rationalism. Even in the height of the revolutionary tumult,\nand while Burke was blustering about the disappearance of unbelief,\nThomas Paine was laying deep and wide the English foundations of a new\ndemocratic freethought; and the upper-class reaction in the nature of\nthe case was doomed to impermanency, though it was to arrest English\nintellectual progress for over a generation. The French Revolution\nhad re-introduced freethought as a vital issue, even in causing it\nto be banned as a danger.\n\n\n That freethought at the end of the century was rather driven\n inwards and downwards than expelled is made clear by the multitude\n of fresh treatises on Christian evidences. Growing numerous\n after 1790, they positively swarm for a generation after Paley\n (1794). Cp. Essays on the Evidence and Influence of Christianity,\n Bath, 1790, pref.; Andrew Fuller, The Gospel its own Witness,\n 1799, pref. and concluding address to deists; Watson's sermon\n of 1795, in Two Apologies, ed. 1806, p. 399; Priestley's Memoirs\n (written in 1795), 1806, pp. 127-28; Wilberforce's Practical View,\n 1797, passim (e.g., pp. 366-69, 8th ed. 1841); Rev. D. Simpson,\n A Plea for Religion ... addressed to the Disciples of Thomas Paine,\n 1797. The latter writer states (2nd ed. p. 126) that \"infidelity is\n at this moment running like wildfire among the common people\"; and\n Fuller (2nd ed. p. 128) speaks of the Monthly Magazine as \"pretty\n evidently devoted to the cause of infidelity.\" A pamphlet on The\n Rise and Dissolution of the Infidel Societies in this Metropolis\n (London, 1800), by W. Hamilton Reid, describes the period as the\n first \"in which the doctrines of infidelity have been extensively\n circulated among the lower orders\"; and a Summary of Christian\n Evidences, by Bishop Porteous (1800; 16th ed. 1826), affirms,\n in agreement with the 1799 Report of the Lords' Committee on\n Treasonable Societies, that \"new compendiums of infidelity,\n and new libels on Christianity, are dispersed continually,\n with indefatigable industry, through every part of the kingdom,\n and every class of the community.\" Freethought, in short, was\n becoming democratized.\n\n\nAs regards England, Paine is the great popular factor; and it is the\nbare truth to say that he brought into the old debate a new earnestness\nand a new moral impetus. The first part of the Age of Reason, hastily\nput together in expectation of speedy death in 1793, and including\nsome astronomic matter that apparently antedates 1781, [925] is\na swift outline of the position of the rationalizing deist, newly\nconscious of firm standing-ground in astronomic science. That is the\nspecial note of Paine's gospel. He was no scholar; and the champions\nof the \"religion of Galilee\" have always been prompt to disparage\nany unlearned person who meddles with religion as an antagonist;\nbut in the second part of his book Paine put hard criticism enough\nto keep a world of popular readers interested for well over a hundred\nyears. The many replies are forgotten: the Biblical criticism of Paine\nwill continue to do its work till popular orthodoxy follows the lead\nof professional scholarship and gives up at once the acceptance and\nthe circulation of things incredible and indefensible as sacrosanct.\n\n\n Mr. Benn (Hist. of Eng. Rationalism in the Nineteenth Century, i,\n 217) remarks that Paine's New Testament criticisms are \"such as at\n all times would naturally occur to a reader of independent mind and\n strong common sense.\" If so, these had been up to Paine's time,\n and remained long afterwards, rare characteristics. And there\n is some mistake about Mr. Benn's criticism that \"the repeated\n charges of fraud and imposture brought against the Apostles and\n Evangelists ... jar painfully on a modern ear. But they are\n largely due to the mistaken notion, shared by Paine with his\n orthodox contemporaries, that the Gospels and Acts were written\n by contemporaries and eye-witnesses of the events related.\" Many\n times over, Paine argues that the documents could not have been\n so written. E.g. in Conway's ed. of Works, pp. 157, 158, 159,\n 160, 164, 167, 168, etc. The reiterated proposition is \"that the\n writers cannot have been eye-witnesses and ear-witnesses of what\n they relate; ... and consequently that the books have not been\n written by the persons called apostles\" (p. 168). And there is some\n exaggeration even in Mr. Benn's remark that, \"strangely enough, he\n accepts the Book of Daniel as genuine.\" Paine (ed. p. 144) merely\n puts a balance of probability in favour of the genuineness. It may\n be sometimes--it is certainly not always--true that Paine \"cannot\n distinguish between legendary or [? and] mythical narratives\"\n (Benn, p. 216); but it is to be feared that the disability subsists\n to-day in more scholarly quarters.\n\n Despite his deadly directness, Paine, in virtue of his strong\n sincerity, probably jars much less on the modern ear than\n he did on that of his own, which was so ready to make felony\n of any opinion hostile to reigning prejudices. But if it be\n otherwise, it is to be feared that no less offence will be given\n by Mr. Benn's own account of the Hexateuch as \"the records kept\n by a lying and bloodthirsty priesthood\"; even if that estimate be\n followed by the very challengeable admission that \"priesthoods\n are generally distinguished for their superior humanity\" (Benn,\n p. 350, and note).\n\n\nHenceforth there is a vital difference in the fortunes of freethought\nand religion alike. Always in the past the institutional strength\nof religion and the social weakness of freethought had lain in the\ncredulity of the ignorant mass, which had turned to naught an infinity\nof rational effort. After the French Revolution, when over a large area\nthe critical spirit began simultaneously to play on faith and life,\npolitics and religion, its doubled activity gave it a new breadth of\noutlook as of energy, and the slow enlightenment of the mass opened\nup a new promise for the ultimate reign of reason.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XVII\n\nFRENCH FREETHOUGHT IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY\n\n\n1. The fruits of the intellectual movement of the seventeenth\ncentury are seen beginning to take form on the very threshold of\nthe eighteenth. In 1700, at the height of the reign of the King's\nconfessors, there was privately printed the Lettre d'Hippocrate \u00e0\nDamag\u00e8te, described as \"the first French work openly destructive\nof Christianity.\" It was ascribed to the Comte de Boulainvilliers,\na pillar of the feudal system. [926] Thus early is the sound of\ndisintegration heard in the composite fabric of Church and State;\nand various fissures are seen in all parts of the structure. The king\nhimself, so long morally discredited, could only discredit pietism by\nhis adoption of it; the Jansenists and the Molinists [i.e., the school\nof Molina, not of Molinos] fought incessantly; even on the side of\nauthority there was bitter dissension between Bossuet and F\u00e9nelon;\n[927] and the movement of mysticism associated with the latter came\nto nothing, though he had the rare credit of converting, albeit\nto a doubtful orthodoxy, the emotional young Scotch deist Chevalier\nRamsay. [928] Where the subtlety of F\u00e9nelon was not allowed to operate,\nthe loud dialectic of Bossuet could not avail for faith as against\nrationalism, whatever it might do to upset the imperfect logic of\nProtestant sects. In no society, indeed, does mere declamation play\na larger part than in that of modern France; but in no society, on\nthe other hand, is mere declamation more sure to be disdained and\nderided by the keener spirits. In the years of disaster and decadence\nwhich rounded off in gloom the life of the Grand Monarque, with\ndefeat dogging his armies and bankruptcy threatening his finances,\nthe spirit of criticism was not likely to slacken. Literary polemic,\nindeed, was hardly to be thought of at such a time, even if it had\nbeen safe. In 1709 the king destroyed the Jansenist seminary of Port\nRoyal, wreaking an ignoble vengeance on the very bones of the dead\nthere buried; and more heretical thinkers had need go warily.\n\nYet even in those years of calamity, perhaps by reason of the very\nstress of it, some freethinking books somehow passed the press,\nthough a system of police espionage had been built up by the king,\nstep for step with some real reforms in the municipal government\nof Paris. The first was a romance of the favourite type, in which a\ntraveller discovers a strange land inhabited by surprisingly rational\npeople. Such appear to have been the Histoire de Calejava, by Claude\nGilbert, produced at Dijon in 1700, and the imaginary travels of\nJuan de Posos, published at Amsterdam in 1708. Both of these were\npromptly suppressed; the next contrived to get into circulation. The\nwork of Symon Tyssot de Patot, Voyages et Avantures de Jacques Mass\u00e9,\npublished in 1710, puts in the mouths of priests of the imaginary\nland discovered by the traveller such mordant arguments against the\nidea of a resurrection, the story of the fall, and other items of\nthe Christian creed, that there could be small question of the deism\nof the author; [929] and the prefatory Lettre de l'\u00e9diteur indicates\nmisgivings. The R\u00e9flexions sur les grands hommes qui sont morts en\nplaisantant, by Deslandes, ostensibly published at Amsterdam in 1712,\nseems to have had a precarious circulation, inasmuch as Brunet never\nsaw the first edition. To permit of the issue of such a book as Jacques\nMass\u00e9--even at Bordeaux--the censure must have been notably lax; as\nit was again in the year of the king's death, when there appeared a\ntranslation of Collins's Discourse of Freethinking. For the moment\nthe Government was occupied over an insensate renewal of the old\npersecution of Protestants, promulgating in 1715 a decree that all\nwho died after refusing the sacraments should be refused burial,\nand that their goods should be confiscated. The edict seems to have\nbeen in large measure disregarded.\n\n2. At the same time the continuous output of apologetics testified\nto the gathering tide of unbelief. The Benedictine Lami followed\nup his attack on Spinoza with a more popular treatise, L'Incr\u00e9dule\namen\u00e9 \u00e0 la religion par la raison (1710); the Abb\u00e9 Genest turned\nDescartes into verse by way of Preuves naturelles de l'existence de\nDieu et de l'immortalit\u00e9 de l'\u00e2me (1716); and the Anti-Lucretius of\nCardinal Polignac (1661-1741), though only posthumously published\nin full (1745), did but pass on to the next age, when deism was the\nprevailing heresy, a deistic argument against atheism. It is difficult\nto see any Christian sentiment in that dialectic performance of a\nborn diplomatist. [930]\n\nWhen the old king died, even the fashion of conformity passed\naway among the upper classes; [931] and the feverish manufacture of\napologetic works testifies to an unslackened activity of unbelief. In\n1719 Jean Denyse, professor of philosophy at the college of Montaigu,\nproduced La v\u00e9rit\u00e9 de la religion chr\u00e9tienne demontr\u00e9e par ordre\ng\u00e9om\u00e9trique (a title apparently suggested by Spinoza's early exposition\nof Descartes), without making any permanent impression on heterodox\nopinion. Not more successful, apparently, was the performance of the\nAbb\u00e9 Houteville, first published in 1722. [932] Much more amiable\nin tone, and more scientific in temper, than the common run of\ndefences, it was found, says an orthodox biographical dictionary,\nto be \"better fitted to make unbelievers than to convert them,\"\nseeing that \"objections were presented with much force and fulness,\nand the replies with more amenity than weight.\" [933] That the\nAbb\u00e9 was in fact not rigorously orthodox might almost be suspected\nfrom his having been appointed, in the last year of his life (1742),\n\"perpetual secretary\" to the Acad\u00e9mie, an office which somehow tended\nto fall to more or less freethinking members, being held before him\nby the Abb\u00e9 Dubos, and after him by Mirabaud, the Abb\u00e9 Duclos, [934]\nD'Alembert, and Marmontel. The Trait\u00e9s des Premi\u00e8res Verit\u00e9z of the\nJesuit Father Buffier (1724) can hardly have been more helpful to\nthe faith. [935] Another experiment by way of popularizing orthodoxy,\nthe copious Histoire du peuple de Dieu, by the Jesuit Berruyer, first\npublished in 1728, [936] had little better fortune, inasmuch as it\nscandalized the orthodox by its secularity of tone without persuading\nthe freethinkers. Condemned by the Bishop of Montpellier in 1731,\nit was censured by Rome in 1734; and the second part, produced long\nafterwards, aroused even more antagonism.\n\n3. There was thus no adaptation on the side of the Church to the forces\nwhich in an increasing degree menaced her rule. Under the regency of\nOrl\u00e9ans (1715-1723), the open disorder of the court on the one hand\nand the ruin of the disastrous financial experiment of Law on the\nother were at least favourable to toleration; but under the Duc de\nBourbon, put in power and soon superseded by Fleury (bishop of Fr\u00e9jus\nand tutor of Louis XV; later cardinal) there was a renewal of the\nrigours against the Protestants and the Jansenists; the edict of 1715\nwas renewed; emigration recommenced; and only public outcry checked\nthe policy of persecution on that side. But Fleury and the king went\non fighting the Jansenists; and while this embittered strife of the\nreligious sections could not but favour the growth of freethought,\nit was incompatible alike with official tolerance of unbelief and\nwith any effectual diffusion of liberal culture. Had the terrorism and\nthe waste of Louis XIV been followed by a sane system of finance and\none of religious toleration; and had not the exhausted and bankrupt\ncountry been kept for another half century--save for eight years\nof peace and prosperity from 1748 to 1755--on the rack of ruinous\nwars, alike under the regency of Orl\u00e9ans and the rule of Louis XV,\nthe intellectual life might have gone fast and far. As it was, war\nafter war absorbed its energy; and the debt of five milliards left\nby Louis XIV was never seriously lightened. Under such a system the\nvestiges of constitutional government were gradually swept away.\n\n4. As the new intellectual movement began to find expression, then, it\nfound the forces of resistance more and more organized. In particular,\nthe autocracy long maintained the severest checks on printing, so that\nfreethought could not save by a rare chance attain to open speech. Any\nbook with the least tendency to rationalism had to seek printers, or\nat least publishers, in Holland. Huard, in publishing his anonymous\ntranslation of the Hypotyposes of Sextus Empiricus (1725), is careful\nto say in his preface that he \"makes no application of the Pyrrhonian\nobjections to any dogma that may be called theological\"; but he goes\non to add that the scandalous quarrels of Christian sects are well\nfitted to confirm Pyrrhonists in their doubts, the sects having no\nsolid ground on which to condemn each other. As such an assertion was\nrank heresy, the translation had to be issued in Amsterdam, and even\nthere without a publisher's name. [937] And still it remains clear that\nthe age of Louis XIV had passed on to the next a heritage of hidden\nfreethinking, as well as one of debt and misgovernment. What takes\nplace thereafter is rather an evolution of and a clerical resistance\nto a growth known to have begun previously, and always feared and\nhated, than any new planting of unbelief in orthodox soil. As we\nhave seen, indeed, a part of the early work of skepticism was done\nby distinguished apologists. Huet, dying in 1722, left for posthumous\npublication his Trait\u00e9 philosophique de la faiblesse de l'esprit humain\n(1723). It was immediately translated into English and German; and\nthough it was probably found somewhat superfluous in deistic England,\nand supersubtle in Lutheran Germany, it helped to prepare the ground\nfor the active unbelief of the next generation in France.\n\n5. A continuous development may be traced throughout the\ncentury. Montesquieu, who in his early Persian Letters (1721) had\nrevealed himself as \"fundamentally irreligious\" [938] and a censor\nof intolerance, [939] proceeded in his masterly little book on the\nGreatness and Decadence of the Romans (1734) and his famous Spirit of\nLaws (1748) to treat the problems of human history in an absolutely\nsecular and scientific spirit, making only such conventional allusions\nto religion as were advisable in an age in which all heretical works\nwere suppressible. [940] The attempts of La Harpe and Villemain [941]\nto establish the inference that he repented his youthful levity in the\nPersian Letters, and recognized in Christianity the main pillar of\nsociety, will not bear examination. The very passages on which they\nfound [942] are entirely secular in tone and purpose, and tell of\nno belief. [943] So late as 1751 there appeared a work, Les Lettres\nPersanes convaincues d'impi\u00e9t\u00e9, by the Abb\u00e9 Gaultier. The election\nof Montesquieu was in fact the beginning of the struggle between\nthe Philosophe party in the Academy and their opponents; [944]\nand in his own day there was never much doubt about Montesquieu's\ndeism. In his posthumous Pens\u00e9es his anti-clericalism is sufficiently\nemphatic. \"Churchmen,\" he writes, \"are interested in keeping the\npeople ignorant.\" He expresses himself as a convinced deist, and,\nwith no great air of conviction, as a believer in immortality. But\nthere his faith ends. \"I call piety,\" he says, \"a malady of the heart,\nwhich plants in the soul a malady of the most ineradicable kind.\" \"The\nfalse notion of miracles comes of our vanity, which makes us believe\nwe are important enough for the Supreme Being to upset Nature on\nour behalf.\" \"Three incredibilities among incredibilities: the pure\nmechanism of animals [the doctrine of Descartes]; passive obedience;\nand the infallibility of the Pope.\" [945] His heresy was of course\ndivined by the guardians of the faith, through all his panegyric of\nit. Even in his lifetime, Jesuits and Jansenists combined to attack\nthe Spirit of Laws, which was denounced at an assembly of the clergy,\nput on the Roman Index, and prohibited by the censure until Malesherbes\ncame into office in 1750. [946] The Count de Cataneo, a Venetian noble\nin the service of the King of Prussia, published in French about 1751\na treatise on The Source, the Strength, and the True Spirit of Laws,\n[947] in which the political rationalism and the ethical utilitarianism\nof Cumberland and Grotius were alike repelled as irreconcilable\nwith the doctrine of revelation. It was doubtless because of this\natmosphere of hostility that on the death of Montesquieu at Paris, in\n1755, Diderot was the only man of letters who attended his funeral,\n[948] though the Acad\u00e9mie performed a commemorative service. [949]\nNevertheless, Montesquieu was throughout his life a figure in \"good\nsociety,\" and suffered no molestation apart from the outcry against\nhis books. He lived under a tradition of private freethinking and\npublic clericalism, even as did Moli\u00e8re in the previous century; and\nwhere the two traditions had to clash, as at interment, the clerical\ndominion affirmed itself. But even in the Church there were always\nsuccessors of Gassendi, to wit, philosophic unbelievers, as well as\nquiet friends of toleration. And it was given to an obscure Churchman\nto show the way of freethought to a generation of lay combatants.\n\n6. One of the most comprehensive freethinking works of the century, the\nTestament of Jean Meslier, cur\u00e9 of Etr\u00e9pigny, in Champagne (d. 1723,\n1729, or 1733), though it inspired numbers of eighteenth-century\nfreethinkers who read it in manuscript, was never printed till\n1861-64. It deserves here some special notice. [950] At his death, by\ncommon account, Meslier left two autograph copies of his book, after\nhaving deposited a third copy in the archives of the jurisdiction of\nSainte-Menehould. By a strange chance one was permitted to circulate,\nand ultimately there were some hundred copies in Paris, selling at ten\nlouis apiece. As he told on the wrapper of the copy he left for his\nparishioners, he had not dared to speak out during his life; but he\nhad made full amends. He is recorded to have been an exceptionally\ncharitable priest, devoted to his parishioners, whose interests\nhe indignantly championed against a tyrannous lord of the manor;\n[951] apropos of Descartes's doctrine of animal automatism, which he\nfiercely repudiates, he denounces with deep feeling all cruelty to\nanimals, at whose slaughter for food he winces; and his book reveals\nhim as a man profoundly impressed at once by the sufferings of the\npeople under heartless kings and nobles, and the immense imposture of\nreligion which, in his eyes, maintained the whole evil system. Some\nmen before him had impugned miracles, some the gospels, some dogma,\nsome the conception of deity, some the tyranny of kings. He impugns\nall; and where nearly all the deists had eulogized the character of\nthe Gospel Jesus, the priest envelops it in his harshest invective.\n\nHe must have written during whole years, with a sombre, invincible\npatience, dumbly building up, in his lonely leisure, his unfaltering\nnegation of all that the men around him held for sacred, and\nthat he was sworn to preach--the whole to be his testament to his\nparishioners. In the slow, heavy style--the style of a cart horse,\nVoltaire called it--there is an indubitable sincerity, a smouldering\npassion, but no haste, no explosion. The long-drawn, formless, prolix\nsentences say everything that can be said on their theme; and when\nthe long book was done it was slowly copied, and yet again copied, by\nthe same heavy, unwearying hand. He had read few books, it seems--only\nthe Bible, some of the Fathers, Montaigne, the \"Turkish Spy,\" Naud\u00e9,\nCharron, Pliny, Tourn\u00e9mine on atheism, and F\u00e9nelon on the existence of\nGod, with some history, and Moreri's Dictionary; but he had re-read\nthem often. He does not cite Bayle; and Montaigne is evidently his\nchief master. But on his modest reading he had reached as absolute a\nconviction of the untruth of the entire Jud\u00e6o-Christian religion as any\nfreethinker ever had. Moved above all by his sense of the corruption\nand misrule around him, he sets out with a twofold indictment against\nreligion and government, of which each part sustains the other, and\nhe tells his parishioners how he had been \"hundreds of times\" [952]\non the point of bursting out with an indignant avowal of his contempt\nfor the rites he was compelled to administer, and the superstitions\nhe had to inculcate. Then, in a grimly-planned order, he proceeds to\ndemolish, section by section, the whole structure.\n\nReligions in general he exhibits as tissues of error, illusion, and\nimposture, the endless sources of troubles and strifes for men. Their\nhistorical proofs and documentary bases are then assailed, and the\ngospels in particular are ground between the slow mill-stones of\nhis dialectic; miracles, promises, and prophecies being handled in\nturn. The ethic and the doctrine are next assailed all along the line,\nfrom their theoretic bases to their political results; and the kings\nof France fare no better than their creed. As against the theistic\nargument of F\u00e9nelon, the entire theistic system is then oppugned,\nsometimes with precarious erudition, generally with cumbrous but\nsolid reasoning; and the eternity of matter is affirmed with more than\nAverro\u00efstic conviction, the Cartesians coming in for a long series of\nheavy blows. Immortality is further denied, as miracles had been; and\nthe treatise ends with a stern affirmation of its author's rectitude,\nand, as it were, a massive gesture of contempt for all that will be\nsaid against him when he has passed into the nothingness which he is\nnearing. \"I have never committed any crime,\" he writes, [953] \"nor\nany bad or malicious action: I defy any man to make me on this head,\nwith justice, any serious reproach\"; but he quotes from the Psalms,\nwith grim zest, phrases of hate towards workers of iniquity. There\nis not even the hint of a smile at the astonishing bequest he was\nlaying up for his parishioners and his country. He was sure he would\nbe read, and he was right. The whole polemic of the next sixty years,\nthe indictment of the government no less than that of the creed,\nis laid out in his sombre treatise.\n\nTo the general public, however, he was never known save by the\n\"Extract\"--really a deistic adaptation--made by Voltaire, [954] and\nthe re-written summary by d'Holbach and Diderot entitled Le Bon Sens\ndu Cur\u00e9 Meslier (1772). [955] Even this publicity was delayed for\na generation, since Voltaire, who heard of the Testament as early\nas 1735, seems to have made no use of it till 1762. But the entire\ngroup of fighting freethinkers of the age was in some sense inspired\nby the old priest's legacy.\n\n7. Apart from this direct influence, too, others of the cloth bore\nsome part in the general process of enlightenment. A good type of\nthe agnostic priest of the period was the Abb\u00e9 Terrasson, the author\nof the philosophic romance Sethos (1732), who died in 1750. Not very\njudicious in his theory of human evolution (which he represented as a\ncontinuous growth from a stage of literary infancy, seen in Homer),\nhe adopted the Newtonian theory at a time when the entire Academy\nstood by Cartesianism. Among his friends he tranquilly avowed his\natheism. [956] He died \"without the sacraments,\" and when asked whether\nhe believed all the doctrine of the Church, he replied that for him\nthat was not possible. [957] Another anti-clerical Abb\u00e9 was Gaidi,\nwhose poem, La Religion \u00e0 l'Assembl\u00e9 du Clerg\u00e9 de France (1762),\nwas condemned to be burned. [958]\n\nAmong or alongside of such disillusioned Churchmen there must have\nbeen a certain number who, desiring no breach with the organization\nto which they belonged, saw the fatal tendency of the spirit of\npersecution upon which its rulers always fell back in their struggle\nwith freethought, and sought to open their eyes to the folly and\nfutility of their course. Freethinkers, of course, had to lead the\nway, as we have seen. It was the young Turgot who in 1753 published\ntwo powerful Lettres sur la tol\u00e9rance, and in 1754 a further series of\nadmirable Lettres d'un eccl\u00e9siastique \u00e0 un magistrat, pleading the same\ncause. [959] But similar appeals were anonymously made, by a clerical\npen, at a moment when the Church was about to enter on a new and\nexasperating conflict with the growing band of freethinking writers who\nrallied round Voltaire. The small book of Questions sur la tol\u00e9rance,\nascribed to the Abb\u00e9 Tailh\u00e9 or Tailhi\u00e9 and the canonist Maultrot\n(Geneva, 1758), is conceived in the very spirit of rationalism, yet\nwith a careful concern to persuade the clergy to sane courses, and is\nto this day worth reading as a utilitarian argument. But the Church\nwas not fated to be led by such light. The principle of toleration\nwas left to become the watchword of freethought, while the Church\nidentified herself collectively with that of tyranny.\n\nAnecdotes of the time reveal the coincidence of tyranny and evasion,\nintolerance and defiance. Of Nicolas Boindin (1676-1751), procureur\nin the royal Bureau des Finances, who was received into the Academy of\nInscriptions and Belles-Lettres in 1706, it is told that he \"would have\nbeen received in the French Academy if the public profession he made\nof being an atheist had not excluded him.\" [960] But the publicity\nwas guarded. When he conversed with the young Marmontel [961] and\nothers at the Caf\u00e9 Procope, they used a conversational code in which\nthe soul was called Margot, religion Javotte, liberty Jeanneton,\nand the deity Monsieur de l'\u00catre. Once a listener of furtive aspect\nasked Boindin who might be this Monsieur de l'\u00catre who behaved so ill,\nand with whom they were so displeased? \"Monsieur,\" replied Boindin,\n\"he is a police spy\"--such being the avocation of the questioner. [962]\n\"The morals of Boindin,\" says a biographical dictionary of the period,\n\"were as pure as those of an atheist can be; his heart was generous;\nbut to these virtues he joined presumption and the obstinacy which\nfollows from it, a bizarre humour, and an unsociable character.\" [963]\nOther testimonies occur on the first two heads, not on the last. But he\nwas fittingly refused \"Christian\" interment, and was buried by night,\n\"sans pompe.\"\n\n8. With the ground prepared as we have seen, freethought was bound\nto progress in France in the age of Louis XV; but it chanced that\nthe lead fell into the hands of the most brilliant and fecund of all\nthe writers of the century. Voltaire [964] (1694-1778) was already\nsomething of a freethinker when a mere child. So common was deism\nalready become in Paris at the end of the seventeenth century that his\ngodfather, an abb\u00e9, is said to have taught him, at the age of three,\na poem by J. B. Rousseau, [965] then privately circulated, in which\nMoses in particular and religious revelations in general are derided\nas fraudulent. [966] Knowing this poem by heart in his childhood,\nthe boy was well on the way to his life's work. It is on record\nthat many of his school-fellows were, like himself, already deists,\nthough his brother, a juvenile Jansenist, made vows to propitiate\nthe deity on the small unbeliever's behalf. [967] It may have been\na general reputation for audacious thinking that led to his being\ncharged with the authorship of a stinging philippic published in\n1715, after the death of Louis XIV. The unknown author, a young man,\nenumerated the manifold abuses and iniquities of the reign, concluding:\n\"I have seen all these, and I am not twenty years old.\" Voltaire was\nthen twenty-two; but D'Argenson, who in the poem had been called\n\"the enemy of the human race,\" finding no likelier author for the\nverses, put him under surveillance and exiled him from Paris; and on\nhis imprudent return imprisoned him for nearly a year in the Bastille\n(1716), releasing him only when the real author of the verses avowed\nhimself. Unconquerable then as always, Voltaire devoted himself in\nprison to his literary ambitions, planning his Henriade and completing\nhis OEdipe, which was produced in 1718 with signal success.\n\nVoltaire was thus already a distinguished young poet and dramatist\nwhen, in 1726, after enduring the affronts of an assault by a\nnobleman's lacqueys, and of imprisonment in the Bastille for seeking\namends by duel, he came to England, where, like Deslandes before him,\nhe met with a ready welcome from the freethinkers. [968] Four years\npreviously, in the powerful poem, For and Against, [969] he had\nput his early deistic conviction in a vehement impeachment of the\nimmoral creed of salvation and damnation, making the declaration,\n\"I am not a Christian.\" Thus what he had to learn in England was\nnot deism, but the physics of Newton and the details of the deist\ncampaign against revelationism; and these he mastered. [970] Not\nonly was he directly and powerfully influenced by Bolingbroke, who\nbecame his intimate friend, but he read widely in the philosophic,\nscientific, and deistic English literature of the day, [971] and\nwent back to France, after three years' stay, not only equipped for\nhis ultimate battle with tyrannous religion, but deeply impressed by\nthe moral wholesomeness of free discussion. [972] Not all at once,\nindeed, did he become the mouthpiece of critical reason for his age:\nhis literary ambitions were primarily on the lines of belles lettres,\nand secondarily on those of historical writing. After his Pour et\nContre, his first freethinking production was the not very heretical\nLettres philosophiques or Lettres anglaises, written in England in\n1728, and, after circulating in MS., published in five editions in\n1734; and the official burning of the book by the common hangman,\nfollowed by the imprisonment of the bookseller in the Bastille, [973]\nwas a sufficient check on such activity for the time. Save for the\njests about Adam and Eve in the Mondain (1736), a slight satire for\nwhich he had to fly from Paris; and the indirect though effective\nthrusts at bigotry in the Ligue (1723; later the Henriade); in the\ntragedy of Mahomet (1739; printed in 1742), in the tales of Memnon\nand Zadig (1747-48), and in the Id\u00e9es de La Mothe le Vayer (1751) and\nthe D\u00e9fense de Milord Bolingbroke (1752), he produced nothing else\nmarkedly deistic till 1755, when he published the \"Poem to the King\nof Prussia,\" otherwise named Sur la loi naturelle (which appears to\nhave been written in 1751, while he was on a visit to the Margravine\nof Bayreuth), and that on the Earthquake of Lisbon. So definitely did\nthe former poem base all morality on natural principles that it was\nordered to be burned by the Parlement of Paris, then equally alarmed\nat freethinking and at Molinism. [974] And so impossible was it still\nin France to print any specific criticism of Christianity that when\nin 1759 he issued his verse translations of the Song of Solomon and\nEcclesiastes they also were publicly burned, though he had actually\nsoftened instead of heightening the eroticism of the first and the\n\"materialism\" of the second. [975]\n\n9. It is thus a complete mistake on the part of Buckle to affirm\nthat the activity of the French reformers up to 1750 was directed\nagainst religion, and that it was thereafter turned against the\nState. Certainly there was much freethinking among instructed men\nand others, but it proceeded, as under Louis XIV, mainly by way of\nmanuscripts and conversation, or at best by the circulation of English\nbooks and a few translations of these; and only guardedly before 1745\nby means of published French books. [976] The Abb\u00e9 Ranchon, in his\nMS. Life of Cardinal Fleury, truly says that \"the time of the Regency\nwas a period of the spirit of dissoluteness and irreligion\"; but when\nhe ascribes to \"those times\" many \"licentious and destructive writings\"\nhe can specify only those of the English deists. \"Precisely in the\ntime of the Regency a multitude of those offensive and irreligious\nbooks were brought over the sea: France was deluged with them.\" [977]\nIt is incredible that multitudes of Frenchmen read English in the days\nof the Regency. French freethinkers like Saint Evremond and Deslandes,\nwho visited or sojourned in London before 1715, took their freethought\nthere with them; and the only translations then in print were those\nof Collins's Discourse of Freethinking and Shaftesbury's essays on\nthe Use of Ridicule and on Enthusiasm. Apart from these, the only\nknown French freethinking book of the Regency period was the work of\nVroes, a councillor at the court of Brabant, on the Spirit of Spinoza,\nreprinted as Des trois imposteurs. Meslier died not earlier than 1729;\nthe Histoire de la philosophie payenne of Burigny belongs to 1724;\nthe Lettres philosophiques of Voltaire to 1734; the earlier works\nof d'Argens to 1737-38; the Nouvelles libert\u00e9s de penser, edited by\nDumarsais, to 1743; and the militant treatise of De la Serre, best\nknown as the Examen de la Religion, to 1745.\n\nThe ferment thus kept up was indeed so great that about 1748 the\necclesiastical authorities decided on the remarkable step of adopting\nfor their purposes the apologetic treatise adapted by Jacob Vernet,\nprofessor of belles lettres at Geneva, from the works of Jean-Alphonse\nTurrettin, [978] not only a Protestant but a substantially Socinian\nprofessor of ecclesiastical history at the same university. The\ntreatise is itself a testimony to the advance of rationalism in the\nProtestant world; and its adoption, even under correction, by the\nCatholic Church in France tells of a keen consciousness of need. But\nthe dreaded advance, as we have seen, was only to a small extent yet\ntraceable by new literature. The Examen critique des apologistes de la\nreligion chr\u00e9tienne of L\u00e9vesque de Burigny was probably written about\n1732, and then and thereafter circulated in manuscript, but it was\nnot published till 1766; and even in manuscript its circulation was\nprobably small, though various apologetic works had testified to the\nincreasing uneasiness of the orthodox world. Such titles as La religion\nchr\u00e9tienne demontr\u00e9e par la Resurrection (by Armand de la Chapelle,\n1728) and La religion chr\u00e9tienne prouv\u00e9e par l'accomplissement des\nproph\u00e9ties (by P\u00e8re Baltus, 1728) tell of private unbelief under the\nRegency. In 1737 appeared the voluminous treatise (anonymous) of the\nAbb\u00e9 de la Chambre, Trait\u00e9 de la v\u00e9ritable religion contre les ath\u00e9es,\nles d\u00e9istes, etc. (5 vols.). In 1747, again, there appeared a learned,\nlaborious, and unintelligent work in three volumes (authorized in\n1742), Le Libertinage combattu par la t\u00e9moignage des auteurs profanes,\nby an unnamed Benedictine [979] of the Congregation of St. Vanne. It\ndeclares that, between atheism and deism, there has never been so\nmuch unbelief as now; but it cites no modern books, and is devoted to\narraying classic arguments in support of theism and morals. Part of the\nexposition consists in showing that Epicurus, Lucian, and Euripides,\nwhom modern atheists are wont to cite as their masters, were not and\ncould not have been atheists; and the pious author roundly declares\nin favour of paganism as against atheism.\n\nSo much smoke tells of fire; but only in 1745 and 1746 did the printed\nExamen of De la Serre and the Pens\u00e9es philosophiques of Diderot begin\nto build up in France the modern school of critical and philosophic\ndeism. When in 1751 the Abb\u00e9 Gauchat began his series of Lettres\ncritiques, he set out by attacking Voltaire's Lettres philosophiques,\nDiderot's Pens\u00e9es philosophiques, the anonymous Discours sur la vie\nheureuse (1748), Les Moeurs [980] (1748), and Pope's Essay on Man;\ntaking up in his second volume the Lettres Persanes of Montesquieu\n(1721), and other sets of Lettres written in imitation of them. In the\nthird volume he has nothing more aggressive of Voltaire's to deal with\nthan La Henriade, the Mahomet, and some of his fugitive pieces. And\nthe Bishop of Puy, writing in 1754 his La D\u00e9votion concili\u00e9e avec\nl'esprit, could say to the faithful: \"You live in an age fertile in\npretended esprits forts, who, too weak nevertheless to attack in front\nan invincible religion, skirmish lightly around it, and in default of\nthe reasons they lack, employ raillery.\" [981] The chivalrous bishop\nknew perfectly well that had a serious attack been published author\nand publisher would have been sent if possible to the Bastille, if\nnot to the scaffold. But his evidence is explicit. There is here no\nrecognition of any literary bombardment, though there was certainly\nan abundance of unbelief. [982]\n\nBuckle has probably mistaken the meaning of the summing up of some\nprevious writer to the effect that up to 1750 or a few years later\nthe political opposition to the Court was religious, in the sense of\necclesiastical or sectarian (Jansenist), [983] and that it afterwards\nturned to matters of public administration. [984] It would be truer\nto say that the early Lettres philosophiques, the reading of which\nlater made the boy Lafayette a republican at nine, were a polemic for\npolitical and social freedom, and as such a more direct criticism of\nthe French administrative system than Voltaire ever penned afterwards,\nsave in the Voix du Sage et du Peuple (1750). In point of fact, as\nwill be shown below, only some twenty scattered freethinking works had\nappeared in French up to 1745, almost none of them directly attacking\nChristian beliefs; and, despite the above-noted sallies of Voltaire,\nCondorcet comes to the general conclusion that it was the hardihood\nof Rousseau's deism in the \"Confession of a Savoyard Vicar\" in his\n\u00c9mile (1762) that spurred Voltaire to new activity. [985] This is\nperhaps not quite certain; there is some reason to believe that his\n\"Sermon of the Fifty,\" his \"first frontal attack on Christianity,\"\n[986] was written a year before; but in any case that and other\nproductions of his at once left Rousseau far in the rear. Even now he\nhad no fixed purpose of continuous warfare against so powerful and\ncruel an enemy as the Church, which in 1757 had actually procured\nan edict pronouncing the death penalty against all writers of works\nattacking religion; though the fall of the Jesuits in 1764 raised new\nhopes of freedom. But when, after that hopeful episode, there began\na new movement of Jansenist fanaticism; and when, after the age of\nreligious savagery had seemed to be over, there began a new series\nof religious atrocities in France itself (1762-66), he girded on a\nsword that was not to be laid down till his death.\n\n\n Even so late as 1768, in his last letter to Damilaville (8 f\u00e9v.),\n Voltaire expresses a revulsion against the aggressive freethought\n propaganda of the time which is either one of his epistolary\n stratagems or the expression of a nervous reaction in a time of\n protracted bad health. \"Mes chagrins redoublent,\" he writes, \"par\n la quantit\u00e9 incroyable d'\u00e9crits contre la religion chr\u00e9tienne, qui\n se succ\u00e9dent aussi rapidement en Hollande que les gazettes et les\n journaux.\" His enemies have the barbarism to impute to him, at his\n age, \"une partie de ces extravagances compos\u00e9es par de jeunes gens\n et par des moines d\u00e9froqu\u00e9s.\" His immediate ground for chagrin may\n have been the fact that this outbreak of anti-Christian literature\n was likely to thwart him in the campaign he was then making to\n secure justice to the Sirven family as he had already vindicated\n that of Calas. Sirven barely missed the fate of the latter.\n\n The misconception of Buckle, above discussed, has been widely\n shared even among students. Thus Lord Morley, discussing the\n \"Creed of the Savoyard Vicar\" in Rousseau's \u00c9mile (1762), writes\n that \"Souls weary of the fierce mockeries that had so long been\n flying like fiery shafts against the far Jehovah of the Hebrews,\n and the silent Christ of the later doctors and dignitaries,\"\n may well have turned to it with ardour (Rousseau, ed. 1886, ii,\n 266). He further speaks of the \"superiority of the sceptical parts\n of the Savoyard Vicar's profession ... over the biting mockeries\n which Voltaire had made the fashionable method of assault\"\n (p. 294). No specifications are offered, and the chronology is\n seen to be astray. The only mockeries which Voltaire could be said\n to have made fashionable before 1760 were those of his Lettres\n philosophiques, his Mondain, his D\u00e9fense de Milord Bolingbroke,\n and his philosophically humorous tales, as Candide, Zadig,\n Microm\u00e9gas, etc.: all his distinctive attacks on Judaism and\n Christianity were yet to come. [The Abb\u00e9 Guyon, in his L'Oracle\n des nouveaux philosophes (Berne, 1759-60, 2 tom.), proclaims an\n attack on doctrines taught \"dans les livres de nos beaux esprits\"\n (Avert. p. xi); but he specifies only denials of (1) revelation,\n (2) immortality, and (3) the Biblical account of man's creation;\n and he is largely occupied with Diderot's Pens\u00e9es philosophiques,\n though his book is written at Voltaire. The second volume is\n devoted to Candide and the Pr\u00e9cis of Ecclesiastes and the Song\n of Solomon--not very fierce performances.] Lord Morley, as it\n happens, does not make this chronological mistake in his earlier\n work on Voltaire, where he rightly represents him as beginning his\n attack on \"the Infamous\" after he had settled at Ferney (1758). His\n \"fierce mockeries\" begin at the earliest in 1761. The mistake may\n have arisen through taking as true the fictitious date of 1736\n for the writing of the Examen Important de Milord Bolingbroke. It\n belongs to 1767. Buckle's error, it may be noted, is repeated by\n so careful a student as Dr. Redlich, Local Government in England,\n Eng. tr. 1903, i, 64.\n\n\n10. The rest of Voltaire's long life was a sleepless and dexterous\nwarfare, by all manner of literary stratagem, [987] facilitated by\nvast literary fame and ample acquired wealth, against what he called\n\"the Infamous\"--the Church and the creed which he found still swift to\nslay for mere variation of belief, and slow to let any good thing be\nwrought for the bettering of men's lives. Of his prodigious literary\nperformance it is probably within the truth to say that in respect\nof rapid influence on the general intelligence of the world it has\nnever been equalled by any one man's writing; and that, whatever its\nmeasure of error and of personal misdirection, its broader influence\nwas invariably for peace on earth, for tolerance among men, and for\nreason in all things. His faults were many, and some were serious; but\nto no other man of his age, save possibly Beccaria, can be attributed\nso much beneficent accomplishment. He can perhaps better be estimated\nas a force than as a man. So great was the area of his literary\nenergy that he is inevitably inadequate at many points. Lessing\ncould successfully impugn him in drama; Diderot in metaphysic;\nGibbon in history; and it is noteworthy that all of these men [988]\nat different times criticized him with asperity, testing him by the\ngiven item of performance, and disparaging his personality. Yet in\nhis own way he was a greater power than any of them; and his range,\nas distinguished from his depth, outgoes theirs. In sum, he was the\ngreatest mental fighter of his age, perhaps of any age: in that aspect\nhe is a \"power-house\" not to be matched in human history; and his\npolemic is mainly for good. It was a distinguished English academic\nwho declared that \"civilization owes more to Voltaire than to all the\nFathers of the Church put together.\" [989] If in a literary way he\nhated his personal foes, much more did he hate cruelty and bigotry;\nand it was his work more than any that made impossible a repetition in\nEurope of such clerical crimes as the hanging of the Protestant pastor,\nLa Rochette; the execution of the Protestant, Calas, on an unproved\nand absurdly false charge; the torture of his widow and children;\nthe beheading of the lad La Barre for ill-proved blasphemy. [990]\nAs against his many humanities, there is not to be charged on him one\nact of public malevolence. In his relations with his fickle admirer,\nFrederick the Great, and with others of his fellow-thinkers, he and\nthey painfully brought home to freethinkers the lesson that for them\nas for all men there is a personal art of life that has to be learned,\nover and above the rectification of opinion. But he and the others\nwrought immensely towards that liberation alike from unreason and\nfrom bondage which must precede any great improvement of human things.\n\nVoltaire's constant burden was that religion was not only untrue\nbut pernicious, and when he was not dramatically showing this of\nChristianity, as in his poem La Ligue (1723), he was saying it by\nimplication in such plays as Za\u00efre (1732) and Mahomet (1742), dealing\nwith the fanaticism of Islam; while in the Essai sur les moeurs (1756),\nreally a broad survey of general history, and in the Si\u00e8cle de Louis\nXIV, he applied the method of Montesquieu, with pungent criticism\nthrown in. Later, he added to his output direct criticisms of the\nChristian books, as in the Examen important de Milord Bolingbroke\n(1767), and the Recherches historiques sur le Christianisme (? 1769),\ncontinuing all his former lines of activity. Meanwhile, with the aid of\nhis companion the Marquise du Chatelet, an accomplished mathematician,\nhe had done much to popularize the physics of Newton and discredit\nthe scientific fallacies of the system of Descartes; all the while\npreaching a Newtonian but rather agnostic deism. This is the purport\nof his Philosophe Ignorant, his longest philosophical essay. [991]\nThe destruction of Lisbon by the earthquake of 1755 seems to have\nshaken him in his deistic faith, since the upshot of his poem on that\nsubject is to leave the moral government of the universe an absolute\nenigma; and in the later Candide (1759) he attacks theistic optimism\nwith his matchless ridicule. Indeed, as early as 1749, in his Trait\u00e9\nde la M\u00e9taphysique, written for the Marquise du Chatelet, he reaches\nvirtually pantheistic positions in defence of the God-idea, declaring\nwith Spinoza that deity can be neither good nor bad. But, like so\nmany professed pantheists, he relapsed, and he never accepted the\natheistic view; on the contrary, we find him arguing absurdly enough,\nin his Homily on Atheism (1765), that atheism had been the destruction\nof morality in Rome; [992] on the publication of d'Holbach's System\nof Nature in 1770 he threw off an article Dieu: r\u00e9ponse au Syst\u00e8me\nde la Nature, where he argued on the old deistic lines; and his tale\nof Jenni; or, the Sage and the Atheist (1775), is a polemic on the\nsame theme. By this time the inconsistent deism of his youth had\nitself been discredited among the more thoroughgoing freethinkers;\nand for years it had been said in one section of literary society\nthat Voltaire after all \"is a bigot; he is a deist!\" [993]\n\nBut for freethinkers of all schools the supreme service of Voltaire lay\nin his twofold triumph over the spirit of religious persecution. He\nhad contrived at once to make it hateful and to make it ridiculous;\nand it is a great theistic poet of our own day that has pronounced\nhis blade the\n\n\n sharpest, shrewdest steel that ever stabbed\n To death Imposture through the armour joints. [994]\n\n\nTo be perfect, the tribute should have noted that he hated cruelty\nmuch more than imposture; and such is the note of the whole movement of\nwhich his name was the oriflamme. Voltaire personally was at once the\nmost pugnacious and the most forgiving of men. Few of the Christians\nwho hated him had so often as he fulfilled their own precept of\nreturning good for evil to enemies; and none excelled him in hearty\nphilanthropy. It is notable that most of the humanitarian ideas of\nthe latter half of the century--the demand for the reform of criminal\ntreatment, the denunciation of war and slavery, the insistence on\ngood government, and toleration of all creeds--are more definitely\nassociated with the freethinking than with any religious party,\nexcepting perhaps the laudable but uninfluential sect of Quakers.\n\n\n The character of Voltaire is still the subject of chronic debate;\n but the old deadlock of laudation and abuse is being solved\n in a critical recognition of him as a man of genius flawed by\n the instability which genius so commonly involves. Carlyle\n (that model of serenity), while dwelling on his perpetual\n perturbations, half-humanely suggests that we should think of\n him as one constantly hag-ridden by maladies of many kinds; and\n this recognition is really even more important in Voltaire's\n case than in Carlyle's own. He was \"a bundle of nerves,\" and\n the clear light of his sympathetic intelligence was often blown\n aside by gusts of passion--often enough excusably. But while his\n temperamental weaknesses exposed him at times to humiliation,\n and often to sarcasm; and while his compelled resort to constant\n stratagem made him more prone to trickery than his admirers can\n well care to think him, the balance of his character is abundantly\n on the side of generosity and humanity.\n\n One of the most unjustifiable of recent attacks upon him\n (one regrets to have to say it) came from the pen of the late\n Prof. Churton Collins. In his book on Voltaire, Montesquieu,\n and Rousseau in England (1908) that critic gives in the main\n an unbiassed account of Voltaire's English experience; but at\n one point (p. 39) he plunges into a violent impeachment with\n the slightest possible justification. He in effect adopts the\n old allegation of Ruffhead, the biographer of Pope--a statement\n repeated by Johnson--that Voltaire used his acquaintance with Pope\n and Bolingbroke to play the spy on them, conveying information\n to Walpole, for which he was rewarded. The whole story collapses\n upon critical examination. Ruffhead's story is, in brief, that\n Pope purposely lied to Voltaire as to the authorship of certain\n published letters attacking Walpole. They were by Bolingbroke;\n but Pope, questioned by Voltaire, said they were his own, begging\n him to keep the fact absolutely secret. Next day at court everyone\n was speaking of the letters as Pope's; and Pope accordingly knew\n that Voltaire was a traitor. For this tale there is absolutely\n nothing but hearsay evidence. Ruffhead, as Johnson declared, knew\n nothing of Pope, and simply used Warburton's material. The one\n quasi-confirmation cited by Mr. Collins is Bolingbroke's letter\n to Swift (May 18, 1727) asking him to \"insinuate\" that Walpole's\n only ground for ascribing the letters to Bolingbroke \"is the\n authority of one of his spies ... who reports, not what he hears\n ... but what he guesses.\" This is an absolute contradiction of the\n Pope story, at two points. It refers to a guess at Bolingbroke,\n and tells of no citation from Pope. To put it as confirming the\n charge is to exhibit a complete failure of judgment.\n\n After this irrational argument, Mr. Collins offers a worse. He\n admits (p. 43) that Voltaire always remained on friendly\n terms with both Pope and Bolingbroke; but adds that this \"can\n scarcely be alleged as a proof of his innocence, for neither\n Pope nor Bolingbroke would, for such an offence, have been\n likely to quarrel with a man in a position so peculiar as that\n of Voltaire. His flattery was pleasant....\" Such an argument is\n worse than nugatory. That Bolingbroke spoke ill in private of\n Voltaire on general grounds counts for nothing. He did the same of\n Pope and of nearly all his friends. Mr. Collins further accuses\n Voltaire of baseness, falsehood, and hypocrisy on the mere score\n of his habit of extravagant flattery. This was notoriously the\n French mode in that age; but it had been just as much the mode\n in seventeenth-century England, from the Jacobean translators of\n the Bible to Dryden--to name no others. And Mr. Collins in effect\n charges systematic hypocrisy upon both Pope and Bolingbroke.\n\n Other stories of Ruffhead's against Voltaire are equally improbable\n and ill-vouched--as Mr. Collins incidentally admits, though he\n forgets the admission. They all come from Warburton, himself\n convicted of double-dealing with Pope; and they finally stand for\n the hatred of Frenchmen which was so common in eighteenth-century\n England, and is apparently not yet quite extinct. Those who would\n have a sane, searching, and competent estimate of Voltaire,\n leaning humanely to the side of goodwill, should turn to the\n Voltaire of M. Champion. A brief estimate was attempted by the\n present writer in the R. P. A. Annual for 1912.\n\n\n11. It is difficult to realize how far the mere demand for\ntolerance which sounds from Voltaire's plays and poems before he\nhas begun to assail credences was a signal and an inspiration to new\nthinkers. Certain it is that the principle of toleration, passed on\nby Holland to England, was regarded by the orthodox priesthood in\nFrance as the abomination of desolation, and resisted by them with all\ntheir power. But the contagion was unquenchable. It was presumably in\nHolland that there were printed in 1738 the two volumes of Lettres sur\nla religion essentielle \u00e0 l'homme, distingu\u00e9e de ce qui n'en est que\nl'accessoire, by Marie Huber, a Genevese lady living in Lyons; also the\ntwo following parts (1739), replying to criticisms on the earlier. In\nits gentle way, the book stands very distinctly for the \"natural\" and\nethical principle in religion, denying that the deity demands from men\neither service or worship, or that he can be wronged by their deeds,\nor that he can punish them eternally for their sins. This was one\nof the first French fruits, after Voltaire, of the English deistic\ninfluence; [995] and it is difficult to understand how the authoress\nescaped molestation. Perhaps the memory of the persecution inflicted\non the mystic Madame Guyon withheld the hand of power. As it was,\nfour Protestant theologians opened fire on her, regarding her doctrine\nas hostile to Christianity. One pastor wrote from Geneva, one from\nAmsterdam, and two professors from Zurich--the two last in Latin. [996]\n\nFrom about 1746 onwards, the rationalist movement in eighteenth-century\nFrance rapidly widens and deepens. The number of rationalistic\nwriters, despite the press laws which in that age inflicted the\nindignity of imprisonment on half the men of letters, increased\nfrom decade to decade, and the rising prestige of the philosophes\nin connection with the Encyclop\u00e9die (1751-72) gave new courage to\nwriters and printers. At once the ecclesiastical powers saw in the\nEncyclop\u00e9die a dangerous enemy; and in January, 1752, the Sorbonne\ncondemned a thesis \"To the celestial Jerusalem,\" by the Abb\u00e9 de\nPrades. It had at first (1751) been received with official applause,\nbut was found on study to breathe the spirit of the new work, [997]\nto which the Abb\u00e9 had contributed, and whose editor, Diderot, was his\nfriend. Sooth to say, it contained not a little matter calculated\nto act as a solvent of faith. Under the form of a vindication of\northodox Catholicism, it negated alike Descartes and Leibnitz; and\ndeclared that the science of Newton and the Dutch physiologists was\na better defence of religion than the theses of Clarke, Descartes,\nCudworth, and Malebranche, which made for materialism. The handling,\ntoo, of the question of natural versus revealed religion, in which\n\"theism\" is declared to be superior to all religions si unam excipias\nveram, \"if you except the one true,\" might well arouse distrust in a\nvigilant Catholic reader. [998] The whole argument savours far more\nof the scientific comparative method than was natural in the work\nof an eighteenth-century seminarist; and the principle, \"Either we\nare ocular witnesses of the facts or we know them only by hearsay,\"\n[999] was plainly as dangerous to the Christian creed as to any\nother. According to Naigeon, [1000] the treatise was wholly the work of\nde Prades and another Abb\u00e9, Yvon; [1001] but it remains probable that\nDiderot inspired not a little of the reasoning; and the clericals,\nbent on putting down the Encyclop\u00e9die, professed to have discovered\nthat he was the real author of the thesis. Either this belief or a\ndesire to strike at the Encyclop\u00e9die through one of its collaborators\n[1002] was the motive of the absurdly belated censure. Such a fiasco\nevoked much derision from the philosophic party, particularly from\nVoltaire; and the Sorbonne compassed a new revenge. Soon after came\nthe formal condemnation of the first two volumes of the Encyclop\u00e9die,\nof which the second had just appeared. [1003]\n\nD'Argenson, watching in his vigilant retirement the course of things\non all hands, sees in the episode a new and dangerous development,\n\"the establishment of a veritable inquisition in France, of which the\nJesuits joyfully take charge,\" though he repeatedly remarks also on\nthe eagerness of the Jansenists to outgo the Jesuits. [1004] But soon\nthe publication of the Encyclop\u00e9die is resumed; and in 1753 D'Argenson\ncontentedly notes the official bestowal of \"tacit permissions to print\nsecretly\" books which could not obtain formal authorization. The\npermission had been given first by the President Malesherbes; but\neven when that official lost the king's confidence the practice was\ncontinued by the lieutenant of police. [1005] Despite the staggering\nblow of the suppression of the Encyclop\u00e9die, the philosophes speedily\ntriumphed. So great was the discontent even at court that soon (1752)\nMadame de Pompadour and some of the ministry invited D'Alembert and\nDiderot to resume their work, \"observing a necessary reserve in all\nthings touching religion and authority.\" Madame de Pompadour was in\nfact, as D'Alembert said at her death, \"in her heart one of ours,\"\nas was D'Argenson. But D'Alembert, in a long private conference with\nD'Argenson, insisted that they must write in freedom like the English\nand the Prussians, or not at all. Already there was talk of suppressing\nthe philosophic works of Condillac, which a few years before had gone\nuncondemned; and freedom must be preserved at any cost. \"I acquiesce,\"\nwrites the ex-Minister, \"in these arguments.\" [1006]\n\nCuriously enough, the freethinking Fontenelle, who for a time (the\ndates are elusive) held the office of royal censor, was more rigorous\nthan other officials who had not his reputation for heterodoxy. One\nday he refused to pass a certain manuscript, and the author put the\nchallenge: \"You, sir, who have published the Histoire des Oracles,\nrefuse me this?\" \"If I had been the censor of the Oracles,\" replied\nFontenelle, \"I should not have passed it.\" [1007] And he had cause for\nhis caution. The unlucky Tercier, who, engrossed in \"foreign affairs,\"\nhad authorized the publication of the De l'Esprit of Helv\u00e9tius,\nwas compelled to resign the censorship, and severely rebuked by\nthe Paris Parlement. [1008] But the culture-history of the period,\nlike the political, was one of ups and downs. From time to time the\nphilosophic party had friends at court, as in the persons of the\nMarquis D'Argenson, Malesherbes, and the Duc de Choiseul, of whom\nthe last-named engineered the suppression of the Jesuits. [1009]\nThen there were checks to the forward movement in the press, as when,\nin 1770, Choiseul was forced to retire on the advent of Madame Du\nBarry. The output of freethinking books is after that year visibly\ncurtailed. But nothing could arrest the forward movement of opinion.\n\n12. A new era of propaganda and struggle had visibly begun. In\nthe earlier part of the century freethought had been disseminated\nlargely by way of manuscripts [1010] and reprints of foreign books in\ntranslation; but from the middle onwards, despite denunciations and\nprohibitions, new books multiply. To the policy of tacit toleration\nimposed by Malesherbes a violent end was temporarily put in 1757,\nwhen the Jesuits obtained a proclamation of the death penalty\nagainst all writers who should attack the Christian religion,\ndirectly or indirectly. It was doubtless under the menace of this\ndecree that Deslandes, before dying in 1757, caused to be drawn\nup by two notaries an acte by which he disavowed and denounced not\nonly his Grands hommes morts en plaisantant but all his other works,\nwhether printed or in MS., in which he had \"laid down principles\nor sustained sentiments contrary to the spirit of religion.\" [1011]\nBut in 1764, on the suppression of the Jesuits, there was a vigorous\nresumption of propaganda. \"There are books,\" writes Voltaire in 1765,\n\"of which forty years ago one would not have trusted the manuscript\nto one's friends, and of which there are now published six editions\nin eighteen months.\" [1012] Voltaire single-handed produced a\nlibrary; and d'Holbach is credited with at least a dozen freethinking\ntreatises, every one remarkable in its day. But there were many more\ncombatants. The reputation of Voltaire has overshadowed even that of\nhis leading contemporaries, and theirs and his have further obscured\nthat of the lesser men; but a list of miscellaneous freethinking works\nby French writers during the century, up to the Revolution, will serve\nto show how general was the activity after 1750. It will be seen that\nvery little was published in France in the period in which English\ndeism was most fecund. A noticeable activity of publication begins\nabout 1745. But it was when the long period of chronic warfare ended\nfor France with the peace of Paris (1763); when she had lost India\nand North America; when she had suppressed the Jesuit order (1764);\nand when England had in the main turned from intellectual interests to\nthe pursuit of empire and the development of manufacturing industry,\nthat the released French intelligence [1013] turned with irresistible\nenergy to the rational criticism of established opinions. The following\ntable is thus symbolic of the whole century's development:--\n\n\n1700. Lettre d'Hypocrate \u00e0 Damag\u00e8te, attributed to the Comte de\n Boulainvilliers. (Cologne.) Rep. in Biblioth\u00e8que Volante,\n Amsterdam, 1700.\n1700. [Claude Gilbert.] Histoire de Calejava, ou de l'isle des hommes\n raisonnables, avec le parall\u00e8le de leur morale et du\n Christianisme. Dijon. Suppressed by the author: only one copy\n known to have escaped.\n1704. [Gueudeville.] Dialogues de M. le Baron de la Houtan et d'un\n sauvage dans l'Am\u00e9rique. (Amsterdam.)\n1709. Lettre sur l'enthousiasme (Fr. tr. of Shaftesbury, by Samson).\n La Haye.\n1710. [Tyssot de Patot, Symon.] Voyages et Avantures de Jaques Mass\u00e9.\n (Bourdeaux.)\n1710. Essai sur l'usage de la raillerie (Fr. tr. of Shaftesbury, by\n Van Effen). La Haye.\n1712. [Deslandes, A. F. B.] Reflexions sur les grands hommes qui sont\n morts en plaisantant. [1014] (Amsterdam.)\n1714. Discours sur la libert\u00e9 de penser [French tr. of Collins's\n Discourse of Freethinking], traduit de l'anglois et augment\u00e9\n d'une Lettre d'un M\u00e9decin Arabe. (Tr. by Henri Scheurl\u00e9er and\n Jean Rousset.) [Rep. 1717.] [1015]\n1719. [Vroes.] La Vie et l'Esprit de M. Beno\u00eet de Spinoza.\n1720. Same work rep. under the double title: De tribus impostoribus:\n Des trois imposteurs. Frankfort on Main.\n1724. [L\u00e9vesque de Burigny.] Histoire de la philosophie payenne. La\n Haye, 2 tom.\n1730. [Bernard, J.-F.] Dialogues critiques et philosophiques. \"Par\n l'Abb\u00e9 de Charte-Livry.\" (Amsterdam.) Rep. 1735.\n1731. R\u00e9futation des erreurs de Beno\u00eet de Spinoza, par F\u00e9nelon, le P.\n Laury, ben\u00e9dictin, et Boulainvilliers, avec la vie de Spinoza\n ... par Colerus, etc. (collected and published by Lenglet du\n Fresnoy). Bruxelles (really Amsterdam). The treatise of\n Boulainvilliers is really a popular exposition.\n1732. Re-issue of Deslandes's R\u00e9flexions.\n1734. [Voltaire.] Lettres philosophiques. 4 edd. within the year.\n [Condemned to be burned. Publisher imprisoned.]\n1734. [Longue, Louis-Pierre de.] Les Princesses Malabares, ou le\n C\u00e9libat Philosophique. Deistic allegory. [Condemned to be\n burned.]\n1737. Marquis D'Argens. La Philosophie du Bon Sens. (Berlin: 8th\n edition, Dresden, 1754.)\n1738. ----, Lettres Juives. 6 tom. (Berlin.)\n1738. [Marie Huber.] Lettres sur la religion essentielle \u00e0 l'homme,\n distingue de ce qui n'en est que l'accessoire. 2 tom.\n (Nominally London.) Rep. 1739 and 1756.\n1739. ----, Suite to the foregoing, \"servant de r\u00e9ponse aux\n objections,\" etc. Also Suite de la troisi\u00e8me partie.\n1741. [Deslandes.] Pigmalion, ou la Statue anim\u00e9e. [Condemned to be\n burnt by Parlement of Dijon, 1742.]\n1741. ----, De la Certitude des connaissances humaines ... traduit de\n l'anglais par F. A. D. L. V.\n1743. Nouvelles libert\u00e9s de penser. Amsterdam. [Edited by Dumarsais.\n Contains the first print of Fontenelle's Trait\u00e9 de la Libert\u00e9,\n Dumarsais's short essays Le Philosophe and De la raison,\n Mirabaud's Sentimens des philosophes sur la nature de l'\u00e2me,\n etc.]\n1745. [Lieut. De la Serre.] La vraie religion traduite de l'Ecriture\n Sainte, par permission de Jean, Luc, Marc, et Matthieu.\n (Nominally Tr\u00e9voux, \"aux d\u00e9pens des P\u00e8res de la Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 de\n J\u00e9sus.\") [Appeared later as Examen, etc. Condemned to be burnt\n by Parlement of Paris.]\n\nThis book was republished in the same year with \"demontr\u00e9e par\"\nsubstituted in the title for \"traduite de,\" and purporting to be\n\"traduit de l'Anglais de Gilbert Burnet,\" with the imprint \"Londres,\nG. Cock, 1745.\" It appeared again in 1761 as Examen de la religion\ndont on cherche l'\u00e9claircissement de bonne foi. Attribu\u00e9 \u00e0 M. de\nSaint-Evremont, traduit, etc., with the same imprint. It again bore\nthe latter title when reprinted in 1763, and again in the \u00c9vangile\nde la Raison in 1764. Voltaire in 1763 declared it to be the work\nof Dumarsais, pronouncing it to be assuredly not in the style of\nSaint-Evremond (Grimm, iv, 85-88; Voltaire, Lettre \u00e0 Damilaville,\n6 d\u00e9c. 1763), adding \"mais il est fort tronqu\u00e9 et d\u00e9testablement\nimprim\u00e9.\" This is true of the reprints in the \u00c9vangile de la Raison\n(1764, etc.), of one of which the present writer possesses a copy to\nwhich there has been appended in MS. a long section which had been\nlacking. The \u00c9vangile as a whole purports to be \"Ouvrage posthume\nde M. D. M......y.\" [1016] But its first volume includes four pieces\nof Voltaire's, and his abridged Testament de Jean Meslier. Further,\nDe la Serre is recorded to have claimed the authorship in writing on\nthe eve of his death. Barbier, Dict. des Anonymes, 2e \u00e9d, No. 6158. He\nis said to have been hanged as a spy at Maestricht, April 11, 1748.\n\n1745. [La Mettrie.] Histoire naturelle de l'\u00e2me. [Condemned to be\n burnt, 1746.] Rep. as Trait\u00e9 de l'\u00e2me.\n1746. [Diderot.] Pens\u00e9es philosophiques. [Condemned to be burnt.]\n1748. [P. Est\u00e8ve.] L'Origine de l'Univers expliqu\u00e9e par un principe\n de mati\u00e8re. (Berlin.)\n1748. [Beno\u00eet de Maillet.] Telliamed, ou Entretiens d'un philosophe\n indien avec un missionaire fran\u00e7ais. (Printed privately, 1735;\n rep. 1755.)\n1748. [La Mettrie.] L'Homme Machine.\n1750. Nouvelles libert\u00e9s de penser. Rep.\n1751. [Mirabaud, J. B. de.] Le Monde, son origine et son antiquit\u00e9.\n [Edited by the Abb\u00e9 Le Maserier (who contributed the preface\n and the third part) and Dumarsais.]\n1751. De Prades. Sorbonne Thesis.\n1752. [Gouvest, J. H. Maubert de.] Lettres Iroquoises. \"Irocopolis,\n chez les V\u00e9n\u00e9rables.\" 2 tom. (Rep. 1769 as Lettres\n cherak\u00e9siennes.)\n1752. [G\u00e9nard, F.] L'\u00c9cole de l'homme, ou Parall\u00e8le des Portraits du\n si\u00e8cle et des tableaux de l'\u00e9criture sainte. [1017] Amsterdam,\n 3 tom. [Author imprisoned.]\n1753. [Baume-Desdossat, Canon of Avignon.] La Christiade. [Book\n suppressed. Author fined.] [1018]\n1753. Maupertuis. Syst\u00e8me de la nature.\n1753. Astruc, Jean. Conjectures sur les m\u00e9moires originaux dont il\n parait que Mo\u00efse s'est servi pour composer le livre de la\n Gen\u00e8se. Bruxelles.\n1754. Pr\u00e9montval, A. I. le Guay de. Le Diog\u00e8ne de d'Alembert, ou\n Pens\u00e9es libres sur l'homme. Berlin. (2nd ed. enlarged, 1755.)\n1754. Burigny, J. L. Th\u00e9ologie payenne. 2 tom. (New ed. of his\n Histoire de la philosophie, 1724.)\n1754. [Diderot.] Pens\u00e9es sur l'interpretation de la nature.\n1754. Beausobre, L. de (the younger). Pyrrhonisme du Sage. Berlin.\n (Burned by Paris Parlement.)\n1755. Recherches philosophiques sur la libert\u00e9 de l'homme. Trans. of\n Collins's Philosophical Inquiry concerning Human Liberty.\n1755. [Voltaire.] Po\u00e8me Sur la loi naturelle.\n1755. Analyse raisonn\u00e9e de Bayle. 4 tom. [By the Abb\u00e9 de Marsy.\n Suppressed. [1019] Continued in 1773, in 4 new vols., by\n Robinet.]\n1755. Morelly. Code de la Nature.\n1755. [Deleyre.] Analyse de la philosophie de Bacon. (Largely an\n exposition of Deleyre's own views.)\n1757. Pr\u00e9montval. Vues Philosophiques. (Amsterdam.)\n\nIn this year--apparently after one of vigilant repression--was\npronounced the death penalty against all writers attacking\nreligion. Hence a general suspension of publication. In 1764 the\nJesuits were suppressed, and the policy of censorship was soon\nparalysed.\n\n1758. Helv\u00e9tius. De l'Esprit. (Authorized. Then condemned.)\n1759. [Voltaire.] Candide. (\"Gen\u00e8ve.\")\n1759. Translation of Hume's Natural History of Religion and\n Philosophical Essays. (By M\u00e9rian.) Amsterdam.\n1761. [N.-A. Boulanger. [1020]] Recherches sur l'origine du\n despotisme oriental, et des superstitions. \"Ouvrage posthume de\n Mr. D. J. D. P. E. C.\"\n1761. Rep. of De la Serre's La vraie religion as Examen de la\n religion, etc.\n1761. [D'Holbach.] Le Christianisme d\u00e9voil\u00e9. [Imprint: \"Londres,\n 1756.\" Really printed at Nancy in 1761. Wrongly attributed to\n Boulanger and to Damilaville.] Rep. 1767 and 1777.\n\nGrimm (Corr. in\u00e9dite, 1829, p. 194) speaks in 1763 of this book\nin his notice of Boulanger, remarking that the title was apparently\nmeant to suggest the author of L'Antiquit\u00e9 d\u00e9voil\u00e9e, but that it was\nobviously by another hand. The Antiquit\u00e9, in fact, was the concluding\nsection of Boulanger's posthumous Despotisme Oriental (1761), and\nwas not published till 1766. Grimm professed ignorance as to the\nauthorship, but must have known it, as did Voltaire, who by way of\nmystification ascribed the book to Damilaville. See Barbier.\n\n1762. Rousseau. \u00c9mile. [Publicly burned at Paris and at Geneva.\n Condemned by the Sorbonne.]\n1762. Robinet, J. B. De la nature. Vol. i. (Vol. ii in 1764; iii and\n iv in 1766.)\n1763. [Voltaire.] Sa\u00fcl. Gen\u00e8ve.\n1763. ---- Dialogue entre un Caloyer et un honn\u00eate homme.\n1763. Rep. of De la Serres' Examen.\n1764. Discours sur la libert\u00e9 de penser. (Rep. of trans. of Collins.)\n1764. [Voltaire.] Dictionnaire philosophique portatif. [1021] [First\n form of the Dictionnaire philosophique. Burned in 1765.]\n1764. Lettres secr\u00e8tes de M. de Voltaire. [Holland. Collection of\n tracts made by Robinet, against Voltaire's will.]\n1764. [Voltaire.] M\u00e9langes, 3 tom. Gen\u00e8ve.\n1764. [Dulaurens, Abb\u00e9 H. J.] L'Ar\u00e9tin.\n1764. L'\u00c9vangile de la Raison. Ouvrage posthume de M. D. M----y. [Ed.\n by Abb\u00e9 Dulaurens; containing the Testament de Jean Meslier\n (greatly abridged and adapted by Voltaire); Voltaire's\n Cat\u00e9chisme de l'honn\u00eate homme, Sermon des cinquante, etc.; the\n Examen de la religion, attribu\u00e9 \u00e0 M. de St. Evremond;\n Rousseau's Vicaire Savoyard, from \u00c9mile; Dumarsais's Analyse de\n la religion chr\u00e9tienne, etc. Rep. 1765 and 1766.]\n1765. Recueil N\u00e9cessaire, avec L'\u00c9vangile de la Raison, 2 tom.\n\nRep. of parts of the \u00c9vangile. Rep. 1767, [1022] 1768, with\nVoltaire's Examen important de Milord Bolingbroke substituted for that\nof De la Serre (attribu\u00e9 a M. de St. Evremond), and with a revised\nset of extracts from Meslier.\n\n1765. Castillon, J. L. Essai de philosophic morale.\n1766. Boulanger, N. A. L'Antiquit\u00e9 d\u00e9voil\u00e9e. [1023] 3 tom. [Recast by\n d'Holbach. Life of author by Diderot.]\n1766. Voyage de Robertson aux terres australes. Traduit sur le\n Manuscrit Anglois. Amsterdam.\n\nBarbier (Dict. des Ouvr. Anon., 2e \u00e9d. iii, 437) has a note\nconcerning this Voyage which pleasantly illustrates the strategy that\nwent on in the issue of freethinking books. An ex-censor of the period,\nhe tells us, wrote a note on the original edition pointing out that\nit contains (pp. 145-54) a tirade against \"Parlements.\" This passage\nwas \"suppressed to obtain permission to bring the book into France,\"\nand a new passage attacking the Encyclop\u00e9distes under the name of\nPansophistes was inserted at another point. The ex-censor had a copy\nof an edition of 1767, in 12mo, better printed than the first and on\nbetter paper. In this, at p. 87, line 30, begins the attack on the\nEncyclop\u00e9distes, which continues to p. 93.\n\nIf this is accurate, there has taken place a double mystification. I\npossess a copy dated 1767, in 12mo, in which no page has so many as 30\nlines, and in which there has been no typographical change whatever\nin pp. 87-93, where there is no mention of Encyclop\u00e9distes. But\npp. 145-54 are clearly a typographical substitution, in different\ntype, with fewer lines to the page. Here there is a narrative about\nthe Pansophistes of the imaginary \"Australie\"; but while it begins\nwith enigmatic satire it ends by praising them for bringing about a\ngreat intellectual and social reform.\n\nIf the censure was induced to pass the book as it is in this edition by\nthis insertion, it was either very heedless or very indulgent. There is\na sweeping attack on the papacy (pp. 91-99), and another on the Jesuits\n(pp. 100-102); and it leans a good deal towards republicanism. But on\na balance, though clearly anti-clerical, it is rather socio-political\nthan freethinking in its criticism. The words on the title-page,\ntraduit sur le manuscrit anglois, are of course pure mystification. It\nis a romance of the Utopia school, and criticizes English conditions\nas well as French.\n\n1766. De Prades. Abr\u00e9g\u00e9 de l'histoire eccl\u00e9siastique de Fleury.\n (Berlin.) Pref. by Frederick the Great. (Rep. 1767.)\n1766. [Burigny.] Examen critique des Apologistes de la religion\n chr\u00e9tienne. Published (by Naigeon ?) under the name of Fr\u00e9ret.\n [1024] [Twice rep. in 1767. Condemned to be burnt, 1770.]\n1766. [Voltaire.] Le philosophe ignorant.\n1766. [Abb\u00e9 Millot.] Histoire philosophique de l'homme. [Naturalistic\n theory of human beginnings.]\n1767. Castillon. Almanach Philosophique.\n1767. Doutes sur la religion (attributed to Gueroult de Pival), suivi\n de l'Analyse du Trait\u00e9 th\u00e9ologique-politique de Spinoza (by\n Boulainvilliers). [Rep. with additions in 1792 under the title\n Doutes sur les religions r\u00e9v\u00e9l\u00e9es, adress\u00e9s \u00e0 Voltaire, par\n \u00c9milie du Chatelet. Ouvrage posthume.]\n1767. [Dulaurens.] L'antipapisme r\u00e9v\u00e9l\u00e9.\n1767. Lettre de Thrasybule \u00e0 Leucippe. [Published under the name of\n Fr\u00e9ret (d. 1749). Written or edited by Naigeon. [1025]]\n1767. [D'Holbach.] L'Imposture sacerdotale, ou Recueil de pi\u00e8ces sur\n la clerg\u00e9, traduites de l'anglois.\n1767. [Voltaire.] Collection des lettres sur les miracles.\n1767. ---- Examen important de milord Bolingbroke.\n1767. Marmontel. B\u00e9lisaire. (Censured by the Sorbonne.)\n1767. [Damilaville.] L'honn\u00eatet\u00ea th\u00e9ologique.\n1767. Reprint of Le Christianisme d\u00e9voil\u00e9. [Condemned to be burnt,\n 1768 and 1770.]\n1767. [Voltaire.] Questions sur les Miracles. Par un Proposant.\n1767. Seconde partie of the Recherches sur l'origine du despotisme.\n1768. Meister, J. H. De l'origine des principes religieux.\n\nAuthor banished from his native town, Zurich, \"in perpetuity\"\n(decree rescinded in 1772), and book publicly burned there by the\nhangman. [1026] Meister published a modified edition at Zurich in\n1769. Orig. rep. in the Recueil Philosophique, 1770.\n\n1768. Catalogue raisonn\u00e9 des esprits forts, depuis le cur\u00e9\n Rabelais jusqu'au cur\u00e9 Meslier.\n1768. [D'Holbach.] La Contagion sacr\u00e9e, ou histoire naturelle de\n la superstition. [Condemned to be burnt, 1770.]\n1768. ---- Lettres philosophiques sur l'origine des pr\u00e9jug\u00e9s,\n etc., traduites de l'anglois (of Toland).\n1768. ---- Lettres \u00e0 Eug\u00e9nie, ou preservatif contre les\n pr\u00e9jug\u00e9s. 2 tom.\n1768. ---- Th\u00e9ologie Portative. \"Par l'abb\u00e9 Bernier.\" [Also\n burnt, 1776.]\n1768. Trait\u00e9 des trois Imposteurs. (See 1719 and 1720.) Rep.\n 1775, 1777, 1793.\n1768. Naigeon, J. A. Le militaire philosophe. [Adaptation of a\n MS. The last chapter by d'Holbach.]\n1768. D'Argens. OEuvres compl\u00e8tes, 24 tom. Berlin.\n1768. Examen des proph\u00e9ties qui servent de fondement \u00e0 la\n religion chr\u00e9tienne (tr. from Collins by d'Holbach).\n1768. Robinet. Consid\u00e9rations philosophiques.\n1769-1780. L'\u00c9vangile du jour. 18 tom. Series of pieces, chiefly by\n Voltaire.\n1769. [Diderot. Also ascribed to Castillon.] Histoire g\u00e9n\u00e9rale\n des dogmes et opinions philosophiques ... tir\u00e9e du\n Dictionnaire encyclop\u00e9dique. Londres, 3 tom.\n1769. [Mirabaud.] Opinions des anciens sur les juifs, and\n R\u00e9flexions impartiales sur l'\u00c9vangile [1027] (rep. in 1777\n as Examen critique du Nouveau Testament).\n1769. [Isoard-Delisle, otherwise Delisle de Sales.] De la\n Philosophie de la Nature. 6 tom. [Author imprisoned. Book\n condemned to be burnt, 1775.]\n1769. [Seguier de Saint-Brisson.] Trait\u00e9 des Droits de G\u00e9nie,\n dans lequel on examine si la connoissance de la verit\u00e9 est\n avantageuse aux hommes et possible au philosophe.\n \"Carolsrouhe,\" 1769. [A strictly naturalistic-ethical\n theory of society. Contains an attack on the doctrine of\n Rousseau, in \u00c9mile, on the usefulness of religious error.]\n1769. L'enfer d\u00e9truit, traduit de l'Anglois [by d'Holbach.]\n1770. [D'Holbach.] Histoire critique de J\u00e9sus Christ.\n1770. ---- Examen critique de la vie et des ouvrages de Saint\n Paul (tr. from English of Peter Annet).\n1770. ---- Essai sur les Pr\u00e9jug\u00e9s. (Not by Dumarsais, whose name\n on the title-page is a mystification.)\n1770. ---- Syst\u00e8me de la Nature. 2 tom.\n1770. Recueil Philosophique. 2 tom. [Edited by Naigeon. Contains\n a rep. of Dumarsais's essays Le Philosophe and De la\n raison, an extract from Tindal, essays by Vauvenargues and\n Fr\u00e9ret (or Fontenelle), three by Mirabaud, Diderot's\n Pens\u00e9es sur la religion, several essays by d'Holbach,\n Meister's De l'origine des principes religieux, etc.]\n1770. Analyse de Bayle. Rep. of the four vols. of De Marsy, with\n four more by Robinet.\n1770. L'Esprit du Judaisme. (Trans. from Collins by d'Holbach.)\n1770. Raynal (with Diderot and others). Histoire philosophique\n des deux Indes. Containing atheistic arguments by Diderot.\n [Suppressed, 1772.]\n\nIn this year there were condemned to be burned seven freethinking\nworks: d'Holbach's Contagion Sacr\u00e9e; Voltaire's Dieu et les Hommes; the\nFrench translation (undated) of Woolston's Discourses on the Miracles\nof Jesus Christ; Fr\u00e9ret's (really Burigny's) Examen critique de la\nreligion chr\u00e9tienne; an Examen impartial des principales religions\ndu monde, undated; d'Holbach's Christianisme d\u00e9voil\u00e9; and his Syst\u00e8me\nde la Nature.\n\n1772. Le Bon Sens. [Adaptation from Meslier by Diderot and\n d'Holbach. Condemned to be burnt, 1774.]\n1772. De la nature humaine. [Trans. of Hobbes by d'Holbach.]\n1773. Helv\u00e9tius. De l'Homme. Ouvrage posthume. 2 tom. [Condemned to\n be burnt, Jan. 10, 1774. Rep. 1775.]\n1773. Carra, J. L. Syst\u00e8me de la Raison, ou le proph\u00e8te philosophe.\n1773. [Burigny (?).] Recherches sur les miracles.\n1773. [D'Holbach.] La politique naturelle. 2 tom.\n1773. ----. Syst\u00e8me Sociale. 3 tom.\n1774. Abauzit, F. R\u00e9flexions impartiales sur les \u00c9vangiles, suivies\n d'un essai sur l'Apocalypse. (Abauzit died 1767.)\n1774. [Condorcet.] Lettres d'un Th\u00e9ologien. (Atheistic.)\n1774. New edition of Theologie Portative. 2 tom. [Condemned to be\n burnt.]\n1775. [Voltaire.] Histoire de Jenni, ou Le Sage et l'Ath\u00e9e. [Attack\n on atheism.]\n1776. [D'Holbach.] La morale universelle. 3 tom.\n1776. ---- Ethocratie.\n1777. Examen critique du Nouveau Testament, \"par M. Fr\u00e9ret.\" [Not\n by Fr\u00e9ret. A rep. of Mirabaud's R\u00e9flexions impartiales sur\n l'\u00c9vangile, 1769, which was probably written about 1750,\n being replied to in the R\u00e9futation du Celse moderne of the\n Abb\u00e9 Gautier, 1752 and 1765.]\n1777. Carra. Esprit de la morale et de la philosophie.\n1778. Barthez, P. J. Nouveaux \u00e9l\u00e9ments de la science de l'homme.\n1779. Vie d'Apollonius de Tyane par Philostrate, avec les\n commentaires donn\u00e9s en anglois par Charles Blount sur les\n deux premiers livres. [Trans. by J.-F. Salvemini de\n Castillon, Berlin.] Amsterdam, 4 tom. (In addition to\n Blount's pref. and notes there is a scoffing dedication to\n Pope Clement XIV.)\n1780. Duvernet, Abb\u00e9 Th. J. L'Intol\u00e9rance religieuse.\n1780. Clootz, Anacharsis. La Certitude des preuves du Mahom\u00e9tisme.\n [Reply by way of parody to Bergier's work, noted on p. 250.]\n1780. Second ed. of Raynal's Histoire philosophique, with\n additions. (Condemned to be burnt, 1781.)\n1781. Mar\u00e9chal, Sylvain. Le nouveau Lucr\u00e8ce.\n1783. Brissot de Warville. Lettres philosophiques sur S. Paul.\n1784. Doray de Longrais. Faustin, ou le si\u00e8cle philosophique.\n1784. Pougens, M. C. J. de. R\u00e9cr\u00e9ations de philosophie et de\n morale.\n1785. Mar\u00e9chal. Livre \u00e9chapp\u00e9 au D\u00e9luge. [Author dismissed.]\n1787. Marquis Pastoret. Zoroastre, Confucius, et Mahomet.\n1788. Meister. De la morale naturelle.\n1788. Pastoret. Mo\u00efse consid\u00e9r\u00e9 comme legislateur et comme\n moraliste.\n1788. Mar\u00e9chal. Almanach des honn\u00eates gens. [Author imprisoned;\n book burnt.]\n1789. Volney. Les Ruines des Empires.\n1789. Duvernet, Abb\u00e9. Les D\u00e9votions de Madame de Betzamooth.\n1789. Cerutti (Jesuit Father). Br\u00e9viaire Philosophique, ou Histoire\n du Judaisme, du Christianisme, et du D\u00e9isme.\n1791-3. Naigeon. Dictionnaire de la philosophie ancienne et moderne.\n1795. Dupuis. De l'origine de tous les Cultes. 5 tom.\n1795. La Fable de Christ d\u00e9voil\u00e9e; ou Lettre du muphti de\n Constantinople \u00e0 Jean Ange Braschy, muphti de Rome.\n1797. Rep. of d'Holbach's Contagion sacr\u00e9e, with notes by Lemaire.\n1798. Mar\u00e9chal. Pens\u00e9es libres sur les pr\u00eatres. A Rome, et se\n trouve \u00e0 Paris, chez les Marchands de Nouveaut\u00e9s. L'An Ier de\n la Raison, et VI de la R\u00e9publique Fran\u00e7aise.\n\n\n13. It will be noted that after 1770--coincidently, indeed, with a\nrenewed restraint upon the press--there is a notable falling-off in the\nfreethinking output. Rationalism had now permeated educated France;\nand, for different but analogous reasons, the stress of discussion\ngradually shifted as it had done in England. France in 1760 stood to\nthe religious problem somewhat as England did in 1730, repeating the\ndeistic evolution with a difference. By that time England was committed\nto the new paths of imperialism and commercialism; whereas France,\nthrown back on the life of ideas and on her own politico-economic\nproblems, went on producing the abundant propaganda we have noted,\nand, alongside of it, an independent propaganda of economics and\npolitics. At the end of 1767, the leading French diarist [1028] notes\nthat \"there is formed at Paris a new sect, called the Economists,\"\nand names its leading personages, Quesnay, Mirabeau the elder, the\nAbb\u00e9 Baudeau, Mercier de la Rivi\u00e8re, and Turgot. These developed the\ndoctrine of agricultural or \"real\" production which so stimulated\nand influenced Adam Smith. But immediately afterwards [1029] the\ndiarist notes a rival sect, the school of Forbonnais, who founded\nmainly on the importance of commerce and manufactures. Each \"sect\"\nhad its journal. The intellectual ferment had inevitably fructified\nthought upon economic as upon historical, religious, and scientific\nproblems; and there was in operation a fourfold movement, all tending\nto make possible the immense disintegration of the State which began\nin 1789. After the Economists came the \"Patriots,\" who directed\ntowards the actual political machine the spirit of investigation and\nreform. And the whole effective movement is not unplausibly to be\ndated from the fall of the Jesuits in 1764. [1030] Inevitably the\nforces interacted: Montesquieu and Rousseau alike dealt with both\nthe religious and the social issues; d'Holbach in his first polemic,\nthe Christianisme d\u00e9voil\u00e9, opens the stern impeachment of kings and\nrulers which he develops so powerfully in the Essai sur les Pr\u00e9jug\u00e9s;\nand the Encyclop\u00e9die sent its search-rays over all the fields of\ninquiry. But of the manifold work done by the French intellect in\nthe second and third generations of the eighteenth century, the\nmost copious and the most widely influential body of writings that\ncan be put under one category is that of which we have above made a\nchronological conspectus.\n\nOf these works the merit is of course very various; but the total\neffect of the propaganda was formidable, and some of the treatises\nare extremely effective. The Examen critique of Burigny, [1031] for\ninstance, which quickly won a wide circulation when printed, is one of\nthe most telling attacks thus far made on the Christian system, raising\nas it does most of the issues fought over by modern criticism. It\ntells indeed of a whole generation of private investigation and\ndebate; and the Abb\u00e9 Bergier, assuming it to be the work of Fr\u00e9ret,\nin whose name it is published, avows that its author \"has written\nit in the same style as his academic dissertations: he has spread\nover it the same erudition; he seems to have read everything and\nmastered everything.\" [1032] Perhaps not the least effective part\nof the book is the chapter which asks: \"Are men more perfect since\nthe coming of Jesus Christ?\"; and it is here that the clerical reply\nis most feeble. The critic cites the claims made by apologists as\nto the betterment of life by Christianity, and then contrasts with\nthose claims the thousand-and-one lamentations by Christian writers\nover the utter badness of all the life around them. Bergier in reply\nfollows the tactic habitually employed in the same difficulty to-day:\nhe ignores the fact that his own apologists have been claiming a vast\nbetterment, and contends that religion is not to be blamed for the\nevils it condemns. Not by such furtive sophistry could the Church\nturn the attack, which, as Bergier bitterly observes, was being made\nby Voltaire in a new book every year.\n\nAs always, the weaker side of the critical propaganda is its effort at\nreconstruction. As in England, so in France, the faithful accused the\ncritics of \"pulling down without building up,\" when in point of fact\ntheir chief error was to build up--that is, to rewrite the history\nof human thought--before they had the required materials, or had even\nmastered those which existed. Thus Voltaire and Rousseau alike framed\n\u00e0 priori syntheses of the origins of religion and society. But there\nwere closer thinkers than they in the rationalistic ranks. Fontenelle's\nessay De l'origine des fables, though not wholly exempt from error,\nadmittedly lays aright the foundations of mythology and hierology;\nand De Brosses in his treatise Du Culte des dieux f\u00e9tiches (1760)\ndoes a similar service on the side of anthropology. Meister's essay\nDe l'origine des principes religieux is full of insight and breadth;\nand, despite some errors due to the backwardness of anthropology,\nessentially scientific in temper and standpoint. His later essay,\nDe la morale naturelle, shows the same independence and fineness of\nspeculation, seeming indeed to tell of a character which missed fame\nby reason of over-delicacy of fibre and lack of the driving force\nwhich marked the foremost men of that tempestuous time. Vauvenargues's\nessay De la suffisance de la religion naturelle is no less clinching,\ngranted its deism. So, on the side of philosophy, Mirabaud, who was\nsecretary of the Acad\u00e9mie from 1742 to 1755, handles the problem of the\nrelation of deism to ethics--if the posthumous essays in the Recueil\nphilosophique be indeed his--in a much more philosophic fashion than\ndoes Voltaire, arguing unanswerably for the ultimate self-dependence\nof morals. The Lettre de Thrasybule \u00e0 Leucippe, ascribed to Fr\u00e9ret,\nagain, is a notably skilful attack on theism.\n\n14. One of the most remarkable of the company in some respects is\nNicolas-Antoine Boulanger (1722-1759), of whom Diderot gives a vivid\naccount in a sketch prefixed to the posthumous L'Antiquit\u00e9 d\u00e9voil\u00e9e par\nses usages (1766). At the Coll\u00e8ge de Beauvais, Boulanger was so little\nstimulated by his scholastic teachers that they looked for nothing from\nhim in his maturity. When, however, at the age of seventeen, he began\nto study mathematics and architecture, his faculties began to develop;\nand the life, first of a military engineer in 1743-44, and later\nin the service of the notable department of Roads and Bridges--the\nmost efficient of all State services under Louis XV--made him an\nindependent and energetic thinker. The chronic spectacle of the corv\u00e9e,\nthe forced labour of peasants on the roads, moved him to indignation;\nbut he sought peace in manifold study, the engineer's contact with\nnature arousing in him all manner of speculations, geological and\nsociological. Seeking for historic light, he mastered Latin, which he\nhad failed to do at school, reading widely and voraciously; and when\nthe Latins failed to yield him the light he craved he systematically\nmastered Greek, reading the Greeks as hungrily and with as little\nsatisfaction. Then he turned indefatigably to Hebrew, Syriac, and\nArabic, gleaning at best verbal clues which at length he wrought into\na large, loose, imaginative yet immensely erudite schema of ancient\nsocial evolution, in which the physicist's pioneer study of the\nstructure and development of the globe controls the anthropologist's\nguesswork as to the beginnings of human society. The whole is set forth\nin the bulky posthumous work Recherches sur l'origine du despotisme\noriental (1761), and in the further treatise L'antiquit\u00e9 d\u00e9voil\u00e9e\n(3 tom. 1766), which is but the concluding section of the first-named.\n\nIt all yields nothing to modern science; the unwearying research\nis all carried on, as it were, in the dark; and the sleepless\nbrain of the pioneer can but weave webs of impermanent speculation\nfrom masses of unsifted and unmanageable material. Powers which\nto-day, on a prepared ground of ascertained science, might yield\nthe greatest results, were wasted in a gigantic effort to build a\nsocial science out of the chaos of undeciphered antiquity, natural\nand human. But the man is nonetheless morally memorable. Diderot\npictures him with a head Socratically ugly, simple and innocent of\nlife, gentle though vivacious, reading Rabbinical Hebrew in his\nwalks on the high roads, suffering all his life from \"domestic\npersecution,\" \"little contradictory though infinitely learned,\"\nand capable of passing in a moment, on the stimulus of a new idea,\ninto a state of profound and entranced absorption. Diderot is always\nenthusiastically generous in praise; but in reading and reviewing\nBoulanger's work we can hardly refuse assent to his friend's claim\nthat \"if ever man has shown in his career the true characters of\ngenius, it was he.\" His immense research was all compassed in a life\nof thirty-seven years, occupied throughout in an active profession;\nand the diction in which he sets forth his imaginative construction\nof the past reveals a constant intensity of thought rarely combined\nwith scholarly knowledge. But it was an age of concentrated energy,\ncarrying in its womb the Revolution. The perusal of Boulanger is a\nsufficient safeguard against the long-cherished hallucination that\nthe French freethinking of his age was but a sparkle of raillery.\n\nEven among some rationalists, however, who are content to take\nhearsay report on these matters, there appears still to subsist a\nnotion that the main body of the French freethinkers of the eighteenth\ncentury were mere scoffers, proceeding upon no basis of knowledge and\nwith no concern for research. Such an opinion is possible only to\nthose who have not examined their work. To say nothing more of the\neffort of Boulanger, an erudition much more exact than Voltaire's\nand a deeper insight than his and Rousseau's into the causation of\nprimitive religion inspires the writings of men like Burigny and\nFr\u00e9ret on the one hand, and Fontenelle and Meister on the other. The\nphilosophic reach of Diderot, one of the most convinced opponents\nof the ruling religion, was recognized by Goethe. And no critic of\nthe \"philosophes\" handled more uncompromisingly than did Dumarsais\n[1033] the vanity of the assumption that a man became a philosopher\nby merely setting himself in opposition to orthodox belief. Dumarsais,\nlong scholastically famous for his youthful treatise Des Tropes, lived\nup to his standard, whatever some of the more eminent philosophes may\nhave done, being found eminently lovable by pietists who knew him;\nwhile for D'Alembert he was \"the La Fontaine of the philosophers\"\nin virtue of his lucid simplicity of style. [1034] The Analyse de la\nreligion chr\u00e9tienne printed under his name in some editions of the\n\u00c9vangile de la Raison has been pronounced supposititious. It seems\nto be the work of at least two hands [1035] of different degrees\nof instruction; but, apart from some errors due to one of these,\nit does him no discredit, being a vigorous criticism of Scriptural\ncontradictions and anomalies, such as a \"Jansenist atheist\" might\nwell compose, though it makes the usual profession of deistic belief.\n\nLater polemic works, inspired by those above noticed, reproduce some\nof their arguments, but with an advance in literary skill, as in the\nanonymous Bon Sens given forth (1772) by Diderot and d'Holbach as the\nwork of Jean Meslier, but really an independent compilation, embodying\nother arguments with his, and putting the whole with a concision\nand brilliancy to which he could make no approach. Pr\u00e9montval, a\nbad writer, [1036] contrives nonetheless to say many pungent things\nof a deistic order in his Diog\u00e8ne de d'Alembert, and, following\nMarie Huber, puts forward the formula of religion versus theology,\nwhich has done so much duty in the nineteenth century. Of the whole\nliterature it is not too much to say that it covered cogently most\nof the important grounds of latter-day debate, from the questions of\nrevelation and the doctrine of torments to the bases of ethics and the\nproblem of deity; and it would be hard to show that the nineteenth\ncentury has handled the main issues with more sincerity, lucidity,\nor logic than were attained by Frenchmen in the eighteenth. To-day, no\ndoubt, in the light of a century and a-half of scientific, historic,\nand philosophic accumulation, the rationalist case is put with more\nprofundity and accuracy by many writers than it could be in the\neighteenth century. But we have to weigh the freethinkers of that\nage against their opponents, and the French performers against those\nof other countries, to make a fair estimate. When this is done their\ncredit is safe. When German and other writers say with Tholuck that\n\"unbelief entered Germany not by the weapons of mere wit and scoffing\nas in France; it grounded itself on learned research,\" [1037] they\nmerely prove their ignorance of French culture-history. An abundance\nof learned research in France preceded the triumphant campaign\nof Voltaire, who did most of the witty writing on the subject; and\nwhose light artillery was to the last reinforced by the heavier guns\nof d'Holbach. It is only in the analysis of the historical problem\nby the newer tests of anthropology and hierology, and in the light\nof latterly discovered documents, that our generation has made much\nadvance on the strenuous pioneers of the age of Voltaire. And even\nin the field of anthropology the sound thinking of Fontenelle and\nDe Brosses long preceded any equally valid work by rationalists in\nGermany; though Spencer of Cambridge had preceded them in his work\nof constructive orthodoxy.\n\n15. Though the bibliographers claim to have traced the authorship in\nmost cases, such works were in the first instance generally published\nanonymously, [1038] as were those of Voltaire, d'Holbach, and the\nleading freethinkers; and the clerical policy of suppression had\nthe result of leaving them generally unanswered, save in anonymous\nwritings, when they nevertheless got into private circulation. It was\ngenerally impolitic that an official answer should appear to a book\nwhich was officially held not to exist; so that the orthodox defence\nwas long confined mainly to the classic performances of Pascal,\nBossuet, Huet, F\u00e9nelon, and some outsiders such as the Protestant\nAbbadie, who settled first in Berlin and later in London. The polemic\nof every one of the writers named is a work of ability; even that of\nAbbadie (Trait\u00e9 de la V\u00e9rit\u00e9 de la religion chr\u00e9tienne, 1684), though\nnow little known, was in its day much esteemed. [1039] In the age of\nLouis XIV those classic answers to unbelief were by believers held\nto be conclusive; and thus far the French defence was certainly more\nthorough and philosophical than the English. But French freethought,\nwhich in Herbert's day had given the lead to English, now drew new\nenergy from the English growth; and the general arguments of the\nold apologists did not explicitly meet the new attack. Their books\nhaving been written to meet the mostly unpublished objections of\nprevious generations, the Church through its chosen policy had the\nair of utter inability to confute the newer propaganda, though some\napologetic treatises of fair power did appear, in particular those\nof the Abb\u00e9 Bergier. [1040] By the avowal of a Christian historian,\n\"So low had the talents of the once illustrious Church of France fallen\nthat in the latter part of the eighteenth century, when Christianity\nitself was assailed, not one champion of note appeared in its ranks;\nand when the convocation of the clergy, in 1770, published their\nfamous anathema against the dangers of unbelief, and offered rewards\nfor the best essays in defence of the Christian faith, the productions\ncalled forth were so despicable that they sensibly injured the cause\nof religion.\" [1041]\n\nThe freethinking attack, in fact, had now become overwhelming. After\nthe suppression of the Jesuit Order (1764) [1042] the press grew\npractically more and more free; and when, after the accession of Pope\nClement XIV (1769), the freethinking books circulated with less and\nless restraint, Bergier extended his attack on deism, and deists and\nclerics joined in answering the atheistic Syst\u00e8me de la Nature of\nd'Holbach. But by this time the deistic books were legion, and the\npolitical battle over the taxation of Church property had become\nthe more pressing problem, especially seeing that the mass of the\npeople remained conforming. The manifesto of the clergy in 1770 was\naccompanied by an address to the king \"On the evil results of liberty\nof thought and printing,\" following up a previous appeal by the pope;\n[1043] and in consideration of the donation by the clergy of sixteen\nmillion livres the Government recommended the Parlement of Paris\nto proceed against impious books. There seems accordingly to have\nbeen some hindrance to publication for a year or two; but in 1772\nappeared the Bon Sens of d'Holbach and Diderot; and there was no\nfurther serious check, the Jesuits being disbanded by the pope in 1773.\n\n\n The English view that French orthodoxy made a \"bad\" defence\n to the freethinking attack as compared with what was done in\n England (Sir J. F. Stephen, Hor\u00e6 Sabbatic\u00e6, 2nd. ser. p. 281;\n Alison, as cited above) proceeds on some misconception of the\n circumstances, which, as has been shown, were substantially\n different in the two countries. Could the English clergy have\n resorted to official suppression of deistic literature, they\n too would doubtless have done so. Swift and Berkeley bitterly\n desired to. But the view that the English defence was relatively\n \"good,\" and that Butler's in particular was decisive, is also,\n as we have seen, fallacious. In Sir Leslie Stephen's analysis,\n as apart from his preamble, the orthodox defence is exhibited as\n generally weak, and often absurd. Nothing could be more futile\n than the three \"Pastoral Letters\" published by the Bishop of\n London (1728, 1730, 1731) as counterblasts to the freethinking\n books of this period. In France the defence began sooner, and\n was more profound and even more methodical. Pascal at least went\n deeper, and Bossuet (in his Discours sur l'Histoire Universelle)\n more widely, into certain inward and outward problems of the\n controversy than did any of the English apologists; Huet produced,\n in his Demonstratio Evangelica, one of the most methodical of all\n the defensive treatises of the time; Abbadie, as before noted,\n gave great satisfaction, and certainly grappled zealously with\n Hobbes and Spinoza; Allix, though no great dialectician, gave a\n lead to English apologetics against the deists (above, p. 97),\n and was even adapted by Paley; and F\u00e9nelon, though his Trait\u00e9 de\n l'Existence et des Attributs de Dieu (1712) and Lettres sur la\n Religion (1716) are not very powerful processes of reasoning,\n contributed through his reproduced conversations (1710) with\n Ramsay a set of arguments at least as plausible as anything on\n the English side, and, what is more notable, marked by an amenity\n which almost no English apologist attained.\n\n The ground had been thus very fully covered by the defence in\n France before the main battle in England began; and when a new\n French campaign commenced with Voltaire, the defence against\n that incomparable attack, so far as the system allowed of any,\n was probably as good as it could have been made in England, save\n insofar as the Protestants gave up modern miracles, while most of\n the Catholics claimed them for their Church. Counterblasts such\n as the essay of Linguet, Le Fanatisme des Philosophes (1764),\n were but general indictments of rationalism; and other apologetic\n treatises, as we saw, handled only the most prominent books on\n the other side. It should be noted, too, that as late as 1764\n the police made it almost impossible to obtain in Paris works\n of Voltaire recently printed in Holland (Grimm, vii, 123, 133,\n 434). But, as Paley admitted with reference to Gibbon (\"Who can\n refute a sneer?\"), the new attack was in any case very hard to\n meet. A sneer is not hard to refute when it is unfounded, inasmuch\n as it implies a proposition, which can be rebutted or turned by\n another sneer. The Anglican Church had been well enough pleased by\n the polemic sneers of Swift and Berkeley; but the other side had\n the heavier guns, and of the mass of defences produced in England\n nothing remains save in the neat compilation of Paley. Alison's\n whole avowal might equally well apply to anything produced in\n England as against Voltaire. The skeptical line of argument for\n faith had been already employed by Huet and Pascal and F\u00e9nelon,\n with visibly small success; Berkeley had achieved nothing with\n it as against English deism; and Butler had no such effect in his\n day in England as to induce French Catholics to use him. (He does\n not appear to have been translated into French till 1821.)\n\n An Oratorian priest, again, translated the anti-deistic essays\n of President Forbes; and the Pens\u00e9es Theologiques relatives aux\n erreurs du temps of P\u00e8re Jamin (1768; 4e \u00e9dit. 1773) were thought\n worthy of being translated into German, poor as they were. With\n their empty affirmation of authority they suggest so much blank\n cartridge, which could avail nothing with thinking men; and here\n doubtless the English defence makes a better impression. But,\n on the other hand, Voltaire circulated widely in England, and was\n no better answered there than in France. His attack was, in truth,\n at many points peculiarly baffling, were it only by its inimitable\n wit. The English replies to Spinoza, again, were as entirely\n inefficient or deficient as the French; the only intelligent\n English answers to Hume on Miracles (the replies on other issues\n were of no account) made use of the French investigations of the\n Jansenist miracles; and the replies to Gibbon were in general\n ignominious failures.\n\n Finally, though the deeper reasonings of Diderot were over the\n heads alike of the French and the English clergy, the Syst\u00e8me\n de la Nature of d'Holbach was met skilfully enough at many\n points by G. J. Holland (1772), who, though not a Frenchman,\n wrote excellent French, and supplied for French readers a\n very respectable rejoinder; [1044] whereas in England there was\n practically none. In this case, of course, the defence was deistic;\n as was that of Voltaire, who criticized d'Holbach as Bolingbroke\n attacked Spinoza and Hobbes. But the Examen du Mat\u00e9rialisme of the\n Abb\u00e9 Bergier (1771), who was a member of the Academy of Sciences,\n was at least as good as anything that could then have been done in\n the Church of England; and the same may be said of his reply to\n Fr\u00e9ret's (really Burigny's) Examen. It is certainly poor enough;\n but Bishop Watson used some of its arguments for his reply to\n Paine. Broadly speaking, as we have said, much more of French\n than of English intelligence had been turned to the dispute\n in the third quarter of the century. In England, political and\n industrial discussion relieved the pressure on creed; in France,\n before the Revolution, the whole habit of absolutism tended to\n restrict discussion to questions of creed; and the attack would\n in any case have had the best of it, because it embodied all\n the critical forces hitherto available. The controversy thus\n went much further than the pre-Humian issues raised in England;\n and the English orthodoxy of the end of the century was, in\n comparison, intellectually as weak as politically and socially it\n was strong. In France, from the first, the greater intellectual\n freedom in social intercourse, exemplified in the readiness of\n women to declare themselves freethinkers (cp. Jamin, as cited,\n ch. xix, \u00a7 1), would have made the task of the apologists harder\n even had they been more competent.\n\n\n16. Above the scattered band of minor combatants rises a group of\nwriters of special power, several of whom, without equalling Voltaire\nin ubiquity of influence, rivalled him in intellectual power and\nindustry. The names of Diderot, D'Holbach, D'Alembert, Helv\u00e9tius, and\nCondorcet are among the first in literary France of the generation\nbefore the Revolution; after them come Volney and Dupuis; and in\ntouch with the whole series stands the line of great mathematicians\nand physicists (to which also belongs D'Alembert), Laplace, Lagrange,\nLalande, Delambre. When to these we add the names of Montesquieu,\nBuffon, Chamfort, Rivarol, Vauvenargues; of the materialists La Mettrie\nand Cabanis; of the philosophers Condillac and Destutt de Tracy; of\nthe historian Raynal; of the poet Andr\u00e9 Ch\u00e9nier; of the politicians\nTurgot, Mirabeau, Danton, Desmoulins, Robespierre--all (save perhaps\nRaynal) deists or else pantheists or atheists--it becomes clear that\nthe intelligence of France was predominantly rationalistic before\nthe Revolution, though the mass of the nation certainly was not.\n\n\n It is necessary to deprecate Mr. Lecky's statement (Rationalism\n in Europe, i, 176) that \"Raynal has taken, with Diderot, a place\n in French literature which is probably permanent\"--an estimate as\n far astray as the declaration on the same page that the English\n deists are buried in \"unbroken silence.\" Raynal's vogue in his\n day was indeed immense (cp. Morley, Diderot, ch. xv); and Edmond\n Scherer (\u00c9tudes sur la litt. du 18e Si\u00e8cle, 1891, pp. 277-78) held\n that Raynal's Histoire philosophique des deux Indes had had more\n influence on the French Revolution than even Rousseau's Contrat\n Social. But the book has long been discredited (cp. Scherer,\n pp. 275-76). A biographical Dictionary of 1844 spoke of it as\n \"cet ouvrage ampoul\u00e9 qu'on ne lit pas aujourd'hui.\" Although the\n first edition (1770) passed the censure only by means of bribery,\n and the second (1780) was publicly burned, and its author forced to\n leave France, he was said to reject, in religion, \"only the pope,\n hell, and monks\" (Scherer, p. 286); and most of the anti-religious\n declamation in the first edition of the Histoire is said to be\n from the pen of Diderot, who wrote it very much at random, at\n Raynal's request.\n\n\nNo list of orthodox names remotely comparable with these can be drawn\nfrom the literature of France, or indeed of any other country of that\ntime. Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), the one other pre-eminent\nfigure, though not an anti-Christian propagandist, is distinctly on\nthe side of deism. In the Contrat Social, [1045] writing with express\napprobation of Hobbes, he declares that \"the Christian law is at bottom\nmore injurious than useful to the sound constitution of the State\"; and\neven the famous Confession of Faith of a Savoyard Vicar in the \u00c9mile is\nanti-revelationist, and practically anti-clerical. He was accordingly\nanathematized by the Sorbonne, which found in \u00c9mile nineteen heresies;\nthe book was seized and burned both at Paris and at Geneva within a few\nweeks of its appearance, [1046] and the author decreed to be arrested;\neven the Contrat Social was seized and its vendors imprisoned. All\nthe while he had maintained in \u00c9mile doctrines of the usefulness of\nreligious delusion and fanaticism. Still, although his temperamental\nway of regarding things has a clear affinity with some later religious\nphilosophy of a more systematic sort, he undoubtedly made for\nfreethought as well as for the revolutionary spirit in general. Thus\nthe cause of Christianity stood almost denuded of intellectually\neminent adherents in the France of 1789; for even among the writers\nwho had dealt with public questions without discussing religion, or\nwho had criticized Rousseau and the philosophes--as the Abb\u00e9s Mably,\nMorellet, Millot--the tone was essentially rationalistic.\n\n\n It has been justly enough argued, concerning Rousseau (see\n below, p. 287), that the generation of the Revolution made him\n its prophet in his own despite, and that had he lived twenty\n years longer he would have been its vehement adversary. But this\n does not alter the facts as to his influence. A great writer of\n emotional genius, like Rousseau, inevitably impels men beyond the\n range of his own ideals, as in recent times Ruskin and Tolstoy,\n both anti-Socialists, have led thousands towards Socialism. In\n his own generation and the next, Rousseau counted essentially for\n criticism of the existing order; and it was the revolutionaries,\n never the conservatives, who acclaimed him. De Tocqueville\n (Hist. philos. du r\u00e8gne de Louis XV, 1849, i, 33) speaks of his\n \"impi\u00e9t\u00e9 dogmatique.\" Martin du Theil, in his J. J. Rousseau\n apologiste de la religion chr\u00e9tienne (2e \u00e9dit. 1840), makes out\n his case by identifying emotional deism with Christianity, as did\n Rousseau himself when he insisted that \"the true Christianity\n is only natural religion well explained.\" Rousseau's praise of\n the gospel and of the character of Jesus was such as many deists\n acquiesced in. Similar language, in the mouth of Matthew Arnold,\n gave rather more offence to Gladstone, as a believing Christian,\n than did the language of simple unbelief; and a recent Christian\n polemist, at the close of a copious monograph, has repudiated the\n association of Rousseau with the faith (see J. F. Nourrisson,\n J. J. Rousseau et le Rousseauisme, 1903, p. 497 sq.). What\n is true of him is that he was more religiously a theist than\n Voltaire, whose impeachment of Providence in the poem on the\n Earthquake of Lisbon he sought strenuously though not very\n persuasively to refute in a letter to the author. But, with\n all his manifold inconsistencies, which may be worked down\n to the neurosis so painfully manifest in his life and in his\n relations to his contemporaries, he never writes as a believer\n in the dogmas of Christianity or in the principle of revelation;\n and it was as a deist that he was recognized by his Christian\n contemporaries. A demi-Christian is all that Michelet will call\n him. His compatriot the Swiss pastor Roustan, located in London,\n directed against him his Offrande aux Autels et \u00e0 la Patrie, ou\n D\u00e9fense du Christianisme (1764), regarding him as an assailant. The\n work of the Abb\u00e9 Bergier, Le D\u00e9isme refut\u00e9 par lui-m\u00eame (1765,\n and later), takes the form of letters addressed to Rousseau, and\n is throughout an attack on his works, especially the \u00c9mile. When,\n therefore, Buckle (1-vol. ed. p. 475) speaks of him as not having\n attacked Christianity, and Lord Morley (Rousseau, ch. xiv) treats\n him as creating a religious reaction against the deists, they do\n not fully represent his influence on his time. As we have seen,\n he stimulated Voltaire to new audacities by his example.\n\n\n17. An interlude in the critical campaign, little noticed at the time,\ndeveloped importance a generation later. In 1753 Jean Astruc, doctor\nof medicine, published after long hesitation his Conjectures on the\noriginal documents which Moses seems to have used in composing the\nbook of Genesis. Only in respect of his flash of insight into the\ncomposite structure of the Pentateuch was Astruc a freethinker. His\nhesitation to publish was due to his fear that les pretendus esprits\nforts might make a bad use of his work; and he was quite satisfied\nthat Moses was the author of the Pentateuch as it stands. The denial\nof that authorship, implied in the criticisms of Hobbes and Spinoza,\nhe described as \"the disease of the last century.\" This attitude may\nexplain the lack of interest in Astruc's work shown by the freethinkers\nof the time. [1047] Nonetheless, by his perception of the clue given\nby the narrative use of the two names Yahweh and Elohim in Genesis,\nhe laid a new foundation of the Higher Criticism of the Bible in modern\ntimes, advancing alike on Spinoza and on Simon. For freethought he had\n\"builded better than he knew.\"\n\n18. In the select Parisian arena of the Acad\u00e9mie, the intellectual\nmovement of the age is as it were dramatized; and there more clearly\nthan in the literary record we can trace the struggle of opinions,\nfrom the admission of Voltaire (1746) onwards. In the old days\nthe Acad\u00e9mie had been rather the home of convention, royalism,\nand orthodoxy than of ideas, though before Voltaire there were some\nfreethinking members of the lesser Acad\u00e9mies, notably Boindin. [1048]\nThe admission of Montesquieu (1728), after much opposition from\nthe court, preludes a new era; and from the entrance of Voltaire,\nfourteen years after his first attempt, [1049] the atmosphere begins\nperceptibly to change. When, in 1727, the academician Bonamy had read\na memoir On the character and the paganism of the emperor Julian,\npartly vindicating him against the aspersions of the Christian Fathers,\nthe Academy feared to print the paper, though its author was a devout\nCatholic. [1050] When the Abb\u00e9 La Bletterie, also orthodox, read to\nthe Academy portions of his Vie de Julien, the members were not now\nscandalized, though the Abb\u00e9's Jansenism moved the King to veto his\nnomination. So, when Blanchard in 1735 read a memoir on Les exorcismes\nmagiques there was much trepidation among the members, and again the\nSecretary inserted merely an analysis, concluding with the words of\nPhiletas, \"Believe and fear God; beware of questioning.\" [1051] Even\nsuch a play of criticism as the challenging of the early history\nof Rome by L\u00e9vesque de Pouilly (brother of L\u00e9vesque de Burigny)\nin a dissertation before the Acad\u00e9mie in 1722, roused the fears and\nthe resentment of the orthodox; the Abb\u00e9 Sallier, in undertaking to\nrefute him, insinuated that he had shown a spirit which might be\ndangerous to other beliefs; and whispers of atheism passed among\nthe academicians. [1052] Pouilly, who had been made a freethinker\nby English contacts, went again to England later, and spent his last\nyears at Rheims. [1053] His thesis was much more powerfully sustained\nin 1738 by Beaufort, in the famous dissertation Sur l'incertitude des\ncinq premiers si\u00e8cles de l'histoire romaine; but Beaufort was of a\nrefugee-Huguenot stock; his book was published, under his initials,\nat Utrecht; and not till 1753 did the Acad\u00e9mie award him a medal--on\nthe score of an earlier treatise. And in 1748 the Religio veterum\nPersarum of the English Orientalist Hyde, published as long before\nas 1700, found a vehement assailant within the Academy in the Abb\u00e9\nFoucher, who saw danger in a favourable view of any heathen religion.\n\nYet even in the time of Louis XIV the Abb\u00e9 Mongault, tutor of the son\nof the Regent, and noted alike for his private freethinking and for\nthe rigid orthodoxy which he instilled into his pupil, treated the\nhistoric subject of the divine honours rendered to Roman governors\nwith such latitude as to elicit from Fr\u00e9ret, in his \u00e9loge of Mongault,\nthe remark that the tutor had reserved to himself a liberty of thought\nwhich he doubtless felt to be dangerous in a prince. [1054] And after\n1750 the old order can be seen passing away. D'Argenson notes in his\ndiary in 1754: \"I observe in the Acad\u00e9mie de belles-lettres, of which\nI am a member, that there begins to be a decided stir against the\npriests. It began to show itself at the death of Boindin, to whom our\nbigots refused a service at the Oratory and a public commemoration. Our\ndeist philosophers were shocked, and ever since, at each election,\nthey are on guard against the priests and the bigots. Nowhere is\nthis division so marked, and it begins to bear fruits.\" [1055] The\nold statesman indicates his own sympathies by adding: \"Why has a bad\nname been made of the title of deist? It is that of those who have\ntrue religion in their hearts, and who have abjured a superstition\nthat is destructive to the whole world.\" It was in this year that\nD'Alembert, who took nearly as much pains to stay out as Voltaire\nhad done to enter, [1056] was elected a member; and with two leading\nencyclop\u00e9distes in the forty, and a friendly abb\u00e9 (Duclos) in the\nsecretaryship (1755), and another zealous freethinker, L\u00e9vesque de\nBurigny, admitted in 1756, [1057] the fortunes of freethought were\nvisibly rising. Its influence was thrown on the side of the academic\norator Thomas, a sincere believer but a hater of all persecution,\nand as such offensive to the Church party. [1058]\n\n19. In 1759 there came a check. The Encyclop\u00e9die, which had been\nallowed to resume publication after its first suppression in 1752,\nwas again stopped; and the battle between philosophes and fanatics,\ndramatized for the time being in Palissot's comedy Les Philosophes\nand in Voltaire's rejoinder to Fr\u00e9ron, L'\u00c9cossaise, came to be\nfought out in the Academy itself. The poet Lefranc de Pompignan,\n[1059] elected in 1759 without any opposition from the freethinkers,\nhad in his youth translated Pope's \"Deist's Prayer,\" and had suffered\nfor it to the extent of being deprived by D'Aguesseau of his official\ncharge [1060] for six months. With such a past, with a keen concern\nfor status, and with a character that did not stick at tergiversation,\nPompignan saw fit to signalize his election by making his discours\nde r\u00e9ception (March, 1760) a violent attack on the whole philosophic\nschool, which, in his conclusion, he declared to be undermining\n\"equally the throne and the altar.\" The academicians heard him\nout in perfect silence, leaving it to the few pietists among the\naudience to applaud; but as soon as the reports reached Ferney there\nbegan the vengeance of Voltaire. First came a leaflet of stinging\nsentences, each beginning with Quand: \"When one has translated\nand even exaggerated the 'Deist's Prayer' composed by Pope ...,\"\nand so on. The maddened Pompignan addressed a fatuous memorial to\nthe King (who notoriously hated the philosophes, and had assented\nonly under petticoat influence to Voltaire's election [1061]); and,\npresuming to print it without the usual official sanction, suffered\nat the hands of Malesherbes the blow of having the printer's plant\nsmashed. Other combatants entered the fray. Voltaire's leaflet \"les\nquand\" was followed by \"les si, les pour, les qui, les quoi, les car,\nles ah!\"--by him or others--and the master-mocker produced in swift\nsuccession three satires in verse, [1062] all accompanied by murderous\nprose annotations. The speedy result was Pompignan's retirement into\nprovincial life. He could not face the merciless hail of rejoinders;\nand when at his death, twenty-five years later, the Abb\u00e9 Maury had\nto pronounce his \u00e9loge, the mention of his famous humiliation was\nhardly tempered by compassion. [1063]\n\n20. Voltaire could not compass, as he for a time schemed, the election\nof Diderot; but other philosophes of less note entered from time\nto time; [1064] Marmontel was elected in 1763; and when in 1764\nthe Academy's prize for poetry was given to Chamfort for a piece\nwhich savoured of what were then called \"the detestable principles\nof Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Helv\u00e9tius,\" and in 1768 its prize for\neloquence went to the same writer, the society as a whole had acquired\na certain character for impiety. [1065] In 1767 there had occurred\nthe famous ecclesiastical explosion over Marmontel's philosophic\nromance B\u00e9lisaire, a performance in which it is somewhat difficult\nto-day to detect any exciting quality. It was by a chapter in praise\nof toleration that the \"universal and mediocre Marmontel\" [1066]\nsecured from the Sorbonne the finest advertisement ever given to a\nwork of fiction, the ecclesiastics of the old school being still too\nthoroughly steeped in the past to realize that a gospel of persecution\nwas a bad warcry for a religion that was being more and more put on the\ndefensive. Only an angry fear before the rising flood of unlicensed\nliterature, combining with the long-baffled desire to strike some\nblow at freethinking, could have moved the Sorbonne to select for\ncensure the duly licensed work [1067] of a popular academician and\nnovelist; and it should be remembered that it was at a time of great\nactivity in the unlicensed production of freethinking literature\nthat the attack was made. The blow recoiled signally. The book\nwas of course promptly translated into all the languages of Europe,\nselling by tens of thousands; [1068] and two sovereigns took occasion\nto give it their express approval. These were the Empress Catherine\n(who caused the book to be translated by members of her court while\nshe was making a tour of her empire, she herself taking a chapter),\nand the Empress Maria-Theresa. From Catherine, herself a freethinker,\nthe approbation might have been expected; but the known orthodoxy\nand austerity of Maria-Theresa made her support the more telling. In\nFrance a small literary tempest raged for a year. Marmontel published\nhis correspondence with the syndic of the Sorbonne and with Voltaire;\nand in all there appeared some dozen documents pro and con, among\nthem an anonymous satire by Turgot, Les xxxvii verit\u00e9s oppos\u00e9es aux\nxxxvii impi\u00e9t\u00e9s de B\u00e9lisaire, \"Par un Bachelier Ubiquiste,\" [1069]\nwhich, with the contributions of Voltaire, gave the victim very much\nthe best of the battle.\n\n21. Alongside of the more strictly literary or humanist movement,\ntoo, there went on one of a scientific kind, which divided into two\nlines, a speculative and a practical. On the former the freelance\nphilosopher Julien Offray la Mettrie gave a powerful initial push by\nhis materialistic theses, in which a medical knowledge that for the\ntime was advanced is applied with a very keen if unsystematic reasoning\nfaculty to the primary problem of mind and body; and others after\nhim continued the impulse. La Mettrie produced his Natural History\nof the Mind in 1745; [1070] and in 1746 appeared the Essay on the\nOrigin of Human Knowledge of the Abb\u00e9 Condillac, both essentially\nrationalistic and anti-theological works, though differing in their\npsychological positions, Condillac being a non-materialist, though\na strong upholder of \"sensism.\" La Mettrie followed up his doctrine\nwith the more definitely materialistic but less heedfully planned\nworks, L'Homme Plante and L'Homme Machine (1748), the second of which,\npublished at Leyden [1071] and wickedly dedicated to the pious Baron\nvon Haller, was burned by order of the magistrates, its author being\nat the same time expelled from Holland. Both books are remarkable\nfor their originality of thought, biological and ethical. Though\nLa Mettrie professed to think the \"greatest degree of probability\"\nwas in favour of the existence of a personal God, [1072] his other\nwritings gave small support to the hypothesis; and even in putting\nit he rejects any inference as to worship. And he goes on to quote\nvery placidly an atheist who insists that only an atheistic world can\nattain to happiness. It is notable that he, the typical materialist of\nhis age, seems to have been one of its kindliest men, by the consent\nof all who knew him, [1073] though heedless in his life to the point\nof ending it by eating a monstrous meal out of bravado.\n\n\n The conventional denunciation of La Mettrie (endorsed by Lord\n Morley, Voltaire, p. 122) proceeds ostensibly upon those of his\n writings in which he discussed sexual questions with absolute\n scientific freedom. He, however, insisted that his theoretic\n discussion had nothing whatever to do with his practice; and there\n is no evidence that he lived otherwise than as most men did in his\n age, and ours. Still, the severe censure passed on him by Diderot\n (Essai sur les r\u00e8gnes de Claude et de N\u00e9ron, ed. 1782, ii, 22-24)\n seems to convict him of at least levity of character. Voltaire\n several times holds the same tone. But Diderot writes so angrily\n that his verdict incurs suspicion.\n\n As Lange notes, there has been much loose generalization as to\n the place and bearing of La Mettrie in the history of French\n thought. Hettner, who apparently had not thought it worth while\n to read him, has ascribed his mental movement to the influence\n of Diderot's Pens\u00e9es philosophiques (1746), whereas it had\n begun in his own Histoire naturelle de l'\u00e2me, published a year\n before. La Mettrie's originality and influence in general have been\n underestimated as a result of the hostility set up by disparagement\n of his character. The idea of a fundamental unity of type in\n nature--an idea underlying all the successive steps of Lamarck,\n Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Goethe, and others, towards the complete\n conception of evolution--is set forth by him in L'Homme Plante in\n 1748, the year in which appeared De Maillet's Telliamed. Buffon\n follows in time as in thought, only beginning his great work\n in 1749; Maupertuis, with his pseudonymous dissertation on the\n Universal system of Nature, applies La Mettrie's conception in\n 1751; and Diderot's Pens\u00e9es sur l'interpr\u00e9tation de la nature,\n stimulated by Maupertuis, appeared only in 1754. La Mettrie\n proceeded from the classification of Linn\u00e6us, but did not\n there find his idea. In the words of Lange, \"these forgotten\n writings are in nowise so empty and superficial as is commonly\n assumed.\" Gesch. des Materialismus, i, 328-29. Lange seems to\n have been the first to make a judicial study of La Mettrie's work,\n as distinguished from the scandals about his character.\n\n\n22. A more general influence, naturally, attached to the\nsimple concrete handling of scientific problems. The interest\nin such questions, noticeable in England at the Restoration\nand radiating thence, is seen widely diffused in France after\nthe publication of Fontenelle's Entretiens, and thenceforward it\nrapidly strengthens. Barren theological disputations set men not\nmerely against theology, but upon the study of Nature, where real\nknowledge was visibly possible. To a certain extent the study took\nopenly heretical lines. The Abb\u00e9 Lenglet du Fresnoy, who was four\ntimes imprisoned in the Bastille, supplied material of which D'Argens\nmade much use, tending to overthrow the Biblical chronology and to\ndiscredit the story of the Flood. [1074] Beno\u00eet de Maillet (1656-1738),\nwho had been for fifteen years inspector of the French establishments\nin Egypt and Barbary, left for posthumous publication (1748) a work\nof which the first title was an anagram of his name, Telliamed, ou\nEntretiens d'un philosophe indien avec un missionaire fran\u00e7ais. Of\nthis treatise the thesis is that the shell deposits in the Alps and\nelsewhere showed the sea to have been where land now was; and that the\nrocks were gradually deposited in their different kinds in the fashion\nin which even now are being formed mud, sand, and shingle. De Maillet\nhad thus anticipated the central conception of modern geology, albeit\nretaining many traditional delusions. His abstention from publication\nduring his lifetime testifies to his sense of the danger he underwent,\nthe treatise having been printed by him only in 1735, at the age of\nseventy-nine; and not till ten years after his death was it given to\nthe world, with \"a preface and dedication so worded as, in case of\nnecessity, to give the printer a fair chance of falling back on the\nexcuse that the work was intended for a mere jeu d'esprit.\" [1075]\n\nThe thesis was adopted, indeed plagiarized, [1076] by Mirabaud in\nhis Le Monde, son origine et son antiquit\u00e9 (1751). Strangely enough,\nVoltaire refused to be convinced, and offered amazing suggestions\nas to the possible deposit of shells by pilgrims. [1077] It is not\nunlikely that it was Voltaire's opposition rather than any orthodox\nargumentation that retarded in France the acceptance of an evolutionary\nview of the origin of the earth and of life. It probably had a more\npractical effect on scientific thought in England [1078]--at least\nas regards geology: its speculations on the modification of species,\nwhich loosely but noticeably anticipate some of the inferences of\nDarwin, found no acceptance anywhere till Lamarck. In the opinion\nof Huxley, the speculations of Robinet, in the next generation, \"are\nrather behind than in advance of those of De Maillet\"; [1079] and it\nmay be added that the former, with his pet theory that all Nature\nis \"animated,\" and that the stars and planets have the faculty of\nreproducing themselves like animals, wandered as far from sound bases\nas De Maillet ever did. The very form of De Maillet's work, indeed,\nwas not favourable to its serious acceptance; and in his case, as in\nthose of so many pioneers of new ideas, errors and extravagances and\noversights in regard to matters of detail went to justify \"practical\"\nmen in dismissing novel speculations. Needless to say, the common run\nof scientific men remained largely under the influence of religious\npresuppositions in science even when they had turned their backs\non the Church. Nonetheless, on all sides the study of natural fact\nbegan to play its part in breaking down the dominion of creed. Even\nin hidebound Protestant Switzerland, the sheer ennui of Puritanism is\nseen driving the descendants of the Huguenot refugees to the physical\nsciences for an interest and an occupation, before any freethinking\ncan safely be avowed; and in France, as Buckle has shown in abundant\ndetail, the study of the physical sciences became for many years\nbefore the Revolution almost a fashionable mania. And at the start\nthe Church had contrived that such study should rank as unbelief,\nand so make unbelievers.\n\nWhen Buffon [1080] in 1749-50 published his Histoire Naturelle,\nthe delight which was given to most readers by its finished style\nwas paralleled by the wrath which its Th\u00e9orie de la Terre aroused\namong the clergy. After much discussion Buffon received early in 1751\nfrom the Sorbonne an official letter specifying as reprehensible in\nhis book fourteen propositions which he was invited to retract. He\nstoically obeyed in a declaration to the effect that he had \"no\nintention to contradict the text of Scripture,\" and that he believed\n\"most firmly all there related about the creation,\" adding: \"I abandon\neverything in my book respecting the formation of the earth.\" [1081]\nStill he was attacked as an unbeliever by the Bishop of Auxerre in that\nprelate's pastoral against the thesis of de Prades. [1082] During the\nrest of his life he outwardly conformed to religious usage, but all\nmen knew that in his heart he believed what he had written; and the\nmemory of the affront that the Church had thus put upon so honoured\na student helped to identify her cause no less with ignorance than\nwith insolence and oppression. For all such insults, and for the long\nroll of her cruelties, the Church was soon to pay a tremendous penalty.\n\n23. But science, like theology, had its schisms, and the rationalizing\ncamp had its own strifes. Maupertuis, for instance, is remembered\nmainly as one of the victims of the mockery of Voltaire (which he\nwell earned by his own antagonism at the court of Frederick); yet he\nwas really an energetic man of science, and had preceded Voltaire in\nsetting up in France the Newtonian against the Cartesian physics. In\nhis System of Nature [1083] (not to be confused with the later work of\nd'Holbach under the same title) he in 1751 propounded a new version of\nthe hylozoisms of ancient Greece; developed the idea of an underlying\nunity in the forms of natural life, already propounded by La Mettrie\nin his L'Homme Plante; connected it with Leibnitz's formula of the\neconomy of nature (\"minimum of action\"--the germ of the modern \"line\nof least resistance\"), and at the same time anticipated some of the\nspecial philosophic positions of Kant. [1084] Diderot, impressed by\nbut professedly dissenting from Maupertuis's Syst\u00e8me in his Pens\u00e9es\nsur l'interpr\u00e9tation de la nature (1754), promptly pointed out that\nthe conception of a primordially vitalized atom excluded that of a\nCreator, and for his own part thereafter took that standpoint. [1085]\n\nIn 1754 came the Trait\u00e9 des Sensations of Condillac, in which is most\nsystematically developed the physio-psychological conception of man as\nan \"animated statue,\" of which the thought is wholly conditioned by the\nsenses. The mode of approach had been laid down before by La Mettrie,\nby Diderot, and by Buffon; and Condillac is rather a developer and\nsystematizer than an originator; [1086] but in this case the process\nof unification was to the full as important as the first steps; [1087]\nand Condillac has an importance which is latterly being rediscovered\nby the school of Spencer on the one hand and by that of James on\nthe other. Condillac, commonly termed a materialist, no more held\nthe legendary materialistic view than any other so named; and the\nsame may be said of the next figure in the \"materialistic\" series,\nJ. B. Robinet, a Frenchman settled at Amsterdam, after having been,\nit is said, a Jesuit. His Nature (4 vols. 1761-1768) is a remarkable\nattempt to reach a strictly naturalistic conception of things. [1088]\nBut he is a theorist, not an investigator. Even in his fixed idea\nthat the universe is an \"animal\" he had perhaps a premonition of\nthe modern discovery of the immense diffusion of bacterial life;\nbut he seems to have had more deriders than disciples. He founds\nat once on Descartes and on Leibnitz, but in his Philosophical\nConsiderations on the natural gradation of living forms (1768)\nhe definitely sets aside theism as illusory, and puts ethics on a\nstrictly scientific and human footing, [1089] extending the arguments\nof Hume and Hutcheson somewhat on the lines of Mandeville. [1090] On\nanother line of reasoning a similar application of Mandeville's thesis\nhad already been made by Helv\u00e9tius in his Trait\u00e9 de l'Esprit [1091]\n(1758), a work which excited a hostility now difficult to understand,\nbut still reflected in censures no less surprising.\n\n\n One of the worst misrepresentations in theological literature is\n the account of Helv\u00e9tius by the late Principal Cairns (Unbelief\n in the Eighteenth Century, 1881, p. 158) as appealing to\n government \"to promote luxury, and, through luxury, public good,\n by abolishing all those laws that cherish a false modesty and\n restrain libertinage.\" Helv\u00e9tius simply pressed the consequences\n of the existing theory of luxury, which for his own part he\n disclaimed. De l'Esprit, Disc. ii, ch. xv. Dr. P\u00fcnjer (i, 462)\n falls so far below his usual standard as to speak of Helv\u00e9tius\n in a similar fashion. As against such detraction it is fitting to\n note that Helv\u00e9tius, like La Mettrie, was one of the most lovable\n and most beloved men of his time, though, like him, sufficiently\n licentious in his youth.\n\n\nIt was at once suppressed by royal order as scandalous, licentious,\nand dangerous, though Helv\u00e9tius held a post at court as ma\u00eetre d'h\u00f4tel\nto the Queen. Ordered to make a public retractation, he did so in a\nletter addressed to a Jesuit; and this being deemed insufficient,\nhe had to sign another, \"so humiliating,\" wrote Grimm, [1092]\n\"that one would not have been astonished to see a man take refuge\nwith the Hottentots rather than put his name to such avowals.\" The\nwits explained that the censor who had passed the book, being an\nofficial in the Bureau of Foreign Affairs, had treated De l'Esprit\nas belonging to that department. [1093] A swarm of replies appeared,\nand the book was formally burnt, with Voltaire's poem Sur la loi\nnaturelle, and several obscure works of older standing. [1094] The\nDe l'Esprit, appearing alongside of the ever-advancing Encyclop\u00e9die,\n[1095] was in short a formidable challenge to the powers of bigotry.\n\nIts real faults are lack of system, undue straining after popularity,\nsome hasty generalization, and a greater concern for the air of paradox\nthan for persuasion; but it abounds in acuteness and critical wisdom,\nand it definitely and seriously founds public ethics on utility. Its\nmost serious error, the assumption that all men are born with equal\nfaculties, and that education is the sole differentiating force, was\nrepeated in our own age by John Stuart Mill; but in Helv\u00e9tius the\nerror is balanced by the thoroughly sound and profoundly important\nthesis that the general superiorities of nations are the result of\ntheir culture-conditions and politics. [1096] The over-balance of his\nstress on self-interest [1097] is an error easily soluble. On the other\nhand, we have the memorable testimony of Beccaria that it was the work\nof Helv\u00e9tius that inspired him to his great effort for the humanizing\nof penal laws and policy; [1098] and the only less notable testimony\nof Bentham that Helv\u00e9tius was his teacher and inspirer. [1099] It may\nbe doubted whether any such fruits can be claimed for the teachings\nof the whole of the orthodox moralists of the age. For the rest,\nHelv\u00e9tius is not to be ranked among the great abstract thinkers; but it\nis noteworthy that his thinking went on advancing to the end. Always\ngreatly influenced by Voltaire, he did not philosophically harden as\ndid his master; and though in his posthumous work, Les Progr\u00e8s de la\nRaison dans la recherche du Vrai (published in 1775), he stands for\ndeism against atheism, the argument ends in the pantheism to which\nVoltaire had once attained, but did not adhere.\n\n24. Over all of these men, and even in some measure over Voltaire,\nDiderot (1713-1784) stands pre-eminent, on retrospect, for variety\nof power and depth and subtlety of thought; though for these very\nreasons, as well as because some of his most masterly works were never\nprinted in his lifetime, he was less of a recognized popular force\nthan some of his friends. In his own mental history he reproduces the\ncourse of the French thought of his time. Beginning as a deist, he\nassailed the contemporary materialists; in the end, with whatever of\ninconsistency, he was emphatically an atheist and a materialist. One\nof his most intimate friends was Damilaville, of whom Voltaire speaks\nas a vehement anti-theist; [1100] and his biographer Naigeon, who at\ntimes overstated his positions but always revered him, was the most\nzealous atheist of his day. [1101]\n\n\n Compare, as to Diderot's position, Soury's contention (p. 577)\n that we shall never make an atheist and a materialist out of\n \"this enthusiastic artist, this poet-pantheist\" (citing Rosenkranz\n in support), with his own admissions, pp. 589-90, and with Lord\n Morley's remarks, pp. 33, 401, 418. See also Lange, i, 310 sq.;\n ii, 63 (Eng. tr. ii, 32, 256). In the affectionate \u00e9loge of his\n friend Meister (1786) there is an express avowal that \"it had been\n much to be desired for the reputation of Diderot, perhaps even for\n the honour of his age, that he had not been an atheist, or that he\n had been so with less zeal.\" The fact is thus put beyond reasonable\n doubt. In the Correspondance Litt\u00e9raire of Grimm and Diderot, under\n date September 15, 1765 (vii, 366), there is a letter in criticism\n of Descartes, thoroughly atheistic in its reasoning, which is\n almost certainly by Diderot. And if the criticism of Voltaire's\n Dieu, above referred to (p. 231), be not by him, he was certainly\n in entire agreement with it, as with Grimm in general. Rosenkranz\n finally (ii, 421) sums up that \"Diderot war als Atheist Pantheist,\"\n which is merely a way of saying that he was scientifically monistic\n in his atheism. Lange points out in this connection (i, 310) that\n the Hegelian schema of philosophic evolution, \"with its sovereign\n contempt for chronology,\" has wrought much confusion as to the\n real developments of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.\n\n\nIt is recorded that Diderot's own last words in serious conversation\nwere: \"The beginning of philosophy is incredulity\"; and it may\nbe inferred from his writings that his first impulses to searching\nthought came from his study of Montaigne, who must always have been\nfor him one of the most congenial of spirits. [1102] At an early stage\nof his independent mental life we find him turning to the literature\nwhich in that age yielded to such a mind as his the largest measure\nboth of nutriment and stimulus--the English. In 1745 he translated\nShaftesbury's Inquiry concerning Virtue and Merit; and he must have\nread with prompt appreciation the other English freethinkers then\nfamous. Ere long, however, he had risen above the deistical plane of\nthought, and grappled with the fundamental issues which the deists\ntook for granted, partly because of an innate bent to psychological\nanalysis, partly because he was more interested in scientific problems\nthan in scholarly research. The Pens\u00e9es philosophiques, published\nin 1746, really deserve their name; and though they exhibit him as\nstill a satisfied deist, and an opponent of the constructive atheism\nthen beginning to suggest itself, they contain abstract reasonings\nsufficiently disturbing to the deistic position. [1103] The Promenade\ndu Sceptique (written about 1747, published posthumously) goes further,\nand presents tentatively the reply to the design argument which was\nadopted by Hume.\n\nIn its brilliant pages may be found a conspectus of the intellectual\nlife of the day, on the side of the religious problem. Every type\nof thinker is there tersely characterized--the orthodox, the deist,\nthe atheist, the sheer skeptic, the scoffer, the pantheist, the\nsolipsist, and the freethinking libertine, the last figuring as\nno small nuisance to the serious unbeliever. So drastic is the\ncriticism of orthodoxy that the book was unprintable in its day;\n[1104] and it was little known even in manuscript. But ere long there\nappeared the Letter on the Blind, for the use of those who see (1749),\nin which a logical rebuttal alike of the ethical and the cosmological\nassumptions of theism, developed from hints in the Pens\u00e9es, is put\nin the mouth of the blind English mathematician, Sanderson. It is not\nsurprising that whereas the Pens\u00e9es had been, with some other books,\nordered by the Paris Parlement to be burnt by the common hangman,\nthe Lettre sur les Aveugles led to his arrest and an imprisonment\nof six months [1105] in the Ch\u00e2teau de Vincennes. Both books had of\ncourse been published without licence; [1106] but the second book was\nmore than a defiance of the censorship: it was a challenge alike to\nthe philosophy and the faith of Christendom; and as such could not\nhave missed denunciation. [1107]\n\nBut Diderot was not the kind of man to be silenced by menaces. In\nthe famous Sorbonne thesis of the Abb\u00e9 de Prades (1751) he probably\nhad, as we have seen, some share; and when De Prades was condemned\nand deprived of his licence (1752) Diderot wrote the third part of\nthe Apologie (published by De Prades in Holland), which defended his\npositions; and possibly assisted in the other parts. [1108] The hand\nof Diderot perhaps may be discovered in the skilful allusions to the\nskeptical Demonstratio Evangelica of Huet, which De Prades professes\nto have translated when at his seminary, seeking there the antidote\nto the poison of the deists. The entire handling of the question of\npagan and Christian miracles, too, suggests the skilled dialectician,\nthough it is substantially an adaptation of Leslie's Short and Easy\nMethod with the Deists. The alternate eulogy and criticism of Locke\nare likely to be his, as is indeed the abundant knowledge of English\nthought shown alike in the thesis and in the Apologie. Whether he\nwrote the passage which claims to rebut an argument in his own Pens\u00e9es\nphilosophiques [1109] is surely doubtful. But his, certainly, is the\nfurther reply to the pastoral of the Jansenist Bishop of Auxerre\nagainst de Prades's thesis, in which the perpetual disparagement\nof reason by Catholic theologians is denounced [1110] as the most\ninjurious of all procedures against religion. And his, probably,\nis the peroration [1111] arraigning the Jansenists and imputing to\ntheir fanaticism and superstition, their miracle-mongering and their\nsectarian bitterness, the discredit which among thinking men had\nlatterly fallen upon Church and creed alike. [1112]\n\nDe Prades, who in his thesis and Apologie had always professed to be a\nbelieving Christian, was not a useful recruit to rationalism. Passing\nfrom Holland to Berlin, he was there appointed, through the influence\nof Voltaire, reader and amanuensis to the King, [1113] who in 1754\narranged for him an official reconciliation with the Church. A formal\nretractation was sent to the Pope, the Sorbonne, and the Bishop of\nMontauban; [1114] and Frederick in due course presented him to a\nCatholic canonry at Glogau. In 1757, however, he was put under arrest\non the charge, it is commonly said, of supplying military information\nto his countrymen; [1115] and thereafter, returning to France in 1759,\nhe obtained a French benefice. Diderot, who was now a recognized\nchampion of freethought, turned away with indignation. [1116]\n\nThenceforward he never faltered on his path. It is his peculiar\nexcellence to be an original and innovating thinker not only in\nphilosophy but in psychology, in \u00e6sthetics, in ethics, in dramatic\nart; and his endless and miscellaneous labours in the Encyclop\u00e9die,\nof which he was the most loyal and devoted producer, represent an\nextraordinary range of interests. He suffered from his position as a\nhack writer and as a forced dissembler in his articles on religious\nmatters; and there is probably a very real connection between his\ncompulsory insincerities [1117] in the Encyclop\u00e9die--to say nothing\nof the official prosecution of that and of others of his works--and\nhis misdeeds in the way of indecent fiction. When organized society\nis made to figure as the heartless enemy of thinking men, it is no\ngreat wonder if they are careless at times about the effect of their\nwritings on society. But it stands to his lasting honour that his\nsufferings at the hands of priests, printers, and parlements never\nsoured his natural goodness of heart. [1118] Having in his youth known\na day's unrelieved hunger, he made a vow that he would never refuse\nhelp to any human being; and, says his daughter, no vow was ever more\nfaithfully kept. No one in trouble was ever turned away from his door;\nand even his enemies were helped when they were base enough to beg of\nhim. It seems no exaggeration to say that the bulk of his life was\ngiven to helping other people; and the indirect effect of his work,\nwhich is rather intellectually disinterested than didactic, is no\nless liberative and humanitarian. \"To do good, and to find truth,\"\nwere his mottoes for life.\n\nHis daughter, Madame de Vandeul, who in her old age remained\ntranquilly divided between the religion instilled into her by her\npious mother and the rationalism she had gathered from her father and\nhis friends, testified, then, to his constant goodness in the home;\n[1119] and his father bore a similar testimony, contrasting him\nwith his pious brother. [1120] He was, in his way, as beneficent as\nVoltaire, without Voltaire's faults of private malice; and his life's\nwork was a great ministry of light. It was Goethe who said of him in\nthe next generation that \"whoever holds him or his doings cheaply is\na Philistine.\" His large humanity reaches from the planes of expert\nthought to that of popular feeling; and while by his Letter on the\nBlind he could advance speculative psychology and pure philosophy,\nhe could by his tale The Nun (La Religeuse, [1121] written about\n1760, published 1796) enlist the sympathies of the people against\nthe rule of the Church. It belonged to his character to be generously\nappreciative of all excellence; he delighted in other men's capacity as\nin pictures and poetry; and he loved to praise. At a time when Bacon\nand Hobbes were little regarded in England he made them newly famous\nthroughout Europe by his praises. In him was realized Bacon's saying,\nAdmiratio semen scientiae, in every sense, for his curiosity was as\nkeen as his sensibility.\n\n25. With Diderot were specially associated, in different ways,\nD'Alembert, the mathematician, for some years his special colleague\non the Encyclop\u00e9die, and Baron d'Holbach. The former, one of\nthe staunchest friends of Voltaire, though a less invincible\nfighter than Diderot, counted for practical freethought by his\nmiscellaneous articles, his little book on the Jesuits (1765), his\nPens\u00e9es philosophiques, his physics, and the general rationalism of\nhis Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclop\u00e9die. It is noteworthy that\nin his intimate correspondence with Voltaire he never avows theism,\nand that his and Diderot's friend, the atheist Damilaville, died\nin his arms. [1122] On Dumarsais, too, he penned an \u00e9loge of which\nVoltaire wrote: \"Dumarsais only begins to live since his death;\nyou have given him existence and immortality.\" [1123] And perpetual\nsecretary as he was of the Academy, the fanatical daughter of Madame\nGeoffrin could write to him in 1776: \"For many years you have set\nall respectable people against you by your indecent and imprudent\nmanner of speaking against religion.\" [1124] Baron d'Holbach, a\nnaturalized German of large fortune, was on the other hand one of the\nmost strenuous propagandists of freethought in his age. Personally no\nless beloved than Helv\u00e9tius, [1125] he gave his life and his fortune\nto the work of enlightening men on all the lines on which he felt\nthey needed light. Much of the progress of the physical sciences in\npre-revolutionary France was due to the long series--at least eleven\nin all--of his translations of solid treatises from the German;\nand his still longer series of original works and translations from\nthe English in all branches of freethought--a really astonishing\nmovement of intellectual energy despite the emotion attaching\nto the subject-matter--was for the most part prepared in the same\nessentially scientific temper. Of all the freethinkers of the period\nhe had perhaps the largest range of practical erudition; [1126] and\nhe drew upon it with unhasting and unresting industry. Imitating the\ntactic of Voltaire, he produced, with some assistance from Diderot,\nNaigeon, and others, a small library of anti-Christian treatises under\na variety of pseudonyms; [1127] and his principal work, the famous\nSystem of Nature (1770), was put out under the name of Mirabaud,\nan actual person, then dead. Summing up as it does with stringent\nforce the whole anti-theological propaganda of the age, it has been\ndescribed as a \"thundering engine of revolt and destruction.\" [1128]\nIt was the first published atheistic [1129] treatise of a systematic\nkind, if we except that of Robinet, issued some years before; and it\nsignificantly marks the era of modern freethought, as does the powerful\nEssai sur les pr\u00e9jug\u00e9s, published in the same year, [1130] by its stern\nimpeachment of the sins of monarchy--here carrying on the note struck\nby Jean Meslier in his manuscript of half-a-century earlier. Rather\na practical argument than a dispassionate philosophic research,\nits polemic against human folly laid it open to the regulation\nretort that on its own necessarian principles no such polemic was\nadmissible. That retort is, of course, ultimately invalid when the\ndenunciation is resolved into demonstration. If, however, it be termed\n\"shallow\" on the score of its censorious treatment of the past, [1131]\nthe term will have to be applied to the Hebrew books, to the Gospel\nJesus, to the Christian Fathers, to Pascal, Milton, Carlyle, Ruskin,\nand a good many other prophets, ancient and modern. The synthesis of\nthe book is really emotional rather than philosophic, and hortatory\nrather than scientific; and it was all the more influential on that\naccount. To the sensation it produced is to be ascribed the edict\nof 1770 condemning a whole shelf of previous works to be burnt along\nwith it by the common hangman.\n\n26. The death of d'Holbach (1789) brings us to the French\nRevolution. By that time all the great freethinking propagandists\nand non-combatant deists of the Voltairean group were gone, save\nCondorcet. Voltaire and Rousseau had died in 1778, Helv\u00e9tius in\n1771, Turgot in 1781, D'Alembert in 1783, Diderot in 1784. After\nall their labours, only the educated minority, broadly speaking,\nhad been made freethinkers; and of these, despite the vogue of the\nSystem of Nature, only a minority were atheists. Deism prevailed,\nas we have seen, among the foremost revolutionists; but atheism\nwas relatively rare. Voltaire, indeed, impressed by the number of\ncultured men of his acquaintance who avowed it, latterly speaks [1132]\nof them as very numerous; and Grimm must have had a good many among\nthe subscribers to his correspondence, to permit of his penning or\npassing the atheistic criticism there given of Voltaire's first reply\nto d'Holbach. Nevertheless, there was no continuous atheistic movement;\nand after 1789 the new freethinking works run to critical and ethical\nattack on the Christian system rather than on theism. Volney combined\nboth lines of attack in his famous Ruins of Empires (1791); and the\nlearned Dupuis, in his voluminous Origin of all Cults (1795), took\nan important step, not yet fully reckoned with by later mythologists,\ntowards the mythological analysis of the gospel narrative. After these\nvigorous performances, the popular progress of French freethought was\nfor long practically suspended [1133] by the tumult of the Revolution\nand the reaction which followed it, though Laplace went on his way\nwith his epoch-making theory of the origin of the solar system,\nfor which, as he told Napoleon, he had \"no need of the hypothesis\"\nof a God. The admirable Condorcet had died, perhaps by his own hand,\nin 1794, when in hiding from the Terrorists, leaving behind him his\nEsquisse d'un tableau historique des progr\u00e8s de l'esprit humain,\nin which the most sanguine convictions of the rationalistic school\nare reformulated without a trace of bitterness or of despair.\n\n27. No part of the history of freethought has been more distorted\nthan that at which it is embroiled in the French Revolution. The\nconventional view in England still is that the Revolution was\nthe work of deists and atheists, but chiefly of the latter; that\nthey suppressed Christianity and set up a worship of a Goddess of\nReason, represented by a woman of the town; and that the bloodshed\nof the Terror represented the application of their principles to\ngovernment, or at least the political result of the withdrawal\nof religious checks. [1134] Those who remember in the briefest\nsummary the records of massacre connected with the affirmation of\nreligious beliefs--the internecine wars of Christian sects under\nthe Roman Empire; the vast slaughters of Manich\u00e6ans in the East;\nthe bloodshed of the period of propagation in Northern Europe,\nfrom Charlemagne onwards; the story of the Crusades, in which nine\nmillions of human beings are estimated to have been destroyed;\nthe generation of wholesale murder of the heretics of Languedoc by\nthe papacy; the protracted savageries of the Hussite War; the early\nholocaust of Protestant heretics in France; the massacres of German\npeasants and Anabaptists; the reciprocal persecutions in England; the\ncivil strifes of sectaries in Switzerland; the ferocious wars of the\nFrench Huguenots and the League; the long-drawn agony of the war of\nthirty years in Germany; the annihilation of myriads of Mexicans and\nPeruvians by the conquering Spaniards in the name of the Cross--those\nwho recall these things need spend no time over the proposition that\nrationalism stands for a removal of restraints on bloodshed. But it\nis necessary to put concisely the facts as against the legend in the\ncase of the French Revolution.\n\n(a) That many of the leading men among the revolutionists were\ndeists is true; and the fact goes to prove that it was chiefly the\nmen of ability in France who rejected Christianity. Of a number of\nthese the normal attitude was represented in the work of Necker,\nSur l'importance des id\u00e9es religieuses (1787), which repudiated the\ndestructive attitude of the few, and may be described as an utterance\nof pious theism or Unitarianism. [1135] Orthodox he cannot well have\nbeen, since, like his wife, he was the friend of Voltaire. [1136]\nBut the majority of the Constituent Assembly was never even deistic;\nit professed itself cordially Catholic; [1137] and the atheists there\nmight be counted on the fingers of one hand. [1138]\n\n\n The Abb\u00e9 Bergier, in answering d'Holbach (Examen du Mat\u00e9rialisme,\n ii, ch. i, \u00a7 1), denies that there has been any wide spread of\n atheistic opinion. This is much more probable than the statement\n of the Archbishop of Toulouse, on a deputation to the king\n in 1775, that \"le monstrueux ath\u00e9isme est devenu l'opinion\n dominante\" (Soulavie, R\u00e8gne de Louis XVI, iii, 16; cited by\n Buckle, 1-vol. ed. p. 488, note). Joseph Droz, a monarchist and a\n Christian, writing under Louis Philippe, sums up that \"the atheists\n formed only a small number of adepts\" (Histoire du R\u00e8gne de Louis\n XVI, \u00e9d. 1839, p. 42). And Rivarol, who at the time of writing\n his Lettres \u00e0 M. Necker was substantially an atheist, says in\n so many words that, while Rousseau's \"Confession of a Savoyard\n Vicar\" was naturally very attractive to many, such a book as the\n \"Syst\u00e8me de la Nature,\" were it as attractive as it is tedious,\n would win nobody\" (OEuvres, \u00e9d. 1852, p. 134). Still, it ran into\n seven editions between 1770 and 1780.\n\n\nNor were there lacking vigorous representatives of orthodoxy:\nthe powerful Abb\u00e9 Gr\u00e9goire, in particular, was a convinced\nJansenist Christian, and at the same time an ardent democrat and\nanti-royalist. [1139] He saw the immense importance to the Church\nof a good understanding with the Revolution, and he accepted\nthe constitution of 1790. With him went a very large number of\npriests. M. L\u00e9once de Lavergne, who was pious enough to write that\n\"the philosophy of the eighteenth century had had the audacity to\nlay hands on God; and this impious attempt has had for punishment\nthe revolutionary expiation,\" also admits that, \"of the clergy,\nit was not the minority but the majority which went along with the\nTiers \u00c9tat.\" [1140] Many of the clergy, however, being refractory,\nthe Assembly pressed its point, and the breach widened. It was solely\nthrough this political hostility on the part of the Church to the\nnew constitution that any civic interference with public worship ever\ntook place. Gr\u00e9goire was extremely popular with the advanced types,\n[1141] though his piety was conspicuous; [1142] and there were not a\nfew priests of his way of thinking, [1143] among them being some of\nthe ablest bishops. [1144] On the flight of the king, he and they went\nwith the democracy; and it was the obstinate refusal of the others to\naccept the constitution that provoked the new Legislative Assembly to\ncoerce them. Though the new body was more anti-clerical than the old,\nhowever, it was simply doing what successive Protestant monarchs had\ndone in England and Ireland; and probably no Government in the world\nwould then have acted otherwise in a similar case. [1145] Patience\nmight perhaps have won the day; but the Revolution was fighting for\nits life; and the conservative Church, as all men knew, was eager to\nstrangle it. Had the clergy left politics alone, or simply accepted\nthe constitutional action of the State, there would have been no\nreligious question. To speak of such a body of priests, who had at\nall times been eager to put men to death for heresy, as vindicating\n\"liberty of conscience\" when they refused fealty to the constitution,\n[1146] is somewhat to strain the terms. The expulsion of the Jesuits\nunder the Old R\u00e9gime had been a more coercive measure than the demand\nof the Assembly on the allegiance of the State clergy. And all the\nwhile the reactionary section of the priesthood was known to be\nconspiring with the royalists abroad. It was only when, in 1793,\nthe conservative clergy were seen to be the great obstacle to the\nlevy of an army of defence, that the more radical spirits began to\nthink of interfering with their functions. [1147]\n\n(b) An \u00e0 priori method has served alike in freethinkers' and in\npietists' hands to obscure the facts. When Michelet insists on the\n\"irreconcilable opposition of Christianity to the Revolution\"--a\nthesis in which he was heartily supported by Proudhon [1148]--he\nmeans that the central Christian dogmas of salvation by sacrifice and\nfaith exclude any political ethic of justice [1149]--any doctrine\nof equality and equity. But this is only to say that Christianity\nas an organization is in perpetual contradiction with some main\npart of its professed creed; and that has been a commonplace since\nConstantine. It does not mean that either Christians in multitudes\nor their churches as organizations have not constantly proceeded on\nordinary political motives, whether populist or anti-populist. In\nGermany we have seen Lutheranism first fomenting and afterwards\nrepudiating the movement of the peasants for betterment; and in\nEngland in the next century both parties in the civil war invoke\nreligious doctrines, meeting texts with texts. Jansenism was in\nconstant friction with the monarchy from its outset; and Louis\nXIV and Louis XV alike regarded the Jansenists as the enemies of\nthe throne. \"Christianity\" could be as easily \"reconciled\" with a\ndemocratic movement in the last quarter of the eighteenth century as\nwith the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew's Day in the sixteenth. If those\nChristians who still charge \"the bloodshed of the French Revolution\"\non the spirit of incredulity desire to corroborate Michelet to the\nextent of making Christianity the bulwark of absolute monarchy, the\nfriend of a cruel feudalism, and the guardian genius of the Bastille,\nthey may be left to the criticism of their fellow-believers who have\nembraced the newer principle that the truth of the Christian religion\nis to be proved by connecting it in practice with the spirit of social\nreform. To point out to either party, as did Michelet, that evangelical\nChristianity is a religion of submission and preparation for the end\nof all things, and has nothing to do with rational political reform,\nis to bestow logic where logic is indomiciliable. While rationalism\nundoubtedly fosters the critical spirit, professed Christians have\nduring many ages shown themselves as prone to rebellion as to war,\nwhether on religious or on political pretexts.\n\n(c) For the rest, the legend falsifies what took place. The facts\nare now established by exact documentary research. The Government\nnever substituted any species of religion for the Catholic. [1150]\nThe Festival of Reason at N\u00f4tre Dame was an act not of the Convention\nbut of the Commune of Paris and the Department; the Convention had\nno part in promoting it; half the members stayed away when invited to\nattend; and there was no Goddess of Reason in the ceremony, but only\na Goddess of Liberty, represented by an actress who cannot even be\nidentified. [1151] Throughout, the devoutly theistic Rousseau was the\nchief literary hero of the movement. The two executive Committees in\nno way countenanced the dechristianization of the Churches, but on the\ncontrary imprisoned persons who removed church properties; and these\nin turn protested that they had no thought of abolishing religion. The\nacts of irresponsible violence did not amount to a hundredth part of\nthe \"sacrilege\" wrought in Protestant countries at the Reformation,\nand do not compare with the acts charged on Cromwell's troopers. The\npolicy of inviting priests and bishops to abdicate their functions\nwas strictly political; and the Archbishop Gobel did not abjure\nCatholicism, but only surrendered his office. That a number of priests\ndid gratuitously abjure their religion is only a proof of what was\nwell known--that a good many priests were simple deists. We have seen\nhow many abb\u00e9s fought in the freethought ranks, or near them. Diderot\nin a letter of 1769 tells of a day which he and a friend had passed\nwith two monks who were atheists. \"One of them read the first draft\nof a very fresh and very vigorous treatise on atheism, full of new\nand bold ideas; I learned with edification that this doctrine was the\ncurrent doctrine of their cloisters. For the rest, these two monks\nwere the 'big bonnets' of their monastery; they had intellect, gaiety,\ngood feeling, knowledge.\" [1152] And a priest of the cathedral of\nAuxerre, whose recollections went back to the revolutionary period,\nhas confessed that at that time \"philosophic\" opinions prevailed in\nmost of the monasteries. His words even imply that in his opinion the\nunbelieving monks were the majority. [1153] In the provinces, where\nthe movement went on with various degrees of activity, it had the same\ngeneral character. \"Reason\" itself was often identified with deity,\nor declared to be an emanation thereof. H\u00e9bert, commonly described\nas an atheist for his share in the movement, expressly denied the\ncharge, and claimed to have exhorted the people to read the gospels\nand obey Christ. [1154] Danton, though at his death he disavowed\nbelief in immortality, had declared in the Convention in 1793 that\n\"we have not striven to abolish superstition in order to establish the\nreign of atheism.\" [1155] Even Chaumette was not an atheist; [1156]\nand the Prussian Clootz, who probably was, had certainly little or no\ndoctrinary influence; while the two or three other professed atheists\nof the Assembly had no part in the public action.\n\n(d) Finally, Robespierre was all along thoroughly hostile to the\nmovement; in his character of Rousseauist and deist he argued\nthat atheism was \"aristocratic\"; he put to death the leaders of\nthe Cult of Reason; and he set up the Worship of the Supreme Being\nas a counter-move. Broadly speaking, he affiliated to Necker, and\nstood very much at the standpoint of the English Unitarianism of the\npresent day. Thus the bloodshed of the Reign of Terror, if it is to\nbe charged on any species of philosophic doctrine rather than on the\nunscrupulous policy of the enemies of the Revolution in and out of\nFrance, stands to the credit of the belief in a God, the creed of\nFrederick, Turgot, Necker, Franklin, Pitt, and Washington. The one\nconvinced and reasoning atheist among the publicists of the Revolution,\nthe journalist Salaville, [1157] opposed the Cult of Reason with sound\nand serious and persuasive argument, and strongly blamed all forcible\ninterference with worship, while at the same time calmly maintaining\natheism as against theism. The age of atheism had not come, any more\nthan the triumph of Reason.\n\n\n Mallet du Pan specifies, as among those who \"since 1788 have\n pushed the blood-stained car of anarchy and atheism,\" Chamfort,\n Gronvelle, Garat, and Cerutti. Chamfort was as high-minded a\n man as Mallet himself, and is to-day so recognized by every\n unprejudiced reader. The others are forgotten. Gronvelle,\n who as secretary of the executive council read to Louis XVI\n his death-sentence, wrote De l'autorit\u00e9 de Montesquieu dans la\n r\u00e9volution pr\u00e9sente (1789). Garat was Minister of Justice in 1792\n and of the Interior in 1793, and was ennobled by Napoleon. He had\n published Consid\u00e9rations sur la R\u00e9volution (1792) and a M\u00e9moire\n sur la R\u00e9volution (1795). Cerutti, originally a Jesuit, became a\n member of the Legislative Assembly, and was the friend of Mirabeau,\n whose funeral oration he delivered.\n\n\n28. The anti-atheistic and anti-philosophic legend was born of the\nexasperation and bad faith of the dethroned aristocracy, themselves\noften unbelievers in the day of their ascendancy, and, whether\nunbelievers or not, responsible with the Church and the court for\nthat long insensate resistance to reform which made the revolution\ninevitable. Mere random denunciation of new ideas as tending to\ngenerate rebellion was of course an ancient commonplace. Medieval\nheretics had been so denounced; Wiclif was in his day; and when the\nCount de Cataneo attacked Montesquieu's Spirit of Laws, he spoke\nof all such reasonings as \"attempts which shake the sacred basis of\nthrones.\" [1158] But he and his contemporaries knew that freethinkers\nwere not specially given to mutiny; and when, later, French Churchmen\nhad begun systematically to accuse the philosophers of undermining\nalike the Church and the throne, [1159] the unbelieving nobles,\nconscious of entire political conservatism, had simply laughed. Better\nthan anyone else they knew that political revolt had other roots and\nmotives than incredulity; and they could not but remember how many\nFrench kings had been rebelled against by the Church, and how many\nslain by priestly hands. Their acceptance of the priestly formula came\nlater. In the life of the brilliant Rivarol, who associated with the\nnoblesse while disdained by many of them because of his obscure birth,\nwe may read the intellectual history of the case. Brilliant without\npatience, keen without scientific coherence, [1160] Rivarol in 1787\nmet the pious deism of Necker with a dialectic in which cynicism as\noften disorders as illuminates the argument. With prompt veracity he\nfirst rejects the ideal of a beneficent reign of delusion, and insists\nthat religion is seen in all history powerless alike to overrule\nmen's passions and prejudices, and to console the oppressed by its\npromise of a reversal of earthly conditions in another world. But in\nthe same breath, by way of proving that the atheist is less disturbing\nto convention than the deist, he insists that the unbeliever soon\nlearns to see that \"irreverences are crimes against society\"; and\nthen, in order to justify such conformity, asserts what he had before\ndenied. And the self-contradiction recurs. [1161] The underlying\nmotive of the whole polemic is simply the grudge of the upper class\ndiner-out against the serious and conscientious bourgeois who strives\nto reform the existing system. Conscious of being more enlightened,\nthe wit is eager at once to disparage Necker for his religiosity\nand to discredit him politically as the enemy of the socially useful\necclesiastical order. Yet in his second letter Sur la morale (1788)\nhe is so plainly an unbeliever that the treatise had to be printed\nat Berlin. The due sequence is that when the Revolution breaks out\nRivarol sides with the court and the noblesse, while perfectly aware of\nthe ineptitude and malfeasance of both; [1162] and, living in exile,\nproceeds to denounce the philosophers as having caused the overturn\nby their universal criticism. In 1787 he had declared that he would\nnot even have written his Letters to Necker if he were not certain\nthat \"the people does not read.\" Then the people had read neither the\nphilosophers nor him. But in exile he must needs frame for the \u00e9migr\u00e9s\na formula, true or false. It is the falsity of men divided against\nthemselves, who pay themselves with recriminations rather than realize\ntheir own deserts. [1163] And in the end Rivarol is but a deist.\n\n29. If any careful attempt be made to analyse the situation, the\nstirring example of the precedent revolution in the British American\ncolonies will probably be recognized as counting for very much more\nthan any merely literary influence in promoting that of France. A\ncertain \"republican\" spirit had indeed existed among educated men in\nFrance throughout the reign of Louis XV: D'Argenson noted it in 1750\nand later. [1164] But this spirit, which D'Argenson in large measure\nshared, while holding firmly by monarchy, [1165] was simply the spirit\nof constitutionalism, the love of law and good government, and it\nderived from English example and the teachings of such Englishmen\nas Locke, [1166] insofar as it was not spontaneous. If acceptance\nof the doctrine of constitutional government can lead to anarchy,\nlet it be avowed; but let not the cause be pretended to be deism or\natheism. The political teaching for which the Paris Parlement denounced\nRousseau's \u00c9mile in 1762, and for which the theologians of the Sorbonne\ncensured Marmontel's B\u00e9lisaire in 1767, was the old doctrine of the\nsovereignty of the people. But this had been maintained by a whole\nschool of English Protestant Christians before Bossuet denounced the\nProtestant Jurieu for maintaining it. Nay, it had been repeatedly\nmaintained by Catholic theologians, from Thomas Aquinas to Suarez,\n[1167] especially when there was any question of putting down a\nProtestant monarch. Protestants on their part protested indignantly,\nand reciprocated. The recriminations of Protestants and Catholics on\nthis head form one of the standing farces of human history. Coger,\nattacking Marmontel, unctuously cites Bayle's censure of his fellow\nProtestants in his Avis aux R\u00e9fugi\u00e9z [1168] for their tone towards\nkings and monarchy, but says nothing of Bayle's quarrel with Jurieu,\nwhich motived such an utterance, or of his Critique G\u00e9n\u00e9rale of\nMaimbourg's Histoire du Calvinisme, in which he shows how the\nCatholic historian's principles would justify the rebellion alike\nof Catholics in every Protestant country and of Protestants in every\nCatholic country, [1169] though all the while it is assumed that true\nChristians never resort to violence. And, unless there has been an\nerror as to his authorship, Bayle himself, be it remembered, had in\nhis letter Ce que c'est que la France toute catholique sous le r\u00e8gne\nde Louis le Grand passed as scathing a criticism on Louis XIV as any\nProtestant refugee could well have compassed. Sectarian hypocrisies\napart, the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people--for opposing\nwhich the freethinker Hobbes has been execrated by generations of\nChristians--is the professed political creed of the very classes\nwho, in England and the United States, have so long denounced\nFrench freethinkers for an alleged \"subversive\" social teaching\nwhich fell far short of what English and American Protestants had\nactually practised. The revolt of the American colonies, in fact,\nprecipitated democratic feeling in France in a way that no writing had\never done. Lafayette, no freethinker, declared himself republican at\nonce on reading the American declaration of the Rights of Man. [1170]\nIn all this the freethinking propaganda counted for nothing directly\nand for little indirectly, inasmuch as there was no clerical quarrel\nin the colonies. And if we seek for even an indirect or general\ninfluence, apart from the affirmation of the duty of kings to their\npeople, the thesis as to the activity of the philosophes must at\nonce be restricted to the cases of Rousseau, Helv\u00e9tius, Raynal,\nand d'Holbach, for Marmontel never passed beyond \"sound\" generalities.\n\nAs for the pretence that it was freethinking doctrines that brought\nLouis XVI to the scaffold, it is either the most impudent or the\nmost ignorant of historical imputations. The \"right\" of tyrannicide\nhad been maintained by Catholic schoolmen before the Reformation,\nand by both Protestants and Catholics afterwards, times without\nnumber, even as they maintained the right of the people to depose and\nchange kings. The doctrine was in fact not even a modern innovation,\nthe theory being so well primed by the practice--under every sort of\ngovernment, Jewish and pagan in antiquity, Moslem in the Middle Ages,\nand Christian from the day of Pepin to the day of John Knox--that a\ncertain novelty lay on the side of the \"divine right of kings\" when\nthat was popularly formulated. And on the whole question of revolution,\nor the right of peoples to recast their laws, the general doctrine\nof the most advanced of the French freethinkers is paralleled or\noutgone by popes and Church Councils in the Middle Ages, by Occam and\nMarsiglio of Padua and Wiclif and more than one German legist in the\nfourteenth century, by John Major and George Buchanan in Scotland, by\nGoodman in England, and by many Huguenots in France, in the sixteenth;\nby Hotman in his Francogallia in 1574; by the author of the Soupirs\nde la France Esclave [1171] in 1689; and by the whole propagandist\nliterature of the English and American Revolutions in the seventeenth\nand eighteenth. So far from being a specialty of freethinkers,\n\"sedition\" was in all these and other cases habitually grounded on\nBiblical texts and religious protestations; so that Bacon, little\ngiven as he was to defending rationalists, could confidently avow that\n\"Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy, to natural piety,\nto laws, to reputation ... but superstition dismounts all these,\nand erecteth an absolute monarchy in the minds of men. Therefore\natheism did never perturb states.... But superstition hath been the\nconfusion of many states.\" For \"superstition\" read \"sectarianism,\"\n\"fanaticism,\" and \"ecclesiasticism.\" Bacon's generalization is of\ncourse merely empirical, atheism being capable of alliance with\nrevolutionary passion in its turn; but the historical summary holds\ngood. Only by men who had not read or had forgotten universal history\ncould the ascription of the French Revolution to rationalistic thought\nhave been made. [1172]\n\n30. A survey of the work and attitude of the leading French\nfreethinkers of the century may serve to settle the point once\nfor all. Voltaire is admittedly out of the question. Mallet du Pan,\nwhose resistance to the Revolution developed into a fanaticism hardly\nless perturbing to judgment [1173] than that of Burke, expressly\ndisparaged him as having so repelled men by his cynicism that he had\nlittle influence on their feelings, and so could not be reckoned a\nprime force in preparing the Revolution. [1174] \"Mably,\" the critic\nadds, \"whose republican declamations have intoxicated many modern\ndemocrats, was religious to austerity: at the first stroke of the\ntocsin against the Church of Rome, he would have thrown his books\nin the fire, excepting his scathing apostrophes to Voltaire and the\natheists. Marmontel, Saint-Lambert, Morellet, Encyclopedists, were\nadversaries of the revolution.\" [1175] On the other hand, Barante\navows that Mably, detesting as he did the freethinking philosophers\nof his day, followed no less than others \"a destructive course,\nand contributed, without knowing it, to weaken the already frayed\nties which still united the parts of an ancient society.\" [1176] As\nBarante had previously ascribed the whole dissolution to the autocratic\nprocess under Louis XIV, [1177] even this indictment of the orthodox\nMably is invalid. Voltaire, on the other hand, Barante charges with\nan undue leaning to the methods of Louis XIV. Voltaire, in fact, was\nin things political a conservative, save insofar as he fought for\ntoleration, for lenity, and for the most necessary reforms. And if\nVoltaire's attack on what he held to be a demoralizing and knew to be\na persecuting religion be saddled with the causation of the political\ncrash, the blame will have to be carried back equally to the English\ndeists and the tyranny of Louis XIV. To such indictments, as Barante\nprotests, there is no limit: every age pivots on its predecessor; and\nto blame for the French Revolution everybody but a corrupt aristocracy,\na tyrannous and ruinously spendthrift monarchy, and a cruel church,\nis to miss the last semblance of judicial method. It may be conceded\nthat the works of Meslier and d'Holbach, neither of whom is noticed\nby Barante, are directly though only generally revolutionary in their\nbearing. But the main works of d'Holbach appeared too close upon\nthe Revolution to be credited with generating it; and Meslier, as we\nknow, had been generally read only in abridgments and adaptations,\nin which his political doctrine disappears.\n\nMallet du Pan, striking in all directions, indicts alternately\nRousseau, whose vogue lay largely among religious people, and the\ndownright freethinkers. The great fomenter of the Revolution,\nthe critic avows, was Rousseau. \"He had a hundred times more\nreaders than Voltaire in the middle and lower classes.... No one\nhas more openly attacked the right of property in declaring it a\nusurpation.... It is he alone who has inoculated the French with\nthe doctrine of the sovereignty of the people, and with its most\nextreme consequences.\" [1178] After this \"he alone,\" the critic\nobliviously proceeds to exclaim: \"Diderot and Condorcet: there are\nthe true chiefs of the revolutionary school,\" adding that Diderot had\n\"proclaimed equality before Marat; the Rights of Man before Si\u00e9y\u00e8s;\nsacred insurrection before Mirabeau and Lafayette; the massacre of\npriests before the Septembrists.\" [1179] But this is mere furious\ndeclamation. Only by heedless misreading or malice can support be\ngiven to the pretence that Diderot wrought for the violent overthrow\nof the existing political system. Passages denouncing kingly tyranny\nhad been inserted in their plays by both Corneille and Voltaire,\nand applauded by audiences who never dreamt of abolishing monarchy. A\nphrase about strangling kings in the bowels of priests is expressly put\nby Diderot in the mouth of an \u00c9leuth\u00e9romane or Liberty-maniac; [1180]\nwhich shows that the type had arisen in his lifetime in opposition to\nhis own bias. This very poem he read to the Prince von Galitzin, the\nambassador of the Empress Catherine and his own esteemed friend. [1181]\nThe tyranny of the French Government, swayed by the king's mistresses\nand favourites and by the Jesuits, he did indeed detest, as he had\ncause to do, and as every man of good feeling did with him; but no\nwriting of his wrought measurably for its violent overthrow. [1182]\nD'Argenson in 1751 was expressing his fears of a revolution, and\nnoting the \"d\u00e9sobeissance constante\" of the Parlement of Paris and the\ndisaffection of the people, before he had heard of \"un M. Diderot,\nqui a beaucoup d'esprit, mais qui affecte trop l'irreligion.\" And\nwhen he notes that the Jesuits have secured the suppression of the\nEncyclop\u00e9die as being hostile \"to God and the royal authority,\" he\ndoes not attach the slightest weight to the charge. He knew that Louis\ncalled the pious Jansenists \"enemies of God and of the king.\" [1183]\n\nMallet du Pan grounds his charge against Diderot almost solely on\n\"those incendiary diatribes intercalated in the Histoire philosophique\ndes deux Indes which dishonour that work, and which Raynal, in\nhis latter days, excised with horror from a new edition which he\nwas preparing.\" But supposing the passages in question to be all\nDiderot's [1184]--which is far from certain--they are to be saddled\nwith responsibility for the Reign of Terror only on the principle\nthat it was more provocative in the days of tyranny to denounce\nthan to exercise it. To this complexion Mallet du Pan came, with\nthe anti-Revolutionists in general; but to-day we can recognize in\nthe whole process of reasoning a reductio ad absurdum. The school\nin question came in all seriousness to ascribe the evils of the\nRevolution to everything and everybody save the men and classes whose\nmisgovernment made the Revolution inevitable.\n\nSome of the philosophers, it is true, themselves gave colour to the\nview that they were the makers of the Revolution, as when D'Alembert\nsaid to Romilly that \"philosophy\" had produced in his time that change\nin the popular mind which exhibited itself in the indifference with\nwhich they received the news of the birth of the dauphin. [1185]\nThe error is none the less plain. The philosophes had done nothing\nto promote anti-monarchism among the common people, who did not\nread. [1186] It was the whole political and social evolution of\ntwo generations that had wrought the change; and the people were\nstill for the most part believing Catholics. Frederick the Great\nwas probably within the mark when in 1769 he privately reminded the\nmore optimistic philosophers that their entire French public did\nnot number above 200,000 persons. The people of Paris, who played\nthe chief part in precipitating the Revolution, were spontaneously\nmutinous and disorderly, but were certainly not in any considerable\nnumber unbelievers. \"While Voltaire dechristianized a portion of polite\nsociety the people remained very pious, even at Paris. In 1766 Louis\nXV, so unpopular, was acclaimed because he knelt, on the Pont Neuf,\nbefore the Holy Sacrament.\" [1187]\n\nAnd this is the final answer to any pretence that the Revolution was\nthe work of the school of d'Holbach. Bergier the priest, and Rivarol\nthe conservative unbeliever, alike denied that d'Holbach's systematic\nwritings had any wide public. Doubtless the same men were ready to\neat their words for the satisfaction of vilifying an opponent. It\nhas always been the way of orthodoxy to tell atheists alternately\nthat they are an impotent handful and that they are the ruin of\nsociety. But by this time it ought to be a matter of elementary\nknowledge that a great political revolution can be wrought only by\nfar-reaching political forces, whether or not these may concur with\na propaganda of rationalism in religion. [1188] If any \"philosopher\"\nso-called is to be credited with specially promoting the Revolution,\nit is either Rousseau, who is so often hailed latterly as the engineer\nof a religious reaction, and whose works, as has been repeatedly\nremarked, \"contain much that is utterly and irreconcilably opposed\"\nto the Revolution, [1189] or Raynal, who was only anti-clerical,\nnot anti-Christian, and who actually censured the revolutionary\nprocedure. When he published his first edition he must be held to have\nacquiesced in its doctrine, whether it were from Diderot's pen or his\nown. Rousseau and Raynal were the two most popular writers of their\nday who dealt with social as apart from religious or philosophical\nissues, and to both is thus imputed a general subversiveness. But\nhere too the charge rests upon a sociological fallacy. The Parlement\nof Paris, composed of rich bourgeois and aristocrats, many of them\nJansenists, very few of them freethinkers, most of them ready to burn\nfreethinking books, played a \"subversive\" part throughout the century,\ninasmuch as it so frequently resisted the king's will. [1190] The\nstars in their courses fought against the old despotism. Rousseau was\nultimately influential towards change because change was inevitable\nand essential, not because he was restless. The whole drift of things\nfurthered his ideas, which at the outset won no great vogue. He\nwas followed because he set forth what so many felt; and similarly\nRaynal was read because he chimed with a strengthening feeling. In\ndirect contradiction to Mallet du Pan, Chamfort, a keener observer,\nwrote while the Revolution was still in action that \"the priesthood\nwas the first bulwark of absolute power, and Voltaire overthrew\nit. Without this decisive and indispensable first step nothing\nwould have been done.\" [1191] The same observer goes on to say that\nRousseau's political works, and particularly the Contrat Social,\n\"were fitted for few readers, and caused no alarm at court.... That\ntheory was regarded as a hollow speculation which could have no\nfurther consequences than the enthusiasm for liberty and the contempt\nof royalty carried so far in the pieces of Corneille, and applauded\nat court by the most absolute of kings, Louis XIV. All that seemed\nto belong to another world, and to have no connection with ours;\n... in a word, Voltaire above all has made the Revolution, because\nhe has written for all; Rousseau above all has made the Constitution\nbecause he has written for the thinkers.\" [1192] And so the changes\nmay be rung for ever. The final philosophy of history cannot be\nreached by any such artificial selection of factors; [1193] and the\nethical problem equally evades such solutions. If we are to pass any\nethico-political judgment whatever, it must be that the evils of the\nRevolution lie at the door not of the reformers, but of the men, the\nclasses, and the institutions which first provoked and then resisted\nit. [1194] To describe the former as the authors of the process is as\nintelligent as it was to charge upon Sokrates the decay of orthodox\ntradition in Athens, and to charge upon that the later downfall of\nthe Athenian empire. The wisest men of the age, notably the great\nTurgot, sought a gradual transformation, a peaceful and harmless\ntransition from unconstitutional to constitutional government. Their\npolicy was furiously resisted by an unteachable aristocracy. When at\nlast fortuitous violence made a breach in the feudal walls, a people\nunprepared for self-rule, and fought by an aristocracy eager for blood,\nsurged into anarchy, and convulsion followed on convulsion. That is\nin brief the history of the Revolution.\n\n31. While the true causation of the Revolution is thus kept clear,\nit must not be forgotten, further, that to the very last, save where\ncontrolled by disguised rationalists like Malesherbes, the tendency\nof the old r\u00e9gime was to persecute brutally and senselessly wherever\nit could lay hands on a freethinker. In 1788, only a year before\nthe first explosion of the Revolution, there appeared the Almanach\ndes Honn\u00eates Gens of Sylvain Mar\u00e9chal, a work of which the offence\nconsisted not in any attack upon religion, but in simply constructing\na calendar in which the names of renowned laymen were substituted for\nsaints. Instantly it was denounced by the Paris Parlement, the printer\nprosecuted, and the author imprisoned; and De Sauvigny, the censor\nwho had passed the book, was exiled thirty leagues from Paris. [1195]\n\n\n Some idea of the intensity of the tyranny over all literature\n in France under the Old R\u00e9gime may be gathered from Buckle's\n compendious account of the books officially condemned, and\n of authors punished, during the two generations before the\n Revolution. Apart from the record of the treatment of Buffon,\n Marmontel, Morellet, Voltaire, and Diderot, it runs: \"The\n ... tendency was shown in matters so trifling that nothing but\n the gravity of their ultimate results prevents them from being\n ridiculous. In 1770, Imbert translated Clarke's Letters on Spain,\n one of the best works then existing on that country. This book,\n however, was suppressed as soon as it appeared; and the only\n reason assigned for such a stretch of power is that it contained\n some remarks respecting the passion of Charles III for hunting,\n which were considered disrespectful to the French crown, because\n Louis XV himself was a great hunter. Several years before this\n La Bletterie, who was favourably known in France by his works,\n was elected a member of the French Academy. But he, it seems,\n was a Jansenist, and had moreover ventured to assert that the\n Emperor Julian, notwithstanding his apostasy, was not entirely\n devoid of good qualities. Such offences could not be overlooked\n in so pure an age; and the king obliged the Academy to exclude\n La Bletterie from their society. That the punishment extended no\n further was an instance of remarkable leniency; for Fr\u00e9ret, an\n eminent critic and scholar, was confined in the Bastille because he\n stated, in one of his memoirs, that the earliest Frankish chiefs\n had received their titles from the Romans. The same penalty was\n inflicted four different times upon Lenglet du Fresnoy. In the\n case of this amiable and accomplished man, there seems to have\n been hardly the shadow of a pretext for the cruelty with which\n he was treated; though on one occasion the alleged offence was\n that he had published a supplement to the History of De Thou.\n\n \"Indeed, we have only to open the biographies and correspondence\n of that time to find instances crowding upon us from all\n quarters. Rousseau was threatened with imprisonment, was driven\n from France, and his works were publicly burned. The celebrated\n treatise of Helv\u00e9tius on the Mind was suppressed by an order of the\n Royal Council; it was burned by the common hangman, and the author\n was compelled to write two letters retracting his opinions. Some\n of the geological views of Buffon having offended the clergy,\n that illustrious naturalist was obliged to publish a formal\n recantation of doctrines which are now known to be perfectly\n accurate. The learned Observations on the History of France, by\n Mably, were suppressed as soon as they appeared: for what reason\n it would be hard to say, since M. Guizot, certainly no friend\n either to anarchy or to irreligion, has thought it worth while to\n republish them, and thus stamp them with the authority of his own\n great name. The History of the Indies, by Raynal, was condemned\n to the flames, and the author ordered to be arrested. Lanjuinais,\n in his well-known work on Joseph II, advocated not only religious\n toleration, but even the abolition of slavery; his book,\n therefore, was declared to be 'seditious'; it was pronounced\n 'destructive of all subordination,' and was sentenced to be\n burned. The Analysis of Bayle, by Marsy, was suppressed, and the\n author was imprisoned. The History of the Jesuits, by Linguet,\n was delivered to the flames; eight years later his journal was\n suppressed; and, three years after that, as he still persisted\n in writing, his Political Annals were suppressed, and he himself\n was thrown into the Bastille. Delisle de Sales was sentenced to\n perpetual exile and confiscation of all his property on account\n of his work on the Philosophy of Nature. The treatise by Mey, on\n French Law, was suppressed; that by Boncerf, on Feudal Law, was\n burned. The Memoirs of Beaumarchais were likewise burned; the \u00c9loge\n on F\u00e9nelon, by La Harpe, was merely suppressed. Duvernet, having\n written a History of the Sorbonne, which was still unpublished,\n was seized and thrown into the Bastille, while the manuscript\n was yet in his own possession. The celebrated work of De Lolme\n on the English constitution was suppressed by edict directly it\n appeared. The fate of being suppressed or prohibited also awaited\n the Letters of Gervaise in 1724; the Dissertations of Courayer in\n 1727; the Letters of Montgon in 1732; the History of Tamerlane,\n by Margat, also in 1732; the Essay on Taste, by Cartaud, in 1736;\n The Life of Domat, by Pr\u00e9vost de la Jann\u00e8s, in 1742; the History\n of Louis XI, by Duclos, in 1745; the Letters of Bargeton in 1750;\n the Memoirs on Troyes, by Grosley, in the same year; the History\n of Clement XI, by Reboulet, in 1752; The School of Man, by G\u00e9nard,\n also in 1752; the Therapeutics of Garlon in 1756; the celebrated\n thesis of Louis, on Generation, in 1754; the treatise on Presidial\n Jurisdiction, by Jousse, in 1755; the Ericie of Fontenelle in 1768;\n the Thoughts of Jamin in 1769; the History of Siam, by Turpin,\n and the \u00c9loge of Marcus Aurelius, by Thomas, both in 1770;\n the works on Finance by Darigrand, in 1764, and by Le Trosne in\n 1779; the Essay on Military Tactics, by Guibert, in 1772; the\n Letters of Boucquet in the same year; and the Memoirs of Terrai,\n by Coquereau, in 1776. Such wanton destruction of property was,\n however, mercy itself compared to the treatment experienced\n by other literary men in France. Desforges, for example, having\n written against the arrest of the Pretender to the English throne,\n was, solely on that account, buried in a dungeon eight feet square\n and confined there for three years. This happened in 1749; and in\n 1770, Audra, professor at the College of Toulouse, and a man of\n some reputation, published the first volume of his Abridgement of\n General History. Beyond this the work never proceeded; it was at\n once condemned by the archbishop of the diocese, and the author\n was deprived of his office. Audra, held up to public opprobrium,\n the whole of his labours rendered useless, and the prospects of\n his life suddenly blighted, was unable to survive the shock. He\n was struck with apoplexy, and within twenty-four hours was lying\n a corpse in his own house.\"\n\n\n32. Among many other illustrations of the passion for persecution in\nthe period may be noted the fact that after the death of the atheist\nDamilaville his enemies contrived to deprive his brother of a post\nfrom which he had his sole livelihood. [1196] It is but one of an\ninfinity of proofs that the spirit of sheer sectarian malevolence,\nwhich is far from being eliminated in modern life, was in the French\nChurch of the eighteenth century the ruling passion. Lovers of moderate\ncourses there were, even in the Church; but even among professors of\nlenity we find an ingrained belief in the virtue of vituperation and\ncoercion. And it is not until the persecuted minority has developed\nits power of written retaliation, and the deadly arrows of Voltaire\nhave aroused in the minds of persecutors a new terror, that there\nseems to arise on that side a suspicion that there can be any better\nway of handling unbelief than by invective and imprisonment. After\nthey had taught the heretics to defend themselves, and found them\npossessed of weapons such as orthodoxy could not hope to handle, we\nfind Churchmen talking newly of the duty of gentleness towards error;\nand even then clinging to the last to the weapons of public ostracism\nand aspersion. So the fight was of necessity fought on the side of\nfreethought in the temper of men warring on incorrigible oppression\nand cruelty as well as on error. The wonder is that the freethinkers\npreserved so much amenity.\n\n33. This section would not be complete even in outline without some\nnotice of the attitude held towards religion by Napoleon, who at once\ncrowned and in large measure undid the work of the Revolution. He\nhas his place in its religious legend in the current datum that he\nwrought for the faith by restoring a suppressed public worship and\nenabling the people of France once more to hear church-bells. In\npoint of fact, as was pointed out by Bishop Gr\u00e9goire in 1826, \"it\nis materially proved that in 1796, before he was Consul, and four\nyears before the Concordat, according to a statement drawn up at the\noffice of the Domaines Nationaux, there were in France 32,214 parishes\nwhere the culte was carried on.\" [1197] Other commonplaces concerning\nNapoleon are not much better founded. On the strength of a number of\noral utterances, many of them imperfectly vouched for, and none of them\nmarked by much deliberation, he has been claimed by Carlyle [1198] as\na theist who philosophically disdained the \"clatter of materialism,\"\nand believed in a Personal Creator of an infinite universe; while by\nothers he is put forward as a kind of expert in character study who\nvouched for the divinity of Jesus. [1199] In effect, his verdict\nthat \"this was not a man\" would tell, if anything, in favour of\nthe view that Jesus is a mythical construction. He was, indeed, by\ntemperament quasi-religious, liking the sound of church bells and\nthe atmosphere of devotion; and in his boyhood he had been a rather\nfervent Catholic. As he grew up he read, like his contemporaries,\nthe French deists of his time, and became a deist like his fellows,\nrecognizing that religions were human productions. Declaring that he\nwas \"loin d'\u00eatre ath\u00e9e,\" he propounded to O'Meara all the conventional\nviews--that religion should be made a support to morals and law; that\nmen need to believe in marvels; that religion is a great consolation\nto those who believe in it; and that \"no one can tell what he will do\nin his last moments.\" [1200] The opinion to which he seems to have\nadhered most steadily was that every man should die in the religion\nin which he had been brought up. And he himself officially did so,\nthough he put off almost to the last the formality of a deathbed\nprofession. His language on the subject is irreconcilable with\nany real belief in the Christian religion: he was \"a deist \u00e0 la\nVoltaire who recalled with tenderness his Catholic childhood, and\nwho at death reverted to his first beliefs.\" [1201] For the rest,\nhe certainly believed in religion as a part of the machinery of the\nState, and repeated the usual platitudes about its value as a moral\nrestraint. He was candid enough, however, not to pretend that it had\never restrained him; and no freethinker condemned more sweepingly\nthan he the paralysing effect of the Catholic system on Spain. [1202]\nTo the Church his attitude was purely political; and his personal\nliking for the Pope never moved him to yield, where he could avoid it,\nto the temporal pretensions of the papacy. The Concordat of 1802,\nthat \"brilliant triumph over the genius of the Revolution,\" [1203]\nwas purely and simply a political measure. If he had had his way,\nhe would have set up a system of religious councils in France, to\nbe utilized against all disturbing tendencies in politics. [1204]\nHad he succeeded, he was capable of suppressing all manifestations\nof freethought in the interests of \"order.\" [1205] He had, in fact,\nno disinterested love of truth; and we have his express declaration,\nat St. Helena, on the subject of Moli\u00e8re's Tartufe: \"I do not hesitate\nto say that if the piece had been written in my time, I would not\nhave permitted its representation.\" [1206] Freethought can make no\nwarm claim to the allegiance of such a ruler; and if the Church of\nRome is concerned to claim him as a son on the score of his deathbed\nadherence, after a reign which led the Catholic clergy of Spain to\nhold him up to the faithful as an incarnation of the devil, [1207]\nshe will hardly gain by the association. Napoleon's ideas on religious\nquestions were in fact no more noteworthy than his views on economics,\nwhich were thoroughly conventional.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XVIII\n\nGERMAN FREETHOUGHT IN THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES\n\n\n1. When two generations of Protestant strife had turned to naught the\nintellectual promise of the Reformation, and much of the ground first\nwon by it had lapsed to Catholicism, the general forward movement of\nEuropean thought availed to set up in Germany as elsewhere a measure of\ncritical unbelief. There is abundant evidence that the Lutheran clergy\nnot only failed to hold the best intelligence of the country with them,\nbut in large part fell into personal disrepute. [1208] \"The scenes of\nclerical immorality,\" says an eminently orthodox historian, \"are enough\nto chill one's blood even at the distance of two centuries.\" [1209]\nA Church Ordinance of 1600 acknowledges information to the effect\nthat a number of clergymen and schoolmasters are guilty of \"whoredom\nand fornication,\" and commands that \"if they are notoriously guilty\nthey shall be suspended.\" Details are preserved of cases of clerical\ndrunkenness and ruffianism; and the women of the priests' families do\nnot escape the pillory. [1210] Nearly a century later, Arnold resigned\nhis professorship at Giessen \"from despair of producing any amendment\nin the dissolute habits of the students.\" [1211] It is noted that\n\"the great moral decline of the clergy was confined chiefly to the\nLutheran Church. The Reformed [Calvinistic] was earnest, pious,\nand aggressive\" [1212]--the usual result of official hostility.\n\nIn such circumstances, the active freethought existing in France at the\nbeginning of the seventeenth century could not fail to affect Germany;\nand even before the date of the polemic of Garasse and Mersenne there\nappeared (1615) a counterblast to the new thought in the Theologia\nNaturalis of J. H. Alsted, of Frankfort, directed adversus atheos,\nEpicureos, et sophistas hujus temporis. The preface to this solid\nquarto (a remarkable sample of good printing for the period) declares\nthat \"there are men in this diseased (exulcerato) age who dare to\noppose science to revelation, reason to faith, nature to grace,\nthe creator to the redeemer, and truth to truth\"; and the writer\nundertakes to rise argumentatively from nature to the Christian God,\nwithout, however, transcending the logical plane of De Mornay. The\ntrouble of the time, unhappily for the faith, was not rationalism,\nbut the inextinguishable hatreds of Protestant and Catholic, and the\nstrife of economic interests dating from the appropriations of the\nfirst reformers. At length, after a generation of gloomy suspense,\ncame the explosion of the hostile ecclesiastical interests, and\nthe long-drawn horror of the Thirty Years' War, which left Germany\nmangled, devastated, drained of blood and treasure, decivilized, and\nwell-nigh destitute of the machinery of culture. No such printing\nas that of Alsted's book was to be done in the German world for\nmany generations. But as in France, so in Germany, the exhausting\nexperience of the moral and physical evil of religious war wrought\nsomething of an antidote, in the shape of a new spirit of rationalism.\n\nNot only was the Peace of Westphalia an essentially secular\narrangement, subordinating all religious claims to a political\nsettlement, [1213] but the drift of opinion was markedly\nfreethinking. Already in 1630 one writer describes \"three classes\nof skeptics among the nobility of Hamburg: first, those who believe\nthat religion is nothing but a mere fiction, invented to keep the\nmasses in restraint; second, those who give preference to no faith,\nbut think that all religions have a germ of truth; and third, those\nwho, confessing that there must be one true religion, are unable to\ndecide whether it is papal, Calvinist, or Lutheran, and consequently\nbelieve nothing at all.\" No less explicit is the written testimony\nof Walther, the court chaplain of Ulrich II of East Friesland, 1637:\n\"These infernal courtiers, among whom I am compelled to live against\nmy will, doubt those truths which even the heathen have learned\nto believe.\" [1214] In Germany as in France the freethinking which\nthus grew up during the religious war expanded after the peace. As\nusual, this is to be gathered from the orthodox propaganda against it,\nsetting out in 1662 with a Preservative against the Pest of Present-day\nAtheists, [1215] by one Theophilus Gegenbauer. So far was this from\nattaining its end that there ensued ere long a more positive and\naggressive development of freethinking than any other country had yet\nseen. A wandering scholar, Matthias Knutzen of Holstein (b. 1645),\nwho had studied philosophy at K\u00f6nigsberg, went about in 1674 teaching\na hardy Religion of Humanity, rejecting alike immortality, God and\nDevil, churches and priests, and insisting that conscience could\nperfectly well take the place of the Bible as a guide to conduct. His\ndoctrines are to be gathered chiefly from a curious Latin letter,\n[1216] written by him for circulation, headed Amicus Amicis Amica;\nand in this the profession of atheism is explicit: \"Insuper Deum\nnegamus.\" In two dialogues in German he set forth the same ideas. His\nfollowers, as holding by conscience, were called Gewissener; and\nhe or another of his group asserted that in Jena alone there were\nseven hundred of them. [1217] The figures were fantastic, and the\nwhole movement passed rapidly out of sight--hardly by reason of the\northodox refutations, however. Germany was in no state to sustain\nsuch a party; and what happened was a necessarily slow gestation of\nthe seed of new thought thus cast abroad.\n\n\n Knutzen's Latin letter is given in full by a Welsh scholar settled\n in Germany, Jenkinus Thomasius (Jenkin Thomas), in his Historia\n Atheismi (Altdorf, 1692), ed. Basel, 1709, pp. 97-101; also\n by La Croze in his (anon.) Entretiens sur divers sujets, 1711,\n p. 402 sq. Thomasius thus codifies its doctrine:--\"1. There is\n neither God nor Devil. 2. The magistrate is nothing to be esteemed;\n temples are to be condemned, priests to be rejected. 3. In place\n of the magistrate and the priest are to be put knowledge and\n reason, joined with conscience, which teaches to live honestly,\n to injure none, and to give each his own. 4. Marriage and free\n union do not differ. 5. This is the only life: after it, there\n is neither reward nor punishment. 6. The Scripture contradicts\n itself.\" Knutzen admittedly wrote like a scholar (Thomasius,\n p. 97); but his treatment of Scripture contradictions belongs\n to the infancy of criticism; though La Croze, replying thirty\n years later, could only meet it with charges of impiety and\n stupidity. As to the numbers of the movement see Trinius,\n Freydenker Lexicon, 1759, s. v. Knutzen. Kurtz (Hist. of the\n Christian Church, Eng. tr. 1864, i, 213) states that a careful\n academic investigation proved the claim to a membership of 700\n to be an empty boast (citing H. Rossel, Studien und Kritiken,\n 1844, iv). This doubtless refers to the treatise of Mus\u00e6us, Jena,\n 1675, cited by La Croze, p. 401. Some converts Knutzen certainly\n made; and as only the hardiest would dare to avow themselves, his\n influence may have been considerable. \"Examples of total unbelief\n come only singly to knowledge,\" says Tholuck; \"but total unbelief\n had still to the end of the century to bear penal treatment.\" He\n gives the instances (1) of the Swedish Baron Skytte, reported in\n 1669 by Spener to the Frankfort authorities for having said at\n table, before the court preacher, that the Scriptures were not\n holy, and not from God but from men; and (2) \"a certain minister\"\n who at the end of the century was prosecuted for blasphemy. (Das\n kirchliche Leben des 17ten Jahrhunderts, 2 Abth. pp. 56-57.) Even\n Anabaptists were still liable to banishment in the middle of\n the century. Id. 1 Abth. 1861, p. 36. As to clerical intolerance\n see pp. 40-44. On the merits of the Knutzen movement cp. P\u00fcnjer,\n Hist, of the Christian Philos. of Religion, Eng. tr. i, 437-8.\n\n\n2. While, however, clerical action could drive such a movement under\nthe surface, it could not prevent the spread of rationalism in all\ndirections; and there was now germinating a philosophic unbelief\n[1218] under the influence of Spinoza. Nowhere were there more\nprompt and numerous answers to Spinoza than in Germany, [1219]\nwhence it may be inferred that within the educated class he soon\nhad a good many adherents. In point of fact the Elector Palatine\noffered him a professorship of philosophy at Heidelberg in 1673,\npromising him \"the most ample freedom in philosophical teaching,\"\nand merely stipulating that he should not use it \"to disturb the\nreligion publicly established.\" [1220] On the other hand, Professor\nRappolt, of Leipzig, attacked him as an atheist, in an Oratio contra\nnaturalistas in 1670; Professor Mus\u00e6us, of Jena, assailed him in 1674;\n[1221] and the Chancellor Kortholt, of Kiel, grouped him, Herbert,\nand Hobbes as The Three Great Impostors in 1680. [1222] After the\nappearance of the Ethica the replies multiplied. On the other hand,\nCuffelaer vindicated Spinoza in 1684; and in 1691 F. W. Stosch, a\ncourt official, and son of the court preacher, published a stringent\nattack on revelationism, entitled Concordia rationis et fidei, partly\non Spinozistic lines, which created much commotion, and was forcibly\nsuppressed and condemned to be burnt by the hangman at Berlin, [1223]\nas it denied not only the immateriality but the immortality of the\nsoul and the historical truth of the Scriptural narratives. This\nseems to have been the first work of modern freethought published\nby a German, [1224] apart from Knutzen's letter; but a partial list\nof the apologetic works of the period, from Gegenbauer onwards,\nmay suffice to suggest the real vogue of heterodox opinions:--\n\n\n1662. Th. Gegenbauer. Preservatio wider die Pest der heutigen\n Atheisten. Erfurt.\n1668. J. Mus\u00e6us. Examen Cherburianismi. Contra E. Herbertum de\n Cherbury.\n1668. Anton Reiser. De origine, progressu, et incremento Antitheismi\n seu Atheismi. [1225] Augsburg.\n1670. Rappolt. Oratio contra Naturalistas. Leipzig.\n1672. J. M\u00fcller. Atheismus devictus (in German). Hamburg.\n1672. J. Lassen. Arcana-Politica-Atheistica (in German).\n1673. ---- Besiegte Atheisterey.\n1673. Chr. Pfaff. Disputatio contra Atheistas.\n1674. J. Mus\u00e6us. Spinozismus. Jena.\n1677. Val. Greissing. Corona Transylvani; Exerc. 2, de Atheismo,\n contra Cartesium et Math. Knutzen. Wittemberg.\n1677. Tobias Wagner. Examen ... atheismi speculativi. T\u00fcbingen.\n1677. K. Rudrauff, Giessen. Dissertatio de Atheismo.\n1680. Chr. Kortholt. De tribus impostoribus magnis liber. Kiloni.\n1689. Th. Undereyck. Der N\u00e4rrische Atheist in seiner Thorheit\n ueberzeugt. Bremen.\n1692. Jenkinus Thomasius. Historia Atheismi. Altdorf.\n1696. J. Lassen. Arcana-Politica-Atheistica. Reprint.\n1697. A. H. Grosse. An Atheismus necessario ducat ad corruptionem\n morum. Rostock.\n1697. Em. Weber. Beurtheilung der Atheisterei.\n1700. Tribbechov. Historia Naturalismi. Jena.\n1708. Loescher. Pr\u00e6notiones Theologic\u00e6 contra Naturalistarum et\n Fanaticorum omne genus, Atheos, Deistas, Indifferentistas, etc.\n Wittemberg.\n1708. Schwartz. Demonstrationes Dei. Leipzig.\n1708. Rechenberg. Fundamenta ver\u00e6 religionis Prudentum, adversus\n Atheos, etc.\n1710. J. C. Wolfius. Dissertatio de Atheismi falso suspectis.\n Wittemberg.\n1713. J. N. Fromman. Atheus Stultus. T\u00fcbingen.\n1713. Anon. Widerlegung der Atheisten, Deisten, und neuen Zweifeler.\n Frankfort.\n\n [Later came the works of Buddeus (1716) and Reimmann and Fabricius,\n noted above, vol. i, ch. i, \u00a7 2.]\n\n\n3. For a community in which the reading class was mainly clerical and\nscholastic, the seeds of rationalism were thus in part sown in the\nseventeenth century; but the ground was not yet propitious. Leibnitz\n(1646-1716), the chief thinker produced by Germany before Kant,\nlived in a state of singular intellectual isolation; [1226] and\nshowed his sense of it by writing his philosophic treatises chiefly\nin French. One of the most widely learned men of his age, he was wont\nfrom his boyhood to grapple critically with every system of thought\nthat came in his way; and, while claiming to be always eager to learn,\n[1227] he was as a rule strongly concerned to affirm his own powerful\nbias. Early in life he writes that it horrifies him to think how\nmany men he has met who were at once intelligent and atheistic;\n[1228] and his propaganda is always dominated by the desire rather\nto confute unbelief than to find out the truth. As early as 1668\n(aet. 22) he wrote an essay to that end, which was published as\na Confessio natur\u00e6 contra Atheistas. Against Spinoza he reacted\ninstantly and violently, pronouncing the Tractatus on its first\n(anonymous) appearance an \"unbearably bold (licentiosum) book,\"\nand resenting the Hobbesian criticism which it \"dared to apply to\nsacred Scripture.\" [1229] Yet in the next year we find him writing\nto Arnauld in earnest protest against the hidebound orthodoxy of the\nChurch. \"A philosophic age,\" he declares, \"is about to begin, in which\nthe concern for truth, flourishing outside the schools, will spread\neven among politicians. Nothing is more likely to strengthen atheism\nand to upset faith, already so shaken by the attacks of great but bad\nmen [a pleasing allusion to Spinoza], than to see on the one side the\nmysteries of the faith preached upon as the creed of all, and on the\nother hand become matter of derision to all, convicted of absurdity\nby the most certain rules of common reason. The worst enemies of the\nChurch are in the Church. Let us take care lest the latest heresy--I\nwill not say atheism, but--naturalism, be publicly professed.\" [1230]\nFor a time he seemed thus disposed to liberalize. He wrote to Spinoza\non points of optics before he discovered the authorship; and he is\nrepresented later as speaking of the Tractatus with respect. He even\nvisited Spinoza in 1676, and obtained a perusal of the manuscript\nof the Ethica; but he remained hostile to him in theology and\nphilosophy. To the last he called Spinoza a mere developer of\nDescartes, [1231] whom he also habitually resisted.\n\nThis was not hopeful; and Leibnitz, with all his power and originality,\nreally wrought little for the direct rationalization of religious\nthought. [1232] His philosophy, with all its ingenuity, has the common\nstamp of the determination of the theist to find reasons for the God\nin whom he believed beforehand; and his principle that all is for\nthe best is the fatal rounding of his argumentative circle. Thus his\ndoctrine that that is true which is clear was turned to the account\nof an empiricism of which the \"clearness\" was really predetermined\nby the conviction of truth. His Theodic\u00e9e, [1233] written in reply\nto Bayle, is by the admission even of admirers [1234] a process of\nbegging the question. Deity, a mere \"infinition\" of finite qualities,\nis proved \u00e0 priori, though it is expressly argued that a finite mind\ncannot grasp infinity; and the necessary goodness of necessary deity\nis posited in the same fashion. It is very significant that such a\nphilosopher, himself much given to denying the religiousness of other\nmen's theories, was nevertheless accused among both the educated\nand the populace of being essentially non-religious. Nominally he\nadhered to the entire Christian system, including miracles, though he\ndeclared that his belief in dogma rested on the agreement of reason\nwith faith, and claimed to keep his thought free on unassailed\ntruths; [1235] and he always discussed the Bible as a believer;\nyet he rarely went to church; [1236] and the Low German nickname\nL\u00f6venix (= Glaubet nichts, \"believes nothing\") expressed his local\nreputation. No clergyman attended his funeral; but indeed no one\nelse went, save his secretary. [1237] It is on the whole difficult to\ndoubt that his indirect influence not only in Germany but elsewhere\nhad been and has been for deism and atheism. [1238] He and Newton\nwere the most distinguished mathematicians and theists of the age;\nand Leibnitz, as we saw, busied himself to show that the philosophy\nof Newton [1239] tended to atheism, and that that of their theistic\npredecessor Descartes would not stand criticism. [1240] Spinoza being,\naccording to him, in still worse case, and Locke hardly any sounder,\n[1241] there remained for theists only his cosmology of monads and\nhis ethic of optimism--all for the best in the best of all possible\nworlds--which seems at least as well fitted as any other theism to\nmake thoughtful men give up the principle.\n\n4. Other culture-conditions concurred to set up a spirit of rationalism\nin Germany. After the Thirty Years' War there arose a religious\nmovement, called Pietism by its theological opponents, which aimed at\nan emotional inwardness of religious life as against what its adherents\nheld to be an irreligious orthodoxy around them. [1242] Contending\nagainst rigid articles of credence, they inevitably prepared the way\nfor less credent forms of thought. [1243] Though the first leaders\nof Pietism grew embittered with their unsuccess and the attacks of\ntheir religious enemies, [1244] their impulse went far, and greatly\ninfluenced the clergy through the university of Halle, which in the\nfirst part of the eighteenth century turned out 6,000 clergymen in\none generation. [1245] Against the Pietists were furiously arrayed\nthe Lutherans of the old order, who even contrived in many places to\nsuppress their schools. [1246] Virtues generated under persecution,\nhowever, underwent the law of degeneration which dogs all intellectual\nsubjection; and the inner life of Pietism, lacking mental freedom\nand intellectual play, grew as cramped in its emotionalism as that\nof orthodoxy in its dogmatism. Religion was thus represented by a\nspecies of extremely unattractive and frequently absurd formalists on\nthe one hand, and on the other by a school which at its best unsettled\nreligious usage, and otherwise tended alternately to fanaticism and\ncant. [1247] Thus \"the rationalist tendencies of the age were promoted\nby this treble exhibition of the aberrations of belief.\" [1248]\n\"How sorely,\" says Tholuck, \"the hold not only of ecclesiastical\nbut of Biblical belief on men of all grades had been shaken at the\nbeginning of the eighteenth century is seen in many instances.\" [1249]\nOrthodoxy selects that of a Holstein student who hanged himself at\nWittemberg in 1688, leaving written in his New Testament, in Latin,\nthe declaration that \"Our soul is mortal; religion is a popular\ndelusion, invented to gull the ignorant, and so govern the world the\nbetter.\" [1250] But again there is the testimony of the mint-master\nat Hanover that at court there all lived as \"free atheists.\" And\nthough the name \"freethinker\" was not yet much used in discussion,\nit had become current in the form of Freigeist--the German equivalent\nstill used. This, as we have noted, [1251] was probably a survival\nfrom the name of the old sect of the \"Free Spirit,\" rather than an\nadaptation from the French esprit fort or the English \"freethinker.\"\n\n5. After the collapse of the popular movement of Matthias Knutzen,\nthe thin end of the new wedge may be seen in the manifold work of\nChristian Thomasius (1655-1728), who in 1687 published a treatise\non \"Divine Jurisprudence,\" in which the principles of Pufendorf\non natural law, already offensive to the theologians, were carried\nso far as to give new offence. Reading Pufendorf in his nonage as a\nstudent of jurisprudence, he was so conscious of the conflict between\nthe utilitarian and the Scriptural view of moral law that, taught\nby a master who had denounced Pufendorf, he recoiled in a state of\ntheological fear. [1252] Some years later, gaining self-possession, he\nrecognized the rationality of Pufendorf's system, and both expounded\nand defended him, thus earning his share in the hostility which the\ngreat jurist encountered at clerical hands. Between that hostility\nand the naturalist bias which he had acquired from Pufendorf,\nthere grew up in him an aversion to the methods and pretensions\nof theologians which made him their lifelong antagonist. [1253]\nPufendorf had but guardedly introduced some of the fundamental\nprinciples of Hobbes, relating morals to the social state, and thus\npreparing the way for utilitarianism. [1254] This sufficed to make\nthe theologians his enemies; and it is significant that Thomasius,\nheterodox at the outset only thus far forth, becomes from that point\nonwards an important pioneer of freethought, toleration, and humane\nreform. Innovating in all things, he began, while still a Privatdocent\nat Leipzig University, a campaign on behalf of the German language;\nand, not content with arousing much pedantic enmity by delivering\nlectures for the first time in his mother tongue, and deriding\nat the same time the bad scholastic Latin of his compatriots,\nhe set on foot the first vernacular German periodical, [1255]\nwhich ran for two years (1688-90), and caused so much anger that\nhe was twice prosecuted before the ecclesiastical court of Dresden,\nthe second time on a charge of contempt of religion. The periodical\nwas in effect a crusade against all the pedantries, the theologians\ncoming in for the hardest blows. [1256] Other satirical writings,\nand a defence of intermarriage between Calvinists and Lutherans,\n[1257] at length put him in such danger that, to escape imprisonment,\nhe sought the protection of the Elector of Brandenburg at Halle, where\nhe ultimately became professor of jurisprudence in the new university,\nfounded by his advice. There for a time he leant towards the Pietists,\nfinding in that body a concern for natural liberty of feeling and\nthinking which was absent from the mental life of orthodoxy; but he\nwas \"of another spirit\" than they, and took his own way.\n\nIn philosophy an unsystematic pantheist, he taught, after Plutarch,\nBayle, and Bacon, that \"superstition is worse than atheism\"; but\nhis great practical service to German civilization, over and above\nhis furthering of the native speech, was his vigorous polemic against\nprosecutions for heresy, trials for witchcraft, and the use of torture,\nall of which he did more than any other German to discredit, though\njudicial torture subsisted for another half-century. [1258] It was by\nhis propaganda that the princes of Germany were moved to abolish all\ntrials for sorcery. [1259] In such a battle he of course had the clergy\nagainst him all along the line; and it is as an anti-clerical that\nhe figures in clerical history. The clerical hostility to his ethics\nhe repaid with interest, setting himself to develop to the utmost,\nin the interest of lay freedom, the Lutheran admission of the divine\nright of princes. [1260] This he turned not against freedom of opinion\nbut against ecclesiastical claims, very much in the spirit of Hobbes,\nwho may have influenced him.\n\nThe perturbed Mosheim, while candidly confessing that Thomasius\nis the founder of academic freedom in Germany, pronounces that the\n\"famous jurists\" who were led by Thomasius \"set up a new fundamental\nprinciple of church polity--namely, the supreme authority and power\nof the civil magistrate,\" so tending to create the opinion \"that the\nministers of religion are not to be accounted ambassadors of God,\nbut vicegerents of the chief magistrates. They also weakened not a\nlittle the few remaining prerogatives and advantages which were left\nof the vast number formerly possessed by the clergy; and maintained\nthat many of the maxims and regulations of our churches which had\ncome down from our fathers were relics of popish superstition. This\nafforded matter for long and pernicious feuds and contests between\nour theologians and our jurists.... It will be sufficient for us to\nobserve, what is abundantly attested, that they diminished much in\nvarious places the respect for the clergy, the reverence for religion,\nand the security and prosperity of the Lutheran Church.\" [1261]\nPusey, in turn, grudgingly allows that \"the study of history was\nrevived and transformed through the views of Thomasius.\" [1262]\n\n6. A personality of a very different kind emerges in the same period\nin Johann Conrad Dippel (1673-1734), who developed a system of\nrationalistic mysticism, and as to whom, says an orthodox historian,\n\"one is doubtful whether to place him in the class of pietists or\nof rationalists, of enthusiasts or of scoffers, of mystics or of\nfreethinkers.\" [1263] The son of a preacher, he yet \"exhibited in his\nninth year strong doubts as to the catechism.\" After a tolerably free\nlife as a student he turned Pietist at Strasburg, lectured on astrology\nand palmistry, preached, and got into trouble with the police. In\n1698 he published under the pen-name of \"Christianus Democritus\"\nhis book, Gest\u00e4uptes Papstthum der Protestirenden (\"The Popery of\nthe Protestantizers Whipped\"), in which he so attacked the current\nChristian ethic of salvation as to exasperate both Churches. [1264] The\nstress of his criticism fell firstly on the unthinking Scripturalism of\nthe average Protestant, who, he said, while reproaching the Catholic\nwith setting up in the crucifix a God of wood, was apt to make for\nhimself a God of paper. [1265] In his repudiation of the \"bargain\" or\n\"redemption\" doctrine of the historic Church he took up positions which\nwere as old as Abailard, and which were one day to become respectable;\nbut in his own life he was much of an Ishmaelite, with wild notions\nof alchemy and gold-making; and after predicting that he should live\ntill 1808, he died suddenly in 1734, leaving a doctrine which appealed\nonly to those constitutionally inclined, on the lines of the earlier\nEnglish Quakers, to set the inner light above Scripture. [1266]\n\n7. Among the pupils of Thomasius at Halle was Theodore Louis Lau,\nwho, born of an aristocratic family, became Minister of Finances to\nthe Duke of Courland, and after leaving that post held a high place\nin the service of the Elector Palatine. While holding that office\nLau published a small Latin volume of pens\u00e9es entitled Meditationes\nTheologic\u00e6-Physic\u00e6, notably deistic in tone. This gave rise to such an\noutcry among the clergy that he had to leave Frankfort, only, however,\nto be summoned before the consistory of K\u00f6nigsberg, his native town,\nand charged with atheism (1719). He thereupon retired to Altona,\nwhere he had freedom enough to publish a reply to his clerical\npersecutors. [1267]\n\n8. While Thomasius was still at work, a new force arose of a more\ndistinctly academic cast. This was the adaptation of Leibnitz's\nsystem by Christian Wolff, who, after building up a large influence\namong students by his method of teaching, [1268] came into public\nprominence by a rectorial address [1269] at Halle (1721) in which\nhe warmly praised the ethics of Confucius. Such praise was naturally\nheld to imply disparagement of Christianity; and as a result of the\npietist outcry Wolff was condemned by the king to exile from Prussia,\nunder penalty of the gallows, [1270] all \"atheistical\" writings being\nat the same time forbidden. Wolff's system, however, prevailed so\ncompletely, in virtue of its lucidity and the rationalizing tendency\nof the age, that in the year 1738 there were said to be already 107\nauthors of his cast of thinking. Nevertheless, he refused to return\nto Halle on any invitation till the accession (1740) of Frederick\nthe Great, one of his warmest admirers, whereafter he figured as\nthe German thinker of his age. His teaching, which for the first\ntime popularized philosophy in the German language, in turn helped\ngreatly, by its ratiocinative cast, to promote the rationalistic\ntemper, though orthodox enough from the modern point of view. Under\nthe new reign, however, pietism and Wolffism alike lost prestige,\n[1271] and the age of anti-Christian and Christian rationalism\nbegan. Thus the period of freethinking in Germany follows close upon\none of religious revival. The 6,000 theologians trained at Halle in the\nfirst generation of the century had \"worked like a leaven through all\nGermany.\" [1272] \"Not since the time of the Reformation had Germany\nsuch a large number of truly pious preachers and laymen as towards\nthe end of the first half of the eighteenth century.\" [1273] There,\nas elsewhere, religion intellectually collapsed.\n\n\n As to Wolff's rationalistic influence see Cairns, Unbelief in\n the Eighteenth Century, 1881, p. 173; Pusey, pp. 115-19; P\u00fcnjer,\n p. 529; Lechler, pp. 448-49. \"It cannot be questioned that, in\n his philosophy, the main stress rests upon the rational\" (Kahnis,\n as cited, p. 28). \"Francke and Lange (pietists) ... saw atheism\n and corruption of manners springing up from Wolff's school\"\n (before his exile). Id. p. 113. Wolff's chief offence lay in\n stressing natural religion, and in indicating, as Tholuck observes,\n that that could be demonstrated, whereas revealed religion could\n only be believed (Abriss, p. 18). He greatly pleased Voltaire\n by the dictum that men ought to be just even though they had\n the misfortune to be atheists. It is noted by Tholuck, however\n (Abriss, as cited, p. 11, note), that the decree for Wolff's\n expulsion was inspired not by his theological colleagues but\n by two military advisers of the king. Tholuck's own criticism\n resolves itself into a protest against Wolff's predilection for\n logical connection in his exposition. The fatal thing was that\n Wolff accustomed German Christians to reason.\n\n\n9. Even before the generation of active pressure from English and\nFrench deism there were clear signs that rationalism had taken root in\nGerman life. On the impulse set up by the establishment of the Grand\nLodge at London in 1717, Freemasonic lodges began to spring up in\nGermany, the first being founded at Hamburg in 1733. [1274] The deism\nwhich in the English lodges was later toned down by orthodox reaction\nwas from the first pronounced in the German societies, which ultimately\npassed on the tradition to the other parts of the Continent. But\nthe new spirit was not confined to secret societies. Wolffianism\nworked widely. In the so-called Wertheim Bible (1735) Johann\nLorenz Schmid, in the spirit of the Leibnitz-Wolffian theology,\n\"undertook to translate the Bible, and to explain it according to the\nprinciple that in revelation only that can be accepted as true which\ndoes not contradict the reason.\" [1275] This of course involved no\nthorough-going criticism; but the spirit of innovation was strong\nenough in Schmid to make him undermine tradition at many points,\nand later carried him so far as to translate Tindal's Christianity as\nold as Creation. So far was he in advance of his time that when his\nWertheim Bible was officially condemned throughout Germany he found no\ndefenders. [1276] The Wolffians were in comparison generally orthodox;\nand another writer of the same school, Martin Knutzen, professor at\nK\u00f6nigsberg (1715-1751), undertook in a youthful thesis De \u00e6ternitate\nmundi impossibili (1735) to rebut the old Averro\u00efst doctrine, revived\nby modern science, of the indestructibility of the universe. A few\nyears later (1739) he published a treatise entitled The Truth of\nChristianity Demonstrated by Mathematics, which succeeded as might\nhave been expected.\n\n10. To the same period belong the first activities of Johann Christian\nEdelmann (1698-1767), one of the most energetic freethinkers of his\nage. Trained philosophically at Jena under the theologian Budde,\na bitter opponent of Wolff, and theologically in the school of the\nPietists, he was strongly influenced against official orthodoxy\nthrough reading the Impartial History of the Church and of Heretics,\nby Gottfried Arnold, an eminently anti-clerical work, which nearly\nalways takes the side of the heretics. [1277] In the same heterodox\ndirection he was swayed by the works of Dippel. At this stage Edelmann\nproduced his Unschuldige Wahrheiten (\"Innocent Truths\"), in which\nhe takes up a pronouncedly rationalist and latitudinarian position,\nbut without rejecting \"revelation\"; and in 1736 he went to Berleburg,\nwhere he worked on the Berleburg translation of the Bible, a Pietist\nundertaking, somewhat on the lines of Dippel's mystical doctrine,\nin which a variety of incredible Scriptural narratives, from the six\ndays' creation onwards, are turned to mystical purpose. [1278] In\nthis occupation Edelmann seems to have passed some years. Gradually,\nhowever, he came more and more under the influence of the English\ndeists; and he at length withdrew from the Pietist camp, attacking\nhis former associates for the fanaticism into which their thought\nwas degenerating. It was under the influence of Spinoza, however,\nthat he took his most important steps. A few months after meeting\nwith the Tractatus he began (1740) the first part of his treatise\nMoses mit aufgedecktem Angesichte (\"Moses with unveiled face\"),\nan attack at once on the doctrine of inspiration and on that of\nthe Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. The book was intended to\nconsist of twelve parts; but after the appearance of three it was\nprohibited by the imperial fisc, and the published parts burned by the\nhangman at Hamburg and elsewhere. Nonetheless, Edelmann continued his\npropaganda, publishing in 1741 or 1742 The Divinity of Reason, [1279]\nand in 1741 Christ and Belial. In 1749 or 1750 his works were again\npublicly burned at Frankfurt by order of the imperial authorities;\nand he had much ado to find anywhere in Germany safe harbourage, till\nhe found protection under Frederick at Berlin, where he died in 1767.\n\nEdelmann's teaching was essentially Spinozist and pantheistic, [1280]\nwith a leaning to the doctrine of metempsychosis. As a pantheist he of\ncourse entirely rejected the divinity of Jesus, pronouncing inspiration\nthe appanage of all; and the gospels were by him dismissed as late\nfabrications, from which the true teachings of the founder could not\nbe learned; though, like nearly all the freethinkers of that age,\nhe estimated Jesus highly. [1281] A German theologian complains,\nnevertheless, that he was \"more just toward heathenism than toward\nJudaism; and more just toward Judaism than toward Christianity\";\nadding: \"What he taught had been thoroughly and ingeniously said in\nFrance and England; but from a German theologian, and that with such\neloquent coarseness, with such a mastery in expatiating in blasphemy,\nsuch things were unheard of.\" [1282] The force of Edelmann's attack\nmay be gathered from the same writer's account of him as a \"bird of\nprey\" who rose to a \"wicked height of opposition, not only against\nthe Lutheran Church, but against Christianity in general.\"\n\n11. Even from decorous and official exponents of religion, however,\nthere came \"naturalistic\" and semi-rationalistic teaching, as in\nthe Reflections on the most important truths of religion [1283]\n(1768-1769) of J. F. W. Jerusalem, Abbot of Marienthal in Brunswick,\nand later of Riddagshausen (1709-1789). Jerusalem had travelled\nin Europe, and had spent two years in Holland and one in England,\nwhere he studied the deists and their opponents. \"In England alone,\"\nhe declared, \"is mankind original.\" [1284] Though really written by\nway of defending Christianity against the freethinkers, in particular\nagainst Bolingbroke and Voltaire, [1285] the very title of his book\nis suggestive of a process of disintegration; and in it certain\nunedifying Scriptural miracles are actually rejected. [1286] It was\nprobably this measure of adaptation to new needs that gave it its\ngreat popularity in Germany and secured its translation into several\nother languages. Goethe called him a \"freely and gently thinking\ntheologian\"; and a modern orthodox historian of the Church groups him\nwith those who \"contributed to the spread of Rationalism by sermons\nand by popular doctrinal and devotional works.\" [1287] Jerusalem was,\nhowever, at most a semi-rationalist, taking a view of the fundamental\nChristian dogmas which approached closely to that of Locke. [1288]\nIt was, as Goethe said later, the epoch of common sense; and the very\ntheologians tended to a \"religion of nature.\" [1289]\n\n12. Alongside of home-made heresy there had come into play a new\ninitiative force in the literature of English deism, which began to\nbe translated after 1740, [1290] and was widely circulated till, in\nthe last third of the century, it was superseded by the French. The\nEnglish answers to the deists were frequently translated likewise,\nand notoriously helped to promote deism [1291]--another proof that\nit was not their influence that had changed the balance of activity\nin England. Under a freethinking king, even clergymen began guardedly\nto accept the deistic methods; and the optimism of Shaftesbury began\nto overlay the optimism of Leibnitz; [1292] while a French scientific\ninfluence began with La Mettrie, [1293] Maupertuis, and Robinet. Even\nthe Leibnitzian school, proceeding on the principle of immortal\nmonads, developed a doctrine of the immortality of the souls of animals\n[1294]--a position not helpful to orthodoxy. There was thus a general\nstirring of doubt among educated people, [1295] and we find mention\nin Goethe's Autobiography of an old gentleman of Frankfort who avowed,\nas against the optimists, \"Even in God I find defects (Fehler).\" [1296]\n\nOn the other hand, there were instances in Germany of the phenomenon,\nalready seen in England in Newton and Boyle, of men of science\ndevoting themselves to the defence of the faith. The most notable\ncases were those of the mathematician Euler and the biologist von\nHaller. The latter wrote Letters (to his Daughter) On the most\nimportant Truths of Revelation (1772) [1297] and other apologetic\nworks. Euler in 1747 published at Berlin, where he was professor,\nhis Defence of Revelation against the Reproaches of Freethinkers;\n[1298] and in 1769 his Letters to a German Princess, of which the\nargument notably coincides with part of that of Berkeley against\nthe freethinking mathematicians. Haller's position comes to the same\nthing. All three men, in fact, grasped at the argument of despair--the\ninadequacy of the human faculties to sound the mystery of things;\nand all alike were entirely unable to see that it logically cancelled\ntheir own judgments. Even a theologian, contemplating Haller's theorem\nof an incomprehensible omnipotence countered in its merciful plan\nof salvation by the set of worms it sought to save, comments on the\nchildishness of the philosophy which confidently described the plans\nof deity in terms of what it declared to be the blank ignorance of\nthe worms in question. [1299] Euler and Haller, like some later men of\nscience, kept their scientific method for the mechanical or physical\nproblems of their scientific work, and brought to the deepest problems\nof all the self-will, the emotionalism, and the irresponsibility of\nthe ignorant average man. Each did but express in his own way the\nresentment of the undisciplined mind at attacks upon its prejudices;\nand Haller's resort to poetry as a vehicle for his religion gives the\nmeasure of his powers on that side. Thus in Germany as in England the\n\"answer\" to the freethinkers was a failure. Men of science playing\nat theology and theologians playing at science alike failed to turn\nthe tide of opinion, now socially favoured by the known deism of the\nking. German orthodoxy, says a recent Christian apologist, fell \"with\na rapidity reminding one of the capture of Jericho.\" [1300] Goethe,\nwriting of the general attitude to Christianity about 1768, sums up\nthat \"the Christian religion wavered between its own historic-positive\nbase and a pure deism, which, grounded on morality, was in turn to\nre-establish ethics.\" [1301]\n\n\n Frederick's attitude, said an early Kantian, had had \"an almost\n magical influence\" on popular opinion (Willich, Elements of the\n Critical Philosophy, 1798, p. 2). With this his French teachers\n must have had much to do. Lord Morley pronounces (Voltaire,\n 4th ed. p. 123) that French deism \"never made any impression on\n Germany,\" and that \"the teaching of Leibnitz and Wolff stood like a\n fortified wall against the French invasion.\" This is contradicted\n by much German testimony; in particular by Lange's (Gesch. des\n Mater. i, 318), though he notes that French materialism could not\n get the upper hand. Laukhard, who expressed the highest admiration\n for Tindal, as having wholly delivered him from dogmatism, avowed\n that Voltaire, whom everybody read, had perhaps done more harm\n to priest religion than all the books of the English and German\n deists together (Leben, 1792-1802, Th. i, p. 268).\n\n Tholuck gravely affirms (Abriss, p. 33) that the acquaintance\n with the French \"deistery and frivolity\" in Germany belongs to\n a \"somewhat later period than that of the English.\" Naturally\n it did. The bulk of the English deistic literature was printed\n before the printing of the French had begun! French MSS. would\n reach German princes, but not German pastors. But Tholuck sadly\n avows that the French deism (of the serious and pre-Voltairean\n portions of which he seems to have known nothing) had a\n \"frightful\" influence on the upper classes, though not on the\n clergy (p. 34). Following him, Kahnis writes (Internal History,\n p. 41) that \"English and French Deism met with a very favourable\n reception in Germany--the latter chiefly in the higher circles,\n the former rather among the educated middle classes.\" (He\n should have added, \"the younger theologians.\") Baur, even\n in speaking disparagingly of the French as compared with the\n English influence, admits (Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, 2te\n Aufl. p. 347) that the former told upon Germany. Cp. Tennemann,\n Bohn. tr. pp. 385, 388. Hagenbach shows great ignorance of English\n deism, but he must have known something of German; and he writes\n (tr. p. 57) that \"the imported deism,\" both English and French,\n \"soon swept through the rifts of the Church, and gained supreme\n control of literature.\" Cp. pp. 67-68. See Croom Robertson's\n Hobbes, pp. 225-26, as to the persistence of a succession of\n Hobbes and Locke in Germany in the teeth of the Wolffian school,\n which soon lost ground after 1740. It is further noteworthy that\n Brucker's copious Historia Critica Philosophi\u00e6 (1742-44), which as\n a mere learned record has great merit, and was long the standard\n authority in Germany, gives great praise to Locke and little space\n to Wolff. (See Enfield's abstract, pp. 614, 619 sq.) The Wolffian\n philosophy, too, had been rejected and disparaged by both Herder\n and Kant--who were alike deeply influenced by Rousseau--in the\n third quarter of the century; and was generally discredited,\n save in the schools, when Kant produced the Critique of Pure\n Reason. See below, pp. 337, 345.\n\n\n13. Frederick, though reputed a Voltairean freethinker par excellence,\nmay be claimed for Germany as partly a product of the rationalizing\nphilosophy of Wolff. In his first letter to Voltaire, written in 1736,\nfour years before his accession, he promises to send him a translation\nhe has had made of the \"accusation and the justification\" of Wolff,\n\"the most celebrated philosopher of our days, who, for having carried\nlight into the darkest places of metaphysics, and for having treated\nthe most difficult matters in a manner no less elevated than precise\nand clear, is cruelly accused of irreligion and atheism\"; and he\nspeaks of getting translated Wolff's Treatise of God, the Soul, and\nthe World. When he became a thoroughgoing freethinker is not clear,\nfor Voltaire at this time had produced no explicit anti-Christian\npropaganda. At first the new king showed himself disposed to act\non the old maxim that freethought is bad for the common people. In\n1743-44 he caused to be suppressed two German treatises by one\nGebhardi, a contributor to Gottsched's magazines, attacking the\nBiblical miracles; and in 1748 he sent a young man named R\u00fcdiger to\nSpandau for six months' confinement for printing an anti-Christian\nwork by one Dr. Pott. [1302] But as he grew more confident in his own\nmethods he extended to men of his own way of thinking the toleration\nhe allowed to all religionists, save insofar as he vetoed the mutual\nvituperation of the sects, and such proselytizing as tended to create\nstrife. With an even hand he protected Catholics, Greek Christians,\nand Unitarians, letting them have churches where they would; [1303]\nand when, after the battle of Striegau, a body of Protestant peasantry\nasked his permission to slay all the Catholics they could find,\nhe answered with the gospel precept, \"Love your enemies.\" [1304]\n\nBeyond the toleration of all forms of religion, however, he never\nwent; though he himself added to the literature of deism. Apart from\nhis verses we have from him the posthumous treatise Pens\u00e9es sur la\nReligion, probably written early in his life, where the rational case\nagainst the concepts of revelation and of miracles is put with a calm\nand sustained force. Like the rest, he is uncritical in his deism;\nbut, that granted, his reasoning is unanswerable. In talk he was wont\nto treat the clergy with small respect; [1305] and he wrote more\ndenunciatory things concerning them than almost any freethinker of\nthe century. [1306] Bayle, Voltaire, and Lucretius were his favourite\nstudies; and as the then crude German literature had no attraction for\nhim, he drew to his court many distinguished Frenchmen, including La\nMettrie, Maupertuis, D'Alembert, D'Argens, and above all Voltaire,\nbetween whom and him there was an incurable incompatibility of\ntemper and character, and a persistent attraction of force of mind,\nwhich left them admiring without respecting each other, and unable\nto abstain from mutual vituperation. Under Frederick's vigorous rule\nall speech was free save such as he considered personally offensive,\nas Voltaire's attack on Maupertuis; and after a stormy reign he could\nsay, when asked by Prince William of Brunswick whether he did not\nthink religion one of the best supports of a king's authority, \"I\nfind order and the laws sufficient.... Depend upon it, countries have\nbeen admirably governed when your religion had no existence.\" [1307]\nReligion certainly had no part in his personality in the ordinary\nsense of the term. Voltaire was wont to impute to him atheism; when\nLa Mettrie died, the mocker, then at Frederick's court, remarked\nthat the post of his majesty's atheist was vacant, but happily the\nAbb\u00e9 de Prades was there to fill it. In effect, Frederick professed\nVoltaire's own deism; but of all the deists of the time he had least\nof the religious temperament and most of sheer cynicism.\n\n\n The attempt of Carlyle to exhibit Frederick as a practical\n believer is a flagrant instance of that writer's subjective\n method. He tells (Hist. of Friedrich, bk. xviii, ch. x) that at\n the beginning of the battle of Leuthen a column of troops near\n the king sang a hymn of duty (which Carlyle calls \"the sound of\n Psalms\"); that an officer asked whether the singing should be\n stopped, and that the king said \"By no means.\" His \"hard heart\n seems to have been touched by it. Indeed, there is in him, in\n those grim days, a tone (!) as of trust in the Eternal, as of\n real religious piety and faith, scarcely noticeable elsewhere\n in his history. His religion--and he had in withered forms a\n good deal of it, if we will look well--being almost always in\n a strictly voiceless state, nay, ultra voiceless, or voiced the\n wrong way, as is too well known.\" Then comes the assertion that\n \"a moment after\" the king said \"to someone, Ziethen probably,\n 'With men like these, don't you think I shall have victory this\n day!'\" Here, with the very spirit of unveracity at work before his\n eyes, Carlyle plumps for the fable. Yet the story, even if true,\n would give no proof whatever of religious belief.\n\n In point of fact, Frederick was a much less \"religious\" deist\n than Voltaire. He erected no temple to his unloved God. And a\n perusal of his dialogue of Pompadour and the Virgin (Dialogues\n des morts) may serve to dispose of the thesis that the German\n mind dealt reverently and decently with matters which the French\n mind handled frivolously. That performance outgoes in ribaldry\n anything of the age in French.\n\n\nAs the first modern freethinking king, Frederick is something of a test\ncase. Son of a man of narrow mind and odious character, he was himself\nno admirable type, being neither benevolent nor considerate, neither\ntruthful nor generous; and in international politics, after writing in\nhis youth a treatise in censure of Machiavelli, he played the old game\nof unscrupulous aggression. Yet he was not only the most competent,\nbut, as regards home administration, the most conscientious king of his\ntime. To find him a rival we must go back to the pagan Antonines and\nJulian, or at least to St. Louis of France, who, however, was rather\nworsened than bettered by his creed. [1308] Henri IV of France, who\nrivalled him in sagacity and greatly excelled him in human kindness,\nwas far his inferior in devotion to duty.\n\nThe effect of Frederick's training is seen in his final attitude to\nthe advanced criticism of the school of d'Holbach, which assailed\ngovernments and creeds with the same unsparing severity of logic and\nmoral reprobation. Stung by the uncompromising attack, Frederick\nretorts by censuring the rashness which would plunge nations into\ncivil strife because kings miscarry where no human wisdom could avoid\nmiscarriage. He who had wantonly plunged all Germany into a hell of\nwar for his sole ambition, bringing myriads to misery, thousands\nto violent death, and hundreds of his own soldiers to suicide,\ncould be virtuously indignant at the irresponsible audacity of\nwriters who indicted the whole existing system for its imbecility and\ninjustice. But he did reason on the criticism; he did ponder it; he did\nfeel bound to meet argument with argument; and he left his arguments to\nthe world. The advance on previous regal practice is noteworthy: the\nwhole problem of politics is at once brought to the test of judgment\nand persuasion. Beside the Christian Georges and the Louis's of his\ncentury, and beside his Christian father, his superiority in judgment\nand even in some essential points of character is signal. Such was\nthe great deist king of the deist age; a deist of the least religious\ntemper and of no very fine moral material to begin with.\n\nThe one contemporary monarch who in any way compares with him in\nenlightenment, Joseph II of Austria, belonged to the same school. The\nmain charge against Frederick as a ruler is that he did not act up\nto the ideals of the school of Voltaire. In reply to the demand of\nthe French deists for an abolition of all superstitious teaching,\nhe observed that among the 16,000,000 inhabitants of France\nat most 200,000 were capable of philosophic views, and that the\nremaining 15,800,000 were held to their opinions by \"insurmountable\nobstacles.\" [1309] This, however, had been said by the deists\nthemselves (e.g., d'Holbach, pr\u00e9f. to Christianisme d\u00e9voil\u00e9); and\nsuch an answer meant that he had no idea of so spreading instruction\nthat all men should have a chance of reaching rational beliefs. This\nattitude was his inheritance from the past. Yet it was under him that\nPrussia began to figure as a first-rate culture force in Europe.\n\n14. The social vogue of deistic thought could now be traced in much of\nthe German belles-lettres of the time. The young Jakob von Mauvillon\n(1743-1794), secretary of the King of Poland and author of several\nhistories, in his youth translated from the Latin into French Holberg's\nVoyage of Nicolas Klimius (1766), which made the tour of Europe, and\nhad a special vogue in Germany. Later in life, besides translating\nand writing abundantly and intelligently on matters of economic and\nmilitary science--in the latter of which he had something like expert\nstatus--Mauvillon became a pronounced heretic, though careful to keep\nhis propaganda anonymous.\n\nThe most systematic dissemination of the new ideas was that carried on\nin the periodical published by Christoph Friedrich Nicolai (1733-1811)\nunder the title of The General German Library (founded 1765), which\nbegan with fifty contributors, and at the height of its power had\na hundred and thirty, among them being Lessing, Eberhard, and Moses\nMendelssohn. In the period from its start to the year 1792 it ran to\n106 volumes; and it has always been more or less bitterly spoken of\nby later orthodoxy as the great library of that movement. Nicolai,\nhimself an industrious and scholarly writer, produced among many\nother things a satirical romance famous in its day, the Life and\nOpinions of Magister Sebaldus Nothanker, ridiculing the bigots and\npersecutors the type of Klotz, the antagonist of Lessing, and some\nof Nicolai's less unamiable antagonists, [1310] as well as various\naspects of the general social and literary life of the time. To\nNicolai is fully due the genial tribute paid to him by Heine, [1311]\nwere it only for the national service of his \"Library.\" Its many\ntranslations from the English and French freethinkers, older and\nnewer, concurred with native work to spread a deistic rationalism,\nlabelled Aufkl\u00e4rung, or enlightenment, through the whole middle class\nof Germany. [1312] Native writers in independent works added to the\npropaganda. Andreas Riem (1749-1807), a Berlin preacher, appointed\nby Frederick a hospital chaplain, [1313] wrote anonymously against\npriestcraft as no other priest had yet done. \"No class of men,\" he\ndeclared, in language perhaps echoed from his king, \"has ever been\nso pernicious to the world as the priesthood. There were laws at all\ntimes against murderers and bandits, but not against the assassin in\nthe priestly garb. War was repelled by war, and it came to an end. The\nwar of the priesthood against reason has lasted for thousands of years,\nand it still goes on without ceasing.\" [1314] Georg Schade (1712-1795),\nwho appears to have been one of the believers in the immortality of\nanimals, and who in 1770 was imprisoned for his opinions in the Danish\nisland of Christiansoe, was no less emphatic, declaring, in a work on\nNatural Religion on the lines of Tindal (1760), that \"all who assert a\nsupernatural religion are godless impostors.\" [1315] Constructive work\nof great importance, again, was done by J. B. Basedow (1723-1790), who\nearly became an active deist, but distinguished himself chiefly as an\neducational reformer, on the inspiration of Rousseau's \u00c9mile, [1316]\nsetting up a system which \"tore education away from the Christian\nbasis,\" [1317] and becoming in virtue of that one of the most popular\nwriters of his day. It is latterly admitted even by orthodoxy that\nschool education in Germany had in the seventeenth century become a\nmatter of learning by rote, and that such reforms as had been set up\nin some of the schools of the Pietists had in Basedow's day come to\nnothing. [1318] As Basedow was the first to set up vigorous reforms,\nit is not too much to call him an instaurator of rational education,\nwhose chief fault was to be too far ahead of his age. This, with the\npersonal flaw of an unamiable habit of wrangling in all companies,\ncaused the failure of his \"Philanthropic Institute,\" established in\n1771, on the invitation of the Prince of Dessau, to carry out his\neducational ideals. Quite a number of other institutions, similarly\nplanned, after his lead, by men of the same way of thinking, as Canope\nand Salzmann, in the same period, had no better success.\n\n\n Goethe, who was clearly much impressed by Basedow, and travelled\n with him, draws a somewhat antagonistic picture of him on\n retrospect (Wahrheit und Dichtung, B. xiv). He accuses him in\n particular of always obtruding his anti-orthodox opinions; not\n choosing to admit that religious opinions were being constantly\n obtruded on Basedow. Praising Lavater for his more amiable\n nature, Goethe reveals that Lavater was constantly propounding\n his orthodoxy. Goethe, in fine, was always lenient to pietism,\n in which he had been brought up, and to which he was wont to make\n sentimental concessions. He could never forget his courtly duties\n towards the established convention, and so far played the game of\n bigotry. Hagenbach notes (i, 298, note), without any deprecation,\n that after Basedow had published in 1763-1764 his Philalethie,\n a perfectly serious treatise on natural as against revealed\n religion, one of the many orthodox answers, that by Pastor Goeze,\n so inflamed against him the people of his native town of Hamburg\n that he could not show himself there without danger. And this\n is the man accused of \"obtruding his views.\" Baur is driven, by\n way of disparagement of Basedow and his school, to censure their\n self-confidence--precisely the quality which, in religious teachers\n with whom he agreed, he as a theologian would treat as a mark\n of superiority. Baur's attack on the moral utilitarianism of the\n school is still less worthy of him. (Gesch. der christl. Kirche,\n iv, 595-96). It reads like an echo of Kahnis (as cited, p. 46 sq.).\n\n\nYet another influential deist was Johann August Eberhard (1739-1809),\nfor a time a preacher at Charlottenburg, but driven out of the Church\nfor the heresy of his New Apology of Sokrates; or the Final Salvation\nof the Heathen (1772). [1319] The work in effect placed Sokrates on\na level with Jesus, [1320] which was blasphemy. [1321] But the outcry\nattracted the attention of Frederick, who made Eberhard a Professor of\nPhilosophy at Halle, where later he opposed the idealism of both Kant\nand Fichte. Substantially of the same school was the less pronouncedly\ndeistic cleric Steinbart, [1322] author of a utilitarian System of\nPure Philosophy, or Christian doctrine of Happiness, now forgotten,\nwho had been variously influenced by Locke and Voltaire. [1323] Among\nthe less heterodox but still rationalizing clergy of the period were\nJ. J. Spalding, author of a work on The Utility of the Preacher's\nOffice, a man of the type labelled \"Moderate\" in the Scotland of the\nsame period, and as such antipathetic to emotional pietists; [1324]\nand Zollikofer, of the same school--both inferribly influenced by the\ndeism of their day. Considerably more of a rationalist than these was\nthe clergyman W. A. Teller (1734-1804), author of a New Testament\nLexicon, who reached a position virtually deistic, and intimated\nto the Jews of Berlin that he would receive them into his church on\ntheir making a deistic profession of faith. [1325]\n\n15. If it be true that even the rationalizing defenders of Christianity\nled men on the whole towards deism, [1326] much more must this hold\ntrue of the new school who applied rationalistic methods to religious\nquestions in their capacity as theologians. Of this school the founder\nwas Johann Salomo Semler (1725-1791), who, trained as a Pietist at\nHalle, early thought himself into a more critical attitude, [1327]\nalbeit remaining a theological teacher. Son of a much-travelled army\nchaplain, who in his many campaigns had learned much of the world,\nand in particular seen something of religious frauds in the Catholic\ncountries, Semler started with a critical bias which was cultivated\nby wide miscellaneous reading from his boyhood onwards. As early as\n1750, in his doctoral dissertation defending certain texts against\nthe criticism of Whiston, he set forth the view, developed a century\nlater by Baur, that the early Christian Church contained a Pauline and\na Petrine party, mutually hostile. The merit of his research won him\na professorship at Halle; and this position he held till his death,\ndespite such heresy as his rejection from the canon of the books of\nRuth, Esther, Ezra, Nehemiah, the Song of Solomon, the two books of\nChronicles, and the Apocalypse, in his Freie Untersuchung des Canons\n(1771-1774)--a work apparently inspired by the earlier performance of\nRichard Simon. [1328] His intellectual life was for long a continuous\nadvance, always in the direction of a more rationalistic comprehension\nof religious history; and he reached, for his day, a remarkably\ncritical view of the mythical element in the Old Testament. [1329]\nNot only did he recognize that Genesis must have pre-Mosaic origins,\nand that such books as the Proverbs and the Psalms were of later\ndate and other origin than those traditionally assigned: [1330] his\nhistorical sense worked on the whole narrative. Thus he recognized\nthe mythical character of the story of Samson, and was at least on\nthe way towards a scientific handling of the New Testament. [1331]\nBut in his period and environment a systematic rationalism was\nimpossible; he was always a \"revelation-believing Christian\"; his\ncritical intelligence was always divided against itself; [1332]\nand his powers were expended in an immense number of works, [1333]\nwhich failed to yield any orderly system, while setting up a general\nstimulus, in despite of their admitted unreadableness. [1334]\n\nIn his latter days he strongly opposed and condemned the more\nradical rationalism of his pupil Bahrdt, and of the posthumous work\nof Reimarus, here exemplifying the common danger of the intellectual\nlife, for critical as well as uncritical minds. After provoking many\northodox men by his own challenges, he is roused to fury alike by the\ngenial rationalism of Bahrdt and by the cold analysis of Reimarus;\nand his attack on the Wolfenb\u00fcttel Fragments published by Lessing\nis loaded with a vocabulary of abuse such as he had never before\nemployed [1335]--a sure sign that he had no scientific hold of his own\nhistorical conception. Like the similarly infuriated semi-rational\ndefenders of the historicity of Jesus in our own day, he merely\n\"followed the tactic of exposing the lack of scientific knowledge and\ntheological learning\" of the innovating writer. Always temperamentally\nreligious, he died in the evangelical faith. But his own influence in\npromoting rationalism is now obvious and unquestioned, [1336] and he is\nrightly to be reckoned a main founder of \"German rationalism\"--that is,\nacademic rationalism on theologico-historical lines [1337]--although\nhe always professed to be merely rectifying orthodox conceptions. In\nthe opinion of Pusey \"the revival of historical interpretation by\nSemler became the most extensive instrument of the degradation of\nChristianity.\"\n\nAmong the other theologians of the time who exercised a similar\ninfluence to the Wolffian, T\u00f6llner attracts notice by the comparative\ncourage with which, in the words of an orthodox critic, he \"raised, as\nmuch as possible, natural religion to revelation,\" and, \"on the other\nhand, lowered Scripture to the level of natural light.\" [1338] First\nhe published (1764) True Reasons why God has not furnished Revelation\nwith evident proofs, [1339] arguing for the modern attenuation of\nthe idea of revelation; then a work on Divine Inspiration (1771) in\nwhich he explicitly avowed that \"God has in no way, either inwardly\nor outwardly, dictated the sacred books. The writers were the real\nauthors\" [1340]--a declaration not to be counterbalanced by further\ngeneralities about actual divine influence. Later still he published a\nProof that God leads men to salvation even by his revelation in Nature\n[1341] (1766)--a form of Christianity little removed from deism. Other\ntheologians, such as Ernesti, went far with the tide of illuminism;\nand when the orthodox Chr. A. Crusius died at Leipzig in 1781, Jean\nPaul Richter, then a student, wrote that people had become \"too much\nimbued with the spirit of illuminism\" to be of his school. \"Most,\nalmost all the students,\" adds Richter, incline to heterodoxy; and\nof the professor Morus he tells that \"wherever he can explain away a\nmiracle, the devil, etc., he does so.\" Of this order of accommodators,\na prominent example was Michaelis (1717-1791), whose reduction of\nthe Mosaic legislation to motives of every-day utility is still\nentertaining.\n\n16. Much more notorious than any other German deist of his time was\nCarl Friedrich Bahrdt (1741-1792), a kind of raw Teutonic Voltaire,\nand the most popularly influential German freethinker of his age. In\nall he is said to have published a hundred and twenty-six books\nand tracts, [1342] thus approximating to Voltaire in quantity if\nnot in quality. Theological hatred has so pursued him that it is\nhard to form a fair opinion as to his character; but the record\nruns that he led a somewhat Bohemian and disorderly life, though a\nvery industrious one. While a preacher in Leipzig in 1768 he first\ngot into trouble--\"persecution\" by his own account; \"disgrace for\nlicentious conduct,\" by that of his enemies. In any case, he was\nat this period quite orthodox in his beliefs. [1343] That there was\nno serious disgrace is suggested by the fact that he was appointed\nProfessor of Biblical Antiquities at Erfurt; and soon afterwards, on\nthe recommendation of Semler and Ernesti, at Giessen (1771). While\nholding that post he published his \"modernized\" translation of the\nNew Testament, done from the point of view of belief in revelation,\nfollowing it up by his New Revelations of God in Letters and Tales\n(1773), which aroused Protestant hostility. After teaching for a time\nin a new Swiss \"Philanthropin\"--an educational institution on Basedow's\nlines--he obtained a post as a district ecclesiastical superintendent\nin the principality of T\u00fcrkheim on the Hardt; whereafter he was enabled\nto set up a \"Philanthropin\" of his own in the castle of Heidesheim,\nnear Worms. The second edition of his translation of the New Testament,\nhowever, aroused Catholic hostility in the district; the edition was\nconfiscated, and he found it prudent to make a tour in Holland and\nEngland, only to receive, on his return, a missive from the imperial\nconsistory declaring him disabled for any spiritual office in the Holy\nGerman Empire. Seeking refuge in Halle, he found Semler grown hostile;\nbut made the acquaintance of Eberhard, with the result of abandoning\nthe remains of his orthodox faith. Henceforth he regarded Jesus, albeit\nwith admiration, as simply a great teacher, \"like Moses, Confucius,\nSokrates, Semler, Luther, and myself\"; [1344] and to this view he gave\neffect; in the third edition of his New Testament translation, which\nwas followed in 1782 by his Letters on the Bible in Popular Style\n(Volkston), and in 1784 by his Completion (Ausf\u00fchrung) of the Plan\nand Aim of Jesus in Letters (1784), and his System of Moral Religion\n(1787). More and more fiercely antagonized, he duly retaliated on the\nclergy in his Church and Heretic Almanack (1781); and after for a time\nkeeping a tavern, he got into fresh trouble by printing anonymous\nsatires on the religious edict of 1788, directed against all kinds\nof heresy, [1345] and was sentenced to two years' imprisonment in a\nfortress--a term reduced by the king to one year. Thereafter he ended\nnot very happily his troublous life in Halle in 1792.\n\nThe weakest part of Bahrdt's performance is now seen to be\nhis application of the empirical method of the early theological\nrationalists, who were wont to take every Biblical prodigy as a merely\nperverted account of an incident which certainly happened. That\nmethod--which became identified with the so-called \"rationalism\"\nof Germany in that age, and is not yet discarded by rationalizing\ntheologians--is reduced to open absurdity in his hands, as when\nhe makes Moses employ fireworks on Mount Sinai, and Jesus feed the\nfive thousand by stratagem, without miracle. But it was not by such\nextravagances that he won and kept a hearing throughout his life. It\nis easy to see on retrospect that the source of his influence as a\nwriter lay above all things in his healthy critical ethic, his own\nmode of progression being by way of simple common sense and natural\nfeeling, not of critical research. His first step in rationalism\nwas to ask himself \"how Three Persons could be One God\"--this while\nbelieving devoutly in revelation, miracles, the divinity of Jesus,\nand the Atonement. Under the influence of a naturalist travelling\nin his district, he gave up the orthodox doctrine of the Atonement,\nfeeling himself \"as if new-born\" in being freed of what he had learned\nto see as a \"pernicious and damnable error.\" [1346] It was for such\nwriting that he was hated and persecuted, despite his habitual eulogy\nof Christ as \"the greatest and most venerable of mortals.\" His offence\nwas not against morals, but against theology; and he heightened the\noffence by his vanity.\n\n\n Bahrdt's real power may be inferred from the fury of some of his\n opponents. \"The wretched Bahrdt\" is Dr. Pusey's Christian account\n of him. Even F. C. Baur is abusive. The American translators\n of Hagenbach, Messrs. Gage and Stuckenberg, have thought fit to\n insert in their chapter-heading the phrase \"Bahrdt, the Theodore\n Parker of Germany.\" As Hagenbach has spoken of Bahrdt with special\n contempt, the intention can be appreciated; but the intended\n insult may now serve as a certificate of merit to Bahrdt. Bishop\n Hurst solemnly affirms that \"What Jeffreys is to the judicial\n history of England, Bahrdt is to the religious history of German\n Protestantism. Whatever he touched was disgraced by the vileness\n of his heart and the Satanic daring of his mind\" (History of\n Rationalism, ed. 1867, p. 119; ed. 1901, p. 139). This concerning\n doctrines of a nearly invariable moral soundness, which to-day\n would be almost universally received with approbation. P\u00fcnjer,\n who cannot at any point indict the doctrines, falls back on\n the professional device of classing them with the \"platitudes\"\n of the Aufkl\u00e4rung; and, finding this insufficient to convey\n a disparaging impression to the general reader, intimates that\n Bahrdt, connecting ethic with rational sanitation, \"does not shrink\n from the coarseness of laying down\" a rule for bodily health,\n which P\u00fcnjer does not shrink from quoting (pp. 549-50). Finally\n Bahrdt is dismissed as \"the theological public-house-keeper of\n Halle.\" So hard is it for men clerically trained to attain to\n a manly rectitude in their criticism of anti-clericals. Bahrdt\n was a great admirer of the Gospel Jesus; so Cairns (p. 178)\n takes a lenient view of his life. On that and his doctrine\n cp. Hagenbach, pp. 107-10; P\u00fcnjer, i, 546-50; Noack, Th. iii,\n Kap. 5. Goethe satirized him in a youthful Prolog, but speaks of\n him not unkindly in the Wahrheit und Dichtung. As a writer he is\n much above the German average.\n\n\n17. Alongside of these propagators of popular rationalism stood\na group of companion deists usually considered together--Gotthold\nEphraim Lessing (1729-1781), Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694-1768), and\nMoses Mendelssohn (1729-1786). The last-named, a Jew, \"lived entirely\nin the sphere of deism and of natural religion,\" [1347] and sought,\nlike the deists in general, to give religion an ethical structure;\nbut he was popular chiefly as a constructive theist and a defender\nof the doctrine of immortality on non-Christian lines. His Ph\u00e6don\n(1767), setting forth that view, had a great vogue. [1348] One of\nhis more notable teachings was an earnest declaration against any\nconnection between Church and State; but like Locke and Rousseau he\nso far sank below his own ideals as to agree in arguing for a State\nenforcement of a profession of belief in a God [1349]--a negation of\nhis own plea. With much contemporary popularity, he had no permanent\ninfluence; and he seems to have been completely broken-hearted over\nJacobi's disclosure of the final pantheism of Lessing, for whom he\nhad a great affection.\n\n\n See the monograph of Rabbi Schreiber, of Bonn, Moses Mendelssohn's\n Verdienste um die deutsche Nation (Z\u00fcrich, 1880), pp. 41-42. The\n strongest claim made for Mendelssohn by Rabbi Schreiber is that he,\n a Jew, was much more of a German patriot than Goethe, Schiller,\n or Lessing. Heine, however, pronounces that \"As Luther against the\n Papacy, so Mendelssohn rebelled against the Talmud\" (Zur Gesch. der\n Relig. und Philos. in Deutschland: Werke, ed. 1876, iii, 65).\n\n\nLessing, on the other hand, is one of the outstanding figures in\nthe history of Biblical criticism, as well as of German literature in\ngeneral. The son of a Lutheran pastor, Lessing became in a considerable\nmeasure a rationalist, while constantly resenting, as did Goethe,\nthe treatment of religion in the fashion in which he himself treated\nnon-religious opinions with which he did not agree. [1350] It is\nclear that already in his student days he had become substantially an\nunbeliever, and that it was on this as well as other grounds that he\nrefused to become a clergyman. [1351] Nor was he unready to jeer at\nthe bigots when they chanced to hate where he was sympathetic. [1352]\nOn the side of religious problems, he was primarily and permanently\ninfluenced by two such singularly different minds as Bayle [1353]\nand Rousseau, the first appealing to and eliciting his keen critical\nfaculty, the second his warm emotional nature; and he never quite\nunified the result. From first to last he was a freethinker in the\nsense that he never admitted any principle of authority, and was\nstedfastly loyal to the principle of freedom of utterance. He steadily\nrefused to break with his freethinking friend Mylius, and he never\nsought to raise odium against any more advanced freethinker on the\nscore of his audacity. [1354] In his Hamburgische Dramaturgie, indeed,\ndealing with a German play in which Mohammedanism in general, and one\nIsmenor in particular, in the time of the Crusades are charged with\nthe sin of persecution, he remarks that \"these very Crusades, which\nin their origin were a political stratagem of the popes, developed\ninto the most inhuman persecutions of which Christian superstition\nhas ever made itself guilty: the true religion had then the most and\nthe bloodiest Ismenors.\" [1355] In his early Rettungen (Vindications),\nagain, he defends the dubious Cardan and impersonally argues the pros\nand cons of Christianity and Mohammedanism in a fashion possible only\nto a skeptical mind. [1356] And in his youth, as in his last years, he\nmaintained that \"there have long been men who disregarded all revealed\nreligions and have yet been good men. [1357] In his youth, however,\nhe was more of a Rousseauist than of an intellectual philosopher,\nsetting up a principle of \"the heart\" against every species of analytic\nthought, including even that of Leibnitz, which he early championed\nagainst the Wolfian adaptation of it. [1358] The sound principle that\nconduct is more important than opinion he was always apt, on the\nreligious side, to strain into the really contrary principle that\nopinions which often went with good conduct were necessarily to be\nesteemed. So when the rationalism of the day seriously or otherwise\n(in Voltairean Berlin it was too apt to be otherwise) assailed the\ncreed of his parents, whom he loved and honoured, sympathy in his\ncase as in Goethe's always predetermined his attitude; [1359] and it\nis not untruly said of him that he did prefer the orthodox to the\nheterodox party, like Gibbon, \"inasmuch as the balance of learning\nwhich attracted his esteem was [then] on that side.\" [1360] We thus\nfind him, about the time when he announces to his father that he had\ndoubted concerning the Christian dogmas, [1361] rather nervously\nproving his essential religiousness by dramatically defending the\nclergy against the prejudices of popular freethought as represented\nby his friend Mylius, who for a time ran in Leipzig a journal called\nthe Freigeist--not a very advanced organ. [1362]\n\nLessing was in fact, with his versatile genius and his vast reading,\na man of moods rather than a systematic thinker, despite his powerful\ncritical faculty; and alike his emotional and his critical side\ndetermined his aversion to the attempts of the \"rationalizing\"\nclergy to put religion on a common-sense footing. His personal\nanimosity to Voltaire and to Frederick would also influence him; but\nhe repugned even the decorous \"rationalism\" of the theologians of\nhis own country. When his brother wrote him to the effect that the\nbasis of the current religion was false, and the structure the work\nof shallow bunglers, he replied that he admitted the falsity of the\nbasis, but not the incompetence of those who built up the system,\nin which he saw much skill and address. Shallow bunglers, on the\nother hand, he termed the schemers of the new system of compromise\nand accommodation. [1363] In short, as he avowed in his fragment on\nBibliolatry, he was always \"pulled this way and that\" in his thought\non the problem of religion. [1364] For himself, he framed (or perhaps\nadopted) [1365] a pseudo-theory of the Education of the Human Race\n(1780), which has served the semi-rationalistic clergy of our own day\nin good stead; and adapted Rousseau's catching doctrine that the true\ntest of religion lies in feeling and not in argument. [1366] Neither\ndoctrine, in short, has a whit more philosophical value than the other\n\"popular philosophy\" of the time, and neither was fitted to have much\nimmediate influence; but both pointed a way to the more philosophic\napologists of religion, while baulking the orthodox. [1367] If all this\nwere more than a piece of defensive strategy, it was no more scientific\nthan the semi-rationalist theology which he contemned. The \"education\"\ntheorem, on its merits, is indeed a discreditable paralogism; and\nonly our knowledge of his affectional bias can withhold us from\ncounting it a mystification. On analysis it is found to have no\nlogical content whatever. \"Christianity\" Lessing made out to be a\n\"universal principle,\" independent of its pseudo-historical setting;\nthus giving to the totality of the admittedly false tradition the\ncredit of an ethic which in the terms of the case is simply human, and\nin all essentials demonstrably pre-Christian. His propaganda of this\nkind squares ill with his paper on The Origin of Revealed Religion,\nwritten about 1860. There he professes to hold by a naturalist view\nof religion. All \"positive\" or dogmatic creeds he ascribes to the\narrangements that men from time to time found it necessary to make\nas to the means of applying \"natural\" religion. \"Hence all positive\nand revealed religions are alike true and alike false; alike true,\ninasmuch as it has everywhere been necessary to come to terms over\ndifferent things in order to secure agreement and unity in the public\nreligion; alike false, inasmuch as that over which men came to terms\ndoes not so much stand close to the essential (nicht sowohl ... neben\ndem Wesentlichen besteht), but rather weakens and oppresses it. The\nbest revealed or positive religion is that which contains the fewest\nconventional additions to natural religion; that which least limits the\neffects of natural religion.\" [1368] This is the position of Tindal\nand the English deists in general; and it seems to have been in this\nmood that Lessing wrote to Mendelssohn about being able to \"help the\ndownfall of the most frightful structure of nonsense only under the\npretext of giving it a new foundation.\" [1369] On the historical\nside, too, he had early convinced himself that Christianity was\nestablished and propagated \"by entirely natural means\" [1370]--this\nbefore Gibbon. But, fighter as he was, he was not prepared to lay\nhis cards on the table in the society in which he found himself. In\nhis strongest polemic there was always an element of mystification;\n[1371] and his final pantheism was only privately avowed.\n\nIt was through a series of outside influences that he went so far,\nin the open, as he did. Becoming the librarian of the great Bibliothek\nof Wolfenb\u00fcttel, the possession of the hereditary Prince (afterwards\nDuke) of Brunswick, he was led to publish the \"Anonymous Fragments\"\nknown as the Wolfenb\u00fcttel Fragments (1774-1778), wherein the methods\nof the English and French deists are applied with a new severity to\nboth the Old and the New Testament narratives. It is now put beyond\ndoubt that they were the work of Reimarus, [1372] who had in 1755\nproduced a defence of \"Natural Religion\"--that is, of the theory of\na Providence--against La Mettrie, Maupertuis, and older materialists,\nwhich had a great success in its day. [1373] At his death, accordingly,\nReimarus ranked as an admired defender of theism and of the belief\nin immortality. [1374] He was the son-in-law of the esteemed scholar\nFabricius, and was for many years Professor of Oriental Languages in\nthe Hamburg Academy. The famous research which preserves his memory\nwas begun by him at the age of fifty, for his own satisfaction, and\nwas elaborated by him during twenty years, while he silently endured\nthe regimen of the intolerant Lutheranism of his day. [1375] As he\nleft the book it was a complete treatise entitled An Apology for the\nRational Worshipper of God; but his son feared to have it published,\nthough Lessing offered to take the whole risk; and it was only by the\nhelp of the daughter, Elise Reimarus, [1376] Lessing's friend, that the\nfragments came to light. As the Berlin censor would not give official\npermission, [1377] Lessing took the course of issuing them piecemeal\nin a periodical series of selections from the treasures of the\nWolfenb\u00fcttel Library, which had privilege of publication. The first,\nOn the Toleration of Deists, which attracted little notice, appeared\nin 1774; four more, which made a stir, in 1777; and only in 1778 was\n\"the most audacious of all,\" On the Aim of Jesus and his Disciples,\n[1378] published as a separate book. Collectively they constituted\nthe most serious attack yet made in Germany on the current creed,\nthough their theory of the true manner of the gospel history of course\nsmacks of the pre-scientific period. A generation later, however,\nthey were still \"the radical book of the anti-supernaturalists\"\nin Germany. [1379]\n\n\n As against miracles in general, the Resurrection in\n particular, and Biblical ethics in general, the attack of\n Reimarus was irresistible, but his historical construction is\n pre-scientific. The method is, to accept as real occurrences\n all the non-miraculous episodes, and to explain them by a\n general theory. Thus the appointment of the seventy apostles--a\n palpable myth--is taken as a fact, and explained as part of\n a scheme by Jesus to obtain temporal power; and the scourging\n of the money-changers from the Temple, improbable enough as it\n stands, is made still more so by supposing it to be part of a\n scheme of insurrection. The method further involves charges of\n calculated fraud against the disciples or evangelists--a historical\n misconception which Lessing repudiated, albeit not on the right\n grounds. See the sketch in Cairns, p. 197 sq., which indicates the\n portions of the treatise produced later by Strauss. Cp. P\u00fcnjer,\n i, 550-57; Noack, Th. iii, Kap. 4. Schweitzer (Von Reimarus zu\n Wrede), in his satisfaction at the agreement of Reimarus with his\n own conception of an \"eschatological\" Jesus, occupied with \"the\n last things,\" gives Reimarus extravagant praise. Strauss rightly\n notes the weakness of the indictment of Moses as a worker of fraud\n (Voltaire, 2te Ausg. p. 407).\n\n It is but fair to say that Reimarus's fallacy of method, which\n was the prevailing one in his day, has not yet disappeared from\n criticism. As we have seen, it was employed by Pomponazzi in\n the Renaissance (vol. i, p. 377), and reintroduced in the modern\n period by Connor and Toland. It is still employed by some professed\n rationalists, as Dr. Conybeare. It has, however, in all likelihood\n suggested itself spontaneously to many inquirers. In the Ph\u00e6drus\n Plato presents it as applied by empirical rationalizers to myths\n at that time.\n\n\nThough Lessing at many points oppugned the positions of the Fragments,\nhe was led into a fiery controversy over them, in which he was\nunworthily attacked by, among others, Semler, from whom he had looked\nfor support; and the series was finally stopped by authority. There\ncan now be no doubt that Lessing at heart agreed with Reimarus on\nmost points of negative criticism, [1380] but reached a different\nemotional estimate and attitude. All the greater is the merit of\nhis battle for freedom of thought. Thereafter, as a final check to\nhis opponents, he produced his famous drama Nathan the Wise, which\nembodies Boccaccio's story of The Three Rings, and has ever since\nserved as a popular lesson of tolerance in Germany. [1381] In the end,\nhe seems to have become, to at least some extent, a pantheist; [1382]\nbut he never expounded any coherent and comprehensive set of opinions,\n[1383] preferring, as he put it in an oft-quoted sentence, the state\nof search for truth to any consciousness of possessing it. [1384]\n\nHe left behind him, however, an important fragment, which constituted\none of his most important services to national culture--his \"New\nHypothesis concerning the evangelists as merely human writers.\" He\nhimself thought that he had done nothing \"more important or ingenious\"\n[1385] of the kind; and though his results were in part unsound and\nimpermanent, he is justly to be credited with the first scientific\nattempt to deduce the process of composition of the gospels [1386]\nfrom primary writings by the first Christians. Holding as he did to\nthe authenticity and historicity of the fourth gospel, he cannot be\nsaid to have gone very deep; but two generations were to pass before\nthe specialists got any further. Lessing had shown more science and\nmore courage than any other pro-Christian scholar of the time, and,\nas the orthodox historian of rationalism has it, \"Though he did not\narray himself as a champion of rationalism, he proved himself one of\nthe strongest promoters of its reign.\" [1387]\n\n18. Deism was now as prevalent in educated Germany as in France or\nEngland; and, according to a contemporary preacher, \"Berliner\" was\nabout 1777 a synonym for \"rationalist.\" [1388] Wieland, one of the\nforemost German men of letters of his time, is known to have become\na deist of the school of Shaftesbury; [1389] and in the leading\njournal of the day he wrote on the free use of reason in matters of\nfaith. [1390] Some acts of persecution by the Church show how far the\nmovement had gone. In 1774 we find a Catholic professor at Mayence,\nLorenzo Isenbiehl, deposed and sent back to the seminary for two\nyears on the score of \"deficient theological knowledge,\" because he\nargued (after Collins) that the text Isaiah vii, 14 applied not to\nthe mother of Jesus but to a contemporary of the prophet; and when,\nfour years later, he published a book on the same thesis, in Latin, he\nwas imprisoned. Three years later still, a young Jesuit of Salzburg,\nnamed Steinbuhler, was actually condemned to death for writing some\nsatires on Roman Catholic ceremonies, and, though afterwards pardoned,\ndied of the ill-usage he had undergone in prison. [1391] It may have\nbeen the sense of danger aroused by such persecution that led to the\nfounding, in 1780, of a curious society which combined an element\nof freethinking Jesuitism with freemasonry, and which included a\nnumber of statesmen, noblemen, and professors--Goethe, Herder, and\nthe Duke of Weimar being among its adherents. But it is difficult to\ntake seriously the accounts given of the order. [1392]\n\nThe spirit of rationalism, in any case, was now so prevalent that\nit began to dominate the work of the more intelligent theologians,\nto whose consequent illogical attempts to strain out by the most\ndubious means the supernatural elements from the Bible narratives\n[1393] the name of \"rationalism\" came to be specially applied, [1394]\nthat being the kind of criticism naturally most discussed among the\nclergy. Taking rise broadly in the work of Semler, reinforced by that\nof the English and French deists and that of Reimarus, the method led\nstage by stage to the scientific performance of Strauss and Baur, and\nthe recent \"higher criticism\" of the Old and New Testaments. Noteworthy\nat its outset as exhibiting the tendency of official believers to\nmake men, in the words of Lessing, irrational philosophers by way of\nmaking them rational Christians, [1395] this order of \"rationalism\"\nin its intermediate stages belongs rather to the history of Biblical\nscholarship than to that of freethought, since more radical work was\nbeing done by unprofessional writers outside, and deeper problems were\nraised by the new systems of philosophy. Within the Lutheran pale,\nhowever, there were some hardy thinkers. A striking figure of the time,\nin respect of his courage and thoroughness, is the Lutheran pastor\nJ. H. Schulz, [1396] who so strongly combatted the compromises of the\nSemler school in regard to the Pentateuch, and argued so plainly for a\nseverance of morals from religion as to bring about his own dismissal\n(1792). [1397] Schulz's Philosophical Meditation on Theology and\nReligion [1398] (1784) is indeed one of the most pronounced attacks on\northodox religion produced in that age. But it is in itself a purely\nspeculative construction. Following the current historical method,\nhe makes Moses the child of the Egyptian princess, and represents him\nas imposing on the ignorant Israelites a religion invented by himself,\nand expressive only of his own passions. Jesus in turn is extolled in\nthe terms common to the freethinkers of the age; but his conception\nof God is dismissed as chimerical; and Schulz finally rests in the\nposition of Edelmann, that the only rational conception of deity is\nthat of the \"sufficient ground of the world,\" and that on this view\nno man is an atheist. [1399]\n\nSchulz's dismissal appears to have been one of the fruits of the\northodox edict (1788) of the new king, Frederick William II, the\nbrother of Frederick, who succeeded in 1786. It announced him--in\nreality a \"strange compound of lawless debauchery and priest-ridden\nsuperstition\" [1400]--as the champion of religion and the enemy of\nfreethinking; forbade all proselytizing, and menaced with penalties\nall forms of heresy, [1401] while professing to maintain freedom of\nconscience. The edict seems to have been specially provoked by fresh\nliterature of a pronouncedly freethinking stamp, though it lays stress\non the fact that \"so many clergymen have the boldness to disseminate\nthe doctrines of the Socinians, Deists, and Naturalists under the name\nof Aufkl\u00e4rung.\" The work of Schulz would be one of the provocatives,\nand there were others. In 1785 had appeared the anonymous Moroccan\nLetters, [1402] wherein, after the model of the Persian Letters\nand others, the life and creeds of Germany are handled in a quite\nVoltairean fashion. The writer is evidently familiar with French\nand English deistic literature, and draws freely on both, making\nno pretence of systematic treatment. Such writing, quietly turning\na disenchanting light of common sense on Scriptural incredibilities\nand Christian historical scandals, without a trace of polemical zeal,\nillustrated at once the futility of Kant's claim, in the second edition\nof his Critique of Pure Reason, to counteract \"freethinking unbelief\"\nby transcendental philosophy. And though the writer is careful to point\nto the frequent association of Christian fanaticism with regicide,\nhis very explicit appeal for a unification of Germany, [1403] his\naccount of the German Protestant peasant and labourer as the most\ndismal figure in Germany, Holland, and Switzerland, [1404] and his\ncharge against Germans of degrading their women, [1405] would not\nenlist the favour of the authorities for his work. Within two years\n(1787) appeared, unsigned, an even more strongly anti-Christian and\nanti-clerical work, The In Part Only True System of the Christian\nReligion, [1406] ascribed to Jakob von Mauvillon, [1407] whom we have\nseen twenty-one years before translating the freethinking romance of\nHolberg. Beginning his career as a serious publicist by translating\nRaynal's explosive history of the Indies (7 vols. 1774-78), he had done\nsolid work as a historian and as an economist, and also as an officer\nin the service of the Duke of Brunswick and a writer on military\nscience. The True System is hostile alike to priesthoods and to the\naccommodating theologians, whose attempt to rationalize Christianity on\nhistorical lines it flouts in Lessing's vein as futile. Mauvillon finds\nunthinkable the idea of a revelation which could not be universal;\nrejects miracles and prophecies as vain bases for a creed; sums up the\nNew Testament as planless; and pronounces the ethic of Christianity,\ncommonly regarded as its strongest side, the weakest side of all. He\nsums up, in fact, in a logical whole, the work of the English and\nFrench deists. [1408] To such propaganda the edict of repression was\nthe official answer. It naturally roused a strong opposition; [1409]\nbut though it ultimately failed, through the general breakdown of\nEuropean despotisms, it was not without injurious effect. The first\nedict was followed in a few months by one which placed the press and\nall literature, native and foreign, under censorship. This policy,\nwhich was chiefly inspired by the new king's Minister of Religion,\nWoellner, was followed up in 1791 by the appointment of a committee\nof three reactionaries--Hermes, Hilmer, and Woltersdorf--who not\nonly saw to the execution of the edicts, but supervised the schools\nand churches. Such a regimen, aided by the reaction against the\nRevolution, for a time prevented any open propaganda on the part of\nmen officially placed; and we shall see it hampering and humiliating\nKant; but it left the leaven of anti-supernaturalism to work all the\nmore effectively among the increasing crowd of university students.\n\nMany minds of the period, doubtless, are typified by Herder,\nwho, though a practising clergyman, was clearly a Spinozistic\ntheist, accommodating himself to popular Christianity in a genially\nlatitudinarian spirit. [1410] When in his youth he published an essay\ndiscussing Genesis as a piece of oriental poetry, not to be treated as\nscience or theology, he evoked an amount of hostility which startled\nhim. [1411] Learning his lesson, he was for the future guarded enough\nto escape persecution. He was led by his own temperamental bias,\nhowever, to a transcendental position in philosophy. Originally in\nagreement with Kant, [1412] as against the current metaphysic, in the\nperiod before the issue of the latter's Critique of Pure Reason, he\nnourished his religious instincts by a discursive reading of history,\nwhich he handled in a comparatively scientific yet above all poetic\nor theosophic spirit, while Kant, who had little or no interest in\nhistory, developed his thought on the side of physical science. [1413]\nThe philosophic methods of the two men thus became opposed; and when\nHerder found Kant's philosophy producing a strongly rationalistic\ncast of thought among the divinity students who came before him\nfor examination, he directly and sharply antagonized it [1414] in\na theistic sense. Yet his own influence on his age was on the whole\nlatitudinarian and anti-theological; he opposed to the apriorism of\nKant the view that the concepts of space and time are the results of\nexperience and an abstraction of its contents; his historic studies\nhad developed in him a conception of the process of evolution alike\nin life, opinion, and faculty; and orthodoxy and philosophy alike\nincline to rank him as a pantheist. [1415]\n\n19. Meanwhile, the drift of the age of Aufkl\u00e4rung was apparent in\nthe practically freethinking attitude of the two foremost men of\nletters in the new Germany--Goethe and Schiller. Of the former,\ndespite the bluster of Carlyle, and despite the \u00e6sthetic favour\nshown to Christianity in Wilhelm Meister, no religious ingenuity\ncan make more than a pantheist, [1416] who, insofar as he touched\non Biblical questions, copied the half-grown rationalism of the\nschool of Semler. [1417] \"The great Pagan\" was the common label\namong his orthodox or conformist contemporaries. [1418] As a boy,\nlearning a little Hebrew, he was already at the critical point of\nview in regard to Biblical marvels, [1419] though he never became a\nscientific critic. He has told how, in his youth, when Lavater insisted\nthat he must choose between orthodox Christianity and atheism, he\nanswered that, if he were not free to be a Christian in his own way\n(wie ich es bisher gehegt h\u00e4tte), he would as soon turn atheist as\nChristian, the more so as he saw that nobody knew very well what\neither signified. [1420] As he puts it, he had made a Christ and\na Christianity of his own. [1421] His admired friend Fr\u00e4ulein von\nKlettenberg, the \"Beautiful Soul\" of one of his pieces, told him\nthat he never satisfied her when he used the Christian terminology,\nwhich he never seemed to get right; and he tells how he gradually\nturned away from her religion, which he had for a time approached,\nin its Moravian aspect, with a too passionate zeal. [1422] In his\nletters to Lavater, he wrote quite explicitly that a voice from heaven\nwould not make him believe in a virgin birth and a resurrection,\nsuch tales being for him rather blasphemies against the great God\nand his revelation in Nature. Thousands of pages of earlier and later\nwritings, he declared, were for him as beautiful as the gospel. [1423]\nNor did he ever yield to the Christian Church more than a Platonic\namity; so that much of the peculiar hostility that was long felt\nfor his poetry and was long shown to his memory in Germany is to be\nexplained as an expression of the normal malice of pietism against\nunbelievers. [1424] Such utterances as the avowal that he revered\nJesus as he revered the Sun, [1425] and the other to the effect that\nChristianity has nothing to do with philosophy, where Hegel sought\nto bring it--that it is simply a beneficent influence, and is not to\nbe looked to for proof of immortality [1426]--are clearly not those\nof a believer. To-day belief is glad to claim Goethe as a friend in\nrespect of his many concessions to it, as well as of his occasional\nflings at more consistent freethinkers. But a \"great pagan\" he remains\nfor the student. In the opinion of later orthodoxy his \"influence on\nreligion was very pernicious.\" [1427] He indeed showed small concern\nfor religious susceptibilities when he humorously wrote that from\nhis youth up he believed himself to stand so well with his God as to\nfancy that he might even \"have something to forgive Him.\" [1428]\n\n\n One passage in Goethe's essay on the Pentateuch, appended to the\n West-Oestlicher Divan, is worth noting here as illustrating the\n ability of genius to cherish and propagate historical fallacies. It\n runs: \"The peculiar, unique, and deepest theme of the history\n of the world and man, to which all others are subordinate,\n is always the conflict of belief and unbelief. All epochs\n in which belief rules, under whatever form, are illustrious,\n inspiriting, and fruitful for that time and the future. All\n epochs, on the other hand, in which unbelief, in whatever form,\n secures a miserable victory, even though for a moment they\n may flaunt it proudly, disappear for posterity, because no man\n willingly troubles himself with knowledge of the unfruitful\"\n (first ed. pp. 424-25). Goethe goes on to speak of the four\n latter books of Moses as occupied with the theme of unbelief,\n and of the first as occupied with belief. Thus his formula was\n based, to begin with, on purely fabulous history, into the nature\n of which his poetic faculty gave him no true insight. (See his\n idyllic recast of the patriarchal history in Th. I, B. iv of the\n Wahrheit und Dichtung.) Applied to real history, his formula has\n no validity save on a definition which implies either an equivoque\n or an argument in a circle. If it refer, in the natural sense, to\n epochs in which any given religion is widely rejected and assailed,\n it is palpably false. The Renaissance and Goethe's own century were\n ages of such unbelief; and they remain much more deeply interesting\n than the Ages of Faith. St. Peter's at Rome is the work of a\n reputedly unbelieving pope. If on the other hand his formula be\n meant to apply to belief in the sense of energy and enthusiasm, it\n is still fallacious. The crusades were manifestations of energy and\n enthusiasm; but they were profoundly \"unfruitful,\" and they are not\n deeply interesting. The only sense in which Goethe's formula could\n stand would be one in which it is recognized that all vigorous\n intellectual life stands for \"belief\"--that is to say, that\n Lucretius and Voltaire, Paine and d'Holbach, stand for \"belief\"\n when confidently attacking beliefs. The formula is thus true only\n in a strained and non-natural sense; whereas it is sure to be\n read and to be believed, by thoughtless admirers, in its natural\n and false sense, though the whole history of Byzantium and modern\n Islam is a history of stagnant and unfruitful belief, and that of\n modern Europe a history of fruitful doubt, disbelief, and denial,\n involving new affirmations. Goethe's own mind on the subject was in\n a state of verbalizing confusion, the result or expression of his\n temperamental aversion to clear analytical thought (\"Above all,\" he\n boasts, \"I never thought about thinking\") and his habit of poetic\n allegory and apriorism. \"Logic was invincibly repugnant to him\"\n (Lewes, Life of Goethe, 3rd ed. p. 38). The mosaic of his thinking\n is sufficiently indicated in Lewes's sympathetically confused\n account (id. pp. 523-27). Where he himself doubted and denied\n current creeds, as in his work in natural science, he was most\n fruitful [1429] (though he was not always right--e.g., his polemic\n against Newton's theory of colour); and the permanently interesting\n teaching of his Faust is precisely that which artistically utters\n the doubt through which he passed to a pantheistic Naturalism.\n\n\n20. No less certain is the unbelief of Schiller (1759-1805), whom\nHagenbach even takes as \"the representative of the rationalism of his\nage.\" In his juvenile Robbers, indeed, he makes his worst villains\nfreethinkers; and in the preface he stoutly champions religion\nagainst all assailants; but hardly ever after that piece does he give\na favourable portrait of a priest. [1430] He himself soon joined the\nAufkl\u00e4rung; and all his \u00e6sthetic appreciation of Christianity never\ncarried him beyond the position that it virtually had the tendency\n(Anlage) to the highest and noblest, though that was in general\ntastelessly and repulsively represented by Christians. He added that\nin a certain sense it is the only \u00e6sthetic religion, whence it is\nthat it gives such pleasure to the feminine nature, and that only\namong women is it to be met with in a tolerable form. [1431] Like\nGoethe, he sought to reduce the Biblical supernatural to the plane\nof possibility, [1432] in the manner of the liberal theologians of\nthe period; and like him he often writes as a deist, [1433] though\nprofessedly for a time a Kantist. On the other hand, he does not\nhesitate to say that a healthy nature (which Goethe had said needed\nno morality, no Natur-recht, [1434] and no political metaphysic)\nrequired neither deity nor immortality to sustain it. [1435]\n\n21. The critical philosophy of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) may be said\nto represent most comprehensively the outcome in German intelligence\nof the higher freethought of the age, insofar as its results could\nbe at all widely assimilated. In its most truly critical part, the\nanalytic treatment of previous theistic systems in the Critique of\nPure Reason (1781), he is fundamentally anti-theological; the effect\nof the argument being to negate all previously current proofs of the\nexistence and cognizableness of a \"supreme power\" or deity. Already\nthe metaphysics of the Leibnitz-Wolff school were discredited;\n[1436] and so far Kant could count on a fair hearing for a system\nwhich rejected that of the schools. Certainly he meant his book to\nbe an antidote to the prevailing religious credulity. \"Henceforth\nthere were to be no more dreams of ghost-seers, metaphysicians, and\nenthusiasts.\" [1437] On his own part, however, no doubt in sympathy\nwith the attitude of many of his readers, there followed a species of\nintuitional reaction. In his short essay What is Freethinking? [1438]\n(1784) he defines Aufkl\u00e4rung or freethinking as \"the advance of men\nfrom their self-imputed minority\"; and \"minority\" as the inability to\nuse one's own understanding without another's guidance. \"Sapere aude;\ndare to use thine own understanding,\" he declares to be the motto of\nfreethought: and he dwells on the laziness of spirit which keeps men\nin the state of minority, letting others do their thinking for them\nas the doctor prescribes their medicine. In this spirit he justifies\nthe movement of rational criticism while insisting, justly enough,\nthat men have still far to go ere they can reason soundly in all\nthings. If, he observes, \"we ask whether we live in an enlightened\n(aufgekl\u00e4rt) age the answer is, No, but in an age of enlightening\n(aufkl\u00e4rung).\" There is still great lack of capacity among men in\ngeneral to think for themselves, free of leading-strings. \"Only slowly\ncan a community (Publikum) attain to freethinking.\" But he repeats\nthat \"the age is the age of aufkl\u00e4rung, the age of Frederick the\nGreat\": and he pays a high tribute to the king who repudiated even\nthe arrogant pretence of \"toleration,\" and alone among monarchs said\nto his subjects, \"Reason as you will; only obey!\"\n\nBut the element of apprehension gained ground in the aging\nfreethinker. In 1787 appeared the second edition of the Critique,\nwith a preface avowing sympathy with religious as against freethinking\ntendencies; and in the Critique of Practical Reason (1788) he makes\nan almost avowedly unscientific attempt to restore the reign of\ntheism on a basis of a mere emotional and ethical necessity assumed\nto exist in human nature--a necessity which he never even attempts to\ndemonstrate. With the magic wand of the Practical Reason, as Heine has\nit, he reanimated the corpse of theism, which the Theoretic Reason had\nslain. [1439] In this adjustment he was perhaps consciously copying\nRousseau, who had greatly influenced him, [1440] and whose theism is\nan avowedly subjectivist predication. But the same attitude to the\nproblem had been substantially adopted by Lessing; [1441] and indeed\nthe process is at bottom identical with that of the quasi-skeptics,\nPascal, Huet, Berkeley, and the rest, who at once impugn and employ\nthe rational process, reasoning that reason is not reasonable. Kant\ndid but set up the \"practical\" against the \"pure\" reason, as other\ntheists before him had set up faith against science, or the \"heart\"\nagainst the \"head,\" and as theists to-day exalt the \"will\" against\n\"knowledge,\" the emotional nature against the logical. It is tolerably\nclear that Kant's motive at this stage was an unphilosophic fear that\nNaturalism would work moral harm [1442]--a fear shared by him with\nthe mass of the average minds of his age.\n\nThe same motive and purpose are clearly at work in his treatise on\nReligion within the bounds of Pure [i.e. Mere] Reason (1792-1794),\nwhere, while insisting on the purely ethical and rational character\nof true religion, he painfully elaborates reasons for continuing\nto use the Bible (concerning which he contends that, in view of\nits practically \"godly\" contents, no one can deny the possibility\nof its being held as a revelation) as \"the basis of ecclesiastical\ninstruction\" no less than a means of swaying the populace. [1443]\nMiracles, he in effect avows, are not true; still, there must be no\ncarping criticism of the miracle stories, which serve a good end. There\nis to be no persecution; but there is to be no such open disputation as\nwould provoke it. [1444] Again and again, with a visible uneasiness,\nthe writer returns to the thesis that even \"revealed\" religion\ncannot do without sacred books which are partly untrue. [1445]\nThe doctrine of the Trinity he laboriously metamorphosed, as so\nmany had done before him, and as Coleridge and Hegel did after him,\ninto a formula of three modes or aspects of the moral deity [1446]\nwhich his ethical purpose required. And all this divagation from the\nplain path of Truth is justified in the interest of Goodness.\n\nAll the while the book is from beginning to end profoundly\ndivided against itself. It indicates disbelief in every one of the\nstanding Christian dogmas--Creation, Fall, Salvation, Miracles,\nand the supernatural basis of morals. The first paragraph of the\npreface insists that morality is founded on the free reason, and\nthat it needs no religion to aid it. Again and again this note is\nsounded. \"The pure religious faith is that alone which can serve as\nbasis for a universal Church; because it is a pure reason-faith, in\nwhich everyone can participate.\" [1447] But without the slightest\nattempt at justification there is thrown in the formula that \"no\nreligion is thinkable without belief in a future life.\" [1448] Thus\nheaven and hell [1449] and Bible and church are arbitrarily imposed\non the \"pure religion\" for the comfort of unbelieving clergymen and\nthe moralizing of life. Error is to cast out error, and evil, evil.\n\n\n The process of Kant's adjustment of his philosophy to social needs\n as he regarded them is to be understood by following the chronology\n and the vogue of his writings. The first edition of the Critique of\n Pure Reason \"excited little attention\" (Stuckenberg, Life of Kant,\n p. 368); but in 1787 appeared the second and modified edition,\n with a new preface, clearly written with a propitiatory eye to\n the orthodox reaction. \"All at once the work now became popular,\n and the praise was as loud and as fulsome as at first the silence\n had been profound. The literature of the day began to teem with\n Kantian ideas, with discussions of the new philosophy, and with\n the praises of its author.... High officials in Berlin would\n lay aside the weighty affairs of State to consider the Kritik,\n and among them were found warm admirers of the work and its\n author.\" Id. p. 369. Cp. Heine, Rel. und Phil. in Deutschland,\n B. iii--Werke, iii, 75, 82.\n\n This popularity becomes intelligible in the light of the new\n edition and its preface. To say nothing of the alterations in the\n text, pronounced by Schopenhauer to be cowardly accommodations\n (as to which question see Adamson, as cited, and Stuckenberg,\n p. 461, note 94), Kant writes in the preface that he had been\n \"obliged to destroy knowledge in order to make room for faith\";\n and, again, that \"only through criticism can the roots be\n cut of materialism, fatalism, atheism, freethinking unbelief\n (freigeisterischen Unglauben), fanaticism and superstition, which\n may become universally injurious; also of idealism and skepticism,\n which are dangerous rather to the Schools, and can hardly reach the\n general public.\" (Meiklejohn mistranslates: \"which are universally\n injurious\"--Bohn ed. p. xxxvii.) This passage virtually puts the\n popular religion and all philosophies save Kant's own on one level\n of moral dubiety. It is, however, distinctly uncandid as regards\n the \"freethinking unbelief,\" for Kant himself was certainly an\n unbeliever in Christian miracles and dogmas.\n\n His readiness to make an appeal to prejudice appears again\n in the second edition of the Critique when he asks: \"Whence\n does the freethinker derive his knowledge that there is, for\n instance, no Supreme Being?\" (Kritik der reinen Vernunft,\n Transc. Methodenlehre, 1 H. 2 Absch. ed. Kirchmann, 1879,\n p. 587; Bohn tr. p. 458.) He had just before professed to be\n dealing with denial of the \"existence of God\"--a proposition of\n no significance whatever unless \"God\" be defined. He now without\n warning substitutes the still more undefined expression \"Supreme\n Being\" for \"God,\" thus imputing a proposition probably never\n sustained with clear verbal purpose by any human being. Either,\n then, Kant's own proposition was the entirely vacuous one that\n nobody can demonstrate the impossibility of an alleged undefined\n existence, or he was virtually asserting that no one can disprove\n any alleged supernatural existence--spirit, demon, Moloch, Krishna,\n Bel, Siva, Aphrodite, or Isis and Osiris. In the latter case he\n would be absolutely stultifying his own claim to cut the roots of\n \"superstition\" and \"fanaticism\" as well as of freethinking and\n materialism; for, if the freethinker cannot disprove Jehovah,\n neither can the Kantist disprove Allah and Satan; and Kant had\n no basis for denying, as he did with Spinoza, the existence of\n ghosts or spirits. From this dilemma Kant's argument cannot be\n delivered. And as he finally introduces deity as a psychologically\n and morally necessary regulative idea, howbeit indemonstrable,\n he leaves every species of superstition exactly where it stood\n before--every superstition being practically held, as against\n \"freethinking unbelief,\" on just such a tenure.\n\n If he could thus react against freethinking before 1789, he\n must needs carry the reaction further after the outbreak of the\n French Revolution; and his Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der\n blossen Vernunft (1792-1794) is a systematic effort to draw the\n teeth of the Aufkl\u00e4rung, modified only by his resentment of the\n tyranny of the political authority towards himself. Concerning the\n age-long opposition between rationalism (Verstandesaufkl\u00e4rung)\n and intuitionism or emotionalism (Gef\u00fchlsphilosophie), it is\n claimed by modern transcendentalists that Kant, or Herder,\n or another, has effected a solution on a plane higher than\n either. (E.g. Kronenberg, Herder's Philosophie, 1889, p. 6.) The\n true solution certainly must account for both points of view--no\n very difficult matter; but no solution is really attained by\n either of these writers. Kant alternately stood at the two\n positions; and his unhistorical mind did not seek to unify them\n in a study of human evolution. For popular purposes he let pass\n the assumption that a cosmic emotion is a clue to the nature of\n the cosmos, as the water-finder's hazel-twig is said to point\n to the whereabouts of water. Herder, recognisant of evolution,\n would not follow out any rational analysis.\n\n\nAll the while, however, Kant's theism was radically irreconcilable with\nthe prevailing religion. As appears from his cordial hostility to the\nbelief in ghosts, he really lacked the religious temperament. \"He\nhimself,\" says a recent biographer, \"was too suspicious of the\nemotions to desire to inspire any enthusiasm with reference to his own\nheart.\" [1450] This misstates the fact that his \"Practical Reason\"\nwas but an abstraction of his own emotional predilection; but it\nremains true that that predilection was nearly free from the commoner\nforms of pious psychosis; and typical Christians have never found him\nsatisfactory. \"From my heart,\" writes one of his first biographers,\n\"I wish that Kant had not regarded the Christian religion merely as\na necessity for the State, or as an institution to be tolerated for\nthe sake of the weak (which now so many, following his example, do\neven in the pulpit), but had known that which is positive, improving,\nand blessed in Christianity.\" [1451] He had in fact never kept up any\ntheological study; [1452] and his plan of compromise had thus, like\nthose of Spencer and Mill in a later day, a fatal unreality for all\nmen who have discarded theology with a full knowledge of its structure,\nthough it appeals very conveniently to those disposed to retain it as\na means of popular influence. All his adaptations, therefore, failed\nto conciliate the mass of the orthodox; and even after the issue of\nthe second Critique (Kritik der praktischen Vernunft) he had been\nthe subject of discussion among the reactionists. [1453] But that\nCritique, and the preface to the second edition of the first, were\nat bottom only pleas for a revised ethic, Kant's concern with current\nreligion being solely ethical; [1454] and the force of that concern led\nhim at length, in what was schemed as a series of magazine articles,\n[1455] to expound his notion of religion in relation to morals. When\nhe did so he aroused a resentment much more energetic than that\nfelt by the older academics against his philosophy. The title of his\ncomplete treatise, Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, is\nobviously framed to parry criticism; yet so drastic is its treatment\nof its problems that the College of Censors at Berlin under the new\ntheological r\u00e9gime vetoed the second part. By the terms of the law\nas to the censorship, the publisher was entitled to know the reason\nfor the decision; but on his asking for it he was informed that\n\"another instruction was on hand, which the censor followed as his\nlaw, but whose contents he refused to make known.\" [1456] Greatly\nincensed, Kant submitted the rejected article with the rest of his\nbook to the theological faculty of his own university of K\u00f6nigsberg,\nasking them to decide in which faculty the censorship was properly\nvested. They referred the decision to the philosophical faculty, which\nduly proceeded to license the book (1793). As completed, it contained\npassages markedly hostile to the Church. His opponents in turn were\nnow so enraged that they procured a royal cabinet order (October,\n1794) charging him with \"distorting and degrading many of the chief\nand fundamental doctrines of the Holy Scriptures and of Christianity,\"\nand ordering all the instructors at the university not to lecture on\nthe book. [1457] Such was the reward for a capitulation of philosophy\nto the philosophic ideals of the police.\n\nKant, called upon to render an account of his conduct to the\nGovernment, formally defended it, but in conclusion decorously said:\n\"I think it safest, in order to obviate the least suspicion in this\nrespect, as your Royal Majesty's most faithful subject, to declare\nsolemnly that henceforth I will refrain altogether from all public\ndiscussion of religion, whether natural or revealed, both in lectures\nand in writings.\" After the death of Frederick William II (1797) and\nthe accession of Frederick William III, who suspended the edict of\n1788, Kant held himself free to speak out again, and published (1798)\nan essay on \"The Strife of the [University] Faculties,\" wherein he\nargued that philosophers should be free to discuss all questions of\nreligion so long as they did not handle Biblical theology as such. The\nbelated protest, however, led to nothing. By this time the philosopher\nwas incapable of further efficient work; and when he died in 1804 the\nchief manuscript he left, planned as a synthesis of his philosophic\nteaching, was found to be hopelessly confused. [1458]\n\nThe attitude, then, in which Kant stood to the reigning religion in his\nlatter years remained fundamentally hostile, from the point of view\nof believing Christians as distinguished from that of ecclesiastical\nopportunists. What were for temporizers arguments in defence of\ndidactic deceit, were for sincerer spirits fresh grounds for recoiling\nfrom the whole ecclesiastical field. Kant must have made more rebels\nthan compliers by his very doctrine of compliance. Religion was\nfor him essentially ethic; and there is no reconciling the process\nof propitiation of deity, in the Christian or any other cult, with\nhis express declaration that all attempts to win God's favour save\nby simple right-living are sheer fetichism. [1459] He thus ends\npractically at the point of view of the deists, whose influence on\nhim in early life is seen in his work on cosmogony. [1460] He had,\nmoreover, long ceased to go to church or follow any religious usage,\neven refusing to attend the services on the installation of a new\nuniversity rector, save when he himself held the office. At the close\nof his treatise on religion, after all his anxious accommodations,\nhe becomes almost violent in his repudiations of sacerdotalism and\nsectarian self-esteem. \"He did not like the singing in the churches,\nand pronounced it mere bawling. In prayer, whether public or private,\nhe had not the least faith; and in his conversation as well as his\nwritings he treated it as a superstition, holding that to address\nanything unseen would open the way for fanaticism. Not only did\nhe argue against prayer; he also ridiculed it, and declared that\na man would be ashamed to be caught by another in the attitude of\nprayer.\" One of his maxims was that \"To kneel or prostrate himself on\nthe earth, even for the purpose of symbolizing to himself reverence\nfor a heavenly object, is unworthy of man.\" [1461] So too he held\nthat the doctrine of the Trinity had no practical value, and he had a\n\"low opinion\" of the Old Testament.\n\nYet his effort at compromise had carried him to positions which are\nthe negation of some of his own most emphatic ethical teachings. Like\nPlato, he is finally occupied in discussing the \"right fictions\"\nfor didactic purposes. Swerving from thoroughgoing freethought for\nfear of moral harm, he ends by sacrificing intellectual morality\nto what seems to him social security. His doctrine, borrowed from\nLessing, of a \"conceivable\" revelation which told man only what he\ncould find out for himself, is a mere flout to reason. While he\ncarries his \"categorical imperative,\" or \u00e0 priori conception of\nduty, so extravagantly far as to argue that it is wrong even to\ntell a falsehood to a would-be murderer in order to mislead him,\nhe approves of the systematic employment of the pulpit function by\nmen who do not believe in the creed they there expound. The priest,\nwith Kant's encouragement, is to \"draw all the practical lessons for\nhis congregation from dogmas which he himself cannot subscribe with\na full conviction of their truth, but which he can teach, since it\nis not altogether impossible that truth may be concealed therein,\"\nwhile he remains free as a scholar to write in a contrary sense in\nhis own name. And this doctrine, set forth in the censured work of\n1793, is repeated in the moralist's last treatise (1798), wherein\nhe explains that the preacher, when speaking doctrinally, \"can put\ninto the passage under consideration his own rational views, whether\nfound there or not.\" Kant thus ended by reviving for the convenience\nof churchmen, in a worse form, the medieval principle of a \"twofold\ntruth.\" So little efficacy is there in a transcendental ethic for\nany of the actual emergencies of life.\n\n\n On this question compare Kant's Religion innerhalb der Grenzen\n der blossen Vernunft, St\u00fcck iii, Abth. i, \u00a7 6; St\u00fcck iv,\n Th. ii, preamble and \u00a7\u00a7 i, 3, and 4; with the essay Ueber ein\n vermeintes Recht aus Menschenliebe zu l\u00fcgen (1797), in reply\n to Constant--rep. in Kant's Vorz\u00fcgliche kleine Schriften, 1833,\n Bd. ii, and in App. to Rosenkranz's ed. of Werke, vii, 295--given\n by T. K. Abbott in his tr. of the Critique of Judgment. See\n also Stuckenberg, pp. 341-45, and the general comment of Baur,\n Kirchengeschichte des 19ten Jahrhunderts, 1862, p. 65. \"Kant's\n recognition of Scripture is purely a matter of expedience. The\n State needs the Bible to control the people; the masses need it in\n order that they, having weak consciences, may recognize their duty;\n and the philosopher finds it a convenient vehicle for conveying\n to the people the faith of reason. Were it rejected it might\n be difficult, if not impossible, to put in its place another\n book which would inspire as much confidence.\" All the while\n \"Kant's principles of course led him to deny that the Bible is\n authoritative in matters of religion, or that it is of itself\n a safe guide in morals.... Its value consists in the fact that,\n owing to the confidence of the people in it, reason can use it to\n interpret into Scripture its own doctrines, and can thus make it\n the means of popularizing rational faith. If anyone imagines that\n the aim of the interpretation is to obtain the real meaning of\n Scripture, he is no Kantian on this point\" (Stuckenberg, p. 341).\n\n\n22. The total performance of Kant thus left Germany with a powerful\nlead on the one hand towards that unbelief in religion which in the\nlast reign had been fashionable, and on the other hand a series of\nprescriptions for compromise; the monarchy all the while throwing\nits weight against all innovation in doctrine and practice. In 1799\nFichte is found expressing the utmost alarm at the combination of the\nEuropean despotisms to \"rout out freethought\"; [1462] and so strong\ndid the official reaction become that in the opinion of Heine all\nthe German philosophers and their ideas would have been suppressed\nby wheel and gallows but for Napoleon, [1463] who intervened in the\nyear 1805. The Prussian despotism being thus weakened, what actually\nhappened was an adaptation of Kant's teaching to the needs alike of\nreligion and of rationalism. The religious world was assured by it\nthat, though all previous arguments for theism were philosophically\nworthless, theism was now safe on the fluid basis of feeling. On the\nother hand, rationalism alike in ethics and in historical criticism\nwas visibly reinforced on all sides. Herder, as before noted, found\ndivinity students grounding their unbelief on Kant's teaching. Sta\u00fcdlin\nbegins the preface to his History and Spirit of Skepticism (1794) with\nthe remark that \"Skepticism begins to be a disease of the age\"; and\nKant is the last in his list of skeptics. At the close of the century\n\"the number of Kantian theologians was legion,\" and it was through\nthe Kantian influence that \"the various anti-orthodox tendencies\nwhich flourished during the period of Illumination were concentrated\nin Rationalism\" [1464]--in the tendency, that is, to bring rational\ncriticism to bear alike on history, dogma, and philosophy. Borowski\nin 1804 complains that \"beardless youths and idle babblers\" devoid of\nknowledge \"appeal to Kant's views respecting Christianity.\" [1465]\nThese views, as we have seen, were partly accommodating, partly\nsubversive in the extreme. Kant regards Jesus as an edifying ideal\nof perfect manhood, \"belief\" in whom as such makes a man acceptable\nto God, because of following a good model. \"While he thus treats\nthe historical account of Jesus as of no significance, except as a\nshell into which the practical reason puts the kernel, his whole\nargument tends to destroy faith in the historic person of Jesus\nas given in the gospel, treating the account itself as something\nwhose truthfulness it is not worth while to investigate.\" [1466]\nIn point of fact we find his devoted disciple Erhard declaring:\n\"I regard Christian morality as something which has been falsely\nimputed to Christianity; and the existence of Christ does not at all\nseem to me to be a probable historical fact\"--this while declaring\nthat Kant had given him \"the indescribable comfort of being able to\ncall himself openly, and with a good conscience, a Christian.\" [1467]\n\nWhile therefore a multitude of preachers availed themselves of\nKant's philosophic licence to rationalize in the pulpit and out\nof it as occasion offered, and yet others opposed them only on\nthe score that all divergence from orthodoxy should be avowed,\nthe dissolution of orthodoxy in Germany was rapid and general; and\nthe anti-supernaturalist handling of Scripture, prepared for as we\nhave seen, went on continuously. Even the positive disparagement\nof Christianity was carried on by Kantian students; and Hamann,\ndubbed \"the Magician of the North\" for his alluring exposition\nof emotional theism, caused one of them, a tutor, to be brought\nbefore a clerical consistory for having taught his pupil to throw all\nspecifically Christian doctrines aside. The tutor admitted the charge,\nand with four others signed a declaration \"that neither morality\nnor sound reason nor public welfare could exist in connection with\nChristianity.\" [1468] Hamann's own influence was too much a matter\nof literary talent and caprice to be durable; and recent attempts to\nre-establish his reputation have evoked the deliberate judgment that\nhe has no permanent importance. [1469]\n\nAgainst the intellectual influence thus set up by Kant there was none\nin contemporary Germany capable of resistance. Philosophy for the most\npart went in Kant's direction, having indeed been so tending before\nhis day. Rationalism of a kind had already had a representative in\nChr. A. Crusius (1712-1775), who in treatises on logic and metaphysics\nopposed alike Leibnitz and Wolff, and taught for his own part a kind\nof Epicureanism, nominally Christianized. To his school belonged\nPlatner (much admired by Jean Paul Richter, his pupil) and Tetens,\n\"the German Locke,\" who attempted a common-sense answer to Hume. His\nideal was a philosophy \"at once intelligible and religious, agreeable\nto God and accessible to the people.\" [1470] Platner on the other hand,\nleaning strongly towards a psychological and anthropological view of\nhuman problems, [1471] opposed first to atheism [1472] and later to\nKantian theism [1473] a moderate Pyrrhonic skepticism; here following a\nremarkable lead from the younger Beausobre, who in 1755 had published\nin French, at Berlin, a treatise entitled Le Pyrrhonisme Raisonnable,\ntaking up the position, among others, that while it is hard to prove\nthe existence of God by reason it is impossible to disprove it. This\nwas virtually the position of Kant a generation later; and it is\nclear that thus early the dogmatic position was discredited.\n\n23. Some philosophic opposition there was to Kant, alike on\nintuitionist grounds, as in the cases of Hamann and Herder, and\non grounds of academic prejudice, as in the case of Kraus; but the\nmore important thinkers who followed him were all as heterodox as\nhe. In particular, Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814), who began in\nauthorship by being a Kantian zealot, gave even greater scandal than\nthe Master had done. Fichte's whole career is a kind of \"abstract\nand brief chronicle\" of the movements of thought in Germany during\nhis life. In his boyhood, at the public school of Pforta, we find\nhim and his comrades already influenced by the new currents. \"Books\nimbued with all the spirit of free inquiry were secretly obtained,\nand, in spite of the strictest prohibitions, great part of the\nnight was spent in their perusal. The works of Wieland, Lessing,\nand Goethe were positively forbidden; yet they found their way\nwithin the walls, and were eagerly studied.\" [1474] In particular,\nFichte followed closely the controversy of Lessing with Goeze;\nand Lessing's lead gave him at once the spirit of freethought,\nas distinct from any specific opinion. Never a consistent thinker,\nFichte in his student and tutorial days is found professing at once\ndeterminism and a belief in \"Providence,\" accepting Spinoza and\ncontemplating a village pastorate. [1475] But while ready to frame a\nplea for Christianity on the score of its psychic adaptation to \"the\nsinner,\" he swerved from the pastorate when it came within sight,\ndeclaring that \"no purely Christian community now exists.\" [1476]\nAbout the age of twenty-eight he became an enthusiastic convert to the\nKantian philosophy, especially to the Critique of Practical Reason,\nand threw over determinism on what appear to be grounds of empirical\nutilitarianism, failing to face the philosophical issue. Within\na year of his visit to Kant, however, he was writing to a friend\nthat \"Kant has only indicated the truth, but neither unfolded nor\nproved it,\" and that he himself has \"discovered a new principle,\nfrom which all philosophy can easily be deduced.... In a couple of\nyears we shall have a philosophy with all the clearness of geometrical\ndemonstration.\" [1477] He had in fact passed, perhaps under Spinoza's\ninfluence, to pantheism, from which standpoint he rejected Kant's\nanti-rational ground for affirming a God not immanent in things, and\nclaimed, as did his contemporaries Schelling and Hegel, to establish\ntheism on rational grounds. Rejecting, further, Kant's reiterated\ndoctrine that religion is ethic, Fichte ultimately insisted that, on\nthe contrary, religion is knowledge, and that \"it is only a corrupt\nsociety that has to use religion as an impulse to moral action.\"\n\nBut alike in his Kantian youth and later he was definitely\nanti-revelationist, however much he conformed to clerical prejudice\nby attacks upon the movement of freethought. In his \"wander-years\"\nhe writes with vehemence of the \"worse than Spanish inquisition\"\nunder which the German clergy are compelled to \"cringe and dissemble,\"\npartly because of lack of ability, partly through economic need. [1478]\nIn his Versuch einer Kritik aller Offenbarung (\"Essay towards a\nCritique of all Revelation\"), published with some difficulty, Kant\nhelping (1792), he in effect negates the orthodox assumption, and,\nin the spirit of Kant and Lessing, but with more directness than they\nhad shown, concludes that belief in revelation \"is an element, and an\nimportant element, in the moral education of humanity, but it is not\na final stage for human thought.\" [1479] In Kant's bi-frontal fashion,\nhe had professed [1480] to \"silence the opponents of positive religion\nnot less than its dogmatical defenders\"; but that result did not follow\non either side, and ere long, as a professor at Jena, he was being\nrepresented as one of the most aggressive of the opponents. Soon\nafter producing his Critique of all Revelation he had published\nanonymously two pamphlets vindicating the spirit as distinguished\nfrom the conduct of the French Revolution; and upon a young writer\nknown to harbour such ideas enmity was bound to fall. Soon it took\nthe form of charges of atheism. It does not appear to be true that\nhe ever told his students at Jena: \"In five years there will be\nno more Christian religion: reason is our religion\"; [1481] and it\nwould seem that the first charges of atheism brought against him were\npurely malicious. [1482] But his career henceforth was one of strife\nand friction, first with the student-blackguardism which had been\nrife in the German universities ever since the Thirty Years' War,\nand which he partly subdued; then with the academic authorities and\nthe traditionalists, who, when he began lecturing on Sunday mornings,\naccused him of attempting to throw over Christianity and set up the\nworship of reason. He was arraigned before the High Consistory of\nWeimar and acquitted; but his wife was insulted in the streets of\nJena; his house was riotously attacked in the night; and he ceased to\nreside there. Then, in his Wissenschaftslehre (\"Doctrine of Knowledge,\"\n1794-95) he came into conflict with the Kantians, with whom his rupture\nsteadily deepened on ethical grounds. Again he was accused of atheism\nin print; and after a defence in which he retorted the charge on the\nutilitarian theists he resigned.\n\nIn Berlin, where the new king held the old view that the wrongs of\nthe Gods were the Gods' affair, he found harbourage; and sought to\nput himself right with the religious world by his book Die Bestimmung\ndes Menschen (\"The Vocation of Man,\" 1800), wherein he speaks of the\nEternal Infinite Will as regulating human reason so far as human reason\nis right--the old counter-sense and the old evasion. By this book\nhe repelled his rationalistic friends Schelling and the Schlegels;\nwhile his religious ally Schleiermacher, who chose another tactic,\nwrote on it a bitter and contemptuous review, and \"could hardly find\nwords strong enough to express his detestation of it.\" [1483] A few\nyears later Fichte was writing no less contemptuously of Schelling;\nand in his remaining years, though the Napoleonic wars partly brought\nhim into sympathy with his countrymen, from whom he had turned away\nin angry alienation, he remained a philosophic Ishmael, warring and\nwarred upon all round. He was thus left to figure for posterity as a\nreligionist \"for his own hand,\" who rejected all current religion while\nangrily dismissing current unbelief as \"freethinking chatter.\" [1484]\nIf his philosophy be estimated by its logical content as distinguished\nfrom its conflicting verbalisms, it is fundamentally as atheistic as\nthat of Spinoza. [1485] That he was conscious of a vital sunderance\nbetween his thought and that of the past is made clear by his answer,\nin 1805, to the complaint that the people had lost their \"religious\nfeeling\" (Religiosit\u00e4t). His retort is that a new religious feeling\nhas taken the place of the old; [1486] and that was the position\ntaken up by the generation which swore by him, in the German manner,\nas the last had sworn by Kant.\n\nBut the successive philosophies of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel,\nall rising out of the \"Illumination\" of the eighteenth century, have\nbeen alike impermanent. Nothing is more remarkable in the history\nof thought than the internecine strife of the systems which insisted\non \"putting something in the place\" of the untenable systems of the\npast. They have been but so many \"toppling spires of cloud.\" Fichte,\nlike Herder, broke away from the doctrine of Kant; and later became\nbitterly opposed to that of his former friend Schelling, as did Hegel\nin his turn. Schleiermacher, hostile to Kant, was still more hostile\nto Fichte; and Hegel, detesting Schleiermacher [1487] and developing\nFichte, give rise to schools arrayed against each other, of which the\nanti-Christian was by far the stronger. All that is permanent in the\nproduct of the age of German Rationalism is the fundamental principle\nupon which it proceeded, the confutation of the dogmas and legends\nof the past, and the concrete results of the historical, critical,\nand physical research to which the principle and the confutation led.\n\n24. It is true that the progressive work was not all done by the\nRationalists so-called. As always, incoherences in the pioneers led\nto retorts which made for rectification. One of the errors of bias\nof the early naturalists, as we have noted, was their tendency to\ntake every religious document as genuine and at bottom trustworthy,\nprovided only that its allegations of miracles were explained away\nas misinterpretations of natural phenomena. So satisfied were many\nof them with this inexpensive method that they positively resisted\nthe attempts of supernaturalists, seeking a way out of their special\ndilemma, to rectify the false ascriptions of the documents. Bent solely\non one solution, they were oddly blind to evidential considerations\nwhich pointed to interpolation, forgery, variety of source, and error\nof literary tradition; while scholars bent on saving \"inspiration\"\nwere often ready in some measure for such recognitions. These arrests\nof insight took place alternately on both sides, in the normal way of\nintellectual progress by alternate movements. All the while, it is the\nsame primary force of reason that sets up the alternate pressures,\nand the secondary pressures are generated by, and are impossible\nwithout, the first.\n\n25. The emancipation, too, was limited in area in the German-speaking\nworld. In Austria, despite a certain amount of French culture, the\nrule of the Jesuits in the eighteenth century was too effective to\npermit of any intellectual developments. Maria Theresa, who knew\ntoo well that the boundless sexual licence against which she fought\nhad nothing to do with innovating ideas, had to issue a special\norder to permit the importation of Montesquieu's Esprit des Lois;\nand works of more subversive doctrine could not openly pass the\nfrontiers at all. An attempt to bring Lessing to Vienna in 1774,\nwith a view to founding a new literary Academy, collapsed before the\nopposition; and when Prof. Jahn, of the Vienna University--described\nas \"freethinking, latitudinarian, anti-supernaturalistic\"--developed\nsomewhat anti-clerical tendencies in his teaching and writing, he\nwas forced to resign, and died a simple Canon. [1488] The Emperor\nJoseph II in his day passed for an unbeliever; [1489] but there was\nno general movement. \"Austria, in a time of universal effervescence,\nproduced only musicians, and showed zest only for pleasure.\" [1490]\nYet among the music-makers was the German-born Beethoven, the greatest\nmaster of his age. Kindred in spirit to Goethe, and much more of a\nrevolutionist than he in all things, Beethoven spent the creative part\nof his life at Vienna without ceasing to be a freethinker. [1491]\n\"Formal religion he apparently had none.\" He copied out a kind of\ntheistic creed consisting of three ancient formulas: \"I am that which\nis\": \"I am all that is, that was, that shall be\": \"He is alone by\nHimself; and to Him alone do all things owe their being.\" Beyond this\nhis beliefs did not go. When his friend Moscheles at the end of his\narrangement of Fidelio wrote: \"Fine, with God's help,\" Beethoven added,\n\"O man, help thyself.\" [1492] His reception of the Catholic sacraments\nin extremis was not his act. He had left to mankind a purer and a more\nlasting gift than either the creeds or the philosophies of his age.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIX\n\nFREETHOUGHT IN THE REMAINING EUROPEAN STATES\n\n\n\u00a7 1. Holland\n\nHolland, so notable for relative hospitality to freethinking in the\nseventeenth century, continued to exhibit it in the eighteenth, though\nwithout putting forth much native response. After her desperate wars\nwith Louis XIV, the Dutch State, now monarchically ruled, turned on\nthe intellectual side rather to imitative belles lettres than to the\nproblems which had begun to exercise so much of English thought. It\nwas an age of \"retrogression and weakness.\" [1493] Elizabeth Wolff,\nn\u00e9e Bekker, one of the most famous of the numerous Dutch women-writers\nof the century (1738-1804), is notable for her religious as well\nas for her political liberalism; [1494] but her main activity was\nin novel-writing; and there are few other signs of freethinking\ntendencies in popular Dutch culture. It was impossible, however,\nthat the influences at work in the neighbouring lands should be shut\nout; and if Holland did not produce innovating books she printed many\nthroughout the century.\n\nIn 1708 there was published at Amsterdam a work under the pseudonym of\n\"Juan di Posos,\" wherein, by way of a relation of imaginary travels,\nsomething like atheism was said to be taught; but the pastor Leenhof\nhad in 1703 been accused of atheism for his treatise, Heaven on\nEarth, which was at most Spinozistic. [1495] Even as late as 1714\na Spinozist shoemaker, Booms, was banished for his writings; but\nhenceforth liberal influences, largely traceable to the works of Bayle,\nbegin to predominate. Welcomed by students everywhere, Bayle must have\nmade powerfully for tolerance and rationalism in his adopted country,\nwhich after his time became a centre of culture for the States of\nnorthern Europe rather than a source of original works. Holland in\nthe eighteenth century was receptive alike of French and English\nthought and literature, especially the former; [1496] and, besides\nreprinting many of the French deists' works and translating some of\nthe English, the Dutch cities harboured such heretics as the Italian\nAlberto Radicati, Count Passerano, who, dying at Rotterdam in 1736,\nleft a collection of deistic treatises of a strongly freethinking\ncast to be posthumously published.\n\nThe German traveller Alberti, [1497] citing the London Magazine,\n1732, states that Passerano visited England and published works\nin English through a translator, Joseph Morgan, and that both were\nsentenced to imprisonment. This presumably refers to his anonymous\nPhilosophical Dissertation upon Death, \"by a friend to truth,\"\npublished in English in 1732. [1498] It is a remarkable treatise,\nbeing a hardy justification of suicide, \"composed for the consolation\nof the unhappy,\" from a practically atheistic standpoint. Two years\nearlier he had published in English, also anonymously, a tract\nentitled Christianity set in a True Light, by a Pagan Philosopher\nnewly converted; and it may be that the startling nature of the second\npamphlet elicited a prosecution which included both. The pamphlet of\n1730, however, is a eulogy of the ethic of Jesus, who is deistically\ntreated as a simple man, but with all the amenity which the deists\nusually brought to bear on that theme. Passerano's Recueil des pi\u00e8ces\ncurieuses sur les mati\u00e8res les plus interessants, published with his\nname at Rotterdam in 1736, [1499] includes a translation of Swift's\nironical Project concerning babies, and an Histoire abreg\u00e9e de la\nprofession sacerdotale, which was published in a separate English\ntranslation. [1500] Passerano is noticeable chiefly for the relative\nthoroughness of his rationalism. [1501] In the Recueil he speaks of\ndeists and atheists as being the same, those called atheists having\nalways admitted a first cause under the names God, Nature, Eternal\nGerms, movement, or universal soul. [1502]\n\n\n In 1737 was published in French a small mystification consisting\n of a Sermon pr\u00each\u00e9 dans la grande Assembl\u00e9e des Quakers de\n Londres, par le fameux Fr\u00e8re E. E., and another little tract,\n La Religion Muhamedane compar\u00e9e \u00e0 la pa\u00efenne de l'Indostan,\n par Ali-Ebn-Omar. \"E. E.\" stood for Edward Elwall, a well-known\n Unitarian of the time, who, as we saw, was tried at Stafford\n Assizes in 1726 for publishing a Unitarian treatise, and who in\n 1742 published another, entitled The Supernatural Incarnation of\n Jesus Christ proved to be false ... and that our Lord Jesus Christ\n was the real son of Joseph and Mary. The two tracts are both by\n Passerano, and are on deistic lines, the text of the Sermon being\n (in English) \"The Religion of the Gospel is the true Original\n Religion of Reason and Nature.\" The proposition is of course\n purely ethical in its bearing.\n\n\nThe currency given in Holland to such literature tells of growing\nliberality of thought as well as of political freedom. But the\nconditions were not favourable to such general literary activity as\nprevailed in the larger States, though good work was done in medicine\nand the natural sciences. Not till the nineteenth century did Dutch\nscholars again give a lead to Europe in religious thought.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 2. The Scandinavian States\n\n1. Traces of new rationalistic life are to be seen in the Scandinavian\ncountries at least as early as the times of Descartes. There, as\nelsewhere, the Reformation had been substantially a fiscal or economic\nrevolution, proceeding on various lines. In Denmark the movement,\nfavoured by the king, began among the people; the nobility rapidly\nfollowing, to their own great profit; and finally Christian III, who\nruled both Denmark and Norway, acting with the nobles, suppressed\nCatholic worship, and confiscated to the crown the \"castles,\nfortresses, and vast domains of the prelates.\" [1503] In Sweden\nthe king, Gustavus Vasa, took the initiative, moved by sore need of\nfunds, and a thoroughly anti-ecclesiastical temper, [1504] the clergy\nhaving supported the Danish rule which he threw off. The burghers and\npeasants promptly joined him against the clergy and nobles, enabling\nhim to confiscate the bishops' castles and estates, as was done in\nDenmark; and he finally secured himself with the nobles by letting\nthem reclaim lands granted by their ancestors to monasteries. [1505]\nHis anti-feudal reforms having stimulated new life in many ways,\nfurther evolution followed.\n\nIn Sweden the stimulative reign of Gustavus Vasa was followed by a\nlong period of the strife which everywhere trod on the heels of the\nReformation. The second successor of Gustavus, his son John, had\nmarried a daughter of the Catholic Sigismund of Poland, and sought\nto restore her religion to power, causing much turmoil until her\ndeath, whereafter he abandoned the cause. His Catholic son Sigismund\nrecklessly renewed the effort, and was deposed in consequence; John's\nbrother Charles becoming king. In Denmark, meanwhile, Frederick II\n(d. 1588) had been a bigoted champion of Lutheranism, expelling a\nprofessor of Calvinistic leanings on the Eucharist, and refusing a\nlanding to the Calvinists who fled from the Netherlands. On the other\nhand he patronized and pensioned Tycho Brah\u00e9, who, until driven into\nbanishment by a court cabal during the minority of Christian IV,\ndid much for astronomy, though unable to accept Copernicanism.\n\nIn 1611 there broke out between Sweden and Denmark the sanguinary\ntwo-years' \"War of Calmar,\" their common religion availing nothing to\navert strife. Thereafter Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, as Protestant\nchampion in the Thirty Years' War, in succession to Christian IV of\nDenmark, fills the eye of Europe till his death in 1632; eleven years\nafter which event Sweden and Denmark were again at war. In 1660 the\nlatter country, for lack of goodwill between nobles and commoners,\nunderwent a political revolution whereby its king, whose predecessors\nhad held the crown on an elective tenure, became absolute, and set\nup a hereditary line. The first result was a marked intellectual\nstagnation. \"Divinity, law, and philosophy were wholly neglected;\nsurgery was practised only by barbers; and when Frederick IV and his\nqueen required medical aid, no native physician could be found to whom\nit was deemed safe to entrust the cure of the royal patients.... The\nonly name, after Tycho Brah\u00e9, of which astronomy can boast, is that\nof Peter Horrebow, and with him the cultivation of the science became\nextinct.\" [1506]\n\n2. For long, the only personality making powerfully for culture was\nHolberg, [1507] certainly a host in himself. Of all the writers of his\nage, the only one who can be compared with him in versatility of power\nis Voltaire, whom he emulated as satirist, dramatist, and historian;\nbut all his dramatic genius could not avail to sustain against the\npuritanical pietism which then flourished, the Danish drama of which\nhe was the fecund creator. After producing a brilliant series of plays\n(1722-1727) he had to witness the closing of the Copenhagen Theatre,\nand take to general writing, historical and didactic. In 1741 he\nproduced in Latin his famous Subterranean Journey of Nicolas Klimius,\n[1508] one of the most widely famous performances of its age. [1509]\nHe knew English, and must have been influenced by Swift's Gulliver's\nTravels, which his story frequently recalls. The hero catastrophically\nreaches a \"subterranean\" planet, with another social system, and\npeopled by moving trees and civilized and socialized animals. With\nthe tree-people, the Potuans, the tale deals at some length, giving\na chapter on their religion, [1510] after the manner of Tyssot de\nPatot in Jacques Mass\u00e9. They are simple deists, knowing nothing of\nChristianity; and the author makes them the mouthpieces of criticisms\nupon Christian prayers, Te Deums, and hymn-singing in general. They\nbelieve in future recompenses, but not in providential government of\nthis life; and at various points they improve upon the current ethic\nof Christendom. [1511]\n\nThere is a trace of the tone of Frederick alike in the eulogy of\ntolerance and in the intimation that anyone who disputes about the\ncharacter of the deity and the properties of spirits or souls is\n\"condemned to phlebotomy\" and to be detained in the general hospital\n(nosocomium). [1512] It was probably by way of precaution that in\nthe closing paragraph of the chapter the Potuans are alleged to\nmaintain that, though their creed \"seemed mere natural religion,\nit was all revealed in a book which was sent from the sky some\ncenturies ago\"; but the precaution is slight, as they are declared to\nhave practically no dogmas at all. It is thus easy to read between\nthe lines of the declaration of Potuan orthodoxy: \"Formerly our\nancestors contented themselves to live in natural religion alone;\nbut experience has shown that the mere light of nature does not\nsuffice, and that its precepts are effaced in time by the sloth\nand negligence of some and the philosophic subtleties of others,\nso that nothing can arrest freethinking (libertatem cogitandi) or\nkeep it within just bounds. Thence came depravation; and therefore\nit was that God had chosen to give them a written law.\" [1513] Such\na confutation of \"the error of those who pretend that a revelation is\nunnecessary\" must have given more entertainment to those in question\nthan satisfaction to the defenders of the faith. But a general tone\nof levity and satire, maintained at the expense of various European\nnations, England included, [1514] together with his popularity as a\ndramatist, saved Holberg from the imputation of heresy. His satire\nreached and was realized by the cultured few alone: the multitude\nwas quite unaffected; and during the reign of Christian VI all\nintellectual efforts beyond the reign of science were subjected to\nrigorous control. [1515] As a culture force, Protestantism had failed\nin the north lands as completely as Catholicism in the south.\n\n3. In Sweden, meantime, there had occurred some reflex of the\nintellectual renascence. Towards the middle of the seventeenth century\nthere are increasing traces of rationalism at the court of the famous\nChristina, who already in her youth is found much interested in the\nobjections of \"Jews, heathens, and philosophers against Christian\ndoctrine\"; [1516] and her invitation of Descartes to her court\n(1649) implies that Sweden had been not a little affected by the\nrevulsion of popular thought which followed on the Thirty Years' War\nin Germany. Christina herself, however, was a remarkable personality,\nunfeminine, strong-willed, with a vigorous but immature intelligence;\nand she did much of her early skeptical thinking for herself. In\nthe course of a few years, the new spirit had gone so far as to\nmake church-going matter for open scoffing at the Swedish court;\n[1517] and the Queen's adoption of Romanism, for which she prepared\nby abdicating the crown, appears to have been by way of revulsion\nfrom a state of mind approaching atheism, to which she had been led\nby her freethinking French physician, Bourdelot, after Descartes's\ndeath. [1518] It has been confidently asserted that she really cared\nfor neither creed, and embraced Catholicism only by way of conformity\nfor social purposes, retaining her freethinking views. [1519] It is\ncertain that she was always unhappy in her Swedish surroundings. But\nher course may more reasonably be explained as that of a mind which\ncould not rest in deism or face atheism, and sought in Catholicism\nthe sense of anchorage which is craved by temperaments ill-framed for\nthe discipline of reason. The author of the Histoire des intrigues\ngalantes de la reine Christine de Su\u00e8de (1697), who seems to have\nbeen one of her suite, insists that while she \"loved bigots no more\nthan atheists,\" [1520] and although her religion had been shaken in\nher youth by Bourdelot and other freethinkers, she was regular in all\nCatholic observances; and that once, looking at the portrait of her\nfather, she said he had failed to provide for the safety of his soul,\nand thanked God for having guided her aright. [1521]\n\nHer annotations of Descartes are of little importance; but it is\nnoteworthy that she accorded to his orthodox adherents a declaration\nthat he had \"greatly contributed\" to her \"glorious conversion\" to the\nCatholic faith. [1522] Whatever favour she may have shown to liberty\nof thought in her youth, no important literary results could follow\nin the then state of Swedish culture, when the studies at even the\nnew colleges were mainly confined to Latin and theology. [1523] The\nGerman Pufendorf, indeed, by his treatises On the Law of Nature and\nNations and On the Duty of Man and Citizen (published at Lund, where he\nwas professor, in 1672-73), did much to establish the utilitarian and\nnaturalistic tendency in ethics which was at work at the same time in\nEngland; but his latent deism had no great influence even in Germany,\nhis Scripture-citing orthodoxy countervailing it, although he argued\nfor a separation of Church and State. [1524]\n\n4. That there was, however, in eighteenth-century Sweden a considerable\namount of unpublished rationalism may be gathered from the writings\nof Emanuel Swedenborg, himself something of a freethinker in his\nvery supernaturalism. His frequent subacid allusions to those who\n\"regarded Nature instead of the divine,\" and \"thought from science,\"\n[1525] tell not merely of much passive opposition to his own prophetic\nclaims (which he avenged by much serene malediction and the allotment\nof bad quarters in the next world), but of reasoned rejection of all\nScriptural claims. Thus in his Sapientia Angelica de Divina Providentia\n[1526] (1764) he sets himself [1527] to deal with a number of the\nways in which \"the merely natural man confirms himself in favour of\nNature against God\" and \"comes to the conclusion that religion in\nitself is nothing, but yet that it is necessary because it serves as\na restraint.\" Among the sources of unbelief specified are ethical\nrevolt alike against the Biblical narratives and against the lack\nof moral government in the world; the recognition of the success of\nother religions than the Christian, and of the many heresies within\nthat; and dissatisfaction with the Christian dogmas. As Swedenborg\nsojourned much in other countries, he may be describing men other\nthan his countrymen; but it is very unlikely that the larger part of\nhis intercourse with his fellows counted for nothing in this account\nof contemporary rationalism.\n\nWith his odd mixture of scripturalism and innovating dogmatism,\nSwedenborg disposes of difficulties about Genesis by reducing Adam\nand Eve to an allegory of the \"Most Ancient Church,\" tranquilly\ndismissing the orthodox belief by asking, \"For who can suppose that\nthe creation of the world could have been as there described?\" [1528]\nHis own scientific training, which had enabled him to make his notable\nanticipation of the nebular theory, [1529] made it also easy for him\nto reduce to allegory the text of what he nevertheless insisted on\ntreating as a divine revelation; and his moral sense, active where\nhe felt no perverting resentment of contradiction by reasoners,\n[1530] made him reject the orthodox doctrine of salvation by faith,\neven as he did the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity. On these points\nhe seems to have had a lead from his father, Bishop Jasper Svedberg,\n[1531] as he had in his overwhelming physiological bias to subjective\nvision-making. But a message which finally amounted to the oracular\npropounding of a new and bewildering supernaturalism, to be taken on\nauthority like the old, could make for freethought only by rousing\nrational reaction. It was Swedenborg's destiny to establish, in virtue\nof his great power of orderly dogmatism, a new supernaturalist and\nscripturalist sect, while his scientific conceptions were left for\nother men to develop. In his own country, in his own day, he had\nlittle success qua prophet, though always esteemed for his character\nand his high secular competence; and he finally figured rather as a\nheresiarch than otherwise. [1532]\n\n5. According to one of Swedenborg's biographers, the worldliness of\nmost of the Swedish clergy in the middle of the eighteenth century so\nfar outwent even that of the English Church that the laity were left\nto themselves; while \"gentlemen disdained the least taint of religion,\nand except on formal occasions would have been ashamed to be caught\nchurch-going.\" [1533] But this was a matter rather of fashion than\nof freethought; and there is little trace of critical life in the\nperiod. In the latter part of the eighteenth century, doubtless,\nthe aristocracies and the cultured class in the Scandinavian States\nwere influenced like the rest of Europe by the spirit of French\nfreethought, [1534] which everywhere followed the vogue of the French\nlanguage and literature. Thus we find Gustavus III of Sweden, an ardent\nadmirer of Voltaire, defending him in company, and proposing in 1770,\nbefore the death of his father prevented it, to make a pilgrimage to\nFerney. [1535] It is without regard to this testimony that Gustavus,\nwho was assassinated, is said to have died \"with the fortitude\nand resignation of a Christian.\" [1536] He was indeed flighty and\nchangeable, [1537] and after growing up a Voltairean was turned for a\nyear or two into a credulous mystic, the dupe of pseudo-Swedenborgian\ncharlatans; [1538] but there is small sign of religious earnestness\nin his fashion of making his dying confession. [1539] Claiming at\nan earlier date to believe more than Joseph II, who in his opinion\n\"believed in nothing at all,\" he makes light of their joint parade of\npiety at Rome, [1540] and seems to have been at bottom a good deal\nof an indifferentist. During his reign his influence on literature\nfostered a measure of the spirit of freethought in belles lettres;\nand in the poets J. H. Kjellgren and J. M. Bellman (both d. 1795)\nthere is to be seen the effect of the German Aufkl\u00e4rung and the\nspirit of Voltaire. [1541] Their contemporary, Tomas Thoren, who\ncalled himself Torild (d. 1812), though more of an innovator in\npoetic style than in thought, wrote among other things a pamphlet\non The Freedom of the General Intelligence. But Torild's nickname,\n\"the mad magister,\" tells of his extravagance; and none of the Swedish\nbelletrists of that age amounted to a European influence. Finally,\nin the calamitous period which followed on the assassination of\nGustavus III, all Swedish culture sank heavily. The desperate energies\nof Charles XII had left his country half-ruined in 1718; and even\nwhile Linn\u00e6us and his pupils were building up the modern science of\nbotany in the latter half of the century the economic exhaustion of\nthe people was a check on general culture. The University of Upsala,\nwhich at one time had over 2,000 students, counted only some 500 at\nthe close of the eighteenth century. [1542]\n\n6. In Denmark, on the other hand, the stagnation of nearly a hundred\nyears had been ended at the accession of Frederick V in 1746. [1543]\nNational literature, revivified by Holberg, was further advanced\nby the establishment of a society of polite learning in 1763;\nunder Frederick's auspices Danish naturalists and scholars were sent\nabroad for study; and in particular a literary expedition was sent to\nArabia. The European movement of science, in short, had gripped the\nlittle kingdom, and the usual intellectual results began to follow,\nthough, as in Catholic Spain, the forces of reaction soon rallied\nagainst a movement which had been imposed from above rather than\nevolved from within.\n\nThe most celebrated northern unbeliever of the French period was\nCount Struensee, who for some years (1770-72) virtually ruled Denmark\nas the favourite of the young queen, the king being half-witted and\nworthless. Struensee was an energetic and capable though injudicious\nreformer: he abolished torture; emancipated the enslaved peasantry;\nsecured toleration for all sects; encouraged the arts and industry;\nestablished freedom of the press; and reformed the finances, the\npolice, the law courts, and sanitation. [1544] His very reforms,\nbeing made with headlong rapidity, made his position untenable, and\nhis enemies soon effected his downfall and death. The young queen,\nwho was not alleged to have been a freethinker, was savagely seized by\nthe hostile faction and put on her trial on a charge of adultery, which\nbeing wholly unproved, the aristocratic faction proposed to try her on\na charge of drugging her husband. Only by the efforts of the British\ncourt was she saved from imprisonment for life in a fortress, and sent\nto Hanover, where, three years later, she died. She too was a reformer,\nand it was on that score that she was hated by the nobles. [1545] Both\nshe and Struensee, in short, were the victims of a violent political\nreaction. There is an elaborate account of Struensee's conversion\nto Christianity in prison by the German Dr. Munter, [1546] which\nmakes him out by his own confession an excessive voluptuary. It is\nan extremely suspicious document, exhibiting strong political bias,\nand giving Struensee no credit for reforms; the apparent assumption\nbeing that the conversion of a reprobate was of more evidential value\nthan that of a reputable and reflective type.\n\nIn spite of the reaction, rationalism persisted among the cultured\nclass. Mary Wollstonecraft, visiting Denmark in 1795, noted that there\nand in Norway the press was free, and that new French publications\nwere translated and freely discussed. The press had in fact been\nfreed by Struensee, and was left free by his enemies because of the\nfacilities it had given them to attack him. [1547] \"On the subject of\nreligion,\" she added, \"they are likewise becoming tolerant, at least,\nand perhaps have advanced a step further in freethinking. One writer\nhas ventured to deny the divinity of Jesus Christ, and to question the\nnecessity or utility of the Christian system, without being considered\nuniversally as a monster, which would have been the case a few years\nago.\" [1548] She likewise noted that there was in Norway very little\nof the fanaticism she had seen gaining ground, on Wesleyan lines,\nin England. [1549] But though the Danes had \"translated many German\nworks on education,\" they had \"not adopted any of their plans\";\nthere were few schools, and those not good. Norway, again, had been\nkept without a university under Danish rule; and not until one was\nestablished at Christiania in 1811 could Norwegian faculty play its\npart in the intellectual life of Europe. The reaction, accordingly,\nsoon afterwards began to gain head. Already in 1790 \"precautionary\nmeasures\" had been attempted against the press; [1550] and, these being\nfound inefficient, an edict was issued in 1799 enforcing penalties\nagainst all anonymous writers--a plan which of course struck at\nthe publishers. But the great geographer, Malte-Brun, was exiled,\nas were Heiberg, the dramatic poet, and others; and again there\nwas \"a temporary stagnation in literature,\" which, however, soon\npassed away in the nineteenth century. Meantime Sweden and Denmark\nhad alike contributed vitally to the progress of European science;\nthough neither had shared in the work of freethought as against dogma.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 3. The Slavonic States\n\n1. In Poland, where, as we saw, Unitarian heresy had spread\nconsiderably in the sixteenth century, positive atheism is heard of in\n1688-89, when Count Liszinski (or Lyszczynski), among whose papers,\nit was said, had been found the written statement that there is no\nGod, or that man had made God out of nothing, was denounced by the\nbishops of Posen and Kioff, tried, and found guilty of denying not\nonly the existence of God but the doctrine of the Trinity and the\nVirgin Birth. After being tortured, beheaded, and burned, his ashes\nwere scattered from a cannon. [1551] The first step was to tear out\nhis tongue, \"with which he had been cruel towards God\"; the next to\nburn his hands at a slow fire. It is all told by Zulaski, the leading\nInquisitionist. [1552] But even had a less murderous treatment been\nmeted out to such heresy, anarchic Poland, ridden by Jesuits, was\nin no state to develop a rationalistic literature. The old king,\nJohn Sobieski, made no attempt to stop the execution, though he is\ncredited with a philosophical habit of mind, and with reprimanding\nthe clergy for not admitting modern philosophy in the universities\nand schools. [1553]\n\n2. In Russia the possibilities of modern freethought emerge only in\nthe seventeenth century, when Muscovy was struggling out of Byzantine\nbarbarism. The late-recovered treasure of ancient folk-poesy,\npartly preserved by chance among the northern peasantry, tells of\nthe complete rupture wrought in the racial life by the imposition\nof Byzantine Christianity from the south. As early as the fourteenth\ncentury the Strigolniks, who abounded at Novgorod, had held strongly\nby anti-ecclesiastical doctrines of the Paulician and Lollard type;\n[1554] but orthodox fanaticism ruled life in general down to the age\nof Peter the Great. In the sixteenth century we find the usual symptom\nof criticism of the lives of the monks; [1555] but the culture was\nalmost wholly ecclesiastical; and in the seventeenth century the\neffort of the turbulent Patriarch Nikon (1605-1681), to correct\nthe corrupt sacred texts and the traditional heterodox practices,\nwas furiously resisted, to the point of a great schism. [1556]\nHe himself had violently denounced other innovations, destroying\npictures and an organ in the manner of Savonarola; but his own\nelementary reforms were found intolerable by the orthodox, [1557]\nthough they were favoured by Sophia, the able and ambitious sister of\nPeter. [1558] The priest Kriezanitch (1617-1678), who wrote a work on\n\"The Russian Empire in the second half of the Seventeenth Century,\"\ndenounced researches in physical science as \"devilish heresies\";\n[1559] and it is on record that scholars were obliged to study\nin secret and by night for fear of the hostility of the common\npeople. [1560] Half-a-century later the orthodox majority seems to\nhave remained convinced of the atheistic tendency of all science;\n[1561] and the friends of the new light doubtless included deists\nfrom the first. Not till the reforms of Peter had begun to bear\nfruit, however, could freethought raise its head. The great Czar, who\npromoted printing and literature as he did every other new activity\nof a practical kind, took the singular step of actually withdrawing\nwriting materials from the monks, whose influence he held to be wholly\nreactionary. [1562] In 1703 appeared the first Russian journal; and in\n1724 Peter founded the first Academy of Sciences, enjoining upon it\nthe study of languages and the production of translations. Now began\nthe era of foreign culture and translations from the French. [1563]\nPrince Kantemir, the satirist, who was with the Russian embassy in\nLondon in 1733, pronounced England, then at the height of the deistic\ntide, \"the most civilized and enlightened of European nations.\" [1564]\nThe fact that he translated Fontenelle on The Plurality of Worlds\ntells further of his liberalism. [1565] Gradually there arose a new\nsecular faction, under Western influences; and other forms of culture\nslowly advanced likewise, notably under Elisabeth Petrovna. At length,\nin the reign of Catherine II, called the Great, French ideas, already\nheralded by belles lettres, found comparatively free headway. She\nherself was a deist, and a satirist of bigots in her comedies;\n[1566] she accomplished what Peter had planned, the secularization of\nChurch property; [1567] and she was long the admiring correspondent\nof Voltaire, to whom and to D'Alembert and Diderot she offered warm\ninvitations to reside at her court. Diderot alone accepted, and him she\nspecially befriended, buying his library when he was fain to sell it,\nand constituting him its salaried keeper. In no country, not excepting\nEngland, was there more of practical freedom than in Russia under her\nrule; [1568] and if after the outbreak of the Revolution she turned\npolitical persecutor, she was still not below the English level. Her\nhalf-crazy son Paul II, whom she had given cause to hate her, undid\nher work wherever he could. But neither her reaction nor his rule\ncould eradicate the movement of thought begun in the educated classes;\nthough in Russia, as in the Scandinavian States, it was not till the\nnineteenth century that original serious literature flourished.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 4. Italy\n\n1. Returning to Italy, no longer the leader of European thought, but\nstill full of veiled freethinking, we find in the seventeenth century\nthe proof that no amount of such predisposition can countervail\nthoroughly bad political conditions. Ground down by the matchless\nmisrule of Spain, from which the conspiracy of the monk Campanella\nvainly sought to free her, and by the kindred tyranny of the papacy,\nItaly could produce in its educated class, save for the men of science\nand the students of economics, only triflers, whose unbelief was of\na piece with their cynicism. While Naples and the south decayed,\nmental energy had for a time flourished in Tuscany, where, under\nthe grand dukes from Ferdinando I onwards, industry and commerce\nhad revived; and even after a time of retrogression Ferdinando II\nencouraged science, now made newly glorious by the names of Galileo\nand Torricelli. But again there was a relapse; and at the end of\nthe century, under a bigoted duke, Florence was priest-ridden and,\nat least in outward seeming, gloomily superstitious; while, save for\nthe better conditions secured at Naples under the viceroyalty of the\nMarquis of Carpi, [1569] the rest of Italy was cynically corrupt\nand intellectually superficial. [1570] Even in Naples, of course,\nenlightenment was restricted to the few. Burnet observes that \"there\nare societies of men at Naples of freer thoughts than can be found\nin any other place of Italy\"; and he admits a general tendency of\nintelligent Italians to recoil from Christianity by reason of Catholic\ncorruption. But at the same time he insists that, though the laity\nspeak with scorn of the clergy, \"yet they are masters of the spirits\nof the people.\" [1571] Yet it only needed the breathing time and the\nimproved conditions under the Bourbon rule in the eighteenth century\nto set up a wonderful intellectual revival.\n\n2. First came the great work of Vico, the Principles of a New Science\n(1725), whereof the originality and the depth--qualities in which,\ndespite its incoherences, it on the whole excels Montesquieu's Spirit\nof Laws--place him among the great freethinkers in philosophy. It\nwas significant of much that Vico's book, while constantly using the\nvocabulary of faith, grappled with the science of human development\nin an essentially secular and scientific spirit. This is the note\nof the whole eighteenth century in Italy. [1572] Vico posits Deity\nand Providence, but proceeds nevertheless to study the laws of\ncivilization inductively from its phenomena. He permanently obscured\nhis case, indeed, by insisting on putting it theologically, and\ncondemning Grotius and others for separating the idea of law from\nthat of religion. Only in a pantheistic sense has Vico's formula any\nvalidity; and he never avows a pantheistic view, refusing even to go\nwith Grotius in allowing that Hebrew law was akin to that of other\nnations. But a rationalistic view, had he put it, would have been\nbarred. The wonder is, in the circumstances, not that he makes so\nmuch parade of religion, but that he could venture to undermine so\nvitally its pretensions, especially after he had found it prudent to\nrenounce the project of annotating the great work of Grotius, De Jure\nBelli et Pacis, on the score that (as he puts it in his Autobiography)\na good Catholic must not endorse a heretic.\n\n\n Signor Benedetto Croce, in his valuable work on Vico (The\n Philosophy of Giambattista Vico, Eng. tr. 1913, pp. 89-94), admits\n that Vico is fundamentally at one with the Naturalists: \"Like\n them, in constructing his science of human society, he excludes\n with Grotius all idea of God, and with Pufendorf considers man as\n without help or attention from God, excluding him, that is, from\n revealed religion and its God.\" Of Vico's opposition to Grotius,\n Signor Croce offers two unsatisfactory explanations. First:\n \"Vico's opposition, which he expresses with his accustomed\n confusion and obscurity, turns ... upon the actual conception\n of religion.... Religion ... means for Vico not necessarily\n revelation, but conception of reality.\" This reduces the defence\n to a quibble; but finally Signor Croce asks himself \"Why--if Vico\n agreed with the natural-right school in ignoring revelation,\n and if he instead of it deepened their superficial immanental\n doctrine--why he put himself forward as their implacable enemy\n and persisted in boasting loudly before prelates and pontiffs\n of having formulated a system of natural rights different from\n that of the three Protestant authors and adapted to the Roman\n Church.\" The natural suggestion of \"politic caution\" Signor\n Croce rejects, declaring that \"the spotless character of Vico\n entirely precludes it; and we can only suppose that, lacking as\n his ideas always were in clarity, on this occasion he indulged\n his tendency to confusion and nourished his illusions, to the\n extent of conferring upon himself the flattering style and title\n of Defensor Ecclesi\u00e6 at the very moment when he was destroying\n the religion of the Church by means of humanity.\"\n\n It is very doubtful whether this equivocal vindication is more\n serviceable to Vico's fame than the plain avowal that a writer\n placed as he was, in the Catholic world of 1720, could not be\n expected to be straightforward upon such an issue. Vico comported\n himself towards the Catholic Church very much as Descartes did. His\n own declaration as to his motives is surely valid as against\n a formula which combines \"spotless character\" with a cherished\n \"tendency to confusion.\" The familiar \"tendency to hedge\" is a\n simpler conception.\n\n\n3. It is noteworthy, indeed, that the \"New Science,\" as Vico boasted,\narose in the Catholic and not in the Protestant world. We might say\nthat, genius apart, the reason was that the energy which elsewhere ran\nto criticism of religion as such had in Catholic Italy to take other\nchannels. By attacking a Protestant position which was really less\ndeeply heterodox than his own, Vico secured Catholic currency for a\nphilosopheme which on its own merits Catholic theologians would have\nscouted as atheism. As it was, Vico's sociology aroused on the one\nhand new rationalistic speculation as to the origin of civilization,\nand on the other orthodox protest on the score of its fundamentally\nanti-Biblical character. It was thus attacked in 1749 by Damiano\nRomano, and later by Finetti, a professor at Padua, \u00e0propos of the\npropaganda raised by Vico's followers as to the animal origin of\nthe human race. This began with Vico's disciple, Emmanuele Duni, a\nprofessor at Rome, who published a series of sociological essays in\n1763. Thenceforth for many years there raged, \"under the eyes of Pope\nand cardinals,\" an Italian debate between the Ferini and Antiferini,\nthe affirmers and deniers of the animal origin of man, the latter\nof course taking up their ground on the Bible, from which Finetti\ndrew twenty-three objections to Vico. [1573] Duni found it prudent\nto declare that he had \"no intention of discussing the origin of\nthe world, still less that of the Hebrew nation, but solely that\nof the Gentile nations\"; but even when thus limited the debate\nset up far-reaching disturbance. At this stage Italian sociology\ndoubtless owed something to Montesquieu and Rousseau; but the fact\nremains that the Scienza Nuova was a book \"truly Italian; Italian par\nexcellence.\" [1574] It was Vico, too, who led the way in the critical\nhandling of early Roman history, taken up later by Beaufort, and still\nlater by Niebuhr; and it was he who began the scientific analysis\nof Homer, followed up later by F. A. Wolf. [1575] By a fortunate\ncoincidence, the papal chair was held at the middle of the century\n(1740-1758) by the most learned, tolerant, and judicious of modern\npopes, Benedict XIV, [1576] whose influence was used for political\npeace in Europe and for toleration in Italy; and whom we shall find,\nlike Clement XIV, on friendly terms with a freethinker. In the same age\nMuratori and Giannone amassed their unequalled historical learning;\nand a whole series of Italian writers broke new ground on the field\nof social science, Italy having led the way in this as formerly in\nphilosophy and physics. [1577] The Hanoverian Dr. G. W. Alberti,\nof Italian descent, writes in 1752 that \"Italy is full of atheists\";\n[1578] and Grimm, writing in 1765, records that according to capable\nobservers the effect of the French freethinking literature in the\npast thirty years had been immense, especially in Tuscany. [1579]\n\n4. Between 1737 and 1798 may be counted twenty-eight Italian writers\non political economy; and among them was one, Cesare Beccaria, who\non another theme produced perhaps the most practically influential\nsingle book of the eighteenth century, [1580] the treatise on Crimes\nand Punishments (1764), which affected penal methods for the better\nthroughout the whole of Europe. Even were he not known to be a deist,\nhis strictly secular and rationalist method would have brought upon\nhim priestly suspicion; and he had in fact to defend himself against\npertinacious and unscrupulous attacks, [1581] though he had sought\nin his book to guard himself by occasionally \"veiling the truth\nin clouds.\" [1582] As we have seen, Beccaria owed his intellectual\nawakening first to Montesquieu and above all to Helv\u00e9tius--another\ntestimony to the reformative virtue of all freethought.\n\nOf the aforesaid eight-and-twenty writers on economics, probably the\nmajority were freethinkers. Among them, at all events, were Count\nAlgarotti (1712-1764), the distinguished \u00e6sthetician, one of the\ngroup round Frederick at Berlin and author of Il Newtonianismo per\nle dame (1737); Filangieri, whose work on legislation (put on the\nIndex by the papacy) won the high praise of Franklin; the Neapolitan\nabbate Ferdinando Galiani, one of the brightest and soundest wits in\nthe circle of the French philosophes; the other Neapolitan abbate\nAntonio Genovesi (1712-1769), the \"redeemer of the Italian mind,\"\n[1583] and the chief establisher of economic science for modern\nItaly. [1584] To these names may be added those of Alfieri, one\nof the strongest anti-clericalists of his age; Bettinelli, the\ncorrespondent of Voltaire and author of The Resurrection of Italy\n(1775); Count Dandolo, author of a French work on The New Men (1799);\nand the learned Giannone, author of the great anti-papal History of\nthe Kingdom of Naples (1723), who, after more than one narrow escape,\nwas thrown in prison by the king of Sardinia, and died there (1748)\nafter twelve years' confinement.\n\nTo the merits of Algarotti and Genovesi there are high contemporary\ntestimonies. Algarotti was on friendly terms with Cardinal Ganganelli,\nwho in 1769 became Pope Clement XIV. In 1754 the latter writes [1585]\nhim: \"My dear Count, Contrive matters so, in spite of your philosophy,\nthat I may see you in heaven; for I should be very sorry to lose sight\nof you for an eternity. You are one of those rare men, both for heart\nand understanding, whom we could wish to love even beyond the grave,\nwhen we have once had the advantage of knowing them. No one has more\nreasons to be convinced of the spirituality and immortality of the\nsoul than you have. The years glide away for the philosophers as well\nas for the ignorant; and what is to be the term of them cannot but\nemploy a man who thinks. Own that I can manage sermons so as not to\nfrighten away a bel esprit; and that if every one delivered as short\nand as friendly sermons as I do, you would sometimes go to hear a\npreacher. But barely hearing will not do ... the amiable Algarotti\nmust become as good a Christian as he is a philosopher: then should\nI doubly be his friend and servant.\" [1586]\n\nIn an earlier letter, Ganganelli writes: \"The Pope [Benedict XIV]\nis ever great and entertaining for his bons mots. He was saying the\nother day that he had always loved you, and that it would give him very\ngreat pleasure to see you again. He speaks with admiration of the king\nof Prussia ... whose history will make one of the finest monuments of\nthe eighteenth century. See here and acknowledge my generosity! For\nthat prince makes the greatest jest possible of the Court of Rome,\nand of us monks and friars. Cardinal Querini will not be satisfied\nunless he have you with him for some time at Brescia. He one day told\nme that he would invite you to come and dedicate his library.... There\nis no harm in preaching to a philosopher who seldom goes to hear a\nsermon, and who will not have become a great saint by residing at\nPotsdam. You are there three men whose talents might be of great\nuse to religion if you would change their direction--viz. Yourself,\nMons. de Voltaire, and M. de Maupertuis. But that is not the ton\nof the age, and you are resolved to follow the fashion.\" [1587]\nGanganelli in his correspondence reveals himself as an admirer\nof Newton [1588] and somewhat averse to religious zeal. [1589] Of\nthe papal government he admitted that it was favourable \"neither\nto commerce, to agriculture, nor to population, which precisely\nconstitute the essence of public felicity,\" while suavely reminding\nthe Englishman of the \"inconveniences\" of his own government. [1590]\nTo the learned Muratori, who suffered at the hands of the bigots,\nhe and Pope Benedict XIV gave their sympathy. [1591]\n\nBut Ganganelli's own thinking on the issues between reason and religion\nwas entirely commonplace. \"Whatever,\" he wrote, \"departs from the\naccount given of the Creation in the book of Genesis has nothing to\nsupport it but paradoxes, or, at most, mere hypotheses. Moses alone,\nas being an inspired author, could perfectly acquaint us with the\nformation of the world, and the development of its parts.... Whoever\ndoes not see the truth in what Moses relates was never born to know\nit.\" [1592] It was only in his relation to the bigots of his own Church\nthat his thinking was rationalistic. \"The Pope,\" he writes to a French\nmarquis, \"relies on Providence; but God does not perform miracles\nevery time he is asked to do it. Besides, is he to perform one that\nRome may enjoy a right of seignory over the Duchy of Parma?\" [1593]\nAt his death an Italian wrote of him that \"the distinction he was\nable to draw between dogmas or discipline and ultramontane opinions\ngave him the courage to take many opportunities of promoting the\npeace of the State.\" His tolerance is sufficiently exhibited in one\nof his letters to Algarotti: \"I hope that you will preach to me some\nof these days, so that each may have his turn.\" [1594] Freethought\nhad achieved something when a Roman Cardinal, a predestinate Pope,\ncould so write to an avowed freethinker. Concerning Galiani we have\nthe warm panegyric of Grimm. \"If I have any vanity with which to\nreproach myself,\" he writes, \"it is that which I derive in spite of\nmyself from the fact of the conformity of my ideas with those of\nthe two rarest men whom I have the happiness to know, Galiani and\nDenis Diderot.\" [1595] Grimm held Galiani to be of all men the best\nqualified to write a true ecclesiastical history. But the history that\nwould have satisfied him and Grimm was not to be published in that age.\n\nItaly, however, had done her full share, considering her heritage\nof burdens and hindrances, in the intellectual work of the century;\nand in the names of Galvani and Volta stands the record of one more of\nher great contributions to human enlightenment. Under Duke Leopold II\nof Tuscany the papacy was so far defied that books put on the Index\nwere produced for him under the imprint of London; [1596] and the\npapacy itself at length gave way to the spirit of reform, Clement XIV\nconsenting among other things to abolish the Order of Jesuits (1773),\nafter his predecessor had died of grief over his proved impotence to\nresist the secular policy of the States around him. [1597] In Tuscany,\nindeed, the reaction against the French Revolution was instant and\nsevere. Leopold succeeded his brother Joseph as emperor of Austria in\n1790, but died in 1792; and in his realm, as was the case in Denmark\nand in Spain in the same century, the reforms imposed from above\nby a liberal sovereign were found to have left much traditionalism\nuntouched. After 1792, Ferdinando III suspended some of his father's\nmost liberal edicts, amid the applause of the reactionaries; and in\n1799, after the first short stay of the revolutionary French army, out\nof its one million inhabitants no fewer than 22,000 were prosecuted for\n\"French opinions.\" [1598] Certainly some of the \"French opinions\" were\nwild enough; for instance, the practice among ladies of dressing alla\nghigliottina, with a red ribbon round the neck, a usage borrowed about\n1795 from France. [1599] As Quinet sums up, the revolution was too\nstrong a medicine for the Italy of that age. The young abbate Monti,\nthe chief poet of the time, was a freethinker, but he alternated his\nstrokes for freedom with unworthy compliances. [1600] Such was the dawn\nof the new Italian day that has since slowly but steadily broadened,\nalbeit under many a cloud.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 5. Spain and Portugal\n\n1. For the rest of Europe during the eighteenth century, we have\nto note only traces of receptive thought. Spain under Bourbon rule,\nas already noted, experienced an administrative renascence. Such men\nas Count Aranda (1718-99) and Aszo y del Rio (1742-1814) wrought to\ncut the claws of the Inquisition and to put down the Jesuits; but not\nyet, after the long work of destruction accomplished by the Church in\nthe past, could Spain produce a fresh literature of any far-reaching\npower. When Aranda was about to be appointed in 1766, his friends\nthe French Encyclop\u00e9distes prematurely proclaimed their exultation\nin the reforms he was to accomplish; and he sadly protested that they\nhad thereby limited his possibilities. [1601] Nonetheless he wrought\nmuch, the power of the Inquisition in Spain being already on the\nwane. Dr. Joaquin Villanueva, one of the ecclesiastical statesmen who\ntook part in its suppression by the Cortes at Cadiz in 1813, tells how,\nin his youth, under the reign of Charles III, it was a current saying\namong the students at college that while the clever ones could rise to\nimportant posts in the Church, or in the law, the blockheads would be\nsure to find places in the Inquisition. [1602] It was of course still\npowerful for social terrorism and minor persecution; but its power of\ntaking life was rapidly dwindling. Between 1746 and 1759 it had burned\nonly ten persons; from 1759 until 1781 it burned only four; thereafter\nnone, [1603] the last case having provoked protests which testified\nto the moral change wrought in Europe by a generation of freethought.\n\nIn Spain too, as elsewhere, freethought had made way among the upper\nclasses; and in 1773 we find the Duke d'Alba (formerly Huescar),\nex-ambassador of Spain to France, subscribing eighty louis for a\nstatue to Voltaire. \"Condemned to cultivate my reason in secret,\"\nhe wrote to D'Alembert, \"I see this opportunity to give a public\ntestimony of my gratitude to and admiration for the great man who\nfirst showed me the way.\" [1604]\n\n2. Still all freethinking in Spain ran immense risks, even under\nCharles III. The Spanish admiral Solano was denounced by his almoner\nto the Inquisition for having read Raynal, and had to demand pardon on\nhis knees of the Inquisition and God. [1605] Aranda himself was from\nfirst to last four times arraigned before the Inquisition, [1606]\nescaping only by his prestige and power. So eminent a personage as\nP. A. J. Olavid\u00e8s, known in France as the Count of Pilos (1726-1803),\ncould not thus escape. He had been appointed by Charles III prefect of\nSeville, and had carried out for the king the great work of colonizing\nthe Sierra Morena, [1607] of which region he was governor. At the\nheight of his career, in 1776, he was arrested and imprisoned, \"as\nsuspected of professing impious sentiments, particularly those of\nVoltaire and Rousseau, with whom he had carried on a very intimate\ncorrespondence.\" He had spoken unwarily to inhabitants of the new\ntowns under his jurisdiction concerning the exterior worship of deity\nin Spain, the worship of images, the fast days, the cessation of work\non holy days, the offerings at mass, and all the rest of the apparatus\nof popular Catholicism. [1608] Olavid\u00e8s prudently confessed his error,\ndeclaring that he had \"never lost his inner faith.\" After two years'\ndetention he was forced to make his penance at a lesser auto da f\u00e9 in\npresence of sixty persons of distinction, many of whom were suspected\nof holding similar opinions, and were thus grimly warned to keep\ntheir counsel. During four hours the reading of his process went on,\nand then came the sentence. He was condemned to pass eight years in\na convent; to be banished forever from Madrid, Seville, Cordova, and\nthe new towns of the Sierra Morena, and to lose all his property; he\nwas pronounced incapable henceforth of holding any public employment\nor title of honour; and he was forbidden to mount a horse, to wear\nany ornament of gold, silver, pearls, diamonds, or other precious\nstones, or clothing of silk or fine linen. On hearing his sentence he\nfainted. Afterwards, on his knees, he received absolution. Escaping\nsome time afterwards from his convent, he reached France. After\nsome years more, he cynically produced a work entitled The Gospel\nTriumphant, or the Philosopher Converted, which availed to procure a\nrepeal of his sentence; and he returned into favour. [1609] In his\nyouth he \"had not the talent to play the hypocrite.\" In the end he\nmastered the art as few had done.\n\n3. Another grandee, Don Christophe Ximenez de Gongora, Duke of\nAlmodobar, published a free and expurgated translation of Raynal's\nHistory of the Indies under another title; [1610] and though he put\nupon the book only an anagram of his name, he presented copies to the\nking. The inquisitors, learning as much, denounced him as \"suspected\nof having embraced the systems of unbelieving philosophers\"; but\nthis time the prosecution broke down for lack of evidence. [1611] A\nsimilar escape was made by Don Joseph Nicholas d'Azara, who had been\nminister of foreign affairs, minister plenipotentiary of the king at\nRome, and ambassador extraordinary at Paris, and was yet denounced at\nSaragossa and Madrid as an \"unbelieving philosopher.\" [1612] Count\nRicla, minister of war under Charles III, was similarly charged,\nand similarly escaped for lack of proofs. [1613]\n\n4. In another case, a freethinking priest skilfully anticipated\nprosecution. Don Philip de Samaniego, \"priest, archdeacon of Pampeluna,\nchevalier of the order of St. James, counsellor of the king and\nsecretary-general, interpreter of foreign languages,\" was one of those\ninvited to assist at the auto da f\u00e9 of Olavid\u00e8s. The impression made\nupon him was so strong that he speedily prepared with his own hand\na confession to the effect that he had read many forbidden books,\nsuch as those of Voltaire, Mirabeau, Rousseau, Hobbes, Spinoza,\nMontesquieu, Bayle, D'Alembert, and Diderot; and that he had been\nthus led into skepticism; but that after serious reflection he had\nresolved to attach himself firmly and forever to the Catholic faith,\nand now begged to be absolved. The sentence was memorable. He was\nordered first to confirm his confession by oath; then to state how\nand from whom he had obtained the prohibited books, where they now\nwere, with what persons he had talked on these matters, what persons\nhad either refuted or adopted his views, and which of those persons\nhad seemed to be aware of such doctrines in advance; such a detailed\nstatement being the condition of his absolution. Samaniego obeyed,\nand produced a long declaration in which he incriminated nearly\nevery enlightened man at the court, naming Aranda, the Duke of\nAlmodobar, Ricla, and the minister Florida Blanca; also General\nRicardos, Count of Truillas, General Massones, Count of Montalvo,\nambassador at Paris and brother of the Duke of Sotomayor; and Counts\nCampomanes, Orreilly, and Lascy. Proceedings were begun against one\nand all; but the undertaking was too comprehensive, and the proofs\nwere avowed to be insufficient. [1614] What became of Samaniego,\nhistory saith not. A namesake of his, Don Felix-Maria de Samaniego,\none of the leading men of letters of the reign of Charles IV, was\narraigned before the Inquisition of Logrogno as \"suspected of having\nembraced the errors of modern philosophers and read prohibited books,\"\nbut contrived, through his friendship with the minister of justice,\nto arrange the matter privately. [1615]\n\n5. Out of a long series of other men of letters persecuted by the\nInquisition for giving signs of enlightenment, a few cases are\npreserved by its historian, Llorente. Don Benedict Bails, professor\nof mathematics at Madrid and author of a school-book on the subject,\nwas proceeded against in his old age, towards the end of the reign\nof Charles III, as suspected of \"atheism and materialism.\" He was\ningenuous enough to confess that he had \"had doubts on the existence of\nGod and the immortality of the soul,\" but that after serious reflection\nhe was repentant and ready to abjure all his errors. He thus escaped,\nafter an imprisonment. Don Louis Cagnuelo, advocate, was forced to\nabjure for having written against popular superstition and against\nmonks in his journal The Censor, and was forbidden to write in future\non any subject of religion or morals. F. P. Centeno, one of the leading\ncritics of the reigns of Charles III and Charles IV, was an Augustinian\nmonk; but his profession did not save him from the Inquisition when\nhe made enemies by his satirical criticisms, though he was patronized\nby the minister Florida Blanca. To make quite sure, he was accused\nat once of atheism and Lutheranism. He had in fact preached against\nceremonialism, and as censor he had deleted from a catechism for the\nfree schools of Madrid an article affirming the existence of the Limbo\nof children who had died unbaptized. Despite a most learned defence,\nhe was condemned as \"violently suspected of heresy\" and forced to\nabjure, whereafter he went mad and in that state died. [1616]\n\n6. Another savant of the same period, Don Joseph de Clavijo y Faxardo,\ndirector of the natural history collection at Madrid, was in turn\narraigned as having \"adopted the anti-Christian principles of modern\nphilosophy.\" He had been the friend of Buffon and Voltaire at Paris,\nhad admirably translated Buffon's Natural History, with notes, and was\nnaturally something of a deist and materialist. Having the protection\nof Aranda, he escaped with a secret penance and abjuration. [1617]\nDon Thomas Iriarte, chief of the archives in the ministry of foreign\naffairs, was likewise indicted towards the end of the reign of Charles\nIII, as \"suspected of anti-Christian philosophy,\" and escaped with\nsimilarly light punishment. [1618]\n\n7. Still in the same reign, the Jesuit Francisco de Ista, author of an\nextremely popular satire against absurd preachers, the History of the\nfamous preacher Fray Gerondif, published under the pseudonym of Don\nFrancisco Lobon de Salazar--a kind of ecclesiastical Don Quixote--so\ninfuriated the preaching monks that the Holy Office received \"an\nalmost infinite number of denunciations of the book.\" Ista, however,\nwas a Jesuit, and escaped, through the influence of his order, with\na warning. [1619] Influence, indeed, could achieve almost anything in\nthe Holy Office, whether for culprits or against the uninculpable. In\n1796, Don Raymond de Salas, a professor at Salamanca, was actually\nprosecuted by the Inquisition of Madrid as being suspected of having\nadopted the principles of Voltaire, Rousseau, and other modern\nphilosophers, he having read their works. The poor man proved that\nhe had done so only in order to refute them, and produced the theses\npublicly maintained at Salamanca by his pupils as a result of his\nteachings. The prosecution was a pure work of personal enmity on the\npart of the Archbishop of Santiago (formerly bishop of Salamanca)\nand others, and Salas was acquitted, with the statement that he was\nentitled to reparation. Again and again did his enemies revive the\ncase, despite repeated acquittals, he being all the while in durance,\nand at length he had to \"abjure,\" and was banished the capital. After\na time the matter was forced on the attention of the Government,\nwith the result that even Charles IV was asked by his ministers to\nordain that henceforth the Inquisition should not arrest anyone without\nprior intimation to the king. At this stage, however, the intriguing\narchbishop successfully intervened, and the ancient machinery for\nthe stifling of thought remained intact for the time. [1620]\n\n8. It is plain that the combined power of the Church, the orders,\nand the Inquisition, even under Charles III, had been substantially\nunimpaired, and rested on a broad foundation of popular fanaticism and\nignorance. The Inquisition attacked not merely freethought but heresy\nof every kind, persecuting Jansenists and Molinists as of old it had\npersecuted Lutherans, only with less power of murder. That much the\nBourbon kings and their ministers could accomplish, but no more. The\ntrouble was that the enlightened administration of Charles III in\nSpain did not build up a valid popular education, the sole security\nfor durable rationalism. Its school policy, though not without zeal,\nwas undemocratic, and so left the priests in control of the mind of\nthe multitude; and throughout the reign the ecclesiastical revenues\nhad been allowed to increase greatly from private sources. [1621]\nLike Leopold of Tuscany, he was in advance of his people, and imposed\nhis reforms from above. When, accordingly, the weak and pious Charles\nIV succeeded in 1788, three of the anti-clerical Ministers of his\npredecessor, including Aranda, were put under arrest, [1622] and\nclericalism resumed full sway, to the extent even of vetoing the\nstudy of moral philosophy in the universities. [1623] Mentally and\nmaterially alike, Spain relapsed to her former state of indigence;\nand the struggle for national existence against Napoleon helped rather\ntraditionalist sentiment than the spirit of innovation.\n\n9. Portugal in the same period, despite the anti-clerical policy\nof the famous Marquis of Pombal, made no noticeable intellectual\nprogress. Though that powerful statesman in 1761 abolished slavery\nin the kingdom, [1624] he too failed to see the need for popular\neducation, while promoting that of the upper classes. [1625] His\nexpulsion of the Jesuits, accordingly, did but raise up against him\na new set of enemies in the shape of the Jacobeos, \"the Blessed,\"\na species of Catholic Puritan, who accused him of impiety. His\nsomewhat forensic defence [1626] leaves the impression that he was\nin reality a deist; but though he fought the fanatics by imprisoning\nthe Bishop of Coimbra, their leader, and by causing Moli\u00e8re's Tartufe\nto be translated and performed, he does not seem to have shown any\nfavour to the deistical literature of which the Bishop had composed\na local Index Expurgatorius. [1627] In Portugal, as later in Spain,\naccordingly, a complete reaction set in with the death of the\nenlightened king. Dom Joseph died in 1777, and Pombal was at once\ndisgraced and his enemies released, the pious Queen Maria and her\nMinisters subjecting him to persecution for some years. In 1783,\nthe Queen, who became a religious maniac, and died insane, [1628]\nis found establishing new nunneries, and so adding to one of the main\nfactors in the impoverishment, moral and financial, of Portugal.\n\n\n\n\n\u00a7 6. Switzerland\n\nDuring the period we have been surveying, up to the French Revolution,\nSwitzerland, which owed much of new intellectual life to the influx of\nFrench Protestants at the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, [1629]\nexhibited no less than the other European countries the inability\nof the traditionary creed to stand criticism. Calvinism by its very\nrigour generated a reaction within its own special field; and the\nspirit of the slain Servetus triumphed strangely over that of his\nslayer. Genevan Calvinism, like that of the English Presbyterians,\nwas transmuted first into a modified Arminianism, then into \"Arianism\"\nor Socinianism, then into the Unitarianism of modern times. In the\neighteenth century Switzerland contributed to the European movement\nsome names, of which by far the most famous is Rousseau; and the\npotent presence of Voltaire cannot have failed to affect Swiss\nculture. Before his period of influence, indeed, there had taken\nplace not a little silent evolution of a Unitarian and deistic kind;\nSocinianism, as usual, leading the way. Among the families of Italian\nProtestant refugees who helped to invigorate the life of Switzerland,\nas French Protestants did later that of Germany, were the Turrettini,\nof whom Francesco came to Geneva in the last quarter of the sixteenth\ncentury. One of his sons, Benedict, made a professor at twenty-four,\nbecame a leading theologian and preacher of orthodox Calvinism,\nand distinguished himself as an opponent of Arminianism. [1630]\nStill more distinguished in his day was Benedict's son Fran\u00e7ois\n(1623-1687), also a professor, who repeated his father's services,\npolitical and controversial, to orthodoxy, and combated Socinianism,\nas Benedict had done Arminianism. But Fran\u00e7ois's son Jean-Alphonse,\nalso a professor (whose Latin work on Christian evidences, translated\ninto French by a colleague, we have seen adopted and adapted by\nthe Catholic authorities in France), became a virtual Unitarian\n[1631] (1671-1737), and as such is still anathematized by Swiss\nCalvinists. Against the deists, however, he was industrious, as his\ngrandfather, a heretic to Catholicism, had been against the Arminians,\nand his father against the Socinians. The family evolution in some\ndegree typifies the theological process from the sixteenth to the\neighteenth century; and the apologetics of Jean-Alphonse testify to\nthe vogue of critical deism among the educated class at Geneva in\nthe days of Voltaire's nonage. He (or his translator) deals with the\n\"natural\" objections to the faith, cites approvingly Locke, Lardner,\nand Clarke, and combats Woolston, but names no other English deist. The\nheresy, therefore, would seem to be a domestic development from the\nroots noted by Viret nearly two centuries before. One of Turrettini's\nannotators complacently observes [1632] that though deists talk of\nnatural religion, none of them has ever written a book in exposition\nof it, the task being left to the Christians. The writer must have\nbeen aware, on the one hand, that any deist who in those days should\nopenly expound natural religion as against revealed would be liable to\nexecution for blasphemy in any European country save England, where,\nas it happened, Herbert, Hobbes, Blount, Toland, Collins, Shaftesbury,\nand Tindal had all maintained the position, and on the other hand\nhe must have known that the Ethica of Spinoza was naturalistic. The\nfalse taunt merely goes to prove that deists could maintain their\nheresy on the Continent at that time without the support of books. But\nsoon after Turrettini's time they give literary indication of their\nexistence even in Switzerland; and in 1763 we find Voltaire sending\na package of copies of his treatise on Toleration by the hand of \"a\nyoung M. Turretin of Geneva,\" who \"is worthy to see the brethren,\nthough he is the grandson of a celebrated priest of Baal. He is\nreserved, but decided, as are most of the Genevese. Calvin begins\nin our cantons to have no more credit than the pope.\" [1633] For\nthis fling there was a good deal of justification. When in 1763 the\nCouncil of Geneva officially burned a pamphlet reprint of the Vicaire\nSavoyard from Rousseau's \u00c9mile there was an immediate public protest\nby \"two hundred persons, among whom there were three priests\"; [1634]\nand some five weeks later \"a hundred persons came for the third time to\nprotest.... They say that it is permissible to every citizen to write\nwhat he will on religion; that he should not be condemned without a\nhearing; and that the rights of men must be respected.\" [1635] All this\nwas not a sudden product of the freethinking influence of Voltaire and\nRousseau, which had but recently begun. An older leaven had long been\nat work. The Principes du Droit Naturel of J. J. Burlamaqui (1748),\nsave for its subsumption of deity as the originator of all human\ntendencies, is strictly naturalistic and utilitarian in its reasoning,\nand clearly exhibits the influence of Hobbes and Mandeville. [1636]\nVoltaire, too, in his correspondence, is found frequently speaking\nwith a wicked chuckle of the Unitarianism of the clergy of Geneva,\n[1637] a theme on which D'Alembert had written openly in his article\nGen\u00e8ve in the Encyclop\u00e9die in 1756. [1638] So early as 1757, Voltaire\nroundly affirms that there are only a few Calvinists left: \"tous les\nhonn\u00eates gens sont d\u00e9istes par Christ.\" [1639] And when the younger\nSalchi, professor at Lausanne, writes in 1759 that \"deism is become\nthe fashionable religion.... Europe is inundated with the works of\ndeists; and their partisans have made perhaps more proselytes in the\nspace of eighty years than were made by the apostles and the first\nFathers of the Church,\" [1640] he must be held to testify in some\ndegree concerning Switzerland. The chief native service to intellectual\nprogress thus far, however, was rendered in the field of the natural\nsciences, Swiss religious opinion being only passively liberalized,\nmainly in a Unitarian direction.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XX\n\nEARLY FREETHOUGHT IN THE UNITED STATES\n\n\n1. Perhaps the most signal of all the proofs of the change wrought\nin the opinion of the civilized world in the eighteenth century is\nthe fact that at the time of the War of Independence the leading\nstatesmen of the American colonies were deists. Such were Benjamin\nFranklin, the diplomatist of the Revolution; Thomas Paine, its prophet\nand inspirer; Washington, its commander; and Jefferson, its typical\nlegislator. But for these four men the American Revolution probably\ncould not have been accomplished in that age; and they thus represent\nin a peculiar degree the power of new ideas, in fit conditions,\nto transform societies, at least politically. On the other hand,\nthe fashion in which their relation to the creeds of their time has\nbeen garbled, alike in American and English histories, proves how\ncompletely they were in advance of the average thought of their day;\nand also how effectively the mere institutional influence of creeds\ncan arrest a nation's mental development. It is still one of the\nstock doctrines of religious sociology in England and America that\ndeism, miscalled atheism, wrought the Reign of Terror in the French\nRevolution; when as a matter of fact the same deism was at the head\nof affairs in the American.\n\n2. The rise of rationalism in the colonies must be traced in the main\nto the imported English literature of the eighteenth century; for\nthe first Puritan settlements had contained at most only a fraction\nof freethought; and the conditions, so deadly for all manner even\nof devout heresy, made avowed unbelief impossible. The superstitions\nand cruelties of the Puritan clergy, however, must have bred a silent\nreaction, which prepared a soil for the deism of the next age. [1641]\n\"The perusal of Shaftesbury and Collins,\" writes Franklin with\nreference to his early youth, \"had made me a skeptic,\" after being\n\"previously so as to many doctrines of Christianity.\" [1642] This\nwas in his seventeenth or eighteenth year, about 1720, so that the\nimportation of deism had been prompt. [1643] Throughout life he held\nto the same opinion, conforming sufficiently to keep on fair terms\nwith his neighbours, [1644] and avoiding anything like critical\npropaganda; though on challenge, in the last year of his life, he\navowed his negatively deistic position. [1645]\n\n3. Similarly prudent was Jefferson, who, like Franklin and Paine,\nextolled the Gospel Jesus and his teachings, but rejected the\nnotion of supernatural revelation. [1646] In a letter written so\nlate as 1822 to a Unitarian correspondent, while refusing to publish\nanother of similar tone, on the score that he was too old for strife,\nhe declared that he \"should as soon undertake to bring the crazy\nskulls of Bedlam to sound understanding as to inculcate reason into\nthat of an Athanasian.\" [1647] His experience of the New England\nclergy is expressed in allusions to Connecticut as having been\n\"the last retreat of monkish darkness, bigotry, and abhorrence\nof those advances of the mind which had carried the other States\na century ahead of them\"; and in congratulations with John Adams\n(who had written that \"this would be the best of all possible worlds\nif there were no religion in it\"), when \"this den of the priesthood\nis at last broken up.\" [1648] John Adams, whose letters with their\n\"crowd of skepticisms\" kept even Jefferson from sleep, [1649] seems\nto have figured as a member of a Congregationalist church, while\nin reality a Unitarian. [1650] Still more prudent was Washington,\nwho seems to have ranked habitually as a member of the Episcopal\nchurch; but concerning whom Jefferson relates that, when the clergy,\nhaving noted his constant abstention from any public mention of the\nChristian religion, so penned an address to him on his withdrawal from\nthe Presidency as almost to force him to some declaration, he answered\nevery part of the address but that, which he entirely ignored. It is\nfurther noted that only in his valedictory letter to the governors of\nthe States, on resigning his commission, did he speak of the \"benign\ninfluence of the Christian religion\" [1651]--the common tone of the\nAmerican deists of that day. It is further established that Washington\navoided the Communion in church. [1652] For the rest, the broad fact\nthat all mention of deity was excluded from the Constitution of the\nUnited States must be historically taken to signify a profound change\nin the convictions of the leading minds among the people as compared\nwith the beliefs of their ancestors. At the same time, the fact that\nthey as a rule dissembled their unbelief is a proof that, even where\nlegal penalties do not attach to an avowal of serious heresy, there\ninheres in the menace of mere social ostracism a power sufficient to\ncoerce the outward life of public and professional men of all grades,\nin a democratic community where faith maintains and is maintained by\na competitive multitude of priests. With this force the freethought\nof our own age has to reckon, after Inquisitions and blasphemy laws\nhave become obsolete.\n\n4. Nothing in American culture-history more clearly proves the last\nproposition than the case of Thomas Paine, the virtual founder of\nmodern democratic freethought in Great Britain and the States. [1653]\nIt does not appear that Paine openly professed any heresy while he\nlived in England, or in America before the French Revolution. Yet\nthe first sentence of his Age of Reason, of which the first part was\nwritten shortly before his imprisonment, under sentence of death from\nthe Robespierre Government, in Paris (1793), shows that he had long\nheld pronounced deistic opinions. [1654] They were probably matured\nin the States, where, as we have seen, such views were often privately\nheld, though there, as Franklin is said to have jesuitically declared\nin his old age, by way of encouraging immigration: \"Atheism is unknown;\ninfidelity rare and secret, so that persons may live to a great age\nin this country without having their piety shocked by meeting with\neither an atheist or an infidel.\" Paine did an unequalled service\nto the American Revolution by his Common Sense and his series of\npamphlets headed The Crisis: there is, in fact, little question that\nbut for the intense stimulus thus given by him at critical moments\nthe movement might have collapsed at an early stage. Yet he seems\nto have had no thought there and then of avowing his deism. It was\nin part for the express purpose of resisting the ever-strengthening\nattack of atheism in France on deism itself that he undertook to save\nit by repudiating the Jud\u00e6o-Christian revelation; and it is not even\ncertain that he would have issued the Age of Reason when it did appear,\nhad he not supposed he was going to his death when put under arrest,\non which score he left the manuscript for publication. [1655]\n\n5. Its immediate effect was much greater in Britain, where his Rights\nof Man had already won him a vast popularity in the teeth of the most\nfurious reaction, than in America. There, to his profound chagrin, he\nfound that his honest utterance of his heresy brought on him hatred,\ncalumny, ostracism, and even personal and political molestation. In\n1797 he had founded in Paris the little \"Church of Theo-philanthropy,\"\nbeginning his inaugural discourse with the words: \"Religion has two\nprincipal enemies, Fanaticism and Infidelity, or that which is called\natheism. The first requires to be combated by reason and morality;\nthe other by natural philosophy.\" [1656] These were his settled\nconvictions; and he lived to find himself shunned and vilified, in the\nname of religion, in the country whose freedom he had so puissantly\nwrought to win. [1657] The Quakers, his father's sect, refused him a\nburial-place. He has had sympathy and fair play, as a rule, only from\nthe atheists whom he distrusted and opposed, or from thinkers who no\nlonger hold by deism. There is reason to think that in his last years\nthe deistic optimism which survived the deep disappointments of the\nFrench Revolution began to give way before deeper reflection on the\ncosmic problem, [1658] if not before the treatment he had undergone at\nthe hands of Unitarians and Trinitarians alike. The Butlerian argument,\nthat Nature is as unsatisfactory as revelation, had been pressed upon\nhim by Bishop Watson in a reply to the Age of Reason; and though, like\nmost deists of his age, he regarded it as a vain defence of orthodoxy,\nhe was not the man to remain long blind to its force against deistic\nassumptions. Like Franklin, he had energetically absorbed and given out\nthe new ideals of physical science; his originality in the invention of\na tubular iron bridge, and in the application of steam to navigation,\n[1659] being nearly as notable as that of Franklin's great discovery\nconcerning electricity. Had the two men drawn their philosophy from\nthe France of the latter part of the century instead of the England\nof the first, they had doubtless gone deeper. As it was, temperamental\noptimism had kept both satisfied with the transitional formula; and in\nthe France of before and after the Revolution they lived pre-occupied\nwith politics.\n\n6. The habit of reticence or dissimulation among American public men\nwas only too surely confirmed by the treatment meted out to Paine. Few\nstood by him; and the vigorous deistic movement set up in his latter\nyears by Elihu Palmer soon succumbed to the conditions, [1660] though\nPalmer's book, The Principles of Nature (1802, rep. by Richard Carlile,\n1819), is a powerful attack on the Judaic and Christian systems all\nalong the line. George Houston, leaving England after two years'\nimprisonment for his translation of d'Holbach's Ecce Homo, went to\nNew York, where he edited the Minerva (1822), reprinted his book,\nand started a freethought journal, The Correspondence. That, however,\nlasted only eighteen months. All the while, such statesmen as Madison\nand Monroe, the latter Paine's personal friend, seem to have been of\nhis way of thinking, [1661] though the evidence is scanty. Thus it came\nabout that, save for the liberal movement of the Hicksite Quakers,\n[1662] the American deism of Paine's day was decorously transformed\ninto the later Unitarianism, the extremely rapid advance of which in\nthe next generation is the best proof of the commonness of private\nunbelief. The influence of Priestley, who, persecuted at home, went to\nend his days in the States, had doubtless much to do with the Unitarian\ndevelopment there, as in England; but it seems certain that the whole\ndeistic movement, including the work of Paine and Palmer, had tended\nto move out of orthodoxy many of those who now, recoiling from the\nfierce hostility directed against the outspoken freethinkers, sought\na more rational form of creed than that of the orthodox churches. The\ndeistic tradition in a manner centred in the name of Jefferson, and the\nknown deism of that leader would do much to make fashionable a heresy\nwhich combined his views with a decorous attitude to the Sacred Books.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXI\n\nFREETHOUGHT IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY\n\n\nThe Reaction\n\nAll over the civilized world, as we have seen, the terrors of the\nFrench Revolution evoked an intellectual no less than a political\nreaction, its stress being most apparent and most destructive in\nthose countries in which there had been previously the largest\nmeasure of liberty. Nowhere was it more intense or more disastrous\nthan in England. In countries such as Denmark and Spain, only lately\nand superficially liberalized, there was no great progress to undo:\nin England, though liberty was never left without an indomitable\nwitness, there was a violent reversal of general movement, not to be\nwholly rectified in half a century. Joined in a new activity with the\ncivil power for the suppression of all innovating thought, the Church\nrapidly attained to an influence it had not possessed since the days\nof Sacheverel and a degree of wealth it had not before reached since\nthe Reformation. The wealth of the upper class was at its disposal\nto an unheard-of extent, there being apparently no better way of\nfighting the new danger of democracy; and dissent joined hands with\nthe establishment to promote orthodoxy.\n\nThe average tone in England in the first quarter of the century may be\ngathered from the language held by a man so enlightened, comparatively\nspeaking, as Sydney Smith, wit, humourist, Whig, and clergyman. In\n1801 we find him, in a preface never reprinted, prescribing various\nmeasures of religious strategy in addition \"to the just, necessary,\nand innumerable invectives which have been levelled against Rousseau,\nVoltaire, D'Alembert, and the whole pandemonium of those martyrs to\natheism, who toiled with such laborious malice, and suffered odium with\nsuch inflexible profligacy, for the wretchedness and despair of their\nfellow creatures.\" [1663] That this was not jesting may be gathered\nfrom his daughter's account of his indignation when a publisher sent\nhim \"a work of irreligious tendency,\" and when Jeffrey admitted\n\"irreligious opinions\" to the Edinburgh Review. To the former he\nwrites that every principle of suspicion and fear would be excited\nin me by a man who professed himself an infidel\"; and to Jeffrey:\n\"Do you mean to take care that the Review shall not profess infidel\nprinciples? Unless this is the case I must absolutely give up all\nconnection with it.\" [1664] All the while any semblance of \"infidelity\"\nin any article in the Review must have been of the most cautious kind.\n\nIn the Catholic countries, naturally, the reaction was no less\nviolent. In Italy, as we saw, it began in Tuscany almost at once. The\nrule of Napoleon, it is true, secured complete freedom of the Press\nas regarded translation of freethinking books, an entire liberty of\nconscience in religious matters, and a sharp repression of clericalism,\nthe latter policy going to the length of expelling all the religious\norders and confiscating their property. [1665] All this counted\nfor change; but the Napoleonic rule all the while choked one of the\nsprings of vital thought--to wit, the spirit of political liberty;\nand in 1814-15 the clerical system returned in full force, as it did\nall over Italy. Everywhere freethought was banned. All criticism\nof Catholicism was a penal offence; and in the kingdom of Naples\nalone, in 1825, there were 27,612 priests, 8,455 monks, 8,185 nuns,\n20 archbishops, and 73 bishops, though in 1807 the French influence\nhad caused the dissolution of some 250 convents. [1666] At Florence\nthe Censure forbade, in 1817, the issue of a new edition of the\ntranslated work of Cabanis on Les Rapports du physique et du moral;\nand Mascagni, the physiologist, was invited to delete from his work\na definition of man in which no notice was taken of the soul. [1667]\nIt was even proclaimed that the works of Voltaire and Rousseau were not\nto be read in the public libraries without ecclesiastical permission;\nbut this veto was not seriously treated. [1668] All native energy,\nhowever, was either cowed or cajoled into passivity. If, accordingly,\nthe mind of Italy was to survive, it must be by the assimilation of the\nculture of freer States; and this culture, reinforced by the writings\nof Leopardi, generated a new intellectual life, which was a main factor\nin the ultimate achievement of Italian liberation from Austrian rule.\n\nSpain, under Charles IV, became so thoroughly re-clericalized at the\nvery outbreak of the Revolution that no more leeway seemed possible;\nbut even in Spain, early in the nineteenth century, the government\nfound means to retrogress yet further, and the minister Caballero\nsent an order to the universities forbidding the study of moral\nphilosophy. The king, he justly declared, did not want philosophers,\nbut good and obedient subjects. [1669]\n\nIn France, where the downfall of Napoleon meant the restoration of\nthe monarchy, the intellectual reaction was really less powerful\nthan in England. The new spirit had been too widely and continuously\nat work, from Voltaire onwards, to be politically expelled; and\nthe revolutions of 1830 and 1848 gave the proof that even on the\npolitical side the old spirit was incapable of permanent recovery. In\nGermany, where freethinking was associated not with the beaten cause\nof the Revolution but in large measure with the national movement\nfor liberation from the tyranny of Napoleon, [1670] the religious\nreaction was substantially emotional and unintellectual, though it\nhad intellectual representatives, notably Schleiermacher. Apart\nfrom his culture-movement, the revival consisted mainly in a new\nPietism, partly orthodox, partly mystical; [1671] and on those\nlines it ran later to the grossest excesses. But among the educated\nclasses of Germany there was the minimum of arrest, because there the\nintellectual life was least directly associated with the political,\nand the ecclesiastical life relatively the least organized. The very\nseparateness of the German States, then and later so often deplored\nby German patriots, was really a condition of relative security for\nfreedom of thought and research; and the resulting multiplicity of\nuniversities meant a variety of intellectual effort not then paralleled\nin any other country. [1672] What may be ranked as the most important\neffect of the reaction in Germany--the turning of Kant, Fichte, and\nHegel in succession to the task of reconciling rational philosophy\nwith religion in the interests of social order--was in itself a\nrationalistic process as compared with the attitude of orthodoxy in\nother lands. German scholarship, led by the re-organized university of\nBerlin, was in fact one of the most progressive intellectual forces\nin Europe during the first half of the nineteenth century; and only\nits comparative isolation, its confinement to a cultured class,\nprevented it from affecting popular thought as widely as deism had\ndone in the preceding century. Even in the countries in which popular\nand university culture were less sharply divided, the German influence\nwas held at bay like others.\n\nBut in time the spirit of progress regained strength, the most\ndecisive form of recovery being the new development of the struggle\nfor political liberty from about 1830 onwards. In England the advance\nthenceforward was to be broadly continuous on the political side. On\nthe Continent it culminated for the time in the explosions of 1848,\nwhich were followed in the Germanic world by another political\nreaction, in which freethought suffered; and in France, after a\nfew years, by the Second Empire, in which clericalism was again\nfostered. But these checks have proved impermanent.\n\n\n\nThe Forces of Renascence\n\nAs with the cause of democracy, so with the cause of rationalism, the\nforward movement grew only the deeper and more powerful through the\ncheck; and the nineteenth century closed on a record of freethinking\nprogress which may be said to outbulk that of all the previous\ncenturies of the modern era together. So great was the activity\nof the century in point of mere quantity that it is impossible,\nwithin the scheme of a \"Short History,\" to treat it on even such\na reduced scale of narrative as has been applied to the past. A\ndetailed history on national lines from the French Revolution onwards\nwould mean another book as large as the present. On however large a\nscale it might be written, further, it would involve a recognition\nof international influences such as had never before been evolved,\nsave when on a much smaller scale the educated world all round read\nand wrote Latin. Since Goethe, the international aspect of culture upon\nwhich he laid stress has become ever more apparent; and scientific and\nphilosophical thought, in particular, are world-wide in their scope\nand bearing. It must here suffice, therefore, to take a series of\nbroad and general views of the past century's work, leaving adequate\ncritical and narrative treatment for separate undertakings. [1673]\nThe most helpful method seems to be that of a conspectus (1) of\nthe main movements and forces that during the century affected\nin varying degrees the thought of the civilized world, and (2)\nof the main advances made and the point reached in the culture of\nthe nations, separately considered. At the same time, the forces of\nrationalism may be discriminated into Particular and General. We may\nthen roughly represent the lines of movement, in non-chronological\norder, as follows:--\n\n\n I.--Forces of criticism and corrective thought bearing expressly\n on religious beliefs.\n\n 1. In Great Britain and America, the new movements of popular\n freethought begun by Paine, and lasting continuously to the\n present day.\n\n 2. In France and elsewhere, the reverberation of the attack\n of Voltaire, d'Holbach, Dupuis, and Volney, carried on most\n persistently in Catholic countries by the Freemasons, as against\n official orthodoxy after 1815.\n\n 3. German \"rationalism,\" proceeding from English deism, moving\n towards naturalist as against supernaturalist conceptions,\n dissolving the notion of the miraculous in both Old and New\n Testament history, analysing the literary structure of the sacred\n books, and all along affecting studious thought in other countries.\n\n 4. The literary compromise of Lessing, claiming for all religions\n a place in a scheme of \"divine education.\"\n\n 5. In England, the neo-Christianity of the school of Coleridge,\n a disintegrating force, promoting the \"Broad Church\" tendency,\n which in Dean Milman was so pronounced as to bring on him charges\n of rationalism.\n\n 6. The utilitarianism of the school of Bentham, carried into\n moral and social science.\n\n 7. Comtism, making little direct impression on the \"constructive\"\n lines laid by the founder, but affecting critical thought in\n many directions.\n\n 8. German philosophy, Kantian and post-Kantian, in particular\n the Hegelian, turned to anti-Christian and anti-supernaturalist\n account by Strauss, Vatke, Bruno Bauer, Feuerbach, and Marx.\n\n 9. German atheism and scientific \"materialism\"--represented\n by Feuerbach and B\u00fcchner (who, however, rejected the term\n \"materialism\" as inappropriate).\n\n 10. Revived English deism, involving destructive criticism\n of Christianity, as in Hennell, F. W. Newman, R. W. Mackay,\n W. R. Greg, Theodore Parker, and Thomas Scott, partly in\n co-operation with Unitarianism.\n\n 11. American transcendentalism or pantheism--the school of Emerson.\n\n 12. Colenso's preliminary attack on the narrative of the\n Pentateuch, a systematized return to Voltairean common-sense,\n rectifying the unscientific course of the earlier \"higher\n criticism\" on the historical issue.\n\n 13. The later or scientific \"higher criticism\" of the Old\n Testament--represented by Kuenen, Wellhausen, and their successors.\n\n 14. New historical criticism of Christian origins, in particular\n the work of Strauss and Baur in Germany, Renan and Havet in France,\n and their successors.\n\n 15. Exhibition of rationalism within the churches, as in Germany,\n Holland, and Switzerland generally; in England in the Essays and\n Reviews; later in multitudes of essays and books, and in the\n ethical criticism of the Old Testament; in America in popular\n theology.\n\n 16. Association of rationalistic doctrine with the Socialist\n movements, new and old, from Owen to Bebel.\n\n 17. Communication of doubt and moral questioning through poetry and\n belles-lettres--as in Shelley, Byron, Coleridge, Clough, Tennyson,\n Carlyle, Arnold, Browning, Swinburne, Goethe, Schiller, Heine,\n Victor Hugo, Leconte de Lisle, Leopardi, and certain French and\n English novelists.\n\n\n II.--Modern Science, physical, mental, and moral, sapping the\n bases of all supernaturalist systems.\n\n 1. Astronomy, newly directed by Laplace.\n\n 2. Geology, gradually connected (as in Britain by Chambers) with\n\n 3. Biology, made definitely non-deistic by Darwin.\n\n 4. The comprehension of all science in the Evolution Theory,\n as by Spencer, advancing on Comte.\n\n 5. Psychology, as regards localization of brain functions.\n\n 6. Comparative mythology, as yet imperfectly applied to Christism.\n\n 7. Sociology, as outlined by Comte, Buckle, Spencer, Winwood Reade,\n Lester Ward, Giddings, Tarde, Durkheim, and others, on strictly\n naturalistic lines.\n\n 8. Comparative Hierology; the methodical application of principles\n insisted on by all the deists, and formulated in the interests\n of deism by Lessing, but latterly freed of his implications.\n\n 9. Above all, the later development of Anthropology (in the wide\n English sense of the term), which, beginning to take shape in the\n eighteenth century, came to new life in the latter part of the\n nineteenth; and is now one of the most widely cultivated of all the\n sciences--especially on the side of religious creed and psychology.\n\n\nOn the other hand, we may group somewhat as follows the general forces\nof retardation of freethought operating throughout the century:--\n\n\n 1. Penal laws, still operative in Britain and Germany against\n popular freethought propaganda, and till recently in Britain\n against any endowment of freethought.\n\n 2. Class interests, involving in the first half of the century\n a social conspiracy against rationalism in England.\n\n 3. Commercial pressure thus set up, and always involved in the\n influence of churches.\n\n 4. In England, identification of orthodox Dissent with political\n Liberalism--a sedative.\n\n 5. Concessions by the clergy, especially in England and the United\n States--to many, another sedative.\n\n 6. Above all, the production of new masses of popular ignorance\n in the industrial nations, and continued lack of education in\n the others.\n\n 7. On this basis, business-like and in large part secular-minded\n organization of the endowed churches, as against a freethought\n propaganda hampered by the previously named causes, and in England\n by laws which veto all direct endowment of anti-Christian heresy.\n\n\nIt remains to make, with forced brevity, the surveys thus outlined.\n\n\n\n\nSection 1.--Popular Propaganda and Culture\n\n1. If any one circumstance more than another differentiates the life\nof to-day from that of older civilizations, or from that of previous\ncenturies of the modern era, it is the diffusion of rationalistic\nviews among the \"common people.\" In no other era is to be found the\nphenomenon of widespread critical skepticism among the labouring\nmasses: in all previous ages, though chronic complaint is made of\nsome unbelief among the uneducated, the constant and abject ignorance\nof the mass of the people has been the sure foothold of superstitious\nsystems. Within the last century the area of the recognizably civilized\nworld has grown far vaster; and in the immense populations that have\nthus arisen there is a relative degree of enlightenment, coupled with\na degree of political power never before attained. Merely to survey,\nthen, the broad movement of popular culture in the period in question\nwill yield a useful notion of the dynamic change in the balance of\nthought in modern times, and will make more intelligible the special\naspects of the culture process.\n\nThis vital change in the distribution of knowledge is largely to\nbe attributed to the written and spoken teaching of a line of men\nwho made popular enlightenment their great aim. Their leading type\namong the English-speaking races is Thomas Paine, whom we have seen\ncombining a gospel of democracy with a gospel of critical reason in\nthe midst of the French Revolution. Never before had rationalism been\nmade widely popular. The English and French deists had written for\nthe middle and upper classes. Peter Annet was practically the first\nwho sought to reach the multitude; and his punishment expressed\nthe special resentment aroused in the governing classes by such\na policy. Of all the English freethinkers of the earlier deistical\nperiod he alone was selected for reprinting by the propagandists of the\nPaine period. Paine was to Annet, however, as a cannon to a musket,\nand through the democratic ferment of his day he won an audience\na hundredfold wider than Annet could have dreamt of reaching. The\nanger of the governing classes, in a time of anti-democratic panic,\nwas proportional. Paine would have been at least imprisoned for\nhis Rights of Man had he not fled from England in time; and the\nsale of all his books was furiously prohibited and ferociously\npunished. Yet they circulated everywhere, even in Protestant Ireland,\n[1674] hitherto affected only under the surface of upper-class life by\ndeism. The circulation of Bishop Watson's Apology in reply only served\nto spread the contagion, as it brought the issues before multitudes\nwho would not otherwise have heard of them. [1675] All the while,\ndirect propaganda was carried on by translations and reprints as\nwell as by fresh English tractates. Diderot's Thoughts on Religion,\nand Fr\u00e9ret's Letter from Thrasybulus to Leucippus, seem to have been\ngreat favourites among the Painites, as was Elihu Palmer's Principles\nof Nature; and Volney's Ruins of Empires had a large vogue. Condorcet's\nEsquisse had been promptly translated in 1795; the translation of\nd'Holbach's System of Nature reached a third edition in 1817; [1676]\nthat of Raynal's History had been reprinted in 1804; and that of\nHelv\u00e9tius On the Mind in 1810; while an English abridgment of Bayle\nin four volumes, on freethinking lines, appeared in 1826.\n\n2. Meantime, new writers arose to carry into fuller detail the attacks\nof Paine, sharpening their weapons on those of the more scholarly\nFrench deists. A Life of Jesus, including his Apocryphal History,\n[1677] was published in 1818, with such astute avoidance of all\ncomment that it escaped prosecution. Others, taking a more daring\ncourse, fared accordingly. George Houston translated the Ecce Homo of\nd'Holbach, first publishing it at Edinburgh in 1799, and reprinting it\nin London in 1813. For the second issue he was prosecuted, fined \u00a3200,\nand imprisoned for two years in Newgate. Robert Wedderburn, a mulatto\ncalling himself \"the Rev.,\" in reality a superannuated journeyman\ntailor who officiated in Hopkins Street Unitarian Chapel, London, was\nin 1820 sentenced to two years' imprisonment in Dorchester Jail for a\n\"blasphemous libel\" contained in one of his pulpit discourses. His\nLetters to the Rev. Solomon Herschell (the Jewish Chief Rabbi) and to\nthe Archbishop of Canterbury show a happy vein of orderly irony and\nnot a little learning, despite his profession of apostolic ignorance;\nand at the trial the judge admitted his defence to be \"exceedingly\nwell drawn up.\" His publications naturally received a new impetus,\nand passed to a more drastic order of mockery.\n\n3. As the years went on, the persecution in England grew still fiercer;\nbut it was met with a stubborn hardihood which wore out even the\nbitter malice of piety. One of the worst features of the religious\ncrusade was that it affected to attack not unbelief but \"vice,\" such\nbeing the plea on which Wilberforce and others prosecuted, during a\nperiod of more than twenty years, the publishers and booksellers who\nissued the works of Paine. [1678] But even that dissembling device\ndid not ultimately avail. A name not to be forgotten by those who\nvalue obscure service to human freedom is that of Richard Carlile,\nwho between 1819 and 1835 underwent nine years' imprisonment in his\nunyielding struggle for the freedom of the Press, of thought, and of\nspeech. [1679] John Clarke, an ex-Methodist, became one of Carlile's\nshopmen, was tried in 1824 for selling one of his publications,\nand \"after a spirited defence, in which he read many of the worst\npassages of the Bible,\" was sentenced to three years' imprisonment,\nand to find securities for good behaviour during life. The latter\ndisability he effectively anticipated by writing, while in prison, A\nCritical Review of the Life, Character, and Miracles of Jesus, wherein\nChristian feelings were treated as Christians had treated the feelings\nof freethinkers, with a much more destructive result. Published first,\nstrangely enough, in the Newgate Magazine, it was republished in 1825\nand 1839, with impunity. Thus did a brutal bigotry bring upon itself\never a deadlier retaliation, till it sickened of the contest. Those\nwho threw up the struggle on the orthodox side declaimed as before\nabout the tone of the unbeliever's attack, failing to read the plain\nlesson that, while noisy fanaticism, doing its own worst and vilest,\ndeterred from utterance all the gentler and more sympathetic spirits\non the side of reason, the work of reason could be done only by\nthe harder natures, which gave back blow for blow and insult for\ninsult, rejoicing in the encounter. Thus championed, freethought\ncould not be crushed. The propagandist and publishing work done by\nCarlile was carried on diversely by such free lances as Robert Taylor\n(ex-clergyman, author of the Diegesis, 1829, and The Devil's Pulpit,\n1830), Charles Southwell (1814-1860), and William Hone, [1680] who\nultimately became an independent preacher. Southwell, a disciple of\nRobert Owen, who edited The Oracle of Reason, was imprisoned for a year\nin 1840 for publishing in that journal an article entitled \"The Jew\nBook\"; and was succeeded in the editorship by George Jacob Holyoake\n(1817-1906), another Owenite missionary, who met a similar sentence;\nwhereafter George Adams and his wife, who continued to publish the\njournal, were imprisoned in turn. Matilda Roalfe and Mrs. Emma Martin\nabout the same period underwent imprisonment for like causes. [1681]\nIn this fashion, by the steady courage of a much-enduring band of men\nand women, was set on foot a systematic Secularist propaganda--the\nname having relation to the term \"Secularism,\" coined by Holyoake.\n\n4. In this evolution political activities played an important\npart. Henry Hetherington (1792-1849), the strenuous democrat who\nin 1830 began the trade union movement, and so became the founder of\nChartism, fought for the right of publication in matters of freethought\nas in politics. After undergoing two imprisonments of six months\neach (1832), and carrying on for three and a half years the struggle\nfor an untaxed Press, which ended in his victory (1834), he was in\n1840 indicted for publishing Haslam's Letters to the Clergy of all\nDenominations, a freethinking criticism of Old Testament morality. He\ndefended himself so ably that Lord Denman, the judge, confessed to have\n\"listened with feelings of great interest and sentiments of respect\ntoo\"; and Justice Talfourd later spoke of the defence as marked by\n\"great propriety and talent.\" Nevertheless, he was punished by four\nmonths' imprisonment. [1682] In the following year, on the advice of\nFrancis Place, he brought a test prosecution for blasphemy against\nMoxon, the poet-publisher, for issuing Shelley's complete works,\nincluding Queen Mab. Talfourd, then Serjeant, defended Moxon, and\npleaded that there \"must be some alteration of the law, or some\nrestriction of the right to put it in action\"; but the jury were\nimpartial enough to find the publisher guilty, though he received\nno punishment. [1683] Among other works published by Hetherington\nwas one entitled A Hunt after the Devil, \"by Dr. P. Y.\" (really by\nLieutenant Lecount), in which the story of Noah's ark was subjected\nto a destructive criticism. [1684]\n\n5. Holyoake had been a missionary and martyr in the movement\nof Socialism set up by Robert Owen, whose teaching, essentially\nscientific on its psychological or philosophical side, was the first\neffort to give systematic effect to democratic ideals by organizing\nindustry. It was in the discussions of the \"Association of all Classes\nof all Nations,\" formed by Owen in 1835, that the word \"Socialism\"\nfirst became current. [1685] Owen was a freethinker in all things;\n[1686] and his whole movement was so penetrated by an anti-theological\nspirit that the clergy as a rule became its bitter enemies, though\nsuch publicists as Macaulay and John Mill also combined with them\nin scouting it on political and economic grounds. [1687] Up till\nthe middle of 1817 he had on his side a large body of \"respectable\"\nand highly-placed philanthropists, his notable success in his own\nsocial and commercial undertakings being his main recommendation. His\nearly Essays on the Formation of Character, indeed, were sufficient\nto reveal his heterodoxy; but not until, at his memorable public\nmeeting on August 21, 1817, he began to expatiate on \"the gross\nerrors that have been combined with the fundamental notions of every\nreligion that has hitherto been taught to men\" [1688] did he rank as\nan aggressive freethinker. It was in his own view the turning-point of\nhis life. He was not prosecuted; though Brougham declared that if any\npolitician had said half as much he would have been \"burned alive\";\nbut the alienation of \"moderate\" opinion at once began; and Owen,\nalways more fervid than prudent, never recovered his influence among\nthe upper classes. Nonetheless, \"his secularistic teaching gained\nsuch influence among the working classes as to give occasion for the\nstatement in the Westminster Review (1839) that his principles were\nthe actual creed of a great portion of them.\" [1689]\n\nOwen's polemic method--if it could properly be so called--was not\nso much a criticism of dogma as a calm impeachment of religion in a\nspirit of philanthropy. No reformer was ever more entirely free from\nthe spirit of wrath: on this side Owen towers above comparison. \"There\nis no place found in him for scorn or indignation. He cannot bring\nhimself to speak or think evil of any man. He carried out in his daily\nlife his own teaching that man is not the proper object of praise or\nblame. Throughout his numerous works there is hardly a sentence of\nindignation--of personal denunciation never. He loves the sinner, and\ncan hardly bring himself to hate the sin.\" [1690] He had come by his\nrationalism through the influence rather of Rousseau than of Voltaire;\nand he had assimilated the philosophic doctrine of determinism--of all\nideals the most difficult to realize in conduct--with a thoroughness\nof which the flawed Rousseau was incapable. There was thus presented\nto the world the curious case of a man who on the side of character\ncarried rationalism to the perfection of ideal \"saintliness,\" while\nin the general application of rational thought to concrete problems\nhe was virtually unteachable. For an absolute and immovable conviction\nin his own practical rightness was in Owen as essential a constituent\nas his absolute benevolence. [1691] These were the two poles of his\npersonality. He was, in short, a fair embodiment of the ideal formed\nby many people--doctrine and dogma apart--of the Gospel Jesus. And\nmost Christians accordingly shunned and feared or hated him.\n\nSuch a personality was evidently a formidable force as against the\nreinforced English orthodoxy of the first generation of the nineteenth\ncentury. The nature of Owen's propaganda as against religion may\nbe best sampled from his lecture, \"The New Religion: or, Religion\nfounded on the Immutable Laws of the Universe, contrasted with all\nReligions founded on Human Testimony,\" delivered at the London Tavern\non October 20, 1830: [1692]--\n\n\n \"Under the arrangements which have hitherto existed for educating\n and governing man, four general characters have been produced\n among the human race. These four characters appear to be formed,\n under the past and present arrangements of society, from four\n different original organizations at birth....\n\n \"No. 1. May be termed the conscientious religious in all countries.\n\n No. 2. Unbelievers in the truth of any religion, but who\n strenuously support the religion of their country, under the\n conviction that, although religion is not necessary to insure\n their own good conduct, it is eminently required to compel others\n to act right.\n\n No. 3. Unbelievers who openly avow their disbelief in the truth\n of any religion, such as Deists, Atheists, Skeptics, etc., etc.,\n but who do not perceive the laws of nature relative to man as an\n individual, or when united in a social state.\n\n No. 4. Disbelievers in all past and present religions, but\n believers in the eternal unchanging laws of the universe, as\n developed by facts derived from all past experience; and who,\n by a careful study of these facts, deduce from them the religion\n of nature.\n\n Class No. 1 is formed, under certain circumstances, from those\n original organizations which possess at birth strong moral and\n weak intellectual faculties.... Class No. 2 is composed of those\n individuals who by nature possess a smaller quantity of moral\n and a larger quantity of intellectual faculty.... Class No. 3\n is composed of men of strong moral and moderate intellectual\n faculty.... Class No. 4 comprises those who, by nature, possess\n a high degree of intellectual and moral faculty....\"\n\n\nThus all forms of opinion were shown to proceed either from\nintellectual or moral defect, save the opinions of Owen. Such\npropositions, tranquilly elaborated, were probably as effective\nin producing irritation as any frontal attack upon any dogmas,\nnarratives, or polities. But, though not even consistent (inasmuch as\nthe fundamental thesis that \"character is formed by circumstances\" is\nundermined by the datum of four varieties of organization), they were\npotent to influence serious men otherwise broadly instructed as to the\nnature of religious history and the irrationality of dogma; and Owen\nfor a generation, despite the inevitable failure and frustration of\nhis social schemes, exercised by his movement a very wide influence\non popular life. To a considerable extent it was furthered by the\npopular deistic philosophy of George and Andrew Combe--a kind of\ndeistic positivism--which then had a great vogue; [1693] and by\nthe implications of phrenology, then also in its most scientific\nand progressive stage. When, for various reasons, Owen's movement\ndissolved, the freethinking element seems to have been absorbed in the\nsecular party, while the others appear to have gone in large part to\nbuild up the movement of Co-operation. On the whole, the movement of\npopular freethought in England could be described as poor, struggling,\nand persecuted, only the most hardy and zealous venturing to associate\nthemselves with it. The imprisonment of Holyoake (1842) for six months,\non a trifling charge of blasphemy, is an illustration of the brutal\nspirit of public orthodoxy at the time. [1694] Where bigotry could\nthus only injure and oppress without suppressing heresy, it stimulated\nresistance; and the result of the stimulus was a revival of popular\npropaganda which led to the founding of a Secular Society in 1852.\n\n6. This date broadly coincides with the maximum domination of\nconventional orthodoxy in English life. From about the middle\nof the century the balance gradually changes. In 1852 we find the\npublisher Henry Bohn reissuing the worthless apologetic works of the\nRev. Andrew Fuller, with a \"publisher's preface\" in which they are\nsaid to \"maintain an acknowledged pre-eminence,\" though written \"at a\nperiod of our national history when the writings of Volney and Gibbon,\nand especially of Thomas Paine, fostered by the political effects\nof the French Revolution, had deteriorated the morals of the people,\nand infused the poison of infidelity into the disaffected portion of\nthe public.\" We have here still the note of early-nineteenth-century\nAnglican respectability, not easily to be matched in human history\nfor hollowness and blatancy. Fuller is at once one of the most\nrabid and one of the most futile of the thousand and one defenders\nof the faith. A sample of his mind and method is the verdict that\n\"If the light that is gone abroad on earth would permit the rearing\nof temples to Venus, or Bacchus, or any of the rabble of heathen\ndeities, there is little doubt but that modern unbelievers would in\ngreat numbers become their devotees; but, seeing they cannot have\na God whose worship shall accord with their inclinations, they seem\ndetermined not to worship at all.\" [1695] In the very next year the\nsame publisher began the issue of a reprint of Gibbon, with variorum\nnotes, edited by \"An English Churchman,\" who for the most part defended\nGibbon against his orthodox critics. This enterprise in turn brought\nupon the pious publisher a fair share of odium. But the second half\nof the century, albeit soon darkened by new wars in Europe, Asia, and\nAmerica, was to be for England one of Liberalism alike in politics and\nin thought, free trade, and relatively free publication, with progress\nin enlightenment for both the populace and the \"educated\" classes.\n\n7. In 1858 there was elected to the presidency of the London Secular\nSociety the young Charles Bradlaugh, one of the greatest orators of\nhis age, and one of the most powerful personalities ever associated\nwith a progressive movement. Early experience of clerical persecution,\nwhich even drove the boy from his father's roof, helped to make him\na fighter, but never infirmed his humanity. In the main self-taught,\nhe acquired a large measure of culture in French and English, and\nhis rare natural gift for debate was sharpened by a legal training. A\npersonal admirer of Owen, he never accepted his social polity, but was\nat all times the most zealous of democratic reformers. Thenceforward\nthe working masses in England were in large part kept in touch\nwith a freethought which drew on the results of the scientific and\nscholarly research of the time, and wielded a dialectic of which\ntrained opponents confessed the power. [1696] In the place of the bland\ndogmatism of Owen, and the calm assumption that all mankind could and\nshould be schoolmastered into happiness and order, there came the alert\nrecognition of the absoluteness of individualism as regards conviction,\nand its present pre-potency as regards social arrangements. Every\nthesis was brought to the test of argument and evidence; and in due\ncourse many who had complained that Owen would not argue, complained\nthat the new school argued everything. The essential thing was that\nthe people were receiving vitally needed instruction; and were being\ntaught with a new power to think for themselves. Incidentally they were\nfreed from an old burden by Bradlaugh's successful resistance to the\ndemand of suretyship from newspapers, and by his no less successful\nbattle for the right of non-theistic witnesses to make affirmation\ninstead of taking the oath in the law courts. [1697]\n\nThe inspiration and the instruction of the popular movement thus\nmaintained were at once literary, scientific, ethical, historical,\nscholarly, and philosophic. Shelley was its poet; Voltaire its first\nstory-teller; and Gibbon its favourite historian. In philosophy,\nBradlaugh learned less from Hume than from Spinoza; in Biblical\ncriticism--himself possessing a working knowledge of Hebrew--he\ncollated the work of English and French specialists, down to\nand including Colenso, applying all the while to the consecrated\nrecord the merciless tests of a consistent ethic. At the same time,\nthe whole battery of argument from the natural sciences was turned\nagainst traditionalism and supernaturalism, alike in the lectures\nof Bradlaugh and the other speakers of his party, and in the pages\nof his journal, The National Reformer. The general outcome was\nan unprecedented diffusion of critical thought among the English\nmasses, and a proportionate antagonism to those who had wrought\nsuch a result. When, therefore, Bradlaugh, as deeply concerned for\npolitical as for intellectual righteousness, set himself to the task\nof entering Parliament, he commenced a struggle which shortened his\nlife, though it promoted his main objects. Not till after a series\nof electoral contests extending over twelve years was he elected for\nNorthampton in 1880; and the House of Commons in a manner enacted\nafresh the long resistance made to him in that city. [1698] When,\nhowever, on his election in 1880, the Conservative Opposition began\nthe historic proceedings over the Oath question, they probably did\neven more to deepen and diffuse the popular freethought movement than\nBradlaugh himself had done in the whole of his previous career. The\nprocess was furthered by the policy of prosecuting and imprisoning\n(1883) Mr. G. W. Foote, editor of the Freethinker, under the Blasphemy\nLaws--a course not directly ventured on as against Bradlaugh, though it\nwas sought to connect him with the publication of Mr. Foote's journal.\n\nTo this day it is common to give a false account of the origin of\nthe episode, representing Bradlaugh as having \"forced\" his opinions\non the attention of the House. Rather he strove unduly to avoid\nwounding religious feeling. Wont to make affirmation by law in the\ncourts of justice, he held that the same law applied to the \"oath of\nallegiance,\" and felt that it would be unseemly on his part to use\nthe words of adjuration if he could legally affirm. On this point\nhe expressly consulted the law officers of the Crown, and they gave\nthe opinion that he had the legal right, which was his own belief\nas a lawyer. The faction called the \"fourth party,\" however, saw an\nopportunity to embarrass the Gladstone Government by challenging the\nact of affirmation, and thus arose the protracted struggle. Only when\na committee of the House decided that he could not properly affirm\ndid Bradlaugh propose to take the oath, in order to take his seat.\n\nThe pretence of zeal for religion, made by the politicians who had\nraised the issue, was known by all men to be the merest hypocrisy. Lord\nRandolph Churchill, who distinguished himself by insisting on the moral\nnecessity for a belief in \"some divinity or other,\" is recorded to\nhave professed a special esteem for Mr. (now Lord) Morley, the most\ndistinguished Positivist of his time. [1699] The whole procedure,\nin Parliament and out, was so visibly that of the lowest political\nmalice, exploiting the crudest religious intolerance, that it turned\ninto active freethinkers many who had before been only passive\ndoubters, and raised the secularist party to an intensity of zeal\nnever before seen. At no period in modern British history had there\nbeen so constant and so keen a platform propaganda of unbelief; so\nunsparing an indictment of Christian doctrine, history, and practice;\nsuch contemptuous rebuttal of every Christian pretension; such asperity\nof spirit against the creed which was once more being championed by\nchicanery, calumny, and injustice. In those five years of indignant\nwarfare were sown the seeds of a more abundant growth of rationalism\nthan had ever before been known in the British Islands. With invincible\ndetermination Bradlaugh fought his case through Parliament and the\nlaw courts, incurring debts which forced upon him further toils that\nclearly shortened his life, but never yielding for an instant in his\nbattle with the bigotry of half the nation. Liberalism was shamed by\nmany defections; Conservatism, with the assent of Mr. Balfour, was\nsolid for injustice; [1700] and in the entire Church of England less\nthan a dozen priests stood for tolerance. But the cause at stake was\nindestructible. When Bradlaugh at length took the oath and his seat\nin 1886, under a ruling of the new Speaker (Peel) which stultified the\nwhole action of the Speaker and majorities of the previous Parliament,\nand no less that of the law courts, straightforward freethought stood\nthree-fold stronger in England than in any previous generation. Apart\nfrom their educative work, the struggles and sufferings of the\nsecularist leaders won for Great Britain the abolition within one\ngeneration of the old burden of suretyship on newspapers, and of\nthe disabilities of non-theistic witnesses; the freedom of public\nmeeting in the London parks; the right of avowed atheists to sit\nin Parliament (Bradlaugh having secured in 1888 their title to\nmake affirmation instead of oath); and the virtual discredit of the\nBlasphemy Laws as such. It is probable also that the treatment meted\nout to Mrs. Besant--then associated with Bradlaugh in freethought\npropaganda--marked the end of another form of tyrannous outrage,\nalready made historic in the case of Shelley. Secured the custody of\nher children under a marital deed of separation, she was deprived of\nit at law (1879) on her avowal of atheistic opinions, with the result\nthat her influence as a propagandist was immensely increased.\n\n8. The special energy of the English secularist movement in the ninth\ndecade was partly due to the fact that by that time there had appeared\na remarkable amount of modern freethinking literature of high literary\nand intellectual quality, and good \"social\" status. Down to 1870\nthe new literary names committed to the rejection of Christianity,\napart from the men of science who kept to their own work, were the\ntheists Hennell, F. W. Newman, W. E. Greg, R. W. Mackay, Buckle,\nand W. E. H. Lecky, all of them influential, but none of them at once\nrecognized as a first-rate force. But with the appearance of Lecky's\nHistory of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in\nEurope (1865), lacking though it was in clearness of thought, a new\ntone began to prevail; and his History of European Morals from Augustus\nto Charlemagne (1869), equally readable and not more uncompromising,\nwas soon followed by a series of powerful pronouncements of a more\nexplicit kind. One of the first of the literary class to come forward\nwith an express impeachment of Christianity was Moncure Daniel Conway,\nwhose Earthward Pilgrimage (1870) was the artistic record of a gifted\npreacher's progress from Wesleyan Methodism, through Unitarianism,\nto a theism which was soon to pass into agnosticism. In 1871 appeared\nthe remarkable work of Winwood Reade, The Martyrdom of Man, wherein\na rapid survey of ancient and medieval history, and of the growth of\nreligion from savage beginnings, leads up to a definitely anti-theistic\npresentment of the future of human life with the claim to have shown\n\"that the destruction of Christianity is essential to the interests of\ncivilization.\" [1701] Some eighteen editions tell of the acceptance\nwon by the book. Less vogue, but some startled notice, was won by\nthe Duke of Somerset's Christian Theology and Modern Scepticism\n(1872), a work of moderate rationalism, but by a peer. In 1873\nappeared Herbert Spencer's Introduction to the Study of Sociology,\nwherein the implicit anti-supernaturalism of that philosopher's First\nPrinciples was advanced upon, in the chapter on \"The Theological Bias,\"\nby a mordant attack on that Christian creed.\n\nThat attack had been preceded by Matthew Arnold's Literature and\nDogma (1872), wherein the publicist who had censured Colenso for not\nwriting in Latin described the Christian doctrine of the Trinity\nas \"the fairy-tale of three Lord Shaftesburys.\" Much pleading for\nthe recognition by unbelievers of the value of the Bible failed to\nconvince Christians of the value of such a thinker's Christianity. A\nmore important sensation was provided in 1873 by the posthumous\npublication of Mill's Autobiography, and, in the following year,\nby his Three Essays on Religion, which exhibited its esteemed author\nas not only not a Christian but as never having been one, although he\nformulated a species of limited liability theism, as unsatisfactory to\nthe rationalists as to the orthodox. Still the fresh manifestations of\nfreethinking multiplied. On the one hand the massive treatise entitled\nSupernatural Religion (1874), and on the other the freethinking\nessays of Prof. W. K. Clifford in the Fortnightly Review, the most\nvigorously outspoken ever yet written by an English academic, showed\nthat the whole field of debate was being reopened with a new power and\nconfidence. The History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century,\nby Leslie Stephen (1876), set up the same impression from another side;\nyet another social sensation was created by the appearance of Viscount\nAmberley's Analysis of Religious Belief (1877); and all the while the\n\"Higher Criticism\" proceeded within the pale of the Church.\n\nThe literary situation was now so changed that, whereas from 1850\nto 1880 the \"sensations\" in the religious world were those made\nby rationalistic attacks, thereafter they were those made by new\ndefences. H. Drummond's Natural Law in the Spiritual World (1883),\nMr. Balfour's Defence of Philosophic Doubt (1879) and Foundations\nof Belief (1895), and Mr. Kidd's Social Evolution (1894), were\nsuccessively welcomed as being declared to render such a service. It is\ndoubtful whether they are to-day valued upon that score in any quarter.\n\n9. In the first half of the century popular forms of freethought\npropaganda were hardly possible in other European countries. France\nhad been too long used to regulation alike under the monarchy and\nunder the empire to permit of open promotion of unbelief in the early\nyears of the Restoration. Yet as early as 1828 we find the Protestant\nCoquerel avowing that in his day the Bourbonism of the Catholic clergy\nhad revived the old anti-clericalism, and that it was common to find\nthe most high-minded patriots unbelievers and materialists. [1702]\nBut still more remarkable was the persistence of deep freethinking\ncurrents in the Catholic world throughout the century. About 1830\nrationalism had become normal among the younger students at Paris;\n[1703] and the revolution of that year elicited a charter putting\nall religions on an equality. [1704] Soon the throne and the chambers\nwere on a footing of practical hostility to the Church. [1705] Under\nLouis Philippe men dared to teach in the Coll\u00e8ge de France that\n\"the Christian dispensation is but one link in the chain of divine\nrevelations to man.\" [1706] Even during the first period of reaction\nafter the restoration numerous editions of Volney's Ruines and of the\nAbr\u00e9g\u00e9 [1707] of Dupuis's Origine de tous les Cultes served to maintain\namong the more intelligent of the proletariat an almost scientific\nrationalism, which can hardly be said to have been improved on by such\nhistoriography as that of Renan's Vie de J\u00e9sus. And there were other\nforces, over and above freemasonry, which in France and other Latin\ncountries has since the Revolution been steadily anti-clerical. The\nwould-be social reconstructor Charles Fourier (1772-1837) was an\nindependent and non-Christian though not an anti-clerical theist,\nand his system may have counted for something as organizing the\nsecular spirit among the workers in the period of the monarchic and\nCatholic reaction. Fourier approximated to Christianity inasmuch as he\nbelieved in a divine Providence; but like Owen he had an unbounded and\nheterodox faith in human goodness and perfectibility; and he claimed\nto have discovered the \"plan of God\" for men. But Fourier was never,\nlike Owen, a popular force; and popular rationalism went on other\nlines. At no time was the proletariat of Paris otherwise than largely\nVoltairean after the Revolution, of which one of the great services\n(carried on by Napoleon) was an improvement in popular education. The\nrival non-Christian systems of Saint-Simon (1760-1823) and Auguste\nComte (1798-1857) also never took any practical hold among them;\nbut throughout the century they have been fully the most freethinking\nworking-class population in the world.\n\n\n As to Fourier see the OEuvres Choisies de Fourier, ed. Ch. Gide,\n pp. 1-3, 9. Cp. Solidarit\u00e9: Vue Synth\u00e9tique sur la doctrine de\n Ch. Fourier, par Hippolyte Renaud, 3e \u00e9dit. 1846, ch. i: \"Pour\n ramener l'homme \u00e0 la foi\" [en Dieu], writes Renaud, \"il faut lui\n offrir aujourd'hui une foi compl\u00e8te et compos\u00e9e, une foi solidement\n assise sur le t\u00e9moignage de la raison. Pour cela il faut que la\n flambeau de la science dissipe toutes les obscurit\u00e9s\" (p. 9). This\n is not propitious to dogma; but Fourier planned and promised\n to leave priests and ministers undisturbed in his new world,\n and even declared religions to be \"much superior to uncertain\n sciences.\" Gide, introd. to OEuvres Choisies, pp. xxii-xxiii,\n citing Manuscrits, vol. de 1853-1856, p. 293. Cp. Dr. Ch. Pellarin,\n Fourier, sa vie et sa th\u00e9orie, 5e \u00e9dit. p. 143.\n\n Saint-Simon, who proposed a \"new Christianity,\" expressly guarded\n against direct appeals to the people. See Weil, Saint-Simon et\n son OEuvre, 1894, p. 193. As to the Saint-Simonian sect, see an\n interesting testimony by Renan, Les Ap\u00f4tres, p. 148.\n\n\nThe generation after the fall of Napoleon was pre-eminently the period\nof new schemes of society; and it is noteworthy that they were all\nnon-Christian, though all, including even Owen's, claimed to provide\na \"religion,\" and the French may seem all to have been convinced by\nNapoleon's practice that some kind of cult must be provided for the\npeoples. Owen alone rejected alike supernaturalism and cultus; and\nhis movement left the most definite rationalistic traces. All seem\nto have been generated by the double influence of (1) the social\nfailure of the French Revolution, which left so many anxious for\nanother and better effort at reconstruction, and (2) of the spectacle\nof the rule of Napoleon, which seems to have elicited new ideals of\nbeneficent autocracy. Owen, Fourier, Saint-Simon, and Comte were all\nalike would-be founders of a new society or social religion. It seems\nprobable that this proclivity to systematic reconstruction, in a world\nwhich still carried a panic-memory of one great social overturn, helped\nto lengthen the rule of orthodoxy. Considerably more progress was made\nwhen freethought became detached from special plans of polity, and\ngrew up anew by way of sheer truth-seeking on all the lines of inquiry.\n\nIn France, however, the freethinking tradition from the eighteenth\ncentury never passed away, at least as regards the life of the great\ntowns. And while Napoleon III made it his business to conciliate the\nChurch, which in the person of the somewhat latitudinarian Darboy,\nArchbishop of Paris, had endorsed his coup d'\u00e9tat of 1851, [1708]\neven under his rule the irreversible movement of freethought revealed\nitself among his own ministers. Victor Duruy, the eminent historian,\nhis energetic Minister of Education, was a freethinker, non-aggressive\ntowards the Church, but perfectly determined not to permit aggression\nby it. [1709] And when the Church, in its immemorial way, declaimed\nagainst all forms of rationalistic teaching in the colleges, and\ninsisted on controlling the instruction in all the schools, [1710]\nhis firm resistance made him one of its most hated antagonists. Even\nin the Senate, then the asylum of all forms of antiquated thought and\nprejudice, Duruy was able to carry his point against the prelates,\nSainte-Beuve strongly and skilfully supporting him. [1711] Thus in\nthe France of the Third Empire, on the open field of the educational\nbattle-ground between faith and reason, the rationalistic advance\nwas apparent in administration no less than in the teaching of the\nprofessed men of science and the polemic of the professed critics\nof religion.\n\n10. In other Catholic countries the course of popular culture in\nthe first half of the century was not greatly dissimilar to that\nseen in France, though less rapid and expansive. Thus we find the\nSpanish Inquisitor-General in 1815 declaring that \"all the world\nsees with horror the rapid progress of unbelief,\" and denouncing\n\"the errors and the new and dangerous doctrines\" which have passed\nfrom other countries to Spain. [1712] This evolution was to some\nextent checked; but in the latter half of the century, especially\nin the last thirty years, all the Catholic countries of Europe were\nmore or less permeated with demotic freethought, usually going hand\nin hand with republican or socialistic propaganda in politics. It is\nindeed a significant fact that freethought propaganda is often most\nactive in countries where the Catholic Church is most powerful. Thus\nin Belgium there are at least three separate federations, standing\nfor hundreds of freethinking \"groups\"; in Spain, a few years ago,\nthere were freethought societies in all the large towns, and at\nleast half-a-dozen freethought journals; in Portugal there have\nbeen a number of societies--a weekly journal, O Secolo, of Lisbon,\nand a monthly review, O Livre Exame. In France and Italy, where\neducated society is in large measure rationalistic, the Masonic\nlodges do most of the personal and social propaganda; but there are\nfederations of freethought societies in both countries. In Switzerland\nfreethought is more aggressive in the Catholic than in the Protestant\ncantons. [1713] In the South American republics, again, as in Italy\nand France, the Masonic lodges are predominantly freethinking; and in\nPeru there was, a few years ago, a Freethought League, with a weekly\norgan. As long ago as 1856 the American diplomatist and arch\u00e6ologist,\nSquier, wrote that, \"Although the people of Honduras, in common with\nthose of Central America in general, are nominally Catholics, yet,\namong those capable of reflection or possessed of education, there\nare more who are destitute of any fixed creed--Rationalists or, as\nthey are sometimes called, Freethinkers, than adherents of any form\nof religion.\" [1714] That the movement is also active in the other\nrepublics of the southern continent may be inferred from the facts\nthat a Positivist organization has long subsisted in Brazil; that its\nmembers were active in the peaceful revolution which there substituted\na republic for a monarchy; and that at the Freethought Congresses of\nRome and Paris in 1904 and 1905 there was an energetic demand for a\nCongress at Buenos Aires, which was finally agreed to for 1906.\n\nWhile popular propaganda is hardly possible save on political lines,\nfreethinking journalism has counted for much in the most Catholic parts\nof Southern Europe. The influence of such journals is to be measured\nnot by their circulation, which is never great, but by their keeping up\na habit of more or less instructed freethinking among readers, to many\nof whom the instruction is not otherwise easily accessible. Probably\nthe least ambitious of them is an intellectual force of a higher order\nthan the highest grade of popular religious journalism; while some of\nthe stronger, as De Dageraad of Amsterdam, have ranked as high-class\nserious reviews. In the more free and progressive countries, however,\nfreethought affects all periodical literature; and in France it partly\npermeates the ordinary newspapers. In England, where a series of\nmonthly or weekly publications of an emphatically freethinking sort\nhas been nearly continuous from about 1840, [1715] new ones rising\nin place of those which succumbed to the commercial difficulties,\nsuch periodicals suffer an economic pinch in that they cannot hope\nfor much income from advertisements, which are the chief sustenance\nof popular journals and magazines. The same law holds elsewhere; but\nin England and America the high-priced reviews have been gradually\nopened to rationalistic articles, the way being led by the English\nWestminster Review [1716] and Fortnightly Review, both founded with\nan eye to freer discussion.\n\n\n Among the earlier freethinking periodicals may be noted The\n Republican, 1819-26 (edited by Carlile); The Deist's Magazine,\n 1820; The Lion, 1828 (Carlile); The Prompter, 1830 (Carlile);\n The Gauntlet, 1833 (Carlile); The Atheist and Republican, 1841-42;\n The Blasphemer, 1842; The Oracle of Reason (founded by Southwell),\n 1842, etc.; The Reasoner and Herald of Progress (largely conducted\n by Holyoake), 1846-1861; Cooper's Journal; or, unfettered\n Thinker, etc., 1850, etc.; The Movement, 1843; The Freethinker's\n Information for the People (undated: after 1840); Freethinker's\n Magazine, 1850, etc.; London Investigator, 1854, etc. Bradlaugh's\n National Reformer, begun in 1860, lasted till 1893. Mr. Foote's\n Freethinker, begun in 1881, still subsists. Various freethinking\n monthlies have risen and fallen since 1880--e.g., Our Corner,\n edited by Mrs. Besant, 1883-88; The Liberal and Progress, edited\n by Mr. Foote, 1879-87; the Free Review, transformed into the\n University Magazine, 1893-1898. The Reformer, a monthly, edited by\n Mrs. Bradlaugh Bonner, subsisted from 1897 to 1904. The Literary\n Guide, which began as a small sheet in 1885, flourishes. Since\n 1900, a popular Socialist journal, The Clarion, has declared for\n rationalism through the pen of its editor, Mr. R. Blatchford\n (\"Nunquam\"), whose polemic has caused much controversy. For a\n generation back, further, rationalistic essays have appeared\n from time to time not only in the Fortnightly Review (founded\n by G. H. Lewes, and long edited by Mr. John (now Lord) Morley,\n much of whose writing on the French philosophes appeared in its\n pages), but in the Nineteenth Century, wherein was carried on,\n for instance, the famous controversy between Mr. Gladstone and\n Prof. Huxley. In the early 'seventies, the Cornhill Magazine,\n under the editorship of Leslie Stephen, issued serially Matthew\n Arnold's Literature and Dogma and St. Paul and Protestantism. In\n the latter years of the century quite a number of reviews, some of\n them short-lived, gave space to advanced opinions. But propaganda\n has latterly become more and more a matter of all-pervading\n literary influence, the immense circulation of the sixpenny\n reprints of the R. P. A. having put the advanced literature of\n the last generation within the reach of all.\n\n\n11. In Germany, as we have seen, the relative selectness of culture,\nthe comparative aloofness of the \"enlightened\" from the mass of the\npeople, made possible after the War of Independence a certain pietistic\nreaction, in the absence of any popular propagandist machinery\nor purpose on the side of the rationalists. In the opinion of an\nevangelical authority, at the beginning of the nineteenth century,\n\"through modern enlightenment (Aufkl\u00e4rung) the people had become\nindifferent to the Church; the Bible was regarded as a merely human\nbook, the Saviour merely as a person who had lived and taught long ago,\nnot as one whose almighty presence is with his people still.\" [1717]\nAccording to the same authority, \"before the war, the indifference to\nthe word of God which prevailed among the upper classes had penetrated\nto the lower; but after it, a desire for the Scriptures was everywhere\nfelt.\" [1718] This involves an admission that the \"religion of the\nheart\" propounded by Schleiermacher in his addresses On Religion\n\"to the educated among its despisers\" [1719] (1799) was not really a\nChristian revival at all. Schleiermacher himself in 1803 declared that\nin Prussia there was almost no attendance on public worship, and the\nclergy had fallen into profound discredit. [1720] A pietistic movement\nhad, however, begun during the period of the French ascendancy; [1721]\nand seeing that the freethinking of the previous generation had been\nin part associated with French opinion, it was natural that on this\nside anti-French feeling should promote a reversion to older and more\n\"national\" forms of feeling. Thus after the fall of Napoleon the tone\nof the students who had fought in the war seems to have been more\nreligious than that of previous years. [1722] Inasmuch, however, as\nthe \"enlightenment\" of the scholarly class was maintained, and applied\nanew to critical problems, the religious revival did not turn back the\ncourse of progress. \"When the third centenary commemoration, in 1817,\nof the Reformation approached, the Prussian people were in a state\nof stolid indifference, apparently, on religious matters.\" [1723]\nAlongside of the pietistic reaction of the Liberation period there\nwent on an open ecclesiastical strife, dating from an anti-rationalist\ndeclaration by the Court preacher Reinhard at Dresden in 1811, [1724]\nbetween the rationalists or \"Friends of Light\" and the Scripturalists\nof the old school; and the effect was a general disintegration of\northodoxy, despite, or it may be largely in virtue of, the governmental\npolicy of rewarding the Pietists and discouraging their opponents\nin the way of official appointments. [1725] The Prussian measure\n(1817) of forcibly uniting the Lutheran and Calvinistic Churches,\nwith a neutral sacramental ritual in which the eucharist was treated\nas a historical commemoration, tended to the same consequences,\nthough it also revived old Lutheran zeal; [1726] and when the\nnew revolutionary movement broke out in 1848, popular feeling was\nsubstantially non-religious. \"In the south of Germany especially\nthe conflict of political opinions and revolutionary tendencies\nproduced, in the first instance, an entire prostration of religious\nsentiment.\" The bulk of society showed entire indifference to worship,\nthe churches being everywhere deserted; and \"atheism was openly avowed,\nand Christianity ridiculed as the invention of priestcraft.\" [1727]\nOne result was a desperate effort of the clergy to \"effect a union\namong all who retained any measure of Christian belief, in order to\nraise up their national religion and faith from the lowest state into\nwhich it has ever fallen since the French Revolution.\"\n\nBut the clerical effort evoked a counter effort. Already, in 1846,\nofficial interference with freedom of utterance led to the formation\nof a \"free religious\" society by Dr. Rupp, of K\u00f6nigsberg, one of\nthe \"Friends of Light\" in the State Church; and he was followed by\nWislicenus of Halle, a Hegelian, and by Uhlich of Magdeburg. [1728]\nAs a result of the determined pressure, social and official, which\nensued on the collapse of the revolution of 1848, these societies\nfailed to develop on the scale of their beginnings; and that of\nMagdeburg, which at the outset had 7,000 members, has latterly\nonly 500; though that of Berlin has nearly 4,000. [1729] There is\nfurther a Freidenker Bund, with branches in many towns; and the two\norganizations, with their total membership of some fifty thousand,\nmay be held to represent the militant side of popular freethought\nin Germany. This, however, constitutes only a fraction of the\ntotal amount of passive rationalism. There is a large measure of\nenlightenment in both the working and the middle classes; and the\nostensible force of orthodoxy among the official and conformist\nmiddle class is in many respects illusory. The German police laws\nput a rigid check on all manner of platform and press propaganda\nwhich could be indicted as hurting the feelings of religious people;\nso that a jest at the Holy Coat of Tr\u00e8ves could even in recent years\nsend a journalist to jail, and the platform work of the militant\nsocieties is closely trammelled. Yet there are, or have been, over\na dozen journals which so far as may be take the freethought side;\n[1730] and the whole stress of Bismarckian reaction and of official\northodoxy under the present Kaiser has never availed to make the tone\nof popular thought pietistic. Karl Marx, the prophet of the German\nSocialist movement (1818-1883), laid it down as part of its mission\n\"to free consciousness from the religious spectre\"; and his two most\ninfluential followers in Germany, Bebel and Liebknecht, were avowed\natheists, the former even going so far as to avow officially in the\nReichstag that \"the aim of our party is on the political plane the\nrepublican form of State; on the economic, Socialism; and on the plane\nwhich we term the religious, atheism\"; [1731] though the party attempts\nno propaganda of the latter order. \"Christianity and Social-Democracy,\"\nsaid Bebel again, \"are opposed as fire and water.\" [1732]\n\nSome index to the amount of popular freethought that normally exists\nunder the surface in Germany is furnished, further, by the strength of\nthe German freethought movement in the United States, where, despite\nthe tendency to the adoption of the common speech, there grew up in\nthe last quarter of the nineteenth century many German freethinking\nsocieties, a German federation of atheists, and a vigorous popular\norgan, Der Freidenker.\n\nThus, under the sounder moral and economic conditions of the life of\nthe proletariate in Germany, straightforward rationalism, as apart\nfrom propaganda, is becoming among them more and more the rule. The\nbureaucratic control of education forces religious teaching in the\ncommon schools; and there is no \"conscience clause\" for unbelieving\nparents. [1733] A Protestant pastor at the end of the century made\nan investigation into the state of religious opinion among the\nworking Socialists of some provincial towns and rural districts,\nand found everywhere a determined attitude of rationalism. The\nformula of the Social Democrats, \"Religion is a private matter,\" he\nbitterly perceives to carry the implication \"a private matter for the\nfools\"; and while he holds that the belief in a speedy collapse of\nthe Christian religion is latterly less common than formerly among\nthe upper and middle classes, he complains that the Socialists are\nnot similarly enlightened. [1734] Bebel's drastic teaching as to the\neconomic and social conditions of the rise of Christianity, [1735]\nand the materialistic theory of history set forth by Marx and Engels,\nhe finds generally accepted. Not only do most of the party leaders\ndeclare themselves to be without religion, but those who do not so\ndeclare themselves are so no less. [1736] Nor is the unbelief a mere\nsequel to the Socialism: often the development is the other way. [1737]\nThe opinion is almost universal, further, that the clergy in general\ndo not believe what they teach. [1738] Atheists are numerous among the\npeasantry; more numerous among the workers in the provincial towns;\nand still more numerous in the large towns; [1739] and while many take\na sympathetic view of Jesus as a man and teacher, not a few deny his\nhistoric existence [1740]--a view set forth in non-Socialist circles\nalso. [1741]\n\n12. Under the widely-different political conditions in Russia and\nthe Scandinavian States it is the more significant that in all alike\nrationalism is latterly common among the educated classes. In Norway\nthe latter perhaps include a larger proportion of working people\nthan can be so classed even in Germany; and rationalism is relatively\nhopeful, though social freedom is still far from perfect. It is the\nold story of toleration for a dangerously well-placed freethought,\nand intolerance for that which reaches the common people. In Russia\nrationalism has before it the task of transmuting a system of autocracy\ninto one of self-government. In no European country, perhaps, is\nrationalism more general among the educated classes; and in none\nis there a greater mass of popular ignorance. [1742] The popular\nicon-worship in Moscow can hardly be paralleled outside of Asia. On\nthe other hand, the aristocracy became Voltairean in the eighteenth\ncentury, and has remained more or less incredulous since, though it\nnow joins hands with the Church; while the democratic movement, in its\nvarious phases of socialism, constitutionalism, and Nihilism, has been\nmarkedly anti-religious since the second quarter of the century. [1743]\nSubsidiary revivals of mysticism, such as are chronicled in other\ncountries, are of course to be seen in Russia; but the instructed\nclass, the intelliguentia, is essentially naturalistic in its cast of\nthought. This state of things subsists despite the readiness of the\ngovernment to suppress the slightest sign of official heterodoxy in\nthe universities. [1744] The struggle is thus substantially between\nthe spirit of freedom and that of arbitrary rule; and the fortunes\nof freethought go with the former.\n\n13. \"Free-religious\" societies, such as have been noted in Germany,\nmay be rated as forms of moderate freethought propaganda, and\nare to be found in all Protestant countries, with all shades of\ndevelopment. A movement of the kind has existed for a number of\nyears back in America, in the New England States and elsewhere,\nand may be held to represent a theistic or agnostic thought too\nadvanced to adhere even to the Unitarianism which during the two\nmiddle quarters of the century was perhaps the predominant creed\nin New England. The Theistic Church conducted by the Rev. Charles\nVoysey after his expulsion from the Church of England in 1871 to\nhis death in 1912, and since then by the Rev. Dr. Walter Walsh, is\nan example. Another type of such a gradual and peaceful evolution\nis the South Place Institute (formerly \"Chapel\") of London, where,\nunder the famous orator W. J. Fox, nominally a Unitarian, there was\npreached between 1824 and 1852 a theism tending to pantheism, perhaps\ntraceable to elements in the doctrine of Priestley, and passed on by\nMr. Fox to Robert Browning. [1745] In 1864 the charge passed to Moncure\nD. Conway, under whom the congregation quietly advanced during twenty\nyears from Unitarianism to a non-scriptural rationalism, embracing\nthe shades of philosophic theism, agnosticism, and anti-theism. In\nConway's Lessons for the Day will be found a series of peculiarly vivid\nmementos of that period, a kind of itinerary, more intimate than any\nretrospective record. The latter part of his life, partly preserved\nin one of the most interesting autobiographies of the century, was\nspent between England and the United States and in travel. After\nhis first withdrawal to the States in 1884 the Institute became an\nopen platform for rationalist and non-theological ethics and social\nand historical teaching, and it now stands as an \"Ethical Society\" in\ntouch with the numerous groups so named which have come into existence\nin England in the last dozen years on lines originally laid down by\nDr. Felix Adler in New York. At the time of the present writing the\nEnglish societies of this kind number between twenty and thirty, the\nmajority being in London and its environs. Their open adherents, who\nare some thousands strong, are in most cases non-theistic rationalists,\nand include many former members of the Secularist movement, of which\nthe organization has latterly dwindled. On partly similar lines there\nwere developed in provincial towns about the end of the century\na small number of \"Labour Churches,\" in which the tendency was to\nsubstitute a rationalist humanitarian ethic for supernaturalism;\nand the same lecturers frequently spoke from their platforms and\nfrom those of Ethical and Secularist societies. Of late, however,\nthe Labour Churches have tended to disappear. All this means no\nresumption of church-going, but, by the confession of the Churches,\na completer secularization of the Sunday.\n\n14. Alongside of the lines of movement before sketched, there has\nsubsisted in England during the greater part of the nineteenth century\na considerable organization of Unitarianism. In the early years of\nthe nineteenth century it was strong enough to obtain the repeal\n(1813) of the penal laws against anti-Trinitarianism, whereafter the\nuse of the name \"Unitarian\" became more common, and a sect so called\nwas founded formally in 1825. When the heretical preachers of the\nPresbyterian sect began openly to declare themselves as Unitarians,\nthere naturally arose a protest from the orthodox, and an attempt\nwas made in 1833 to save from its new destination the property owned\nby the heretical congregations. [1746] This was frustrated by the\nDissenters' Chapels Act of 1844, which gave to each group singly the\npower to interpret its trust in its own fashion. Thenceforward the\nsect prospered considerably, albeit not so greatly as in the United\nStates. During the century English Unitarianism has been associated\nwith scholarship through such names as John Kenrick and Samuel Sharpe,\nthe historians of Egypt, and J. J. Tayler; and, less directly, with\nphilosophy in the person of Dr. James Martineau, who, however, was\nrather a coadjutor than a champion of the sect. In the United States\nthe movement, greatly aided to popularity by the eloquent humanism of\nthe two Channings, lost the prestige of the name of Emerson, who had\nbeen one of its ministers, by the inability of his congregation to go\nthe whole way with him in his opinions. In 1853 Emerson told the young\nMoncure Conway that \"the Unitarian Churches were stated to be no longer\nproducing ministers equal to their forerunners, but were more and more\nfinding their best men in those coming from orthodox Churches,\" who\n\"would, of course, have some enthusiasm for their new faith.\" [1747]\nLatterly Unitarians have been entitled to say that the Trinitarian\nChurches are approximating to their position. [1748] Such an approach,\nhowever, involves rather a weakening than a strengthening of the\nsmaller body; though some of its teachers are to the full as bigoted\nand embittered in their propaganda as the bulk of the traditionally\northodox. Others adhere to their ritual practices in the spirit of\nuse and wont, as Emerson found when he sought to rationalize in his\nown Church the usage of the eucharist. [1749] On the other hand,\nnumbers have passed from Unitarianism to thoroughgoing rationalism;\nand some whole congregations, following more or less the example of\nthat of South Place Chapel, have latterly reached a position scarcely\ndistinguishable from that of the Ethical Societies.\n\n15. A partly similar evolution has taken place among the Protestant\nChurches of France, Switzerland, Hungary, and Holland. French\nProtestantism could not but be intellectually moved by the intense\nferment of the Revolution; and, when finally secured against\nactive oppression from the Catholic side, could not but develop\nan intellectual opposition to the Catholic Reaction after 1815. In\nSwitzerland, always in intellectual touch with France and Germany,\nthe tendencies which had been stamped as Socinian in the days\nof Voltaire soon reasserted themselves so strongly as to provoke\nfanatical reaction. [1750] The nomination of Strauss to a chair of\ntheology at Z\u00fcrich by a Radical Government in 1839 actually gave rise\nto a violent revolt, inflamed and led by Protestant clergymen. The\nExecutive Council were expelled, and a number of persons killed in\nthe strife. [1751] In the canton of Aargau in 1841, again, the cry of\n\"religion in danger\" sufficed to bring about a Catholic insurrection\nagainst a Liberal Council; and yet again in 1844 it led, among the\nCatholics of the Valais canton, to the bloodiest insurrection of\nall. Since these disgraceful outbreaks the progress of Rationalism\nin Switzerland has been steady. In 1847 a chair was given at Berne\nto the rationalistic scholar Zeller, without any such resistance\nas was made to Strauss at Z\u00fcrich. In 1892, out of a total number\nof 3,151 students in the five universities of Switzerland and in\nthe academies of Fribourg and Neuch\u00e2tel, the number of theological\nstudents was only 374, positively less than that of the teaching\nstaff, which was 431. Leaving out the academies named, which had\nno medical faculty, the number of theological students stood at\n275 out of 2,917. The Church in Switzerland has thus undergone the\nrelative restriction in power and prestige seen in the other European\ncountries of long-established culture. The evolution, however, remains\nnegative rather than positive. Though a number of pastors latterly\ncall themselves libres penseurs or penseurs libres, and a movement\nof ethical culture (morale sociale) has made progress, the forces of\npositive freethought are not numerically strong. An economic basis\nstill supports the Churches, and the lack of it leaves rationalism\nnon-aggressive. [1752]\n\nA somewhat similar state of things exists in Holland, where the\n\"higher criticism\" of both the Old and New Testaments made notable\nprogress in the middle decades of the century. There then resulted not\nonly an extensive decay of orthodoxy within the Protestant Church,\nbut a movement of aggressive popular freethought, which was for a\nnumber of years well represented in journalism. To-day, orthodoxy\nand freethought are alike less demonstrative; the broad explanation\nbeing that the Dutch people in the mass has ceased to be pietistic,\nand has secularized its life. Even in the Bible-loving Boer Republic\nof South Africa (Transvaal), in its time one of the most orthodox of\nthe civilized communities of the world, there was seen in the past\ngeneration the phenomenon of an agnostic ex-clergyman's election to\nthe post of president, in the person of T. F. Burgers, who succeeded\nPretorius in 1871. His election was of course on political and not on\nreligious grounds; and panic fear on the score of his heresy, besides\ndriving some fanatics to emigrate, is said to have disorganized a\nBoer expedition under his command; [1753] but his views were known\nwhen he was elected. In the years 1899-1902 the terrible experience of\nthe last Boer War, in South Africa as in Britain, perhaps did more to\nturn critical minds against supernaturalism than was accomplished by\nalmost any other agency in the same period. In Britain the overturn\nwas by way of the revolt of many ethically-minded Christians against\nthe attitude of the orthodox churches, which were so generally\nand so unscrupulously belligerent as to astonish many even of their\nfreethinking opponents. [1754] As regards the Boers and the Cape Dutch\nthe resultant unbelief was among the younger men, who harassed their\nelders with challenges as to the justice or the activity of a God\nwho permitted the liberties of his most devoted worshippers to be\nwantonly destroyed. Among the more educated burghers in the Orange\nFree State commandos unbelief asserted itself with increasing force\nand frequency. [1755] An ethical rationalism thus motived is not\nlikely to be displaced; and the Christian churches of Britain have\nthus the sobering knowledge that the war which they so vociferously\nglorified [1756] has wrought to the discredit of their creed alike\nin their own country and among the vanquished.\n\n16. The history of popular freethought in Sweden yields a good\nillustration, in a compact form, [1757] of the normal play of\nforces and counter-forces. Since the day of Christina, as we saw,\nthough there have been many evidences of passive unbelief, active\nrationalism has been little known in her kingdom down till modern\ntimes, Sweden as a whole having been little touched by the great\nferment of the eighteenth century. The French Revolution, however,\nstirred the waters there as elsewhere. Tegn\u00e9r, the poet-bishop,\nauthor of the once-famous Frithiof's Saga, was notable in his day\nfor a determined rejection of the evangelical doctrine of salvation;\nand his letters contain much criticism of the ruling system. But the\nfirst recognizable champion of freethought in Sweden is the thinker\nand historian E. G. Geijer (d. 1847), whose history of his native\nland is one of the best European performances of his generation. In\n1820 he was prosecuted for his attack upon the dogmas of the Trinity\nand redemption--long the special themes of discussion in Sweden--in\nhis book Thorild; but was acquitted by the jury. Thenceforth Sweden\nfollows the general development of Europe. In 1841 Strauss's Leben\nJesu was translated in Swedish, and wrought its usual effect. On the\npopular side the poet Wilhelm von Braun carried on an anti-Biblical\nwarfare; and a blacksmith in a provincial town contrived to\nprint in 1850 a translation of Paine's Age of Reason. Once more\nthe spirit of persecution blazed forth, and he was prosecuted and\nimprisoned. H. B. Palmaer (d. 1854) was likewise prosecuted for his\nsatire, The Last Judgment in Cocaigne (Kr\u00e4kwinkel), with the result\nthat his defence extended his influence. In the same period the\nStockholm curate Nils Ignell (d. 1864) produced a whole series of\ncritical pamphlets and a naturalistic History of the Development of\nMan, besides supplying a preface to the Swedish translation of Renan's\nVie de J\u00e9sus. Meantime translations of the works of Theodore Parker,\nby V. Pfeiff and A. F. Akerberg, had a large circulation and a wide\ninfluence; and the courage of the gymnasium rector N. J. Cramer\n(d. 1893), author of The Farewell to the Church, gave an edge to\nthe movement. The partly rationalistic doctrine of Victor Rydberg\n(d. 1895) was in comparison uncritical, and was proportionally popular.\n\nOn another line the books of Dr. Nils Lilja (d. 1870), written for\nworking people, created a current of rationalism among the masses;\nand in the next generation G. J. Leufstedt maintained it by popular\nlectures and by the issue of translations of Colenso, Ingersoll,\nB\u00fcchner, and Renan. Hjalmar Stromer (d. 1886) did similar platform\nwork. Meantime the followers of Parker and Rydberg founded in 1877\na monthly review, The Truthseeker, which lasted till 1894, and an\nassociation of \"Believers in Reason,\" closely resembling the British\nEthical Societies of our own day. Among its leading adherents has been\nK. P. Arnoldson, the well-known peace advocate. Liberal clerics were\nnow fairly numerous; Positivism, represented by Dr. Anton Nystr\u00f6m's\nGeneral History of Civilization, played its part; and the more radical\nfreethinking movement, nourished by new translations, became specially\nactive, with the usual effect on orthodox feeling. August Strindberg,\nauthor and lecturer, was prosecuted in 1884 on a charge of ridiculing\nthe eucharist, but was declared not guilty. The strenuous Victor\nLennstrand, lecturer and journalist, prosecuted in 1888 and later\nfor his anti-Christian propaganda, was twice fined and imprisoned,\nwith the result of extending his influence and discrediting his\nopponents. \"Utilitarian Associations,\" created by his activity,\nwere set up in many parts of the country; and his movement survives\nhis death.\n\n17. Only in the United States has the public lecture platform been\nmade a means of propaganda to anything like the extent seen in Britain;\nand the greatest part of the work in the States has thus far been done\nby the late Colonel Ingersoll, the leading American orator of the last\ngeneration, and the most widely influential platform propagandist of\nthe last century. No other single freethinker, it is believed, has\nreached such an audience by public speech; and between his propaganda\nand that of the freethought journals there has been maintained for\na generation back a large body of vigorous freethinking opinion in\nall parts of the States. Before the Civil War this could hardly\nbe said. In the middle decades of the century the conditions had\nbeen so little changed that after the death of President Lincoln,\nwho was certainly a non-Christian deist, and an agnostic deist at\nthat, [1758] it was sought to be established that he was latterly\northodox. In his presidential campaign of 1860 he escaped attack on\nhis opinions simply because his opponent, Stephen A. Douglas, was\nlikewise an unbeliever. [1759] The great negro orator, Frederick\nDouglas, was as heterodox as Lincoln. [1760] It is even alleged\nthat President Grant [1761] was of the same cast of opinion. Such\nis the general drift of intelligent thought in the United States,\nfrom Washington onwards; and still the social conditions impose\non public men the burden of concealment, while popular history is\ngarbled for the same reasons. Despite the great propagandist power of\nthe late Colonel Ingersoll, therefore, American freethought remains\ndependent largely on struggling organizations and journals, [1762]\nand its special literature is rather of the popularizing than of the\nscholarly order. Nowhere else has every new advance of rationalistic\nscience been more angrily opposed by the priesthood; because nowhere is\nthe ordinary prejudice of the priest more voluble or better-bottomed in\nself-complacency. As late as 1891 the Methodist Bishop Keener delivered\na ridiculous attack on the evolution theory before the OEcumenical\nCouncil of Methodism at Washington, declaring that it had been utterly\nrefuted by a certain \"wonderful deposit of the Ashley beds.\" [1763]\nVarious professors in ecclesiastical colleges have been driven from\ntheir posts for accepting in turn the discoveries of geology, biology,\nand the \"higher criticism\"--for instance, Woodrow of Columbia, South\nCarolina; Toy of Louisville; Winchell of Vanderbilt University; and\nmore than one professor in the American college at Beyrout. [1764]\nIn every one of the three former cases, it is true, the denounced\nprofessor has been called to a better chair; and latterly some of\nthe more liberal clergy have even commercially exploited the higher\ncriticism by producing the \"Rainbow Bible.\" Generally speaking,\nhowever, in the United States sheer preoccupation with business,\nand lack of leisure, counteract in a measure the relative advantage\nof social freedom; and while culture is more widely diffused than\nin England, it remains on the whole less radical in the \"educated\"\nclasses so-called. So far as it is possible to make a quantitative\nestimate, it may be said that in the more densely populated parts of\nthe States there is latterly less of studious freethinking because\nthere is less leisure than in England; but that in the Western States\nthere is a relative superiority, class for class, because of the\nspecial freedom of the conditions and the independent character of\nmany of the immigrants who constitute the new populations. [1765]\n\n\n\n\nSection 2.--Biblical Criticism\n\nIt is within the last generation that the critical analysis of the\nJewish and Christian sacred books has been most generally carried on;\nbut the process has never been suspended since the German Aufkl\u00e4rung\narose on the stimuli of English and French deism.\n\n1. At the beginning of the century, educated men in general\nbelieved in the Semitic myths of creation, as given in Genesis:\nlong before the end of it they had more or less explicitly\nrectified their beliefs in the light of new natural science and\nnew arch\u00e6ology. The change became rapid after 1860; but it had\nbeen led up to even in the period of reaction. While in France,\nunder the restored monarchy, rationalistic activity was mainly\nheaded into historical, philosophical, and sociological study,\nand in England orthodoxy predominated in theological discussion,\nthe German rationalistic movement went on among the specialists,\ndespite the liberal religious reaction of Schleiermacher, [1766]\nwho himself gave forth such an uncertain sound. His case and that of\nhis father, an army chaplain, tell signally of the power of the mere\nclerical occupation to develop a species of emotional belief in one who\nhas even attained rationalism. When the son, trained for the church,\navowed to his father (1787) that he had lost faith in the supernatural\nJesus, the father professed to mourn bitterly, but three years later\navowed that he in his own youth had preached Christianity for twelve\nyears while similarly disbelieving its fundamental tenet. [1767] He\nprofessionally counselled compromise, which the son duly practised,\nwith such success that, whereas he originally addressed his Discourses\non Religion (1799) to \"the educated among its despisers,\" he was able\nto say in the preface to the third edition, twenty years later (1821),\nthat the need now was to reason with the pietists and literalists, the\nignorant and bigoted, the credulous and superstitious. [1768] In short,\nhe and others had been able to set up a fashion of poetic religion\namong deists, but not to lighten the darkness of orthodox belief.\n\nThe ostensible religious revival associated with Schleiermacher's\nname was in fact a reaction of temperament, akin to the romantic\nmovement in literature, of which Chateaubriand in France was the\nexponent as regarded religious feeling. The German \"rationalism\"\nof the latter part of the eighteenth century, with its stolid\ntranslation of the miraculous into the historical, and its official\naccommodation of the result to the purposes of the pulpit, had not\nreached any firm scientific foundation; and Schleiermacher on the other\nside, protesting that religion was a matter not of knowledge but of\nfeeling, attracted alike the religious emotionalists, the seekers of\ncompromise, and the romantics. His personal and literary charm, and\nhis tolerance of mundane morals, gave him a German vogue not unlike\nthat of Chateaubriand in France. His intellectual cast and ultimate\nphilosophic bias, however, together with his freedom of private life,\n[1769] ultimately alienated him from the orthodox, and thus it was that\nhe died (1834) in the odour of heresy. Heresy, in fact, he had preached\nfrom the outset; and it was only in a highly emancipated society that\nhis teaching could have been fashionable. The statement that by his\nDiscourses \"with one stroke he overthrew the card-castle of rationalism\nand the old fortress of orthodoxy\" [1770] is literally quite false,\nfor the old compromising pseudo-rationalism survived a long while,\nand orthodoxy still longer; and it is quite misleading inasmuch as\nit suggests a resurgence of faith. The same historian proceeds to\nrecord that some saw in the work \"only a slightly disguised return\nto superstition, and others a brilliant confession of unbelief.\" \"The\ngeneral public saw in the Discourses a new assault of romanticism upon\nreligion. The clergy in particular were painfully aroused, and did not\ndissemble their irritation. Spalding himself could not restrain his\nanger.\" Schleiermacher's friend Sach, who had passed the Discourses\nin manuscript, woke up to denounce them as unchristian, pantheistic,\nand denuded of the ideas of God, immortality, and morality. [1771]\n\nIn England the work would have been so denounced on all sides; and\nthe bulk of Schleiermacher's teaching would there have been reckoned\nrevolutionary and \"godless.\" He was a lover of both political and\nsocial freedom; and in his Two Memoranda on the Church Question in\nregard to Prussia (1803) he made \"a veritable declaration of war on the\nclerical spirit.\" [1772] Recognizing that ecclesiastical discipline\nhad reached a low ebb, he even proposed that civil marriage should\nprecede religious marriage, and be alone obligatory; besides planning a\ndrastic subjection of the Prussian Church to State regulation. [1773]\nIn his pamphlet on The So-called Epistle to Timothy, of which he\ndenied the authenticity, he played the part of a \"destructive\"\ncritic. [1774] He \"saw with pain the approach of the rising tide of\nconfessionalism\"--that is, the movement for an exact statement of\ncreed. [1775] Nor can it be said that, despite his attempts in later\nlife to reach a more definite theology, Schleiermacher really held\nfirmly any Christian or even theistic dogma. He seems to have been\nat bottom a pantheist; [1776] and the secret of his attraction for\nso many German preachers and theologians then and since is that he\noffered them in eloquent and moving diction a kind of profession of\nfaith which avoided alike the fatal undertaking of the old religious\nrationalism to reduce the sacred narratives to terms of reason, and\nthe dogged refusal of orthodoxy to admit that there was anything to\nexplain away. Philosophically and critically speaking, his teaching\nhas no lasting intellectual substance, being first a negation of\nintellectual tests and then a belated attempt to apply them. It is not\neven original, being a development from Rousseau and Lessing. But it\nhad undoubtedly a freeing and civilizing influence for many years; and\nit did little harm save insofar as it fostered the German proclivity to\nthe nebulous in thought and language, and partly encouraged the normal\nresistance to the critical spirit. All irrationalism, to be sure, in\nsome sort spells self-will and lawlessness; but the orthodox negation\nof reason was far more primitive than Schleiermacher's. From that side,\naccordingly, he never had any sympathy. When, soon after his funeral,\nin which his coffin was borne and followed by troops of students,\nhis church was closed to the friends who wished there to commemorate\nhim, it was fairly clear that his own popularity lay mainly with the\nprogressive spirits, and not among the orthodox; and in the end his\ninfluence tended to merge in that of the critical movement. [1777]\n\n2. Gradually that had developed a greater precision of method,\nthough there were to be witnessed repetitions of the intellectual\nanomalies of the past, so-called rationalists losing the way while\nsupernaturalists occasionally found it. It has been remarked by\nReuss that Paulus, a clerical \"rationalist,\" fought for the Pauline\nauthorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews in the very year in which\nTholuck, a reconverted evangelical, gave up the Pauline authorship\nas hopeless; that when Schleiermacher, ostensibly a believer in\ninspiration, denied the authenticity of the Epistle to Timothy,\nthe [theological] rationalist Wegscheider opposed him; and that\nthe rationalistic Eichhorn maintained the Mosaic authorship of\nthe Pentateuch long after the supernaturalist Vater had disproved\nit. [1778] Still the general movement was inevitably and irrevocably\nrationalistic. Beginning with the Old Testament, criticism gradually\nsaw more and more of mere myth where of old men had seen miracle, and\nwhere the first rationalists saw natural events misconceived. Soon the\nprocess reached the New Testament, every successive step being resisted\nin the old fashion; and much laborious work, now mostly forgotten,\nwas done by a whole company of scholars, among whom Paulus, Eichhorn,\nDe Wette, G. L. Bauer, Wegscheider, Bretschneider, and Gabler were\nprominent. [1779] The train as it were exploded on the world in\nthe great Life of Jesus by Strauss (1835), a year after the death\nof Schleiermacher.\n\nThis was in some respects the high-water mark of rational critical\nscience for the century, inasmuch as it represented the fullest use\nof free judgment. The powerful and orderly mind of Strauss, working\nsystematically on a large body of previous unsystematic criticism,\nproduced something more massive and coherent than any previous writer\nhad achieved. It was not that he applied any new principle. Criticism\nhad long been slowly disengaging itself from the primary fallacy of\ntaking all scriptural records as standing for facts, and explaining\naway the supernatural side. Step by step it was recognized that not\nmisinterpretation of events but mythology underlay much of the sacred\nhistory. Already in 1799 an anonymous and almost unnoticed writer\n[1780] had argued that the entire gospel story was a pre-existent\nconception in the Jewish mind. In 1802 G. L. Bauer had produced\na treatise on Hebrew Mythology, [1781] in which not only was the\nactuality of myth in Bible narrative insisted on, but the general\nprinciple of animism in savage thought was clearly formulated. Semler\nhad seen that the stories of Samson and Esther were myths. Even\nEichhorn--who reduced all the Old Testament stories to natural\nevents misunderstood, accepted Noah and the patriarchs as historical\npersonages, and followed Bahrdt in making Moses light a fire on Mount\nSinai--changed his method on coming to the New Testament, and pointed\nout that only indemonstrable hypotheses could be reached by turning\nsupernatural events into natural where there was no outside historical\nevidence. Other writers--as Krug, Gabler, Kaiser, Wegscheider, and\nHorst--ably pressed the mythical principle, some of them preceding\nBauer. The so-called \"natural\" theory--which was not at all that of the\n\"naturalists\" but the specialty of the compromising \"rationalists\"--was\nthus effectively shaken by a whole series of critics.\n\nBut the power of intellectual habit and environment was still\nstrikingly illustrated in the inability of all of the critics to shake\noff completely the old fallacy. Bauer explained the divine promise to\nAbraham as standing for the patriarch's own prophetic anticipation,\nset up by a contemplation of the starry heavens. Another gave up\nthe supernatural promise of the birth of the Baptist, but held to\nthe dumbness of Zechariah. Krug similarly accepted the item of\nthe childless marriage, and claimed to be applying the mythical\nprinciple in taking the Magi without the star, and calling them\noriental merchants. Kaiser took the story of the fish with a coin in\nits mouth as fact, while complaining of other less absurd reductions\nof miracle to natural occurrences. The method of Paulus, [1782] the\n\"Christian Ev\u00eameros\"--who loyally rejected all miracles, but got rid\nof them on the plan of explaining, e.g., that when Jesus was supposed\nto be walking on the water he was really walking on the bank--was\nstill popular, a generation after Schleiermacher's Reden. The mythical\ntheory as a whole went on hesitating among definitions and genera--saga\nand legend, historical myth, mythical history, philosophical myth,\npoetic myth--and the differences of the mythological school over\nmethod arrested the acceptance of their fundamental principle.\n\n3. No less remarkable was the check to the few attempts which had\nbeen made at clearing the ground by removing the Fourth Gospel from\nthe historical field. Lessing had taken this gospel as peculiarly\nhistorical, as did Fichte and Schleiermacher and the main body of\ncritics after him. Only in England (by Evanson) had the case been more\nradically handled. In 1820 Bretschneider, following up a few tentative\nGerman utterances, put forth, by way of hypothesis, a general argument\n[1783] to the effect that the whole presentment of Jesus in the Fourth\nGospel is irreconcilable with that of the Synoptics, that it could\nnot be taken as historical, and that it could not therefore be the\nwork of the Apostle John. [1784] The result was a general discussion\nand a general rejection. The innovation in theory was too sudden for\nassimilation: and Bretschneider, finding no support, later declared\nthat he had been \"relieved of his doubts\" by the discussion, and had\nthus attained his object. Strauss himself, in his first Leben Jesu,\nfailed to realize the case; and it was not till the second (1863)\nthat he developed it, profiting by the intermediate work of F. C. Baur.\n\n4. But as regards the gospel history in general, the first Leben\nJesu is a great \"advance in force\" as compared with all preceding\nwork. Himself holding undoubtingly to the vital assumption of the\nrationalizing school that the central story of Jesus and the disciples\nand the crucifixion was history, he yet applied the mythical principle\nsystematically to nearly all the episodes, handling the case with\nthe calmness of a great judge and the skill of a great critic. Even\nStrauss, indeed, paid the penalty which seems so generally to attach\nto the academic discipline--the lack of ultimate hold on life. After\nshowing that much of the gospel narrative was mere myth, and leaving\nutterly problematical all the rest, he saw fit to begin and end with\nthe announcement that nothing really mattered--that the ideal Jesus\nwas unaffected by historic analysis, and that it was the ideal that\ncounted. [1785] In a world in which nine honest believers out of ten\nheld that the facts mattered everything, there could be no speedy or\npractical triumph for a demonstration which thus announced its own\ninutility. Strauss had achieved for New Testament criticism what Kant\nand Fichte and Hegel had compassed for rational philosophy in general,\nostensibly proffering together bane and antidote. As in their case,\nhowever, so in his, the truly critical work had an effect in despite\nof the theoretic surrender. Among instructed men, historical belief\nin the gospels has never been the same since Strauss wrote; and he\nlived to figure for his countrymen as one of the most thoroughgoing\nfreethinkers of his age.\n\n5. For a time there was undoubtedly \"reaction,\" engineered with the\nfull power of the Prussian State in particular. The pious Frederick\nWilliam IV, already furious against Swiss Radicalism in 1847, was\nmoved by the revolutionary outbreaks of 1848 to a fierce repression\nof everything liberal in theological teaching. \"This dismal period of\nPrussian history was the bloom-period of the Hengsterbergan theology\"\n[1786]--the school of rabid orthodoxy. In 1854, Eduard Zeller, bringing\nout in book form his work on the Acts of the Apostles (originally\nproduced in the T\u00fcbingen Theological Journal, 1848-51), writes that\n\"The exertions of our ecclesiastics, assisted by political reaction,\nhave been so effectual that the majority of our theologians not only\nlook with suspicion or indifference on this or that scientific opinion,\nbut regard scientific knowledge in general with the same feelings\";\nand he leaves it an open question \"whether time will bring a change, or\nwhether German Protestantism will stagnate in the Byzantine conditions\ntowards which it is now hastening with all sail on.\" [1787] For his own\npart, Zeller abandoned the field of theology for that of philosophy,\nproducing a history of Greek philosophy, and one of German philosophy\nsince Leibnitz.\n\n6. Another expert of Baur's school, Albrecht Schwegler, author of\nworks on Montanism, the Post-Apostolic Age, and other problems of early\nChristian history, and of a Handbook of the History of Philosophy which\nfor half a century had an immense circulation, was similarly driven\nout of theological research by the virulence of the reaction, [1788]\nand turned to the task of Roman history, in which he distinguished\nhimself as he did in every other he essayed. The brains were being\nexpelled from the chairs of theology. But this very fact tended to\ndiscredit the reaction itself; and outside of the Prussian sphere of\ninfluence German criticism went actively on. Gustav Volkmar, turning\nhis back on Germany in 1854, settled in Switzerland, and in 1863 became\nprofessor at Z\u00fcrich, where he added to his early Religion Jesu (1857)\nand other powerful works his treatises on the Origin of the Gospels\n(1866), The Gospels (1869), Commentary on the Apocalypse (1860-65),\nand Jesus Nazarenus (1881)--all stringent critical performances,\nirreconcilable with orthodoxy. Elsewhere too there was a general\nresumption of progress.\n\nTo this a certain contribution was made by Bruno Bauer (1809-1882),\nwho, after setting out as an orthodox Hegelian, outwent Strauss\nin the opposite direction. In 1838, as a licentiate at Bonn, he\nproduced two volumes on The Religion of the Old Testament, in which\nthe only critical element is the notion of a \"historical evolution\nof revelation.\" Soon he had got beyond belief in revelation. In\n1840 appeared his Critique of the Gospel History of John, and in\n1841 his much more disturbing Critique of the Gospel History of the\nSynoptics, wherein there is substituted for Strauss's formula of the\n\"community-mind\" working on tradition, that of individual literary\nconstruction. Weisse and Wilcke had convinced him that Mark was\nthe first gospel, and Wilcke in particular that it was no mere copy\nof an oral tradition but an artistic construction. As he claimed,\nthis was a much more \"positive\" conception than Strauss's, which was\nfundamentally \"mysterious.\" [1789] Unfortunately, though he saw that\nthe new position involved the non-historicity of the Gospel Jesus,\nhe left his own historic conception \"mysterious,\" giving no reason why\nthe \"Urevangelist\" framed his romance. Bauer was non-anthropological,\nand left his theory as it began, one of an arbitrary construction by\ngospel-makers. Immediately after his book appeared that of Ghillany\non Human Sacrifice among the ancient Hebrews (1842), which might have\ngiven him clues; but they seem to have had for him no significance.\n\nAs it was, his book on the Synoptics raised a great storm; and when\nthe official request for the views of the university faculties as to\nthe continuance of his licence evoked varying answers, Bauer settled\nthe matter by a violent attack on professional theologians in general,\nand was duly expelled. [1790] For the rest of his long life he was a\nfreelance, doing some relatively valid work on the Pauline problem,\nbut pouring out his turbid spirit in a variety of political writings,\nfiguring by turns as an anti-Semite (1843), a culture-historian,\n[1791] and a pre-Bismarckian imperialist, despairing of German\nunity, but looking hopefully to German absorption in a vast empire of\nRussia. [1792] Naturally he found political happiness in 1870, [1793]\nliving on, a spent force, to do fresh books on Christian origins,\n[1794] on German culture-history, and on the glories of imperialism.\n\n7. In 1864, after an abstention of twenty years from discussion of\nthe problem, Strauss restated his case in a Life of Jesus, adapted for\nthe German People. Here, accepting the contention of F. C. Baur that\nthe proper line of inquiry was to settle the order of composition of\nthe synoptic gospels, and agreeing in Baur's view that Matthew came\nfirst, he undertook to offer more of positive result than was reached\nin his earlier research, which simply dealt scientifically with the\nabundant elements of dubiety in the records. The new procedure was\nreally much less valid than the old. Baur had quite unwarrantably\ndecided that the Sermon on the Mount was one of the most certainly\ngenuine of the discourses ascribed to Jesus; [1795] and Strauss,\nwhile exhibiting a reserve of doubt [1796] as to all \"such speeches,\"\nnonetheless committed himself to the \"certain\" genuineness alike of\nthe Sermon and of the seven parables in the thirteenth chapter of\nMatthew. [1797] Many scholars who continue to hold by the historicity\nof Jesus have since recognized that the Sermon is no real discourse,\nbut a compilation of gnomic sayings or maxims previously current in\nJewish literature. [1798] Thus the certainties of Baur and Strauss pass\ninto the category of the cruder certainties which Strauss impugned;\nand the latter left the life of Jesus an unsolved enigma after all\nhis analysis.\n\nAs he himself noted, the German New Testament criticism of the\nprevious twenty years had \"run to seed\" [1799] in a multitude of\ntreatises on the sources, aims, composition, and mutual relations of\nthe Synoptics, as if these were the final issues. They had settled\nnothing; and after a lapse of fifty years the same problems are\nbeing endlessly discussed. The scientific course for Strauss would\nhave been to develop more radically the method of his first Life:\nfailing to do this, he made no new contribution to the problem,\nthough he deftly enough indicated how little difference there was,\nsave in formula, between Baur's negations and his own.\n\nSomething of the explanation is to be detected in the sub-title,\n\"Adapted for the German People.\" From his first entrance into the\narena he had met with endless odium theologicum; being at once\ndeprived of his post as a philosophical lecturer at T\u00fcbingen, and\nvirulently denounced on all hands. His proposed appointment to a\nchair at Z\u00fcrich in 1839, as we have seen, led there to something\napproaching a revolution. Later, he found that acquaintance with him\nwas made a ground of damage to his friends; and though he had actually\nbeen elected to the Wirtemberg Diet in 1848 by his fellow citizens\nof Ludwigsburg town, after being defeated in his candidature for\nthe new parliament at Frankfort through the hostility of the rural\nvoters, he had abundant cause to regard himself as a banned person\nin Germany. A craving for the goodwill of the people as against\nthe hatred of the priests was thus very naturally and justifiably\noperative in the conception of his second work; and this none the\nless because his fundamental political conservatism had soon cut\nshort his representation of radical Ludwigsburg. As he justly said,\nthe question of the true history of Christianity was not one for\ntheologians alone. But the emotional aim affected the intellectual\nprocess. As previously in his Life of Ulrich von Hutten, he strove to\nestablish the proposition that the new Reformation he desired was akin\nto the old; and that the Germans, as the \"people of the Reformation,\"\nwould show themselves true to their past by casting out the religion\nof dogma and supernaturalism. Such an attempt to identify the spirit\nof freethought with the old spirit of Bibliolatry was in itself\nfantastic, and could not create a genuine movement, though the book\nhad a wide audience. The Glaubenslehre, in which he made good his\nmaxim that \"the true criticism of dogma is its history,\" is a sounder\nperformance. Strauss's avowed desire to write a book as suitable to\nGermans as was Renan's Vie de J\u00e9sus to Frenchmen was something less\nthan scientific. The right book would be written for all nations.\n\nLike most other Germans, Strauss exulted immensely over the war of\n1870. In what is now recognized as the national manner, he wrote two\nboastful open-letters to Renan explaining that whatsoever Germany\ndid was right, and whatsoever France did was wrong, and that the\nannexation of Alsace and Lorraine was altogether just. These letters\nform an important contribution to the vast cairn of self-praise\nraised by latter-day German culture. But Strauss's literary life\nended on a nobler note and in a higher warfare. After all his efforts\nat popularity, and all his fraternization with his people on the\nground of racial animosity (not visible in his volume of lectures on\nVoltaire, written and delivered at the request of the Princess Alice),\nhis fundamental sincerity moved him to produce a final \"Confession,\"\nunder the title of The Old and the New Faith (1872). It asked the\nquestions: \"Are we still Christians?\"; \"Have we still religion?\";\n\"How do we conceive the world?\"; \"How do we order our life?\"; and it\nanswered them all in a calmly and uncompromisingly naturalistic sense,\ndismissing all that men commonly call religious belief. The book\nas a whole is heterogeneous in respect of its two final chapters,\n\"Of our Great Poets\" and \"Of our Great Musicians,\" which seem to\nhave been appended by way of keeping up the attitude of national\nfraternity evoked by the war. But they could not and did not avail\nto conciliate the theologians, who opened fire on the book with all\ntheir old animosity, and with an unconcealed delight in the definite\ncommittal of the great negative critic to an attitude of practical\natheism. The book ran through six editions in as many months, and\ncrystallized much of the indefinite freethinking of Germany into\nsomething clearer and firmer. All the more was it a new engine of\nstrife and disintegration; and the aging author, shocked but steadied\nby the unexpected outburst of hostility, penned a quatrain to himself,\nending: \"In storm hast thou begun; in storm shalt thou end.\"\n\nOn the last day of the year he wrote an \"afterword\" summing up his work\nand his position. He had not written, he declared, by way of contending\nwith opponents; he had sought rather to commune with those of his own\nway of thinking; and to them, he felt, he had the right to appeal to\nlive up to their convictions, not compromising with other opinions,\nand not adhering to any Church. For his \"Confession\" he anticipated\nthe thanks of a more enlightened future generation. \"The time of\nagreement,\" he concluded, \"will come, as it came for the Leben Jesu;\nonly this time I shall not live to see it.\" [1800] A little more than\na year later (1874) he passed away.\n\nIt is noteworthy that he should have held that agreement had come as\nto the first Leben Jesu. He was in fact convinced that all educated\nmen--at least in Germany--had ceased to believe in miracles and the\nsupernatural, however they might affect to conform to orthodoxy. And,\nbroadly speaking, this was true: all New Testament criticism of\nany standing had come round to the naturalistic point of view. But,\nas we have seen, the second Leben Jesu was far enough from reaching\na solid historical footing; and the generation which followed made\nonly a piecemeal and unsystematic advance to a scientific solution.\n\n8. And it was long before even Strauss's early method of scientific\ncriticism was applied to the initial problems of Old Testament\nhistory. The investigation lagged strangely. Starting from the clues\ngiven by Hobbes, Spinoza, and Simon, and above all by the suggestion\nof Astruc (1753) as to the twofold element implied in the God-names\nJehovah and Elohim, it had proceeded, for sheer lack of radical\nskepticism, on the assumption that the Pentateuchal history was\ntrue. On this basis, modern Old Testament criticism of a professional\nkind may be said to have been founded by Eichhorn, who hoped by a\nquasi-rationalistic method to bring back unbelievers to belief. [1801]\nOf his successors, some, like Ilgen, were ahead of their time; some,\nlike De Wette, failed to make progress in their criticism; some,\nlike Ewald, remained always arbitrary; and some of the ablest and most\noriginal, as Vatke, failed to co\u00f6rdinate fully their critical methods\nand results. [1802] Thus, despite all the German activity, little\nsure progress had been made, apart from discrimination of sources,\nbetween the issue of the Critical Remarks on the Hebrew Scriptures of\nthe Scotch Catholic priest, Dr. Geddes, in 1800, and the publication\nof the first part of the work of Bishop Colenso on The Pentateuch\n(1862). This, by the admission of Kuenen, who had begun as a rather\nnarrow believer, [1803] corrected the initial error of the German\nspecialists by applying to the narrative the common-sense tests\nsuggested long before by Voltaire. [1804] That academic scholarship\nthus wasted two generations in its determination to adhere to the\n\"reverent\" method, and in its aversion to the \"irreverence\" which\nproceeded on the simple power to see facts, is a sufficient comment\non the Kantian doctrine that it was the business of scholars to adapt\nthe sacred books to popular needs. Tampering with the judgment of\ntheir flocks, the German theologians injured their own.\n\nAs of old, part of the explanation lay in the malignant resistance\nof orthodoxy to every new advance. We have seen how Strauss's\nappointment to a chair at Z\u00fcrich was met by Swiss pietism. The same\nspirit sought to revert, even in \"intellectually free\" Germany, to\nits old methods of repression. The authorities of Berlin discussed\nwith Neander the propriety of suppressing Strauss's Leben Jesu;\n[1805] and after a time those who shared his views were excluded\neven from philosophical chairs. [1806] Later, the brochure in\nwhich Edgar Bauer defended his brother Bruno against his opponents\n(1842) was seized by the police; and in the following year, for\npublishing The Strife of Criticism with Church and State, the same\nwriter was sentenced to four years' imprisonment. In private life,\npersecution was carried on in the usual ways; and the virulence\nof the theological resistance recalled the palmy days of Lutheran\npolemics. In the sense that the mass of orthodoxy held its ground\nfor the time being, the attack failed. Naturally the most advanced\nand uncompromisingly scientific positions were least discussed, the\nstress of dispute going on around the criticism which modified without\nannihilating the main elements in the current creed, or that which\ndid the work of annihilation on a popular level of thought. Only in\nour day is German \"expert\" criticism beginning openly to reckon with\npropositions fairly and fully made out by German writers of three\nor more generations back. Thus in 1781 Corodi in his Geschichte des\nChiliasmus dwelt on the pre-Hebraic origins of the belief in angels,\nin immortality, and heaven and hell, and on the Persian derivation of\nthe Jewish seven archangels; Wegscheider in 1819 in his Institutes of\nTheology indicated further connections of the same order, and cited\npagan parallels to the virgin-birth; J. A. L. Richter in the same year\npointed to Indian and Persian precedents for the Logos and many other\nChristian doctrines; and several other writers, Strauss included,\npointed to both Persian and Babylonian influences on Jewish theology\nand myth. [1807] The mythologist and Hebraist F. Korn (who wrote as\n\"F. Nork\"), in a series of learned and vigorous but rather loosely\nspeculative works, [1808] indicated many of the mythological elements\nin Christianity, and endorsed many of the astronomical arguments of\nDupuis, while holding to the historicity of Jesus. [1809]\n\nWhen even these theses were in the main ignored, more mordant doctrine\nwas necessarily burked. Such subversive criticism of religious\nhistory as Ghillany's Die Menschenopfer der alten Hebr\u00e4er (1842),\ninsisting that human sacrifice had been habitual in early Jewry,\nand that ritual cannibalism underlay the paschal eucharist, found\neven fewer students prepared to appreciate it than did the searching\nethico-philosophical criticism passed on the Christian creed by\nFeuerbach. F. Daumer, [1810] who in 1842 published a treatise on the\nsame lines as Ghillany's (Der Feuer und Molochdienst), and followed it\nup in 1847 with another on the Christian mysteries, nearly as drastic,\nwavered later in his rationalism and avowed his conversion to a species\nof faith. Hence a certain setback for his school. In France the genial\nGerman revolutionist and exile Ewerbeck published, under the titles\nof Qu'est ce que la Religion? and Qu'est ce que la Bible? (1850), two\nvolumes of very freely edited translations from Feuerbach, Daumer,\nGhillany, L\u00fctzelberger (on the simple humanity of Jesus), and Bruno\nBauer, avowing that after vainly seeking a publisher for years he had\nproduced the books at his own expense. He had, however, so mutilated\nthe originals as to make the work ineffectual for scholars, without\nmaking it attractive to the general public; and there is nothing\nto show that his formidable-looking arsenal of explosives had much\neffect on contemporary French thought, which developed on other lines.\n\nOld Testament criticism, nevertheless, has in the last generation been\nmuch developed, after having long missed some of the first lines of\nadvance. After Colenso's rectification of the fundamental error as\nto the historicity of the narrative of the Pentateuch, so long and\nso obstinately persisted in by the German specialists in contempt\nof Voltaire, the \"higher criticism\" proceeded with such substantial\ncertainty on the scientific lines of Kuenen and Wellhausen that,\nwhereas Professor Robertson Smith had to leave the Free Church of\nScotland in 1881 [1811] for propagating Kuenen's views, before the\ncentury was out Canons of the English Church were doing the work with\nthe acquiescence of perhaps six clergymen out of ten; and American\npreachers were found promoting an edition of the Bible which exhibited\nsome of the critical results to the general reader. Heresy on this\nscore had \"become merchandise.\" Nevertheless, the professional tendency\nto compromise (a result of economic and other pressures) keeps most\nof the ecclesiastical critics far short of the outspoken utterances of\nM. M. Kalisch, who in his Commentary on Leviticus (1867-72) repudiates\nevery vestige of the doctrine of inspiration. [1812] Later clerical\ncritics, notably Canon Driver, use language on that subject which\ncannot be read with critical respect. [1813] But among students at the\nend of the century the orthodox view was practically extinct. Whereas\nthe defenders of the faith even a generation before habitually stood to\nthe \"argument from prophecy,\" the conception of prophecy as prediction\nhas now become meaningless as regards the so-called Mosaic books; and\nthe constant disclosure of interpolations and adaptations in the others\nhas discredited it as regards the \"prophets\" themselves. For the rest,\nmuch of the secular history still accepted is tentatively reduced\nto myth in the Geschichte Israels of Hugo Winckler (1895-1900). The\npeculiar theory of Dr. Cheyne is no less \"destructive.\"\n\n9. In New Testament criticism, though the strict critical method of\nStrauss's first book was not faithfully followed, critical research\nwent on continuously; and the school of F. C. Baur of T\u00fcbingen in\nparticular imposed a measure of rational criticism on theologians in\ngeneral. Apart from Strauss, Baur was probably the ablest Christian\nscholar of his day. Always lamed by his professionalism, he yet toiled\nendlessly to bring scientific method into Christian research. His\nPaulus, der Apostel Jesu Christi, 1845; Kritische Untersuchungen\n\u00fcber die Kanonischen Evangelien, 1847; and Das Christenthum und\ndie christliche Kirche der drei ersten Jahrhunderte, 1853, were\nepoch-marking works, which recast so radically, in the name of\northodoxy, the historical conception of Christian origins, that he\nfigured as the most unsettling critic of his time after Strauss. With\nhis earlier researches in the history of the first Christian sects\nand his history of the Church, they constitute a memorable mass\nof studious and original work. In the case of the T\u00fcbingen school\nas of every other there was \"reaction,\" with the usual pretence\nby professional orthodoxy that the innovating criticism had been\ndisposed of; but no real refutation has ever taken place. Where Baur\nreduced the genuine Pauline epistles to four, the last years of the\ncentury witnessed the advent of Van Manen, who, following up earlier\nsuggestions, wrought out the thesis that the epistles are all alike\nsupposititious. This may or may not hold good; but there has been\nno restoration of traditionary faith among the mass of open-minded\ninquirers. Such work as Zeller's Contents and Origin of the Acts of\nthe Apostles (1854), produced in Baur's circle, has substantially\nheld its ground; and such a comparatively \"safe\" book of the next\ngeneration as Weizs\u00e4cker's Apostolic Age (Eng. tr. of 2nd ed. 1893)\nleaves no doubt as to the untrustworthiness of the Acts. Thus at the\nclose of the century the current professional treatises indicated\na \"Christianity\" stripped not only of all supernaturalism, and\ntherefore of the main religious content of the historic creed, but\neven of credibility as regards large parts of the non-supernaturalist\nnarratives of its sacred books. The minute analysis and collocation\nof texts which has occupied so much of critical industry has but made\nclearer the extreme precariousness of every item in the records. The\namount of credit for historicity that continues to be given to them is\ndemonstrably unjustifiable on scientific grounds; and the stand for a\n\"Christianity without dogma\" is more and more clearly seen to be an\neconomic adjustment, not an outcome of faithful criticism.\n\n10. The movement of Biblical and other criticism in Germany has had\na significant effect on the supply of students for the theological\nprofession. The numbers of Protestant and Catholic theological students\nin all Germany have varied as follows:--Protestant: 1831, 4,147; 1851,\n1,631; 1860, 2,520; 1876, 1,539; 1882-83, 3,168. Catholic: 1831, 1,801;\n1840, 866; 1850, 1,393; 1860, 1,209; 1880, 619. [1814] Thus, under\nthe reign of reaction which set in after 1848 there was a prolonged\nrecovery; and again since 1876 the figures rise for Protestantism\nthrough financial stimulus. When, however, we take population into\naccount, the main movement is clear. In an increasing proportion, the\ntheological students come from the rural districts (69\u00b74 in 1861-70),\nthe towns furnishing ever fewer; [1815] so that the conservative\nmeasures do but outwardly and formally affect the course of thought;\nthe clergy themselves showing less and less inclination to make\nclergymen of their sons. [1816] Even among the Catholic population,\nthough that has increased from ten millions in 1830 to sixteen millions\nin 1880, the number of theological students has fallen from eleven\nto four per 100,000 inhabitants. [1817] Thus, after many \"reactions\"\nand much Bismarckism, the Zeit-Geist in Germany was still pronouncedly\nskeptical in all classes in 1881, [1818] when the church accommodation\nin Berlin provided only two per cent. of the population, and even\nthat provision outwent the demand. [1819] And though there have been\nyet other alleged reactions since, and the imperial influence is\nzealously used for orthodoxy, a large proportion of the intelligent\nworkers in the towns remain socialistic and freethinking; and the\nmass of the educated classes remain unorthodox in the teeth of the\nsocialist menace. Reactionary professors can make an academic fashion:\nthe majority of instructed men remain tacitly naturalistic.\n\nAlongside of the inveterate rationalism of modern Germany, however,\na no less inveterate bureaucratism preserves a certain official\nconformity to religion. University freedom does not extend to open\nand direct criticism of the orthodox creed. On the other hand, the\napplause won by Virchow in 1877 on his declaration against the doctrine\nof evolution, and the tactic resorted to by him in putting upon that\ndoctrine the responsibility of Socialist violence, are instances of the\nnormal operation of the lower motives against freedom in scientific\nteaching. [1820] The pressure operates in other spheres in Germany,\nespecially under such a regimen as the present. Men who never go to\nchurch save on official occasions, and who have absolutely no belief\nin the Church's doctrine, nevertheless remain nominally its adherents;\n[1821] and the Press laws make it peculiarly difficult to reach the\ncommon people with freethinking literature, save through Socialist\nchannels. Thus the Catholic Church is perhaps nowhere--save in Ireland\nand the United States--more practically influential than in nominally\n\"Protestant\" Germany, where it wields a compact vote of a hundred or\nmore in the Reichstag, and can generally count on well-filled churches\nas beside the half-empty temples of Protestantism.\n\nAnother circumstance partly favourable to reaction is the simple\nmaintenance of all the old theological chairs in the universities. As\nthe field of scientific work widens, and increasing commerce raises\nthe social standard of comfort, men of original intellectual power\ngrow less apt to devote themselves to theological pursuits even\nunder the comparatively free conditions which so long kept German\nBiblical scholarship far above that of other countries. It can\nhardly be said that men of the mental calibre of Strauss, Baur,\nVolkmar, and Wellhausen continue to arise among the specialists in\ntheir studies. Harnack, the most prominent German Biblical scholar\nof our day, despite his great learning, creates no such impression of\noriginality and insight, and, though latterly forced forward by more\nindependent minds, exhibits often a very uncritical orthodoxy. Thus\nit is \u00e0 priori possible enough that the orthodox reactions so often\nclaimed have actually occurred, in the sense that the experts have\nreverted to a prior type. A scientifically-minded \"theologian\" in\nGermany has now little official scope for his faculty save in the\nanalysis of the Hebrew Sacred Books and the New Testament documents\nas such; and this has been on the whole very well done, short of\nthe point of express impeachment of the historic delusion; but there\nis a limit to the attraction of such studies for minds of a modern\ncast. Thus there is always a chance that chairs will be filled by\nmen of another type.\n\n11. On a less extensive scale than in Germany, critical study of the\nsacred books made some progress in England, France, and America in the\nfirst half of the century; though for a time the attention even of the\neducated world was centred much more upon the Oxford \"tractarian\"\nreligious reaction than upon the movement of rationalism. The\nreaction, associated mainly with the name of John Henry Newman, was\nrather against the political Erastianism and \u00e6sthetic apathy of the\nWhig type of Christian than against German or other criticism, of\nwhich Newman knew little. But against the attitude of those moderate\nAnglicans who were disposed to disestablish the Church in Ireland\nand to modernize the liturgy somewhat, the language of the \"Tracts\nfor the Times\" is as authoritarian and anti-rationalistic as that\nof Catholics denouncing freethought. Such expressions as \"the filth\nof heretical novelty\" [1822] are meant to apply to anything in the\nnature of innovation; the causes at stake are ritual and precedent,\nthe apostolic succession and the status of the priest, not the truth\nof revelation or the credibility of the scriptures. The third Tract\nappeals to the clergy to \"resist the alteration of even one jot or\ntittle\" of the liturgy; and concerning the burial service the line of\nargument is: \"Do you pretend you can discriminate the wheat from the\ntares? Of course not.\" All attempts even to modify the ritual are an\n\"abuse of reason\"; and the true believer is adjured to stand fast in\nthe ancient ways. [1823] At a pinch he is to \"consider what Reason\nsays; which surely, as well as Scripture, was given us for religious\nends\"; [1824] but the only \"reason\" thus recognized is one which\naccepts the whole apparatus of revelation. Previous to and alongside\nof this single-minded reversion to the ideals of the Dark Ages--a\nphenomenon not unconnected with the revival of romanticism by Scott\nand Chateaubriand--there was going on a movement of modernism, of which\none of the overt traces is Milman's History of the Jews (1829), a work\nto-day regarded as harmless even by the orthodox, but sufficient in\nits time to let Newman see whither religious \"Liberalism\" was heading.\n\nOther and later researches dug much deeper into the problems of\nreligious historiography. The Unitarian C. C. Hennell produced an\nInquiry Concerning the Origin of Christianity (1838), so important for\nits time as to be thought worth translating into German by Strauss;\nand this found a considerable response from the educated English\npublic of its day. In the preface to his second edition (1841) Hennell\nspoke very plainly of \"the large and probably increasing amount of\nunbelief in all classes around us\"; and made the then remarkably\ncourageous declarations that in his experience \"neither deism,\npantheism, nor even atheism indicates modes of thought incompatible\nwith uprightness and benevolence\"; and that \"the real or affected\nhorror which it is still a prevailing custom to exhibit towards their\nnames would be better reserved for those of the selfish, the cruel,\nthe bigot, and other tormentors of mankind.\" It was in the circle of\nHennell that Marian Evans, later to become famous as George Eliot,\ngrew into a rationalist in despite of her religious temperament;\nand it was she who, when Hennell's bride gave up the task, undertook\nthe toil of translating Strauss's Leben Jesu--though at many points\nshe \"thought him wrong.\" [1825] In the churches he had of course no\novert acceptance. At this stage, English orthodoxy was of such a cast\nthat the pious Tregelles, himself fiercely opposed to all forms of\nrationalism, had to complain that the most incontrovertible corrections\nof the current text of the New Testament were angrily denounced. [1826]\n\nIn the next generation Theodore Parker in the United States, developing\nhis critical faculty chiefly by study of the Germans, at the cost of\nmuch obloquy forced some knowledge of critical results and a measure of\ntheistic or pantheistic rationalism on the attention of the orthodox\nworld; promoting at the same time a semi-philosophic, semi-ethical\nreaction against the Calvinistic theology of Jonathan Edwards,\ntheretofore prevalent among the orthodox of New England. In the old\ncountry a number of writers developed new movements of criticism\nfrom theistic points of view. F. W. Newman, the scholarly brother\nof John Henry, [1827] produced a book entitled The Soul (1849), and\nanother, Phases of Faith (1853), which had much influence in promoting\nrationalism of a rather rigidly theistic cast. R. W. Mackay in the\nsame period published two learned treatises, A Sketch of the Rise\nand Progress of Christianity (1854), notably scientific in method\nfor its time; and The Progress of the Intellect as Exemplified in the\nReligious Development of the Greeks and Hebrews (1850), which won the\nadmiration of Buckle; \"George Eliot\" translated Feuerbach's Essence of\nChristianity (1854) under her own name, Marian Evans; and W. R. Greg,\none of the leading publicists of his day, put forth a rationalist\nstudy of The Creed of Christendom: Its Foundations Contrasted with\nits Superstructure (1850), which has gone through many editions and\nis still reprinted. In 1864 appeared The Prophet of Nazareth, by Evan\nPowell Meredith, who had been a Baptist minister in Wales. The book\nis a bulky prize essay on the theme of New Testament eschatology,\nwhich develops into a deistic attack on the central Christian\ndogma and on gospel ethics. Another zealous theist, Thomas Scott,\nwhose pamphlet-propaganda on deistic lines had so wide an influence\nduring many years, produced an English Life of Jesus (1871), which,\nthough less important than the works of Strauss and less popular than\nthose of Renan, played a considerable part in the disintegration of\nthe traditional faith among English churchmen. Still the primacy in\ncritical research on scholarly lines lay with the Germans; and it was\nthe results of their work that were co-ordinated, from a theistic\nstandpoint, [1828] in the anonymous work, Supernatural Religion\n(1874-77), a massive and decisive performance, too powerful to be\ndisposed of by the episcopal and other attacks made upon it. [1829]\nSince its assimilation the orthodox or inspirationist view of the\ngospels has lost credit among competent scholars even within the\nchurches. The battleground is now removed to the problem of the\nhistoricity of the ostensible origins of the cult; and scholarly\northodoxy takes for granted many positions which fifty years ago were\ntypical of \"German rationalism.\"\n\n12. In France systematic criticism of the sacred books recommenced\nin the second half of the century with such writings as those of\nP. Larroque (Examen Critique des doctrines de la religion chr\u00e9tienne,\n1860); Gustave d'Eichthal (Les \u00c9vangiles, ptie. i, 1863); and Alphonse\nPeyrat (Histoire \u00e9l\u00e9mentaire et critique de J\u00e9sus, 1864); whereafter\nthe rationalistic view was applied with singular literary charm, if\nwith imperfect consistency, by Renan in his series of seven volumes\non the origins of Christianity, and with more scientific breadth\nof view by Ernest Havet in his Christianisme et ses Origines (1872,\netc.). Renan's Vie de J\u00e9sus (1863) especially has been read throughout\nthe civilized world. It has been quite justly pronounced, by German\nand other critics, a romance; but no other \"life\" properly so called\nhas been anything else, Strauss's first Life being an analysis rather\nthan a construction; and the epithet was but an unwitting avowal\nthat to accept the gospels, barring miracles, as biography--which\nis what Renan did--is to be committed to the unhistorical. He began\nby accepting the fourth as equipollent with the synoptics; and upon\nthis Strauss in his second Life confidently called for a recantation,\nwhich came in due course. But Renan, in his fitful way, had critical\nglimpses which were denied to Strauss--for instance, as to the material\nof the Sermon on the Mount. The whole series of the Origines, which\nwound up with Marc Aur\u00e8le (1882), has a similar fluctuating value,\nshowing on the whole a progressive critical sense. The Saint Paul,\nfor example, at the close suddenly discards the traditional view\npreviously accepted in Les Ap\u00f4tres, and recognizes that the ministry\nof Paul can have been no more than a propaganda of small conventicles,\nwhose total membership throughout the Empire could not have been above\na thousand. But Renan's total service consisted rather in a highly\nartistic and winning application of rational historical methods to\nearly Christian history, with the effect of displacing the traditionist\nmethod, than in any lasting or comprehensive solution of the problem\nof the origins. Havet's survey is both corrective and complementary\nto his. Renan's influence on opinion throughout the world, however,\nwas enormous, were it only because he was one of the most finished\nliterary artists of his time.\n\n\n\n\nSection 3.--Poetry and General Literature\n\n1. The whole imaginative literature of Europe, in the generation\nafter the French Revolution, reveals directly or indirectly the\ntransmutation that the eighteenth century had worked in religious\nthought. Either it reacts against or it develops the rationalistic\nmovement. In France the literary reaction is one of the first factors\nin the orthodox revival. Its leader and type was Chateaubriand,\nin whose typical work, the G\u00e9nie du Christianisme (1802), lies the\nproof that, whatever might be the \"shallowness\" of Voltairism, it\nwas profundity beside the philosophy of the majority who repelled\nit. On one who now reads it with the slightest scientific preparation,\nthe book makes an impression in parts of something like fatuity. The\nhandling of the scientific question at the threshold of the inquiry\nis that of a man incapable of a scientific idea. All the accumulating\nevidence of geology and pal\u00e6ontology is disposed of by the grotesque\ntheorem that God made the world out of nothing with all the marks\nof antiquity upon it--the oaks at the start bearing \"last year's\nnests\"--on the ground that, \"if the world were not at once young and\nold, the great, the serious, the moral would disappear from nature,\nfor these sentiments by their essence attach to antique things.\" [1830]\nIn the same fashion the fable of the serpent is with perfect gravity\nhomologated as a literal truth, on the strength of an anecdote about\nthe charming of a rattlesnake with music. [1831] It is humiliating,\nbut instructive, to realize that only a century ago a \"Christian\nreaction,\" in a civilized country, was inspired by such an order\nof ideas; and that in the nation of Laplace, with his theory in\nview, it was the fashion thus to prattle in the taste of the Dark\nAges. [1832] The book is merely the eloquent expression of a nervous\nrecoil from everything savouring of cool reason and clear thought,\na recoil partly initiated by the sheer stress of excitement of the\nnear past; partly fostered by the vague belief that freethinking in\nreligion had caused the Revolution; partly enhanced by the tendency\nof every warlike period to develop emotional rather than reflective\nlife. What was really masterly in Chateaubriand was the style; and\nsentimental pietism had now the prestige of fine writing, so long\nthe specialty of the other side. Yet a generation of monarchism\nserved to wear out the ill-based credit of the literary reaction;\nand belles lettres began to be rationalistic as soon as politics\nbegan again to be radical. Thus the prestige of the neo-Christian\nschool was already spent before the revolution of 1848; [1833] and\nthe inordinate vanity of Chateaubriand, who died in that year, had\nundone his special influence still earlier. He had created merely a\nliterary mode and sentiment.\n\n2. The literary history of France since his death decides the question,\nso far as it can be thus decided. From 1848 till our own day it has\nbeen predominantly naturalistic and non-religious. After Guizot and\nthe Thierrys, the nearest approach to Christianity by an influential\nFrench historian is perhaps in the case of the very heterodox Edgar\nQuinet. Michelet was a mere heretic in the eyes of the faithful,\nSaisset describing his book Du Pr\u00eatre, de la Femme, et de la Famille\n(1845), as a \"renaissance of Voltaireanism.\" [1834] His whole brilliant\nHistory, indeed, is from beginning to end rationalistic, challenging\nas it does all the decorous traditions, exposing the failure of the\nfaith to civilize, pronouncing that \"the monastic Middle Age is an\nage of idiots\" and the scholastic world which followed it an age of\nartificially formed fools, [1835] flouting dogma and discrediting\ncreed over each of their miscarriages. [1836] And he was popular,\nwithal, not only because of his vividness and unfailing freshness,\nbut because his convictions were those of the best intelligence\naround him. In poetry and fiction the predominance of one or other\nshade of freethinking is signal. Balzac, who grew up in the age of\nreaction, makes essentially for rationalism by his intense analysis;\nand after him the difficulty is to find a great French novelist who is\nnot frankly rationalistic. George Sand will probably not be claimed\nby orthodoxy; and Beyle, Constant, Flaubert, M\u00e9rim\u00e9e, Zola, Daudet,\nMaupassant, and the De Goncourts make a list against which can be\nset only the names of M. Bourget, an artist of the second order,\nand of the distinguished d\u00e9cadent Huysmans, who became a Trappist\nafter a life marked by a philosophy and practice of an extremely\ndifferent complexion.\n\n3. In French poetry the case is hardly otherwise. B\u00e9ranger, who\npassed for a Voltairean, did indeed claim to have \"saved from the\nwreck an indestructible belief\"; [1837] and Lamartine goes to the\nside of Christianity; but de Musset, the most inspired of d\u00e9cadents,\nwas no more Christian than Heine, save for what a critic has called\n\"la banale religiosit\u00e9 de l'Espoir en Dieu\", [1838] and the pessimist\nBaudelaire had not even that to show. De Musset's absurd attack\non Voltaire in his Byronic poem, Rolla, well deserves the same\nepithets. It is a mere product of hysteria, representing neither\nknowledge nor reflection. The grandiose theism of Victor Hugo,\nagain, is stamped only with his own image and superscription; and\nin his great contemporary Leconte de Lisle we have one of the most\nconvinced and aggressive freethinkers of the century, a fine scholar\nand a self-controlled pessimist, who felt it well worth his while to\nwrite a little Popular History of Christianity (1871) which would have\ndelighted d'Holbach. It is significant, on the other hand, that the\nexquisite religious verse of Verlaine was the product of an incurable\nneuropath, like the later work of Huysmans, and stands for decadence\npure and simple. While French belles lettres thus in general made for\nrationalism, criticism was naturally not behindhand. Sainte-Beuve,\nthe most widely appreciative though not the most scientific or just\nof critics, had only a literary sympathy with the religious types\nover whom he spent so much effusive research; [1839] Edmond Scherer\nwas an unbeliever almost against his will; Taine, though reactionary\non political grounds in his latter years, was the typical French\nrationalist of his time; and though M. Bruneti\u00e8re, whose preferences\nwere all for Bossuet, made \"the bankruptcy of science\" the text of\nhis very facile philosophy, the most scientific and philosophic head\nin the whole line of French critics, the late \u00c9mile Hennequin, was\nwholly a rationalist; and even the rather reactionary Jules Lema\u00eetre\ndid not maintain his early attitude of austerity towards Renan.\n\n4. In England it was due above all to Shelley that the very age of\nreaction was confronted with unbelief in lyric form. His immature Queen\nMab was vital enough with conviction to serve as an inspiration to a\nwhole host of unlettered freethinkers not only in its own generation\nbut in the next. Its notes preserved, and greatly expanded, the\ntract entitled The Necessity of Atheism, for which he was expelled\nfrom Oxford; and against his will it became a people's book, the law\nrefusing him copyright in his own work, on the memorable principle that\nthere could be no \"protection\" for a book setting forth pernicious\nopinions. Whether he might not in later life, had he survived, have\npassed to a species of mystic Christianity, reacting like Coleridge,\nbut with a necessary difference, is a question raised by parts of\nthe Hellas. Gladstone seems to have thought that he had in him such\na potentiality. But Shelley's work, as done, sufficed to keep for\nradicalism and rationalism the crown of song as against the final\nTory orthodoxy [1840] of the elderly Wordsworth and of Southey; and\nColeridge's zeal for (amended) dogma came upon him after his hour of\npoetic transfiguration was past.\n\n\n And even Coleridge, who held the heresies of a modal Trinity and\n the non-expiatory character of the death of Christ, was widely\n distrusted by the pious, and expressed himself privately in\n terms which would have outraged them. Miracles, he declared,\n \"are supererogatory. The law of God and the great principles\n of the Christian religion would have been the same had Christ\n never assumed humanity. It is for these things, and for such as\n these, for telling unwelcome truths, that I have been termed an\n atheist. It is for these opinions that William Smith assured the\n Archbishop of Canterbury that I was (what half the clergy are in\n their lives) an atheist. Little do these men know what atheism\n is. Not one man in a thousand has either strength of mind or\n goodness of heart to be an atheist. I repeat it. Not one man in\n ten thousand has goodness of heart or strength of mind to be an\n atheist.\" Allsopp's Letters, etc., as cited, p. 47. But at other\n times Coleridge was a defender of the faith, while contemning\n the methods of the evidential school. Id. pp. 13-14, 31.\n\n\nOn the other side, Scott's honest but unintellectual romanticism,\nas we know from Newman, certainly favoured the Tractarian reaction,\nto which it was \u00e6sthetically though hardly emotionally akin. Yet\nGeorge Eliot could say in later life that it was the influence\nof Scott that first unsettled her orthodoxy; [1841] meaning,\ndoubtless, that the prevailing secularity of his view of life and\nhis objective handling of sects and faiths excluded even a theistic\nsolution. Scott's orthodoxy was in fact nearly on all fours with his\nJacobitism--a matter of temperamental loyalty to a tradition. [1842]\nBut the far more potent influence of Byron, too wayward to hold a\nfirm philosophy, but too intensely alive to realities to be capable\nof Scott's feudal orthodoxy, must have counted much for heresy even\nin England, and was one of the literary forces of revolutionary\nrevival for the whole of Europe. Though he never came to a clear\natheistical decision as did Shelley, [1843] and often in private gave\nhimself out for a Calvinist, he so handled theological problems in\nhis Cain that he, like Shelley, was refused copyright in his work;\n[1844] and it was widely appropriated for freethinkers' purposes. The\northodox Southey was on the same grounds denied the right to suppress\nhis early revolutionary drama, Wat Tyler, which accordingly was made\nto do duty in Radical propaganda by freethinking publishers. Keats,\nagain, though he melodiously declaimed, in a boyish mood, against\nthe scientific analysis of the rainbow, and though he never assented\nto Shelley's impeachments of Christianity, was in no active sense a\nbeliever in it, and after his long sickness met death gladly without\nthe \"consolations\" ascribed to creed. [1845]\n\n5. One of the best-beloved names in English literature, Charles Lamb,\nis on several counts to be numbered with those of the freethinkers\nof his day--who included Godwin and Hazlitt--though he had no part\nin any direct propaganda. Himself at most a Unitarian, but not at\nall given to argument on points of faith, he did his work for reason\npartly by way of the subtle and winning humanism of such an essay as\nNew Year's Eve, which seems to have been what brought upon him the\npedantically pious censure of Southey, apparently for its lack of\nallusion to a future state; partly by his delicately-entitled letter,\nThe Tombs in the Abbey, in which he replied to Southey's stricture. \"A\nbook which wants only a sounder religious feeling to be as delightful\nas it is original\" had been Southey's pompous criticism, in a paper on\nInfidelity. [1846] In his reply, Lamb commented on Southey's life-long\nhabit of scoffing at the Church of Rome, and gravely repudiated the\ntest of orthodoxy for human character.\n\n\n Lamb's words are not generally known, and are worth remembering. \"I\n own,\" he wrote, \"I never could think so considerably of myself\n as to decline the society of an agreeable or worthy man upon\n difference of opinion only. The impediments and the facilitations\n to a sound belief are various and inscrutable as the heart of\n man. Some believe upon weak principles; others cannot feel the\n efficacy of the strongest. One of the most candid, most upright,\n and single-meaning men I ever knew was the late Thomas Holcroft. I\n believe he never said one thing and meant another in his life;\n and, as near as I can guess, he never acted otherwise than\n with the most scrupulous attention to conscience. Ought we to\n wish the character false for the sake of a hollow compliment to\n Christianity?\" Of the freethinking and unpopular Hazlitt, who had\n soured towards Lamb in his perverse way, the essayist spoke still\n more generously. Of Leigh Hunt he speaks more critically, but with\n the same resolution to stand by a man known as a heretic. But the\n severest flout to Southey and his Church is in the next paragraph,\n where, after the avowal that \"the last sect with which you can\n remember me to have made common profession were the Unitarians,\"\n he tells how, on the previous Easter Sunday, he had attended the\n service in Westminster Abbey, and when he would have lingered\n afterwards among the tombs to meditate, was \"turned, like a dog\n or some profane person, out into the common street, with feelings\n which I could not help, but not very congenial to the day or the\n discourse. I do not know,\" he adds, \"that I shall ever venture\n myself again into one of your churches.\"\n\n These words were published in the London Magazine in 1825; but\n in the posthumous collected edition of the Essays of Elia all\n the portions above cited were dropped, and the paragraph last\n quoted from was modified, leaving out the last words. The essay\n does not seem to have been reprinted in full till it appeared in\n R. H. Shepherd's edition of 1878. But the original issue in the\n London Magazine created a tradition among the lovers of Lamb,\n and his name has always been associated with some repute for\n freethinking. There is further very important testimony as to\n Lamb's opinions in one of Allsopp's records of the conversation\n of Coleridge:--\n\n \"No, no; Lamb's skepticism has not come lightly, nor is he\n a skeptic [sic: Query, scoffer?]. The harsh reproof to Godwin\n for his contemptuous allusion to Christ before a well-trained\n child proves that he is not a skeptic [? scoffer]. His mind,\n never prone to analysis, seems to have been disgusted with the\n hollow pretences, the false reasonings and absurdities of the\n rogues and fools with whom all establishments, and all creeds\n seeking to become established, abound. I look upon Lamb as one\n hovering between earth and heaven; neither hoping much nor fearing\n anything. It is curious that he should retain many usages which he\n learnt or adopted in the fervour of his early religious feelings,\n now that his faith is in a state of suspended animation. Believe\n me, who know him well, that Lamb, say what he will, has more\n of the essentials of Christianity than ninety-nine out of a\n hundred professing Christians. He has all that would still have\n been Christian had Christ never lived or been made manifest upon\n earth.\" (Allsopp's Letters, etc., as cited, p. 46.) In connection\n with the frequently cited anecdote as to Lamb's religious feeling\n given in Leigh Hunt's Autobiography (rep. p. 253), also by\n Hazlitt (Winterslow, essay ii, ed. 1902, p. 39), may be noted the\n following, given by Allsopp: \"After a visit to Coleridge, during\n which the conversation had taken a religious turn, Leigh Hunt\n ... expressed his surprise that such a man as Coleridge should,\n when speaking of Christ, always call him Our Saviour. Lamb, who\n had been exhilarated by one glass of that gooseberry or raisin\n cordial which he has so often anathematized, stammered out:\n 'Ne-ne-never mind what Coleridge says; he is full of fun.'\"\n\n\n6. While a semi-Bohemian like Lamb could thus dare to challenge the\nreigning bigotry, the graver English writers of the first half of the\ncentury who had abandoned or never accepted orthodoxy felt themselves\nfor the most part compelled to silence or ostensible compliance. It\nwas made clear by Carlyle's posthumous Reminiscences that he had\nearly turned away from Christian dogma, having in fact given up a\nclerical career because of unbelief. Later evidence abounds. At the\nage of fifteen, by his own account, he had horrified his mother with\nthe question: \"Did God Almighty come down and make wheel-barrows in a\nshop?\" [1847] Of his college life he told: \"I studied the evidences\nof Christianity for several years, with the greatest desire to be\nconvinced, but in vain. I read Gibbon, and then first clearly saw\nthat Christianity was not true. Then came the most trying time of my\nlife.\" [1848] Goethe, he claimed, led him to peace; but philosophic\npeace he never attained. \"He was contemptuous to those who held\nto Christian dogmas; he was angry with those who gave them up;\nhe was furious with those who attacked them. If equanimity be the\nmark of a Philosopher, he was of all great-minded men the least of a\nPhilosopher.\" [1849] To all freethinking work, scholarly or other,\nhe was hostile with the hostility of a man consciously in a false\nposition. Strauss's Leben Jesu he pronounced, quite late in life,\n\"a revolutionary and ill-advised enterprise, setting forth in\nwords what all wise men had in their minds for fifty years past,\nand thought it fittest to hold their peace about.\" [1850] He was,\nin fact, so false to his own doctrine of veracity as to disparage all\nwho spoke out; while privately agreeing with Mill as to the need for\nspeaking out. [1851] Even Mill did so only partially in his lifetime,\nas in his address to the St. Andrews students (1867), when, \"in the\nreception given to the Address, he was most struck by the vociferous\napplause of the divinity students at the freethought passage.\" [1852]\nIn the first half of the century such displays of courage were rare\nindeed. Only after the death of Romilly was it tacitly avowed, by\nthe publication of a deistic prayer found among his papers, that he\nhad had no belief in revelation. [1853] Much later in the century,\nHarriet Martineau, for openly avowing her unbelief, incurred the\nangry public censure of her own brother.\n\nDespite his anxious caution, Carlyle's writing conveyed to susceptible\nreaders a non-Christian view of things. We know from a posthumous\nwriting of Mr. Froude's that, when that writer had gone through the\nuniversity and taken holy orders without ever having had a single doubt\nas to his creed, Carlyle's books \"taught him that the religion in which\nhe had been reared was but one of many dresses in which spiritual truth\nhad arrayed itself, and that the creed was not literally true so far as\nit was a narrative of facts.\" [1854] It was presumably from the Sartor\nResartus and some of the Essays, such as that on Voltaire--perhaps,\nalso, negatively from the general absence of Christian sentiment in\nCarlyle's works--that such lessons were learned; and though it is\ncertain that many non-zealous Christians saw no harm in Carlyle,\nthere is reason to believe that for multitudes of readers he had\nthe same awakening virtue. It need hardly be said that his friend\nEmerson exercised it in no less degree. Mr. Froude was remarkable\nin his youth for his surrender of the clerical profession, in the\nteeth of a bitter opposition from his family, and further for his\npublication of a freethinking romance, The Nemesis of Faith (1849);\nbut he went far to conciliate Anglican orthodoxy by his History. The\nromance had a temporary vogue rather above its artistic merits as a\nresult of being publicly burned by the authorities of Exeter College,\nOxford, of which he was a Fellow. [1855]\n\n7. This attitude of orthodoxy, threatening ostracism to any avowed\nfreethinker who had a position to lose, must be kept in mind in\nestimating the English evolution of that time. A professed man of\nscience could write in 1838 that \"the new mode of interpreting the\nScriptures which has sprung up in Germany is the darkest cloud which\nlowers upon the horizon of that country.... The Germans have been\nconducted by some of their teachers to the borders of a precipice,\none leap from which will plunge them into deism.\" He added that in\nvarious parts of Europe \"the heaviest calamity impending over the\nwhole fabric of society in our time is the lengthening stride of bold\nskepticism in some parts, and the more stealthy onwards-creeping\nstep of critical cavil in others.\" [1856] Such declamation could\nterrorize the timid and constrain the prudent in such a society as\nthat of early Victorian England. The prevailing note is struck in\nMacaulay's description of Charles Blount as \"an infidel, and the head\nof a small school of infidels who were troubled with a morbid desire to\nmake converts.\" [1857] All the while, Macaulay was himself privately\n\"infidel\"; [1858] but he cleared his conscience by thus denouncing\nthose who had the courage of their opinions. In this simple fashion\nsome of the sanest writers in history were complacently put below\nthe level of the commonplace dissemblers who aspersed them; and the\naverage educated man saw no baseness in the procedure.\n\n\n The opinion deliberately expressed in this connection by the late\n Professor Bain is worth noting:--\n\n \"It can at last be clearly seen what was the motive of Carlyle's\n perplexing style of composition. We now know what his opinions\n were when he began to write, and that to express them would have\n been fatal to his success; yet he was not a man to indulge in\n rank hypocrisy. He accordingly adopted a studied and ambiguous\n phraseology, which for long imposed upon the religious public,\n who put their own interpretation upon his mystical utterances, and\n gave him the benefit of any doubt. In the Life of Sterling he threw\n off the mask, but still was not taken at his word. Had there been a\n perfect tolerance of all opinions, he would have begun as he ended;\n and his strain of composition, while still mystical and high-flown,\n would never have been identified with our national orthodoxy.\n\n \"I have grave doubts as to whether we possess Macaulay's real\n opinions on religion. His way of dealing with the subject is\n so like the hedging of an unbeliever that, without some good\n assurance to the contrary, I must include him also among the\n imitators of Aristotle's 'caution.'...\n\n \"When Sir Charles Lyell brought out his Antiquity of Man, he too\n was cautious. Knowing the dangers of his footing, he abstained\n from giving an estimate of the extension of time required by the\n evidences of human remains. Society in London, however, would\n not put up with this reticence, and he had to disclose at dinner\n parties what he had withheld from the public--namely, that in his\n opinion the duration of man could not be less than 50,000 years\"\n (Practical Essays, p. 274.)\n\n\n8. Thus for a whole generation honest and narrow-minded believers were\ntrained to suppose that their views were triumphant over all attacks,\n[1859] and to see in \"infidelity\" a disease of an ill-informed past;\nand as the Church had really gained in conventional culture as well\nas in wealth and prestige in the period of reaction, the power of\nmere convention to override ideas was still enormous. But through\nthe whole stress of reaction and conservatism, even apart from the\npositive criticism of creed which from time to time forced its head\nup, there is a visible play of a new spirit in the most notable\nof the serious writing of the time. Carlyle undermined orthodoxy\neven in his asseveration of unreasoned theism; Emerson disturbs it\nalike when he acclaims mystics and welcomes evolutionary science;\nand the whole inspiration of Mill's Logic no less than of his Liberty\nis something alien to the principle of authority. Of Ruskin, again,\nthe same may be asserted in respect of his many searching thrusts at\nclerical and lay practice, his defence of Colenso, and the obvious\ndisappearance from his later books of the evangelical orthodoxy of the\nearlier. [1860] Thus the most celebrated writers of serious English\nprose in the latter half of the century were in a measure associated\nwith the spirit of critical thought on matters religious. In a\nmuch stronger degree the same thing may be predicated finally of\nthe writer who in the field of English belles lettres, apart from\nfiction, came nearest them in fame and influence. Matthew Arnold,\npassing insensibly from the English attitude of academic orthodoxy\nto that of the humanist for whom Christ is but an admirable teacher\nand God a \"Something not ourselves which makes for righteousness,\"\nbecame for the England of his later years the favourite pilot across\nthe bar between supernaturalism and naturalism. Only in England,\nperhaps, could his curious gospel of church-going and Bible-reading\natheism have prospered, but there it prospered exceedingly. Alike as\npoet and as essayist, even when essaying to disparage Colenso or to\nconfute the Germans where they jostled his predilection for the Fourth\nGospel, he was a disintegrator of tradition, and, in his dogmatic way,\na dissolver of dogmatism. When, therefore, beside the four names just\nmentioned the British public placed those of the philosophers Spencer,\nLewes, and Mill, and the scientists Darwin, Huxley, Clifford, and\nTyndall, they could not but recognize that the mind of the age was\ndivorced from the nominal faith of the Church.\n\n9. In English fiction, the beginning of the end of genuine faith\nwas apparent to the prophetic eyes of Wilberforce and Robert Hall,\nof whom the former lamented the total absence of Christian sentiment\nfrom nearly all the successful fiction even of his day; [1861] and\nthe latter avowed the pain with which he noted that Miss Edgeworth,\nwhom he admired for her style and art, put absolutely no religion\nin her books, [1862] while Hannah More, whose principles were so\nexcellent, had such a vicious style. With Thackeray and Dickens,\nindeed, serious fiction might seem to be on the side of faith,\nboth being liberally orthodox, though neither ventured on religious\nromance; but with George Eliot the balance began to lean the other\nway, her sympathetic treatment of religious types counting for little\nas against her known rationalism. At the end of the century almost\nall of the leading writers of the higher fiction were known to be\neither rationalists or simple theists; and against the heavy metal of\nMr. Meredith, Mr. Conrad, Mr. Hardy, Mr. Bennett, Mr. Moore (whose\nsympathetic handling of religious motives suggests the influence of\nHuysmans), and the didactic-deistic Mrs. Humphry-Ward, orthodoxy can\nbut claim artists of the third or lower grades. The championship of\nsome of the latter may be regarded as the last humiliation of faith.\n\n\n In 1905 there was current a vulgar novel entitled When it was\n Dark, wherein was said to be drawn a blood-curdling picture\n of what would happen in the event of a general surrender of\n Christian faith. Despite some episcopal approbation, the book\n excited much disgust among the more enlightened clergy. The\n preface to Miss Marie Corelli's Mighty Atom may serve to\n convey to the many readers who cannot peruse the works of\n that lady an idea of the temper in which she vindicates her\n faith. Another popular novelist of a low artistic grade, the\n late Mr. Seton-Merriman, has avowed his religious soundness in a\n romance with a Russian plot, entitled The Sowers. Referring to\n the impressions produced by great scenes of Nature, he writes:\n \"These places and these times are good for convalescent atheists\n and such as pose as unbelievers--the cheapest form of notoriety\"\n (p. 168). The novelist's own Christian ethic is thus indicated:\n \"He had Jewish blood in his veins, which ... carried with it\n the usual tendency to cringe. It is in the blood; it is part of\n that which the people who stood without Pilate's palace took\n upon themselves and their children\" (p. 59). But the enormous\n mass of modern novels includes some tolerable pleas for faith,\n as well as many manifestoes of agnosticism. One of the works of\n the late \"Edna Lyall,\" We Two, was notable as the expression of\n the sympathy of a devout, generous, and amiable Christian lady\n with the personality and career of Mr. Bradlaugh.\n\n\n10. Among the most artistically gifted of the English story-writers and\nessayists of the last generation of the century was Richard Jefferies\n(d. 1887), who in The Story of My Heart (1883) has told how \"the last\ntraces and relics of superstitions acquired compulsorily in childhood\"\nfinally passed away from his mind, leaving him a Naturalist in every\nsense of the word. In the Eulogy of Richard Jefferies published\nby Sir Walter Besant in 1888 it is asserted that on his deathbed\nJefferies returned to his faith, and \"died listening with faith and\nlove to the words contained in the Old Book.\" A popular account of this\n\"conversion\" accordingly became current, and was employed to the usual\npurpose. As has been shown by a careful student, and as was admitted\non inquiry by Sir Walter Besant, there had been no conversion whatever,\nJefferies having simply listened to his wife's reading without hinting\nat any change in his convictions. [1863] Despite his biographer's\nexpress admission of his error, Christian journals, such as the\nSpectator, have burked the facts; one, the Christian, has piously\ncharged dishonesty on the writer who brought them to light; and a\nthird, the Salvationist War Cry, has pronounced his action \"the basest\nform of chicanery and falsehood.\" [1864] The episode is worth noting\nas indicating the qualities which still attach to orthodox propaganda.\n\n11. Though Shelley was anathema to English Christians in his own\nclay, his fame and standing steadily rose in the generations after\nhis death. Nor has the balance of English poetry ever reverted\nto the side of faith. Even Tennyson, who more than once struck at\nrationalism below the belt, is in his own despite the poet of doubt\nas much as of credence, however he might wilfully attune himself to\nthe key of faith; and the unparalleled optimism of Browning evolved a\nform of Christianity sufficiently alien to the historic creed. [1865]\nIn Clough and Matthew Arnold, again, we have the positive record of\nsurrendered faith. Alongside of Arnold, Swinburne put into his verse\nthe freethinking temper that Leconte de Lisle reserved for prose;\nand the ill-starred but finely gifted James Thomson (\"B.V.\") was no\nless definitely though despairingly an unbeliever. Among our later\npoets, finally, the balance is pretty much the same. Mr. Watson has\ndeclared in worthily noble diction for a high agnosticism, and the\nlate John Davidson defied orthodox ethics in the name of his very\nantinomian theology; [1866] while on the side of the regulation\nreligion--since Mr. Yeats is but a stray Druid--can be cited at best\nthe regimental psalmody of Mr. Kipling, lyrist of trumpet and drum;\nthe stained-glass Mariolatries of the late Francis Thompson; the\ndeclamatory orthodoxy of Mr. Noyes; and the Godism of W. E. Henley,\nwhereat the prosaic godly look askance.\n\n12. Of the imaginative literature of the United States, as of that of\nEngland, the same generalization broadly holds good. The incomparable\nHawthorne, whatever his psychological sympathy with the Puritan past,\nwrought inevitably by his art for the loosening of its intellectual\nhold; Poe, though he did not venture till his days of downfall to write\nhis Eureka, thereby proves himself an entirely non-Christian theist;\nand Emerson's poetry, no less than his prose, constantly expresses\nhis pantheism; while his gifted disciple Thoreau, in some ways a\nmore stringent thinker than his master, was either a pantheist or a\nLucretian theist, standing aloof from all churches. [1867] The economic\nconditions of American life have till recently been unfavourable to\nthe higher literature, as apart from fiction; but the unique figure\nof Walt Whitman stands for a thoroughly naturalistic view of life;\n[1868] Mr. Howells appears to be at most a theist; Mr. Henry James\nhas not even exhibited the bias of his gifted brother to the theism\nof their no less gifted father; and some of the most esteemed men\nof letters since the Civil War, as Dr. Wendell Holmes and Colonel\nWentworth Higginson, have been avowedly on the side of rationalism,\nor, as the term goes in the States, \"liberalism.\" Though the tone of\nordinary conversation is more often reminiscent of religion in the\nUnited States than in England, the novel and the newspaper have been\nperhaps more thoroughly secularized there than here; and in the public\nhonour done to so thorough a rationalist as the late Dr. Moncure Conway\nat the hands of his alma mater, the Dickinson College, West Virginia,\nmay be seen the proof that the official orthodoxy of his youth has\ndisappeared from the region of his birth.\n\n13. Of the vast modern output of belles lettres in continental Europe,\nfinally, a similar account is to be given. The supreme poet of modern\nItaly, Leopardi, is one of the most definitely rationalistic as well\nas one of the greatest philosophic poets in literature; Carducci,\nthe greatest of his successors, was explicitly anti-Christian; and\ndespite all the claims of the Catholic socialists, there is little\nmodern Catholic literature in Italy of any European value. One of\nthe most distinguished of modern Italian scholars, Professor A. de\nGubernatis, has in his Letture sopra la mitologia vedica (1874)\nexplicitly treated the Christian legend as a myth. In Germany we\nhave seen Goethe and Schiller distinctly counting for naturalism;\nand of Jean Paul Richter (1763-1825) an orthodox historian declares\nthat his \"religion was a chaotic fermenting of the mind, out of\nwhich now deism, then Christianity, then a new religion, seems to\ncome forth.\" [1869] The naturalistic line is found to be continued\nin Heinrich von Kleist, the unhappy but masterly dramatist of Der\nZerbrochene Krug, one of the truest geniuses of his time; and above\nall in Heine, whose characteristic profession of reconciling himself\non his deathbed with the deity he imaged as \"the Aristophanes of\nheaven\" [1870] serves so scantily to console the orthodox lovers of\nhis matchless song. His criticism of Kant and Fichte is a sufficient\nclue to his serious convictions; and that \"God is all that there is\"\n[1871] is the sufficient expression of his pantheism. The whole purport\nof his brilliant sketch of the History of Religion and Philosophy\nin Germany (1834; 2nd ed. 1852) is a propaganda of the very spirit\nof freethinking, which constitutes for Germany at once a literary\nclassic and a manifesto of rationalism. As he himself said of the\nreturn of the aged Schelling to Catholicism, we may say of Heine, that\na deathbed reversion to early beliefs is a pathological phenomenon.\n\n\n The use latterly made of Heine's deathbed re-conversion by\n orthodoxy in England is characteristic. The late letters and\n conversations in which he said edifying things of God and the\n Bible are cited for readers who know nothing of the context,\n and almost as little of the speaker. He had similarly praised\n the Bible in 1830 (Letter of July, in B. iii of his volume on\n B\u00f6rne--Werke, vii, 160). To the reader of the whole it is clear\n that, while Heine's verbal renunciation of his former pantheism,\n and his characterization of the pantheistic position as a \"timid\n atheism,\" might have been made independently of his physical\n prostration, his profession of the theism at which he had formerly\n scoffed is only momentarily serious, even at a time when such a\n reversion would have been in no way surprising. His return to and\n praise of the Bible, the book of his childhood, during years of\n extreme suffering and utter helplessness, was in the ordinary way\n of physiological reaction. But inasmuch as his thinking faculty\n was never extinguished by his tortures, he chronically indicated\n that his religious talk was a half-conscious indulgence of the\n overstrained emotional nature, and substantially an exercise of\n his poetic feeling--always as large a part of his psychosis as his\n reasoning faculty. Even in deathbed profession he was neither a\n Jew nor a Christian, his language being that of a deism \"scarcely\n distinguishable in any essential element from that of Voltaire\n or Diderot\" (Strodtmann, Heine's Leben und Werke, 2te Aufl. ii,\n 386). \"My religious convictions and views,\" he writes in the\n preface to the late Romancero, \"remain free of all churchism.... I\n have abjured nothing, not even my old heathen Gods, from whom I\n have parted in love and friendship.\" In his will he peremptorily\n forbade any clerical procedure at his funeral; and his feeling on\n that side is revealed in his sad jests to his friend Meissner in\n 1850. \"If I could only go out on crutches!\" he exclaimed; adding:\n \"Do you know where I should go? Straight to church.\" On his friends\n expressing disbelief, he went on: \"Certainly, to church! Where\n should a man go on crutches? Naturally, if I could walk without\n crutches, I should go to the laughing boulevards or the Jardin\n Mabille.\" The story is told in England without the conclusion,\n as a piece of \"Christian Evidence.\"\n\n But even as to his theism Heine was never more than wilfully and\n poetically a believer. In 1849 we find him jesting about \"God\" and\n \"the Gods,\" declaring he will not offend the lieber Gott, whose\n vultures he knows and respects. \"Opium is also a religion,\" he\n writes in 1850. \"Christianity is useless for the healthy ... for\n the sick it is a very good religion.\" \"If the German people in\n their need accept the King of Prussia, why should not I accept the\n personal God?\" And in speaking of the postscript to the Romancero\n he writes in 1851: \"Alas, I had neither time nor mood to say there\n what I wanted--namely, that I die as a Poet, who needs neither\n religion nor philosophy, and has nothing to do with either. The\n Poet understands very well the symbolic idiom of Religion, and the\n abstract jargon of Philosophy; but neither the religious gentry nor\n those of philosophy will ever understand the Poet.\" A few weeks\n before his death he signs a New Year letter, \"Nebuchadnezzar\n II, formerly Prussian Atheist, now Lotosflower-adorer.\" At\n this time he was taking immense doses of morphia to make his\n tortures bearable. A few hours before his death a querying\n pietist got from him the answer: \"God will pardon me; it is his\n business.\" The Gest\u00e4ndnisse, written in 1854, ends in absolute\n irony; and his alleged grounds for giving up atheism, sometimes\n quoted seriously, are purely humorous (Werke, iv, 33). If it be\n in any sense true, as he tells in the preface to the Romancero,\n that \"the high clerisy of atheism pronounced its anathema\" over\n him--that is to say, that former friends denounced him as a weak\n turncoat--it needed only the publication of his Life and Letters\n to enable freethinkers to take an entirely sympathetic view of his\n case, which may serve as a supreme example of \"the martyrdom of\n man.\" On the whole question see Strodtmann, as cited, ii, 372 sq.,\n and the Gest\u00e4ndnisse, which should be compared with the earlier\n written fragments of Briefe \u00fcber Deutschland (Werke, iii, 110),\n where there are some significant variations in statements of fact.\n\n\nSince Heine, German belles lettres has not been a first-rate influence\nin Europe; but some of the leading novelists, as Auerbach and Heyse,\nare well known to have shared in the rational philosophy of their age;\nand the Christianity of Wagner, whose precarious support to the cause\nof faith has been welcomed chiefly by its heteroclite adherents,\ncounts for nothing in the critical scale. [1872]\n\n14. But perhaps the most considerable evidence, in belles lettres,\nof the predominance of rationalism in modern Europe is to be found\nin the literary history of the Scandinavian States and Russia. The\nRussian development indeed had gone far ere the modern Scandinavian\nliteratures had well begun. Already in the first quarter of the century\nthe poet Poushkine was an avowed heretic; and Gogol even let his\nart suffer from his preoccupations with the new humanitarian ideas;\nwhile the critic Bi\u00e9linsky, classed by Tourgu\u00e9nief as the Lessing\nof Russia, [1873] was pronouncedly rationalistic, [1874] as was his\ncontemporary the critic Granovsky, [1875] reputed the finest Russian\nstylist of his day. At this period belles lettres stood for every\nform of intellectual influence in Russia, [1876] and all educated\nthought was moulded by it. The most perfect artistic result is the\nfiction of the freethinker Tourgu\u00e9nief, [1877] the Sophocles of the\nmodern novel. His two great contemporaries, Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy,\ncount indeed for supernaturalism; but the truly wonderful genius of\nthe former was something apart from his philosophy, which was merely\nchildlike; and the latter, the least masterly if the most strenuous\nartist of the three, made his religious converts in Russia chiefly\namong the uneducated, and was in any case sharply antagonistic to\northodox Christianity. It does not appear that the younger writer,\nPotapenko, a fine artist, is orthodox, despite his extremely\nsympathetic presentment of a superior priest; and the still younger\nGorky is an absolute Naturalist.\n\n15. In the Scandinavian States, again, there are hardly any\nexceptions to the freethinking tendency among the leading living men\nof letters. In the person of the abnormal religionist S\u00f6ren Kierkegaard\n(1813-1855) a new force of criticism began to stir in Denmark. Setting\nout as a theologian, Kierkegaard gradually developed, always on\nquasi-religious lines, into a vehement assailant of conventional\nChristianity, somewhat in the spirit of Pascal, somewhat in that\nof Feuerbach, again in that of Ruskin; and in a temper recalling\nnow a Berserker and now a Hebrew prophet. The general effect of his\nteaching may be gathered from the mass of the work of Henrik Ibsen,\nwho was his disciple, and in particular from Ibsen's Brand, of which\nthe hero is partly modelled on Kierkegaard. [1878] Ibsen, though\nhis Brand was counted to him for righteousness by the Churches,\nshowed himself a thorough-going naturalist in all his later work;\nBj\u00f6rnson was an active freethinker; the eminent Danish critic, Georg\nBrandes, early avowed himself to the same effect; and his brother,\nthe dramatist, Edward Brandes, was elected to the Danish Parliament in\n1871 despite his declaration that he believed in neither the Christian\nnor the Jewish God. Most of the younger litt\u00e9rateurs of Norway and\nSweden seem to be of the same cast of thought.\n\n\n\n\nSection 4.--The Natural Sciences\n\n1. The power of intellectual habit and tradition had preserved\namong the majority of educated men, to the end of the eighteenth\ncentury, a notion of deity either slightly removed from that of the\nancient Hebrews or ethically purified without being philosophically\ntransformed, though the astronomy of Copernicus, Galileo, and\nNewton had immensely modified the Hebraic conception of the physical\nuniverse. We have seen that Newton did not really hold by the Christian\nscheme--he wrote, at times, in fact, as a pantheist--but some later\nastronomers seem to have done so. When, however, the great Laplace\ndeveloped the nebular hypothesis, previously guessed at by Bruno and\noutlined by Kant, orthodox psychological habit was rudely shaken\nas regards the Biblical account of creation; and like every other\nprevious advance in physical science this was denounced as atheistic\n[1879]--which, as we know, it was, Laplace having declared in reply\nto Napoleon that he had no need of the God hypothesis. Confirmed\nin essentials by all subsequent science, Laplace's system widens\nimmensely the gulf between modern cosmology and the historic theism\nof the Christian era; and the subsequent concrete developments\nof astronomy, giving as they do such an insistent and overwhelming\nimpression of physical infinity, have made the \"Christian hypothesis\"\n[1880] fantastic save for minds capable of enduring any strain on the\nsense of consistency. Paine had brought the difficulty vividly home\nto the common intelligence; and though the history of orthodoxy is\na history of the success of institutions and majorities in imposing\nincongruous conformities, the perception of the incongruity on this\nside must have been a force of disintegration. The freethinking of the\nFrench astronomers of the Revolution period marks a decisive change;\nand as early as 1826 we find in a work on Jewish antiquities by a\nScotch clergyman a very plain indication [1881] of disbelief in the\nHebrew story of the stopping of the sun and moon, or (alternatively) of\nthe rotation of the earth. It is typical of the tenacity of religious\ndelusion that a quarter of a century later this among other irrational\ncredences was contended for by the Swiss theologian Gaussen, [1882]\nand by the orthodox majority elsewhere, when for all scientifically\ntrained men they had become untenable. And that the general growth\nof scientific thought was disintegrating among scientific men the\nold belief in miracles may be gathered from an article, remarkable\nin its day, which appeared in the Edinburgh Review of January, 1814\n(No. 46), and was \"universally attributed to Prof. Leslie,\" [1883] the\ndistinguished physicist. Reviewing the argument of Laplace's essay,\nSur les probabilit\u00e9s, it substantially endorsed the thesis of Hume\nthat miracles cannot be proved by any testimony.\n\nLeslie's own case is one of the milestones marking the slow recovery\nof progress in Britain after the Revolution. His appointment to the\nchair of Mathematics, after Playfair, at Edinburgh University in\n1805 was bitterly resisted by the orthodox on the score that he was\na disbeliever in miracles and an \"infidel\" of the school of Hume,\nwho had been his personal friend. Nevertheless he again succeeded\nPlayfair in the chair of Physics in 1819, and was knighted in 1832. The\ninvention of the hygrometer and the discovery of the relations of light\nand heat had begun to count for more in science than the profession\nof orthodoxy.\n\n2. From France came likewise the impulse to a naturalistic handling\nof biology, long before the day of Darwin. The protagonist in this\ncase was the physician P.-J.-G. Cabanis (1737-1808), the colleague of\nLaplace in the School of Sciences. Growing up in the generation of\nthe Revolution, Cabanis had met, in the salon of Madame Helv\u00e9tius,\nd'Holbach, Diderot, D'Alembert, Condorcet, Laplace, Condillac,\nVolney, Franklin, and Jefferson, and became the physician of\nMirabeau. His treatise on the Rapports du physique et du morale de\nl'homme (1796-1802) [1884] might be described as the systematic\napplication to psychology of that \"positive\" method to which all\nthe keenest thought of the eighteenth century had been tending,\nyet with much of the literary or rhetorical tone by which the French\nwriters of that age had nearly all been characterized. For Cabanis,\nthe psychology of Helv\u00e9tius and Condillac had been hampered by their\nignorance of physiology; [1885] and he easily put aside the primary\nerrors, such as the \"equality of minds\" and the entity of \"the soul,\"\nwhich they took over from previous thinkers. His own work is on the\nwhole the most searching and original handling of the main problems\nof psycho-physiology that had yet been achieved; and to this day its\nsuggestiveness has not been exhausted.\n\nBut Cabanis, in his turn, made the mistake of Helv\u00e9tius and\nCondillac. Not content with presenting the results of his study\nin the province in which he was relatively master, he undertook\nto reach ultimate truth in those of ethics and philosophy, in\nwhich he was not so. In the preface to the Rapports he lays down\nan emphatically agnostic conviction as to final causes: \"ignorance\nthe most invincible,\" he declares, is all that is possible to man\non that issue. [1886] But not only does he in his main work freely\nand loosely generalize on the phenomena of history and overleap the\nethical problem: he penned shortly before his death a Lettre sur les\ncauses premi\u00e8res, addressed to Fauriel, [1887] in which the aging\nintelligence is seen reverting to \u00e0 priori processes, and concluding\nin favour of a \"sort of stoic pantheism\" [1888] with a balance towards\nnormal theism and a belief in immortality. The final doctrine did not\nin the least affect the argument of the earlier, which was simply one\nof positive science; but the clerical world, which had in the usual\nfashion denounced the scientific doctrine, not on the score of any\nattack by Cabanis upon religion, but because of its incompatibility\nwith the notion of the soul, naturally made much of the mystical,\n[1889] and accorded its framer authority from that moment.\n\nAs for the conception of \"vitalism\" put forward in the Letter to\nFauriel by way of explanation of the phenomena of life, it is but\na reversion to the earlier doctrine of Stahl, of which Cabanis had\nbeen a partisan in his youth. [1890] The fact remains that he gave an\nenduring impulse to positive science, [1891] his own final vacillation\nfailing to arrest the employment of the method he had inherited and\nimproved. Most people know him solely through one misquotation, the\nfamous phrase that \"the brain secretes thought as the liver secretes\nbile.\" This is not only an imperfect statement of his doctrine: it\nsuppresses precisely the idea by which Cabanis differentiates from pure\n\"sensationalism.\" What he taught was that \"impressions, reaching the\nbrain, set it in activity, as aliments reaching the stomach excite it\nto a more abundant secretion of gastric juice.... The function proper\nto the first is to perceive particular impressions, to attach to them\nsigns, to combine different impressions, to separate them, to draw from\nthem judgments and determinations, as the function of the second is to\nact on nutritive substances,\" etc. [1892] It is after this statement\nof the known processus, and after pointing out that there is as much\nof pure inference in the one case as in the other, that he concludes:\n\"The brain in a manner digests impressions, and makes organically the\nsecretion of thought\" and this conclusion, he points out, disposes of\nthe difficulty of those who \"cannot conceive how judging, reasoning,\nimagining, can ever be anything else than feeling. The difficulty\nceases when one recognizes, in these different operations, the action\nof the brain upon the impressions which are passed on to it.\" The\ndoctrine is, in short, an elementary truth of psychological science,\nas distinguished from the pseudo-science of the Ego considered as\nan entity. To that pseudo-science Cabanis gave a vital wound; and\nhis derided formula is for true science to-day almost a truism. The\nattacks made upon his doctrine in the next generation only served to\nemphasize anew the eternal dilemma of theism. On the one hand his\nfinal \"vitalism\" was repugnant to those who, on traditional lines,\ninsisted upon a distinction between \"soul\" and \"vital force\"; on\nthe other hand, those who sought to make a philosophic case for\ntheism against him made the usual plunge into pantheism, and were\nreproached accordingly by the orthodox. [1893] All that remained was\nthe indisputable \"positive\" gain.\n\n3. In England the influence of the French stimulus in physiology\nwas seen even more clearly than that of the great generalization of\nLaplace. Professor William Lawrence (1783-1867), the physiologist,\npublished in 1816 an Introduction to Comparative Anatomy and\nPhysiology, containing some remarks on the nature of life,\nwhich elicited from the then famous Dr. Abernethy a foul attack\nin his Physiological Lectures delivered before the College of\nSurgeons. Lawrence was charged with belonging to the party of French\nphysiological skeptics whose aim was to \"loosen those restraints on\nwhich the welfare of mankind depends.\" [1894] In the introductory\nlecture of his course of 1817 before the College of Physicians,\nLawrence severely retaliated, repudiating the general charge, but\nreasserting that the dependence of life on organization is as clear\nas the derivation of daylight from the sun. The war was adroitly\ncarried at once into the enemy's territory in the declaration that\n\"The profound, the virtuous, and fervently pious Pascal acknowledged,\nwhat all sound theologians maintain, that the immortality of the\nsoul, the great truths of religion, and the fundamental principles\nof morals cannot be demonstrably proved by mere reason; and that\nrevelation alone is capable of dissipating the uncertainties\nwhich perplex those who inquire too curiously into the sources of\nthese important principles. All will acknowledge that, as no other\nremedy can be so perfect and satisfactory as this, no other can\nbe necessary, if we resort to this with firm faith.\" [1895] The\nvalue of this pronouncement is indicated later in the same volume\nby subacid allusions to \"those who regard the Hebrew Scriptures as\nwritings composed with the assistance of divine inspiration,\" and\nwho receive Genesis \"as a narrative of actual events.\" Indicating\nvarious \"grounds of doubt respecting inspiration,\" the lecturer adds\nthat the stories of the naming of the animals and their collection\nin the ark, \"if we are to understand them as applied to the living\ninhabitants of the whole world, are zoologically impossible.\" [1896]\nOn the principle then governing such matters Lawrence was in 1822,\non the score of his heresies, refused copyright in his lectures,\nwhich were accordingly reprinted many times in a cheap stereotyped\nedition, and thus widely diffused. [1897]\n\nThis hardy attack was reinforced in 1819 by the publication of\nSir T. C. Morgan's Sketches of the Philosophy of Life, wherein the\nphysiological materialism of Cabanis is quietly but firmly developed,\nand a typical sentence of his figures as a motto on the title-page. The\nmethod is strictly naturalistic, alike on the medical and on the\nphilosophic side; and \"vitalism\" is argued down as explicitly as is\nanthropomorphism. [1898] As a whole the book tells notably of the\nstimulus of recent French thought upon English.\n\n4. A more general effect, however, was probably wrought by the science\nof geology, which in a stable and tested form belongs to the nineteenth\ncentury. Of its theoretic founders in the eighteenth century, Werner\nand Dr. James Hutton (1726-1797), the latter and more important [1899]\nis known from his Investigation of the Principles of Knowledge (1794)\nto have been consciously a freethinker on more grounds than that of\nhis naturalistic science; and his Theory of the World (1795) was\nduly denounced as atheistic. [1900] Whereas the physical infinity\nof the universe almost forced the orthodox to concede a vast cosmic\nprocess of some kind as preceding the shaping of the earth and solar\nsystem, the formation of these within six days was one of the plainest\nassertions in the sacred books; and every system of geology excluded\nsuch a conception. As the evidence accumulated, in the hands of men\nmostly content to deprecate religious opposition, [1901] there was duly\nevolved the quaint compromise of the doctrine that the Biblical six\n\"days\" meant six ages--a fantasy still cherished in the pulpit. On\nthe ground of that absurdity, nevertheless, there gradually grew\nup a new conception of the antiquity of the earth. Thus a popular\nwork on geology such as The Ancient World, by Prof. Ansted (1847),\ncould begin with the proposition that \"long before the human race\nhad been introduced on the earth this world of ours existed as the\nhabitation of living things different from those now inhabiting its\nsurface.\" Even the thesis of \"six ages,\" and others of the same order,\ndrew upon their supporters angry charges of \"infidelity.\" Hugh Miller,\nwhose natural gifts for geological research were chronically turned to\nconfusion by his orthodox bias, was repeatedly so assailed, when in\npoint of fact he was perpetually tampering with the facts to salve\nthe Scriptures. [1902] Of all the inductive sciences geology had\nbeen most retarded by the Christian canonization of error. [1903]\nEven the plain fact that what is dry land had once been sea was\nobstinately distorted through centuries, though Ovid [1904] had put\nthe observations of Pythagoras in the way of all scholars; and though\nLeonardo da Vinci had insisted on the visible evidence; nay, deistic\nhabit could keep even Voltaire, as we saw, preposterously incredulous\non the subject. When the scientific truth began to force its way in\nthe teeth of such authorities as Cuvier, who stood for the \"Mosaic\"\ndoctrine, the effect was proportionately marked; and whether or not the\nsuicide of Miller (1856) was in any way due to despair on perception of\nthe collapse of his reconciliation of geology with Genesis, [1905] the\nscientific demonstration made an end of revelationism for many. What\nhelped most to save orthodoxy from humiliation on the scientific side\nwas the attitude of men like Professor Baden Powell, whose scientific\nknowledge and habit of mind moved him to attack the Judaism of the\nBibliolaters in the name of Christianity, and in the name of truth\nto declare that \"nothing in geology bears the smallest semblance to\nany part of the Mosaic cosmogony, torture the interpretation to what\nextent we may.\" [1906] In 1857 this was very bold language.\n\n5. Still more rousing, finally, was the effect of the science of\nzoology, as placed upon a broad scientific foundation by Charles\nDarwin. Here again steps had been taken in previous generations on the\nright path, without any general movement on the part of scientific\nand educated men. Darwin's own grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, had in\nhis Zoonomia (1794) anticipated many of the positions of the French\nLamarck, who in 1801 began developing the views he fully elaborated\nin 1815, as to the descendance of all existing species from earlier\nforms. [1907] As early as 1795 Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire had begun to\nsuspect that all species are variants on a primordial form of life;\nand at the same time (1794-95) Goethe in Germany had reached similar\nconvictions. [1908] That views thus reached almost simultaneously in\nGermany, England, and France, at the time of the French Revolution,\nshould have to wait for two generations before even meeting the\nfull stress of battle, must be put down as one of the results of\nthe general reaction. Saint-Hilaire, publishing his views in 1828,\nwas officially overborne by the Cuvier school in France. In England,\nindeed, so late as 1855, we find Sir David Brewster denouncing the\nNebular Hypothesis: \"that dull and dangerous heresy of the age.... An\nomnipotent arm was required to give the planets their position and\nmotion in space, and a presiding intelligence to assign to them the\ndifferent functions they had to perform.\" [1909] And Murchison the\ngeologist was no less emphatic against Darwinism, which he rejected\ntill his dying day (1871).\n\n6. Other anticipations of Darwin's doctrine in England and elsewhere\ncame practically to nothing, [1910] as regarded the general opinion,\nuntil Robert Chambers in 1844 published anonymously his Vestiges of\nthe Natural History of Creation, a work which found a wide audience,\nincurring bitter hostility not only from the clergy but from some\nspecialists who, like Huxley, were later to take the evolutionist\nview on Darwin's persuasion. Chambers it was that brought the\nissue within general knowledge; and he improved his position in\nsuccessive editions. A hostile clerical reader, Whewell, admitted of\nhim, in a letter to a less hostile member of his profession, that,\n\"as to the degree of resemblance between the author and the French\nphysiological atheists, he uses reverent phrases: theirs would not be\ntolerated in England\"; adding: \"You would be surprised to hear the\ncontempt and abhorrence with which Owen and Sedgwick speak of the\nVestiges.\" [1911] Hugh Miller, himself accused of \"infidelity\" for\nhis measure of inductive candour, held a similar tone towards men of\ngreater intellectual rectitude, calling the liberalizing religionists\nof his day \"vermin\" and \"reptiles,\" [1912] and classifying as \"degraded\nand lost\" [1913] all who should accept the new doctrine of evolution,\nwhich, as put by Chambers, was then coming forward to evict his own\ndelusions from the field of science. The young Max M\u00fcller, with the\ncertitude born of an entire ignorance of physical science, declared\nin 1856 that the doctrine of a human evolution from lower types\n\"can never be maintained again,\" and pronounced it an \"unhallowed\nimputation.\" [1914]\n\n7. \"Contempt and abhorrence\" had in fact at all times constituted\nthe common Christian temper towards every form of critical dissent\nfrom the body of received opinion; and only since the contempt,\ndoubled with criticism, began to be in a large degree retorted on\nthe bigots by instructed men has a better spirit prevailed. Such a\nreaction was greatly promoted by the establishment of the Darwinian\ntheory. It was after the above-noted preparation, popular and academic,\nand after the theory of transmutation of species had been definitely\npronounced erroneous by the omniscient Whewell, [1915] that Darwin\nproduced (1859) his irresistible arsenal of arguments and facts, the\nOrigin of Species, expounding systematically the principle of Natural\nSelection, suggested to him by the economic philosophy of Malthus,\nand independently and contemporaneously arrived at by Dr. Alfred\nRussel Wallace. The outcry was enormous; and the Church, as always,\narrayed itself violently against the new truth. Bishop Wilberforce\npointed out in the Quarterly Review that \"the principle of natural\nselection is absolutely incompatible with the word of God,\" [1916]\nwhich was perfectly true; and at a famous meeting of the British\nAssociation in 1860 he so travestied the doctrine as to goad Huxley\ninto a fierce declaration that he would rather be a descendant of\nan ape than of a man who (like the Bishop) plunged into questions\nwith which he had no real acquaintance, only to obscure them and\ndistract his hearers by appeals to religious prejudice. [1917]\nThe mass of the clergy kept up the warfare of ignorance; but the\nbattle was practically won within twenty years. In France, Germany,\nand the United States leading theologians had made the same suicidal\ndeclarations, entitling all men to say that, if evolution proved\nto be true, Christianity was false. Professor Luthardt, of Leipzig,\ntook up the same position as Bishop Wilberforce, declaring that \"the\nwhole superstructure of personal religion is built upon the doctrine\nof creation\"; [1918] leading American theologians pronounced the new\ndoctrine atheistic; and everywhere gross vituperation eked out the\ntheological argument. [1919]\n\n8. Thus the idea of a specific creation of all forms of life by an\noriginating deity--the conception which virtually united the deists\nand Christians of the eighteenth century against the atheists--was\nat length scientifically exploded. The principle of personal divine\nrule or providential intervention had now been philosophically\nexcluded successively (1) from astronomy by the system of Newton;\n(2) from the science of earth-formation by the system of Laplace\nand the new geology; (3) from the science of living organisms by\nthe new zoology. It only needed that the deistic conception should\nbe further excluded from the human sciences--from anthropology, from\nthe philosophy of history, and from ethics--to complete, at least in\noutline, the rationalization of modern thought. Not that the process\nwas complete in detail even as regarded zoology. Despite the plain\nimplications of the Origin of Species, the doctrine of the Descent of\nMan (1871) came on many as a shocking surprise and evoked a new fury\nof protest. The lacun\u00e6 in Darwin, further, had to be supplemented;\nand much speculative power has been spent on the task by Haeckel,\nwithout thus far establishing complete agreement. But the desperate\nstand so long made on the score of the \"missing link\" seems to have\nbeen finally discredited in 1894; and the Jud\u00e6o-Christian doctrine\nof special creation and providential design appears, even in the\nimperfectly educated society of our day, to be already a lost cause.\n\nAs we have seen, however, it was not merely the clerical class that\nresisted the new truth: the men of science themselves were often\ndisgracefully hostile; and that \"class\" continued to give a sufficiency\nof support to clericalism. If the study of the physical sciences be no\nguarantee for recognition of new truth in those sciences, still less is\nit a sure preparation for right judgment in matters of sociology, or,\nindeed, for a courageous attitude towards conventions. Spencer in his\nearlier works used the language of deism [1920] at a time when Comte\nhad discarded it. It takes a rare combination of intellectual power,\nmoral courage, and official freedom to permit of such a directly\nrationalistic propaganda as was carried on by Professor Clifford, or\neven such as has been accomplished by President Andrew White in America\nunder the comparatively popular profession of deism. It was only in\nhis leisured latter years that Huxley carried on a general conflict\nwith orthodoxy. In middle age he frequently covered himself by attacks\non professed freethinkers; and he did more than any other man of his\ntime in England to conserve the Bible as a school manual by his politic\npanegyric of it in that aspect at a time when bolder rationalists were\nstriving to get it excluded from the State schools. [1921] Other men of\nscience have furnished an abundance of support to orthodoxy by more or\nless vaguely religious pronouncements on the problem of the universe;\nso that Catholic and other obscurantist agencies are able to cite from\nthem many quasi-scientific phrases [1922]--taking care not to ask what\nbearing their language has on the dogmas of the Churches. Physicists\nwho attempt to be more precise are rarely found to be orthodox; and\nthe moral and social science of such writers is too often a species\nof charlatanism. But the whole tendency of natural science, which as\nsuch is necessarily alien to supernaturalism, makes for a rejection of\nthe religious tradition; and the real leaders of science are found more\nand more openly alienated from the creed of faith. We know that Darwin,\nthough the son and grandson of freethinkers, was brought up in ordinary\northodoxy by his mother, and \"gave up common religious belief almost\nindependently from his own reflections.\" [1923] All over the world that\nhas since been an increasingly common experience among scientific men.\n\n\n\n\nSection 5.--The Sociological Sciences\n\n1. A rationalistic treatment of human history had been explicit or\nimplicit in the whole literature of Deism; and had been attempted with\nvarious degrees of success by Bodin, Vico, Montesquieu, Mandeville,\nHume, Smith, Voltaire, Volney, and Condorcet, as well as by lesser\nmen. [1924] So clear had been the classic lead to naturalistic views\nof social growth in the Politics of Aristotle, and so strong the\ninfluence of the new naturalistic spirit, that it is seen even in the\nwork of Goguet (1769), who sets out as biblically as Bossuet; while\nin Germany Herder and Kant framed really luminous generalizations;\nand a whole group of sociological writers rose up in the Scotland\nof the middle and latter parts of the century. [1925] Here again\nthere was reaction; but in France the orthodox Guizot did much to\npromote broader views than his own; Eus\u00e8be Salverte in his essay De\nla Civilisation (1813) made a highly intelligent effort towards a\ngeneral view; and Charles Comte in his Trait\u00e9 de L\u00e9gislation (1826)\nmade a marked scientific advance on the suggestive work of Herder. As\nwe have seen, the eclectic Jouffroy put human affairs in the sphere\nof natural law equally with cosmic phenomena. At length, in the great\nwork of Auguste Comte, scientific method was applied so effectively and\nconcretely to the general problem that, despite his serious fallacies,\nsocial science again took rank as a solid study.\n\n2. In England the anti-revolution reaction was visible in this as\nin other fields of thought. Hume and Gibbon had set the example\nof a strictly naturalistic treatment of history; and the clerical\nRobertson was faithful to their method; but Hallam makes a stand\nfor supernaturalism even in applying a generally scientific critical\nstandard. The majority of historical events he is content to let pass\nas natural, even as the average man sees the hand of the doctor in\nhis escape from rheumatism, but the hand of God in his escape from\na railway accident. Discussing the defeat of Barbarossa at Legnano,\nHallam pronounces that it is not \"material to allege ... that the\naccidental destruction of Frederic's army by disease enabled the\ncities of Lombardy to succeed in their resistance.... Providence\nreserves to itself various means by which the bonds of the oppressor\nmay be broken; and it is not for human sagacity to anticipate whether\nthe army of a conqueror shall moulder in the unwholesome marshes of\nRome or stiffen with frost in a Russian winter.\" [1926]\n\nBut Hallam was nearly the last historian of distinction to vend\nsuch nugatory oracles as either a philosophy or a religion of\nhistory. Even the oracular Carlyle did not clearly stipulate for\n\"special providences\" in his histories, though he leant to that\nconception; and though Ranke also uses mystifying language, he writes\nas a Naturalist; while Michelet is openly anti-clerical. Grote\nwas wholly a rationalist; the historic method of his friend and\ncompetitor, Bishop Thirlwall, was as non-theological as his; Macaulay,\nwhatever might be his conformities or his bias, wrote in his most\nsecular spirit when exhibiting theological evolution; and George\nLong indicated his rationalism again and again. [1927] It is only\nin the writings of the most primitively prejudiced of those German\nhistorians who eliminate ethics from historiography that the \"God\"\nfactor is latterly emphasized in ostensibly expert historiography.\n\n3. All study of economics and of political history fostered such\nviews, and at length, in England and America, by the works of Draper\nand Buckle, in the sixth and later decades of the century, the\nconception of law in human history was widely if slowly popularized,\nto the due indignation of the supernaturalists, who saw the last\ngreat field of natural phenomena passing like others into the realm\nof science. Draper's avowed theism partly protected him from attack;\nbut Buckle's straightforward attacks on creeds and on Churches brought\nupon him a peculiarly fierce hostility, which was unmollified by\nhis incidental avowal of belief in a future life and his erratic\nattacks upon unbelievers. For long this hostility told against his\nsociological teaching. Spencer's Principles of Sociology nevertheless\nclinched the scientific claim by taking sociological law for granted;\nand the new science has continually progressed in acceptance. In the\nhands of all its leading modern exponents in all countries--Lester\nWard, Giddings, Guyau, Letourneau, Tarde, Ferri, Durkheim, De Greef,\nGumplowicz, Lilienfeld, Sch\u00e4ffle--it has been entirely naturalistic,\nthough some Catholic professors continue to inject into it theological\nassumptions. It cannot be said, however, that a general doctrine\nof social evolution is even yet fully established. The problem is\ncomplicated by the profoundly contentious issues of practical politics;\nand in the resulting diffidence of official teachers there arises a\nnotable opening for obscurantism, which has been duly forthcoming. In\nthe first half of the century such an eminent Churchman as Dean Milman\nincurred at the hands of J. H. Newman and others the charge of writing\nthe history of the Jews and of early Christianity in a rationalistic\nspirit, presenting religion as a \"human\" phenomenon. [1928] Later\nChurchmen, with all their preparation, have rarely gone further.\n\n4. Two lines of scientific study, it would appear, must be thoroughly\nfollowed up before the ground can be pronounced clear for authoritative\nconclusions--those of anthropological arch\u00e6ology (including comparative\nmythology and comparative hierology) and economic analysis. On both\nlines, however, great progress has been made; and on the former in\nparticular the result is profoundly disintegrating to traditional\nbelief. The lessons of anthropology had been long available to the\nmodern world before they began to be scientifically applied to the\n\"science of religion.\" The issues raised by Fontenelle and De Brosses\nin the eighteenth century were in practice put aside in favour of\ndirect debate over Christian history, dogma, and ethic; though many\nof the deists dwelt on the analogies of \"heathen\" and \"revealed\"\nreligion. As early as 1824 Benjamin Constant made a vigorous attempt\nto bring the whole phenomena under a general evolutionary conception\nin his work De la Religion. [1929] But it was not till the treasure of\nmodern anthropology had been scientifically massed by such students\nas Theodor Waitz (Anthropologie der Naturv\u00f6lker, 6 Bde. 1859-71) and\nAdolf Bastian (Der Mensch in der Geschichte, 3 Bde. 1860), and above\nall by Sir Edward Tylor, who first lucidly elaborated the science\nof it all, that the arbitrary religious conception of the psychic\nevolution of humanity began to be decisively superseded.\n\nIn 1871 Tylor could still say that \"to many educated minds there seems\nsomething presumptuous and repulsive in the view that the history of\nmankind is part and parcel of the history of nature; that our thoughts,\nwills, and actions accord with laws as definite as those which govern\nthe motion of waves, the combination of acids and bases, and the growth\nof plants and animals.\" [1930] But the old repulsion had already been\nprofoundly impaired by biological and social science; and Tylor's book\nmet with hardly any of the odium that had been lavished on Darwin and\nBuckle. \"It will make me for the future look on religion--a belief\nin the soul, etc.--from a different point of view,\" wrote Darwin\n[1931] to Tylor on its appearance. So thoroughly did the book press\nhome the fact of the evolution of religious thought from savagery\nthat thenceforward the science of mythology, which had never yet\nrisen in professional hands to the height of vision of Fontenelle,\nbegan to be decisively adapted to the anthropological standpoint.\n\nIn the hands of Spencer [1932] all the phenomena of primitive mental\nlife--beliefs, practices, institutions--are considered as purely\nnatural data, no other point of view being recognized; and the\nanthropological treatises of Lord Avebury (Sir John Lubbock) are at\nthe same standpoint. When at length the mass of savage usages which\nlie around the beginnings of historic religion began to be closely\nscanned and classified, notably in the great latter-day compilations\nof Sir J. G. Frazer, what had appeared to be sacred peculiarities\nof the Christian cult were seen to be but variants of universal\nprimitive practice. Thenceforth the problem for serious inquirers\nwas not whether Christianity was a supernatural revelation--the\nsupernatural is no longer a ground of serious discussion--but whether\nthe central narrative is historical in any degree whatever. The defence\nis latterly conducted from a standpoint indistinguishable from the\nUnitarian. But an enormous amount of anthropological research is\nbeing carried on without any reference to such issues, the total\neffect being to exclude the supernaturalist premiss from the study\nof religion as completely as from that of astronomy.\n\n\n\n\nSection 6.--Philosophy and Ethics\n\n1. The philosophy of Kant, while giving the theological class a new\napparatus of defence as against common-sense freethinking, forced none\nthe less on theistic philosophy a great advance from the orthodox\npositions. Thus his immediate successors, Fichte and Schelling,\nproduced systems of which one was loudly denounced as atheistic, and\nthe other as pantheistic, [1933] despite its dualism. Neither seems\nto have had much influence on concrete religious opinion outside the\nuniversities; [1934] and when Schelling in old age turned Catholic\nobscurantist, the gain to clericalism was not great. Hegel in turn\nloosely wrought out a system of which the great merit is to substitute\nthe conception of existence as relation for the nihilistic idealism\nof Fichte and the unsolved dualism of Schelling. This system he\nlatterly adapted to practical exigencies [1935] by formulating, as\nKant had recently done, a philosophic Trinity and hardily defining\nChristianity as \"Absolute Religion\" in comparison with the various\nforms of \"Natural Religion.\" Nevertheless, he counted in a great\ndegree as a disintegrating influence, and was in a very practical\nway anti-Christian. More explicitly than Kant, he admitted that the\nAufkl\u00e4rung, the freethinking movement of the past generation, had\nmade good its case so far as it went; and though, by the admission\nof admirers, he took for granted without justification that it had\ncarried its point with the world at large, [1936] he was chronically\nat strife with the theologians as such, charging them on the one hand\nwith deserting the dogmas which he re-stated, [1937] and on the other\ndeclaring that the common run of them \"know as little of God as a\nblind man sees of a painting, even though he handles the frame.\" [1938]\nOf the belief in miracles he was simply contemptuous. \"Whether at the\nmarriage of Cana the guests got a little more wine or a little less is\na matter of absolutely no importance; nor is it any more essential to\ndemand whether the man with the withered hand was healed; for millions\nof men go about with withered and crippled limbs, whose limbs no man\nheals.\" On the story of the marks made for the information of the\nangel on the Hebrew houses at the Passover he asks: \"Would the angel\nnot have known them without these marks?\", adding: \"This faith has\nno real interest for Spirit.\" [1939] Such writing, from the orthodox\npoint of view, was not compensated for by a philosophy of Christianity\nwhich denaturalized its dogmas, and a presentment of the God-idea and\nof moral law which made religion alternately a phase of philosophy\nand a form of political utilitarianism.\n\n\n As to the impression made by Hegel on most Christians, compare\n Hagenbach, German Rationalism (Eng. tr. of Kirchengeschichte),\n pp. 364-69; Renan, \u00c9tudes d'histoire religieuse, 5e \u00e9dit. p. 406;\n J. D. Morell, Histor. and Crit. View of the Spec. Philos. of\n Europe in the Nineteenth Century, 2nd ed. 1847, ii, 189-91;\n Robins, A Defence of the Faith, 1862, pt. i, pp. 135-41, 176;\n Eschenmenger, Die Hegel'sche Religions-philosophie, 1834; quoted\n in Beard's Voices of the Church, p. 8; Leo, Die Hegelingen,\n 1838; and Reinhard, Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie,\n 2nd ed. 1839, pp. 753-54--also cited by Beard, pp. 9-12.\n\n The gist of Hegel's rehabilitation of Christianity is well\n set forth by Prof. A. Seth Pringle-Pattison in his essay on\n The Philosophy of Religion in Kant and Hegel (rep. in The\n Philos. Radicals and other Essays, 1907), ch. iii. Considered\n in connection with his demonstration that in politics the\n Prussian State was the ideal government, it is seen to be even\n more of an arbitrary and unveridical accommodation to the social\n environment than Kant's Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen\n Vernunft. It approximates intellectually to the process by which\n the neo-Platonists and other eclectics of the classic decadence\n found a semblance of allegorical or symbolical justification for\n every item in the old theology. Nothing could be more false to\n the spirit of Hegel's general philosophy than the representing\n of Christianity as a culmination or \"ultimate\" of all religion;\n and nothing, in fact, was more readily seen by his contemporaries.\n\n We who look back, however, may take a more lenient view of Hegel's\n process of adaptation than was taken in the next generation\n by Haym, who, in his Hegel und seine Zeit (1857), presented\n him as always following the prevailing fashion in thought, and\n lending himself as the tool of reactionary government. Hegel's\n officialism was in the main probably wholehearted. Even as Kant\n felt driven to do something for social conservation at the outbreak\n of the French Revolution, and Fichte to shape for his country\n the sinister ideal of The Closed Industrial State, so Hegel,\n after seeing Prussia shaken to its foundations at the battle of\n Jena and being turned out of his own house by the looting French\n soldiers, was very naturally impelled to support the existing\n State by quasi-philosophico-religious considerations. It was an\n abandonment of the true function of philosophy; but it may have\n been done in all good faith. An intense political conservatism\n was equally marked in Strauss, who dreaded \"demagogy,\" and in\n Schopenhauer, who left his fortune to the fund for the widows and\n families of soldiers killed or injured in the revolutionary strifes\n of 1848. It came in their case from the same source--an alarmed\n memory of social convulsion. The fact remains that Hegel had no\n real part in the State religion which he crowned with formulas.\n\n\nNot only does Hegel's conception of the Absolute make deity simply\nthe eternal process of the universe, and the divine consciousness\nindistinguishable from the total consciousness of mankind, [1940]\nbut his abstractions lend themselves equally to all creeds; [1941]\nand some of the most revolutionary of the succeeding movements of\nGerman thought--as those of Vatke, Strauss, [1942] Feuerbach, and\nMarx--professedly founded on him. It is certainly a striking testimony\nto the influence of Hegel that five such powerful innovators as Vatke\n[1943] in Old-Testament, Bruno Bauer and Strauss in New-Testament\ncriticism, Feuerbach in the philosophy of religion, and Marx in social\nphilosophy, should at first fly the Hegelian flag. It can hardly have\nbeen that Hegel's formulas sufficed to generate the criticism they\nall brought to bear upon their subject matter; rather we must suppose\nthat their naturally powerful minds were attracted by the critical\nand reconstructive aspects of his doctrine; but the philosophy which\nstimulated them must have had great affinities for revolution, as\nwell as for all forms of the idea of evolution.\n\n2. In respect of his formal championship of Christianity Hegel's\nmethod, arbitrary even for him, appealed neither to the orthodox nor,\nwith a few exceptions, [1944] to his own disciples, some of whom,\nas Ruge, at length definitely renounced Christianity. [1945] In 1854\nHeine told his French readers that there were in Germany \"fanatical\nmonks of atheism\" who would willingly burn Voltaire as a besotted\ndeist; [1946] and Heine himself, in his last years of suffering\nand of revived poetic religiosity, could see in Hegel's system only\natheism. Bruno Bauer at first opposed Strauss, and afterwards went\neven further than he, professing Hegelianism all the while. [1947]\nSchopenhauer and Hartmann in turn being even less sustaining to\northodoxy, and later orthodox systems failing to impress, there came\nin due course the cry of \"Back to Kant,\" where at least orthodoxy\nhad some formal semblance of sanction.\n\nHartmann's work on The Self-Decomposition of Christianity [1948]\nis a stringent exposure of the unreality of what passed for\n\"liberal Christianity\" in Germany a generation ago, and an appeal\nfor a \"new concrete religion\" of monism or pantheism as a bulwark\nagainst Ultramontanism. On this monism, however, Hartmann insisted\non grounding his pessimism; and with this pessimistic pantheism he\nhoped to outbid Catholicism against the \"irreligious\" Strauss and the\nliberal Christians--in his view no less irreligious. It does not seem\nto have had much acceptance. On the whole, the effect of all German\nphilosophy has probably been to make for the general discredit of\ntheistic thinking, the surviving forms of Hegelianism being little\npropitious to current religion. And though Schopenhauer and Nietzsche\ncan hardly be said to carry on the task of philosophy either in spirit\nor in effect, yet the rapid intensification of hostility to current\nreligion which their writings in particular manifest [1949] must be\nadmitted to stand for a deep revolt against the Kantian compromise. And\nthis revolt was bound to come about. The truth-shunning tactic of Kant,\nFichte, and Hegel--aiming at the final discrediting of the Aufkl\u00e4rung\nas a force that had done its work, and could find no more to do,\nhowever it be explained and excused--was a mere expression of their\nown final lack of scientific instinct. It is hard to believe that\nthinkers who had perceived and asserted the fact of progression in\nreligion could suppose that true philosophy consisted in putting a\nstop on \u00e0 priori grounds to the historical analysis, and setting up an\n\"ultimate\" of philosophic theory. The straightforward investigators,\nseeking simply for truth, have passed on to posterity a spirit\nwhich, correcting their inevitable errors, reaches a far deeper\nand wider comprehension of religious evolution and psychosis than\ncould be reached by the verbalizing methods of the self-satisfied\nand self-sufficing metaphysicians. These, so far as they prevailed,\ndid but delay the advance of real knowledge. Their work, in fact,\nwas fatally shaped by the general reaction against the Revolution,\nwhich in their case took a quasi-philosophic form, while in France\nand England it worked out as a crude return to clerical and political\nauthoritarianism. [1950]\n\n3. From the collisions of philosophic systems in Germany there\nemerged two great practical freethinking forces, the teachings of\nLudwig Feuerbach (1804-76), who was obliged to give up his lecturing\nat Erlangen in 1830 after the issue of his Thoughts upon Death and\nImmortality, and Ludwig B\u00fcchner, who was deprived of his chair of\nclinic at T\u00fcbingen in 1855 for his Force and Matter. The former,\noriginally a Hegelian, expressly broke away from his master,\ndeclaring that, whereas Hegel belonged to the \"Old Testament\"\nof modern philosophy, he himself would set forth the New, wherein\nHegel's fundamentally incoherent treatment of deity (as the total\nprocess of things on the one hand, and an objective personality\non the other) should be cured. [1951] Feuerbach accordingly, in\nhis Essence of Christianity (1841) and Essence of Religion (1851),\nsupplied one of the first adequate modern statements of the positively\nrationalistic position as against Christianity and theism, in terms\nof philosophic as well as historical insight--a statement to which\nthere is no characteristically modern answer save in terms of the\nrefined sentimentalism of the youthful Renan, [1952] fundamentally\naverse alike to scientific precision and to intellectual consistency.\n\nFeuerbach's special service consists in the rebuttal of the metaphysic\nin which religion had chronically taken refuge from the straightforward\ncriticism of freethinkers, in itself admittedly unanswerable. They\nhad shown many times over its historic falsity, its moral perversity,\nand its philosophic self-contradiction; and the more astute official\ndefenders, leaving to the less competent the task of re-vindicating\nmiracles and prophecy and defending the indefensible, proceeded\nto shroud the particular defeat in a pseudo-philosophic process\nwhich claimed for all religion alike an indestructible inner truth,\nin the light of which the instinctive believer could again make\nshift to affirm his discredited credences. It was this process which\nFeuerbach exploded, for all who cared to read him. He had gone through\nit. Intensely religious in his youth, he had found in the teaching of\nHegel an attractive philosophic garb for his intuitional thought. But a\nwider concern than Hegel's for actual knowledge, and for the knowledge\nof the actual, moved him to say to his teacher, on leaving: \"Two years\nhave I attached myself to you; two years have I completely devoted to\nyour philosophy. Now I feel the necessity of starting in the directly\nopposite way: I am going to study anatomy.\" [1953] It may have been\nthat what saved him from the Hegelian fate of turning to the end the\nsquirrel-cage of conformist philosophy was the personal experience\nwhich put him in fixed antagonism to the governmental forces that\nHegel was moved to serve. The hostility evoked by his Thoughts on\nDeath and Immortality completed his alienation from the official\nside of things, and left him to the life of a devoted truth-seeker--a\ncareer as rare in Germany as elsewhere. The upshot was that Feuerbach,\nin the words of Strauss, \"broke the double yoke in which, under Hegel,\nphilosophy and theology still went.\" [1954]\n\nFor the task he undertook he had consummately equipped himself. In\na series of four volumes (History of Modern Philosophy from Bacon to\nSpinoza, 1833; Exposition and Criticism of the Leibnitzian Philosophy,\n1837; Pierre Bayle, 1838; On Philosophy and Christianity, 1839)\nhe explored the field of philosophy, and re-studied theology in\nthe light of moral and historical criticism, before he produced\nhis masterpiece, Das Wesen des Christenthums. Here the tactic of\nHegel is turned irresistibly on the Hegelian defence; and religion,\ndefiantly declared by Hegel to be an affair of self-consciousness,\n[1955] is shown to be in very truth nothing else. \"Such as are a\nman's thoughts and dispositions, such is his God; so much worth as\na man has, so much and no more has his God. Consciousness of God is\nself-consciousness; knowledge of God is self-knowledge.\" [1956] This\nof course is openly what Hegelian theism is in effect--philosophic\natheism; and though Feuerbach at times disclaimed the term, he declares\nin his preface that \"atheism, at least in the sense of this work, is\nthe secret of religion itself; that religion itself ... in its heart,\nin its essence, believes in nothing else than the truth and divinity of\nhuman nature.\" In the preliminary section on The Essence of Religion\nhe makes his position clear once for all: \"A God who has abstract\npredicates has also an abstract existence.... Not the attribute of\nthe divinity, but the divineness or deity of the attribute, is the\nfirst true Divine Being. Thus what theology and philosophy have held\nto be God, the Absolute, the Infinite, is not God; but that which they\nhave held not to be God, is God--namely the attribute, the quality,\nwhatever has reality. Hence, he alone is the true atheist to whom the\npredicates of the Divine Being--for example, love, wisdom, justice--are\nnothing; not he to whom merely the subject of these predicates is\nnothing.... These have an intrinsic, independent reality; they force\ntheir recognition upon man by their very nature; they are self-evident\ntruths to him; they approve, they attest themselves.... The idea of\nGod is dependent on the idea of justice, of benevolence....\"\n\nThis is obviously the answer to Baur, who, after paying tribute\nto the personality of Feuerbach, and presenting a tolerably fair\nsummary of his critical philosophy, can find no answer to it save\nthe inept protest that it is one-sided in respect of its reduction\nof religion to the subjective (the very course insisted on by a\nhundred defenders!), that it favours the communistic and other extreme\ntendencies of the time, and that it brings everything \"under the rude\nrule of egoism.\" [1957] Here a philosophic and an aspersive meaning\nare furtively combined in one word. The scientific subjectivism\nof Feuerbach's analysis of religion is no more a vindication or\nacceptance of \"rude egoism\" than is the Christian formula of \"God's\nwill\" a condonation of murder. The restraint of egoism by altruism\nlies in human character and polity alike for the rationalist and\nfor the irrationalist, as Baur must have known well enough after his\nlong survey of Church history. His really contemptible escape from\nFeuerbach's criticism, under cover of alternate cries of \"Communism\"\nand \"egoism\"--a self-stultification which needs no comment--is simply\none more illustration of the fashion in which, since the time of Kant,\nphilosophy in Germany as elsewhere has been chronically demoralized\nby resort to non-philosophical tests. \"Max Stirner\" (pen-name of\nJohann Caspar Schmidt, 1806-1856) carried the philosophic \"egoism\" of\nFeuerbach about as far in words as might be; but his work on the Ego\n(Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum, 1845) remains an ethical curiosity\nrather than a force. [1958]\n\n4. Arnold Ruge (1802-1880), who was of the same philosophical school,\n[1959] gave his life to a disinterested propaganda of democracy and\nlight; and if in 1870 he capitulated to the new Empire, and thereby won\na small pension for the two last years of his life, he was but going\nthe way of many another veteran, dazzled in his old age by very old\nfires. His Addresses on Religion, its Rise and Fall: to the educated\namong its Reverers [1960] (1869) is a lucid and powerful performance,\nproceeding from a mythological analysis of religion to a cordial\nplea for rationalism in all things. The charge of \"materialism\"\nwas for him no bugbear. \"Truly,\" he writes, \"we are not without the\nearth and the solar system, not without the plants and the animals,\nnot without head. But whoever has head enough to understand science\nand its conquests in the field of nature and of mind (Geist) knows\nalso that the material world rests in the immaterial, moves in it,\nand is by it animated, freed, and ensouled; that soul and idea are\nincarnate in Nature, but that also logic, idea, spirit, and science\nfree themselves out of Nature, become abstracted and as immaterial\nPower erect their own realm, the realm of spirit in State, science,\nand art.\" [1961]\n\n5. On Feuerbach's Essence of Religion followed the resounding explosion\nof B\u00fcchner's Force and Matter (1855), which in large measure, but\nwith much greater mastery of scientific detail, does for the plain\nman of his century what d'Holbach in his chief work sought to do\nfor his day. Constantly vilified, even in the name of philosophy,\nin the exact tone and spirit of animal irritation which marks the\nreligious vituperation of all forms of rationalism in previous ages;\nand constantly misrepresented as professing to explain an infinite\nuniverse when it does but show the hollowness of all supernaturalist\nexplanations, [1962] the book steadily holds its ground as a manual of\nanti-mysticism. [1963] Between them, Feuerbach and B\u00fcchner may be said\nto have framed for their age an atheistic \"System of Nature,\" concrete\nand abstract, without falling into the old error of substituting one\napriorism for another. Whosoever endorses Baur's protest against the\n\"one-sidedness\" of Feuerbach, who treats of religion on its chosen\nground of self-consciousness, has but to turn to B\u00fcchner's study of\nthe objective world and see whether his cause fares any better.\n\n6. In France the course of thought had been hardly less\nrevolutionary. Philosophy, like everything else, had been affected\nby the legitimist restoration; and between Victor Cousin and the\nother \"classic philosophers\" of the first third of the century\northodoxy was nominally reinstated. Yet even among these there was\nno firm coherence. Maine de Biran, one of the shrinking spirits who\npassed gradually into an intolerant authoritarianism from fear of\nthe perpetual pressures of reason, latterly declared (1821) that a\nphilosophy which ascribed to deity only infinite thought or supreme\nintelligence, eliminating volition and love, was pure atheism;\nand this pronouncement struck at the philosophy of Cousin. Nor\nwas this species of orthodoxy any more successful than the furious\nirrationalism of Joseph De Maistre in setting up a philosophic form of\nfaith, as distinct from the cult of rhetoric and sentiment founded by\nChateaubriand. Cousin was deeply distrusted by those who knew him, and\nat the height of his popularity he was contemned by the more competent\nminds around him, such as Sainte-Beuve, Comte, and Edgar Quinet. [1964]\nThe latter thinker himself counted for a measure of rationalism, though\nhe argued for theism, and undertook to make good the historicity of\nJesus against those who challenged it. For the rest, even among the\nostensibly conservative and official philosophers, Th\u00e9odore Jouffroy,\nan eclectic, who held the chair of moral philosophy in the Facult\u00e9\ndes Lettres at Paris, was at heart an unbeliever from his youth up,\n[1965] and even in his guarded writings was far from satisfying the\northodox. \"God,\" he wrote, [1966] \"interposes as little in the regular\ndevelopment of humanity as in the course of the solar system.\" He\nadded a fatalistic theorem of divine predetermination, which he\nverbally salved in the usual way by saying that predetermination\npresupposed individual liberty. Eclecticism thus fell, as usual,\nbetween two stools; but it was not orthodoxy that would gain. On\nanother line Jouffroy openly bantered the authoritarians on their\nappeal to a popular judgment which they declared to be incapable of\npronouncing on religious questions. [1967]\n\n7. On retrospect, the whole official French philosophy of the period,\nhowever conservative in profession, is found to have been at bottom\nrationalistic, and only superficially friendly to faith. The Abb\u00e9\nFelice de Lamennais declaimed warmly against L'indiff\u00e9rence en\nmati\u00e8re de religion (4 vols. 1818-24), resorting to the old Catholic\ndevice, first employed by Montaigne, of turning Pyrrhonism against\nunbelief. Having ostensibly discredited the authority of the senses and\nthe reason (by which he was to be read and understood), he proceeded\nin the customary way to set up the ancient standard of the consensus\nuniversalis, the authority of the majority, the least reflective and\nthe most fallacious. This he sought to elevate into a kind of corporate\nwisdom, superior to all individual judgment; and he marched straight\ninto the countersense of claiming the pagan consensus as a confirmation\nof religion in general, while arguing for a religion which claimed to\nput aside paganism as error. The final logical content of the thesis\nwas the inanity that the majority for the time being must be right.\n\nDamiron, writing his Essai sur l'histoire de la philosophie en\nFrance au XIXe Si\u00e8cle in 1828, replies in a fashion more amiable than\nreassuring, commenting on the \"strange skepticism\" of Lamennais as\nto the human reason. [1968] For himself, he takes up the parable of\nLessing, and declares that where Lessing spoke doubtfully, men had\nnow reached conviction. It was no longer a question of whether, but of\nwhen, religion was to be recast in terms of fuller intelligence. \"In\nthis religious regeneration we shall be to the Christians what the\nChristians were to the Jews, and the Jews to the patriarchs: we shall\nbe Christians and something more.\" The theologian of the future will\nbe half-physicist, half-philosopher. \"We shall study God through\nnature and through men; and a new Messiah will not be necessary\nto teach us miraculously what we can learn of ourselves and by our\nnatural lights.\" Christianity has been a useful discipline; but \"our\neducation is so advanced that henceforth we can be our own teachers;\nand, having no need of an extraneous inspiration, we draw faith from\nscience.\" [1969] \"Prayer is good, doubtless,\" but it \"has only a\nmysterious, uncertain, remote action on our environment.\" [1970] All\nthis under Louis Philippe, from a professor at the \u00c9cole Normale. Not\nto this day has official academic philosophy in Britain ventured\nto go so far. In France the brains were never out, even under\nthe Restoration. Lamennais himself gave the proof. His employment\nof skepticism as an aid to faith had been, like Montaigne's, the\nexpression of a temperament slow to reach rational positions, but\nsurely driven thither. As a boy of twelve, when a priest sought to\nprepare him for communion, he had shown such abnormal incredulity\nthat the priest gave him up; and later he read omnivorously among\nthe deists of the eighteenth century, Rousseau attracting him in\nparticular. Later he passed through a religious crisis, slowly covering\nground which others traverse early. He did not become a communicant\ntill he was twenty-two; he entered the seminary only at twenty-seven;\nand he was ordained only when he was nearly thirty-two.\n\nYet he had experienced much. Already in 1808 his R\u00e9flexions sur\nl'\u00e9tat de l'\u00e9glise had been suppressed by Napoleon's police; in 1814\nhe had written, along with his brother, in whose seminary he taught\nmathematics, a treatise maintaining the papal claims; and in the\nHundred Days of 1815 he took flight to London. His mind was always at\nwork. His Essay on Indifference expressed his need of a conviction;\nwith unbelief he could reckon and sympathize; with indifference\nhe could not; but when the indifference was by his own account the\nresult of reflective unbelief he treated it in the same fashion as\nthe spontaneous form. At bottom, his quarrel was with reason. Yet\nthe very element in his mind which prompted his anti-rational polemic\nwas ratiocinative; and as he slowly reached clearness of thought he\ncame more and more into conflict with Catholicism. It was all very\nwell to flout the individual reason in the name of the universal;\nbut to give mankind a total infallibility was not the way to satisfy\na pope or a Church which claimed a monopoly of the gift. In 1824\nhe was well received by the pope; but when in 1830 he began to write\nLiberal articles in the journal L'Avenir, in which he collaborated with\nLacordaire, the Comte de Montalembert, and other neo-Catholics, offence\nwas quickly taken, and the journal was soon suspended. Lamennais\nand his disciples Lacordaire and Montalembert went to Rome to plead\ntheir cause, but were coldly received; and on their way home in 1832\nreceived at Munich a missive of severe reprimand.\n\nRendering formal obedience, Lamennais retired, disillusioned, with\nhis friends to his and his brother's estate in Brittany, and began\nhis process of intellectual severance. In January, 1833, he performed\nmass, and at this stage he held by his artificial distinction between\nthe spheres of faith and reason. In May of that year he declared his\ndetermination to place himself \"as a writer outside of the Church and\nCatholicism,\" declaring that \"outside of Catholicism, outside faith,\nthere is reason; outside of the Church there is humanity; I place\nmyself (je me renferme) in this sphere.\" [1971] Still he claimed to\nbe simple fid\u00e8le en religion, and to combine \"fidelity in obedience\nwith liberty in science.\" [1972] In January of 1834, however, he had\nceased to perform any clerical function; and his Paroles d'un Croyant,\npublished in that year, stand for a faith which the Church reckoned\nas infidelity.\n\nLacordaire, separating from his insubordinate colleague, published\nan Examen de la philosophie de M. de Lamennais, in which the true\npapal standpoint was duly taken. Thenceforth Lamennais was an\nIshmaelite. Feeling as strongly in politics as in everything else,\nhe was infuriated by the brutal suppression of the Polish rising\nin 1831-32; and the government of Louis Philippe pleased him as\nlittle as that of Charles X had done. In 1841 he was sentenced to\na year's imprisonment for his brochure Le pays et le gouvernement\n(1840). Shortly before his death in 1854 he claimed that he had never\nchanged: \"I have gone on, that is all.\" But he had in effect changed\nfrom a Catholic to a pantheist; [1973] and in 1848, as a member of\nthe National Assembly, he more than once startled his colleagues by\n\"an affectation of impiety.\" [1974] On his deathbed he refused to\nreceive the cur\u00e9 of the parish, and by his own wish he was buried\nwithout any religious ceremony, in the fosse commune of the poor and\nwith no cross on his grave.\n\nSuch a type does not very clearly belong to rationalism; and Lamennais\nnever enrolled himself save negatively under that flag. Always\nemotional and impulsive, he had in his period of aggressive fervour\nas a Churchman played a rather sinister part in the matter of\nthe temporary insanity of Auguste Comte, lending himself to the\nunscrupulous tactics of the philosopher's mother, who did not stick\nat libelling her son's wife in order to get him put under clerical\ncontrol. [1975] It was perhaps well for him that he was forced out\nof the Church; for his love of liberty was too subjective to have\nqualified him for a wise use of power. But the spectacle of such\na temperament forced into antagonism with the Church on moral and\nsocial grounds could not but stimulate anti-clericalism in France,\nwhatever his philosophy may have done to promote rational thinking.\n\n8. The most energetic and characteristic philosophy produced in the new\nFrance was that of Auguste Comte, which as set forth in the Cours de\nPhilosophie Positive (1830-42) practically reaffirmed while it recast\nand supplemented the essentials of the anti-theological rationalism\nof the previous age, and in that sense rebuilt French positivism,\ngiving that new name to the naturalistic principle. Though Comte's\ndirect following was never large, it is significant that soon after the\ncompletion of his Cours we find Saisset lamenting that the war between\nthe clergy and the philosophers, \"suspended by the great political\ncommotion of 1830,\" had been \"revived with a new energy.\" [1976]\nThe later effort of Comte to frame a politico-ecclesiastical system\nnever succeeded beyond the formation of a politically powerless sect;\nand the attempt to prove its consistency with his philosophic system\nby claiming that from the first he had harboured a plan of social\nregulation [1977] is beside the case. A man's way of thinking may\ninvolve intellectual contradictions all through his life; and Comte's\ndid. Positivism in the scientific sense cannot be committed to any\none man's scheme for regulating society and conserving \"cultus\"; and\nComte's was merely one of the many evoked in France by the memory\nof an age of revolutions. It belongs, indeed, to the unscientific\nand unphilosophic side of his mind, the craving for authority and the\ntemper of ascendency, which connect with his admiration of the medieval\nChurch. Himself philosophically an atheist, he condemned atheists\nbecause they mostly contemned his passion for regimentation. By\nreason of this idiosyncrasy and of the habitually dictatorial tone\nof his doctrine, he has made his converts latterly more from the\nreligious than from the freethinking ranks. But both in France and\nin England his philosophy tinged all the new thought of his time, his\nleading English adherents in particular being among the most esteemed\npublicists of the day. Above all, he introduced the conception of a\n\"science of society\" where hitherto there had ruled the haziest forms\nof \"providentialism.\" In France the general effect of the rationalistic\nmovement had been such that when Taine, under the Third Empire,\nassailed the whole \"classic\" school in his Philosophes classiques\n(1857), his success was at once generally recognized, and a non-Comtist\npositivism was thenceforth the ruling philosophy. The same thing has\nhappened in Italy, where quite a number of university professors are\nexplicitly positivist in their philosophic teaching. [1978]\n\n9. In Britain, where abstract philosophy after Berkeley had been mainly\nleft to Hume and the Scotch thinkers who opposed him, metaphysics\nwas for a generation practically overriden by the moral and social\nsciences; Hartley's Christian Materialism making small headway\nas formulated by him, though it was followed up by the Unitarian\nPriestley. The reaction against the Revolution, indeed, seems to have\nevicted everything in the nature of active philosophic thought from\nthe universities in the first decade of the nineteenth century; at\nOxford it was taught in a merely traditionary fashion, in lamentable\ncontrast to what was going on in Germany; [1979] and in Scotland in\nthe 'thirties things had fallen to a similar level. [1980] It was over\npractical issues that new thought germinated in England. The proof of\nthe change wrought in the direction of native thought is seen in the\npersonalities of the men who, in the teeth of the reaction, applied\nrationalistic method to ethics and psychology. Bentham and James\nMill were in their kindred fields among the most convinced and active\nfreethinkers of their day, the former attacking both clericalism and\northodoxy; [1981] while the latter, no less pronounced in his private\nopinions, more cautiously built up a rigorously naturalistic psychology\nin his Analysis of the Human Mind (1829). Bentham's utilitarianism\nwas so essentially anti-Christian that he could hardly have been\nmore disliked by discerning theists if he had avowed his share in\nthe authorship of the atheistic Analysis of the Influence of Natural\nReligion, which, elaborated from his manuscript by no less a thinker\nthan George Grote, was published in 1822. [1982] Pseudonymous as\nthat essay is, it seeks to guard against the risk of prosecution\nby the elaborate stipulation that what it discusses is always the\ninfluence of natural religion on life, revealed religion being another\nmatter. But this is of course the merest stratagem, the whole drift of\nthe book being a criticism of the effects of the current religion on\ncontemporary society. It greatly influenced J. S. Mill, whose essay\non The Utility of Religion echoes its beginning; and if it had been\na little less drab in style it might have influenced many more.\n\nBut Bentham's ostensible restriction of his logic to practical problems\nof law and morals secured him a wider influence than was wielded by any\nof the higher publicists of his day. The whole tendency of his school\nwas intensely rationalistic; and it indirectly affected all thought\nby its treatment of economics, which from Hume and Smith onwards had\nbeen practically divorced from theology. Even clerical economists,\nsuch as Malthus and Chalmers, alike orthodox in religion, furthered\nnaturalism in philosophy in spite of themselves by their insistence\non the law of population, which is the negation of divine benevolence\nas popularly conceived. A not unnatural result was a religious fear\nof all reasoning whatever, and a disparagement of the very faculty\nof reason. This, however, was sharply resisted by the more cultured\nchampions of orthodoxy, [1983] to the great advantage of critical\ndiscussion.\n\n10. When English metaphysical philosophy revived with Sir William\nHamilton, [1984] it was on the lines of a dialectical resistance\nto the pantheism of Germany, in the interests of faith; though\nHamilton's dogmatic views were always doubtful. [1985] Admirably\nlearned, and adroit in metaphysical fence, he always grounded his\ntheism on the alleged \"needs of our moral nature\"--a declaration of\nphilosophical bankruptcy. The vital issue was brought to the front\nafter his death in the Bampton Lectures (1858) of his supporter\nDean Mansel; and between them they gave the decisive proof that the\northodox cause had been philosophically lost while being socially\nwon, since their theism emphasized in the strongest way the negative\ncriticism of Kant, leaving deity void of all philosophically cognizable\nqualities. Hamilton and Mansel alike have received severe treatment\nat the hands of Mill and others for the calculated irrationalism\nand the consequent immoralism of their doctrine, which insisted on\nattributing moral bias to an admittedly Unknowable Absolute, and on\nstanding for Christian mysteries on the skeptical ground that reason\nis an imperfect instrument, and that our moral faculties and feelings\n\"demand\" the traditional beliefs. But they did exactly what was\nneeded to force rationalism upon open and able minds. It is indeed\nastonishing to find so constantly repeated by trained reasoners the\nold religious blunder of reasoning from the inadequacy of reason to\nthe need for faith. The disputant says in effect: \"Our reason is not\nto be trusted; let us then on that score rationally decide to believe\nwhat is handed down to us\": for if the argument is not a process of\nreasoning it is nothing; and if it is to stand, it is an assertion\nof the validity it denies. Evidently the number of minds capable of\nsuch self-stultification is great; but among minds at once honest\nand competent the number capable of detecting the absurdity must be\nconsiderable; and the invariable result of its use down to our own\ntime is to multiply unbelievers in the creed so absurdly defended.\n\nIt is difficult to free Mansel from the charge of seeking to confuse\nand bewilder; but mere contact with the processes of reasoning in\nhis Bampton Lectures is almost refreshing after much acquaintance\nwith the see-saw of vituperation and platitude which up to that time\nmostly passed muster for defence of religion in nineteenth-century\nEngland. He made for a revival of intellectual life. And he suffered\nenough at the hands of his co-religionists, including F. D. Maurice,\nto set up something like compassion in the mind of the retrospective\nrationalist. Accused of having adopted \"the absolute and infinite,\nas defined after the leaders of German metaphysics,\" as a \"synonym\nfor the true and living God,\" he protested that he had done\n\"exactly the reverse. I assert that the absolute and infinite,\nas defined in the German metaphysics, and in all other metaphysics\nwith which I am acquainted, is a notion which destroys itself by\nits own contradictions. I believe also that God is, in some manner\nincomprehensible by me, both absolute and infinite; and that those\nattributes exist in Him without any repugnance or contradiction at\nall. Hence I maintain throughout that the infinite of philosophy is\nnot the true infinite.\" [1986] Charged further with borrowing without\nacknowledgment from Newman, the Dean was reduced to crediting Newman\nwith \"transcendent gifts\" while claiming to have read almost nothing\nby him, [1987] and winding up with a quotation from Newman inviting\nmen to seek solace from the sense of nescience in blind belief.\n\nIt was said of Hamilton that, \"having scratched his eyes out in the\nbush of reason, he scratched them in again in the bush of faith\";\nand when that could obviously be said also of his reverend pupil,\nthe philosophic tide was clearly on the turn. Within two years of the\ndelivery of Mansel's lectures his and Hamilton's philosophic positions\nwere being confidently employed as an open and avowed basis for the\nnaturalistic First Principles (1860-62) of Herbert Spencer, wherein,\nwith an unfortunate laxity of metaphysic on the author's own part,\nand a no less unfortunate lack of consistency as regards the criticism\nof religious and anti-religious positions, [1988] the new cosmic\nconceptions are unified in a masterly conception of evolution as a\nuniversal law. This service, the rendering of which was quite beyond\nthe capacity of the multitude of Spencer's metaphysical critics, marks\nhim as one of the great influences of his age. Strictly, the book is a\n\"System of Nature\" rather than a philosophy in the sense of a study\nof the grounds and limitations of knowledge; that is to say, it is on\nthe former ground alone that it is coherent and original. But its very\nimperfections on the other side have probably promoted its reception\namong minds already shaken in theology by the progress of concrete\nscience; while at the same time such imperfections give a hostile\nfoothold to the revived forms of theism. In any case, the \"agnostic\"\nfoundation supplied by the despairing dialectic of Hamilton and Mansel\nhas always constituted the most effective part of the Spencerian case.\n\n11. The effect of the ethical pressure of the deistic attack on\nthe intelligence of educated Christians was fully seen even within\nthe Anglican Church before the middle of the century. The unstable\nColeridge, who had gone round the whole compass of opinion [1989] when\nhe began to wield an influence over the more sensitive of the younger\nChurchmen, was strenuous in a formal affirmation of the doctrine of\nthe Trinity, but no less anxious to modify the doctrine of Atonement\non which the conception of the Trinity was historically founded. In\nthe hands of Maurice the doctrine of sacrifice became one of example to\nthe end of subjective regeneration of the sinner. This view, which was\ndeveloped by John the Scot--perhaps from hints in Origen [1990]--and\nagain by Bernardino Ochino, [1991] is specially associated with the\nteaching of Coleridge; but it was quite independently held in England\nbefore him by the Anglican Dr. Parr (1747-1825), who appears to have\nbeen heterodox upon most points in the orthodox creed, [1992] and who,\nlike Servetus and Coleridge and Hegel, held by a modal as against a\n\"personal\" Trinity. The advance in ethical sensitiveness which had\nlatterly marked English thought, and which may perhaps be traced in\nequal degrees to the influence of Shelley and to that of Bentham,\ncounted for much in this shifting of Christian ground. The doctrine of\nsalvation by faith was by many felt to be morally indefensible. Such\nUnitarian accommodations presumably reconciled to Christianity and\nthe Church many who would otherwise have abandoned them; and the only\northodox rebuttal seems to have been the old and dangerous resort to\nthe Butlerian argument, to the effect that the God of Nature shows no\nsuch benign fatherliness as the anti-sacrificial school ascribe to\nhim. [1993] This could only serve to emphasize the moral bankruptcy\nof Butler's philosophy, to which Mansel, in an astonishing passage\nof his Bampton Lectures, [1994] had shown himself incredibly blind.\n\nThe same pressure of moral argument was doubtless potent in the\ndevelopment of \"Socinian\" or other rationalistic views in the\nProtestant Churches of Germany, Holland, Hungary, Switzerland, and\nFrance in the first half of the century. Such development had gone\nso far that by the middle of the century the Churches in question\nwere, to the eye of an English evangelical champion, predominantly\nrationalistic, and in that sense \"infidel.\" [1995] Reactions have been\nclaimed before and since; but in our own age there is little to show\nfor them. In the United States, again, the ethical element probably\npredominated in the recoil of Emerson from Christian orthodoxy even of\nthe Unitarian stamp, as well as in the heresy of Theodore Parker, whose\naversion to the theistic ethic of Jonathan Edwards was so strong as\nto make him blind to the reasoning power of that stringent Calvinist.\n\n12. A powerful and wholesome stimulus was given to English thought\nthroughout the latter half of the nineteenth century by the many-sided\ninfluence of John Stuart Mill, who, beginning by a brilliant System\nof Logic (1843), which he followed up with a less durable exposition\nof the Principles of Political Economy (1848), became through his\nshorter works On Liberty and on various political problems one of\nthe most popular of the serious writers of his age. It was not till\nthe posthumous issue of his Autobiography and his Three Essays on\nReligion (1874) that many of his readers realized how complete was\nhis alienation from the current religion, from his childhood up. In\nhis Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy (1865), indeed,\nhe had indignantly repudiated the worship of an unintelligibly good\nGod; but he had there seemed to take for granted the God-idea; and\nsave in inconclusive passages in the Liberty (1859) he had indicated\nno rejection of Christianity. But though the Liberty was praised by\nKingsley and contemned by Carlyle, it made for freethinking no less\nthan for tolerance; and his whole life's work made for reason. \"The\nsaint of rationalism\" was Gladstone's [1996] account of him as a\nparliamentarian. His posthumous presentment to the world of the strange\nconception of a limited-liability God, the victim of circumstances--a\ntheorem which meets neither the demand for a theistic explanation of\nthe universe nor the worshipper's craving for support--sets up some\nwonder as to his philosophy; but was probably as disintegrative of\northodoxy as a more philosophical performance would have been.\n\n\n\n\nSection 7.--Modern Jewry\n\nIn the culture-life of the dispersed Jews, in the modern period,\nthere is probably as much variety of credence in regard to religion\nas occurs in the life of Christendom so called. Such names as those\nof Spinoza, Jacobi, Moses Mendelssohn, Heine, and Karl Marx tell\nsufficiently of Jewish service to freethought; and each one of these\nmust have had many disciples of his own race. Deism among the educated\nJews of Germany in the eighteenth century was probably common. [1997]\nThe famous Rabbi Elijah of Wilna (d. 1797), entitled the Gaon, \"the\ngreat one,\" set up a movement of relatively rationalistic pietism\nthat led to the establishment in 1803 of a Rabbinical college at\nWalosin, which has flourished ever since, and had in 1888 no fewer\nthan 400 students, among whose successors there goes on a certain\namount of independent study. [1998] In the freer world outside\ncritical thought has asserted itself within the pale of orthodox\nJudaism; witness such a writer as Nachman Krochmal (1785-1840),\nwhose posthumous Guide to the Perplexed of the Time [1999] (1851),\nthough not a scientific work, is ethically and philosophically in\nadvance of the orthodox Judaism of its age. Of Krochmal it has been\nsaid that he \"was inspired in his work by the study of Hegel, just\nas Maimonides had been by the study of Aristotle.\" [2000] The result\nis only a liberalizing of Jewish orthodoxy in the light of historic\nstudy, [2001] such as went on among Christians in the same period;\nbut it is thus a stepping-stone to further science.\n\nTo-day educated Jewry is divided in somewhat the same proportions\nas Christendom into absolute rationalists and liberal and fanatical\nbelievers; and representatives of all three types, of different\nsocial grades, may be found among the Zionists, whose movement for the\nacquisition of a new racial home has attracted so much attention and\nsympathy in recent years. Whether or not that movement attains to any\ndecisive political success, Judaism clearly cannot escape the solvent\ninfluences which affect all European opinion. As in the case of the\nChristian Church, the synagogue in the centres of culture keeps the\nformal adherence of some who no longer think on its plane; but while\nattempts are made from time to time to set up more rationalistic\ninstitutions for Jews with the modern bias, the general tendency is\nto a division between devotees of the old forms and those who have\ndecided to live by reason.\n\n\n\n\nSection 8.--The Oriental Civilizations\n\nWe have already seen, in discussing the culture histories of India,\nChina, and Moslem Persia, how ancient elements of rationalism continue\nto germinate more or less obscurely in the unpropitious soils of\nAsiatic life. Ignorance is in most oriental countries too immensely\npreponderant to permit of any other species of survival. But sociology,\nwhile recognizing the vast obstacles to the higher life presented by\nconditions which with a fatal facility multiply the lower, can set\nno limit to the possibilities of upward evolution. The case of Japan\nis a sufficient rebuke to the thoughtless iterators of the formula of\nthe \"unprogressiveness of the East.\" While a cheerfully superstitious\nreligion is there still normal among the mass, the transformation of\nthe political ideals and practice of the nation under the influence of\nEuropean example is so great as to be unparalleled in human history;\nand it has inevitably involved the substitution of rationalism for\nsupernaturalism among the great majority of the educated younger\ngeneration. The late Yukichi Fukuzawa, who did more than any other man\nto prepare the Japanese mind for the great transformation effected in\nhis time, was spontaneously a freethinker from his childhood; [2002]\nand through a long life of devoted teaching he trained thousands to\na naturalist way of thought. That they should revert to Christian\nor native orthodoxy seems as impossible as such an evolution\nis seen to be in educated Hindostan, where the higher orders of\nintelligence are probably not relatively more common than among the\nJapanese. The final question, there as everywhere, is one of social\nreconstruction and organization; and in the enormous population of\nChina the problem, though very different in degree of imminence, is\nthe same in kind. Perhaps the most hopeful consideration of all is\nthat of the ever-increasing inter-communication which makes European\nand American progress tend in every succeeding generation to tell\nmore and more on Asiatic life.\n\n\n As to Japan, Professor B. H. Chamberlain pronounced twenty years\n ago that the Japanese \"now bow down before the shrine of Herbert\n Spencer\" (Things Japanese, 3rd ed. 1898, p. 321. Cp. Religious\n Systems of the World, 3rd ed. p. 103), proceeding in another\n connection (p. 352) to describe them as essentially an undevotional\n people. Such a judgment would be hard to sustain. The Japanese\n people in the past have exhibited the amount of superstition\n normal in their culture stage (cp. the Voyages de C. P. Thunberg\n au Japon, French tr. 1796, iii, 206); and in our own day they\n differ from Western peoples on this side merely in respect of\n their greater general serenity of temperament. There were in\n Japan in 1894 no fewer than 71,831 Buddhist temples, and 190,803\n Shinto temples and shrines; and the largest temple of all, costing\n \"several million dollars,\" was built in the last dozen years of\n the nineteenth century. To the larger shrines there are habitual\n pilgrimages, the numbers annually visiting one leading Buddhist\n shrine reaching from 200,000 to 250,000, while at the Shint\u00f4\n shrine of Kompira the pilgrims are said to number about 900,000\n each year. (See The Evolution of the Japanese, 1903, by L. Gulick,\n an American missionary organizer.)\n\n Professor Chamberlain appears to have construed \"devotional\" in the\n light of a special conception of true devotion. Yet a Christian\n observer testifies, of the revivalist sect of Nichirenites,\n \"the Ranters of Buddhism,\" that \"the wildest excesses that seek\n the mantle of religion in other lands are by them equalled if\n not excelled\" (Griffis, The Mikado's Empire, 1876, p. 163); and\n Professor Chamberlain admits that \"the religion of the family binds\n them [the Japanese in general, including the 'most materialistic']\n down in truly sacred bonds\"; while another writer, who thinks\n Christianity desirable for Japan, though he apparently ranks\n Japanese morals above Christian, declares that in his travels he\n was much reassured by the superstition of the innkeepers, feeling\n thankful that his hosts were \"not Agnostics or Secularists,\" but\n devout believers in future punishments (Tracy, Rambles through\n Japan without a Guide, 1892, pp. 131, 276, etc.).\n\n A third authority with Japanese experience, Professor W. G. Dixon,\n while noting a generation ago that \"among certain classes in Japan\n not only religious earnestness but fanaticism and superstition\n still prevail,\" decides that \"at the same time it remains true\n that the Japanese are not in the main a very religious people,\n and that at the present day religion is in lower repute than\n probably it has ever been in the country's history. Religious\n indifference is one of the prominent features of new Japan\" (The\n Land of the Morning, 1882, p. 517). The reconciliation of these\n estimates lies in the recognition of the fact that the Japanese\n populace is religious in very much the same way as those of Italy\n and England, while the more educated classes are rationalistic, not\n because of any \"essential\" incapacity for \"devotion,\" but because\n of enlightenment and lack of countervailing social pressure. To\n the eye of the devotional Protestant the Catholics of Italy,\n with their regard to externals, seem \"essentially\" irreligious;\n and vice vers\u00e2. Such formulas miss science. Two hundred years ago\n Charron, following previous schematists, made a classification in\n which northerners figured as strong, active, stupid, warlike, and\n little given to religion; the southerners as slight, abstinent,\n obstinate, unwarlike, and superstitious; and the \"middle\"\n peoples as between the two. La Sagesse, liv. i, ch. 42. The\n cognate formulas of to-day are hardly more trustworthy. Buddhism\n triumphed over Shint\u00f4ism in Japan both in ancient and modern times\n precisely because its lore and ritual make so much more appeal\n to the devotional sense. (Cp. Chamberlain, pp. 358-62; Dixon,\n ch. x; Religious Systems of the World, pp. 103, 111; Griffis,\n p. 166.) But the \u00e6sthetically charming cult of the family,\n with its poetic recognition of ancestral spirits (as to which\n see Lafcadio Hearn, Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation, 1904),\n seems to hold its ground as well as any.\n\n So universal is sociological like other law that we find in\n Japan, among some freethinkers, the same disposition as among\n some in Europe to decide that religion is necessary for the\n people. Professor Chamberlain (p. 352) cites Fukuzawa, \"Japan's\n most representative thinker and educationist,\" as openly declaring\n that \"It goes without saying that the maintenance of peace and\n security in society requires a religion. For this purpose any\n religion will do. I lack a religious nature, and have never\n believed in any religion. I am thus open to the charge that I\n am advising others to be religious while I am not so. Yet my\n conscience does not permit me to clothe myself with religion\n when I have it not at heart.... Of religions there are several\n kinds--Buddhism, Christianity, and what not. From my standpoint\n there is no more difference between those than between green\n tea and black.... See that the stock is well selected and the\n prices cheap....\" (Japan Herald, September 9, 1897). To this view,\n however, Fukuzawa did not finally adhere. The Rev. Isaac Dooman,\n a missionary in Japan who knew him well, testifies to a change\n that was taking place in his views in later life regarding the\n value of religion. In an unpublished letter to Mr. Robert Young,\n of Kobe, Mr. Dooman says that on one occasion, when conversing\n on the subject of Christianity, Fukuzawa remarked: \"There was\n a time when I advocated its adoption as a means to elevate our\n lower classes; but, after finding out that all Christian countries\n have their own lower classes just as bad, if not worse than ours,\n I changed my mind.\" Further reflection, marked by equal candour,\n may lead the pupils of Fukuzawa to see that nations cannot be\n led to adore any form of \"tea\" by the mere assurance of its\n indispensableness from leaders who confess they never take\n any. His view is doubtless shared by those priests concerning\n whom \"it may be questioned whether in their fundamental beliefs\n the more scholarly of the Shinshi\u00fb priests differ very widely\n from the materialistic agnostics of Europe\" (Dixon, p. 516). In\n this state of things the Christian thinks he sees his special\n opportunity. Professor Dixon writes (p. 518), in the manner of\n the missionary, that \"decaying shrines and broken gods are to\n be seen everywhere. Not only is there indifference, but there\n is a rapidly-growing skepticism.... The masses too are becoming\n affected by it.... Shint\u00f4ism and ... Buddhism are doomed. What\n is to take their place?... It must be either Christianity or\n Atheism. We have the brightest hopes that the former will triumph\n in the near future....\"\n\n The American missionary before cited, Mr. Gulick, argues\n alternately that the educated Japanese are religious and that\n they are not, meaning that they have \"religious instincts,\"\n while rejecting current creeds. The so-called religious\n instinct is in fact simply the spirit of moral and intellectual\n seriousness. Mr. Gulick's summing-up, as distinct from his\n theory and forecast, is as follows: \"For about three hundred\n years the intelligence of the nation has been dominated by\n Confucian thought, which rejects active belief in supra-human\n beings.... The tendency of all persons trained in Confucian\n classics was towards thoroughgoing skepticism as to divine\n beings and their relation to this world. For this reason, beyond\n doubt, has Western agnosticism found so easy an entrance into\n Japan.... Complete indifference to religion is characteristic\n of the educated classes of to-day. Japanese and foreigners,\n Christians and non-Christians alike, unite in this opinion. The\n impression usually conveyed by this statement, however, is that\n agnosticism is a new thing in Japan. In point of fact, the old\n agnosticism is merely reinforced by ... the agnosticism of the\n West\" (The Evolution of the Japanese, pp. 286-87). This may be\n taken as broadly accurate. Cp. the author's paper on \"Freethought\n in Japan\" in the Agnostic Annual for 1906. Professor E. H. Parker\n notes (China and Religion, 1905, p. 263) that \"the Japanese in\n translating Western books are beginning, to the dismay of our\n missionaries, to leave out all the Christianity that is in them.\"\n\n\nBut a very grave danger to the intellectual and moral life of Japan\nhas been of late set up by a new application of Shint\u00f4ism, on the\nlines of the emperor-worship of ancient Rome. A recent pamphlet\nby Professor Chamberlain, entitled The Invention of a New Religion\n(R. P. A.; 1912), incidentally shows that the Japanese temperament\nis so far from being \"essentially\" devoid of devotion as to be\ncapable of building up a fresh cultus to order. It appears that\nsince the so-called Restoration of 1868, when the Imperial House,\nafter more than two centuries of seclusion in Kyoto, was brought\nfrom its retirement and the Emperor publicly installed as ruler by\nright of his divine origin, the sentiment of religious devotion to\nthe Imperial House has been steadily inculcated, reaching its height\nduring the Russo-Japanese War, when the messages of victorious generals\nand admirals piously ascribed their successes over the enemy to the\n\"virtues of the Imperial Ancestors.\" In every school throughout the\nEmpire there hangs a portrait of the emperor, which is regarded and\ntreated as is a sacred image in Russia and in Catholic countries. The\ncurators of schools have been known on occasion of fire and earthquake\nto save the imperial portrait before wife or child; and their action\nhas elicited popular acclamation. On the imperial birthday teachers\nand pupils assemble, and passing singly before the portrait, bow in\nsolemn adoration. The divine origin of the Imperial House and the\ngrossly mythical history of the early emperors are taught as articles\nof faith in Japanese schools precisely as the cosmogony of Genesis\nhas been taught for ages in the schools of Christendom. Some years\nago a professor who exposed the absurdity of the chronology upon\nwhich the religion is based was removed from his post, and a teacher\nwho declined to bow before a casket containing an imperial rescript\nwas dismissed. His life was, in fact, for some time in danger from\nthe fury of the populace. So dominant has Mikado-worship become that\nsome Japanese Christian pastors have endeavoured to reconcile it with\nChristianity, and to be Mikado-worshippers and Christ-worshippers at\nthe same time. [2003] All creeds are nominally tolerated in Japan,\nbut avowed heresy as to the divine origin of the Imperial House is\na bar to public employment, and exposes the heretic to suspicion of\ntreason. The new religion, which is merely old Shint\u00f4ism revised,\nhas been invented as a political expedient, and may possibly not long\nsurvive the decease of Mutsu Hito, the late emperor, who continued\nthroughout his reign to live in comparative seclusion, and has been\nsucceeded by a young prince educated on European lines. But the cult\nhas obtained a strong hold upon the people; and by reason of social\npressure receives the conventional support of educated men exactly\nas Christianity does in England, America, Germany, and Russia.\n\nThus there is not \"plain sailing\" for freethought in Japan. In such a\npolitical atmosphere neither moral nor scientific thought has a good\nprognosis; and if it be not changed for the better much of the Japanese\nadvance may be lost. Rationalism on any large scale is always a product\nof culture; and culture for the mass of the people of Japan has only\nrecently begun. Down till the middle of the nineteenth century nothing\nmore than sporadic freethought existed. [2004] Some famous captains\nwere irreverent as to the omens; and in a seventeenth-century manual of\nthe principles of government, ascribed to the great founder of modern\nfeudalism, Iy\u00e9yasu, the sacrifices of vassals at the graves of their\nlords are denounced, and Confucius is even cited as ridiculing the\nburial of effigies in substitution. [2005] But, as elsewhere under\nsimilar conditions, such displays of originality were confined to the\nruling caste. [2006] I have seen, indeed, a delightful popular satire,\napparently a product of mother-wit, on the methods of popular Buddhist\nshrine-making; but, supposing it to be genuine and vernacular, it can\nstand only for that measure of freethought which is never absent from\nany society not pithed by a long process of religious tyranny. Old\nJapan, with its intense feudal discipline and its indurated etiquette,\nexhibited the social order, the grace, the moral charm, and the\nintellectual vacuity of a hive of bees. The higher mental life was\nhardly in evidence; and the ethical literature of native inspiration\nis of no importance. [2007] To this day the educated Chinese, though\nlacking in Japanese \"efficiency\" and devotion to drill of all kinds,\nare the more freely intellectual in their habits of mind. The Japanese\nfeudal system, indeed, was so immitigably ironbound, so incomparably\ndestructive of individuality in word, thought, and deed, that only\nin the uncodified life of art and handicraft was any free play of\nfaculty possible. What has happened of late is the rapid and docile\nassimilation of western science. Another and a necessarily longer\nstep is the independent development of the speculative and critical\nintelligence; and in the East, as in the West, this is subject to\neconomic conditions.\n\nA similar generalization holds good as to the other Oriental\ncivilizations. Analogous developments to those seen in the latter-day\nMohammedan world, and equally marked by fluctuation, have been noted in\nthe mental life alike of the non-Mohammedan and the Mohammedan peoples\nof India; and at the present day the thought of the relatively small\neducated class is undoubtedly much affected by the changes going on\nin that of Europe, and especially of England. The vast Indian masses,\nhowever, are far from anything in the nature of critical culture;\nand though some system of education for them is probably on the way\nto establishment, [2008] their life must long remain quasi-primitive,\nmentally as well as physically. Buddhism is theoretically more capable\nof adaptation to a rationalist view of life than is Christianity; but\nits intellectual activities at present seem to tend more towards an\n\"esoteric\" credulity than towards a rational or scientific adjustment\nto life.\n\n\n Of the nature of the influence of Buddhism in Burmah, where it\n has prospered, a vivid and thoughtful account is given in the\n work of H. Fielding, The Soul of a People, 1898. At its best\n the cult there deifies the Buddha; elsewhere, it is interwoven\n with aboriginal polytheism and superstition (Davids, Buddhism,\n pp. 207-211; Max M\u00fcller, Anthro. Rel., P. 132).\n\n Within Brahmanism, again, there have been at different times\n attempts to set up partly naturalistic reforms in religious\n thought--e.g. that of Chaitanya in the sixteenth century; but\n these have never been pronouncedly freethinking, and Chaitanya\n preached a \"surrender of all to Krishna,\" very much in the manner\n of evangelical Christianity. Finally he has been deified by his\n followers. (M\u00fcller, Nat. Rel. p. 100; Phys. Rel. p. 356.)\n\n More definitely freethinking was the monotheistic cult set up among\n the Sikhs in the fifteenth century, as the history runs, by Nanak,\n who had been influenced both by Parsees and by Mohammedans, and\n whose ethical system repudiated caste. But though Nanak objected\n to any adoration of himself, he and all his descendants have\n been virtually deified by his devotees, despite their profession\n of a theoretically pantheistic creed. (Cp. De la Saussaye,\n Manual of the Science of Religion, Eng. tr. pp. 659-62; M\u00fcller,\n Phys. Rel. p. 355.) Trumpp (Die Religion der Sikhs, 1881, p. 123)\n tells of other Sikh sects, including one of a markedly atheistic\n character belonging to the nineteenth century; but all alike seem\n to gravitate towards Hinduism.\n\n Similarly among the Jainas, who compare with the Buddhists in\n their nominal atheism as in their tenderness to animals and\n in some other respects, there has been decline and compromise;\n and their numbers appear steadily to dwindle, though in India\n they survived while Buddhism disappeared. Cp. De la Saussaye,\n Manual, pp. 557-63; Rev. J. Robson, Hinduism, 1874, pp. 80-86;\n Tiele, Outlines, p. 141. Finally, the Brahmo-Somaj movement of\n the nineteenth century appears to have come to little in the way\n of rationalism (Mitchell, Hinduism, pp. 224-46; De la Saussaye,\n pp. 669-71; Tiele, p. 160).\n\n\nThe principle of the interdependence of the external and the internal\nlife, finally, applies even in the case of Turkey. The notion\nthat Turkish civilization in Europe is unimprovable, though partly\ncountenanced by despondent thinkers even among the enlightened Turks,\n[2009] had no justification in social science, though bad politics\nmay ruin the Turkish, like other Moslem States; and although Turkish\nfreethinking has not in general passed the theistic stage, [2010]\nand its spread is grievously hindered by the national religiosity,\n[2011] which the age-long hostility of the Christian States so\nmuch tends to intensify, a gradual improvement in the educational\nand political conditions would suffice to evolve it, according to\nthe observed laws of all civilization. It may be that a result of\nthe rationalistic evolution in the other European States will be to\nmake them intelligently friendly to such a process, where at present\nthey are either piously malevolent towards the rival creed or merely\nself-seeking as against each other's influence on Turkish destinies.\n\nIn any case, it cannot seriously be pretended that the mental life of\nChristian Greece in modern times has yielded, apart from services to\nsimple scholarship, a much better result to the world at large than\nhas that of Turkey. The usual reactions in individual cases of course\ntake place. An American traveller writing in 1856 notes how illiterate\nGreek priests glory in their ignorance, \"asserting that a more liberal\neducation has the effect of making atheists of the youth.\" He adds that\nhe has \"known several deacons and others in the University [of Athens]\nthat were skeptics even as to the truth of religion,\" and would gladly\nhave become laymen if they could have secured a livelihood. [2012]\nBut there was then and later in the century no measurable movement\nof a rationalistic kind. At the time of the emancipation the Greek\npriesthood was \"in general at once the most ignorant and the most\nvicious portion of the community\"; [2013] and it remained socially\npredominant and reactionary. \"Whatever progress has been made in Greece\nhas received but little assistance from them.\" [2014] Liberal-minded\nprofessors in the theological school were mutinied against by bigoted\nstudents, [2015] a type still much in evidence at Athens; and the\nliberal thinker Theophilus Ka\u00efres, charged with teaching \"atheistic\ndoctrines,\" and found guilty with three of his followers, died of\njail fever while his appeal to the Areopagus was pending. [2016]\n\nThus far Christian bigotry seems to have held its own in what\nonce was Hellas. On the surface, Greece shows little trace of\ninstructed freethought; while in Bulgaria, by Greek testimony,\nschool teachers openly proclaim their rationalism, and call for the\nexclusion of religious teaching from the schools. [2017] Despite the\npolitical freedom of the Christian State, there has thus far occurred\nthere no such general fertilization by the culture of the rest of\nEurope as is needed to produce a new intellectual evolution of any\nimportance. The mere geographical isolation of modern Greece from\nthe main currents of European thought and commerce is probably the\nmost retardative of her conditions; and it is hard to see how it can\nbe countervailed. Italy, in comparison, is pulsating with original\nlife, industrial and intellectual. But, given either a renascence of\nMohammedan civilization or a great political reconstruction such as\nis latterly on foot, the whole life of the nearer East may take a new\ndeparture; and in such an evolution Greece would be likely to share.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCONCLUSION\n\n\nAny fuller survey of the intellectual history of the nineteenth century\nwill but reveal more fully the signal and ever-widening growth of\nrational thought among all classes of the more advanced nations,\nand among the more instructed of the less advanced. The retrospect\nof the whole past tells of a continuous evolution, which in the\ntwentieth century proceeds more extensively than ever before. There\nhas emerged the curious fact that in our own country a measure of\nrational doubt has been almost constantly at work in the sphere in\nwhich it could perhaps least confidently be expected--to wit, that\nof poetry. From Chaucer onwards it is hard to find a great orthodox\npoet. Even Spenser was as much Platonist as Christian; and Marlowe,\nShakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Pope, Burns, Wordsworth, Shelley,\nByron, Coleridge, Keats, Tennyson, Arnold, and Browning (to name no\nothers) in their various ways baffle the demand of faith. Latterly,\nthe sex which has always been reckoned the more given to religion\nhas shown many signs of adaptation to the higher law. In Britain,\nas in France, women began to appear in the ranks of reason in the\neighteenth century. [2018] In the nineteenth the number has increased\nat a significant rate. Already in the fierce battles fought in the\ntime of reaction after the French Revolution women took their place on\nthe side of freedom; and Frances Wright (Madame d'Arusmont) played a\nnotable part as a freethinking publicist and philanthropist. [2019]\nSince her day the names of Harriet Martineau and George Eliot tell\nof the continual gain of knowledge; and women rationalists are now\nto be counted by thousands in all the more civilized countries.\n\nThe same law holds of public life in general. Gladstone eagerly\nmaintained in his latter years that politicians, in virtue of their\npractical hold of life, were little given to skepticism; but the facts\nwere and are increasingly against him. The balance of the evidence\nis against the ascription of orthodoxy to either of the Pitts, or to\nFox; and we have seen that the statesmen of the American Revolution,\nas of the French, were in general deists. Garibaldi [2020] in Italy,\nand Gambetta in France, were freethinkers; Lincoln and his opponent,\nDouglas, were deists; towards the close of the century, in New Zealand,\nSir Robert Stout and the late Mr. John Ballance, avowed rationalists,\nwere among the foremost politicians of their generation; and in the\nEnglish Cabinet rationalism began to be represented in the person of\nLord Morley.\n\nWhile such developments have been possible in the fierce light of\npolitical strife, the process of disintegration and decomposition has\nproceeded in society at large till unbelief can hardly be reckoned a\nsingularity. Within the pale of all the Christian Churches dogmatic\nbelief has greatly dwindled, and goes on dwindling: and \"Christianity\"\nis made to figure more and more as an ethical doctrine which has\nabandoned its historical foundations, while preserving formulas and\nrituals which have no part in rational ethics. The mythical cosmogony\nout of which the whole originally grew is no longer believed in by\nany educated person, though it is habitually presented to the young\nas divine truth. Thousands of clergymen, economically gripped to\na false position, would gladly rectify their professed creeds, but\ncannot; because the political and economic bases involve the consent\nof the majority, and changes cannot be made without angry resistance\nand uproar among the less instructed multitude of all classes. The\nProtestant Churches collectively dread to figure as repudiating the\nhistoric creed; while the Roman Catholic Church, conscious of the\nsituation, maintains a semblance of rigid discipline and a minimum\nstandard of instruction for its adherents, counting on holding its\nground while the faculty of uncritical faith subsists. Only by the\nsilent alienation of the more thoughtful and sincere minds from the\npriesthood can the show of orthodoxy be maintained even within the\nCatholic pale.\n\nIn all orders alike, nevertheless, the \"practice\" of religion\ndecays with the theory. The Churches are constantly challenged to\njustify their existence by social reforms and philanthropic works:\nno other plea passes as generally valid; and it is only by reason of\na general transference of interest from religious to social problems\nthat the decay of belief is disguised. \"Piety,\" in the old sense,\ncounts relatively for little; and while orthodoxy is still a means\nof advantage in political life, religion counts for nothing in\ninternational relations. In the war of 1899-1902, \"Bible-loving\"\nEngland forced a quarrel on the most Bible-loving race in the\nworld; and at the time of the penning of these lines six nations\nare waging the greatest war of all time irrespectively of racial and\nreligious ties alike, though all alike officially claim the support\nof Omnipotence. In Berlin a popular preacher edifies great audiences\nby proclaiming that \"God is not neutral\"; and his Emperor habitually\nparades the same faith, with the support of all the theologians of\nGermany--the State supremely guilty of the whole embroilment, and the\ndeliberate perpetrator of the grossest aggression in modern history. On\nthe side of the Allies \"Christianity\" is less systematically but\nstill frequently invoked. On both sides the forms of prayer are\nofficially practised by the non-combatants, very much as the Romans\nin their wars maintained the practice of augury from the entrails of\nsacrificed victims; and \"family prayer\" is said to be reviving.\n\nEverywhere, nevertheless, the more rational, remembering how in the\n\"ages of faith\" deadly wars were waged for whole generations in the\nvery name of religion, recognize that Christianity furnishes neither\ncontrol for the present nor solution for the future; and that the\nhope of civilization lies in the resort of the nations to human\nstandards of sanity and reciprocity. The ties which hold are those\nof fellow-citizenship.\n\nThere can be no doubt among rationalists that if modern civilization\nescapes the ruin which militarism brought upon those of all previous\neras, the principle of reason will continually widen its control,\nlatterly seen to be everywhere strengthening apart from the dangerous\npersistence of militarist ideals and impulses. When it controls\ninternational relations, it will be dominant in the life of thought. In\nthe words of a great fighter for freethought, \"No man ever saw a\nreligion die\"; and there are abundant survivals of pre-Christian\npaganism in Europe after two thousand years of Christianity; but\nit seems likely that when the history of the twentieth century is\nwritten it will be recognized that what has historically figured as\nreligion belongs in all its forms to the past.\n\nThe question is sometimes raised whether the age of decline will\nbe marked by movements of active and persecuting fanaticism. Here,\nagain, the answer must be that everything depends upon the general\nfortunes of civilization. It is significant that a number of clerical\nvoices proclaim a revival of religion as a product of war, while\nothers complain that the state of struggle has a sterilizing effect\nupon religious life. While organized religions subsist, there will\nalways be adherents with the will to persecute; and from time to time\nacts of public persecution occur, in addition to many of a private\ncharacter. But in Britain public persecution is latterly restricted\nto cases in which the technical offence of \"blasphemy\" is associated\nwith acts which come under ordinary police jurisdiction. After the\nunquestionable blasphemies of Arnold and Swinburne had to be officially\nignored, it became impossible, in the present stage of civilization,\nthat any serious and decent literary indictment of the prevailing\ncreeds should be made a subject of persecution; and before long,\nprobably, such indictments will be abandoned in the cases of offenders\nagainst police regulations.\n\nThe main danger appears to lie in Catholic countries, and from the\naction of the Catholic hierarchy. The common people everywhere,\nsave in the most backward countries, are increasingly disinclined\nto persecution. In Ireland there is much less of that spirit among\nthe Catholic population than among that of Protestant Ulster. But\nthe infamous execution of Francisco Ferrer in Spain, in 1909,\nwhich aroused passionate reprobation in every civilized country,\nwas defended in England and elsewhere with extravagant baseness by\nCatholic litt\u00e9rateurs, who, with their reactionary priests, are the\nlast to learn the lesson of tolerance. The indignation everywhere\nexcited by the judicial murder [2021] of Ferrer, however, gives\npromise that even the most zealous fanatics of the Catholic Church\nwill hesitate again to rouse the wrath of the nations by such a\nreversion to the methods of the eras of religious rule.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nNOTES\n\n\n[1] Stow's Annals, ed. 1615, pp. 570, 575.\n\n[2] Burnet, Hist. of the Reformation, ed. Nares, ii, 179; iii, 289;\nStrype, Memorials of Cranmer, ed. 1848-54, ii, 100.\n\n[3] The Marian persecutions undoubtedly did much to stimulate\nProtestantism. It is not generally realized that many of the burnings\nof heretics under Mary were quasi-sacrifices on her behalf. On each\noccasion of her hopes of pregnancy being disappointed, some victims\nwere sent to the stake. See Strype, ed. cited, iii, 196, and Peter\nMartyr, there cited; Froude, ed. 1870, v, 521 sq., 539 sq. The\ninfluence of Spanish ecclesiastics may be inferred. The expulsions\nof the Jews and the Moriscoes from Spain were by way of averting the\nwrath of God. Still, a Spanish priest at Court preached in favour of\nmercy. Lingard, ed. 1855, v, 231.\n\n[4] The number slain was certainly not small. It amounted to at\nleast 190, perhaps to 204. Soames, Elizabethan Religious History,\n1839, p. 596-98. Under Mary there perished some 288. Durham Dunlop,\nThe Church under the Tudors, 1869, p. 104 and refs.\n\n[5] Soames, as cited, pp. 213-18, and refs.\n\n[6] Froude, Hist. of England, ed. 1870, x, 545 (ed. 1875, xi, 199),\nciting MSS. Ireland.\n\n[7] Gloss to February in the Shepherd's Calendar, Globe ed. pp. 451-52.\n\n[8] Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit, Arber's reprint, pp. 140, 153. That\nthe reference was mainly to Oxford is to be inferred from the address\n\"To my verie good friends the Gentlemen Schollers of Oxford,\" prefixed\nto the ed. of 1581. Id. p. 207.\n\n[9] Id. p. 158.\n\n[10] Id. pp. 161, 166.\n\n[11] Essay Of Atheism.\n\n[12] Lecky, Rationalism, i, 103-104. Scot's book (now made accessible\nby a reprint, 1886) had practically no influence in his own day;\nand King James, who wrote against it, caused it to be burned by the\nhangman in the next. Scot inserts the \"infidelitie of atheists\" in\nthe list of intellectual evils on his title-page; but save for an\nallusion to \"the abhomination of idolatrie\" all the others indicted\nare aspects of the black art.\n\n[13] \"No woman ever lived who was so totally destitute of the sentiment\nof religion\" (Green, Short History, ch. vii, \u00a7 3, p. 369).\n\n[14] Cp. Soames, Elizabethan Religious History, 1839, p. 225. Yet\nwhen Morris, the attorney of the Duchy of Lancaster, introduced in\nParliament a Bill to restrain the power of the ecclesiastical courts,\nshe had him dismissed and imprisoned for life, being determined\nthat the control should remain, through those courts, in her own\nhands. Heylyn, Hist. of the Reformation, ed. 1849, pref. vol. i,\npp. xiv-xv.\n\n[15] See above, vol. i, pp. 435, 446, 459.\n\n[16] Collier's Reprint, p. 190.\n\n[17] Camden, Annals of Elizabeth, sub. ann. 1580; 3rd ed. 1635,\np. 218. Cp. Soames, p. 214.\n\n[18] Hooker, Pref. to Ecclesiastical Polity, ch. iii, \u00a7\n9, ed. 1850. Camden (p. 219) states that the Dutch teacher Henry\nNichalai, whose works were translated for the sect, \"gave out that\nhe did partake of God, and God of his humanity.\"\n\n[19] See above, i, 458, as to a much more pronounced heresy in 1549,\nwhich also seems to have escaped punishment. Camden tells that the\nbooks of the \"Family of Love\" were burnt in 1580, but mentions no\nother penalties. Stow records that on October 9, 1580, \"proclamation\nwas published at London for the apprehension and severe punishing\nof all persons suspected to be of the family of love.\" Ed. 1615,\np. 687. Five of them had been frightened into a public recantation\nin 1575. Id. p. 679.\n\n[20] May 13, 1579. The burning was on the 20th.\n\n[21] Stow's Annals, ed. 1580, pp. 1, 194-95. Ed. 1615, p. 695.\n\n[22] Stow, ed. 1615, p. 697; David's Evidence, by William Burton,\nPreacher of Reading, 1592 (?), p. 125.\n\n[23] Stow, ed. 1615, p. 696.\n\n[24] Burton, as cited. See below, pp. 7, 12, as to Kett's writings.\n\n[25] Art. Matthew Hamond, in Dict. of Nat. Biog.\n\n[26] Art. Francis Kett, in Dict. of Nat. Biog.\n\n[27] Prof. Storojenko, Life of Greene, Eng. tr. in Grosart's\n\"Huth Library\" ed. of Greene's Works, i, 42-50. It is quite clear\nthat Malone and the critics who have followed him were wrong in\nsupposing the unnamed instructor to be Francis Kett, who was a devout\nUnitarian. Prof. Storojenko speaks of Kett as having been made an\nArian at Norwich, after his return there in 1585, by the influence\nof Lewes and Haworth. Query Hamond?\n\n[28] In Pierce's Supererogation, Collier's ed. p. 85.\n\n[29] Rep. of Nashe's Works in Grosart's \"Huth Library\" ed. vol. iv,\npp. 172, 173, 178, 182, 183. etc. Ed. McKerrow. 1904, ii, 114-129.\n\n[30] MS. Harl. 6853, fol. 320. It is given in full in the appendix\nto the first issue of the selected plays of Marlowe in the Mermaid\nSeries, edited by Mr. Havelock Ellis: and, with omissions, in the\neditions of Cunningham, Dyce, and Bullen.\n\n[31] Act II, sc. i.\n\n[32] Grosart's ed. in \"Temple Dramatists\" series, 11. 246-371. There\nis plenty of \"irreligion\" in the passage, but not atheism, though\nthere is a denial of a future state (365-70). The lines in question\nstrongly suggest Marlowe's influence or authorship, which indeed is\nclaimed by Mr. C. Crawford for the whole play. But all the external\nevidence ascribes the play to Greene.\n\n[33] Tamburlaine, Part II, Act II, sc. ii, iii; V, sc. i.\n\n[34] Writing as Andrew Philopater. See Dict. of Nat. Biog., art. Robert\nParsons, and Storojenko, as cited, i, 36, and note.\n\n[35] Translated into Latin by Henri Estienne in 1562.\n\n[36] Remains of Sir Walter Raleigh, ed. 1657, p. 123.\n\n[37] Bk. i, ch. i, sec. 11.\n\n[38] Bk. ii, ch. i, sec. 7.\n\n[39] Essay on the Prometheus.\n\n[40] Art. Raleigh, in Dict. of Nat. Biog., xlvii, 192.\n\n[41] Id. pp. 200-201.\n\n[42] Report in 1736 ed. of History of the World, p. ccxlix. \"Harpool\"\nseems an error for Harriott. Cp. Edwards, Life of Sir Walter Raleigh,\n1868, i, 432, 436. It is after naming \"Harpool\" that the judge says:\n\"Let not any devil persuade you to think there is no eternity in\nheaven.\"\n\n[43] Ed. cited, p. xxviii.\n\n[44] Id. p. xxiv.\n\n[45] Id. p. xxii.\n\n[46] Id. p. xvi.\n\n[47] Cp. Gardiner, History of England, 1603-1642, 10-vol. ed. i,\n132-35; iii, 150, 152.\n\n[48] Ed. cited, p. xxii.\n\n[49] Title of verses appended to trans. of Achilles Shield,\n1598. Chapman spells the name Harriots.\n\n[50] Pref. to complete trans. of Iliad.\n\n[51] Bk. v, ch. ii, \u00a7\u00a7 1-4. Works, ed. 1850, i, 432-36.\n\n[52] Exposition upon Nehemiah (1585) in Parker Soc. ed. of Works,\n1812, p. 401.\n\n[53] Work cited, pp. 8-11, 22.\n\n[54] Works, i, 432; ii, 762-63.\n\n[55] Eccles. Pol. bk. i, ch. vii; bk. ii, ch. i, vii; bk. iii,\nch. viii, \u00a7 16; bk. v, ch. viii; bk. vii, ch. xi; bk. viii, \u00a7 6 (Works,\ni, 165, 231, 300, 446; ii, 388, 537). See the citations in Buckle,\n3-vol. ed. iii, 341-42; 1-vol. ed. pp. 193-94.\n\n[56] Supplication of Travers, in Hooker's Works, ed. 1850, ii, 662.\n\n[57] Answer to Travers, id. p. 693.\n\n[58] Some typical attempts of the kind are discussed in the author's\ntwo lectures on The Religion of Shakespeare, 1887 (South Place\nInstitute).\n\n[59] Shakespeare Commentaries, Eng. tr. 1863, ii, 618-19.\n\n[60] Id. ii, 586.\n\n[61] In the last edition I had written to that effect; but I have\nmodified the opinion.\n\n[62] The allusion to \"popish ceremonies\" in Titus Andronicus is\nprobably from his hand. See the author's work, Did Shakespeare Write\n\"Titus Andronicus\"?, where it is argued that the play in question is\nsubstantially Peele's and Greene's.\n\n[63] Shakespeare Soc. rep. 1853, pp. 14, 16-17, 18, 24, 28, etc.\n\n[64] This has been shown to be his by Fleay and Mr. Crawford.\n\n[65] See his Groatsworth of Wit Bought with a Million of Repentance.\n\n[66] Compare the Jane Shore portions of his Edward IV with the close\nof A Woman Killed with Kindness. Note also the conclusion of The\nEnglish Traveller.\n\n[67] See the poem England's Elizabeth, 1631.\n\n[68] Henslowe's Diary, ed. Greg, i, fol. 96.\n\n[69] E.g., the lines,\n\n\n The best of men\n That e'er wore earth about him, was a sufferer,\n A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit,\n The first true gentleman that ever breathed,\n\n\nat the close of Part I of The Honest Whore; and the phrase, \"Heaven's\ngreat arithmetician,\" at the close of Old Fortunatus.\n\n[70] Green, Short Hist. ch. vii, \u00a7 7 end. Cp. Ruskin, Sesame and\nLilies, Lect. iii, \u00a7 115.\n\n[71] The old work of W. J. Birch, M.A., An Inquiry into the Philosophy\nand Religion of Shakspere (1848), is an unjudicial ex parte statement\nof the case for Shakespeare's unbelief; but it is worth study.\n\n[72] The town paid for his bread and wine, no doubt by way of\ncompliment.\n\n[73] Cp. the author's Montaigne and Shakespeare, 2nd ed. sec. viii.\n\n[74] A Woorke concerning the trewnesse of the Christian Religion,\n1587. Reprinted in 1592, 1604, and 1617.\n\n[75] As to the expert analysis of this play, which shows it to be in\nlarge part Fletcher's, see Furnivall, as cited, pp. xciii-xcvi.\n\n[76] Cp. Seccombe and Allen, The Age of Shakspere, 1903, ii, 189.\n\n[77] Alberti, Briefe betreffende den Zustand der Religion in\nGross-Britannien, Hanover, 1752, ii, 429. Alberti reads \"God\" at the\nend of the passage; I follow Grosart's edition.\n\n[78] Hallam, Lit. Europe, ii, 371, 376; Pattison, Isaac Casaubon,\n2nd ed. p. 286 sq.\n\n[79] Pattison, as cited, p. 290; G. W. Johnson, Memoirs of John Selden,\n1835, pp. 56-70.\n\n[80] Memoirs cited, pp. 60-61. On the whole question see the\nReview appended by Selden to his History after a few copies had\nbeen distributed.\n\n[81] Poems of Sir John Davies, ed. Grosart, 1876, i, 82, 83.\n\n[82] Essaies Politicke and Morall, by D. T. Gent, 1608, fol. 9.\n\n[83] Act iv, sc. 1.\n\n[84] Act i, sc. 1. Jonson himself could have been so indicted on the\nstrength of certain verses.\n\n[85] He had been offered professorships of divinity at Saumur and\nMarburg.\n\n[86] Gardiner, History of England, 1603-1642, 4th ed. ii,\n128. Cp. Bayle, art. Vorstius, Note N. By his theological opponents and\nby James, Vorstius was of course called an atheist. He was in reality\nnot a Socinian, but a \"strict Arian, who believed that the Son of God\nwas at first created by the Father, and then delegated to create the\nuniverse--a sort of inferior deity, who was nevertheless entitled to\nreligious homage\" (James Nichols, note to App. P. on Brandt's Life\nof Arminius in Works of Arminius, 1825, i, 218). Nichols gives a full\nsurvey of the subject, pp. 202-237. Fuller (Ch. Hist. B. x, cent. 17,\nsec. iv, \u00a7\u00a7 1-5) tells the story, and pronounces the opinions of\nVorstius \"fitter to be remanded to hell than committed to writing.\"\n\n[87] Bayle (art. cited, Note F) says both Universities, as does\nFuller. At the Synod of Dort, however, the British representatives read\nonly, it seems, a decree (dated Sept. 21, 1611) of the Vice-Chancellor\nof Cambridge, ordering the burning of the book there. (Nichols,\nAccount of the Synod of Dort, in Works of Arminius, i, 497).\n\n[88] Gardiner, pp. 129-30. Fuller (as last cited, \u00a7\u00a7 6-14) gives a\nlist of Legate's \"damnable tenets.\" See it in Mrs. Bradlaugh Bonner's\nPenalties upon Opinion, pp. 12-14.\n\n[89] Gardiner, as cited. Fuller is cheerfully acquiescent, though\nhe notes the private demurs, which he denounces. \"God,\" he says,\n\"may seem well pleased with this seasonable severity.\"\n\n[90] In 1580 Stow records how one Randall was put on trial for\n\"conjuring to know where treasure was hid in the earth and goods\nfeloniously taken were become\"; and four others were tried \"for being\npresent.\" Four were found guilty and sentenced to be hanged. Randall\nwas executed, and the others reprieved. (Ed. 1615, p. 688.)\n\n[91] Fuller actually alleges that \"there was none ever after that\nopenly avowed these heretical doctrines\"--an unintelligible figment.\n\n[92] All reprinted in 1816 for the Hanserd Knollys Society, with\nhistor. introd. by E. B. Underhill, in the vol. Tracts on Liberty of\nConscience and Persecution, 1614-1661. They do not speak of Legate\nor Wightman.\n\n[93] Atheomastix, 1622, pref. Sig. B. 3, verso. The work was posthumous\nand incomplete.\n\n[94] Bk. i, ch. i, p. 5.\n\n[95] In the Advancement of Learning, bk. i (Routledge ed. p. 54),\nhe himself notes how, long before his time, the new learning had in\npart discredited the schoolmen.\n\n[96] Filum Labyrinthi--an English version of the Cogitata et Visa--\u00a7 7.\n\n[97] Cp. Huarte, cited above, p. 471.\n\n[98] Nov. Org. bk. i. Aph. 62 (Works, Routledge ed. p. 271).\n\n[99] Id. Aph. 65.\n\n[100] Id. ib. Cp. the Advancement of Learning, bk. ii, and the De\nAugmentis, bk. ix, near end. (Ed. cited, pp. 173, 634.)\n\n[101] Nov. Org. Aph. 89. Cp. Aph. 46, 49, 96; the Valerius Terminus,\nch. xxv; the English Filum Labyrinthi, \u00a7 7; and the De Principiis\natque Originibus (ed. cited, p. 650).\n\n[102] Valerius Terminus, cap. i. (Ed. cited, p. 188.)\n\n[103] Id. p. 187; Filum Labyrinthi, p. 209.\n\n[104] Bk. ix, ch. i. (Ed. cited, p. 631.) Compare Valerius Terminus,\nch. i (p. 186), and De Aug. bk. iii, ch. ii (p. 456), as to the\nimpossibility of knowing the will and character of God from Nature,\nthough (De Aug. last cit.) it reveals his power and glory.\n\n[105] Advancement, bk. i (ed. cited, p. 45). Cp. Valerius Terminus,\nch. i (p. 187).\n\n[106] Advancement, bk. ii; De Augmentis, bk. iii, chs. iv and v;\nValerius Terminus, ch. xxv; Novum Organum, bk. i, Aph. 48; bk. ii,\nAph. 2. (Ed. cited, pp. 96, 205, 266, 302, 471, 473.)\n\n[107] De Principiis atque Originibus. (Ed. cited,\npp. 649-50.) Elsewhere (De Aug. bk. iii, ch. iv, p. 471) he expressly\nputs it that the system of Democritus, which \"removed God and mind\nfrom the structure of things,\" was more favourable to true science\nthan the teleology and theology of Plato and Aristotle.\n\n[108] Id. pp. 651, 657.\n\n[109] Id. p. 648.\n\n[110] De Augmentis, bk. iii, ch. ii; bk. iv, ch. ii. (Ed. cited,\npp. 456, 482.)\n\n[111] Id. bk. ii, ch. i. (Ed. cited, p. 428.)\n\n[112] De Augmentis, ed. cited, p. 73.\n\n[113] No. xviii, Diomedes. Ed. cited, p. 841.\n\n[114] De Principiis atque Originibus, p. 664.\n\n[115] Nov. Org. i. 89; Filum Labyrinthi, \u00a7 7; Essay 16.\n\n[116] Francis Osborn, pref. to his \"Miscellany,\" in Works, 7th\ned. 1673.\n\n[117] Cp. Valerius Terminus, ch. i.\n\n[118] This is noted by Glassford in his tr. of the Novum Organum\n(1844, p. 26); and by Ellis in his and Spedding's edition of the\nWorks. (Routledge ed. pp. 32, 473, note.)\n\n[119] De Augmentis, bk. iii, ch. iv, end.\n\n[120] Essay 57, Of Anger.\n\n[121] Valerius Terminus, ch. xxv.\n\n[122] De Principiis, ed. cited, pp. 648-49. Cp. pp. 612-43.\n\n[123] Id. p. 648.\n\n[124] Valerius Terminus, ch. ii; De Augmentis, bk. v,\nch. iv. Ed. cited, pp. 199, 517.\n\n[125] Cp. Brewster, Life of Newton, 1855, ii, 400-404; Draper,\nIntel. Devel. of Europe, ed. 1875, ii, 258-60; Dean Church, Bacon,\npp. 180-201; Fowler, Bacon, ch. vi; Lodge, Pioneers of Science,\npp. 145-51; Lange, Gesch. d. Materialismus, i, 197 sq. (Eng. tr. i,\n236-37), and cit. from Liebig--as to whom, however, see Fowler,\npp. 133, 157.\n\n[126] Novum Organum, ii, 46 and 48, \u00a7 17; De Aug. iii, 4; Thema\nCoeli. Ed. cited, pp. 364, 375, 461, 705, 709. Whewell (Hist. of\nInduct. Sciences, 3rd ed. i, 296, 298) ignores the second and third\nof these passages in denying Hume's assertion that Bacon rejected the\nCopernican theory with \"disdain.\" It is true, however, that Bacon had\nvacillated. The facts are fairly faced by Prof. Fowler in his Bacon,\n1881, pp. 151-52, and his ed. of Novum Organum, Introd. pp. 30-36. See\nalso the summing-up of Ellis in notes to passages above cited, and\nat p. 675.\n\n[127] Aubrey, Lives of Eminent Persons, ed. 1813, vol. ii, pt. ii,\np. 383.\n\n[128] See notes in ed. cited, pp. 50, 53, 61, 63, 68, 75, 76, 84, 110.\n\n[129] Fowler, ed. of Nov. Org. \u00a7 14, pp. 101-104.\n\n[130] Id. \u00a7 14, p. 108; Ellis in ed. cited, p. 643.\n\n[131] Rawley's Life, in ed. cited, p. 9; Osborn, as above cited;\nFowler, ed. of Nov. Org. Introd. \u00a7 14; T. Martin, Character of Bacon,\n1835, pp. 216, 227, 222-23.\n\n[132] Cp. Fowler, Bacon, pp. 139-41; Mill, Logic, bk. vi, ch. v, \u00a7\n5; Jevons, Princ. of Science, 1-vol. ed. p. 576; Tyndall, Scientific\nUse of the Imagination, 3rd ed. pp. 4, 8-9, 42-43; T. Martin, as\ncited, pp. 210-38; Bagehot, Postulates of Eng. Polit. Econ. ed. 1885,\npp. 18-19; Ellis and Spedding, in ed. cited, pp. x, xii, 22, 389. The\nnotion of a dialectic method which should mechanically enable any\nman to make discoveries is an irredeemable fallacy, and must be\nabandoned. Bacon's own remarkable anticipation of modern scientific\nthought in the formula that heat is a mode of motion (Nov. Org. ii,\n20) is not mechanically yielded by his own process, noteworthy and\nsuggestive though that is.\n\n[133] Pref. Epistle.\n\n[134] Works, ed. Dublin. 1766, p. 159; ed. 1910, p. 344.\n\n[135] Kohlrausch, Hist. of Germany, Eng. tr. p. 385.\n\n[136] Moritz Ritter, Geschichte der deutschen Union, 1867-73, ii, 55.\n\n[137] Menzel, Geschichte der Deutschen, 3te Aufl. Cap. 416.\n\n[138] Cp. Gardiner, Thirty Years' War, pp. 12-13; Kohlrausch, p. 438;\nPusey, Histor. Enq. into Ger. Rationalism, pp. 9-25; Henderson,\nShort Hist. of Germany, i, ch. xvi.\n\n[139] Kohlrausch, p. 439. A specially strong reaction set in about\n1573. Ritter, Geschichte der deutschen Union, i, 19. Cp. Menzel,\nCap. 433.\n\n[140] Cp. Gardiner, Thirty Years' War, pp. 16, 18, 21; Kohlrausch,\np. 370.\n\n[141] As to this see Moritz Ritter, as cited, i, 9, 27; ii, 122 sq.;\nDunham, Hist. of the Germanic Empire, iii, 186; Henderson, i, 411 sq.\n\n[142] Freytag, Bilder aus d. deutschen Vergangenheit, Bd. ii, 1883,\np. 381; Bd. iii, ad init.\n\n[143] Cp. Lecky, Rationalism in Europe, i, 53-83.\n\n[144] Freytag, Bilder, Bd. ii, Abth. ii, p. 378.\n\n[145] The Pope and the Council, Eng. tr. p. 260; French tr. p. 285.\n\n[146] De Praestigiis Daemonum, 1563. See it described by Lecky,\nRationalism, i, 85-87; Hallam, Lit. of Europe, ii, 76.\n\n[147] By Dutch historians Wier is claimed as a Dutchman. He was born\nat Grave, in North Brabant, but studied medicine at Paris and Orleans,\nand after practising physic at Arnheim in the Netherlands was called to\nD\u00fcsseldorf as physician to the Duke of J\u00fclich, to whom he dedicated his\ntreatise. His ideas are probably traceable to his studies in France.\n\n[148] His collected works (1632) amount to nearly 7,000 folio\npages. J. Ten Brink, Kleine Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Letteren,\n1882, p. 91.\n\n[149] Ten Brink, p. 86. Jonckbloet (Beknopte Geschiedenis der\nNederl. Letterkunde, ed. 1880, p. 148) is less specific.\n\n[150] Ten Brink, pp. 89-90.\n\n[151] Hallam, Lit. of Europe, ii, 83.\n\n[152] Ten Brink, p. 87.\n\n[153] Jonckbloet, Beknopte Geschiedenis, p. 149; Ten Brink,\np. 91; Bayle, Dictionnaire, art. Koornhert; P\u00fcnjer, Hist. of the\nChr. Philos. of Religion, Eng. tr. p. 269; Dr. E. Gosse, art. on\nDutch Literature in Encyc. Brit. 9th ed. xii, 93.\n\n[154] Ten Brink, p. 91.\n\n[155] Flint, Vico, p. 142.\n\n[156] De Jure Belli et Pacis, proleg. \u00a7\u00a7 11, 16.\n\n[157] Bayle, art. Voelkel.\n\n[158] Schlegel's note on Mosheim, Reid's ed. p. 862.\n\n[159] Nelson, Life of Bishop Bull, 2nd ed. 1714, p. 392.\n\n[160] Nic\u00e9ron, M\u00e9moires pour servir, etc., xiv (1731), 340 sq. One of\nthe replies is the Justa Detestatio sceleratissimi libelli Adriani\nBeverlandi De Peccato Originali, by Leonard Ryssen, 1680. A very\nfree version of Beverland's book appeared in French in 1714 under\nthe title Etat de l'Homme dans le Pech\u00e9 Originel. It reached a sixth\nedition in 1741.\n\n[161] Nelson, Life of Bishop Bull, as cited, p. 280.\n\n[162] Krasinski, Ref. in Poland, 1840, ii, 363; Mosheim, 16\nCent. sec. iii, pt. ii, ch. iv, \u00a7 22. Budny translated the Bible,\nwith rationalistic notes.\n\n[163] Krasinski, p. 361.\n\n[164] Mosheim, last cit. \u00a7 23, note 4.\n\n[165] Krasinski, p. 367; Wallace, Antitrin. Biog. 1850, ii, 320.\n\n[166] Bayle, art. Fauste Socin. Krasinski, p. 374.\n\n[167] Krasinski, pp. 361-62. Fausto Sozzini also could apparently\nforgive everybody save those who believed less than he did.\n\n[168] Cp. the inquiry as to Locke's Socinianism in J. Milner's Account\nof Mr. Lock's Religion out of his own Writings, 1706, and Lessing's\nZur Geschichte und Literatur, i, as to Leibnitz's criticism of Sonerus.\n\n[169] Enfield's History of Philosophy (an abstract of Brucker),\ned. 1840, p. 537.\n\n[170] In the dominions of Philip II there are said to have been 58\narchbishops, 684 bishops, 11,400 abbeys, 23,000 religious fraternities,\n46,000 monasteries, 13,500 nunneries, 312,000 secular priests, 400,000\nmonks, 200,000 friars and other ecclesiastics. H. E. Watts, Miguel\nde Cervantes, 1895, pp. 67-68. Spain alone had 9,088 monasteries.\n\n[171] Buckle, 3-vol. ed. ii, 484; 1-vol. ed. p. 564, and refs.\n\n[172] Cp. Buckle, 3-vol. ed. ii, 497-99; 1-vol. ed. pp. 572-73;\nLa Rigaudi\u00e8re, Hist. des Pers\u00e9c. Relig. en Espagne, 1860, pp. 220-26.\n\n[173] Cp. Lewes, Spanish Drama, passim.\n\n[174] \"He inspires me only with horror for the faith which he\nprofesses. No one ever so far disfigured Christianity; no one ever\nassigned to it passions so ferocious, or morals so corrupt\" (Sismondi,\nLit. of South of Europe, Bohn tr. ii, 379).\n\n[175] Ticknor, Hist. of Spanish Lit. 6th ed. ii, 501; Don Quixote,\npt. ii, ch. liv; Ormsby, tr. of Don Quixote, 1885, introd. i, 58.\n\n[176] Lafuente, Historia de Espa\u00f1a, 1856, xvii, 340. It is not quite\ncertain that Lafuente expressed his sincere opinion.\n\n[177] Llorente, ii. 433.\n\n[178] Id. p. 420.\n\n[179] Bouterwek, Hist. of Spanish and Portuguese Literature,\nEng. tr. 1823, i, 331.\n\n[180] Id. p. 151.\n\n[181] Part II, ch. xxxvi.\n\n[182] Bouterwek, whose sociology, though meritorious, is ill-clarified,\nargues that the Inquisition was in a manner congenital to Spain because\nbefore its establishment the suspicion of heresy was already \"more\ndegrading in Spain than the most odious crimes in other countries.\" But\nthe same might have been said of the other countries also. As to\nearlier Spanish heresy see above, vol. i, p. 337 sq.\n\n[183] Despite the many fallacies retained by Copernicus from the\ncurrent astronomy, he must be pronounced an exceptionally scientific\nspirit. Trained as a mathematician, astronomer, and physician,\nhe showed a keen and competent interest in the practical problem of\ncurrency; and one of the two treatises which alone he published of his\nown accord was a sound scheme for the rectification of that of his\nown government. Though a canon of Frauenburg, he never took orders;\nbut did manifold and unselfish secular service.\n\n[184] It was shielded by thirteen popes--from Paul III to Paul V.\n\n[185] Galileo, Dialogi dei due massimi sistemi del mondo, ii (Opere,\ned. 1811, xi, 303-304).\n\n[186] A good study of Bruno is supplied by Owen in his Skeptics of\nthe Italian Renaissance. He has, however, omitted to embody the later\ndiscoveries of Dufour and Berti, and has some wrong dates. The Life\nof Giordano Bruno, by I. Frith (Mrs. Oppenheim), 1887, gives all the\ndata, but is inadequate on the philosophic side. A competent estimate\nis given in the late Prof. Adamson's lectures on The Development\nof Modern Philosophy, etc., 1903, ii, 23 sq.; also in his art. in\nEncyc. Brit. For a hostile view see Hallam, Lit. of Europe, ii,\n105-111. The biography of Bartholm\u00e8ss, Jordano Bruno, 1846, is\nextremely full and sympathetic, but was unavoidably loose as to\ndates. Much new matter has since been collected, for which see the\nVita di Giordano Bruno of Domenico Berti, rev. and enlarged ed. 1889;\nProf. J. L. McIntyre, Giordano Bruno, 1903; Dufour, Giordano Bruno\n\u00e0 G\u00e9n\u00e8ve: Documents In\u00e9dits, 1884; David Levi, Giordano Bruno, o\nla religione del pensiero: l'uomo, l'apostolo e il martire, 1887;\nDr. H. Brunnhofer's Giordano Bruno's Weltanschauung und Verh\u00e4ngniss,\n1882; and the doctoral treatise of C. Sigwart, Die Lebensgeschichte\nGiordano Brunos, T\u00fcbingen, 1880. For other authorities see Owen's\nand I. Frith's lists, and the final Literaturnachweis in Gustav\nLouis's Giordano Bruno, seine Weltanschauung und Lebensverfassung,\nBerlin, 1900. The study of Bruno has been carried further in Germany\nthan in England; but Mr. Whittaker (Essays and Notices, 1895) and\nProf. McIntyre make up much leeway.\n\n[187] Cp. Bartholm\u00e8ss, i, 49-53; Lange, Gesch. des Materialismus, i,\n191-94 (Eng. tr. i, 232); Gustav Louis, as cited, pp. 11, 88.\n\n[188] Berti, Vita di Giordano Bruno, 1889, pp. 40-41, 420. Bruno\ngives the facts in his own narrative before the Inquisitors at Venice.\n\n[189] Berti, pp. 42-43, 47; Owen, p. 265.\n\n[190] Not to Genoa, as Berti stated in his first ed. See ed. 1889,\npp. 54, 392.\n\n[191] Berti, p. 65. Owen has the uncorrected date, 1576.\n\n[192] Dufour, Giordano Bruno \u00e0 G\u00e9n\u00e8ve: Documents In\u00e9dits, 1884; Berti,\npp. 95-97; Gustav Louis, Giordano Bruno, pp. 73-75. Owen (p. 269)\nhas overlooked these facts, set forth by Dufour in 1884. The documents\nare given in full in Frith, Life, 1887, p. 60 sq.\n\n[193] The dates are in doubt. Cp. Berti, p. 115, and Frith, p. 65.\n\n[194] See his own narrative before the Inquisitors in 1592. Berti,\np. 394.\n\n[195] McIntyre, Giordano Bruno, 1907, pp. 21-22.\n\n[196] Frith, Life, p. 121, and refs.; Owen, p. 275; Bartholm\u00e8ss,\nJordano Bruno, i, 136-38.\n\n[197] Cp. Hallam, Lit. of Europe, ii, 111, note. As to Bruno's\nsupposed influence on Bacon and Shakespeare, cp. Bartholm\u00e8ss, i,\n134-35; Frith, Life, pp. 104-48; and the author's Montaigne and\nShakspere, pp. 132-38. Here there is no case; but there is much\nto be said for Mr. Whittaker's view (Essays and Notices, p. 94)\nthat Spenser's late Cantos on Mutability were suggested by Bruno's\nSpaccio. Prof. McIntyre supports.\n\n[198] His praise of Luther, and his compliments to the Lutherans,\nare in notable contrast to his verdict on Calvinism. What happened\nwas that at Wittemberg he was on his best behaviour, and was well\ntreated accordingly.\n\n[199] As to the traitor's motives cp. McIntyre, p. 66 sq.; Berti,\np. 262 sq.\n\n[200] Noroff, as cited in Frith, p. 345.\n\n[201] De l'Infinito, ed. Wagner, ii, 27; Cena de la Ceneri, ed. Wagner,\ni, 173; Acrotismus, ed. Gfr\u00f6rer, p. 12.\n\n[202] Cp. Berti, pp. 187-88; Whittaker, Essays and Notices, 1895,\np. 89; and Louis's section, Stellung zu Christenthum und Kirche.\n\n[203] Berti, pp. 297-98. It takes much searching in the two poems\nto find any of the ideas in question, and Berti has attempted\nno collation; but, allowing for distortions, the Inquisition has\nsufficient ground for outcry.\n\n[204] Sigillus Sigillorum: De duodecima contractionis\nspeciae. Cp. F. J. Clemens, Giordano Bruno und Nicolaus von Cusa, 1847,\npp. 176, 183; and H. Brunnhofer, Giordano Bruno's Weltanschauung und\nVerh\u00e4ngniss, 1882, pp. 227, 237.\n\n[205] In the treatise De Lampade combinatoria Lulliana\n(1587). According to Berti (p. 220) he is the first to employ this\nphrase, which becomes the watchword of Spinoza (libertas philosophandi)\na century later.\n\n[206] Berti, cap. iv; Owen, p. 249; Ueberweg, ii, 27; P\u00fcnjer, p. 93\nsq.; Whittaker, Essays and Notices, p. 66. As to Bruno's debt to\nNicolaus of Cusa cp. Gustav Louis, as cited, p. 11; P\u00fcnjer, as cited;\nCarriere, Die philosophische Weltanschauung der Reformationszeit,\np. 25; and Whittaker, p. 68. The argument of Carriere's second edition\nis analysed and rebutted by Mr. Whittaker, p. 253 sq.\n\n[207] De Immenso, vii, c. 18, cited by Whittaker, Essays and Notices,\np. 70.\n\n[208] As to Bruno's own claim in the Eroici Furori, cp. Whittaker,\nEssays, p. 90.\n\n[209] Documents in Berti, pp. 407-18; McIntyre, p. 75 sq.\n\n[210] See the document in Berti, p. 398 sq.; Frith, pp. 270-81.\n\n[211] Berti, p. 400 sq.\n\n[212] See Berti, p. 396; Owen, pp. 285-86; Frith, pp. 282-83.\n\n[213] The controversy as to whether Galileo was tortured leaves it\nclear that torture was common. See Dr. Parchappe, Galil\u00e9e, sa vie,\netc., 1866, Ptie. ii, ch. 7.\n\n[214] Spaccio della bestia trionfante, ed. Wagner, ii, 120.\n\n[215] Prof. Carriere has contended that a transition from pantheism\nto theism marks the growth of his thought; but, as is shown by\nMr. Whittaker, he is markedly pantheistic in his latest work of all,\nthough his pantheism is not merely naturalistic. Essays and Notices,\npp. 72, 253-58.\n\n[216] Italian versions differ verbally. Cp. Levi, p. 379; Berti,\np. 386. That inscribed on the Bruno statue at Rome is a close rendering\nof the Latin: Majori forsan cum timore sententiam in me fertis quam\nego accipiam, preserved by Scioppius.\n\n[217] Avviso, in Berti, p. 329; in Levi, p. 386.\n\n[218] Levi, pp. 384-92. Levi relates (p. 390) that Bruno at the stake\nwas heard to utter the words: \"O Eterno, io fo uno sforzo supremo per\nattrarre in me quanto vi tra di pi\u00f9 divino nell'universo.\" He cites\nno authority. An Avviso reports that Bruno said his soul would rise\nwith the smoke to Paradise (p. 386; Berti, p. 330), but does not\nstate that this was said at the stake. And Levi accepts the other\nreport that Bruno was gagged.\n\n[219] Notably his comedy Il Candelaio.\n\n[220] Owen, Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance, p. 357. A full\nnarrative, from the documents, is given in R. C. Christie's essay,\n\"Vanini in England,\" in the English Historical Review of April, 1895,\nreprinted in his Selected Essays and Papers, 1902.\n\n[221] See it analysed by Owen, pp. 361-68, and by Carriere,\nWeltanschauung, pp. 496-504.\n\n[222] Amphitheatrum, 1615, Exercit. xix, pp. 117-18.\n\n[223] Amphitheatrum, Exercit. xxvii, p. 161.\n\n[224] Id. pp. 72, 73, 78, 113, etc.\n\n[225] P. 35. Machiavelli is elsewhere attacked. Pp. 36, 50.\n\n[226] Julii C\u00e6saris Vanini Neapolitani, Theologi, Philosophi, et juris\nutriusque Doctoris, de Admirandis Natur\u00e6 Regin\u00e6que De\u00e6que Mortalium\nArcanis, libri quatuor. Luteti\u00e6, 1616.\n\n[227] Mr. Owen makes a serious misstatement on this point, by which\nI was formerly misled. He writes (p. 369) that from the publisher's\npreface we \"learn that the Dialogues were not written by Vanini, but\nby his disciples. They are a collection of discursive conversations\nembodying their master's opinions.\" This is not what the preface\nsays. It tells, after a high-pitched eulogy of Vanini, that \"nos\npublic\u00e6 utilitatis solliciti, alia eius monumenta, qu\u00e6 avarius\nretinebat, per idoneos ex scriptores nancisci curavimus.\" In ascribing\nthe matter of the dialogues to Vanini's young days, Mr. Owen forgets\nthe references to the Amphitheatrum.\n\n[228] \"Alex. Sed in qua nam Religione ver\u00e8 et pi\u00e8 Deum coli vetusti\nPhilosophi existimarunt? Vanini. In unica Natur\u00e6 lege, quam ipsa\nNatura, qu\u00e6 Deus est (est enim principium motus)....\" De Arcanis,\nas cited, p. 366. Lib. iv, Dial. 50. See Rousselot's French tr. 1842,\np. 227. This passage is cited by Hallam (Lit. Hist. ii, 461) as avowing\n\"disbelief of all religion except such as Nature ... has planted in\nthe minds of men\"--a heedless perversion.\n\n[229] De Arcanis, pp. 354-60, 420-22 (Dial. 50, 56); Rousselot,\npp. 219-23, 271-73.\n\n[230] The special reference (lib. iv, dial. 56, p. 428) is to\na story of an infant prophesying when only twenty-four hours\nold. (Amphitheatrum, Ex. vi, p. 38; cp. Owen, p. 368, note.) On this\nand on other points Cousin (cited by Owen, pp. 368, 371, 377) and\nHallam (Lit. Hist. ii, 461) make highly prejudiced statements. Quoting\nthe final pages on which the dialoguist passes from serious debate\nto a profession of levity, and ends by calling for the play-table,\nthe English historian dismisses him as \"the wretched man.\"\n\n[231] Cp. Carriere's analysis of the Dialogues, pp. 505-59; and the\nApologia pro Jul. C\u00e6sare Vanino (by Arpe), 1712.\n\n[232] See Owen's vindication, pp. 371-74. Renan's criticism (Averro\u00e8s,\npp. 420-23) is not quite judicial. See many others cited by Carriere,\np. 516.\n\n[233] It is difficult to understand how the censor could let pass\nthe description of Nature in the title; but this may have been\nadded after the authorization. The book is dedicated by Vanini to\nMarshal Bassompierre, and the epistle dedicatory makes mention of\nthe Serenissima Regina aeterni nominis Maria Medic\u00e6a, which would\ndisarm suspicion. In any case the permit was revoked, and the book\ncondemned to be burned.\n\n[234] Owen, p. 395.\n\n[235] Mercure Fran\u00e7ais, 1619, tom. v, p. 64.\n\n[236] Gramond (Barth\u00e9lemi de Grammont), Historia Galli\u00e6 ab excessu\nHenrici IV, 1643, p. 209. Carriere translates the passage in full,\npp. 500-12, 515; as does David Durand in his hostile Vie et Sentimens\nde Lucilio Vanini, 1717. As to Gramond see the Lettres de Gui Patin,\nwho (Lett. 428, ed. Reveill\u00e9-Parise) calls him \u00e2me foible et bigote,\nand guilty of falsehood and flattery.\n\n[237] Gramond, p. 210. Of Vanini, as of Bruno, it is recorded that at\nthe stake he repelled the proffered crucifix. Owen and other writers,\nwho justly remark that he well might, overlook the once received\nbelief that it was the official practice, with obstinate heretics,\nto proffer a red-hot crucifix, so that the victim should be sure to\nspurn it with open anger.\n\n[238] Stephen Phillips, Marpessa.\n\n[239] Cp. Owen, pp. 389, 391, and Carriere, pp. 512-13, as to the\nworst calumnies. It is significant that Vanini was tried solely for\nblasphemy and atheism. What is proved against him is that he and an\nassociate practised a rather gross fraud on the English ecclesiastical\nauthorities, having apparently no higher motive than gain and a free\nlife. Mr. Christie notes, however, that Vanini in his writings always\nspeaks very kindly of England and the English, and so did not add\ningratitude to his act of imposture.\n\n[240] De Arcanis, p. 205. Lib. iii, dial. 30.\n\n[241] Amphitheatrum, p. 17.\n\n[242] De Arcanis, lib. iv, dial. 52, p. 379; dial. 51,\np. 373. Cp. Amphitheatrum, p. 36; and De Arcanis, p. 20.\n\n[243] De Arcanis, dial. 50 and 56. In the Amphitheatrum he adduces\nan equally skilful German atheist (p. 73).\n\n[244] Dial. li, p. 371.\n\n[245] Dial. liv, p. 407.\n\n[246] Cp. Rousselot, notice, p. xi.\n\n[247] Durand compiles a list of ten or eleven works of Vanini from\nthe allusions in the Amphitheatrum and the De Arcanis.\n\n[248] Reported by Gramond, as cited.\n\n[249] Owen, pp. 393-94.\n\n[250] Garasse, Doctrine curieuse des beaux esprits, 1623.\n\n[251] De Arcanis, dial. vii, p. 36.\n\n[252] Dial. iv, p. 21.\n\n[253] Doctrine curieuse des beaux esprits de ce temps, 1623, p. 848.\n\n[254] Karl von Gebler, Galileo Galilei and the Roman Curia,\nEng. tr. 1879, pp. 36-37.\n\n[255] This appears from the letters of Sagredo to Galileo. Gebler,\np. 37. Cp. Gui Patin, Lett. 816, ed. Reveill\u00e9-Parise, 1846, iii,\n758; Bayle, art. Cremonin, notes C and D; and Renan, Averro\u00e8s, 3e\n\u00e9dit. pp. 408-13. Patin writes that his friend Naud\u00e9 \"avoit \u00e9t\u00e9 intime\nami de Cremonin, qui n'\u00e9toit point meilleur Chr\u00e9tien que Pomponace,\nque Machiavel, que Cardan et telles autres ... dont le pays abonde.\"\n\n[256] Lange, Gesch. des Materialismus, i, 183 (Eng. tr. i, 220);\nGebler, p. 25. Libri actually made the refusal; but all that is\nproved as to Cremonini is that he opposed Galileo's discoveries \u00e0\npriori. As to the attitude of such opponents see Galileo's letter to\nKepler. J. J. Fahie, Galileo: his Life and Work, 1903. pp. 101-102.\n\n[257] Fahie, Galileo, p. 100.\n\n[258] Id. p. 127.\n\n[259] Gebler, pp. 54, 129, and passim; The Private Life of Galileo\n(by Mrs. Olney), Boston, 1870, pp. 67-72.\n\n[260] Galileo's letter to Kepler, cited by Gebler, p. 26.\n\n[261] The Jesuits were expelled from Venice in 1616, in retaliation\nfor a papal interdict.\n\n[262] See it summarized by Gebler, pp. 46-60, and quoted in the\nPrivate Life, pp. 83-85.\n\n[263] The measure of reverence with which the orthodox handled the\nmatter may be inferred from the fact that the Dominican Caccini, who\npreached against Galileo in Florence, took as one of his texts the\nverse in Acts i: \"Viri Galilaei, quid statis aspicientes in coelum,\"\nmaking a pun on the Scripture.\n\n[264] See this summarized by Gebler, pp. 64-70.\n\n[265] See The Private Life of Galileo, pp. 86-87, 91, 99; Gebler,\np. 44; Fahie, pp. 169-70; Berti, Il Processo Originale de Galileo\nGalilei, 1878, p. 53.\n\n[266] Gebler (p. 101) solemnly comments on this letter as a lapse into\n\"servility\" on Galileo's part.\n\n[267] Gebler, pp. 112-13.\n\n[268] Private Life, pp. 216-18; Gebler, pp. 157-62.\n\n[269] Berti, pp. 61-64; Private Life, pp. 212-13; Gebler, p. 162.\n\n[270] Gebler, p. 239; Private Life, p. 256.\n\n[271] Gebler, pp. 249-63; Private Life, pp. 255-56; Marini,\npp. 55-57. The \"e pur si muove\" story is first heard of in 1774. As\nto the torture, it is to be remembered that Galileo recanted under\nthreat of it. See Berti, pp. 93-101; Marini, p. 59; Sir O. Lodge,\nPioneers of Science, 1893, pp. 128-31. Berti argues that only the\nspecial humanity of the Commissary-General, Macolano, saved him from\nthe torture. Cp. Gebler, p. 259, note.\n\n[272] Gebler, p. 281.\n\n[273] Private Life, pp. 265-60, 268; Gebler, p. 252.\n\n[274] Berti, Il Processo di Galileo, pp. 111-12.\n\n[275] Letter of Hobbes to Newcastle, in Report of the\nHist. Mss. Comm. on the Duke of Portland's Papers, 1892, ii. Hobbes\nexplains that few copies were brought over, \"and they that buy such\nbooks are not such men as to part with them again.\" \"I doubt not,\"\nhe adds, \"but the translation of it will here be publicly embraced.\"\n\n[276] Gebler, pp. 312-15; Putnam, Censorship of the Church of Rome,\ni, 313-14.\n\n[277] See Ueberweg, ii, 12, as to the conflicting types. In addition\nto Cremonini, several leading Aristotelians in the sixteenth and\nseventeenth centuries were accused of atheism (Hallam, Lit. Hist. ii,\n101-102), the old charge against the Peripatetic school. Hallam\n(p. 102) complains that Cesalpini of Pisa \"substitutes the barren\nunity of pantheism for religion.\" Cp. Ueberweg, ii, 14; Renan,\nAverro\u00e8s, 3e \u00e9dit. p. 417. An Averro\u00efst on some points, he believed\nin separate immortality.\n\n[278] Gebler, pp. 37, 45. Gebler appears to surmise that Cremonini\nmay have escaped the attack upon himself by turning suspicion upon\nGalileo, but as to this there is no evidence.\n\n[279] Ueberweg, ii, 17.\n\n[280] Epist. 36.\n\n[281] See above, p. 45.\n\n[282] Bartholm\u00e8ss, Jordano Bruno, i, 49.\n\n[283] Lange, Gesch. des Mater. i, 189-90 (Eng. tr. i, 228). Born\nin Valencia and trained at Paris, Vives became a humanist teacher\nat Louvain, and was called to England (1523) to be tutor to the\nPrincess Mary. During his stay he taught at Oxford. Being opposed to\nthe divorce of Henry VIII, he was imprisoned for a time, afterwards\nliving at Bruges.\n\n[284] See the monograph, Ramus, sa vie, ses \u00e9crits, et ses opinions,\npar Ch. Waddington, 1855. Owen has a good account of Ramus in his\nFrench Skeptics.\n\n[285] Schol\u00e6 math. l. iii, p. 78, cited by Waddington, p. 343.\n\n[286] \"In many respects Galileo deserves to be ranked with Descartes\nas inaugurating modern philosophy.\" Prof. Adamson, Development of\nMod. Philos. 1903, i, 5. \"We may compare his [Hobbes's] thought with\nDescartes's, but the impulse came to him from the physical reasonings\nof Galileo.\" Prof. Croom Robertson, Hobbes, 1886, p. 42.\n\n[287] Buckle, 1-vol. ed. pp. 327-36; 3-vol. ed. ii, 77-85. Cp. Lange,\ni, 425 (Eng. tr. i, 248, note); Adamson, Philosophy of Kant, 1879,\np. 194.\n\n[288] Cp. Lange, i, 425 (Eng. tr. i, 248-49, note); Bouillier,\nHist. de la philos. cart\u00e9sienne, 1854, i, 40-47, 185-86; Bartholm\u00e8ss,\nJordano Bruno, i, 354-55; Memoir in Garnier ed. of OEuvres Choisies,\np. v, also pp. 6, 17, 19, 21. Bossuet pronounced the precautions of\nDescartes excessive. But cp. Dr. Land's notes in Spinoza: Four Essays,\n1882, p. 55.\n\n[289] Coll. of Philos. Writings, ed. 1712, pref. p. xi.\n\n[290] Discours de la M\u00e9thode, pties. i, ii, iii, iv (OEuvres Choisies,\npp. 8, 10, 11, 22, 24); Meditation I (id. pp. 73-74).\n\n[291] Full details in Kuno Fischer's Descartes and his School,\nEng. tr. 1890, bk. i, ch. vi; Bouillier, i, chs. xii, xiii.\n\n[292] Buckle, 1-vol. ed. pp. 337-39; 3-vol. ed. ii, 94, 97.\n\n[293] Buckle, pp. 327-30; ii, 81.\n\n[294] Id. p. 330; ii, 82. The process is traced hereinafter.\n\n[295] Kuno Fischer, Francis Bacon, Eng. tr. 1857, p. 74.\n\n[296] For an exact summary and criticism of Gassendi's positions see\nthe masterly monograph of Prof. Brett of Lahore, The Philosophy of\nGassendi, 1908--a real contribution to the history of philosophy.\n\n[297] Cp. Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, bk. v, ch. i (McCulloch's\ned. 1839, pp. 364-65). It is told of him, with doubtful authority, that\nwhen dying he said: \"I know not who brought me into the world, neither\ndo I know what was to do there, nor why I go out of it.\" Reflections\non the Death of Freethinkers, by Deslandes (Eng. tr. of the R\u00e9flexions\nsur les grands hommes qui sont morts en plaisantant), 1713, p. 105.\n\n[298] For a good account of Gassendi and his group (founded on Lange, \u00a7\niii, ch. i) see Soury, Br\u00e9viaire de l'hist. de mat\u00e9rialisme, ptie. iii,\nch. ii.\n\n[299] Voltaire, \u00c9l\u00e9ments de philos. de Newton, ch. ii; Lange, i, 232\n(Eng. tr. i, 267) and 269.\n\n[300] Bayle, art. Pomponace, Notes F. and G. The complaint was made\nby Arnauld, who with the rest of the Jansenists was substantially\na Cartesian.\n\n[301] See it in Garnier's ed. of Descartes's OEuvres Choisies, p. 145.\n\n[302] Id. pp. 158-64.\n\n[303] Apparently just because the Jansenists adopted Descartes\nand opposed Gassendi. But Gassendi is extremely guarded in all his\nstatements, save, indeed, in his objections to the M\u00e9ditations of\nDescartes.\n\n[304] See Soury, pp. 397-98, as to a water-drinking \"debauch\" of\nGassendi and his friends.\n\n[305] Rambaud, as cited, p. 154.\n\n[306] Id. p. 155.\n\n[307] Voltaire, Si\u00e8cle de Louis XIV, ed. Didot, p. 366. \"On ne l'e\u00fbt\npas os\u00e9 sous Henri IV et sous Louis XIII,\" adds Voltaire. Cp. Michelet,\nLa Sorci\u00e8re, \u00e9d. S\u00e9ailles, 1903, p. 302.\n\n[308] Tr. into English in 1659, under the title The Vanity of Judiciary\nAstrology.\n\n[309] Jenkin Thomasius in his Historia Atheismi (1692) joins Herbert\nwith Bodin as having five points in common with him (ed. 1709, ch. ix,\n\u00a7 2, pp. 76-77).\n\n[310] It might have been supposed that he was recalled on account\nof his book; but it was not so. He was recalled by letter in April,\nreturned home in July, and seems to have sent his book thence to\nParis to be printed.\n\n[311] Autobiography, Sir S. Lee's 2nd ed. p. 132.\n\n[312] The book was reprinted at London in Latin in 1633; again at\nParis in 1636; and again at London in 1645. It was translated and\npublished in French in 1639, but never in English.\n\n[313] Compare the verdict of Hamilton in his ed. of Reid, note A, \u00a7\n6, 35 (p. 781).\n\n[314] For a good analysis see P\u00fcnjer, Hist. of the Christ. Philos. of\nReligion, Eng. trans. 1887, pp. 292-99; also Noack, Die Freidenker\nin der Religion, Bern, 1853, i, 17-40; and Lechler, Geschichte des\nenglischen Deismus, pp. 36-54.\n\n[315] See his Autobiography, as cited, pp. 133-34.\n\n[316] De causis errorum, una cum tractate de religione laici et\nappendice ad sacerdotes (1645); De religione gentilium (1663). The\nlatter was translated into English in 1705. The former are short\nappendices to the De Veritate. In 1768 was published for the first time\nfrom a manuscript, A Dialogue between a Tutor and his Pupil, which,\ndespite the doubts of Lechler, may confidently be pronounced Herbert's\nfrom internal evidence. See the \"Advertisement\" by the editor of the\nvolume, and cp. Lee, p. xxx, and notes there referred to. The \"five\npoints,\" in particular, occur not only in the Religio Gentilium, but\nin the De Veritate. The style is clearly of the seventeenth century.\n\n[317] Sir Sidney Lee can hardly be right in taking the Dialogue to be\nthe \"little treatise\" which Herbert proposed to write on behaviour\n(Autobiography, Lee's 2nd ed. p. 43). It does not answer to that\ndescription, being rather an elaborate discussion of the themes of\nHerbert's main treatises, running to 272 quarto pages.\n\n[318] See below, p. 80.\n\n[319] More Reasons for the Christian Religion, 1672, p. 79.\n\n[320] It is to be remembered that the doctrine of the supremacy of\nthe civil power in religious matters (Erastianism) was maintained by\nsome of the ablest men on the Parliamentary side, in particular Selden.\n\n[321] Leviathan, ch. iv, H. Morley's ed. p. 26.\n\n[322] Cp. his letter to an opponent, Considerations upon the\nReputation, etc., of Thomas Hobbes, 1680, with chs. xi and xii of\nLeviathan, and De Corpore Politico, pt. ii, c. 6. One of his most\nexplicit declarations for theism is in the De Homine, c. 1, where\nhe employs the design argument, declaring that he who will not see\nthat the bodily organs are a mente aliqua conditas ordinatasque ad\nsua quasque officia must be himself without mind. This ascription of\n\"mind,\" however, he tacitly negates in Leviathan, ch. xi, and De\nCorpore Politico, pt. ii, c. 6.\n\n[323] De Corpore, pt. ii, c. 8, \u00a7 20.\n\n[324] Cp. Bentley's letter to Bernard, 1692, cited in Dynamics of\nReligion, pp. 82-83.\n\n[325] Leviathan, pt. i, ch. vi. Morley's ed. p. 34.\n\n[326] Leviathan, pt. iii, ch. xxxiii.\n\n[327] Above, p. 24.\n\n[328] On this see Lange, Hist. of Materialism, sec. iii, ch. ii.\n\n[329] Molyneux, an anti-Hobbesian, in translating Hobbes's objections\nalong with the Meditations (1680) claims that the slightness of\nDescartes's replies was due to his unacquaintance with Hobbes's works\nand philosophy in general (trans. cited, p. 114). This is an obviously\nlame defence. Descartes does parry some of the thrusts of Hobbes;\nothers he simply cannot meet.\n\n[330] E.g., Leviathan, pt. iv, ch. xlvii.\n\n[331] Kuno Fischer, Descartes and his School, pp. 232-35. Cp. Bentley,\nSermons on Atheism (i.e., his Boyle Lectures), ed. 1724, p. 8.\n\n[332] Hobbes also was of Mersenne's acquaintance, but only as a man of\nscience. When, in 1647, Hobbes was believed to be dying, Mersenne for\nthe first time sought to discuss theology with him; but the sick man\ninstantly changed the subject. In 1648 Mersenne died. He thus did not\nlive to meet the strain of Leviathan (1651), which enraged the French\nno less than the English clergy. (Croom Robertson's Hobbes, pp. 63-65.)\n\n[333] Hobbes lived to see this law abolished (1677). There was left,\nhowever, the jurisdiction of the bishops and ecclesiastical courts\nover cases of atheism, blasphemy, heresy, and schism, short of the\ndeath penalty.\n\n[334] Croom Robertson, Hobbes, p. 196; Pepys's Diary, Sept. 3, 1668.\n\n[335] Leviathan, ch. ii; Morley's ed. p. 19; chs. xiv, xv, pp. 66,\n71, 72, 78; ch. xxix, pp. 148, 149.\n\n[336] Leviathan, chs. xv, xvii, xviii. Morley's ed. pp. 72, 82, 83, 85.\n\n[337] \"For two generations the effort to construct morality on a\nphilosophical basis takes more or less the form of answers to Hobbes\"\n(Sidgwick, Outlines of the History of Ethics, 3rd ed. p. 169).\n\n[338] As when he presents the law of Nature as \"dictating peace,\nfor a means of the conservation of men in multitudes\" (Leviathan,\nch. xv. Morley's ed. p. 77).\n\n[339] See the headings, Council, Religion, etc.\n\n[340] G. W. Johnson, Memoirs of John Selden, 1835, pp. 348, 362.\n\n[341] G. W. Johnson, p. 264.\n\n[342] Above, p. 20.\n\n[343] G. W. Johnson, pp. 258, 302.\n\n[344] Id. p. 302. Cp. in the Table Talk, art. Trinity, his view of\nthe Roundheads.\n\n[345] Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson, ed. 1810, i, 181. Cp. i, 292;\nii, 44.\n\n[346] Cp. Overton's pamphlet, An Arrow against all Tyrants and\nTyranny (1646), cited in the History of Passive Obedience since the\nReformation, 1689, i, 59; pt. ii of Thomas Edwards's Gangr\u00e6na: or a\nCatalogue and Discovery of many of the Errours, Heresies, Blasphemies,\nand pernicious Practices of the Sectaries of this time, etc., 2nd\ned. 1646, pp. 33-34 (Nos. 151-53).\n\n[347] Lords Journals, January 16, 1645-1646; Gangr\u00e6na, as cited,\np. 150; cp. Gardiner, Hist. of the Civil War, ed. 1893, iii, 11.\n\n[348] Green, Short Hist. ch. viii, \u00a7 8, pp. 551-52; Gardiner, Hist. of\nthe Civil War, iv, 22.\n\n[349] Gangr\u00e6na, p. 18.\n\n[350] In 1644 he had been imprisoned at Bury St. Edmunds for\n\"dipping\" adults, and after six months' durance had been released on a\nrecantation and promise of amendment. Gangr\u00e6na, as cited, pp. 104-105.\n\n[351] Rev. James Cranford, H\u00e6reseo-Machia, a Sermon, 1646, p. 10.\n\n[352] No. 100 in Gangr\u00e6na.\n\n[353] Cranford, as cited, p. 11 sq.\n\n[354] See G. P. Gooch's Hist. of Democ. Ideas in England in the 17th\nCentury, 1898, ch. vi.\n\n[355] Above, pp. 4 and 8.\n\n[356] In the British Museum copy the name Richardson is penned, not in\na contemporary hand, at the end of the preface; and in the preface to\nvol. ii of the Phenix, 1708, in which the treatise is reprinted, the\nsame name is given, but with uncertainty. The Richardson pointed at\nwas the author of The Necessity of Toleration in Matters of Religion\n(1647). E. B. Underhill, in his collection of that and other Tracts\non Liberty of Conscience for the Hanserd Knollys Society, 1846,\nremains doubtful (p. 247) as to the authorship of the tract on hell.\n\n[357] The fourth English edition appeared in 1754.\n\n[358] Gangr\u00e6na, ep. ded. (p. 5). Cp. pp. 47, 151, 178-79; and Bailie's\nLetters, ed. 1841, ii, 234-37; iii, 393. The most sweeping plea for\ntoleration seems to have been the book entitled Toleration Justified,\n1646. (Gangr\u00e6na, p. 151.) The Hanserd Knollys collection, above\nmentioned, does not contain one of that title.\n\n[359] Gangr\u00e6na, pp. 152-53.\n\n[360] Pp. 18-36.\n\n[361] Id. p. 15. As to other sects mentioned by him cp. Tayler, p. 194.\n\n[362] On the intense aversion of most of the Presbyterians to\ntoleration see Tayler, Retrospect of Relig. Life of Eng. p. 136. They\ninsisted, rightly enough, that the principle was never recognized in\nthe Bible.\n\n[363] See the citations in Buckle, 3-vol. ed. i, 347;\n1-vol. ed. p. 196.\n\n[364] Alex. Ross, Pansebeia, 4th ed. 1672, p. 379.\n\n[365] Cp. the present writer's Buckle and his Critics, 1895, ch. viii,\n\u00a7 2.\n\n[366] See above, vol. i, p. 5.\n\n[367] Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson, 3rd ed. i, 200.\n\n[368] Heresiography: The Heretics and Sectaries of these Times,\n1614. Epist. Ded.\n\n[369] Discourse, ed. 1857, p. 226.\n\n[370] Dr. J. Brown's pref. to ed. of 1857, p. xxii.\n\n[371] More, Collection of Philosophical Writings, 4th ed. 1692, p. 95.\n\n[372] Fabricius, Delectus Argumentorum et Syllabus Scriptorum, 1725,\np. 341.\n\n[373] No copy in British Museum.\n\n[374] Urwick, Life of John Howe, with 1846 ed. of Howe's Select Works,\npp. xiii, xix. Urwick, a learned evangelical, fully admits the presence\nof \"infidels\" on both sides in the politics of the time.\n\n[375] Discourse Concerning Union Among Protestants, ed. cited, pp. 146,\n156, 158. In the preface to his treatise, The Redeemer's Tears Wept\nover Lost Souls, Howe complains of \"the atheism of some, the avowed\nmere theism of others,\" and of a fashionable habit of ridiculing\nreligion. This sermon, however, appears to have been first published\nin 1684; and the date of its application is uncertain.\n\n[376] Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biography, Art. 285.\n\n[377] The preface begins: \"It is neither to satisfie the importunity\nof friends, nor to prevent false copies (which and such like excuses\nI know are expected in usual prefaces), that I have adventured abroad\nthis following treatise: but it is out of a just resentment of the\naffronts and indignities which have been cast on religion, by such\nwho account it a matter of judgment to disbelieve the Scriptures,\nand a piece of wit to dispute themselves out of the possibility of\nbeing happy in another world.\"\n\n[378] See bk. ii, ch. x. Page 338, 3rd ed. 1666.\n\n[379] Cp. Glanvill, pref. Address to his Scepsis Scientifica, Owen's\ned. 1885, pp. lv-lvii; and Henry More's Divine Dialogues, Dial. i,\nch. xxxii.\n\n[380] Cp. Lecky, Rationalism in Europe, i. 109.\n\n[381] The Reformed Pastor, abr. ed. 1826, pp. 236, 239.\n\n[382] Work cited, ed. 1667, p. 136. The proposition is reiterated.\n\n[383] Id. p. 388.\n\n[384] Reasons of the Christian Religion, pp. 388-89.\n\n[385] Religio Stoici, Edinburgh, 1663. p. 19. The essay was reprinted\nin 1665, and in London in 1693 under the title of The Religious Stoic.\n\n[386] Id. p. 18.\n\n[387] Id. p. 124.\n\n[388] Id. p. 76.\n\n[389] Id. p. 69.\n\n[390] Religio Stoici, p. 116.\n\n[391] Id. p. 122.\n\n[392] This last is interesting as a probable echo of opinions he had\nheard from some of his older contemporaries: \"Opinion kept within its\nproper bounds is an [ = the Scottish \"ane\"] pure act of the mind;\nand so it would appear that to punish the body for that which is a\nguilt of the soul is as unjust as to punish one relation for another\"\n(pref. pp. 10-11). He adds that \"the Almighty hath left no warrand\nupon holy record for persecuting such as dissent from us.\"\n\n[393] Reason: an Essay, ed. 1690, p. 21. Cp. p. 152.\n\n[394] Id. p. 82. It is noteworthy that Mackenzie puts in a protest\nagainst \"implicit Faith and Infallibility, those great tyrants\nover Reason\" (p. 88). But the essay as a whole is ill-planned and\nunimpressive.\n\n[395] Work cited, 2nd ed. pt. ii, pp. 106-15.\n\n[396] Cp. Dynamics of Religion, pp. 86-87, 89-90. This explanation\nis also given by Bishop Wilkins in his treatise on Natural Religion,\n7th ed. p. 354.\n\n[397] Replying to Herbert's De Veritate, which he seems not to have\nread before.\n\n[398] Pref. to Obs. upon the United Prov. of the Netherlands, in Works,\ned. 1814, i, 36.\n\n[399] Cp. Dynamics of Religion, pp. 87, 94-98, 111, 112.\n\n[400] As to the religious immoralism see Mosheim, 17 Cent. sec. ii,\npt. ii, ch. ii, \u00a7 23, and Murdock's notes.\n\n[401] Compare the picture of average Protestant deportment given by\nBenjamin Bennet in his Discourses against Popery, 1714, p. 377.\n\n[402] More, Coll. of Philos. Writings, 4th ed. 1712, gen. pref. p. 7.\n\n[403] Compare some of the extracts in Thomas Bennet's Defence of\nthe Discourse of Schism, etc., 2nd ed. 1704, from the sermons of\nR. Gouge (1688). The description of men as \"mortal crumbling bits\nof dependency, yesterday's start-ups, that come out of the abyss of\nnothing, hastening to the bosom of their mother earth\" (work cited,\np. 93) is a reminder that the resonant and cadenced rhetoric of\nthe Brownes and Taylors and Cudworths was an art of the age, at the\ncommand of different orders of propaganda.\n\n[404] Cited by Bonnet, A Defence of the Discourse of Schism, etc.,\nas cited, p. 41.\n\n[405] Thus Henry More's biographer, the Rev. Richard Ward, says \"the\nlate Mr. Chiswel told a friend of mine that for twenty years together\nafter the return of King Charles the Second the Mystery of Godliness,\nand Dr. More's other works, ruled all the booksellers in London\"\n(Life of More, 1710, pp. 162-63). We have seen the nature of some of\nMore's \"other works.\"\n\n[406] The Reasonableness of Scripture Belief, 1672, Epist. Ded.\n\n[407] Rep. 1675; 2nd ed. 1691; rep. in the Phoenix, vol. ii, 1708;\n3rd ed. 1736.\n\n[408] A very hostile account of him is given in Dict. of Nat. Biog. He\nwas, however, the friend of Cowley, and the \"M. Clifford\" to whom Sprat\naddressed his sketch of Cowley's Life. He was also a foe of Dryden--the\n\"malicious Matt Clifford\" of Dryden's Sessions of the Poets; and he\nattacked the poet in Notes on Dryden's Poems (published 1687), and\nis supposed to have had a hand in the Rehearsal. He was befriended\nby Shaftesbury.\n\n[409] Tract. Theol. Polit. c. 15.\n\n[410] Wood, Athen\u00e6 Oxonienses, ii, 381-82; Granger, Biog. Hist. of\nEngland, 5th ed. v, 293.\n\n[411] Johnson's Life of Dr. Watts, 1785, App. i.\n\n[412] Toulmin, Hist. of the Prot. Dissenters, 1814, citing Johnson's\nLife of Dr. Watts.\n\n[413] It has been suggested that this was really written by Clifford,\nfor posthumous publication. The humorous sketch of \"His Character\"\nat the close, suggesting that his vices seem to the writer to have\noutweighed his virtues, hints of ironical mystification.\n\n[414] Work cited, pp. 10, 14, 30, 55.\n\n[415] Dr. Urwick, Life of Howe, as cited, p. xxxii.\n\n[416] A Demonstration of the Divine Authority of the Law of Nature and\nof the Christian Religion, by Samuel Parker, D.D., 1681, pref. The\nfirst part of this treatise is avowedly a popularization of the\nargument of Cumberland's Disquisitio de Legibus Natur\u00e6, 1672. Parker\nhad previously published in Latin a Disiputatio de Deo et Providentia\nDivina, in which he raised the question, An Philosophorum ulli,\net quinam Athei fuerunt (1678).\n\n[417] Work cited, 2nd ed. 1682, pp. 32, 38-40, 45-48.\n\n[418] Id. pp. 54-55.\n\n[419] Id. p. 52.\n\n[420] Twelve Sermons Preached upon Several Occasions, 1692, pp. 438-39.\n\n[421] This has been ascribed, without any good ground, to Charles\nBlount. It does not seem to me to be in his style.\n\n[422] Premonition to the Candid Reader.\n\n[423] Hist. Nat. vii, 1.\n\n[424] Pamphlet cited, pp. 20, 21.\n\n[425] Id. p. 23.\n\n[426] Concerning whom see Macaulay's History, ch. xix, ed. 1877, ii,\n411-12--a very prejudiced account. Blount is there spoken of as \"one\nof the most unscrupulous plagiaries that ever lived,\" and as having\n\"stolen\" from Milton, because he issued a pamphlet \"By Philopatris,\"\nlargely made up from the Areopagitica. Compare Macaulay's treatment of\nLocke, who adopted Dudley North's currency scheme (ch. xxi, vol. ii,\np. 547).\n\n[427] Bayle (art. Apollonius, note), who is followed by the French\ntranslator of Philostratus with Blount's notes in 1779 (J. F. Salvemini\nde Castillon), says the notes were drawn from the papers of Lord\nHerbert of Cherbury; but of this Blount says nothing.\n\n[428] As to these see the Dict. of Nat. Biog. The statements of Anthony\nWood as to the writings of Blount's father, relied on in the author's\nDynamics of Religion, appear to be erroneous. Sir Thomas Pope Blount,\nCharles's eldest brother, shows a skeptical turn of mind in his Essays\n(3rd ed. 1697, Essay 7). Himself a learned man, he disparages learning\nas checking thought; and, professing belief in the longevity of the\npatriarchs (p. 187), pronounces popery and pagan religion to be mere\nworks of priestcraft (Essay 1). He detested theological controversy\nand intolerance, and seems to have been a Lockian.\n\n[429] All that is known of this tragedy is that Blount loved his\ndeceased wife's sister and wished to marry her; but she held it\nunlawful, and he was in despair. According to Pope, a sufficiently\nuntrustworthy authority, he \"gave himself a stab in the arm, as\npretending to kill himself, of the consequence of which he really died\"\n(note to Epilogue to the Satires, i, 123). An overstrung nervous\nsystem may be diagnosed from his writing.\n\n[430] Boyle Lectures on Atheism, ed. 1724, p. 4.\n\n[431] Reflexions upon the Books of the Holy Scriptures to establish the\nTruth of the Christian Religion, by Peter Allix, D.D., 1688, i, 6-7.\n\n[432] As cited by Leslie, Truth of Christianity Demonstrated, 1711,\npp. 17-21.\n\n[433] Characteristics, ii, 263 (Moralists, pt. ii, \u00a7 3). One of the\nmost dangerous positions from the orthodox point of view would be the\nthesis that while religion could do either great good or great harm to\nmorals, atheism could do neither. (Bk. I, pt. iii, \u00a7 1.) Cp. Bacon's\nEssay, Of Atheism.\n\n[434] Blount, after assailing in anonymous pamphlets Bohun the\nlicenser, induced him to license a work entitled King William and Queen\nMary Conquerors, which infuriated the nation. Macaulay calls the device\n\"a base and wicked scheme.\" It was almost innocent in comparison\nwith Blount's promotion of the \"Popish plot\" mania. See Who Killed\nSir Edmund Godfrey Berry? by Alfred Marks. 1905, pp. 133-35, 150.\n\n[435] See the text in Mrs. Bradlaugh Bonner's Penalties upon Opinion,\npp. 19-21. Macaulay does not mention this measure.\n\n[436] The Act had been preceded by a proclamation of the king, dated\nFeb. 24. 1697.\n\n[437] As to an earlier monopoly of the London booksellers, see George\nHerbert's letters to the Archbishop of Canterbury and to Bacon,\nJan. 29, 1620. In Works of George Herbert, ed. 1841, i. 217-18.\n\n[438] See Locke's notes on the Licensing Act in Lord King's Life of\nLocke, 1829, pp. 203-206; Fox Bourne's Life of Locke, ii. 313-14;\nMacaulay's History, ii, 504.\n\n[439] Trinius, Freydenker-Lexicon, 1759, p. 120; P\u00fcnjer, i, 291,\n300-301. Browne was even called an atheist. Arpe, Apologia pro Vanino,\n1712, p. 27, citing Welschius. Mr. A. H. Bullen, in his introduction\nto his ed. of Marlowe (1885, vol. i, p. lviii), remarks that Browne,\nwho \"kept the road\" in divinity, \"exposed the vulnerable points in\nthe Scriptural narratives with more acumen and gusto than the whole\narmy of freethinkers, from Anthony Collins downwards.\" This is of\ncourse an extravagance, but, as Mr. Bullen remarks in the Dict. of\nNat. Biog. vii, 66, Browne discusses \"with evident relish\" the\n\"seeming absurdities in the Scriptural narrative.\"\n\n[440] Browne's Annotator points to the derivation of his skepticism\nfrom \"that excellent French writer Monsieur Mountaign, in whom I\noften trace him\" (Sayle's ed. 1904, i, p. xviii).\n\n[441] Religio Medici, i, 6.\n\n[442] Id. i, 9.\n\n[443] Id. i, 18.\n\n[444] Religio Medici, i, 20.\n\n[445] Bk. I, ch. x.\n\n[446] Here we have a theorem independently reached later (with the\nsubstitution of Nature for God) by Mary Wollstonecraft and Tennyson\nin turn. Browne cites yet another: \"that he looks not below the moon,\nbut hath resigned the regiment of sublunary affairs unto inferior\ndeputations\"--a thesis adopted in effect by Cudworth.\n\n[447] By an error of the press, Browne is made in Mr. Sayle's excellent\nreprint (i, 108) to begin a sentence in the middle of a clause, with an\nodd result:--\"I do confess I am an Atheist. I cannot persuade myself\nto honour that the world adores.\" The passage should obviously read:\n\"to that subterraneous Idol (avarice) and God of the Earth I do\nconfess I am an Atheist,\" etc.\n\n[448] Hutchinson, Histor. Essay Conc. Witchcraft, 1718, p. 118;\n2nd ed. 1720, p. 151.\n\n[449] Cp. Whewell, Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy,\ned. 1862, p. 33.\n\n[450] Robertson Smith, The Religion of the Semites, 1889, pref. p. vi;\nRev. Dr. Duff, Hist. of Old Test. Criticism, R. P. A. 1910, p. 113.\n\n[451] This appears again, much curtailed and \"so altered as to be in\na manner new,\" in its author's collected Essays on Several Important\nSubjects in Religion and Philosophy (1676), under the title Against\nConfidence in Philosophy.\n\n[452] See the Humane Nature (1640), ch. iv, \u00a7\u00a7 7-9.\n\n[453] Scepsis Scientifica, ch. 23, \u00a7 1.\n\n[454] See the passages compared by Lewes, History of Philosophy,\n4th ed. ii, 338.\n\n[455] In his Blow at Modern Sadducism (4th ed. 1668), Sadducismus\nTriumphatus (1681; 3rd ed. 1689), and A Whip to the Droll, Fidler\nto the Atheist (1688--a letter to Henry More, who was zealous on the\nsame lines). These works seem to have been much more widely circulated\nthan the Scepsis Scientifica.\n\n[456] Scepsis, ch. 20, \u00a7 3.\n\n[457] See Glanvill's reply in a letter to a friend (1665), re-written\nas Essay II, Of Scepticism and Certainty: in A short Reply to the\nlearned Mr. Thomas White in his collected Essays on Several Important\nSubjects, 1676.\n\n[458] See the reply in Plus Ultra: or, the Progress and\nAdvancement of Knowledge since the days of Aristotle, 1668,\nEpist. Ded. Pref. ch. xviii, and Conclusion. [The re-written treatise,\nin the collected Essays, eliminates the controversial matter.]\n\n[459] First printed with Glanvill's Philosophia Pia in 1671. Rep. as\nan essay in the collected Essays.\n\n[460] Owen, pref. to Scepsis, pp. xx-xxii.\n\n[461] Owen, pref. to ed. of Scepsis Scientifica, p. ix.\n\n[462] Of whom, however, a high medical authority declares that,\n\"as a physiologist, he was sunk in realism\" (that is, metaphysical\napriorism). Prof. T. Clifford Allbutt, Harveian Oration on Science\nand Medieval Thought, 1901, p. 44.\n\n[463] Cp. Whewell, as last cited, pp. 75-83; Hallam, Literature of\nEurope, iv, 159-71.\n\n[464] Reid, Intellectual Powers, Essay I, ch. i; Hamilton's ed. of\nWorks, p. 226. Glanvill calls Gassendi \"that noble wit.\" (Scepsis\nScientifica, Owen's ed. p. 151.)\n\n[465] Poet. Works of Milton, 1874, Introd. i, 92 sq.\n\n[466] Scepsis Scientifica, Owen's ed. p. 66. In the condensed version\nof the treatise in Glanvill's collected Essays (1676, p. 20), the\nlanguage is to the same effect.\n\n[467] J. J. Tayler, Retrospect of the Religious Life of England,\nMartineau's ed. p. 204; Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biography, iii,\n152-53.\n\n[468] Cp. Buckle, 3-vol. ed. ii, 347-51; 1-vol. ed. pp. 196-99.\n\n[469] Tayler, Retrospect, pp. 204-205; Wallace, iii, 154-56.\n\n[470] Gangr\u00e6na, pt. i, p. 38.\n\n[471] Tayler, p. 221. As to Biddle, the chief propagandist of the sect,\nsee pp. 221-24, and Wallace, Art. 285.\n\n[472] Macaulay, Essay on Milton. Cp. Brown's ed. (Clarendon Press)\nof the poems of Milton, ii, 30.\n\n[473] Cp. Dynamics of Religion, ch. v.\n\n[474] Of Education, \u00a7 136.\n\n[475] Essay, bk. iv, ch. xix. \u00a7 4.\n\n[476] Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, c. 15.\n\n[477] Third Letter to the Bishop of Worcester.\n\n[478] Some Familiar Letters between Mr. Locke and Several of his\nFriends, 1708, pp. 302-304.\n\n[479] Fox Bourne, Life of Locke, 1876, ii, 34.\n\n[480] The first Letter, written while he was hiding in Holland in 1685,\nwas in Latin, but was translated into French, Dutch, and English.\n\n[481] Mr. Fox Bourne, in his biography (ii, 41), apologizes for the\nlapse, so alien to his own ideals, by the remark that \"the atheism\nthen in vogue was of a very violent and rampant sort.\" It is to be\nfeared that this palliation will not hold good--at least, the present\nwriter has been unable to trace the atheism in question. For \"atheism\"\nwe had better read \"religion.\"\n\n[482] Second Vindication of \"The Reasonableness of Christianity,\"\n1697, pref.\n\n[483] Fox Bourne, Life of Locke, ii, 181.\n\n[484] Son of the Presbyterian author of the famous Gangr\u00e6na.\n\n[485] Said by Carrol, Dissertation on Mr. Lock's Essay, 1706, cited\nby Anthony Collins, Essay Concerning the Use of Reason, 1709, p. 30.\n\n[486] Cited by Fox Bourne, Life of Locke, ii, 438.\n\n[487] Whose calibre may be gathered from his egregious doctoral thesis,\nConcio ad clerum de d\u00e6monum malorum existentia et natura (1700). After\na list of the deniers of evil spirits, from the Sadducees and\nSallustius to Bekker and Van Dale, he addresses to his \"dilectissimi\nin Christo fratres\" the exordium: \"En, Academici, veteres ac hodiernos\nSadduc\u00e6os! quibuscum tota Atheorum cohors amicissim\u00e8 congruit; nam\nqui divinum numen, iidem ipsi infernales spiritus acriter negant.\"\n\n[488] Confutation of Warburton (1757) in Extracts from Law's Works,\n1768, i, 208-209.\n\n[489] Cp. the Essay, bk. i, ch. iii, \u00a7 6, with Law's Case of Reason,\nin Extracts, as cited, p. 36.\n\n[490] Cp. Dynamics of Religion, p. 122.\n\n[491] Fox Bourne, ii, 404-405.\n\n[492] An ostensibly orthodox Professor of our own day has written\nthat Locke's doctrine as to religion and ethics \"shows at once the\nsincerity of his religious convictions and the inadequate conception\nhe had formed to himself of the grounds and nature of moral philosophy\"\n(Fowler, Locke, 1880, p. 76).\n\n[493] Burnet, History of his Own Time, ed. 1838, p. 251. Burnet adds\nthat Temple \"was a corrupter of all that came near him.\" The 1838\neditor protests against the whole attack as the \"most unfair and\nexaggerated\" of Burnet's portraits; and a writer in The Present State\nof the Republick of Letters, Jan., 1736, p. 26, carries the defence\nto claiming orthodoxy for Temple. But the whole cast of his thought\nis deistic. Cp. the Essay upon the Origin and Nature of Government,\nand ch. v of the Observations upon the United Provinces (Works,\ned. 1770, i, 29, 36, 170-74).\n\n[494] Cp. Macaulay, History, ch. ii. Student's ed. i, 120.\n\n[495] Compare his Advice to a Daughter, \u00a7 1 (in Miscellanies, 1700),\nand his Political Thoughts and Reflections: Religion.\n\n[496] See Macaulay, ch. xx. Student's ed. ii, 459.\n\n[497] De Morgan, as cited, p. 107.\n\n[498] See Brewster, ii, 318, 321-22, 323, 331 sq., 342 sq.\n\n[499] Id. p. 327 sq.\n\n[500] Id. p. 115.\n\n[501] Cp. De Morgan, pp. 133-45.\n\n[502] Four Letters from Sir Isaac Newton to Dr. Bentley, ed. 1756,\np. 25. Cp. Dynamics of Religion, pp. 97-102.\n\n[503] Brewster, ii, 314.\n\n[504] Id. pp. 315-16.\n\n[505] Id. pp. 342-46.\n\n[506] Brewster, p. 349. See the remaining articles, and App. XXX,\np. 532.\n\n[507] Id. p. 388.\n\n[508] Discourse on Tillotson and Burnet, pp. 38, 40, 74, cited by\nCollins, Discourse of Freethinking, 1713, pp. 171-72.\n\n[509] The Brief Notes on the Creed of St. Athanasius (author unknown),\nprinted by Thomas Firmin. Late in 1693 appeared another antitrinitarian\ntract, by William Freke, who was prosecuted, fined \u00a3500, and ordered\nto make a recantation in the Four Courts of Westminster Hall. The book\nwas burnt by the hangman. Wallace, Art. 354. There had also been \"two\nquarto volumes of tracts in support of Unitarianism,\" published in 1691\n(Dr. W. H. Drummond, An Explanation and Defence of the Principles of\nProtestant Dissent, 1842, p. 17).\n\n[510] \"Locke's ribald schoolfellow of nearly fifty years ago\" (Fox\nBourne, ii, 405).\n\n[511] Id. ib.\n\n[512] Tayler, Retrospect, p. 226; Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biography,\ni, 160-69.\n\n[513] Fox Bourne, ii, 405; Wallace, art. 353.\n\n[514] Above, pp. 35-36.\n\n[515] Nelson's Life of Bishop Bull, 2nd ed. 1714, p. 398.\n\n[516] \"Perhaps at no period was the Unitarian controversy so actively\ncarried on in England as between 1690 and 1720.\" History, Opinions,\netc., of the English Presbyterians, 1834, p. 22.\n\n[517] Cp. Dynamics of Religion, pp. 113-15--Tayler, Retrospect, p. 227.\n\n[518] As to whom see Tayler, Retrospect, ch. v. \u00a7 4. They are spoken\nof as \"the new sect of Latitude-Men\" in 1662; and in 1708 are said\nto be \"at this day Low Churchmen.\" See A Brief Account of the New\nSect of Latitude-Men, by \"S. P.\" of Cambridge, 1662, reprinted in The\nPhenix, vol. ii, 1708. and pref. to that vol. From \"S. P.'s\" account\nit is clear that they connected with the new scientific movement, and\nleant to Cartesianism. As above noted, they included such prelates as\nWilkins and Tillotson. The work of E. A. George, Seventeenth Century\nMen of Latitude (1908), deals with Hales, Chillingworth, Whichcote,\nH. More, Taylor, Browne, and Baxter.\n\n[519] Toulmin, Histor. View of the Prot. Dissenters, 1814, p. 270. A\nmain ground of the offence taken was a somewhat trivial dialogue in\nBurnet's book between Eve and the serpent, indicating the \"popular\"\ncharacter of the tale. This was omitted from a Dutch edition at the\nauthor's request, and from the 3rd ed. 1733 (Toulmin, as cited). It\nis given in the partial translation in Blount's Oracles of Reason.\n\n[520] See Brewster's Memoirs of Newton, 1855, ii, 315-16, for a letter\nindicating Craig's religious attitude. He contributed to Dr. George\nCheyne's Philosophical Principles of Religion, Natural and Revealed,\n1705. (Pref. to pt. i, ed. 1725.)\n\n[521] See the note of Pope and Warburton on the Dunciad, iv, 462.\n\n[522] See arts. in Dict. of Nat. Biog.\n\n[523] Reprinted at Amsterdam, 1712.\n\n[524] Essays as cited, p. 84.\n\n[525] Id. p. 30.\n\n[526] See Christianity not Founded on Argument (by Henry Dodwell,\njr.), 1741, pp. 11, 34. Waterland, as cited by Bishop Hurst, treats\nthe terms Reasonist and Rationalist as labels or nicknames of those\nwho untruly profess to reason more scrupulously than other people. The\nformer term may, however, have been set up as a result of Le Clerc's\nrendering of \"the Logos,\" in John i, 1, by \"Reason\"--an argument to\nwhich Waterland repeatedly refers.\n\n[527] Prof. Strowski, who is concerned to prove that the freethinkers\nof the period were mostly men-about-town, claims Patin as a Frondeur\n(De Montaigne \u00e0 Pascal, p. 215). But Patin's attitude in this matter\nwas determined by his detestation of Mazarin, whom he regarded as an\narch-scoundrel. Naud\u00e9's defence of the Massacre is forensic.\n\n[528] Lettres de Gui Patin, No. 188, \u00e9dit. Reveill\u00e9-Parise, 1846,\ni, 364.\n\n[529] Cp. Reveill\u00e9-Parise, as cited, Notice sur Gui Patin,\npp. xxiii-xxvii, and Bayle, art. Patin.\n\n[530] See the notices of him in Owen's Skeptics of the French\nRenaissance; and in Sainte-Beuve. Port Royal, iii, 180, etc.\n\n[531] De la Vertu des Payens, in t. v. of the 12mo ed. of OEuvres,\n1669.\n\n[532] Hanotaux, Hist. du Cardinal de Richelieu, 1893, i, pref. p. 7.\n\n[533] Cp. Buckle, ch. viii, 1-vol. ed. pp. 305-10, 325-28.\n\n[534] See the good criticism of M. Hanotaux in Perrens, Les Libertins\nen France au xvii. si\u00e8cle, p. 95 sq.\n\n[535] OEuvres, ed. 1669, v, 4 sq. Bellarmin, as Le Vayer shows, had\nsimilarly explained away Augustine. But the doctrine that heathen\nvirtue was not true virtue had remained orthodox.\n\n[536] Ed. cited, iv, 125.\n\n[537] Id. pp. 123-24.\n\n[538] Tom. iii, 251.\n\n[539] He wrote very many, the final collection filling three\nvolumes folio, and fifteen in duodecimo. The Cincq Dialogues faits\n\u00e0 l'imitation des Anciens were pseudonymous, and are not included in\nthe collected works.\n\n[540] \"On le r\u00e9garde comme le Plutarque de notre si\u00e8cle\" (Perrault,\nLes Hommes Illustres du XVIIe Si\u00e8cle, \u00e9d. 1701, ii. 131).\n\n[541] Perrault, ii, 132.\n\n[542] Bayle, Dict. art. La Mothe le Vayer. Cp. introd. to L'Esprit de\nla Mothe le Vayer, par M. de M. C. D. S. P. D. L. (i.e. De Montlinot,\nchanoine de Saint Pierre de Lille), 1763, pp. xviii, xxi, xxvi.\n\n[543] M. Perrens, who endorses this criticism, does not note that\nsome passages he quotes from the Dialogues, as to atheism being less\ndisturbing to States than superstition, are borrowed from Bacon's\nessay Of Atheism, of which Le Vayer would read the Latin version.\n\n[544] Perrens, p. 132.\n\n[545] In French, 1631; in Latin, 1656, amended.\n\n[546] Translated into English in 1688, and into French, under the\ntitle Trait\u00e9 du Pyrrhonisme de l'\u00e9glise romaine, by N. Chalaire,\nAmsterdam, 1721.\n\n[547] Bouillier, Hist. de la Philos. cart\u00e9sienne, 1854, i, 410 sq., 420\nsq.; Lanson, Hist. de la litt. fran\u00e7aise, 5e \u00e9dit. p. 396; Bruneti\u00e8re,\n\u00c9tudes Critiques, 3e s\u00e9rie, p. 2; Buckle, 1-vol. ed. p. 338. Bouillier\nnotes (i, 426) that the femmes savantes ridiculed by Moli\u00e8re are\nCartesians.\n\n[548] Bouillier, i, 456; Lanson, p. 397.\n\n[549] Bouillier, i, 411 sq.\n\n[550] Id. p. 431 sq.\n\n[551] Id. p. 437 sq.\n\n[552] Id. pp. 449-50.\n\n[553] \"Il disait tr\u00e8s souvent,\" said Pascal's niece:--\"Je ne puis\npardonner \u00e0 Descartes: il aurait bien voulu, dans toute sa philosophie,\npouvoir se passer de Dieu; mais il n'a pu s'emp\u00eacher de lui accorder\nune chiquenade, pour mettre le monde en mouvement; apr\u00e8s cela il\nn'a plus que faire de Dieu.\" R\u00e9cit de Marguerite Perier (\"De ce\nque j'ai ou\u00ef dire par M. Pascal, mon oncle\"), rep. with Pens\u00e9es,\ned. 1853. pp. 38-39.\n\n[554] Bouillier, p. 453.\n\n[555] Id. p. 455 sq.\n\n[556] See Bouillier, i, 460 sq.; ii, 373 sq.; and introd. to OEuvres\nphilos. du P\u00e8re Buffier, 1846, p. 4; and cp. Rambaud, Hist. de la\ncivilisation fran\u00e7aise, 6e \u00e9dit. ii, 336.\n\n[557] Bouillier, i, 465.\n\n[558] Perrens, pp. 84-85.\n\n[559] Cp. Perrens, pp. 68-69, and refs.\n\n[560] Cp. Strowski, De Montaigne \u00e0 Pascal, p. 141.\n\n[561] See Duvernet, Vie de Voltaire, ch. i, and note 1; and Perrens,\npp. 74-80.\n\n[562] For all that is known of Petit see the Avertissement to\nBibliophile Jacob's edition of Paris ridicule et burlesque au\n17i\u00e8me si\u00e8cle, and refs. in Perrens, p. 153. After Petit's death,\nhis friend Du Pelletier defended him as being a deist; but he seems\nin his youthful writings to have blasphemed at large, and he had\nbeen guilty of assassinating a young monk. He was burned, however,\nfor blaspheming the Virgin.\n\n[563] Guizot, Corneille et son temps, ed. 1880, p. 200. The circle of\nthe H\u00f4tel Rambouillet were especially hostile. Cp. Palissot's note to\nPolyeucte, end. On the other hand, Corneille found it prudent to cancel\nfour skeptical lines which he had originally put in the mouth of the\npagan Severus, the sage of the piece. Perrens, Les Libertins, p. 140.\n\n[564] Under whom he studied in his youth with a number of other notably\nindependent spirits, among them Cyrano de Bergerac. See Sainte-Beuve's\nessay on Moli\u00e8re, prefixed to the Hachette edition. Moli\u00e8re held by\nGassendi as against Descartes. Bouillier, i, 542 sq.\n\n[565] Constant Coquelin, art. \"Don Juan\" in the International Review,\nSeptember, 1903, p. 61--an acute and scholarly study.\n\n[566] \"Moli\u00e8re is a freethinker to the marrow of his bones\" (Perrens,\np. 280). Cp. Lanson, p. 520; Fournier, \u00c9tudes sur Moli\u00e8re, 1885,\npp. 122-23; Soury, Br\u00eav. de l'hist. du mat\u00e9r. p. 384. \"Ginguen\u00e9,\"\nwrites Sainte-Beuve, \"a publi\u00e9 une brochure pour montrer Rabelais\npr\u00e9curseur de la r\u00e9volution fran\u00e7aise: c'\u00e9toit inutile \u00e0 prouver sur\nMoli\u00e8re\" (essay cited).\n\n[567] Act II, sc. iv. in OEuvres Comiques, etc., ed. Jacob, rep. by\nGarnier, pp. 426-27.\n\n[568] See Jacob's note in loc., ed. cited, p. 455.\n\n[569] E.g. his Lettre contre un P\u00e9dant (No. 13 of the Lettres\nSatiriques in ed. cited, p. 181), which, however, appears to have\nbeen mutilated in some editions; as one of the deistic sentences\ncited by M. Perrens, p. 247, does not appear in the reprint of\nBibliophile Jacob.\n\n[570] E.g. the Histoire des Oiseaux in the Histoire Comique des \u00e9tats\net empires du Soleil, ed. Jacob (Garnier), p. 278; and the Fragment\nde Physique (same vol.).\n\n[571] See the careful criticism of Perrens, pp. 248-50.\n\n[572] Bibliophile Jacob, pref. to ed. cited, pp. i-ii.\n\n[573] Perrens, p. 302. Compare Bossuet's earlier sermon for the Second\nSunday of Advent, 1665, cited by Perrens, pp. 253-54, where he speaks\nwith something like fury of the free discussion around him.\n\n[574] Cousin plausibly argues that Pascal began writing Pens\u00e9es\nunder the influence of a practice set up in her circle by Madame de\nSabl\u00e9. Mme. de Sabl\u00e9, 5e \u00e9dit. p. 124 sq.\n\n[575] It is to be remembered that the work as published contained\nmatter not Pascal's. Cp. Bruneti\u00e8re, \u00c9tudes, iii, 46-47; and the\neditions of the Pens\u00e9es by Faug\u00e8re and Havet.\n\n[576] As to some of these see Perrens, pp. 158-69. They included the\ngreat Cond\u00e9 and some of the women in his circle; all of them unserious\nin their skepticism, and all \"converted\" when the physique gave the\nrequired cue.\n\n[577] Pens\u00e9es, ed. Faug\u00e8re, ii, 168-69. The \"ab\u00eatira\" comes from\nMontaigne.\n\n[578] Thus Mr. Owen treats Pascal as a skeptic, which philosophically\nhe was, insofar as he really philosophized and did not merely catch\nat pleas for his emotional beliefs. \"Les Pens\u00e9es de Pascal,\" writes\nProf. Le Dantec, \"sont \u00e0 mon avis le livre le plus capable de renforcer\nl'ath\u00e9isme chez un ath\u00e9e\" (L'Ath\u00e9isme, 1906, pp. 24-25). They have\nin fact always had that effect.\n\n[579] De la Delicatesse, 1671, dial. v, p. 329, etc.\n\n[580] Vinet, \u00c9tudes sur Blaise Pascal, 3e \u00e9dit. p. 267 sq.\n\n[581] Cp. the \u00c9loge de Pascal by Bordas Demoulin in Didot ed. of\nthe Lettres, 1854, pp. xxii-xxiii, and cit. from Saint-Beuve. Mark\nPattison, it seems, held that the Jesuits had the best of the\nargument. See the Letters of Lord Acton to Mary Gladstone, 1904,\np. 207. As regards the effect of Jansenism on belief, we find De\nTocqueville pronouncing that \"Le Jansenisme ouvrit ... la br\u00eache\npar laquelle la philosophie du 18e si\u00e8cle devait faire irruption\"\n(Hist. philos. du r\u00e8gne de Louis XV, 1849, i, 2). This could truly\nbe said of Pascal.\n\n[582] Cp. Voltaire's letter of 1768, cited by Morley, Voltaire,\n4th ed. p. 159.\n\n[583] Cp. Owen, French Skeptics, pp. 762-63, 767.\n\n[584] This was expressly urged against Huet by Arnauld. See the Notice\nin Jourdain's ed. of the Logique de Port Royal, 1854, p. xi; Perrens,\nLes Libertins, p. 301; and Bouillier Hist. de la philos. cart\u00e9sienne,\n1854, i, 595-96, where are cited the letters of Arnauld (Nos. 830,\n834, and 837 in OEuvres Compl. iii, 396, 404, 424) denouncing Huet's\nPyrrhonism as \"impious\" and perfectly adapted to the purposes of\nthe freethinkers.\n\n[585] Cp. Alexandre Westphal, Les Sources du Pentateuque, i (1888),\npp. 64-68.\n\n[586] Huet himself incurred a charge of temerity in his handling of\ntextual questions. Id. p. 66.\n\n[587] Pattison, Essays, 1889, i. 303-304.\n\n[588] Pattison, as cited.\n\n[589] \"After all, a book [the Bible] cannot make a stand against the\nwild, living intellect of man.\" Newman, Apologia pro Vita Sua, 1st\ned. p. 382; ed. 1875, p. 245. The same is said by Newman of religion\nin general (p. 243).\n\n[590] Pattison disparages it as colourless, a fault he charges on\nJesuit Latin in general. But by most moderns the Latin style of Huet\nwill be found pure and pleasant.\n\n[591] Pattison, Essays, i, 299. Cp. Bouillier, i, 595.\n\n[592] Fontenelle, \u00c9loge sur R\u00e9gis; Bouillier, Philos. cart\u00e9s., i, 507.\n\n[593] R\u00e9ponse to Huet's Censura philosophi\u00e6 cartes., 1691; Bouillier,\ni, 515.\n\n[594] Usage de la raison et de la foi, 1704, liv. i, ptie. i, ch. vii;\nBouillier, p. 511.\n\n[595] Bouillier, i, 521-25.\n\n[596] Lettre de 10 ao\u00fbt, 1677, No. 591, \u00e9d. Nodier.\n\n[597] Bouillier, ii, 10.\n\n[598] M\u00e9ditations chr\u00e9tiennes, ix, \u00a7 13.\n\n[599] Entretiens m\u00e9taphysiques, viii.\n\n[600] Id. viii, ix.\n\n[601] Bouillier, ii, 33. So Kuno Fischer: \"In brief, Malebranche's\ndoctrine, rightly understood, is Spinoza's\" (Descartes and his School,\nEng. tr. 1890, p. 589. Cp. p. 542).\n\n[602] The work of Arnauld was reprinted in 1724 with a remarkable\nApprobation by Clavel, in which he eulogizes the style and the\ndialectic of Arnauld, and expresses the hope that the book may \"gu\u00e9rir,\ns'il se peut, d'une \u00e9trange pr\u00e9occupation et d'une excessive confiance,\nceux qui enseignent ou soutiennent comme evident ce qu'il y a de plus\ndangereux dans la nouvelle philosophie non-obstant les d\u00e9fenses faites\npar le feu Roi Louis XIV \u00e0 l'Universit\u00e9 d'Angers en l'ann\u00e9e 1675 et \u00e0\nl'Universit\u00e9 de Paris aux ann\u00e9es 1691 et 1704 de le laisser enseigner\nou soutenir.\"\n\n[603] Des vrayes et des fausses id\u00e9es, ch. xxviii.\n\n[604] Recherche de la V\u00e9rit\u00e9, liv. vi, ptie. ii, ch. iii.\n\n[605] This was the main theme of the finished \u00c9loge of Fontenelle, and\nwas acknowledged by Bayle, Daguesseau, Arnauld, Bossuet, Voltaire, and\nDiderot, none of whom agreed with him. Bouillier, ii, 19. Fontenelle\nopposed Malebranche's philosophy in his Doutes sur le syst\u00e8me physique\ndes causes occasionelles. Id. p. 575.\n\n[606] Cp. Bouillier, ii, 260-61.\n\n[607] He is not mentioned by Ueberweg, Lange, or Lewes. His importance\nin \u00e6sthetics, however, is recognized by some moderns, though he is\nnot named in Mr. Bosanquet's History of \u00c6sthetic.\n\n[608] Trait\u00e9 des premi\u00e8res v\u00e9rit\u00e9s, 1724, \u00a7\u00a7 521-31.\n\n[609] Bouillier, introd. to Buffier's OEuvres philosophiques, 1846,\np. xiii.\n\n[610] Remarques sur les principes de la metaphysique de Locke,\npassages cited by Bouillier.\n\n[611] OEuvres, \u00e9d. Bouillier, p. 329.\n\n[612] Cp. Bouillier, Hist. de la philos. cart\u00e9s., ii, 391.\n\n[613] Malebranche, Trait\u00e9 de Morale, liv. ii, ch. 10. Cp. Bouillier,\ni, 582, 588-90; ii, 23.\n\n[614] Cp. Westphal, Les Sources du Pentateuque, 1888, i, 67 sq.\n\n[615] Pr\u00e6adamit\u00e6, sive Exercitatio super versibus 12, 13, 14 cap. 5,\nEpist. D. Pauli ad Romanos, Quibus inducuntur Primi Homines ante\nAdamum conditi. The notion of a pre-Adamite human race, as we saw,\nhad been held by Bruno. (Above, p. 46.)\n\n[616] My copies of the Pr\u00e6adamit\u00e6 and Systema bear no place-imprint,\nbut simply \"Anno Salutis MDCLV.\" Both books seem to have been at once\nreprinted in 12mo.\n\n[617] Bayle, Dictionnaire, art. Peyrere. A correspondent of Bayle's\nconcludes his account of \"le Pr\u00e9adamite\" thus: \"Le Pereire \u00e9toit le\nmeilleur homme du monde, le plus doux, et qui tranquillement croyoit\nfort peu de chose.\" There is a satirical account of him in the Lettres\nde Gui Patin, April 5,1658 (No. 454, ed. Reveill\u00e9-Parise, 1846, iii,\n83), cited by Bayle.\n\n[618] See the account of his book by Mr. Lecky, Rationalism in\nEurope, i, 295-97. Rejecting as he did the Mosaic authorship of the\nPentateuch, he ranks with Hobbes and Spinoza among the pioneers of\ntrue criticism. Indeed, as his book seems to have been in MS. in 1645,\nhe may precede Hobbes. Patin had heard of Peyr\u00e8re's Pr\u00e6adamit\u00e6 as\nready for printing in 1643. Let. 169, ed. cited, i, 297.\n\n[619] Kuno Fischer, Descartes and his School, pp. 254-68.\n\n[620] Colerus (i.e., K\u00f6hler), Vie de Spinoza, in Gfr\u00f6rer's ed. of\nthe Opera, pp. xlv-xlvii.\n\n[621] Cited by George Sinclar in pref. to Satan's Invisible World\nDiscovered, 1685,rep. 1871. I have been unable to meet with a copy\nof Mastricht's book.\n\n[622] \"Novitates Cartesian\u00e6 multis parasangas superunt Arminianas.\"\n\n[623] Nichols, Works of Arminius, 1824, i, 257 b (paging partly\nduplicated).\n\n[624] Cp. Bouillier, i, 293-94.\n\n[625] Colerus, Vie de Spinoza, in Gfr\u00f6rer's ed. of Opera, p. xxv;\nMartineau, Study of Spinoza, 1882, pp. 20-22; Pollock, Spinoza,\n2nd ed. 1899, pp. 10-14.\n\n[626] As set forth by Joel, Beitr\u00e4ge zur Gesch. der Philos., Breslau,\n1876. See citations in Land's note to his lecture in Spinoza: Four\nEssays, 1882, pp. 51-53.\n\n[627] Land, \"In Memory of Spinoza,\" in Spinoza: Four Essays, pp. 57-58;\nSigwart, as there cited; Pollock, Spinoza, p. 12. Cp. however,\nMartineau, p. 101, note.\n\n[628] Renati Des Cartes Princip. Philos. more geometrico demonstrat\u00e6,\n1663.\n\n[629] Cp. Martineau, pp. 46, 57.\n\n[630] Reprinted in 1674, without place-name, and with the imprint of\nan imaginary Hamburg publisher.\n\n[631] Tractatus, c. 15.\n\n[632] Ep. xxiv, to Oldenburg.\n\n[633] Epp. lviii, lx, to Boxel.\n\n[634] Ep. xxiii, to Oldenburg.\n\n[635] Ep. xxiv.\n\n[636] Ep. xxxiv, to W. van Bleyenberg.\n\n[637] Ep. xlvii, to Jellis, Feb. 1671.\n\n[638] Ep. xix, 1675, to Oldenburg.\n\n[639] \"Spinozism is atheistic, and has no valid ground for retaining\nthe word 'God'\" (Martineau, p. 349). This estimate is systematically\nmade good by Prof. E. E. Powell of Miami University in his Spinoza and\nReligion (1906). See in particular ch. v. The summing-up is that \"the\nright name for Spinoza's philosophy is Atheistic Monism\" (pp. 339-40).\n\n[640] Ethica, pt. i, App.; pt. ii, end; pt. v, prop. 41, schol. Cp. the\nLetters, passim.\n\n[641] The solution is, of course, that the attitude of the will in\nthe forming of opinion may or may not be passionally perverse, in the\nsense of being inconsistent. To show that it is inconsistent may be\na means of enlightening it; and an aspersion to that effect may be\nmedicinal. Spinoza might truly have said that passional perversity\nwas at least as common on the orthodox side as on the other. In any\ncase, he quashes his own criticism of Bacon. Cp. the author's essay\non Spinoza in Pioneer Humanists.\n\n[642] Pt. iv, prop. 68, schol.\n\n[643] Ep. 1; 2 June, 1674.\n\n[644] Colerus, as cited, p. liv. Cuper appears to have been genuinely\nanti-Spinozist, while his opponent, Breitburg, or Bredenburg, of\nRotterdam, was a Spinozist. Both were members of the society of\n\"Collegiants,\" a body of non-dogmatic Christians, which for a time\nwas broken up through their dissensions. Mosheim, 17 Cent. sec. ii,\npt. ii, ch. vii, \u00a7 2, and note.\n\n[645] Theologisch, Philosophisch, en Historisch process voor God,\ntegen allerley Atheisten. By Francis Ridder, Rotterdam, 1678.\n\n[646] L'Impi\u00e9ti\u00e9 Convaincu, \"par Pierre Yvon,\" Amsterdam, 1681. Really\nby the Sieur No\u00ebl Aubert de Vers\u00e9. This appears to have been reprinted\nin 1685 under the title L'Impie convaincu, ou Dissertation contre\nSpinosa, ou l'on r\u00e9fute les fondemens de son ath\u00e9isme.\n\n[647] See Fox Bourne's Life of Locke, ii, 282-83, as to Locke's\nfriendly relations with the Remonstrants in 1683-89.\n\n[648] See the summary of his argument by Alexandre Westphal, Les\nSources du Pentateuque, 1888, i, 78 sq.\n\n[649] Mosheim, Reid's ed. p. 836; Martineau, pp. 327-28. The first\nMS. of the treatise of Spinoza, De Deo et Homine, found and published\nin the nineteenth century, bore a note which showed it to have\nbeen used by a sect of Christian Spinozists. See Janet's ed. 1878,\np. 3. They altered the text, putting \"faith\" for \"opinion.\" Id. p. 53,\nnotes.\n\n[650] Edwards, Gangr\u00e6na, as before cited.\n\n[651] Discourse of Freethinking, p. 28.\n\n[652] Colerus, as cited, p. lviii.\n\n[653] First ed. Rotterdam, 2 vols. folio, 1696.\n\n[654] Albert Cazes, Pierre Bayle, sa vie, ses id\u00e9es, son influence,\nson oeuvre, 1905, pp. 6, 7.\n\n[655] A movement of skepticism had probably been first set up in\nthe young Bayle by Montaigne, who was one of his favourite authors\nbefore his conversion (Cazes, p. 5). Montaigne, it will be remembered,\nhad been a fanatic in his youth. Thus three typical skeptics of the\nsixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries had known what it\nwas to be Catholic believers.\n\n[656] Cp. the essay on The Skepticism of Bayle in Sir J. F. Stephen's\nHor\u00e6 Sabbatic\u00e6, vol. iii, and the remarks of Perrens, Les Libertins,\npp. 331-37.\n\n[657] \u00c9loge de M. le Cardinal Polignac prefixed to Bougainville's\ntranslation, L'Anti-Lucr\u00e8ce, 1767, i, 141. Bayle's quoted words are:\n\"Oui, monsieur, je suis bon Protestant, et dans toute la force du mot;\ncar au fond de mon \u00e2me je proteste contre tout ce qui se dit et tout\nce qui se fait.\"\n\n[658] Cp. the testimony of Bonet-Maury, Histoire de la libert\u00e9\nde conscience en France, 1900, p. 55. Besides the writings above\ncited, note, in the Dictionnaire, art. Mahomet, \u00a7 ix; art. Conecte;\nart. Simonide, notes H and G; art. Sponde, note C.\n\n[659] Commentaire philosophique sur la parabole: Contrains-les\nd'entrer, 2e ptie, vi. Cp. the Critique g\u00e9n\u00e9rale de l'histoire du\nCalvinisme du P\u00e8re Maimbourg, passim.\n\n[660] See pref. to Eng. tr. of Hotman's Franco-Gallia, 1711.\n\n[661] Rep. at Amsterdam, 1788, under the title, Voeux d'un\nPatriote. Jurieu's authorship is not certain. Cp. Ch. Nodier, M\u00e9langes\ntir\u00e9s d'une petite biblioth\u00e8que, 1829, p. 357. But it is more likely\nthan the alternative ascription to Le Vassor. The book made such\na sensation that the police of Louis XIV destroyed every copy they\ncould find; and in 1772 the Chancelier Maupeou was said to have paid\n500 livres for a copy at auction over the Duc d'Orl\u00e9ans.\n\n[662] Ed. 1766, p. 7.\n\n[663] The Tractatus Theologico-Politicus had been translated into\nFrench in 1678 by Saint-Glain, a Protestant, who gave it no fewer\nthan three other titles in succession to evade prosecution. (Note\nto Colerus in Gfr\u00f6rer's ed. of Spinoza, p. xlix.) In addition to\nthe work of Aubert de Vers\u00e9, above mentioned, replies were published\nby Simon, De la Motte (minister of the Savoy Chapel, London), Lami,\na Benedictine, and others. Their spirit may be divined from Lami's\ntitle, Nouvel ath\u00e9isme renvers\u00e9, 1706.\n\n[664] Tom. I. \u00a7 ii, ch. ix (ed. 1864, i, 134. 177).\n\n[665] The destruction of Protestant liberties was not the work of\nthe single Act of Revocation. It had begun in detail as early as\n1663. From the withholding of court favour it proceeded to subsidies\nfor conversions, and thence to a graduated series of invasions of\nProtestant rights, so that the formal Revocation was only the violent\nconsummation of a process. See the recital in Bonet-Maury, Histoire\nde la libert\u00e9 de conscience en France, 1900, pp. 46-52.\n\n[666] As to the loss to French industry see Bonet-Maury, as cited,\np. 59, and refs.\n\n[667] See Duruy, Hist. de la France, ii, 253; Bonet-Maury, as cited,\npp. 53-66.\n\n[668] As to whose attitude at this crisis see O. Douen, L'Intol\u00e9rance\nde F\u00e9nelon, 1880.\n\n[669] Lanson, Hist. de la litt. fran\u00e7aise, p. 627.\n\n[670] Id ib. Cp. Demogeot, p. 468.\n\n[671] Not printed till 1743, in the Nouvelles libert\u00e9s de penser; and\nstill read in MS. by Grimm in 1754. Fontenelle was also credited with\na heretical letter on the resurrection, and an essay on the Infinite,\npointing to disbelief. It should be noted, however, that he stands\nfor deism in his essay, De l'existence de Dieu, which is a guarded\napplication of the design argument against what was then assumed to\nbe the only alternative--the \"fortuitous concourse of atoms.\"\n\n[672] But Voltaire and he were not at one. He is the \"nain de Saturne\"\nin Microm\u00e9gas.\n\n[673] B. 1613; d. 1703. A man who lived to ninety can have been no\ngreat debauchee.\n\n[674] Cp. Dynamics of Religion, p. 172.\n\n[675] Cp. Gidel, \u00c9tude prefixed to OEuvres Choisies de Saint-Evremond,\ned. Garnier, pp. 64-69.\n\n[676] Caract\u00e8res (1687), ch. xvi: Les Esprits Forts.\n\n[677] \"Is embarrassed\" in the first edition.\n\n[678] Des ouvrages de l'esprit, near end. \u00a7 65 in ed. Walckenaer,\np. 176.\n\n[679] M. Le Vassor, De la v\u00e9ritable religion, 1688, pr\u00e9f. Le Vassor\nspeaks in the same preface of \"this multitude of libertins and of\nunbelievers which now terrifies us.\" His book seeks to vindicate\nthe Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, inspiration, prophecies,\nand miracles, against Spinoza, Le Clerc, and others.\n\n[680] Cp. Huet, Huetiana, \u00a7 1.\n\n[681] The question is discussed in the author's Buckle and his Critics,\npp. 324-42, and ed. of Buckle's Introduction. Buckle's view, however,\nwas held by Huet, Huetiana, \u00a7 73.\n\n[682] Cp. Perrens, pp. 310-14.\n\n[683] Letter of the Duchesse d'Orl\u00e9ans, cited by Rocquain, L'Esprit\nr\u00e9volutionnaire avant la r\u00e9volution, 1878, p. 3, note.\n\n[684] As Voltaire noted, Toland was persecuted in Ireland for his\ncircumspect and cautious first book, and left unmolested in England\nwhen he grew much more aggressive.\n\n[685] First ed. anonymous. Second ed., of same year, gives author's\nname. Another ed. in 1702.\n\n[686] See Dynamics of Religion, p. 129.\n\n[687] Pref. to 2nd ed. pp. vi, viii, xxiv, xxvi.\n\n[688] As late as 1701 a vote for its prosecution was passed in the\nLower House of Convocation. Farrar, Crit. Hist. of Freethought, p. 180.\n\n[689] Molyneux, in Familiar Letters of Locke, etc. p. 228.\n\n[690] No credit for this is given in Sir Leslie Stephen's notice of\nToland in English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, i, 101-12. Compare\nthe estimate of Lange, Gesch. des Materialismus, i, 272-76 (Eng. tr. i,\n324-30). Lange perhaps idealizes his subject somewhat.\n\n[691] In two letters published along with the Letters to Serena, 1704.\n\n[692] Letters to Serena, etc. 1704, pref.\n\n[693] De Principiis atque Originibus (Routledge's 1-vol. ed. pp. 651,\n667).\n\n[694] Letters to Serena, pp. 19, 67.\n\n[695] Sir Henry Craik (cited by Temple Scott, Bohn ed. of Swift's\nWorks, iii, 9) speaks of Toland as \"a man of utterly worthless\ncharacter.\" This is mere malignant abuse. Toland is described by Pope\nin a note to the Dunciad (ii, 399) as a spy to Lord Oxford. There\ncould hardly be a worse authority for such a charge.\n\n[696] Gostwick, German Culture and Christianity, 1882, p. 26.\n\n[697] Cp. Stephen, as cited, p. 115.\n\n[698] \"The Christianity of many writers consisted simply in expressing\ndeist opinions in the old-fashioned phraseology\" (Stephen, i, 91).\n\n[699] Cp. P\u00fcnjer, Christ. Philos. of Religion, i, 289-90; and\nDynamics of Religion, pp. 94-98. Lord Morley's reference to \"the\ngodless deism of the English school\" (Voltaire, 4th ed. p. 69) is\npuzzling. Cp. Rosenkranz (Diderot's Leben und Werke, 1866, ii, 421) on\n\"den ung\u00f6ttlichen Gott der Jesuiten and Jansenisten, dies monstr\u00f6se\nZerrbild des alten Jehovah, diesen apotheosirten Tyrannen, diesen\nMoloch.\" The latter application of the term seems the more plausible.\n\n[700] Macaulay's description of Blount as an atheist is therefore\ndoubly unwarranted.\n\n[701] Cp. Dynamics of Religion, pp. 94-98.\n\n[702] Continuation des Pens\u00e9es Diverses ... \u00e0 l'occasion de la Com\u00e8te\n... de 1680, Amsterdam, 1705, i, 91.\n\n[703] Warburton, Divine Legation, vol. ii, preface.\n\n[704] Stephen, English Thought, i, 114-18.\n\n[705] This, according to John Craig, was Newton's opinion. \"The\nreason of his [Newton's] showing the errors of Cartes's philosophy\nwas because he thought it made on purpose to be the foundation of\ninfidelity.\" Letter to Conduitt, April 7, 1727, in Brewster's Memoirs\nof Newton, ii, 315. Clarke, in his Answer to Butler's Fifth Letter,\nexpresses a similar view.\n\n[706] \"Three Discourses of Happiness, Virtue, and Liberty, Collected\nfrom the Works of the Learn'd Gassendi by Monsieur Bernier. Translated\nout of the French, 1699.\"\n\n[707] Cp. W. Sichel, Bolingbroke and His Times, 1901, i, 175.\n\n[708] Sir Leslie Stephen (i, 33) makes the surprising statement that a\n\"dogmatic assertion of free-will became a mark of the whole deist and\nsemi-deist school.\" On the contrary, Hobbes and Anthony Collins, not\nto speak of Locke, wrote with uncommon power against the conception\nof free-will, and had many disciples on that head.\n\n[709] Letter to the Princess of Wales, November, 1715, in Brewster,\nii, 284-85.\n\n[710] Second Letter to Clarke, par. 1.\n\n[711] Abstract from the Works of John Hutchinson, 1755, pp. 149-63.\n\n[712] Clarke's Answer to Leibnitz's First Letter, end.\n\n[713] Berkeley, Defence of Freethinking in Mathematics, par. vii; and\nStock's Memoir of Berkeley. Cp. Brewster, Memoirs of Newton, ii, 408.\n\n[714] In the Philosophical Transactions, 1718, No. 355, i, v, vi.\n\n[715] Brewster, More Worlds than One, 1854, p. 110.\n\n[716] Lecky, Hist. of England in the Eighteenth Cent. ed. 1892,\niii, 22-24.\n\n[717] The tradition of Saunderson's unbelief is constant. In the\nmemoir prefixed to his Elements of Algebra (1740) no word is said of\nhis creed, though at death he received the sacrament.\n\n[718] See The State of the Process depending against Mr. John Simson,\nEdinburgh, 1728. Simson always expressed himself piously, but had\nthrown out such expressions as Ratio est principium et fundamentum\ntheologi\u00e6, which \"contravened the Act of Assembly, 1717\" (vol. cited,\np. 316). The \"process\" against him began in 1714, and dragged on for\nnearly twenty years, with the result of his resigning his professorship\nof theology at Glasgow in 1729, and seceding from the Associate\nPresbytery in 1733. Burton, History of Scotland, viii, 399-400.\n\n[719] Cp. the pamphlet by \"A Presbyter of the Church of England,\"\nattributed to Bishop Hare, cited in Dynamics of Religion, pp. 177-78,\nand by Lecky, iii, 25.\n\n[720] Tatler, Nos. 12, 111, 135; Spectator, Nos. 231, 381, 389, 599;\nGuardian, Nos. 3, 9, 27, 35, 39, 55, 62, 70, 77, 83, 88, 120, 130,\n169. Most of the Guardian papers cited are by Berkeley. They are\nextremely virulent; but Steele's run them hard.\n\n[721] Analyst, Queries 60 and 62: Defence of Freethinking in\nMathematics, \u00a7\u00a7 5, 6, 50. Cp. Dynamics of Religion, pp. 141-42.\n\n[722] Letter in De Morgan's Newton: his Friend: and his Niece, 1885,\np. 69.\n\n[723] The essays in the Characteristics (excepting the Inquiry\nConcerning Virtue and Merit, which was published by Toland, without\npermission, in 1699) appeared between 1708 and 1711, being collected\nin the latter year. Shaftesbury died in 1713, in which year appeared\nhis paper on The Judgment of Hercules.\n\n[724] A Project for the Advancement of Religion. Bohn ed. of Works,\niii, 44. In this paper Swift reveals his moral standards by the avowal\n(p. 40) that \"hypocrisy is much more eligible than open infidelity\nand vice: it wears the livery of religion ... and is cautious of\ngiving scandal.\"\n\n[725] Sir Leslie Stephen (English Thought, i, 283) speaks of Dodwell's\nthesis as deserving only \"pity or contempt.\" Cp. Macaulay, Student's\ned. ii, 107-108. But a doctrine of conditional immortality had been\nexplicitly put by Locke in his Reasonableness of Christianity, 1695,\np. 13. Cp. Prof. Fraser's Locke, 1890, pp. 259-60, and Fox Bourne's\nLife of Locke, ii, 287. The difference was that Dodwell elaborately\ngave his reasons, which, as Dr. Clarke put it, made \"all good men\nsorry, and all profane men rejoice.\"\n\n[726] History of his Own Time, ed. 1838, p. 887.\n\n[727] Compare his ironical Argument Against Abolishing Christianity,\n1708.\n\n[728] He had, however, hailed the anonymous Letter Concerning\nEnthusiasm as \"very well writ,\" believing it to be by a friend of his\nown--(Robert Hunter, to whom, accordingly, it has since been mistakenly\nattributed by various bibliographers, including Barbier). \"Enthusiasm,\"\nas meaning \"popular fanaticism,\" was of course as repellent to a\nChurchman as to the deists.\n\n[729] Printed in folio 1711. Rep. in vol. xi of the Harleian\nMiscellany, p. 168 sq. (2nd ed. p. 163 sq.).\n\n[730] Dr. E. Synge, of Dublin (afterwards Archbishop of Tuam), in his\nReligion Tryed by the Test of Sober and Impartial Reason, published\nin 1713, seems to be writing before the issue of Collins's book when\nhe says (Dedication, p. 11) that the spread of the \"disease not only\nof Heterodoxy but of Infidelity\" is \"too plain to be either denied\nor dissembled.\"\n\n[731] Leslie affirms in his Truth of Christianity Demonstrated (1711,\np. 14) that the satirical Detection of his Short Method with the\nDeists, to which the Truth is a reply, was by the author of Priestcraft\nin Perfection; but, while the Detection has some of Collins's humour,\nit lacks his amenity, and is evidently not by him.\n\n[732] An English translation of the Dictionary, in 5 vols. folio,\nwith \"many passages restored,\" appeared in 1734.\n\n[733] A Collection of Several Pieces of Mr. John Locke, 1720, p. 271.\n\n[734] E.g. Mark Pattison, who calls Collins's book of 178 pages a\n\"small tract.\"\n\n[735] \"Ignorance,\" Collins writes, \"is the foundation of Atheism, and\nFreethinking the cure of it\" (Discourse of Freethinking, p. 105). Like\nNewton, he contemplated only an impossible atheism, never formulated\nby any writer. The Philosophical Principles of Religion, Natural\nand Reveal'd, of Dr. George Cheyne (1705, 2nd ed. 1715), similarly\ndeclares (pref. end) that \"if the modern [i.e. Newtonian] philosophy\ndemonstrates nothing else, yet it infallibly proves Atheism to be the\nmost gross ignorance.\" Thus the vindicator of \"religion\" was writing\nin the key of the deist.\n\n[736] Mr. Temple Scott, in his Bohn ed. of Swift's Works (iii, 166),\nasserts that Swift's satire \"frightened Collins into Holland.\" For\nthis statement there is no evidence whatever, and as it stands it is\nunintelligible. The assertion that Collins had had to fly to Holland\nin 1711 (Dr. Conybeare, Hist. of N. T. Crit. R. P. A. 1910, p. 38)\nis also astray.\n\n[737] Second ed. 1717. Another writer, William Lyons, was on the same\ntrack, publishing The Infallibility of Human Judgment, its Dignity\nand Excellence (2nd ed. 1720), and A Discourse of the Necessity of\nHuman Actions (1730).\n\n[738] Work cited, p. 13.\n\n[739] As to whose positions see a paper in the writer's Pioneer\nHumanists, 1907.\n\n[740] There were six separate Discourses. Voltaire speaks of \"three\neditions coup sur coup of ten thousand each\" (Lettre sur les auteurs\nAnglais--in OEuvres, ed. 1792. lxviii, 359). This seems extremely\nunlikely as to any one Discourse; and even 5,000 copies of each\nDiscourse is a hardly credible sale, though the writer of the sketch\nof his life (1733) says that \"the sale of Mr. Woolston's works was\nvery great.\" In any case, Woolston's Discourses are now seldomer\nmet with than Collins's Discourse of Freethinking. Alberti (Briefe\nbetreffend den Zustand der Religion in Gross-Brittannien) wrote in 1752\nthat the Discourses were even in that day somewhat rare, and seldom\nfound together. Many copies were probably destroyed by the orthodox,\nand many would doubtless be thrown away, as tracts so often are.\n\n[741] Tyerman's Life of Wesley, ed. 1871, i, 65-66.\n\n[742] The Infidel Convicted, 1731, pp. 33, 62.\n\n[743] Tindal (1653-1733) was the son of a clergyman, and in 1678 was\nelected a Fellow of All Souls, Oxford. From 1685 to 1688 he was a\nRoman Catholic. Under William III he wrote three works on points of\npolitical freedom--one, 1698, on The Liberty of the Press. His Rights\nof the Christian Church, anonymously published in 1706, a defence\nof Erastianism, made a great sensation, and was prosecuted--only\nto be reprinted. His later Defence of the Rights of the Christian\nChurch was in 1710, by order of the House of Commons, burned by the\ncommon hangman.\n\n[744] Middleton's Works, 2nd ed. 1755, iii, 50-56.\n\n[745] Tindal (Voltaire tells) regarded Pope as devoid of genius and\nimagination, and so trebly earned his place in the Dunciad.\n\n[746] A Layman's Faith.... \"By a Freethinker and a Christian,\" 1732.\n\n[747] Title-page of Rev. Elisha Smith's Cure of Deism, 1st ed. 1736;\n3rd ed. 1740.\n\n[748] Le Moine, Dissertation historique sur les \u00e9crits de Woolston,\nsa condemnation, etc. pp. 29-31, cited by Salchi, Lettres sur le\nD\u00e9isme, 1759, p. 67 sq.\n\n[749] Lettre sur les auteurs Anglais, as cited. Voltaire tells that,\nwhen a she-bigot one day spat in Woolston's face, he calmly remarked:\n\"It was so that the Jews treated your God.\" Another story reads like\na carefully-improved version of the foregoing. A woman is said to\nhave accosted him as a scoundrel, and asked him why he was not yet\nhanged. On his asking her grounds for such an accost, she replied:\n\"You have writ against my Saviour. What would become of my poor sinful\nsoul if it was not for my dear Saviour--my Saviour who died for such\nwicked sinners as I am.\" Life of Mr. Woolston, prefixed to a reprint\nof his collected Discourses, 1733, p. 27. Cp. Salchi, p. 78.\n\n[750] Life cited, pp. 22, 26, 29.\n\n[751] An Historical Defence of the Trustees of Lady Hewley's\nFoundations, by the Rev. Joseph Hunter, 1834, pp. 17, 35; The History,\nOpinions, and present legal position of the English Presbyterians,\n1834, pp. 18, 29; Skeats, History of the Free Churches of England,\ned. Miall, p. 240.\n\n[752] Hunter, as cited, p. 17; History of the Presbyterians, as cited,\np. 19; Fletcher, History of Independency, 1862, iv, 266-67.\n\n[753] Hunter, pp. 37, 39.\n\n[754] Skeats, as cited, p. 226.\n\n[755] Hunter, pp. 24-25.\n\n[756] Skeats (pp.239-40) sums up that while the Baptists had\nprobably \"never been entirely free from the taint\" of Unitarianism,\nthe Particular Baptists and the Congregationalists were saved from\nit by their lack of men of \"eminently speculative mind\"; while the\nPresbyterians \"were men, for the most part, of larger reading than\nother Nonconformists, and the writings of Whiston and Clarke had\nfound their way among them.\" But the tendency existed before Whiston\nand Clarke.\n\n[757] History, cited, p. 22; Hunter, pp. 44-45; Skeats, pp. 243-44.\n\n[758] Skeats, pp. 240-43, 245 sq.\n\n[759] Skeats, p. 248.\n\n[760] Hunter, p. 50.\n\n[761] As Sir Leslie Stephen has observed (English Thought, i, 164),\nChubb \"deserves the praise of Malthusians.\" Having a sufficiency of\nmeans for himself, but not more, he \"lived a single life, judging\nit greatly improper to introduce a family into the world without a\nprospect of maintaining them.\" The proverb as to mouths and meat, he\ndrily observes, had not been verified in his experience. (The Author's\nAccount of Himself, pref. to Posthumous Works, 1748, i, p. iv.)\n\n[762] One of the then numerous tribe of eccentrics. He held by\nJudaic Sabbatarianism, and affected a Rabinnical costume. He made a\ncompetence, however, as an ironmonger.\n\n[763] Essay Towards Preventing the Ruin of Great Britain.\n\n[764] Discourse to Magistrates.\n\n[765] Guardian, Nos. 3, 55, 88.\n\n[766] The Analyst, Queries, 55-67.\n\n[767] See above, pp. 126-28.\n\n[768] Discourse of Passive Obedience, \u00a7 26.\n\n[769] Works, ed. 1837, p. 352.\n\n[770] See the whole context, which palpitates with excitement.\n\n[771] Mr. Walter Sichel (Bolingbroke and his Times, 1901, i, 175)\nthinks fit to dispose of her attitude as \"her aversion to the Church\nand to everything that transcended her own faculties.\" So far as the\nevidence goes, her faculties were much superior to those of most of\nher orthodox contemporaries. For her tone see her letters.\n\n[772] E.g. Dunciad, ii, 399; iii, 212; iv, 492.\n\n[773] Voltaire commented pointedly on Pope's omission to make any\nreference to Shaftesbury, while vending his doctrine. (Lettres\nPhilosophiques, xxii.) As a matter of fact Pope does in the Dunciad\n(iv, 488) refer maliciously to the Theocles of Shaftesbury's Moralists\nas maintaining a Lucretian theism or virtual atheism. The explanation\nis that Shaftesbury had sharply criticized the political course of\nBolingbroke, who in turn ignored him as a thinker. See the present\nwriter's introd. to Shaftesbury's Characteristics, ed. 1900 (rep. in\nPioneer Humanists); and cp. W. R. Scott, Francis Hutcheson, 1900,\np. 101.\n\n[774] Texte, Rousseau and the Cosmopolitan Spirit in Literature,\nEng. tr. pp. 117-18.\n\n[775] Chesterfield in his Characters (app. to the Letters)\ntestifies that Pope \"was a deist believing in a future state;\nthis he has often owned himself to me.\" (Bradshaw's ed. of Letters,\niii, 1410.) Chesterfield makes a similar statement concerning Queen\nCaroline:--\"After puzzling herself in all the whimsies and fantastical\nspeculations of different sects, she fixed herself ultimately in Deism,\nbelieving in a future state.\" (Id. p. 1406.)\n\n[776] Dict. Philos. art. Ath\u00e9e, \u00a7 2.\n\n[777] Wise, in his adaptation of Cudworth, A Confutation of the\nReason and Philosophy of Atheism (1706), writes (i, 5) that \"the\nphilosophical atheists are but few in number,\" and their objections\nso weak \"as that they deserve not a hearing but rather neglect\"; but\nconfusedly goes on to admit that \"one or two broachers of 'em maybe\nthought able to infect a whole nation, as ... sad experience tells us.\"\n\n[778] Complaint to this effect was made by orthodox writers. The Scotch\nProfessor Halyburton, for instance, complains that in many sermons\nin his day \"Heathen Morality has been substituted in the room of\nGospel Holiness. And Ethicks by some have been preached instead of the\nGospels of Christ.\" Natural Religion Insufficient (Edinburgh), 1714,\np. 25. Cp. pp. 23, 26-27, 59, etc. Bishop Burnet, in the Conclusion to\nhis History of his Own Time, declares, \"I must own that the main body\nof our clergy has always seemed dead and lifeless to me,\" and ascribes\nmuch more zeal to Catholics and dissenters. (Ed. 1838, pp. 907-910.)\n\n[779] The Moralists deals rather with strict skepticism than with\nsubstantive atheism.\n\n[780] The Grand Essay: or, a Vindication of Reason and Religion\nagainst Impostures of Philosophy. The book was, on March 18, 1704,\ncondemned by the House of Commons to be burned in Palace Yard,\nalong with its author's Second Thoughts Concerning the Human Soul\n(1702). A second ed. of the latter appeared soon after.\n\n[781] Above, p. 153.\n\n[782] Mr. Herbert Paul, in his essay on Swift (Men and Letters,\n1901, p. 267), lumps as deists the four writers named by Swift in his\nArgument. Not having read them, he thinks fit to asperse all four as\nbad writers. Asgill, as was noted by Coleridge (Table Talk, July 30,\n1831; April 30, 1832), was one of the best writers of his time. He\nwas, in fact, a master of the staccato style, practised by Mr. Paul\nwith less success.\n\n[783] Work cited, p. 324. The book is now rare.\n\n[784] Cp. Cheyne, Founders of Old Testament Criticism, 1893, p. 2.\n\n[785] Dr. Cheyne expresses surprise that a \"theological writer\" who\ngot no far should not have been \"prompted by his good genius to follow\nup his advantage.\" It is, however, rather remarkable that Parvish,\nwho was a bookseller at Guildford (Alberti, Briefe, p. 426), should\nhave achieved what he did. It was through not being a theological\nwriter that he went so far, no theologian of his day following him.\n\n[786] See the author's introduction to ed. of the Characteristics,\n1900, rep. in Pioneer Humanists.\n\n[787] The question remains obscure. Cp. the Letter cited, reprinted at\nend of Carver's 1830 ed. of Paine's Works (New York); F. Thackeray's\nLife of Chatham, ii, 405; and Chatham's \"scalping-knife\" speech.\n\n[788] A Vindication of the Moral Philosopher appeared in 1741.\n\n[789] Cp. Lechler, pp. 371, 386.\n\n[790] Cp. Cairns, Unbelief in the Eighteenth Century, 1881, p. 101.\n\n[791] Ed. 1741, p. 30 sq.\n\n[792] View of the Deistical Writers, Letter XI (X in 1st ed.).\n\n[793] Sir Leslie Stephen, English Thought, i, 169.\n\n[794] Act 9th, Geo. II (1736), ch. 5.\n\n[795] A Tour in Ireland, ed. 1892, ii, 59-72.\n\n[796] Young at this period was entirely secular in his\nthinking. Telling of his recovery from a fever in 1790, he writes:\n\"I fear that not one thought of God ever occurred to me at that time\"\n(Autobiography, 1898, p. 188). Afterwards he fell into religious\nmelancholia (Introd. note of editor).\n\n[797] Really an abler man than half the others in the list, but himself\na good deal of a heretic. So far from attempting to make \"victims,\"\nhe pleaded for a more candid treatment of deistic objections.\n\n[798] Doddridge himself was not theologically orthodox, but was an\nevangelical Christian. Dr. Stoughton, Religion in England under Queen\nAnne and the Georges, 1878, i, 344-46.\n\n[799] Whose doctrine Sir Leslie Stephen elsewhere (p. 258) calls a\n\"brutal theology which gloried in trampling on the best instincts of\nits opponents,\" and a \"most unlovely product of eighteenth-century\nspeculation.\"\n\n[800] Of Warburton Sir Leslie writes elsewhere (p. 353) that \"this\ncolossus was built up of rubbish.\" See p. 352 for samples. Again he\nspeaks (p. 368) of the bishop's pretensions as \"colossal impudence.\" It\nshould be noted, further, that Warburton's teaching in the Divine\nLegation was a gross heresy in the eyes of William Law, who in his\nShort but Sufficient Confutation pronounced its main thesis a \"most\nhorrible doctrine.\" Ed. 1768, as cited, i, 217.\n\n[801] As to whose \"senile incompetence\" see same vol. p. 234.\n\n[802] History of Protestant Theology, Eng. tr. ii, 77. For the\ninfluence of deism on Germany, see Tholuck (Vermischte Schriften,\nBd. ii) and Lechler (Gesch. des englischen Deismus).--Note by\nDr. Cheyne.\n\n[803] An Essay towards a Natural History of the Earth, 3rd ed. 1723,\npref. and pp. 16 sq., 77 sq. Cp. White, Warfare of Science with\nTheology, i. 227.\n\n[804] End of pref.\n\n[805] Work cited, p. 85.\n\n[806] Playfair, in the Edinburgh Review, January, 1808, cited by\nBrewster, Memoirs of Newton, 1855. i, 347.\n\n[807] Brewster, as last cited.\n\n[808] Grant, History of Physical Astronomy, 1852, p. 108.\n\n[809] Baden Powell, Hist. of Nat. Philos. 1834, p. 363.\n\n[810] Brewster, More Worlds than One, 1854, p. 111.\n\n[811] Sir James Stephen, Hor\u00e6 Sabbatic\u00e6, ii, 281; Lechler, p. 451.\n\n[812] See details in Dynamics of Religion, ch. viii.\n\n[813] Essay on \"Tendencies of Religious Thought in England: 1688-1750,\"\nin Essays and Reviews, 9th ed. p. 304.\n\n[814] In criticizing whom Sir Leslie Stephen barely notices his\nscientific work, but dwells much on his religious fallacies--a course\nwhich would make short work of the fame of Newton.\n\n[815] In his Case of Reason; or, Natural Religion Fully and Fairly\nStated, in answer to Tindal (1732). See the argument set forth by\nSir Leslie Stephen, i, 158-63. It is noteworthy, however, that in his\nSpirit of Prayer (1750), pt. ii, dial. i, Law expressly argues that\n\"No other religion can be right but that which has its foundation in\nNature. For the God of Nature can require nothing of his creatures but\nwhat the state of their nature calls them to.\" Like Baxter, Berkeley,\nButler, and so many other orthodox polemists, Law uses the argument\nfrom ignorance when it suits him, and ignores or rejects it when used\nby others.\n\n[816] The general reader should take note that in A. Murray's issue\nof Hume's Essays (afterwards published by Ward, Lock, and Co.),\nwhich omits altogether the essays on Miracles and a Future State,\nthe Natural History of Religion is much mutilated, though the book\nprofesses to be a verbatim reprint.\n\n[817] Even before his death he was suspected of that view. When\nhis coffin was being carried from his house for interment, one of\n\"the refuse of the rabble\" is said to have remarked, \"Ah, he was\nan atheist.\" \"No matter,\" replied another, \"he was an honest man\"\n(Curious Particulars, etc., respecting Chesterfield and Hume, 1788,\np. 15).\n\n[818] See Burton, Hist. of Scotland, viii, 549-50, as to the case\nof Pitcairne.\n\n[819] Howell's State Trials, xiii (1812), coll. 917-38.\n\n[820] Macaulay, History, ch. xxii; student's ed. ii, 620-21; Burton,\nHistory of Scotland, viii, 76-77. Aikenhead seems to have been a\nboy of unusual if unbalanced capacity, even by the bullying account\nof Macaulay, who missed no opportunity to cover himself by stoning\nheretics. See the boy's arguments on the bases of ethics, set forth\nin his \"dying speech,\" as cited by Halyburton, Natural Religion\nInsufficient, 1714, pp. 119-23, 131, and the version in the State\nTrials, xiii, 930-34.\n\n[821] Macaulay ascribes the savagery of the prosecution to the Lord\nAdvocate, Sir James Stewart, \"as cruel as he was base\"; but a letter\nprinted in the State Trials, from a member of the Privy Council,\nsays the sentence would have been commuted if \"the ministers would\nintercede.\" They, however, \"spoke and preached for cutting him\noff.\" Trials, xiii, 930; Burton, viii, 77.\n\n[822] Letter to Sir Francis Masham, printed in the State Trials, xiii,\n928-29--evidently written by Locke, who seems to have preserved all\nthe papers printed by Howell.\n\n[823] Macaulay, as cited. In 1681 one Francis Borthwick, who had\ngone abroad at the age of fourteen and turned Jew, was accused of\nblaspheming Jesus, and had to fly for his life, being outlawed. State\nTrials, as cited, col. 939.\n\n[824] A Full Account of the Several Ends and Uses of Confessions\nof Faith, first published in 1719 as a preface to a Collection of\nConfessions of Faith, by Prof. W. Dunbar, of Edinburgh University,\n3rd ed. 1775, p. 1.\n\n[825] Work cited, p. 48.\n\n[826] Id. p. 198.\n\n[827] Scotland and Scotsmen in the Eighteenth Century. From the MSS. of\nJohn Ramsay, of Ochtertyre, 1888, i, 277. Ramsay describes Johnston as\na \"joyous, manly, honourable man,\" of whom Kames \"was exceedingly fond\"\n(p. 278).\n\n[828] W. R. Scott, Francis Hutcheson, 1900, pp. 15, 20-21.\n\n[829] Id. p. 52.\n\n[830] Cp. Alberti, Briefe betreffende den Zustand der Religion in\nGross-Brittannien, 1752, pp. 430-31.\n\n[831] See Dr. McCosh's Scottish Philosophy, 1875,\npp. 111-13. Dr. McCosh notes that at some points Dudgeon anticipated\nHume.\n\n[832] Dr. McCosh, however, admits that the absence of the printer's\nname on the 1765 edition of Dudgeon's works shows that there was then\nno thorough freedom of thought in Scotland.\n\n[833] Rae, Life of Adam Smith, 1895, p. 13. Prof. Fowler shows\nno knowledge of this prosecution in his monograph on Hutcheson\n(Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, 1882); and Mr. W. R. Scott, in his,\nseems to rely for the wording of the indictment solely on Mr. Rae,\nwho gives no references, drawing apparently on unpublished MSS.\n\n[834] Rae, as cited, pp. 11-15.\n\n[835] Scott, as cited, p. 87.\n\n[836] Dr. James Orr, David Hume and his Influence, etc.,\n1903. pp. 36-37.\n\n[837] Also for a time a theological professor in Edinburgh University.\n\n[838] The Thoughts Concerning Religion, Natural and Revealed,\nappeared in 1735; the Letter to a Bishop in 1732; and the Reflections\non the Sources of Incredulity (left unfinished) posthumously about\n1750. Forbes in his youth had been famed as one of the hardest drinkers\nof his day.\n\n[839] Reflections on Incredulity, in Works, undated, ii, 141-42. Yet\nthe works of Forbes were translated for orthodox purposes into German,\nand later into French by P\u00e8re Houbigant (1769), who preserves the\npassage on freethinkers' morals, though curtailing the Reflections\nas a whole.\n\n[840] As to which see A Sober Enquiry into the Grounds of the Present\nDifferences in the Church of Scotland, 1723.\n\n[841] Cockburn's Life of Jeffrey, ed. 1872, p. 10.\n\n[842] See the Autobiography of the Rev. Dr. A. Carlyle, 1860,\npp. 492-93. Millar's Historical View of the English Government\n(censured by Hallam) was once much esteemed; and his Origin of Ranks\nis still worth the attention of sociologists.\n\n[843] Ritchie's Life of Hume, 1807, pp. 52-81; Tytler's Life of Lord\nKames, 2nd ed. 1814, i, ch. v; Burton's Life of Hume, i, 425-30.\n\n[844] Ritchie, as cited, p. 57.\n\n[845] McCulloch, Life of Smith prefixed to ed. of Wealth of Nations,\ned. 1839, p. ii.\n\n[846] Ramsay of Ochtertyre, Scotland and Scotsmen in the Eighteenth\nCentury, 1888, i, 462-63. Mr. Rae doubts the story, Life of Adam Smith,\n1895, p. 60.\n\n[847] Ramsay, as last cited.\n\n[848] Ramsay, passage cited.\n\n[849] Theory of Moral Sentiments, pt. iii, ch. ii, end.\n\n[850] Cp. Rae, pp. 427-30. Mr. Rae thinks the deletion stood for\nno change of opinion, and cites Smith's own private explanation\n(Sinclair's Life of Sir John Sinclair, i, 40) that he thought the\npassage \"unnecessary and misplaced.\" But this expression must be read\nin the light of Smith's general reticence concerning established\ndogmas. Certainly he adhered to his argument--which does not claim\nto be a demonstration--for the doctrine of a future state.\n\n[851] Bk. v, ch. i, pt. iii, art. 3.\n\n[852] Smith's admiration for Voltaire might alone indicate his mental\nattitude. As to that see F. W. Hirst, Adam Smith (Eng. Men of Letters\nser.), pp. 127-28. But the assertion of Skarzinski, that Smith, after\nbeing an Idealist under the influence of Hume, \"returned a materialist\"\nfrom his intercourse with Voltaire and other French freethinkers,\nis an exhibition of learned ignorance. See Hirst, p. 181.\n\n[853] An Explanation and Defence of the Principles of Protestant\nDissent, by the Rev. Dr. W. Hamilton Drummond, 1842, pp. 5-6. 47;\nSkeats, Hist. of the Free Churches of England, ed. Miall, pp. 238-39;\nWallace, Anti-Trinitarian Biography, iii, art. 360.\n\n[854] Cp. Drummond, as cited, pp. 29-30; History, Opinions, etc.,\nof the English Presbyterians, 1834, p. 29.\n\n[855] W. R. Scott, Francis Hutcheson, p. 31.\n\n[856] Above, p. 154, note.\n\n[857] Scott, pp. 28-29, 35-36. The suggestion is not quite\nconvincing. Synge, after becoming Archbishop of Tuam, continued to\npublish his propagandist tracts, among them An Essay towards making\nthe Knowledge of Religion Easy to the Meanest Capacity (6th ed. 1734),\nwhich is quite orthodox, and which argues (p. 3) that the doctrine\nof the Trinity is to be believed, and not pried into, \"because it is\nabove our understanding to comprehend.\" All the while there was being\nsold also his early treatise, \"A Gentleman's Religion: in Three Parts\n... with an Appendix, wherein it is proved that nothing contrary to\nour Reason can possibly be the object of our belief, but that it is\nno just exception against some of the doctrines of Christianity that\nthey are above our reason.\"\n\n[858] Scott, p. 36.\n\n[859] All that is told of this prelate by Lecky (Hist. of Ireland\nin the 18th Cent. 1892. i, 207) is that at Killala he patronized\nhorse-races. He was industrious on more episcopal lines. He wrote an\nIntroduction to the History of the Jews; a Vindication of Biblical\nChronology; two treatises on prophecy; an anti-Athanasian Essay on\nSpirit (1751), which aroused much controversy; A Vindication of the\nHistories of the Old and New Testament, in answer to Bolingbroke (2\nvols. 1752-1754; 2nd ed. 1757; rep. with the Essay on Spirit, Dublin,\n1759), which led to his being prosecuted; and other works. The offence\ngiven by the Vindication lay in his denunciation of the Athanasian\ncreed, and of the bigotry of those who supported it. See pt. iii,\nletters i and ii. The Essay on Spirit is no less heterodox. In other\nrespects, however, Clayton is ultra-orthodox.\n\n[860] Dr. G. W. Alberti, Briefe betreffende den Zustand der Religion\nin Gross-Brittannien, Hannover, 1752, p. 440.\n\n[861] Above, p. 180.\n\n[862] Put by Huarte in 1575. Above, i, 472.\n\n[863] Inquiry, p. 162.\n\n[864] Inquiry, pref. pp. x, xxii.\n\n[865] A Letter to the Rev. Dr. Conyers Middleton, occasioned by his\nlate \"Free Inquiry,\" 1749, pp. 3-4.\n\n[866] A Free Answer to Dr. Middleton's \"Free Inquiry,\" by William\nDodwell [son of the elder and brother of the younger Henry], Rector\nof Shottesbrook, 1749, pp. 14-15.\n\n[867] Inquiry, p. 162.\n\n[868] Works, 2nd ed. 1755, ii, 348.\n\n[869] Cp. essay on Mandeville, in the author's Pioneer Humanists, 1907.\n\n[870] As against the objections of Mr. Lang, see the author's paper\nin Studies in Religious Fallacy.\n\n[871] Cp. the summary of Farrar, Crit. Hist. of Freethought,\npp. 177-78, which is founded on that of Pusey's early Historical\nEnquiry concerning German Rationalism, pp. 124-26.\n\n[872] Rep. same year at Dublin: 2nd ed. 1750. The first ed. was\nascribed to D'Argens--an error caused though not justified by the\npublisher's notice.\n\n[873] The point is further discussed in Dynamics of Religion,\npp. 175-76.\n\n[874] Cp. G. B. Hertz, The Old Colonial System, 1905, pp. 4, 22,\n93, 157.\n\n[875] Letter xxxi, in Mason's Memoir.\n\n[876] Hill Burton's Life of Hume, ii, 433, 434, 484-85, 487.\n\n[877] Compare the verdicts of Gibbon in his Autobiography, and of\nAdam Smith, Wealth of Nations, bk. v, ch. i, art. 2; and see the\nmemoir of Smith in 1831 ed. and McCulloch's ed., and Rae's Life of\nAdam Smith, p. 24. It appears that about 1764 many English people\nsent their sons to Edinburgh University on account of the better\neducation there. Letter of Blair, in Burton's Life of Hume, ii, 229.\n\n[878] Essays, iv, end.\n\n[879] Present State of Polite Learning, 1765, ch. vi. His story of how\nthe father of St. Foix cured the youth of the desire to rationalize\nhis creed is not suggestive of conviction. The father pointed to a\ncrucifix, saying, \"Behold the fate of a reformer.\" The story has been\noften plagiarized since--e.g., in Galt's Annals of the Parish.\n\n[880] Abbey and Overton, The English Church in the Eighteenth Century,\n1878, ii, 37.\n\n[881] Dieu et les Hommes, ch. xxxix.\n\n[882] Cp. Bishop Law, Considerations on the Theory of Religion, 6th\ned. 1774, p. 65, note, and the Analysis of Bolingbroke's writings\n(1755) there cited. Mr. Sichel's reply to Sir L. Stephen's criticism\nmay or may not be successful; but he does not deal with Bishop Law's.\n\n[883] M\u00e9moires de Diderot, ed. 1841, ii, 25.\n\n[884] These had begun as early as 1753 (Microm\u00e9gas).\n\n[885] Works, ed. 1842, i, pp. cix, 445; ii, 628, 728. Cp. the poem\nKew Gardens, left in MS.\n\n[886] I here take a few sentences from my paper, The Church and\nEducation, 1903.\n\n[887] Short History, p. 717. The Concise Description of the Endowed\nGrammar Schools, by Nicholas Carlisle, 1818, shows that schools were\nfounded in all parts of the country by private bequest or public\naction during the eighteenth century.\n\n[888] Collis, in Transactions of the Social Science Association,\n1857, p. 126. According to Collis, 48 had been founded by James I,\n28 under Charles I, 16 under the Commonwealth, 36 under Charles II,\n4 under James II, 7 under William and Mary, 11 under Anne, 17 under\nGeorge I, and 7 under George II. He does not indicate their size.\n\n[889] Green, as last cited.\n\n[890] Gibbins, Industrial History of England, 1894, p. 151.\n\n[891] Hist. of England under George III, ed. 1865, ii, 83.\n\n[892] The document is given in Ritchie's Life of Hume, 1807, pp. 53-55.\n\n[893] A reply, The World proved to be not eternal nor mechanical,\nappeared in 1790.\n\n[894] The Doctrines of a Trinity and the Incarnation of God was\npublished anonymously.\n\n[895] See the Biographical Introduction to the Unitarian reprint of\nWatts's Solemn Address, 1840, which gives the letters of Lardner. And\ncp. Skeats, Hist. of the English Free Churches, ed. Miall, p. 240.\n\n[896] Life of Lardner, by Dr. Kippis, prefixed to Works, ed. 1835,\ni, p. xxxii.\n\n[897] Memoirs of Priestley, 1806, pp. 30-32, 35, 37. The Letter on\nthe Logos was addressed by Lardner to the first Lord Barrington,\nand was first published anonymously, in 1759.\n\n[898] Memoirs of Priestley, p. 19.\n\n[899] Pamphlet of 1778, printing the sermon, with reply to a local\nattack.\n\n[900] MS. alteration in print. See also p. 1 of Epistle Dedicatory.\n\n[901] In criticizing whom Sir Leslie Stephen barely notices his\nscientific work, but dwells much on his religious fallacies--a course\nwhich would make short work of the fame of Newton.\n\n[902] A Church dignitary has described Evanson's Dissonance as \"the\ncommencement of the destructive criticism of the Fourth Gospel\"\n(Archdeacon Watkins's Bampton Lectures, 1890, p. 174).\n\n[903] Williams (d. 1816), who published 3 vols. of \"Lectures on\nEducation\" and other works, has a longer claim on remembrance as the\nfounder of the \"Literary Fund.\"\n\n[904] The subject is discussed at length in the essay on Gibbon in\nthe author's Pioneer Humanists.\n\n[905] Cp. Bishop Watson's Apology for Christianity (1776) as to\nthe vogue of unbelief at that date. (Two Apologies, ed. 1806,\np. 121. Cp. pp. 179, 399.)\n\n[906] The panegyric on Voltaire delivered at his death by Frederick\nthe Great (Nov. 26, 1778) was promptly translated into English (1779).\n\n[907] Reflections on the French Revolution, 1790, p. 131.\n\n[908] See Hannah More's letter of April, 1777, in her Life, abridged\n16mo-ed. p. 36. An edition of Shaftesbury, apparently, appeared in\n1773, and another in 1790.\n\n[909] The essays of Hume, including the Dialogues concerning Natural\nReligion (1779), were now circulated in repeated editions. Mr. Rae,\nin his valuable Life of Adam Smith, p. 311, cites a German observer,\nWendeborn, as writing in 1785 that the Dialogues, though a good deal\ndiscussed in Germany, had made no sensation in England, and were at\nthat date entirely forgotten. But a second edition had been called\nfor in 1779, and they were added to a fresh edition of the essays\nin 1788. Any \"forgetting\" is to be set down to preoccupation with\nother interests.\n\n[910] Letter to the Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, 1777, p. 3.\n\n[911] Dr. Parr, Characters of C. J. Fox, i, 220; cited in Charles\nJames Fox, a Commentary, by W. S. Landor, ed. by S. Wheeler, 1907,\np. 147. Fox's secretary and biographer, Trotter, while anxious\nto discredit the statement of Parr, gives such a qualified account\n(Memoirs of the Latter Years of C. J. Fox, 1811, pp. 470-71) of Fox's\nviews on immortality as to throw much doubt on the stronger testimony\nof B. C. Walpole (Recollections of C. J. Fox, 1806, p. 242).\n\n[912] See J. L. Le B. Hammond, Charles James Fox, 1903, ch. xiii.\n\n[913] See a letter in Bishop Watson's Life, i, 402; and cp. Buckle,\nch. vii, note 218.\n\n[914] See his Task, bk. iii, 150-90 (1783-1784), for the prevailing\nreligious tone.\n\n[915] Princ. of Moral Philos. bk. v, ch. ix. The chapter tells of\nwidespread freethinking.\n\n[916] Ernest Krause, Erasmus Darwin, Eng. tr. 1879,\np. 211. Cp. pp. 193, 194.\n\n[917] Letters vii, viii, ix, xix, xxii.\n\n[918] E.g., The Ordination, the Address to the Deil, A Dedication to\nGavin Hamilton, The Kirk's Alarm, etc.\n\n[919] See also the pieces printed between these in the Globe edition,\npp. 66-68.\n\n[920] The benevolent Supreme Being, he writes, \"has put the immediate\nadministration of all this into the hands of Jesus Christ--a great\npersonage, whose relation to Him we cannot fathom, but whose relation\nto us is [that of] a guide and Saviour.\" Letter 86 in Globe ed. Letters\n189 and 197, to Mrs. Dunlop, similarly fail to meet the requirements\nof the orthodox correspondent. The poem Look up and See, latterly\nprinted several times apart from Burns's works, and extremely likely\nto be his, is a quite Voltairean criticism of David. If the poem be\nungenuine, it is certainly by far the ablest of the unacknowledged\npieces ascribed to him, alike in diction and in purport.\n\n[921] Letter to Mrs. Dunlop, Jan. 1, 1789, in Robert Burns and\nMrs. Dunlop, ed. by W. Wallace, 1898, p. 129. The passage is omitted\nfrom Letter 168 in the Globe ed., and presumably from other reprints.\n\n[922] Letter to Mrs. Dunlop, July 9, 1790. Published for the first\ntime in vol. cited, p. 266.\n\n[923] Epistle to a Young Friend.\n\n[924] Lecky, writing in 1865, and advancing on Burke, has said of\nthe whole school, including Shaftesbury, that \"the shadow of the tomb\nrests on all: a deep, unbroken silence, the chill of death, surrounds\nthem. They have long ceased to wake any interest\" (Rationalism in\nEurope, i, 116). As a matter of fact, they had been discussed by Taylor\nin 1853; by Pattison in 1860; and by Farrar in 1862; and they have\nsince been discussed at length by Dr. Hunt, by Dr. Cairns, by Lange,\nby Gyzicki, by M. Sayous, by Sir Leslie Stephen, by Prof. H\u00f6ffding,\nand by many others.\n\n[925] Conway, introd. to Age of Reason, in his ed. of Paine's Works,\niv, 3.\n\n[926] Lemontey, Hist. de la r\u00e9gence et de la minorit\u00e9 de Louis XV,\n1835, ii, 358, note. In 1731 there was published under the name of\nBoulainvilliers (d. 1722) a so-called R\u00e9futation de Spinoza, which was\n\"really a popular exposition.\" Pollock, Spinoza, 2nd ed. p. 363. Sir\nF. Pollock assents to Voltaire's remark that Boulainvilliers \"gave\nthe poison and forgot to give the antidote.\"\n\n[927] For a brief view of the facts, usually misconceived, see Lanson,\npp. 610-11. F\u00e9nelon seems to have been uncandid, while Bossuet, by\ncommon consent, was malevolent. There is probably truth, however,\nin the view of Shaftesbury (Characteristics, ed. 1900, ii, 214),\nthat the real grievance of F\u00e9nelon's ecclesiastical opponents was the\ntendency of his mysticism to withdraw devotees from ceremonial duties.\n\n[928] Now remembered chiefly through the account of his intercourse\nwith F\u00e9nelon (repr. in Didot ed. of F\u00e9nelon's misc. works), and\nHume's long extract from his Philosophical Principles of Natural and\nRevealed Religion in the concluding note to the Essays. Cp. M. Matter,\nLe Mysticisme en France au temps de F\u00e9nelon, 1865, pp. 352-54.\n\n[929] Tyssot de Patot was Professor of Mathematics at Deventer. In\nhis Lettres choisies, published in 1726, there is an avowal that\n\"he might be charged with having different notions from those of the\nvulgar in point of religion\" (New Memoirs of Literature, iv (1726),\n267); and his accounts of pietists and unbelieving and other priests\nsufficiently convey that impression (id. pp. 268-84).\n\n[930] Towards the close of his \"poem\" Polignac speaks of a defence of\nChristianity as a future task. He died without even completing the\nAnti-Lucretius, begun half a century before. Of him are related two\nclassic anecdotes. Sent at the age of twenty-seven to discuss Church\nquestions with the Pope, he earned from His Holiness the compliment:\n\"You seem always to be of my opinion; and in the end it is yours that\nprevails.\" Louis XIV gave him a long audience, after which the King\nsaid: \"I have had an interview with a young man who has constantly\ncontradicted me without my being able to be angry for a moment.\" (\u00c9loge\nprefixed to Bougainville's trans., L'Anti-Lucr\u00e8ce, 1767, i. 131.)\n\n[931] Cp. Duvernet, Vie de Voltaire, ch. i. Rivarol (Lettres \u00e0 Necker,\nin OEuvres, ed. 1852, p. 138) wrote that under Louis XV there began a\n\"general insurrection\" of discussion, and that everybody then talked\n\"only of religion and philosophy during half a century.\" But this\nexaggerates the beginnings, of which Rivarol could have no exact\nknowledge.\n\n[932] La verit\u00e9 de la religion chr\u00e9tienne prouv\u00e9e par les faits:\npr\u00e9c\u00e9d\u00e9e d'un discours historique et critique sur la m\u00e9thode des\nprincipaux auteurs qui ont \u00e9crit pour et contre le christianisme\ndepuis son origine, 1722. Rep. 1741, 3 vols. 4to., 4 vols. 12mo.\n\n[933] Nouveau Dictionnaire historique portatif, 1771, art. Houteville,\ntom. ii.\n\n[934] Whose Consid\u00e9rations sur les Moeurs (1751) does not seem to\ncontain a single religious sentiment. Historiographer of France,\nhe had not escaped the suppression of his Histoire de Louis XI, 1745.\n\n[935] See above, p. 130. Buffier seems to have begun an attempt at\nspelling reform (by dropping doubled letters), followed in 1725 by\nHuard and later by Pr\u00e9montval.\n\n[936] 7 vols. 4to., 10 vols. 12mo. Rep. with corrections 1733. Seconde\npartie, 1753, 8 vols. 12mo.\n\n[937] A reprint in 1735 bears the imprint of London, with the note\n\"Aux d\u00e9pens de la Compagnie.\"\n\n[938] Lanson, p. 702. The Persian Letters, like the Provincial Letters\nof Pascal, had to be printed at Rouen and published at Amsterdam. Their\nfreethinking expressions put considerable difficulties in the way\nof his election (1727) to the Academy. See E. Edwards, Chapters\nof the Biog. Hist. of the French Academy, 1864, pp. 34-35, and\nD. M. Robertson, Hist. of the French Academy, 1910, p. 92, as to the\nmystification about the alleged reprint without the obnoxious passages.\n\n[939] Lettre 86.\n\n[940] \"Au point de vue religieux, Montesquieu tirait poliment son coup\nde chapeau au christianisme\" (Lanson, p. 714). E.g. in the Esprit\ndes Lois, liv. xxiv, chs. i, ii, iii, iv, vi, and the footnote to\nch. x of liv. xxv. Montesquieu's letter to Warburton (16 mai, 1754),\nin acknowledgment of that prelate's attack on the posthumous works of\nBolingbroke, is a sample of his social make-believe. But no religious\nreader could suppose it to come from a religious man.\n\n[941] Also of E. Edwards, as cited above.\n\n[942] See the notes cited on pp. 405, 407 of Garnier's variorum ed. of\nthe Esprit des Lois, 1871. La Harpe and Villemain seem blind to irony.\n\n[943] The flings at Bayle (liv. xxiv, chs. ii, vi) are part of a subtly\nironical vindication of ideal as against ecclesiastical Christianity,\nand they have no note of faith.\n\n[944] Paul Mesnard, Hist. de l'acad\u00e9mie fran\u00e7aise, 1857, pp. 61-63.\n\n[945] Pens\u00e9es Diverses: De la religion.\n\n[946] Lanson, p. 714, note.\n\n[947] Tr. in English, 1753. It is noteworthy that Cataneo formally\naccepts Montesquieu's professions of orthodoxy.\n\n[948] Correspondance litt\u00e9raire de Grimm et Diderot, ed. 1829-31,\ni, 273. See the footnote for an account of the indecent efforts of\nthe Jesuits to get at the dying philosopher. The cur\u00e9 of the parish\nwho was allowed entry began his exhortation with: \"Vous savez,\nM. le Pr\u00e9sident, combien Dieu est grand.\" \"Oui, monsieur,\" returned\nMontesquieu, \"et combien les hommes sont petits.\"\n\n[949] Mesnard, Hist. de l'acad\u00e9mie fran\u00e7aise, p. 63.\n\n[950] A full analysis is given by Strauss in the second Appendix to\nhis Voltaire: Sechs Vortr\u00e4ge, 2te Aufl. 1870.\n\n[951] The details are dubious. See the memoir compiled by \"Rudolf\nCharles\" (R. C. D'Ablaing van Giessenburg), the editor of the\nTestament, Amsterdam, 3 tom. 1861-64. It draws chiefly on the M\u00e9moires\nsecrets de Bachaumont, under date Sept. 30, 1764.\n\n[952] Testament, as cited, i, 25.\n\n[953] iii, 396.\n\n[954] First published in 1762 [or 1764? See Bachaumont, Oct. 30],\nwith the date 1742; and reprinted in the \u00c9vangile de la Raison,\n1764. It was no fewer than four times ordered to be destroyed in the\nRestoration period.\n\n[955] Probably Diderot did the most of the adaptation. \"Il y a\nplus que du bon sens dans ce livre,\" writes Voltaire to D'Alembert;\n\"il est terrible. S'il sort de la boutique du Syst\u00e8me de la Nature,\nl'auteur s'est bien perfectionn\u00e9\" (Lettre de 27 Juillet, 1775).\n\n[956] \"Il leur faut un \u00catre \u00e0 ces messieurs; pour moi, je m'en\npasse.\" Grimm, Correspondance Litt\u00e9raire, ed. 1829-31, iv, 186.\n\n[957] Grimm, as cited, i, 235. Grimm tells a delightful story of his\nreception of the confessor.\n\n[958] \"Cet ouvrage, dont les vers sont grands et bien tourn\u00e9s,\nest une satire des plus licencieuses contre les moeurs de nos\n\u00e9v\u00eaques.\" Bachaumont, M\u00e9moires Secrets, Juin 15, 1762.\n\n[959] Bonet-Maury, Hist. de la lib. de conscience en France, 1900,\np. 68.\n\n[960] Nouveau dictionnaire historique-portatif ... par une Soci\u00e9t\u00e9\nde Gens de Lettres, ed. 1771, i, 314.\n\n[961] Marmontel does not relate this in his M\u00e9moires, where he insists\non the decorum of the talk, even at d'Holbach's table.\n\n[962] Chamfort, Caract\u00e8res et Anecdotes.\n\n[963] Nouveau dictionnaire, above cited, i, 315.\n\n[964] Name assumed for literary purposes, and probably composed by\nanagram from the real name Arouet, with \"le jeune\" (junior) added,\nthus: A. R. O. V. E. T. L(e). I(eune).\n\n[965] Not to be confounded with the greater and later Jean Jacques\nRousseau. J. B. Rousseau became Voltaire's bitter enemy--on the score,\nit is said, of the young man's epigram on the elder poet's \"Ode to\nPosterity,\" which, he said, would not reach its address. Himself a\nrather ribald freethinker, Rousseau professed to be outraged by the\nirreligion of Voltaire.\n\n[966] See the poem in note 4 to ch. ii of Duvernet's Vie de\nVoltaire. Duvernet calls it \"one of the first attacks on which\nphilosophy in France had ventured against superstition\" (Vie de\nVoltaire, ed. 1797, p. 19).\n\n[967] Duvernet, ch. ii. The free-hearted Ninon de l'Enclos,\nbrightest of old ladies, is to be numbered among the pre-Voltairean\nfreethinkers, and to be remembered as leaving young Voltaire a legacy\nto buy books. She refused to \"sell her soul\" by turning d\u00e9vote on the\ninvitation of her old friend Madame de Maintenon. Madame D'\u00c9pinay,\nVoltaire's \"belle philosophe et aimable Habacuc,\" Madame du Deffand,\nand Madame Geoffrin were among the later freethinking grandes dames of\nthe Voltairean period; and so, presumably, was the Madame de Cr\u00e9qu\u00ed,\nquoted by Rivarol, who remarked that \"Providence\" is \"the baptismal\nname of Chance.\" As to Madame Geoffrin see the OEuvres Posthumes de\nD'Alembert, 1799, i, 240, 271; and the M\u00e9moires de Marmontel, 1804,\nii, 102 sq. If Marmontel is accurate, she went secretly at times to\nmass (p. 104).\n\n[968] Deslandes wrote some new chapters of his R\u00e9flexions in London,\nfor the English translation. Eng. tr. 1713, p. 99.\n\n[969] Pour et Contre, ou \u00c9pitre \u00e0 Uranie. It was of course not printed\ntill long afterwards. Diderot, writing his Promenade du Sceptique\nin 1747, says: \"C'est, je crois, dans l'all\u00e9e des fleurs [of his\nallegory] entre le champagne et le tokay, que l'\u00e9pitre \u00e0 Uranie prit\nnaissance.\" (L'All\u00e9e des Marronniers, ad init.) This seems unjust.\n\n[970] He has been alternately represented as owing everything and\nowing very little to England. Cp. Texte, Rousseau and the Cosmopolitan\nSpirit, Eng. tr. p. 58. Neither view is just.\n\n[971] In his Essay upon the Civil Wars of France, and ... upon\nEpick Poetry (2nd ed. 1728, \"corrected by himself\"), written and\npublished in English, he begins his \"Advertisement\" with the remark:\n\"It has the appearance of too great a presumption in a traveller\nwho hath been but eighteen months in England, to attempt to write\nin a language which he cannot pronounce at all, and which he hardly\nunderstands in conversation.\" As the book is remarkably well written,\nhe must have read much English.\n\n[972] Lord Morley (Voltaire, 4th ed. p. 40) speaks of the English\npeople as having then won \"a full liberty of thought and speech and\nperson.\" This, as we have seen, somewhat overstates the case. But\ndiscussion was much more nearly free than in France.\n\n[973] Probably as much on political as on religious grounds. The 8th\nletter, Sur le Parlement, must have been very offensive to the French\nGovernment; and in 1739, moved by angry criticisms, Voltaire saw fit to\nmodify its language. See Lanson's ed. of the Lettres, 1909, i, 92, 110.\n\n[974] Condorcet, Vie de Voltaire, ed. 1792, p. 92. In reprints the\npoem was entitled Sur la religion naturelle, and was so commonly cited.\n\n[975] Condorcet, p. 99.\n\n[976] See above, pp. 213-14, as to the works of Boulainvilliers,\nTyssot de Patot, Deslandes, and others who wrote between 1700 and 1715.\n\n[977] Cited by Schlosser, Hist. of the Eighteenth Century, Eng. tr. i,\n146-7.\n\n[978] Trait\u00e9 de la verit\u00e9 de la religion chr\u00e9tienne, tir\u00e9 en partie\ndu latin de M. J. Alphonse Turrettin, professeur ... en l'acad\u00e9mie\nde G\u00e9n\u00e8ve, par M. J. Vernet, professeur de belles-lettres en la\nm\u00eame Acad\u00e9mie. Revue et corrig\u00e9 par un Th\u00e9ologien Catholique. 1e\n\u00e9d. G\u00e9n\u00e8ve, 1730. Rep. in 2 tom. 1753. Ecclesiastical approbation\ngiven 15 janv. 1749; privil\u00e8ge, juillet, 1751.\n\n[979] Dom Remi Desmonts, according to Barbier.\n\n[980] \"Par Panage\" (=Toussaint?). Rep. 1755 and 1767 (Berlin).\n\n[981] Work cited, ed. 1755, p. 252.\n\n[982] A glimpse of old Paris before or about 1750 is afforded by\nFontenelle's remark that the prevailing diseases might be known from\nthe affiches. At every street corner were to be seen two, of which one\nadvertised a Trait\u00e9 sur l'incr\u00e9dulit\u00e9. (Grimm, Corr. litt. iii, 373.)\n\n[983] Thus Duruy had said in his Histoire de France (1st ed. 1852)\nthat in the work of the Jansenists of Port Royal \"l'esprit d'opposition\npolitique se cacha sous l'opposition religieuse\" (ed. 1880, ii, 298).\n\n[984] The case has been thus correctly put by M. Rocquain, who,\nhowever, decides that \"de religieuse qu'elle \u00e9tait, l'opposition\ndevient politique\" as early as about 1724-1733. L'Esprit\nr\u00e9volutionnaire avant la r\u00e9volution, 1878; table des mati\u00e8res,\nliv. 2e. Duruy (last note) puts the tendency still earlier.\n\n[985] \"Cette hardiesse \u00e9tonna Voltaire, et excita son \u00e9mulation\"\n(ed. cited, p. 118).\n\n[986] Avertissement des \u00e9diteurs, in Basle ed. of 1792, vol. xlv,\np. 92.\n\n[987] It has been counted that he used no fewer than a hundred\nand thirty different pseudonyms; and the perpetual prosecution and\nconfiscation of his books explains the procedure. As we have seen,\nthe Lettres philosophiques (otherwise the Lettres anglaises) were\nburned on their appearance, in 1734, and the bookseller put in the\nBastille; the Recueil des pi\u00e8ces fugitives was suppressed in 1739;\nthe Voix du Sage et du Peuple was officially and clerically condemned\nin 1751; the poem on Natural Law was burned at Paris in 1758; Candide\nat Geneva in 1759; the Dictionnaire philosophique at Geneva in 1764,\nand at Paris in 1765; and many of his minor pseudonymous performances\nhad the same advertisement. But even the Henriade, the Charles XII,\nand the first chapters of the Si\u00e8cle de Louis XIV were prohibited;\nand in 1785 the thirty volumes published of the 1784 edition of his\nworks were condemned en masse.\n\n[988] Diderot, critique of Le philosophe ignorant in Grimm's\nCorr. Litt. 1 juin 1766; Lessing, Hamburgische Dramaturgie, St\u00fcck\n10-12, 15; Gibbon, ch. i, note near end; ch. li, note on siege of\nDamascus. Rousseau was as hostile as any (see Morley's Rousseau,\nch. ix, \u00a7 1). But Rousseau's verdict is the least important, and the\nleast judicial. He had himself earned the detestation of Voltaire, as\nof many other men. In a moment of pique, Diderot wrote of Voltaire:\n\"Cet homme n'est que le second dans tous les genres\" (Lettre 71 \u00e0\nMdlle. Voland, 12 ao\u00fbt, 1762). He forgot wit and humour!\n\n[989] Prof. Jowett, of Balliol College. See L. A. Tollemache, Benjamin\nJowett, Master of Balliol, 4th ed. pp. 27-28.\n\n[990] See details in Lord Morley's Voltaire, 4th ed. pp. 165-70,\n257-58. The erection by the French freethinkers of a monument to La\nBarre in 1905, opposite the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, Montmartre,\nParis, is an expression at once of the old feud with the Church and\nthe French appreciation of high personal courage. La Barre was in\ntruth something of a scapegrace, but his execution was an infamy,\nand he went to his death as to a bridal. The erection of the monument\nhas been the occasion of a futile pretence on the clerical side that\nfor La Barre's death the Church had no responsibility, the movers\nin the case being laymen. Nothing, apparently, can teach Catholic\nChurchmen that the Church's past sins ought to be confessed like\nthose of individuals. It is quite true that it was a Parlement that\ncondemned La Barre. But what a religious training was it that turned\nlaymen into murderous fanatics!\n\n[991] M. Lanson seems to overlook it when he writes (p. 747) that\n\"the affirmation of God, the denial of Providence and miracles,\nis the whole metaphysic of Voltaire.\"\n\n[992] Lord Morley writes (p. 209): \"We do not know how far he ever\nseriously approached the question ... whether a society can exist\nwithout a religion.\" This overlooks both the Hom\u00e9lie sur l'Ath\u00e9isme\nand the article Ath\u00e9isme in the Dictionnaire Philosophique, where\nthe question is discussed seriously and explicitly.\n\n[993] Horace Walpole, Letter to Gray, Nov. 19, 1765. Compare the\nmordant criticism of Grimm (Corr. litt. vii, 54 sq.) on his tract\nDieu in reply to d'Holbach. \"Il raisonne l\u00e0-dessus comme un enfant,\"\nwrites Grimm, \"mais comme un joli enfant qu'il est.\"\n\n[994] Browning, The Two Poets of Croisic, st. cvii.\n\n[995] Cp. St\u00e4ndlin, Gesch. des Rationalismus und Supernaturalismus,\n1826, pp. 287-90. Hagenbach, Kirchengeschichte des 18. und\n19. Jahrhunderts, 2te Aufl. 1848, i, 218-20.\n\n[996] Zimmerman, De causis magis magisque invalescentis incredulitatis,\net medela huic malo adhibenda, Tiguri, 1739, 4to. Prof. Breitinger\nof Zurich wrote a criticism afterwards tr. (1741) as Examen des\nLettres sur la religion essentielle. De Roches, pastor at Geneva,\npublished in letter-form 2 vols. entitled D\u00e9fense du Christianisme, as\n\"pr\u00e9servatif contre\" the Lettres of Mdlle. Huber (1740); and Bouillier\nof Amsterdam also 2 vols. of Lettres (1741).\n\n[997] Cp. Bouillier, Hist. de la philos. cart\u00e9s, ii, 624-25;\nD'Argenson, M\u00e9moires, ed. Jannet, iv. 63.\n\n[998] See the thesis (Jerusalem Coelesti) as printed in the Apologie\nde M. l'Abb\u00e9 De Prades, \"Amsterdam,\" 1752, pp. 4, 6.\n\n[999] Id. p. 10.\n\n[1000] M\u00e9moires sur la vie et les ouvrages de Diderot, 1821, p. 160.\n\n[1001] Cp. Bachaumont, M\u00e9moires secrets, 4 f\u00e9v. 1762; 22 avril,\n1768. Tn the latter entry, Yvon is described as \"poursuivi comme\ninfid\u00e8le, quoique le plus croyant de France.\" In 1768, after the\nB\u00e9lisaire scandal, he was refused permission to proceed with the\npublication of his Histoire eccl\u00e9siastique.\n\n[1002] This was de Prades's own view of the matter (Apologie, as cited,\np. v); and D'Argenson repeatedly says as much. M\u00e9moires, iv, 57, 65,\n66, 74, 77.\n\n[1003] Rocquain, L'esprit revolutionnaire avant la r\u00e9volution, 1878,\npp. 149-51; Morley, Diderot, ch. v; D'Argenson, iv, 78. The decree\nof suppression was dated 13 f\u00e9v. 1752.\n\n[1004] M\u00e9moires, iv, 64, 74.\n\n[1005] Id. iv, 129, 140.\n\n[1006] Id. iv, 92-93.\n\n[1007] Maury, Hist. de l'ancienne Acad\u00e9mie des Inscriptions, 1864,\npp. 312-13.\n\n[1008] Journal historique de Barbier, 1847-56, iv, 304.\n\n[1009] Astruc, we learn from D'Alembert, connected their decline with\nthe influence of the new opinions. \"Ce ne sont pas les jansenistes\nqui tuent les j\u00e9suites, c'est l'Encyclop\u00e9die.\" \"Le maroufle Astruc,\"\nadds D'Alembert, \"est comme Pasquin, il parle quelquefois d'assez\nbon sens.\" Lettre \u00e0 Voltaire. 4 mai, 1762.\n\n[1010] Cp. pref. (La Vie de Salvien) to French tr. of Salvian, 1734,\np. lxix. I have seen MS. translations of Toland and Woolston.\n\n[1011] MS. statement, in eighteenth-century hand, on flyleaf of a\ncopy of 1755 ed. of the Grands hommes, in the writer's possession.\n\n[1012] Lettre \u00e0 D'Alembert, 16 Octobre, 1765.\n\n[1013] Of the works noted below, the majority appear or profess to have\nbeen printed at Amsterdam, though many bore the imprint Londres. All\nthe freethinking books and translations ascribed to d'Holbach bore\nit. The Ar\u00e9tin of Abb\u00e9 Dulaurens bore the imprint: \"Rome, aux d\u00e9pens\nde la Congr\u00e9gation de l'Index.\" Mystifications concerning authorship\nhave been as far as possible cleared up in the present edition.\n\n[1014] Given by Brunet, who is followed by Wheeler, as appearing in\n1732, and as translated into English, under the title Dying Merrily,\nin 1745. But I possess an English translation of 1713 (pref. dated\nMarch 25), entitled A Philological Essay: or, Reflections on the\nDeath of Freethinkers.... By Monsieur D----, of the Royal Academy of\nSciences in France, and author of the Poetae Rusticantis Literatum\nOtium. Translated from the French by Mr. B----, with additions by the\nauthor, now in London, and the translator. [A note in a contemporary\nhand makes \"B\" Boyer.] Barbier gives 1712 for the first edition,\n1732 for the second. Rep. 1755 and 1776.\n\n[1015] There is no sign of any such excitement in France over the\ntranslation as was aroused in England by the original; but an Examen\ndu trait\u00e9 de la libert\u00e9 de penser, by De Crousaz, was published at\nAmsterdam in 1718.\n\n[1016] This was probably meant to point to the Abb\u00e9 de Marsy, who\ndied in 1763.\n\n[1017] The Abb\u00e9 Sepher ascribed this book to one Dupuis, a Royal\nGuardsman.\n\n[1018] This \"prose poem\" was not an intentional burlesque, as\nthe ecclesiastical authorities alleged; but it did not stand for\northodoxy. See Grimm's Correspondance, i, 113.\n\n[1019] \"A eu les honneurs de la br\u00fblure, et toutes les censures\ncumul\u00e9es des Facult\u00e9s de Th\u00e9ologie, de la Sorbonne et des\n\u00e9v\u00eaques.\" Bachaumont, d\u00e9c. 23, 1763. Marsy, who was expelled from\nthe Order of Jesuits, was of bad character, and was hotly denounced\nby Voltaire.\n\n[1020] See Grimm, Corr. v. 15.\n\n[1021] A second edition appeared within the year. \"Quoique proscrit\npresque partout, et m\u00eame en Hollande, c'est de l\u00e0 qu'il nous\narrive.\" Bachaumont, d\u00e9c. 27, 1764.\n\n[1022] Bachaumont, mai 7, 1767.\n\n[1023] \"Se repand \u00e0 Paris avec la permission de la police.\" Bachaumont,\n13 f\u00e9v. 1766.\n\n[1024] \"Il est facile de se convaincre que les parties les plus\nimportantes et les plus solides de cet ouvrage sont emprunt\u00e9es aux\ntravaux de Burigny.\" L.-F. Alfred Maury, L'ancienne Acad\u00e9mie des\nIncriptions et bellet-lettres, 1864, p. 316. Maury leaves it open\nquestion whether the compilation was made by Burigny or by Naigeon. The\nAbb\u00e9 Bergier accepted it without hesitation as the work of Fr\u00e9ret,\nwho was known to hold some heretical views. (Maury, p. 317.) Barbier\nconfidently ascribes the work to Burigny.\n\n[1025] The mystification in regard to this work is elaborate. It\npurports to be translated from an English version, declared in turn\nby its translator to be made \"from the Greek.\" It is now commonly\nascribed to Naigeon. (Maury, as cited, p. 317.) Its machinery, and\nits definite atheism, mark it as of the school of d'Holbach, though\nit is alleged to have been written by Fr\u00e9ret as early as 1722. It\nis however reprinted, with the Examen critique des Apologistes, in\nthe 1796 edition of Fr\u00e9ret's works without comment; and Barbier was\nsatisfied that it was the one genuine \"philosophic\" work ascribed to\nFr\u00e9ret, but that it was redacted by Naigeon from imperfect MSS.\n\n[1026] Notice sur Henri Meister, pref. to Lettres in\u00e9dites de Madame\nde Sta\u00ebl \u00e0 Henri Meister, 1903, p. 17.\n\n[1027] \"Deux nouveaux livres infernaux ... connus comme\nmanuscrits depuis longtemps et gard\u00e9s dans l'obscurit\u00e9 des\nportefeuilles....\" Bachaumont, 22 mars, 1769.\n\n[1028] Bachaumont, M\u00e9moires Secrets, d\u00e9c. 20, 1767.\n\n[1029] Id. Jan. 18, 1768.\n\n[1030] So Pidansat de Mairobert in his preface to the first ed. (1777)\nof the M\u00e9moires Secrets of Bachaumont, continued by him. See pref. to\nthe abridged ed. by Bibliophile Jacob.\n\n[1031] As to the authorship see above, p. 241.\n\n[1032] La Certitude des preuves du Christianisme (1767). 2e \u00e9dit. 1768,\nAvertissement.\n\n[1033] In the short essay Le Philosophe, which appeared in the\nNouvelles Libert\u00e9s de Penser, 1743 and 1750, and in the Recueil\nPhilosophique, 1770. In the 1793 rep. of the Essai sur les pr\u00e9jug\u00e9s\n(again rep. in 1822) it is unhesitatingly affirmed, on the strength\nof its title-page and the prefixed letter of Dumarsais, dated 1750,\nthat that book is an expansion of the essay Le Philosophe, and that\nthis was published in 1760. But Le Philosophe is an entirely different\nproduction, which to a certain extent criticizes les philosophes\nso-called. The Essai sur les pr\u00e9jug\u00e9s published in 1770 is not the\nwork of Dumarsais; it is a new work by d'Holbach. This was apparently\nknown to Frederick, who in his rather angry criticism of the book\nwrites that, whereas Dumarsais had always respected constituted\nauthorities, others had \"put out in his name, two years after he was\ndead and buried, a libel of which the veritable author could only be\na schoolboy as new to the world as he was puzzle-headed.\" (M\u00e9langes\nen vers et en prose de Frederic II, 1792, ii, 215). Dumarsais died in\n1754, but I can find no good evidence that the Essai sur les pr\u00e9jug\u00e9s\nwas ever printed before 1770. As to d'Holbach's authorship see the\nOEuvres de Diderot, ed. 1821, xii, 115 sq.--passage copied in the\n1829-31 ed. of the Correspondance litt\u00e9raire of Grimm and Diderot, xiv,\n293 sq. In a letter to D'Alembert dated Mars 27, 1773, Voltaire writes\nthat in a newly-printed collection of treatises containing his own\nLois de Minos is included \"le philosophe de Dumarsais, qui n'a jamais\n\u00e9t\u00e9 imprim\u00e9 jusqu'\u00e0 present.\" This seems to be a complete mistake.\n\n[1034] Grimm (iv, 86) has some good stories of him. He announced\none day that he had ound twenty-five fatal flaws in the story of\nthe resurrection of Lazarus, the first being that the dead do not\nrise. His scholarly friend Nicolas Boindin (see above, p. 222) said:\n\"Dumarsais is a Jansenist atheist; as for me, I am a Molinist atheist.\"\n\n[1035] On two successive pages the title Messiah is declared to mean\n\"simply one sent\" and simply \"anointed.\"\n\n[1036] Like Buffier and Huard, however, he strives for a reform in\nspelling, dropping many doubled letters, and writing home, bone,\nacuse, fole, apelle, hon\u00eate, afreux, etc.\n\n[1037] Abriss einer Geschichte der Umw\u00e4lzung welche seit 1750 auf dem\nGebiete der Theologie in Deutschland statt gefunden, in Tholuck's\nVermischte Schriften, 1839, ii, 5. The proposition is repeated\npp. 24, 33.\n\n[1038] The exceptions were books published outside of France.\n\n[1039] Madame de S\u00e9vign\u00e9, for instance, declared that she would not\nlet pass a year of her life without re-reading the second volume\nof Abbadie.\n\n[1040] Le D\u00e9isme refut\u00e9 par lui-m\u00eame (largely a reply to Rousseau),\n1765; 1770, Apologie de la religion chr\u00e9tienne; 1773, La certitude\ndes preuves du christianisme. In 1759 had appeared the Lettres sur le\nD\u00e9isme of the younger Salchi, professor at Lausanne. It deals chiefly\nwith the English deists, and with D'Argens. As before noted, the Abb\u00e9\nGauchat began in 1751 his Lettres Critiques, which in time ran to 15\nvolumes (1751-61). There were also two journals, Jesuit and Jansenist,\nwhich fought the philosophes (Lanson, p. 721); and sometimes even a\nmanuscript was answered--e.g. the R\u00e9futation du Celse moderne of the\nAbb\u00e9 Gautier (1752), a reply to Mirabaud's unpublished Examen critique.\n\n[1041] Alison, History of Europe, ed. 1849, i, 180-81.\n\n[1042] The Jesuits were expelled from Portugal in 1759; from Bohemia\nand Denmark in 1766; from the whole dominions of Spain in 1767; from\nGenoa and Venice in the same year; and from Naples, Malta, and Parma\nin 1768. Officially suppressed in France in 1764, they were expelled\nthence in 1767. Pope Clement XIII strove to defend them; but in 1773\nthe Society was suppressed by papal bull by Clement XIV; whereafter\nthey took refuge in Prussia and Russia, ruled by the freethinking\nFrederick and Catherine.\n\n[1043] See the Correspondance de Grimm, ed. 1829-31, vii, 51 sq.\n\n[1044] This apologetic work, after having been praised by the\ncensor and registered with privil\u00e8ge du roi in November, 1772,\nwas officially suppressed on Jan. 17, 1773, and, it would appear,\nreissued in that year.\n\n[1045] Liv. i. ch. viii.\n\n[1046] Bachaumont, juin 22; juillet 9, 20, 27; novembre 14, 1762.\n\n[1047] Grimm notices Astruc's Dissertations sur l'immortalit\u00e9,\nl'immaterialit\u00e9, et la libert\u00e9 de l'\u00e2me, published in 1755 (Corr. i,\n438), but not his Conjectures. At his death (1766) he pronounces him\n\"un des hommes les plus decri\u00e9s de Paris,\" \"Il passait pour fripon,\nfourbe, m\u00e9chant, en un mot pour un tr\u00e8s-malhonn\u00eate homme.\" \"Il \u00e9tait\nviolent et emport\u00e9, et d'une avarice sordide.\" Finally, he died\n\"sans sacremens\" after having \"fait le d\u00e9vot\" and attached himself\nto the Jesuits in their day of power. Corr. v, 98. But Grimm was a\nman of many hates, and not the best of historians.\n\n[1048] Cp. Maury, L'ancienne Acad\u00e9mie des inscriptions et\nbelles-lettres, 1864, pp. 55-56.\n\n[1049] Voltaire's various stratagems to secure election are not\nto his credit. See Paul Mesnard, Histoire de l'acad\u00e9mie fran\u00e7aise,\n1857, pp. 68-74. But even Montesquieu is said to have resorted to\nsome questionable devices for the same end. Id. p. 62.\n\n[1050] Maury, L'ancienne Acad\u00e9mie des inscriptions, pp. 54-55, 94, 308.\n\n[1051] Id. p. 93.\n\n[1052] Id. pp. 116-20.\n\n[1053] Where he was lieutenant-g\u00e9n\u00e9ral, and died in 1750.\n\n[1054] Maury, pp. 53, 86-87.\n\n[1055] M\u00e9moires, ed. Jannet, iv, 181.\n\n[1056] Cp. Mesnard, as cited, pp. 79-80.\n\n[1057] Maury, p. 315.\n\n[1058] Id. pp. 82-84. It is noteworthy that the orthodox Thomas, and\nnot any of the philosophes, was the first to impeach the Government\nin academic discourses. Mesnard, pp. 82-84, 100 sq.\n\n[1059] \"L'excellent Pompignan,\" M. Lanson calls him, p. 723.\n\n[1060] \"Les provisions de sa charge pendant six mois en\n1736.\" Voltaire, Lettre \u00e0 Mme. D'\u00c9pinay, 13 juin, 1760. \"Je le servis\ndans cette affaire,\" adds Voltaire.\n\n[1061] Mesnard, pp. 67, 71, 73, 89.\n\n[1062] Le Pauvre Diable, ouvrage en vers ais\u00e9s de feu M. Vad\u00e9,\nmis en lumi\u00e8re par Catherine Vad\u00e9, sa cousine (falsely dated 1758);\nLa Vanit\u00e9; and Le Russe \u00e0 Paris.\n\n[1063] Mesnard, pp. 86-92.\n\n[1064] Id. pp. 93-94.\n\n[1065] Id. pp. 95-96.\n\n[1066] Lanson, Hist. de la litt. fran\u00e7aise, p. 725.\n\n[1067] The formal approval of a Sorbonnist was necessary. One refused\nit; another gave it. Marmontel, M\u00e9moires, 1804, iii, 35-36.\n\n[1068] Marmontel mentions that while he was still discussing a\ncompromise with the syndic of the Sorbonne, 40,000 copies had been\nsold throughout Europe. M\u00e9moires, iii, 39.\n\n[1069] This satire was taken by the German freethinker Eberhard,\nin his New Apology for Socrates, as the actual publication of the\nSorbonne. Barbier, Dict. des Ouvr. anon et Pseud., 2e \u00e9dit., i, 468.\n\n[1070] Published pseudonymously as a translation from the English:\nHistoire naturelle de l'\u00e2me, traduite de l'Anglais de M. Charp, par\nfeu M. H----, de l'Acad\u00e9mie des Sciences. \u00c0 La Haye, 1745. Republished\nunder the title Trait\u00e9 de l'\u00c2me.\n\n[1071] By Elie Luzac, to whom is ascribed the reply entitled\nL'Homme plus que Machine (1748 also). This is printed in the OEuvres\nphilosophiques of La Mettrie as if it were his: and Lange (i, 420)\nseems to think it was. But the bibliographers ascribe it to Luzac,\nwho was a man of culture and ability.\n\n[1072] L'Homme Machine, ed. Ass\u00e9zat, 1865, p. 97;\nOEuv. philos. ed. 1774, iii, 51.\n\n[1073] Lange, Gesch. des Materialismus, i, 362 sq. (Eng. tr. ii,\n78-80); Soury, Br\u00e9viare de l'hist. du mat\u00e9rialisme, pp. 663, 666-68;\nVoltaire, Hom\u00e9lie sur l'ath\u00e9isme, end. Frederick the Great, who gave\nLa Mettrie harbourage, support, and friendship, and who was not a\nbad judge of men, wrote and read in the Berlin Academy the funeral\n\u00e9loge of La Mettrie, and pronounced him \"une \u00e2me pure et un coeur\nserviable.\" By \"pure\" he meant sincere.\n\n[1074] Salchi, Lettres sur le D\u00e9isme, 1759, pp. 177, 197, 239, 283 sq.\n\n[1075] Huxley, essay on Darwin on the Origin of Species;\nR. P. A. ed. of Twelve Lectures and Essays, p. 94.\n\n[1076] See the parallel passages in the Lettres Critiques of the Abb\u00e9\nGauchat, vol. xv (1761), p. 192 sq.\n\n[1077] See his essay Des Singularit\u00e9s de la Nature, ch. xii, and his\nDissertation sur les changements arriv\u00e9s dans notre globe.\n\n[1078] Eng. tr. 1750.\n\n[1079] Essay cited, p. 96. The criticism ignores the greater\ncomprehensiveness of Robinet's survey of nature.\n\n[1080] George-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, 1707-1788.\n\n[1081] Lyell, Principles of Geology, 12th ed. 1875, i, 57-58.\n\n[1082] Suite de l'Apologie de M. l'Abb\u00e9 De Prades, 1752, p. 37 sq.\n\n[1083] Dissertatio inauguralis metaphysica de universali natur\u00e6\nsystemate, published at G\u00f6ttingen as the doctoral thesis of an\nimaginary Dr. Baumann, 1751. In French, 1753.\n\n[1084] Soury, p. 579. The later speculations of Maupertuis by their\nextravagance discredited the earlier.\n\n[1085] \"Scheinbar bek\u00e4mpft er Maupertuis desswegen, aber im geheimen\nstimmt er ihm bei\"(Rosenkranz, i, 144).\n\n[1086] It should be noted that by Condillac's avowal he was much\naided by his friend Mdlle. Ferrand.\n\n[1087] Cp. R\u00e9thor\u00e9, Condillac, ou l'empirisme et le rationalisme,\n1864, ch. i.\n\n[1088] Lange, ii, 27, 29; Soury, pp. 603-44.\n\n[1089] Soury, pp. 596-600; Lange, ii, 27.\n\n[1090] Oddly enough he became ultimately press censor! He lived till\n1820, dying at Rennes at the age of 85.\n\n[1091] This may best be translated Treatise on the Mind. The English\ntranslation of 1759 (rep. 1807) is entitled De l'Esprit: or, Essays\non the Mind, etc.\n\n[1092] Correspondance, ii, 262.\n\n[1093] Id. p. 263.\n\n[1094] Id. p. 293.\n\n[1095] At the time the pietists declared that Diderot had collaborated\nin De l'Esprit. This was denied by Grimm, who affirmed that Diderot and\nHelv\u00e9tius were little acquainted, and rarely met; but his Secretary,\nMeister, wrote in 1786 that the finest pages in the book were\nDiderot's. Id. p. 294, note. In his sketch \u00c0 la m\u00e9moire de Diderot\n(1786, app. to Naigeon's M\u00e9moires, 1821, p. 425, note), Meister speaks\nof a number of \"belles pages,\" but does not particularize.\n\n[1096] De l'Esprit, Disc, iii, ch. 30.\n\n[1097] Cp. Morley's criticism. Diderot, ed. 1884, pp. 331-32.\n\n[1098] Beccaria's Letter to Morellet, cited in ch. i of J. A. Farrer's\ned. of the Crimes and Punishments, p. 6. It is noteworthy that the\npartial reform effected earlier in England by Oglethorpe, on behalf\nof imprisoned debtors (1730-32), belongs to the time of propagandist\ndeism there.\n\n[1099] Morley, Diderot, p. 329.\n\n[1100] Lettre \u00e0 d'Alembert, 9 janvier, 1773.\n\n[1101] Cp. Rosenkranz, Vorbericht, p. vi.\n\n[1102] Cp. Morley, Diderot, ed. 1834, p. 32.\n\n[1103] E.g. \u00a7 21.\n\n[1104] A police agent seized the MS. in Diderot's library, and Diderot\ncould not get it back. Malesherbes, the censor, kept it safe for him!\n\n[1105] According to Naigeon (M\u00e9moires, 1821, p. 131), three months\nand ten days.\n\n[1106] The Lettre purports, like so many other books of that and the\nnext generation, to be published \"A Londres.\"\n\n[1107] Diderot's daughter, in her memoir of him, speaks of his\nimprisonment in the Bastille as brought about through the resentment\nof a lady of whom he had spoken slightingly; and her husband left\na statement in MS. to the same effect (printed at the end of the\nM\u00e9moires by Naigeon). The lady is named as Madame Dupr\u00e9 de Saint-Maur,\na mistress of the King, and the offence is said to have been committed\nin the story entitled Le Pigeon blanc. Howsoever this may have been,\nthe prosecution was quite in the spirit of the period, and the earlier\nPens\u00e9es were made part of the case against him. See Delort, Hist. de\nla d\u00e9tention des philosophes, 1829, ii, 208-16. M. de Vandeul-Diderot\ntestifies that the Marquis Du Chatelet, Governor of Vincennes, treated\nhis prisoner very kindly. Buckle (1-vol. ed. p. 425) does not seem to\nhave fully read the Lettre, which he describes as merely discussing\nthe differentiation of thought and sensation among the blind.\n\n[1108] His friend Meister (\u00c0 la m\u00e9moire de Diderot, 1786, app. to\nNaigeon's M\u00e9moires de Diderot, 1821, p. 424) writes as if Diderot had\nwritten the whole Apologie \"in a few days.\" The third part, a reply\nto the pastoral of the Bishop of Auxerre, appeared separately as a\nSuite to the others.\n\n[1109] Apologie, as cited, 2e partie, p. 87 sq.\n\n[1110] Observations sur l'instruction pastorale de Mons. l'\u00c9v\u00eaque\nd'Auxerre, Berlin, 1752, p. 17.\n\n[1111] Id. p. 102 sq.\n\n[1112] Cp. Morley, Diderot, pp. 98-99.\n\n[1113] Carlyle, Frederick, bk. xviii, ch. ix, end.\n\n[1114] D'Argenson, M\u00e9moires, iv, 188.\n\n[1115] Carlyle, as cited.\n\n[1116] \"Quelle abominable homme!\" he writes to Mdlle. Voland\n(15 juillet, 1759); and Lord Morley pronounces de Prades a rascal\n(Diderot, p. 98). Carlyle is inarticulate with disgust--but as much\nagainst the original heresy as against the treason to Frederick. As\nto that, Thi\u00e9bault was convinced that de Prades was innocent and\ncalumniated. Everybody at court, he declares, held the same view. Mes\nSouvenirs de vingt ans de s\u00e9jour \u00e0 Berlin, 2e \u00e9dit. 1805, v, 402-404.\n\n[1117] It is not clear how these are to be distinguished from the\nmutilations of the later volumes by his treacherous publisher\nLe Breton. Of this treachery the details are given by Grimm,\nCorr. litt. ed. 1829. vii, 144 sq.\n\n[1118] Buckle's account of him (1-vol. ed. p. 426) as \"burning with\nhatred against his persecutors\" after his imprisonment is overdrawn. He\nwas a poor hater.\n\n[1119] Madame Diderot, says her daughter, was very upright as well\nas very religious, but her temper, \"\u00e9ternellement grondeur, faisait\nde notre int\u00e9rieur un enfer, dont mon p\u00e8re \u00e9tait l'ange consolateur\"\n(Letter to Meister, in Notice pref. to Lettres In\u00e9dites de Mme. de\nSta\u00ebl \u00e0 Henri Meister, 1903, p. 62).\n\n[1120] \"H\u00e9las! disait mon excellent grand-p\u00e8re, j'ai deux fils:\nl'un sera s\u00fbrement un saint, et je crains bien que l'autre ne soit\ndamn\u00e9; mais je ne puis vivre avec le saint, et je suis tr\u00e8s heureux\ndu temps que je passe avec le damn\u00e9\" (Letter of Mme. de Vandeul,\nlast cited). Freethinker as he was, his fellow-townsmen officially\nrequested in 1780 to be allowed to pay for a portrait of him for\npublic exhibition, and the bronze bust he sent them was placed in\nthe h\u00f4tel de ville (MS. of M. de Vandeul-Diderot, as cited).\n\n[1121] Madame de Vandeul states that this story was motived by the\ncase of Diderot's sister, who died mad at the age of 27 or 28 (Letter\nabove cited; Rosenkranz, i, 9).\n\n[1122] Lettre de Voltaire \u00e0 D'Alembert, 27 ao\u00fbt, 1774.\n\n[1123] Lettre de 2 d\u00e9cembre, 1757.\n\n[1124] OEuvres posthumes de D'Alembert, 1799, i, 240.\n\n[1125] D'Holbach was the original of the character of Wolmar in\nRousseau's Nouvelle H\u00e9lo\u00efse, of whom Julie says that he \"does good\nwithout recompense.\" \"I never saw a man more simply simple\" was the\nverdict of Madame Geoffrin. Corr. litt. de Grimm (notice probably by\nMeister), ed. 1829-31, xiv, 291.\n\n[1126] Marmontel says of him that he \"avoit tout lu et n'avoit jamais\nrien oubli\u00e9 d'interessant.\" M\u00e9moires, 1804, ii, 312.\n\n[1127] See a full list of his works (compiled by Julian Hibbert\nafter the list given in the 1821 ed. of Diderot's Works, xii, 115,\nand rep. in the 1829-31 ed. of Grimm and Diderot's Correspondance,\nxiv, 293), prefixed to Watson's ed. (1834 and later) of the English\ntranslation of the System of Nature.\n\n[1128] Morley, Diderot, p. 341. The chapter gives a good account of\nthe book. Cp. Lange, i, 364 sq. (Eng. trans, ii, 26 sq.) as to its\nmaterialism. The best pages were said to be by Diderot (Corr. de Grimm,\nas cited, p. 289; the statement of Meister, who makes it also in his\n\u00c9loge). Naigeon denied that Diderot had any part in the Syst\u00e8me, but\nin 1820 there was published an edition with \"notes and corrections\"\nby Diderot.\n\n[1129] It is to be noted that the English translation (3 vols. 3rd\ned. 1817; 4th ed. 1820) deliberately tampers with the language of the\noriginal to the extent of making it deistic. This perversion has been\nby oversight preserved in all the reprints.\n\n[1130] Mirabeau spoke of the Essai as \"le livre le moins connu,\net celui qui m\u00e9rite le plus l'\u00eatre.\" Even the reprint of 1793 had\nbecome \"extremely rare\" in 1822. The book seems to have been specially\ndisquieting to orthodoxy, and was hunted down accordingly.\n\n[1131] So Morley, p. 347. It does not occur to Lord Morley, and to\nthe Comtists who take a similar tone, that in thus disparaging past\nthinkers they are really doing the thing they blame.\n\n[1132] Lettres de Memmius \u00e0 Cic\u00e9ron (1771); Histoire de Jenni\n(1775). In the earlier article, Ath\u00e9e, in the Dictionnaire\nPhilosophique, he speaks of having met in France very good physicists\nwho were atheists. In his letter of September 26, 1770, to Madame\nNecker, he writes concerning the Syst\u00e8me de la Nature: \"Il est un\npeu honteux \u00e0 notre nation que tant de gens aient embrass\u00e9 si vite\nune opinion si ridicule.\" And yet Prof. W. M. Sloane, of Columbia\nUniversity, still writes of Voltaire, in the manner of English bishops,\nas \"atheistical\" (The French Revolution and Religious Reform, 1901,\np. 26).\n\n[1133] Though in 1797 we have Mar\u00e9chal's Code d'une Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 d'hommes\nsans Dieu, and in 1798 his Pens\u00e9es libres sur les pr\u00eatres.\n\n[1134] Thus Dr. Cairns (Unbelief in the Eighteenth Century, p. 165)\ngravely argues that the French Revolution proves the inefficacy\nof theism without a Trinity to control conduct. He has omitted to\ncompare the theistic bloodshed of the Revolution with the Trinitarian\nbloodshed of the Crusades, the papal suppression of the Albigenses,\nthe Hussite wars, and other orthodox undertakings.\n\n[1135] The book was accorded the Monthyon prize by the French\nAcademy. In translation (1788) it found a welcome in England among\nChurchmen by reason of its pro-Christian tone and its general\nvindication of religious institutions. The translation was the work\nof Mary Wollstonecraft. See Kegan Paul's William Godwin, 1876, i,\n193. Mrs. Dunlop, the friend of Burns, recommending its perusal to\nthe poet, paid it a curious compliment: \"He does not write like a\nsectary, hardly like a Christian, but yet while I read him, I like\nbetter my God, my neighbour, Monsieur Necker, and myself.\" Robert\nBurns and Mrs. Dunlop, ed. by W. Wallace, 1898, p. 258.\n\n[1136] See Voltaire's letters to Madame Necker, Corr. de Grimm,\ned. 1829, vii, 23, 118. Of the lady, Grimm writes (p. 118): \"Hypathie\nNecker passe sa vie avec des syst\u00e9matiques, mais elle est devote \u00e0\nsa mani\u00e8re. Elle voudrait \u00eatre sinc\u00e8rement hugenote, ou socinienne,\nou d\u00e9istique, ou plut\u00f4t, pour \u00eatre quelque chose, elle prend le\nparti de ne se rendre compte sur rien.\" \"Hypathie\" was Voltaire's\ncomplimentary name for her.\n\n[1137] Cp. Aulard, Le Culte de la Raison et le Culte de l'\u00catre Supr\u00eame,\n1892, pp. 17-19. M. Gazier (\u00c9tudes sur l'histoire religieuse de la\nr\u00e9volution fran\u00e7aise, 1877, pp. 48, 173, 189 sq.) speaks somewhat\nloosely of a prevailing anti-Christian feeling when actually citing\nonly isolated instances, and giving proofs of a general orthodoxy. Yet\nhe points out the complete misconception of Thiers on the subject\n(p. 202).\n\n[1138] Cp. Prof. W. M. Sloane, The French Revolution and Religious\nReform, p. 43.\n\n[1139] Gazier, as cited, pp. 2, 4, 12, 19-21, 71, etc.\n\n[1140] Les Assembl\u00e9es Provinciales sous Louis XVI, 1864,\npref. pp. viii-ix.\n\n[1141] Gazier, L. ii, ch. i.\n\n[1142] Id. p. 67.\n\n[1143] Id. p. 69.\n\n[1144] L\u00e9once de Lavergne, as cited.\n\n[1145] The authority of Turgot himself could be cited for the\ndemand that the State clergy should accept the constitution of the\nState. Cp. Aulard, Le Culte de la Raison, p. 12; Tissot, \u00c9tude sur\nTurgot, 1878, p. 160.\n\n[1146] Gazier, p. 113.\n\n[1147] Aulard, Culte, pp. 19-20.\n\n[1148] Michelet, Hist. de la r\u00e9volution fran\u00e7aise, ed. 8vo 1868 and\nlater, i, 16. Cp. Proudhon's De la justice, 1858.\n\n[1149] \"Tout jugement religieux ou politique est une contradiction\nflagrante dans une religion uniquement fond\u00e9e sur un dogme \u00e9tranger\n\u00e0 la justice.\" Ed. cited, introd. p. 60.\n\n[1150] The grave misstatement of Michelet on this head is exposed by\nAulard, Culte, p. 60.\n\n[1151] Yet it is customary among Christians to speak of this lady\nin the most opprobrious terms. The royalist (but malcontent) Marquis\nde Villeneuve, who had seen the Revolution in his youth, claimed in\nhis old age to have afterwards \"conversed with the Goddess Reason\nof Paris and with the Goddess Reason of Bourges\" (where he became\ngovernor); but, though he twice alludes to those women, he says\nnothing whatever against their characters (De l'Agonie de la France,\n1835, i, 3, 19). Prof. W. M. Sloane, with all his religious prejudice,\nis satisfied that the women chosen as Goddesses of Reason outside of\nParis were \"noted for their spotless character.\" Work cited, p. 198.\n\n[1152] M\u00e9moires, ed. 1841, ii, 166.\n\n[1153] P\u00e8re F.-J.-F. Fortin, Souvenirs, Auxerre, 1867, ii, 41.\n\n[1154] See the speech in Aulard, Culte, p. 240; and cp. pp. 79-85.\n\n[1155] \"Le peuple aura des f\u00eates dans lesquelles il offrira de l'encens\n\u00e0 l'\u00catre Supr\u00eame, au ma\u00eetre de la nature, car nous n'avons pas voulu\nan\u00e9antir la superstition pour \u00e9tablir le r\u00e8gne de l'ath\u00e9isme.\" Speech\nof Nov. 26, 1793, in the Moniteur. (Discours de Danton, ed. Andr\u00e9\nFribourg, 1910, p. 599.)\n\n[1156] Aulard, Culte, pp. 81-82.\n\n[1157] Concerning whom see Aulard, Culte, pp. 86-96.\n\n[1158] The Source, the Strength, and the True Spirit of Laws,\nEng. tr. 1753, p. 6.\n\n[1159] E.g., in the Arr\u00eat du Parlement of 9 juin, 1762, denouncing\nRousseau's \u00c9mile as tending to make the royal authority odious and to\ndestroy the principle of obedience; and in the Examen du B\u00e9llisaire de\nM. Marmontel, by Coger (Nouv. \u00e9d. augm. 1767, p. 45 sq. Cp. Marmontel's\nM\u00e9moires, 1804, iii, 46, as to his being called ennemi du tr\u00f4ne et de\nl'autel). This kind of invective was kept up against the philosophes\nto the moment of the Revolution. See for instance Le vrai religieux,\nDiscours d\u00e9di\u00e9 \u00e0 Madame Louise de France, par le R. P. C. A. 1787,\np. 4: \"Une philosophie orgueilleuse a renvers\u00e9 les limites sacr\u00e9es que\nla main du Tr\u00e8s-Haut avoit elle-m\u00eame \u00e9lev\u00e9es. La raison de l'homme\na os\u00e9 sonder les d\u00e9crets de Dieu.... Dans les acc\u00e8s de son ivresse,\nn'a-t-elle pas sap\u00e9 les fondemens du tr\u00f4ne et des lois,\" etc.\n\n[1160] Cp. the admissions of Curnier (Rivarol, sa vie et ses oeuvres,\n1858, p. 149) in deprecation of Burke's wild likening of Rivarol's\njournalism to the Annals of Tacitus.\n\n[1161] OEuvres, ed. cited, pp. 136-40, 147-55.\n\n[1162] Cp. the critique of Sainte-Beuve, prefixed to ed. cited,\npp. 14-17, and that of Ars\u00e8ne Houssaye, id. pp. 31-33. Mr. Saintsbury,\nthough biassed to the side of the royalist, admits that \"Rivarol\nhardly knows what sincerity is\" (Miscellaneous Essays, 1892, p. 67).\n\n[1163] Charles Comte is thus partly inaccurate in saying (Trait\u00e9 de\nL\u00e9gislation, 1835, i, 72) that the charge against the philosophers\nbegan \"on the day on which there was set up a government in France\nthat sought to re-establish the abuses of which they had sought the\ndestruction.\" What is true is that the charge, framed at once by the\nbackers of the Old R\u00e9gime, has always since done duty for reaction.\n\n[1164] M\u00e9moires, ed. Jannet, iii, 313; iv, 70; v, 346, 348.\n\n[1165] Id. iii, 346-47.\n\n[1166] D'Argenson, noting in his old age how \"on n'a jamais autant\nparl\u00e9 de nation et d'\u00c9tat qu'aujourd'hui,\" how no such talk had been\nheard under Louis XIV, and how he himself had developed on the subject,\nadds, \"cela vient du parlement et des Anglois.\" He goes on to speak of\na reissue of the translation of Locke on Civil Government, originally\nmade by the Jansenists (M\u00e9moires, iv, 189-90).\n\n[1167] Hallam, Lit. of Europe, ed. 1872, iii, 160-63.\n\n[1168] OEuvres diverses de Pierre Bayle, La Haye, 4 vols. fol. 1737,\nii, 564 sq.\n\n[1169] This Critique appears in the very volume to which Coger refers\nfor the Avis aux R\u00e9fugi\u00e9z. See Lett. viii, xiii, xvii, etc., vol. and\ned. cited, pp. 36, 54, 71, etc.\n\n[1170] Cp. the survey of Aulard, Hist. polit. de la r\u00e9v. fran\u00e7aise,\n2e \u00e9dit. 1903, pp. 2-23.\n\n[1171] Probably the work of a Jansenist.\n\n[1172] On the whole question of the growth of abstract revolutionary\ndoctrine in politics cp. W. S. McKechnie on the De Jure Regni apud\nScotos in the \"George Buchanan\" vol. of Glasgow Quatercentenary\nStudies, 1906, pp. 256-76; Gierke, Political Theories of the Middle\nAges, Maitland's tr. 1900, p. 37 sq.\n\n[1173] Mallet actually reproaches the philosophes in the mass--while\nadmitting the hostility of many of them to the Revolution--with \"having\naccelerated French degeneration and depravation ... by rendering\nthe conscience argumentative (raisonneuse), by substituting for\nduties inculcated by sentiment, tradition, and habit, the uncertain\nrules of the human reason and sophisms adapted to passions,\" etc.,\netc. (B. Mallet, as cited, p. 360). With all his natural vigour of\nmind, Mallet du Pan thus came to talk the language of the ordinary\nirrationalist of the Reaction. Certainly, if the stimulation of the\nhabit of reasoning be a destructive course, the philosophes stand\ncondemned. But as Christians had been reasoning as best they could, in\nan eternal series of vain disputes, for a millennium and a-half before\nthe Revolution, with habitual appeal to the passions, the argument\nonly proves how vacuous a Christian champion's reasoning can be.\n\n[1174] Art. in Mercure Britannique, No. 13, Feb. 21, 1799; cited\nby B. Mallet in Mallet du Pan and the French Revolution, 1902,\nApp. p. 357.\n\n[1175] Id. p. 359.\n\n[1176] Tableau litt\u00e9raire du dix-huiti\u00e8me si\u00e8cle, 8e \u00e9dit. pp. 112,\n113.\n\n[1177] Id. p. 72.\n\n[1178] Work cited, p. 358.\n\n[1179] Id. p. 359.\n\n[1180] Cp. Morley, Diderot, p. 407. Lord Morley points to the phrase in\nanother form in a letter of Voltaire's in 1761. It really derives from\nJean Meslier, who quotes it from an unlettered man (Testament, i. 19).\n\n[1181] Rosenkranz, Diderot's Leben und Werke, 1866, ii, 380-81.\n\n[1182] As Lord Morley points out, Henri Martin absolutely reverses\nthe purport of a passage in order to convict Diderot of justifying\nregicide.\n\n[1183] M\u00e9moires, ed. Jannet, iv, 44, 51, 68, 69, 74, 91, 93, 101, 103.\n\n[1184] Mallet du Pan says he saw the MS., and knew Diderot to have\nreceived 10,000 livres tournois for his additions. This statement\nis incredible. But Meister is explicit, in his \u00e9loge, as to Diderot\nhaving written for the book much that he thought nobody would sign,\nwhereas Raynal was ready to sign anything.\n\n[1185] Memoirs of Sir Samuel Romilly, 3rd ed. 1841, i, 46.\n\n[1186] When D'Argenson writes in 1752 (M\u00e9moires, \u00e9d. Jannet, iv,\n103) that he hears \"only philosophes say, as if convinced, that even\nanarchy would be better\" than the existing misgovernment, he makes\nno suggestion that they teach this. And he declares for his own part\nthat everything is drifting to ruin: \"nulle r\u00e9formation ... nulle\nam\u00e9lioration.... Tout tombe, par lambeaux.\"\n\n[1187] Aulard, Hist. polit. de la r\u00e9vol. p. 24.\n\n[1188] This is the sufficient comment on a perplexing page of Lord\nMorley's second monograph on Burke (pp. 110-11), which I have never\nbeen able to reconcile with the rest of his writing.\n\n[1189] Lecky, Hist. of England in the Eighteenth Century, small\ned. vi, 263.\n\n[1190] D'Argenson notes this repeatedly, though in one passage he\npraises the Parlement as having alone made head against absolutism\n(d\u00e9c. 1752; ed. cited, iv, 116).\n\n[1191] Maximes et Pens\u00e9es, ed. 1856, p. 72.\n\n[1192] Id. pp. 73-74.\n\n[1193] Chamfort in another passage maintains against Soulavie that\nthe Academy did much to develop the spirit of freedom in thought and\npolitics. Id. p. 107. And this too is arguable, as we have seen.\n\n[1194] On this complicated issue, which cannot be here handled at\nany further length, see Prof. P. A. Wadia's essay The Philosophers\nand the French Revolution (Social Science Series, 1904), which,\nhowever, needs revision; and compare the argument of Nourrisson,\nJ.-J. Rousseau et le Rousseauisme, 1903, ch. xx.\n\n[1195] Correspondance de Grimm, ed. cited, xiv, 5-6. Lettre de\njanv. 1788.\n\n[1196] Lettre de Voltaire \u00e0 D'Alembert, 27 ao\u00fbt, 1774.\n\n[1197] Histoire du mariage des pr\u00eatres en France, par M. Gr\u00e9goire,\nancien \u00e9v\u00eaque de Blois, 1826, p. v. Compare the details in the\nAppendice to the Etudes of M. Gazier, before cited. That writer's\naccount is the more decisive seeing that his bias is clerical,\nand that, writing before M. Aulard, he had to a considerable extent\nretained the old illusion as to the \"decreeing of atheism\" by the\nConvention (p. 313). See pp. 230-260 as to the readjustment effected\nby Gr\u00e9goire, while the conservative clergy were still striving to\nundo the Revolution.\n\n[1198] Heroes and Hero-Worship: Napoleon.\n\n[1199] See the Sentiments de Napol\u00e9on sur le Christianisme:\nconversations recueillies \u00e0 Sainte-H\u00e9l\u00e8ne par le Comte de Montholon,\n1841. Many of the utterances here set forth are irreconcilable with\nNapoleon's general tone.\n\n[1200] O'Meara, Napol\u00e9on en Exil, ed. Lacroix, 1897, ii, 39.\n\n[1201] Ph. Gonnard, Les origines de la l\u00e9gende Napol\u00e9onienne, 1906,\np. 258.\n\n[1202] Id. p. 260.\n\n[1203] Pasquier, cited by Rose, Life of Napoleon, ed. 1913, i,\n282. The Concordat was bitterly resented by the freethinkers in the\narmy. Id. p. 281.\n\n[1204] See Jules Barni's Napol\u00e9on Ier. ed. 1870, p. 83, as to the\namazing Catechism imposed by Napoleon on France in 1811. For the\nhistory of its preparation and imposition see De Labone, Paris sous\nNapol\u00e9on: La Religion, 1907, p. 100 sq.\n\n[1205] As to the Napoleonic censorship of literature, cp. Madame de\nSta\u00ebl, Consid\u00e9rations sur la r\u00e9volution fran\u00e7aise, ptie. iv, ch. 16;\nDix Ann\u00e9es d'Exil, pr\u00e9f.; Welschinger, La Censure sous le premier\nEmpire, 1882.\n\n[1206] Las Cases, M\u00e9morial de Sainte-H\u00e9l\u00e8ne, 19 ao\u00fbt, 1816.\n\n[1207] Mignet, Hist. de la r\u00e9volution fran\u00e7aise, 4e \u00e9dit. ii, 340.\n\n[1208] Cp. Pusey, Histor. Enquiry into the Probable Causes of the\nRationalist Character ... of the Theology of Germany, 1828, p. 79.\n\n[1209] Bishop Hurst, History of Rationalism, ed. 1867, p. 56.\n\n[1210] Id. pp. 57-58 (last ed. pp. 74-76), citing Tholuck, Deutsche\nUniversit\u00e4ten, i, 145-48, and Dowding, Life of Calixtus, pp. 132-33.\n\n[1211] Pusey, p. 113.\n\n[1212] Hurst, p. 59.\n\n[1213] Cp. Buckle, 1-vol. ed. pp. 303-309. \"The result of the\nThirty Years' War was indifference, not only to the Confession, but\nto religion in general. Ever since that period, secular interests\ndecidedly occupy the foreground\" (Kahnis, Internal History of German\nProtestantism, Eng. tr. 1856, p. 21).\n\n[1214] Quoted by Bishop Hurst, ed. cited, p. 60 (78).\n\n[1215] Preservatio wider die Pest der heutigen Atheisten.\n\n[1216] Dated from Rome; but this was a mystification.\n\n[1217] Kahnis, p. 125; La Croze, Entretiens, 1711, p. 401.\n\n[1218] Even Knutzen seems to have been influenced by Spinoza. P\u00fcnjer,\nHist. of the Christ. Philos. of Religion, Eng. tr. i, 437. P\u00fcnjer,\nhowever, seems to have exaggerated the connection.\n\n[1219] Cp. Lange, Gesch. des Materialismus, 3te Aufl. i, 318\n(Eng. tr. ii, 35).\n\n[1220] Epistol\u00e6 ad Spinozam et Responsiones, in Gfr\u00f6rer, liii.\n\n[1221] Colerus, Vie de Spinoza, in Gfr\u00f6rer's ed. of the Opera, 1830,\npp. lv, lvi.\n\n[1222] P\u00fcnjer, as cited, i, 434-30: Lange, last cit. Lange notes\nthat Genthe's Compendium de impostura religionum, which has been\nerroneously assigned to the sixteenth century, must belong to the\nperiod of Kortholt's work.\n\n[1223] P\u00fcnjer, p. 439; Lange, last cit.; Tholuck, Kirch. Leben,\n2 Abth. pp. 57-58.\n\n[1224] It was nominally issued at Amsterdam, really at Berlin.\n\n[1225] This writer gives (p. 12) a notable list of the forms of\natheism: Atheismus directus, indirectus, formalis, virtualis,\ntheoreticus, practicus, inchoatus, consummatus, subtilis, crassus,\nprivativus, negativus, and so on, ad lib.\n\n[1226] Cp. Buckle and his Critics, pp. 171-72; P\u00fcnjer, i, 515.\n\n[1227] Letter cited by Dr. Latta. Leibniz, 1898, p. 2, note.\n\n[1228] Philos. Schriften, ed. Gerhardt, i, 26; Martineau, Study of\nSpinoza, p. 77.\n\n[1229] Letter to Thomas, December 23, 1670.\n\n[1230] Quoted by Tholuck, as last cited, p. 61. Spener took the\nsame tone.\n\n[1231] Philos. Schriften, ed. Gerhardt, i, 34; ii, 563; Latta,\np. 24; Martineau, p. 75. Cp. Refutation of Spinoza by Leibnitz,\ned. by Foucher de Careil. Eng. tr. 1855.\n\n[1232] His notable surmise as to gradation of species (see Latta,\npp. 38-39) was taken up among the French materialists, but did not\nthen modify current science.\n\n[1233] The only lengthy treatise published by him in his lifetime.\n\n[1234] M. A. Jacques, intr. to OEuvres de Leibniz, 1846, i, 54-57.\n\n[1235] Cp. Tholuck, Das kirchliche Leben, as cited, 2\nAbth. pp. 52-55. Kahnis, coinciding with Erdmann, pronounces that,\nalthough Leibnitz \"acknowledges the God of the Christian faith,\nyet his system assigned to Him a very uncertain position only\"\n(Int. Hist. of Ger. Protestantism, p. 26).\n\n[1236] Cp. P\u00fcnjer, i, 509, as to his attitude on ritual.\n\n[1237] Latta, as cited, p. 16; Vie de Leibnitz, par De Jaucourt,\nin ed. 1747 of the Essais de Th\u00e9odic\u00e9e, i, 235-39.\n\n[1238] As to his virtual deism see P\u00fcnjer, i, 513-15. But he proposed\nto send Christian missionaries to the heathen. Tholuck, as last cited,\np. 55.\n\n[1239] Lettres entre Leibnitz et Clarke.\n\n[1240] Discours de la conformit\u00e9 de la foi avec la raison, \u00a7\u00a7 68-70;\nEssais sur la bont\u00e9 de Dieu, etc., \u00a7\u00a7 50, 61, 164, 180, 292-93.\n\n[1241] The Nouveaux Essais sur l'Entendement humain, refuting Locke,\nappeared posthumously in 1765. Locke had treated his theistic critic\nwith contempt. (Latta, p. 13.)\n\n[1242] Amand Saintes, Hist. crit. du Rationalisme en Allemagne, 1841,\nch. vi; Heinrich Schmid, Die Geschichte des Pietismus, 1863, ch. ii.\n\n[1243] Saintes, p. 51; cp. Pusey, p. 105, as to \"the want of resistance\nfrom the school of Pietists to the subsequent invasion of unbelief.\"\n\n[1244] Hagenbach, German Rationalism, Eng. tr. 1865, p. 9.\n\n[1245] Id. p. 39; Pusey, Histor. Enquiry into the Causes of German\nRationalism, 1828, pp. 88, 97; Tholuck, Abriss einer Geschichte des\nUmw\u00e4lzung ... seit 1750 auf dem Gebiete der Theologie in Deutschland,\nin Vermischte Schriften, 1839, ii, 5.\n\n[1246] Pusey, pp. 86, 87, 98.\n\n[1247] Cp. Pusey, pp. 37-38, 45, 48, 49, 53-54, 79, 101-109; Saintes,\npp. 28, 79-80; Hagenbach, pp. 41, 72, 105.\n\n[1248] Pusey, p. 110. Cp. Saintes, ch. vi.\n\n[1249] Das kirchliche Leben, as cited, 2 Abth. p. 58.\n\n[1250] Id. pp. 56-57.\n\n[1251] Vol. i, p. 6.\n\n[1252] H. Luden, Christian Thomasius nach seinen Schicksalen und\nSchriften dargestellt, 1805, p. 7.\n\n[1253] Cp. Schmid, Geschichte des Pietismus, pp. 486-88.\n\n[1254] Pufendorf's bulky treatise De Jure Natur\u00e6 et Gentium was\npublished at Lund, where he was professor, in 1672. The shorter De\nOfficio hominis et civis (also Lund, 1673) is a condensation and\npartly a vindication of the other, and this it was that convinced\nThomasius. As to Pufendorf's part in the transition from theological to\nrational moral philosophy, see Hallam, Lit. of Europe, iv, 171-78. He\nis fairly to be bracketed with Cumberland; but Hallam hardly recognizes\nthat it was the challenge of Hobbes that forced the change.\n\n[1255] Freim\u00fcthige, lustige und ernsthafte, jedoch vernunft- und\ngesetzm\u00e4ssige Gedanken, oder Monatgespr\u00e4che \u00fcber allerhand, vornehmlich\n\u00fcber neue B\u00fccher. There had been an earlier Acta Eruditorum, in Latin,\npublished at Leipzig, and a French Ephemerides savantes, Hamburg,\n1686. Other German and French periodicals soon followed that of\nThomasius. Luden, p. 162.\n\n[1256] Schmid, pp. 488-92, gives a sketch of some of the contents.\n\n[1257] Pusey, p. 86, note. It is surprising that Pusey does not make\nmore account of Thomasius's naturalistic treatment of polygamy and\nsuicide, which he showed to be not criminal in terms of natural law.\n\n[1258] Compare Weber, Gesch. der deutschen Lit. \u00a7 81 (ed. 1880,\npp. 90-91); Pusey, as cited, p. 114. note; Enfield's Hist. of\nPhilos. (abst. of Brucker's Hist. crit. philos.), 1840. pp. 610-612;\nUeberweg, ii, 115; and Schlegel's note in Reid's Mosheim, p. 790,\nwith Karl Hillebrand, Six Lect. on the Hist. of German Thought, 1880,\npp. 64-65. There is a modern monograph by A. Nicoladoni, Christian\nThomasius; ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Aufkl\u00e4rung, 1888.\n\n[1259] Baron de Bielfeld, Progr\u00e8s des Allemands, 3e \u00e9d. 1767, i,\n24. \"Before Thomasius,\" writes Bielfeld, \"an old woman could not have\nred eyes without running the risk of being accused of witchcraft and\nburned at the stake.\"\n\n[1260] Schmid, pp. 493-97. Thomasius's principal writings on this\ntheme were: Vom Recht evangelischen F\u00fcrsten in Mitteldingen (1692);\nVom Recht evangelischen F\u00fcrsten in theologischen Streitigkeiten\n(1696); Vom Recht evangelischen F\u00fcrsten gegen Ketzer (1697).\n\n[1261] Ec. Hist. 17 Cent. sect. ii, pt. ii, ch. i, \u00a7\u00a7 11, 14. It\nis noteworthy that the Pietists at Halle did not scruple to ally\nthemselves for a time with Thomasius, he being opposed to the orthodox\nparty. Kahnis, Internal Hist. of Ger. Protestantism, p. 114.\n\n[1262] Pusey, as cited, p. 121. Cp. p. 113.\n\n[1263] Hagenbach, Kirchengeschichte des 18. und 19. Jahrh., 2te\nAufl. i, 164. (This matter is not in the abridged translation.)\n\n[1264] See the furious account of him by Mosheim, 17 C. sec. ii,\npt. ii, ch. i, \u00a7 33.\n\n[1265] Hagenbach, last cit. p. 169.\n\n[1266] Noack, Die Freidenker in der Religion, Th. iii, Kap. 1; Bruno\nBauer, Einfluss des englischen Qu\u00e4kerthums auf die deutsche Cultur und\nauf das englisch-russische Projekt einer Weltkirche, 1878, pp. 41-44.\n\n[1267] Pref. to French tr. of the Meditationes, 1770, pp. xii-xvii. Lau\ndied in 1740.\n\n[1268] Tholuck, Abriss, as cited, p. 10.\n\n[1269] Trans. in English, 1750.\n\n[1270] Hagenbach, tr. pp. 35-36; Saintes, p. 61; Kahnis, as cited,\np. 114.\n\n[1271] Hagenbach, pp. 37-39. It is to be observed (Tholuck, Abriss,\np. 23) that the Wolffian philosophy was reinstated in Prussia by\nroyal mandate in 1739, a year before the accession of Frederick the\nGreat. But we know that Frederick championed him.\n\n[1272] Tholuck, Abriss, as cited, p. 5.\n\n[1273] Tholuck, Abriss, as cited, p. 6.\n\n[1274] Kahnis, p. 55.\n\n[1275] P\u00fcnjer, i, 544. Cp. Tholuck, Abriss, pp. 19-22.\n\n[1276] Tholuck, Abriss, p. 22. Schmid was for a time supposed to be\nthe author of the Wolfenb\u00fcttel Fragments of Reimarus (below, p. 327).\n\n[1277] Unpartheyische Kirchen- und Ketzerhistorie, 1699-1700, 2\ntom. fol.--fuller ed. 3 tom. fol. 1740. Compare Mosheim's angry account\nof it with Murdock's note in defence: Reid's ed. p. 804. Bruno Bauer\ndescribes it as epoch-making (Einfluss des englischen Qu\u00e4kerthums,\np. 42). This history had a great influence on Goethe in his teens,\nleading him, he says, to the conviction that he, like so many\nother men, should have a religion of his own, which he goes on to\ndescribe. It was a re-hash of Gnosticism. (Wahrheit und Dichtung,\nB. viii; Werke, ed. 1866, xi, 344 sq.)\n\n[1278] Cp. Hagenbach, Kirchengeschichte, i, 171: P\u00fcnjer, i, 279.\n\n[1279] Die G\u00f6ttlichkeit der Vernunft.\n\n[1280] Noack, Th. iii, Kap. 2: Saintes, pp. 85-86; P\u00fcnjer, p. 442. It\nis interesting to find Edelmann supplying a formula latterly utilized\nby the so-called \"New Theology\" in England--the thesis that \"the\nreality of everything which exists is God,\" and that there can\ntherefore be no atheists, since he who recognizes the universe\nrecognizes God.\n\n[1281] Naigeon, by altering the words of Diderot, caused him to appear\none of the exceptions; but he was not. See Rosenkranz, Diderot's\nLeben und Werke. Vorb. p. vii.\n\n[1282] Kahnis, pp. 128-29. Edelmann's Life was written by\nPratje. Historische Nachrichten von Edelmann's Leben, 1755. It gives\na list of replies to his writings (p. 205 sq.). Apropos of the first\nissue of Strauss's Leben Jesu, a volume of Erinnerungen of Edelmann\nwas published at Clausthal in 1839 by W. Elster; and Strauss in his\nDogmatik avowed the pleasure with which he had made the acquaintance\nof so interesting a writer. A collection of extracts from Edelmann's\nworks, entitled Der neu er\u00f6ffnete Edelmann, was published at Bern\nin 1847; and the Unschuldige Wahrheiten was reprinted in 1846. His\nAutobiography, written in 1752, was published in 1849.\n\n[1283] Betrachtungen \u00fcber die vornehmsten Wahrheiten der\nReligion. Another apologetic work of the period marked by rational\nmoderation and tolerance was the Vertheidigten Glauben der Christen\nof the Berlin court-preacher A. W. F. Sack (1754).\n\n[1284] Art. by Wagenmann in Allgemeine deutsche Biographie.\n\n[1285] Hagenbach, Kirchengeschichte, i, 355.\n\n[1286] P\u00fcnjer, i, 542.\n\n[1287] Kurz, Hist. of the Christian Church from the Reformation,\nEng. tr. ii, 274. A Jesuit, A. Merz, wrote four replies to\nJerusalem. One was entitled Frag ob durch die biblische Simplicit\u00e4t\nallein ein Freydenker oder Deist bekehret ... werden k\u00f6nne (\"Can a\nFreethinker or Deist be converted by Biblical Simplicity alone?\"),\n1775.\n\n[1288] Cp. Hagenbach, i, 353; tr. p. 120. Jerusalem was the father\nof the gifted youth whose suicide (1775) moved Goethe to write The\nSorrows of Werther, a false presentment of the real personality,\nwhich stirred Lessing (his affectionate friend) to publish a volume of\nthe dead youth's essays, in vindication of his character. The father\nhad considerable influence in purifying German style. Cp. Goethe,\nWahrheit und Dichtung, Th. ii, B. vii; Werke, ed. 1866. xi, 272;\nand Hagenbach, i, 354.\n\n[1289] Goethe, as last cited, pp. 268-69.\n\n[1290] Lechler, Gesch. des englischen Deismus, pp. 447-52. The\ntranslations began with that of Tindal (1741), which made a great\nsensation.\n\n[1291] Pusey, pp. 125, 127, citing Twesten; Gostwick, German Culture\nand Christianity, p. 36, citing Ernesti. Thorschmid's Freidenker\nBibliothek, issued in 1765-67, collected both translations and\nrefutations. Lechler, p. 451.\n\n[1292] Lange, Gesch. des Materialismus, i. 405 (Eng. tr. ii, 146-47).\n\n[1293] Lange, i, 347, 399 (Eng. tr. ii, 76, 137).\n\n[1294] Lange, i, 396-97 (ii, 134-35).\n\n[1295] Goethe tells of having seen in his boyhood, at Frankfort, an\nirreligious French romance publicly burned, and of having his interest\nin the book thereby awakened. But this seems to have been during the\nFrench occupation. (Wahrheit und Dichtung, B. iv; Werke, xi, 146.)\n\n[1296] Id. B. iv, end.\n\n[1297] Translated into English 1780; 2nd ed. 1793. The translator\nclaims for Haller great learning (2nd ed. p. xix). He seems in reality\nto have had very little, as he represents that Jesus in his day\n\"was the only teacher who recommended chastity to men\" (p. 82).\n\n[1298] Rettung der Offenbarung gegen die Einw\u00fcrfe der\nFreigeister. Haller wrote under a similar title, 1775-76.\n\n[1299] Baur, Gesch. der christl. Kirche, iv, 599.\n\n[1300] Gostwick, p. 15.\n\n[1301] Wahrheit und Dichtung, B. viii; Werke, xi, 329.\n\n[1302] Schlosser, Hist. of Eighteenth Cent., Eng. tr. 1843. i, 150;\nHagenbach, tr. p. 66.\n\n[1303] Hagenbach, tr. p. 63.\n\n[1304] Id., Kirchengeschichte, i, 232.\n\n[1305] Kahnis, p. 43; Tholuck, Abriss, p. 34.\n\n[1306] See the extracts of B\u00fcchner, Zwei gekr\u00f6nte Freidenker, 1890,\npp. 45-47.\n\n[1307] Thi\u00e9bault, Mes Souvenirs de Vingt Ans de S\u00e9jour \u00e0 Berlin, 2e\n\u00e9dit. 1805, i, 126-28. See i, 355-56, ii, 78-82, as to the baselessness\nof the stories (e.g., Pusey, Histor. Inq. into Ger. Rationalism,\np. 123) that Frederick changed his views in old age. Thi\u00e9bault, a\nstrict Catholic, is emphatic in his negation: \"The persons who assert\nthat [his principles] became more religious ... have either lied or\nbeen themselves mistaken.\" Carlyle naturally detests Thi\u00e9bault. The\nrumour may have arisen out of the fact that in his Examen critique du\nSyst\u00e8me de la Nature Frederick counter-argues d'Holbach's impeachment\nof Christianity. The attack on kings gave him a fellow-feeling with\nthe Church.\n\n[1308] Cp. the argument of Faure, Hist. de Saint Louis, 1866, i,\n242-43; ii, 597.\n\n[1309] Examen de l'Essai sur les pr\u00e9jug\u00e9s, 1769. See the passage in\nL\u00e9vy-Bruhl, L'Allemagne depuis Leibniz, p. 89).\n\n[1310] G. Weber, Gesch. der deutschen Literatur, 11te Aufl. p. 99.\n\n[1311] Zur Gesch. der Relig. und Philos. in Deutschland--Werke,\ned. 1876, iii, 63-64. Goethe's blame (W. und D., B. vii) is passed\non purely literary grounds.\n\n[1312] Hagenbach, tr. pp. 103-104; Cairns, p. 177.\n\n[1313] This post he left to become secretary of the Academy of\nPainting.\n\n[1314] Cited by P\u00fcnjer, i, 545-46.\n\n[1315] Id. p. 546.\n\n[1316] Hagenbach, tr. pp. 100-103; Saintes, pp. 91-92; P\u00fcnjer, p. 536;\nNoack, Th. iii, Kap. 7.\n\n[1317] Hagenbach, Kirchengeschichte, i, 298, 351.\n\n[1318] Id. i, 294 sq.\n\n[1319] The book is remembered in France by reason of Eberhard's\namusing mistake of treating as a serious production of the Sorbonne\nthe skit in which Turgot derided the Sorbonne's findings against\nMarmontel's B\u00e9lisaire.\n\n[1320] Hagenbach, tr. p. 109.\n\n[1321] Eberhard, however, is respectfully treated by Lessing in his\ndiscussion on Leibnitz's view as to eternal punishment.\n\n[1322] Noack, Th. iii, Kap. 8.\n\n[1323] Saintes, pp. 92-93.\n\n[1324] Cp. Hagenbach, Kirchengeschichte, i, 348, 363.\n\n[1325] Id. i, 367; tr. pp. 124-25; Saintes, p. 94; Kahnis, p. 45. Pusey\n(150-51, note) speaks of Teller and Spalding as belonging, with\nNicolai, Mendelssohn, and others, to a \"secret institute, whose object\nwas to remodel religion and alter the form of government.\" This seems\nto be a fantasy.\n\n[1326] So Steffens, cited by Hagenbach, tr. p. 124.\n\n[1327] P. Gastrow, Joh. Salomo Semler, 1905, p. 45. See Pusey,\n140-41, note, for Semler's account of the rigid and unreasoning\northodoxy against which he reacted. (Citing Semler's Lebenschreibung,\nii, 121-61.) Semler, however, records that Baumgarten, one of the\ntheological professors at Halle, would in expansive moods defend theism\nand make light of theology (Lebenschreibung, i, 103 ). Cp. Tholuck,\nAbriss, as cited, pp. 12, 18. Pusey notes that \"many of the principal\ninnovators had been pupils of Baumgarten\" (p. 132, citing Niemeyer).\n\n[1328] Cp. Dr. G. Karo, Johann Salomo Semler, 1905, p. 25; Saintes,\npp. 129-31.\n\n[1329] Cp. Gostwick, p. 51; P\u00fcnjer, i, 561.\n\n[1330] Karo, p. 44.\n\n[1331] Cp. Saintes, p. 132 sq.\n\n[1332] Cp. Karo, pp. 3, 8, 16, 28.\n\n[1333] Over a hundred and seventy in all. P\u00fcnjer, i, 560; Gastrow,\np. 637.\n\n[1334] Karo, pp. 5-6.\n\n[1335] Gastrow, p. 223.\n\n[1336] Pusey, p. 142; A. S. Farrar, Crit. Hist. of Freethought, p. 313.\n\n[1337] Cp. Karo, p. 5 sq.; St\u00e4udlin, cited by Tholuck, Abriss, p. 39.\n\n[1338] Kahnis. p. 116.\n\n[1339] Wahre Gr\u00fcnde wanum Gott die Offenbarung nicht mit\naugenscheinlichen Beweisen versehen hat.\n\n[1340] Die G\u00f6ttliche Eingebung, 1771.\n\n[1341] Beweis das Gott die Menschen bereits durch seine Offenbarung\nin der Natur zur Seligkeit fuhre.\n\n[1342] Gostwick, p. 53; P\u00fcnjer, i, 546, note.\n\n[1343] Cp. Kahnis, pp. 132-36, as to Bahrdt's early morals.\n\n[1344] Geschichte seines Lebens, etc. 1700-91, iv, 119.\n\n[1345] See below, p. 331.\n\n[1346] Geschichte seines Lebens, Kap. 22; ii, 223 sq.\n\n[1347] Baur, Gesch. der chr. Kirche, iv. 597.\n\n[1348] Translated into English in 1789.\n\n[1349] Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, Abschn. I--Werke, 1838 p. 239\n(Eng. tr. 1838, pp. 50-51); Rousseau, Contrat Social, liv, iv,\nch. viii, near end; Locke, as cited above, p. 117. Cp. Bartholm\u00e8ss,\nHist. crit. des doctr. relig. de la philos. moderne, 1855, i, 145;\nBaur, as last cited.\n\n[1350] See his Werke, ed. 1866, v, 317--Aus dem Briefe, die neueste\nLiteratur betreffend, 49ter Brief.\n\n[1351] If Lessing's life were sketched in the spirit in which orthodoxy\nhas handled that of Bahrdt, it could be made unedifying enough. Even\nGoethe remarks that Lessing \"enjoyed himself in a disorderly tavern\nlife\" (Wahrheit und Dichtung, B. vii); and all that Hagenbach\nmaliciously charges against Basedow in the way of irregularity of\nstudy is true of him. On that and other points, usually glossed over,\nsee the sketch in Taylor's Historic Survey of German Poetry, 1830,\ni, 332-37. All the while, Lessing is an essentially sound-hearted\nand estimable personality; and he would probably have been the last\nman to echo the tone of the orthodox towards the personal life of\nthe freethinkers who went further in unbelief than he.\n\n[1352] E.g. his fable The Bull and the Calf (Fabeln, ii, 5), \u00e0 propos\nof the clergy and Bayle.\n\n[1353] Sime, Life of Lessing, 1877, i, 102.\n\n[1354] E.g. his early notice of Diderot's Lettre sur les\nAveugles. Sime, i, 94.\n\n[1355] Dramaturgie, St\u00fcck 7.\n\n[1356] Sime, i, 103-109.\n\n[1357] Sime, i, 73, 107; ii, 253.\n\n[1358] In his Gedanke \u00fcber die Herrnhuter, written in 1750. See Adolf\nStahr's Lessing, sein Leben und seine Werke, 7te Aufl. ii, 183 sq.\n\n[1359] Julian Schmidt puts the case sympathetically: \"He had learned\nin his father's house what value the pastoral function may have for\nthe culture of the people. He was bibelfest, instructed in the history\nof his church, Protestant in spirit, full of genuine reverence for\nLuther, full of high respect for historical Christianity, though on\nreading the Fathers he could say hard things of the Church.\" Gesch. der\ndeutschen Litteratur von Leibniz bis auf unsere Zeit, ii (1886), 326.\n\n[1360] Taylor, as cited, p. 361.\n\n[1361] Sime, i, 73.\n\n[1362] See Lessing's rather crude comedy, Der Freigeist, and Sime's\nLife, i, 41-42, 72, 77.\n\n[1363] Cp. his letters to his brother of which extracts are given by\nSime, ii, 191-92.\n\n[1364] Sime, ii, 188.\n\n[1365] As to the authorship see Saintes, pp. 101-102; and Sime's Life\nof Lessing, i, 261-62, where the counter-claim is rejected.\n\n[1366] Zur Geschichte und Literatur, aus dem 4ten Beitr.--Werke,\nvi. 142 sq. See also in his Theologische Streitschriften the Axiomata\nwritten against Pastor Goeze. Cp. Schwarz, Lessing als Theologe,\n1854, pp. 146, 151; and Pusey, as cited, p. 51. note.\n\n[1367] Compare the regrets of Pusey (pp. 51, 153), Cairns (p. 195),\nHagenbach (pp. 89-97), and Saintes (p. 100).\n\n[1368] S\u00e4mmtliche Schriften, ed. Lachmann, 1857, xi (2), 248. Sime (ii,\n190) mistranslates this passage; and Schmidt (ii, 326) mutilates it\nby omissions. Fontanes (Le Christianisme moderne: \u00c9tude sur Lessing,\n1867, p. 171) paraphrases it very loosely.\n\n[1369] Sime, ii, 190.\n\n[1370] Stahr, ii, 239; Sime, ii. 189.\n\n[1371] See Sime, ii, 222, 233: Stahr, ii, 254. Hettner, an admirer,\ncalls the early Christianity of Reason a piece of sophistical\ndialectic. Litteraturgeschichte des 18ten Jahrhunderts, ed. 1872,\niii. 588-89.\n\n[1372] Stahr, ii, 243. Lessing said the report to this effect was\na lie; but this and other mystifications appear to have been by way\nof fulfilling his promise of secrecy to the Reimarus family. Cairns,\npp. 203, 209. Cp. Farrar, Crit. Hist. of Freethought, note 29.\n\n[1373] See it analysed by Bartholm\u00e8ss, Hist. crit. des doctr. relig. de\nla philos. moderne, i, 147-67; and by Schweitzer, The Quest of the\nHistoric Jesus (trans. of Von Reimarus zu Wrede), 1910.\n\n[1374] Gostwick, p. 47; Bartholm\u00e8ss, i, 166. His book was translated\ninto English (The Principal Truths of Natural Religion Defended and\nIllustrated) in 1766; into Dutch in 1758; in part into French in 1768;\nand seven editions of the original had appeared by 1798.\n\n[1375] Stahr, ii, 241-44.\n\n[1376] Id. ii, 245.\n\n[1377] The statement that, in Lessing's age, \"in north Germany men\nwere able to think and write freely\" (Conybeare, Hist. of N. T. Crit.,\np. 80) is thus seen to be highly misleading.\n\n[1378] Von dem Zwecke, Jesus und seiner J\u00fcnger, Braunschweig, 1778.\n\n[1379] Taylor, Histor. Survey of German Poetry, i, 365.\n\n[1380] Stahr, ii, 253-54.\n\n[1381] Cp. Introd. to Willis's trans. of Nathan. The play is sometimes\nattacked as being grossly unfair to Christianity. (E.g. Crousl\u00e9,\nLessing, 1863, p. 206.) The answer to this complaint is given by Sime,\nii, 252 sq.\n\n[1382] See Cairns, Appendix, Note I; Willis, Spinoza, pp. 149-62;\nSime, ii, 299-303; and Stahr, ii, 219-30, giving the testimony of\nJacobi. Cp. P\u00fcnjer, i, 564-85. But Heine laughingly adjures Moses\nMendelssohn, who grieved so intensely over Lessing's Spinozism, to\nrest quiet in his grave: \"Thy Lessing was indeed on the way to that\nterrible error ... but the Highest, the Father in Heaven, saved him\nin time by death. He died a good deist, like thee and Nicolai and\nTeller and the Universal German Library\" (Zur Gesch. der Rel. und\nPhilos. in Deutschland, B. ii, near end.--Werke, ed. 1876, iii. 69).\n\n[1383] See in Stahr, ii, 184-85. the various characterizations of his\nindefinite philosophy. Stahr's own account of him as anticipating the\nmoral philosophy of Kant is as overstrained as the others. Gastrow,\nan admirer, expresses wonder (Johann Salomo Semler, p. 188) at the\nindifference of Lessing to the critical philosophy in general.\n\n[1384] Sime, ii, ch. xxix, gives a good survey.\n\n[1385] Letter to his brother, Feb., 1778.\n\n[1386] Strauss, Das Leben Jesu (the second) Einleitung, \u00a7 14.\n\n[1387] Hurst, History of Rationalism, 3rd ed. p. 130. \"It was a\npopular belief, as an organ of pious opinion announced to its readers,\nthat at his death the devil came and carried him away like a second\nFaust.\" Sime, ii, 330.\n\n[1388] Cited by Hurst, Hist. of Rationalism, 3rd ed. p. 125. Outside\nBerlin, however, matters went otherwise till late in the century. Kurz\ntells (Gesch. der deutschen Literatur, ii, 461 b) that \"the\nindifference of the learned towards native literature was so great\nthat even in the year 1761 Abbt could write that in Rinteln there\nwas nobody who knew the names of Moses Mendelssohn and Lessing.\"\n\n[1389] Karl Hillebrand, Lectures on the Hist. of German Thought,\n1880, p. 109.\n\n[1390] Deutsche Merkur, Jan. and March, 1788 (Werke, ed. 1797,\nxxix, 1-144; cited by St\u00e4udlin, Gesch. der Rationalismus und\nSupernaturalismus, 1826, p. 233).\n\n[1391] Kurtz, Hist. of the Chr. Church, Eng. tr. 1864, ii, 224.\n\n[1392] T. C. Perthes, Das Deutsche Staatsleben vor der Revolution,\n262 sq., cited by Kahnis pp. 58-59.\n\n[1393] See above, pp. 321, 328.\n\n[1394] Kant distinguishes explicitly between \"rationalists,\" as\nthinkers who would not deny the possibility of a revelation, and\n\"naturalists,\" who did. See the Religion innerhalb der grenzen der\nblossen Vernunft, St\u00fcck iv, Th. i. This was in fact the standing\nsignificance of the term in Germany for a generation.\n\n[1395] Letter to his brother, February 2, 1774.\n\n[1396] Known as Zopf-Schulz from his wearing a pigtail in the fashion\nthen common among the laity. \"An old insolent rationalist,\" Kurtz\ncalls him (ii, 270).\n\n[1397] Hagenbach, Kirchengeschichte, i, 372; Gostwick, pp. 52, 54.\n\n[1398] Philosophische Betrachtung \u00fcber Theologie und Religion\n\u00fcberhaupt, und \u00fcber die J\u00fcdische insonderheit, 1784.\n\n[1399] P\u00fcnjer, i, 544-45.\n\n[1400] Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, ch. ix, Bohn ed. p. 71.\n\n[1401] See the details in Hagenbach, Kirchengeschichte, i, 368-72;\nKahnis, p. 60.\n\n[1402] Marokkanische Briefe. Aus dem Arabischen. Frankfurt and Leipzig,\n1785. The Letters purport to be written by one of the Moroccan embassy\nat Vienna in 1783.\n\n[1403] Briefe, xxi.\n\n[1404] P. 49.\n\n[1405] P. 232.\n\n[1406] Das zum Theil einzige wahre System der christlichen Religion. It\nhad been composed in its author's youth under the title False\nReasonings of the Christian Religion; and the MS. was lost through\nthe bankruptcy of a Dutch publisher.\n\n[1407] Noack, Th. III, Kap. 9, p. 194.\n\n[1408] Mauvillon further collaborated with Mirabeau, and became a\ngreat admirer of the French Revolution. He left freethinking writings\namong his remains. They are not described by Noack, and I have been\nunable to meet with them.\n\n[1409] It was a test of the depth of the freethinking spirit in\nthe men of the day. Semler justified the edict; Bahrdt vehemently\ndenounced it. Hagenbach, i, 372.\n\n[1410] Cp. Crabb Robinson's Diary, iii, 48; Martineau, Study of\nSpinoza, p. 328; Willis, Spinoza, pp. 162-68. Bishop Hurst laments\n(Hist. of Rationalism, 3rd ed. p. 145) that Herder's early views as\nto the mission of Christ \"were, in common with many other evangelical\nviews, doomed to an unhappy obscuration upon the advance of his later\nyears by frequent intercourse with more skeptical minds.\"\n\n[1411] On the clerical opposition to him at Weimar on this score see\nD\u00fcntzer, Life of Goethe, Eng. tr. 1883, i, 317.\n\n[1412] Cp. Kronenberg, Herder's Philosophie nach ihrem\nEntwickelungsgang, 1889.\n\n[1413] Kronenberg, p. 90.\n\n[1414] Stuckenberg, Life of Immanuel Kant, 1882, pp. 381-87;\nKronenberg, Herder's Philosophie, pp. 91, 103.\n\n[1415] Kahnis, p. 78, and Erdmann, as there cited. Erdmann finds the\npantheism of Herder to be, not Spinozistic as he supposed, but akin\nto that of Bruno and his Italian successors.\n\n[1416] The chief sample passages in his works are the poem Das\nG\u00f6ttliche and the speech of Faust in reply to Gretchen in the garden\nscene. It was the surmised pantheism of Goethe's poem Prometheus that,\naccording to Jacobi, drew from Lessing his avowal of a pantheistic\nleaning. The poem has even an atheistic ring; but we have Goethe's\nown account of the influence of Spinoza on him from his youth onwards\n(Wahrheit und Dichtung, Th. III, B. xiv; Th. IV, B. xvi). See also\nhis remarks on the \"natural\" religion of \"conviction\" or rational\ninference, and that of \"faith\" (Glaube) or revelationism, in B. iv\n(Werke, ed. 1866, xi, 134); also Kestner's account of his opinions\nat twenty-three, in D\u00fcntzer's Life, Eng. tr. i, 185; and again his\nletter to Jacobi, January 6, 1813, quoted by D\u00fcntzer, ii, 290.\n\n[1417] See the Alt-Testamentliches Appendix to the West-Oestlicher\nDivan.\n\n[1418] Heine, Zur Gesch. der Rel. u. Phil. in Deutschland (Werke,\ned. 1876, iii, 92).\n\n[1419] Wahrheit und Dichtung, Th. I, B. iv (Werke, ed. 1886, xi, 123).\n\n[1420] Id. Th. III, B. xiv, par. 20 (Werke, xii, 159).\n\n[1421] Id. pp. 165, 186.\n\n[1422] Id. p. 184.\n\n[1423] Cited by Baur, Gesch. der christl. Kirche, v, 50.\n\n[1424] Compare, as to the hostility he aroused, D\u00fcntzer, i, 152, 317,\n329-30, 451; ii, 291 note, 455, 461; Eckermann, Gespr\u00e4che mit Goethe,\nM\u00e4rz 6, 1830; and Heine, last cit. p. 93.\n\n[1425] Eckermann, M\u00e4rz 11, 1832.\n\n[1426] Id. Feb. 4, 1829.\n\n[1427] Hurst, Hist. of Rationalism, 3rd ed. p. 150.\n\n[1428] Wahrheit und Dichtung, Th. III, B. viii; Werke, xi, 334.\n\n[1429] Cp., however, the estimate of Krause, above, p. 207. Virchow,\nG\u00f6the als Naturforscher, 1861, goes into detail on the biological\npoints, without reaching any general estimate.\n\n[1430] Remarked by Hagenbach, tr. p. 238.\n\n[1431] Letter to Goethe, August 17, 1795 (Briefwechsel, No. 87). The\npassage is given in Carlyle's essay on Schiller.\n\n[1432] In Die Sendung Moses.\n\n[1433] See the Philosophische Briefe.\n\n[1434] Carlyle translates, \"No Rights of Man,\" which was probably\nthe idea.\n\n[1435] Letter to Goethe, July 9, 1796 (Briefwechsel, No. 188). \"It is\nevident that he was estranged not only from the church but from the\nfundamental truths of Christianity\" (Rev. W. Baur, Religious Life of\nGermany, Eng. tr. 1872, p. 22). F. C. Baur has a curious page in which\nhe seeks to show that, though Schiller and Goethe cannot be called\nChristian in a natural sense, the age was not made un-Christian by them\nto such an extent as is commonly supposed (Gesch. der christl. Kirche,\nv, 46).\n\n[1436] Cp. Tieftrunk, as cited by Stuckenberg, Life of Immanuel Kant,\np. 225.\n\n[1437] Id. p. 376. In his early essay Tr\u00e4ume eines Geistersehers,\nerl\u00e4utert durch Tr\u00e4ume der Metaphysik (1766) this attitude is clear. It\nends with an admiring quotation from Voltaire's Candide.\n\n[1438] Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufkl\u00e4rung? in the Berliner\nMonatschrift, Dec. 1784, rep. in Kant's Vorz\u00fcgliche kleine Schriften,\n1833, Bd. i.\n\n[1439] For an able argument vindicating the unity of Kant's system,\nhowever, see Prof. Adamson, The Philosophy of Kant, 1879, p. 21 sq.,\nas against Lange. With the verdict in the text compare that of Heine,\nZur Gesch. der Relig. u. Philos. in Deutschland, B. iii (Werke, as\ncited, iii, 81-82); that of Prof. G. Santayana, The Life of Reason,\nvol. i, 1905, p. 94 sq.; and that of Prof. A. Seth Pringle-Pattison,\nThe Philosophy of Religion in Kant and Hegel, rep. in vol. entitled\nThe Philosophical Radicals and Other Essays, 1907, pp. 264, 266.\n\n[1440] Stuckenberg, pp. 225, 332.\n\n[1441] Cp. Haym, Herder nach seinem Leben ... dargestellt, 1877, i,\n33, 48; Kronenberg, Herder's Philosophie, p. 10.\n\n[1442] Cp. Hagenbach, Eng. tr. p. 223.\n\n[1443] Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft, St\u00fcck iii,\nAbth. i, \u00a7 5; Abth. ii (ed. 1793, pp. 145-46, 188-89).\n\n[1444] Work cited, St\u00fcck ii, Abschn. ii, Allg. Anm. p. 108 sq.\n\n[1445] E.g. St\u00fcck iv, Th. i, preamble (p. 221, ed. cited).\n\n[1446] Id. St\u00fcck iii, Abth. ii, Allg. Anm.: \"This belief,\" he avows\nfrankly enough, \"involves no mystery\" (p. 199). In a note to the\nsecond edition he suggests that there must be a basis in reason for the\nidea of a Trinity, found as it is among so many ancient and primitive\npeoples. The speculation is in itself evasive, for he does not give\nthe slightest reason for thinking the Goths capable of such metaphysic.\n\n[1447] St\u00fcck iii, Abth. i, \u00a7 5; pp. 137, 139.\n\n[1448] St\u00fcck iii, Abth. ii, p. 178.\n\n[1449] Kant explicitly concurs in Warburton's thesis that the Jewish\nlawgiver purposely omitted all mention of a future state from the\nPentateuch; since such belief must be supposed to have been current\nin Jewry. But he goes further, and pronounces that simple Judaism\ncontains \"absolutely no religious belief.\" To this complexion can\nphilosophic compromise come.\n\n[1450] Stuckenberg, Life of Immanuel Kant, p. 329.\n\n[1451] Borowski, Darstellung des Lebens und Charakters Immanuel Kant's,\n1804, cited by Stuckenberg, p. 357.\n\n[1452] Stuckenberg, pp. 359-60.\n\n[1453] Stuckenberg, p. 361.\n\n[1454] Cp. F. C. Baur, Gesch. der christl. Kirche, v, 63-66.\n\n[1455] The first, on \"Radical Evils,\" appeared in a Berlin monthly\nin April, 1792, and was then reprinted separately.\n\n[1456] Stuckenberg, p. 361.\n\n[1457] Ueberweg, ii, 141; Stuckenberg, p. 363.\n\n[1458] Stuckenberg, pp. 304-309.\n\n[1459] Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft, St\u00fcck iv,\nTh. 2.\n\n[1460] Cp. Stuckenberg, p. 332; Seth Pringle-Pattison, as cited.\n\n[1461] Stuckenberg, pp. 340, 346, 354, 468.\n\n[1462] Letter of May 22, 1799, reproduced by Heine.\n\n[1463] Zur Gesch. der Rel. u. Philos. in Deutschland. Werke, as cited,\niii, 96, 98.\n\n[1464] Stuckenberg, p. 311.\n\n[1465] Id. p. 357.\n\n[1466] Stuckenberg, p. 351. \"It is only necessary,\" adds Stuckenberg\n(p. 468, note 142), \"to develop Kant's hints in order to get the\nviews of Strauss in his Leben Jesu.\"\n\n[1467] Id. p. 375. Erhard stated that Pestalozzi shared his views on\nChristian ethics.\n\n[1468] Stuckenberg, p. 358.\n\n[1469] Cp. Weber, Gesch. der deutschen Literatur, 11te Aufl. p. 119;\nR. Unger, Hamann und die Aufkl\u00e4rung, 1911.\n\n[1470] Bartholm\u00e8ss, Hist. crit. des doctr. relig. de la\nphilos. moderne, 1855, i, 136-40.\n\n[1471] In demanding a \"history of the human conscience\" (Neue\nAnthropologie, 1790) Platner seems to have anticipated the modern\nscientific approach to religion.\n\n[1472] Gespr\u00e4che \u00fcber den Atheismus, 1781.\n\n[1473] Lehrbuch der Logik und Metaphysik, 1795.\n\n[1474] W. Smith, Memoir of Fichte, 2nd ed. p. 10.\n\n[1475] Id. pp. 12, 13, 20, 23, 25, etc.\n\n[1476] Id. pp. 34-35.\n\n[1477] Smith, p. 94.\n\n[1478] Id. p. 34.\n\n[1479] Adamson, Fichte, 1881, p. 32; Smith, as cited, pp. 64-65.\n\n[1480] Letter to Kant, cited by Smith, p. 63.\n\n[1481] Asserted by Stuckenberg, Life of Kant, p. 386.\n\n[1482] Cp. Robins, A Defence of the Faith, 1862, pt. i, pp. 132-33;\nAdamson, Fichte, pp. 50-67; W. Smith, Memoir of Fichte, pp. 106-107.\n\n[1483] Adamson, pp. 71, 73.\n\n[1484] Grundz\u00fcge des gegenw\u00e4rtigen Zeitalters, 16te Vorles. ed. 1806,\npp. 509-510.\n\n[1485] Compare the complaints of Hurst, Hist. of Rationalism,\n3rd ed. pp. 136-37, and of Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, Bohn\ned. p. 72. Fichte's theory, says Coleridge (after praising him as\nthe destroyer of Spinozism), \"degenerated into a crude egoismus,\na boastful and hyperstoic hostility to Nature, as lifeless, godless,\nand altogether unholy, while his religion consisted in the assumption\nof a mere ordo ordinans, which we were permitted exoteric\u00e9 to call\nGod.\" Heine (as last cited, p. 75) insists that Fichte's Idealism is\n\"more Godless than the crassest Materialism.\"\n\n[1486] Grundz\u00fcge, as cited, p. 502.\n\n[1487] Cp. Seth Pringle-Pattison, as cited, p. 280, note.\n\n[1488] Kurtz, Hist. of the Chr. Church, Eng. tr. 1864, ii, 225. Jahn\nwas well in advance of his age in his explanation of Joshua's\ncosmic miracle as the mistaken literalizing of a flight of poetic\nphrase. See the passage in his Introduction to the Book of Joshua,\ncited by Rowland Williams, The Hebrew Prophets, ii (1871), 31, note 33.\n\n[1489] R. N. Bain, Gustavus Vasa and his Contemporaries, 1894,\ni. 265-68.\n\n[1490] A. Sorel, L'Europe et la r\u00e9volution fran\u00e7aise, i (1885), p. 458.\n\n[1491] See articles on Beethoven by Macfarren in Dictionary of\nUniversal Biography, and by Grove in the Dictionary of Music and\nMusicians.\n\n[1492] Grove, art. cited, ed. 1904, i, 224.\n\n[1493] Jonckbloet, Beknopte Geschiedenis der nederl. Letterkunde,\ned. 1880, p. 282.\n\n[1494] Id. pp. 315-16.\n\n[1495] Cp. Trinius, Freydenker-Lexicon, pp. 336-37; Colerus, Vie de\nSpinoza, as cited, p. lviii.\n\n[1496] See Texte, Rousseau and the Cosmopolitan Spirit, Eng. tr. p. 29.\n\n[1497] Briefe, 1752, p. 451.\n\n[1498] This is the basis of Pope's reference to \"illustrious Passeran\"\nin his Epilogue to the Satires, 1738, ii, 124. The Rev. J. Bramstone's\nsatire, The Man of Taste (1733), spells the name \"Pasaran,\" whence\nmay be inferred the extent of the satirist's knowledge of his topic.\n\n[1499] Reprinted, in French, at London in 1749, in a more complete\nand correct edition, published by J. Brindley.\n\n[1500] The copy in the British Museum is dated 1737, and the title-page\ndescribes Passerano as \"a Piemont\u00e6se exile now in Holland, a Christian\nFreethinker.\" It is presumably a re-issue.\n\n[1501] Warburton in a note on Pope (Epilogue, as cited)\ncharacteristically alleges that Passerano had been banished from\nPiedmont \"for his impieties, and lived in the utmost misery, yet\nfeared to practise his own precepts; and at last died a penitent.\" The\nsource of these allegations may serve as warrant for disbelieving\nthem. Warburton, it will be observed, says nothing of an imprisonment\nin England.\n\n[1502] London ed. 1749, pp. 24-25.\n\n[1503] Koch, Histor. View of the European Nations, Eng. tr. 3rd\ned. p. 103. Cp. Crichton and Wheaton, Scandinavia, 1837, i, 383-96;\nOtt\u00e9, Scandinavian History, 1874, pp. 222-24; Villiers, Essay on\nthe Reformation, Eng. tr. 1836, p. 105. But cp. Allen, Histoire de\nDanemark, Fr. tr. i, 298-300.\n\n[1504] Ott\u00e9, pp. 232-36; Crichton-Wheaton, i, 398-400; Geijer,\nHist. of the Swedes, Eng. tr. i, 125.\n\n[1505] Koch, p. 104; Geijer, i, 129.\n\n[1506] Crichton-Wheaton, ii, 322.\n\n[1507] Ludwig Holberg, Baron Holberg, born at Bergen, Norway,\n1684. After a youth of poverty and struggle he settled at Copenhagen in\n1718, as professor of metaphysics, and attained the chair of eloquence\nin 1720. Made Baron by King Frederick V of Denmark at his accession\nin 1747. D. 1754.\n\n[1508] Nicolai Klimii Iter Subterraneum novam telluris theoriam\nac historiam quint\u00e6 monarchi\u00e6 ... exhibens, etc. Dr. Gosse, in\nart. Holberg, Encyc. Brit., makes the mistake of calling the book a\npoem. It is in Latin prose, with verse passages.\n\n[1509] It was published thrice in Danish, ten times in German, thrice\nin Swedish, thrice in Dutch, thrice in English, twice in French,\ntwice in Russian, and once in Hungarian.\n\n[1510] Cap. vi, De religione gentis Potuan\u00e6.\n\n[1511] Cp. pp. 75-78, ed. 1754.\n\n[1512] Cap. vi, p. 69; cp. cap. viii, De Academia, p. 101.\n\n[1513] Id. p. 77.\n\n[1514] He had visited England in his youth.\n\n[1515] Crichton-Wheaton, ii, 322. On p. 159 a somewhat contrary\nstatement is made, which obscures the facts. Cp. Schlosser, iv, 13,\nas to Christian's martinet methods.\n\n[1516] Geijer, i, 324.\n\n[1517] Id. p. 343; Ott\u00e9, p. 292.\n\n[1518] Geijer, i, 342. Cp. Ranke, Hist. of the Popes,\nEng. tr. ed. 1908, ii, 399; iii, 345-46.\n\n[1519] Crichton-Wheaton, ii, 88-89, and refs.\n\n[1520] Cp. Ranke, as cited, ii, 407.\n\n[1521] Work cited, pp. 288-89. This writer gives the only intelligible\naccount of the private execution of Christina's secretary, Monaldeschi,\nby her orders. Monaldeschi had either passed over to other hands some\nof her letters to him, or kept them so carelessly as to let them be\nstolen. Id. p. 11. For her cruel act she shows no trace of religious\nor any other remorse. She was, in fact, a neurotic egoist. Cp. Ranke,\nii, 394, 405.\n\n[1522] Bouillier, Hist. de la philos. cart\u00e9s., i, 449-50.\n\n[1523] Geijer, i, 342.\n\n[1524] See his treatise, Of the Nature and Qualification of Religion\nin Reference to Civil Society, Eng. tr. by Crull, 1698.\n\n[1525] Heaven and Hell, 1758, \u00a7\u00a7 353, 354, 464.\n\n[1526] Translated as The Divine Providence.\n\n[1527] \u00a7\u00a7 235-264.\n\n[1528] Work cited, \u00a7 241.\n\n[1529] De cultu et amore Dei, 1745. tr. as The Worship and Love of God,\ned. 1885, p. 18.\n\n[1530] \"When he was contradicted he kept silence.\" Documents concerning\nSwedenborg, ed. by Dr. Tafel, 1875-1877, ii, 564.\n\n[1531] Cp. Swedenborg's letter to Beyer, in Documents, as cited,\nii, 279.\n\n[1532] For many years he seldom went to church, being unable to listen\npeacefully to the trinitarian doctrine he heard there. Documents,\nas cited, ii, 560.\n\n[1533] W. White, Swedenborg: his Life and Writings, ed. 1867, i, 188.\n\n[1534] Schweitzer, Geschichte der skandinavischen Literatur, ii,\n175, 225; C.-F. Allen, Histoire de Danemark, Fr. tr. ii, 1900-1901;\nR. N. Bain, Gustavus Vasa and his Contemporaries, 1894, i, 226.\n\n[1535] Correspondance de Grimm, ed. 1829-1831, vii, 229.\n\n[1536] Crichton-Wheaton, ii, 206.\n\n[1537] Writing to his mother on his first visit to Paris, he takes\nher, ostensibly as a libre esprit, into his confidence, disparaging\nMarmontel and Grimm as vain. Joseph II in turn pronounced Gustavus \"a\nconceited fop, an impudent braggart\" (Bain, as cited, i, 266). Both\nmonarchs set up an impression of want of balance, and the mother of\nGustavus, who forced him to break with her, does the same.\n\n[1538] Bain, as cited, i, 224-31.\n\n[1539] Id. ii, 208-12.\n\n[1540] Id. i, 267-68.\n\n[1541] Cp. Bain, ii, 272, 287, 293-96.\n\n[1542] Crichton-Wheaton, ii, 335.\n\n[1543] Crichton-Wheaton, ii, 322. Cp. pp. 161-63. Schlosser, iv, 15.\n\n[1544] Crichton-Wheaton, ii, 190; Ott\u00e9, p. 322; C.-F. Allen, as cited,\nii, 194-201; Schlosser, iv, 319 sq.\n\n[1545] Cp. Mary Wollstonecraft's Letters from Sweden, Norway, and\nDenmark, 1796, Let. xviii. One of the grounds on which the queen\nwas charged with unchastity was, that she had established a hospital\nfor foundlings.\n\n[1546] Trans. from the German, 1774; 2nd ed. 1825. See it also in the\nwork, Converts from Infidelity, by Andrew Crichton; vols. vi and vii\nof Constable's Miscellany, 1827. This singular compilation includes\nlives of Boyle, Bunyan, Haller, and others, who were never \"infidels.\"\n\n[1547] Crichton-Wheaton, ii, 190-91.\n\n[1548] Work cited, Letter vii.\n\n[1549] Id. Letter viii, near end.\n\n[1550] Crichton-Wheaton, ii, 324.\n\n[1551] He claimed that the remarks penned by him in an anti-atheistic\nwork, challenging its argument, represented not unbelief but the demand\nfor a better proof, which he undertook to produce. See Krasinski,\nSketch of the Religious History of the Slavonic Nations, 1851,\npp. 224-25. It is remarkable that the Pope, Innocent XI, bitterly\ncensured the execution.\n\n[1552] Fletcher, History of Poland, 1831, p. 141.\n\n[1553] Fletcher, pp. 145-46.\n\n[1554] Hardwick, Church History: Middle Age, 1853, pp. 386-87.\n\n[1555] L. Sichler, Hist. de la litt. Russe, 1887, pp. 88-89,\n139. Cp. Rambaud, Hist. de Russie, 2e \u00e9dit. pp. 249, 259,\netc. (Eng. tr. i, 309, 321, 328).\n\n[1556] R. N. Bain, The First Romanovs, 1905, pp. 136-51; Rambaud,\np. 333 (tr. i, 414-17). The struggle (1654) elicited old forms of\nheresy, going back to Manicheism and Gnosticism. In this furious\nschism Nikon destroyed irregular ikons or sacred images; and savage\npersecutions resulted from his insistence that the faithful should\nuse three fingers instead of two in crossing themselves. Many resisted\nto the death.\n\n[1557] Prince Serge Wolkonsky, Russian History and Literature, 1897,\npp. 98-101.\n\n[1558] Morfill, History of Russia, 1902, p. 14; Bain, p. 201.\n\n[1559] Cp. Wolkonsky, p. 101.\n\n[1560] C. E. Turner, Studies in Russian Literature, 1882, p. 2.\n\n[1561] Id. pp. 16, 17, 25, 26, 40; Sichler, p. 148.\n\n[1562] Sichler, p. 139. Peter's dislike of monks won him the repute of\na freethinker. Morfill, p. 97. He was actually attacked as \"Antichrist\"\nin a printed pamphlet on the score of his innovations. Personally, he\ndetested religious persecution, and was willing to tolerate anybody but\nJews; but he had to let persecution take place; and even to consent to\nremoving statues of pagan deities from his palace. Bain, pp. 304-309.\n\n[1563] Cp. Bain, p. 392.\n\n[1564] Turner, p. 22. Kantemir was the friend of Bolingbroke and\nMontesquieu in Paris.\n\n[1565] Sichler, p. 147.\n\n[1566] Turner, pp. 40-41.\n\n[1567] See the passages cited by Rambaud, p. 482, from her letter\nto Voltaire.\n\n[1568] Seume, Ueber das Leben ... der Kaiserin Catharina II: Werke,\ned. 1839, v, 239-40; Rambaud, pp. 482-84.\n\n[1569] See Bishop Burnet's Letters, iv, ed. Rotterdam, 1686,\npp. 187-91.\n\n[1570] Zeller, Histoire d'Italie, pp. 426-32, 450; Procter, Hist. of\nItaly, 2nd ed. pp. 240, 268.\n\n[1571] Burnet, as cited, pp. 195-97.\n\n[1572] Prof. Flint, who insists on the deep piety of Vico, notes\nthat he \"appears to have had strangely little interest in Christian\nsystematic theology\" (Vico, 1884, p. 70).\n\n[1573] Siciliani, Sul Rinnovamento della filosofia positiva in Italia,\n1871, pp. 37-41.\n\n[1574] Siciliani, p. 36.\n\n[1575] Introduction (by Mignet?) to the Princess Belgiojoso's tr. La\nScience Nouvelle, 1844, p. cxiii. Cp. Flint, Vico, 231.\n\n[1576] Ganganelli, Papst Clemens XIV, seine Briefe und seine Zeit,\nvom Verfasser der R\u00f6mischen Briefe (Von Reumont), 1847, pp. 35-36,\nand p. 155, note.\n\n[1577] See the Storia della economia pubblica in Italia of G. Pecchio,\n1829, p. 61 sq., as to the claim of Antonio Serra (Breve trattato,\netc. 1613) to be the pioneer of modern political economy. Cp. Hallam,\nLit. of Europe, iii, 164-66. Buckle (1-vol. ed. p. 122, note) has\nclaimed the title for William Stafford, whose Compendious or briefe\nExamination of certain ordinary Complaints (otherwise called A Briefe\nConceipt of English Policy) appeared in 1581. But cp. Ingram (Hist. of\nPol. Econ. 1888, pp. 43-45) as to the prior claims of Bodin.\n\n[1578] Briefe, as before cited, p. 408.\n\n[1579] Correspondence litt\u00e9raire, ed. 1829-31, vii, 331. Cp. Von\nReumont, Ganganelli, p. 33.\n\n[1580] The Dei delitti e delle pene was translated into 22\nlanguages. Pecchio, p. 144.\n\n[1581] See in the 6th ed. of the Dei delitti (Harlem, 1766) the\nappended Risposta ad uno scritto, etc., Parte prima, Accuse d'empiet\u00e0.\n\n[1582] See his letter to the Abb\u00e9 Morellet, cited by Mr. Farrer in\nch. i of his ed. of Crimes and Punishments, 1880, p. 5. It describes\nthe Milanese as deeply sunk in prejudices.\n\n[1583] Pecchio, p. 123.\n\n[1584] Cp. McCulloch, Literature of Political Economy, 1845, p. 64;\nBlanqui, Hist. de l'economie politique, 2e \u00e9dit. ii, 432.\n\n[1585] As to the genuineness of the Ganganelli letters, originally\nmuch disputed, see Von Reumont's Ganganelli, Papst Clemens XIV;\nseine Briefe und seine Zeit, 1847, pp. 40-44.\n\n[1586] Lett. lvi, Eng. tr. 1777, i, 141-42. No. lxxii in Von Reumont's\nGanganelli, 1847.\n\n[1587] Lett. xiii, 1749. Eng. tr. i, 44-46; No. cxiv in Von Reumont's\ntranslation.\n\n[1588] Lett. vi and xiv; Nos. ix and xxii in Von Reumont.\n\n[1589] Lett. xxx, p. 83; No. xxxiv in Von Reumont.\n\n[1590] Lett. xci; No. xcii in Von Reumont.\n\n[1591] Lett. cxlvi; No. xiii in Von Reumont.\n\n[1592] Lett. lxxxii, 1753 or 1754; No. lxi in Von Reumont.\n\n[1593] Lett. cxxiv, 1769. This letter is not in Von Reumont's\ncollection, and appears to be regarded by him as spurious--or unduly\nindiscreet.\n\n[1594] Lett. lxxxiii, 1754; No. lxxiii in Von Reumont.\n\n[1595] Corr. Litt. as cited, vii, 104.\n\n[1596] Zeller, p. 473.\n\n[1597] Zeller, pp. 478-79.\n\n[1598] Julien Luchaire, Essai sur l'evolution intellectuelle de\nl'Italie de 1815 \u00e0 1830, 1906, p. 3.\n\n[1599] Parini wrote a reproving Ode on the subject. (Henri Hauvette,\nLitt\u00e9rature Italienne, 1906, p. 371.) He was one of those disillusioned\nby the course of the Revolution. (Id. p. 375.)\n\n[1600] Hauvette, pp. 391-93.\n\n[1601] Coxe, Memoirs of the Bourbon Kings of Spain, ed. 1815, iv, 408.\n\n[1602] Villanueva, Vida Literaria, London, 1825.\n\n[1603] Buckle, iii, 547-48 (1-vol. ed. 599-600). The last victim\nseems to have been a woman accused of witchcraft. Her nose was cut\noff before her execution. See the Marokkanische Briefe, 1785, p. 36;\nand Buckle's note 272.\n\n[1604] Letter of D'Alembert to Voltaire, 13 mai, 1773.\n\n[1605] Grimm, Corr. Litt. x, 393.\n\n[1606] Llorente, ii, 534.\n\n[1607] As to which see Buckle, p. 607.\n\n[1608] Llorente, ii, 544.\n\n[1609] Id. ii, 544-47.\n\n[1610] Grimm is evidently in error in his statement (Correspondance,\ned. 1829-31, x, 394) that one of the main grievances against Olavid\u00e8s\nwas his having caused to be made a Spanish translation of Raynal's\nbook, which was never published. No such offence is mentioned by\nLlorente. The case of Almodobar had been connected in French rumour\nwith that of Olavid\u00e8s.\n\n[1611] Llorente, ii, 532.\n\n[1612] Id. ii, 534-35.\n\n[1613] Id. pp. 547-48.\n\n[1614] Llorente, ii. 549-50.\n\n[1615] Id. ii, 472-73.\n\n[1616] Id. pp. 436-40.\n\n[1617] Id. ii, 440-42. Llorente mentions that Clavijo edited a\njournal named The Thinker, \"at a time when hardly anyone was to be\nfound who thought.\" A Frenchman, Langle having asserted, in his Voyage\nd'Espagne, that the Thinker was without merit, the historian comments\nthat if Langle is right in the assertion, it will be the sole verity\nin his book, but that, in view of his errors on all other matters,\nit is probable that he is wrong there also.\n\n[1618] Llorente, p. 449.\n\n[1619] Id. ii, 450-51. The book was prohibited, but a printer at\nBayonne reissued it with an additional volume of the tracts written\nfor and against it.\n\n[1620] Id. ii, 469-72.\n\n[1621] Buckle, p. 618.\n\n[1622] Id. p. 612.\n\n[1623] Id. p. 613.\n\n[1624] Carnota, The Marquis of Pombal, 2nd ed. 1871, p. 242.\n\n[1625] Id. p. 240.\n\n[1626] Id. pp. 261-62.\n\n[1627] Id. p. 262.\n\n[1628] Id. p. 375.\n\n[1629] Cp. P. Godet, Hist. litt. de la suisse fran\u00e7aise, 1900.\n\n[1630] E. de Bud\u00e9, Vie de Fran\u00e7ois Turrettini, 1871,\npp. 12-18. B. Turrettini was commissioned to write a history of the\nReformation at Geneva, which however remains in MS. He was further\ncommissioned in 1621 to go to Holland to obtain financial help for the\ncity, then seriously menaced by Savoy; and obtained 30,000 florins,\nbesides smaller sums from Hamburg and Bremen.\n\n[1631] Cp. Bud\u00e9, as cited, pp. 24 (birth-date wrong), 294; and the\nAvis de l'\u00c9diteur to the Trait\u00e9 de la Verit\u00e9 de la Religion Chr\u00e9tienne\nof J. A. Turretin, Paris, 1753.\n\n[1632] Work cited, i, 8, note.\n\n[1633] Lettre \u00e0 Damilaville, 6 d\u00e9cembre, 1763. The reserved youth may\nhave been either Jean-Alphonse, grandson of the Socinian professor,\nwho was born in 1735 and died childless, or some other member of the\nnumerous Turrettini clan.\n\n[1634] Voltaire to Damilaville, 12 juillet, 1763. \"Il faut que vous\nsachiez,\" explains Voltaire \"que Jean Jacques n'a \u00e9t\u00e9 condamn\u00e9 que\nparce qu'on n'aime pas sa personne.\"\n\n[1635] Voltaire to Damilaville, 21 auguste, 1763.\n\n[1636] Cp. i, 2, 16, 56, 58, 65, 68, 70, 71, 73, 94; ii, 290, etc.\n\n[1637] For instance: \"Je me recommande contr'eux [les pr\u00eatres] \u00e0 Dieu\nle p\u00e8re, car pour le fils, vous savez qu'il a aussi peu de cr\u00e9dit\nque sa m\u00e8re \u00e0 Gen\u00e8ve\" (Lettre \u00e0 D'Alembert, 25 mars, 1758).... \"Une\nr\u00e9publique o\u00f9 tout le monde est ouvertement socinien, except\u00e9s ceux\nqui font anabaptistes ou moraves. Figurez-vous, mon cher ami, qu'il\nn'y a pas actuellement un chr\u00e9tien de Gen\u00e8ve \u00e0 Berne; cela fait\nfr\u00e9mir!\" (To the same, 8 f\u00e9v. 1776.)\n\n[1638] On this see the correspondence of Voltaire and D'Alembert,\nunder dates 8, 28, and 29 janvier, 1757.\n\n[1639] Lettre \u00e0 D'Alembert, 27 ao\u00fbt, 1757.\n\n[1640] Lettres sur le D\u00e9isme, 1759, p. 6. Cp. pp. 84, 94, 103,\n105, 412.\n\n[1641] John Wesley in his Journal, dating May, 1737, speaks of having\neverywhere met many more \"converts to infidelity\" than \"converts to\nPopery,\" with apparent reference to Carolina.\n\n[1642] Such is the wording of the passage in the Autobiography in the\nEdinburgh edition of 1803, p. 25, which follows the French translation\nof the original MS. In the edition of the Autobiography and Letters\nin the Minerva Library, edited by Mr. Bettany (1891, p. 11), which\nfollows Mr. Bigelow's edition of 1879, it runs: \"Being then, from\nreading Shaftesbury and Collins, become a real doubter in many points\nof our religious doctrine....\"\n\n[1643] Only in 1784, however, appeared the first anti-Christian work\npublished in America, Ethan Allen's Reason the only Oracle of Man. As\nto its positions see Conway, Life of Paine, ii, 192-93.\n\n[1644] Autobiography, Bettany's ed. pp. 56, 65, 74, 77, etc.\n\n[1645] Letter of March 9, 1790. Id. p. 636.\n\n[1646] Cp. J. T. Morse's Thomas Jefferson, pp. 339-40.\n\n[1647] MS. cited by Dr. Conway, Life of Paine, ii, 310-11.\n\n[1648] Memoirs of Jefferson, 1829, iv, 300-301. The date is 1817. These\nand other passages exhibiting Jefferson's deism are cited in Rayner's\nSketches of the Life, etc., of Jefferson, 1832, pp. 513-17.\n\n[1649] Memoirs of Jefferson, iv, 331.\n\n[1650] Dr. Conway, Life of Paine, ii, 310.\n\n[1651] Extract from Jefferson's Journal under date February 1, 1800,\nin the Memoirs, iv, 512. Gouverneur Morris, whom Jefferson further\ncites as to Washington's unbelief, is not a very good witness; but\nthe main fact cited is significant.\n\n[1652] Compare the testimony given by the Rev. Dr. Wilson, of Albany,\nin 1831, as cited by R. D. Owen in his Discussion on the Authenticity\nof the Bible with O. Bacheler (London, ed. 1840, p. 231), with\nthe replies on the other side (pp. 233-34). Washington's death-bed\nattitude was that of a deist. See all the available data for his\nsupposed orthodoxy in Sparks's Life of Washington, 1852, app. iv.\n\n[1653] So far as is known, Paine was the first writer to use the\nexpression \"the religion of Humanity.\" See Conway's Life of Paine,\nii, 206. To Paine's influence, too, appears to be due the founding\nof the first American Anti-Slavery Society. Id. i, 51-52, 60, 80, etc.\n\n[1654] Cp. Conway's Life of Paine, ii, 205-207.\n\n[1655] A letter of Franklin to someone who had shown him a freethinking\nmanuscript, advising against its publication (Bettany's ed. p. 620),\nhas been conjecturally connected with Paine, but was clearly not\naddressed to him. Franklin died in 1790, and Paine was out of America\nfrom 1787 onwards. But the letter is in every way inapplicable to\nthe Age of Reason. The remark: \"If men are so wicked with religion,\nwhat would they be without it?\" could not be made to a devout deist\nlike Paine.\n\n[1656] Conway, Life of Paine, ii, 254-55.\n\n[1657] See Dr. Conway's chapter, \"The American Inquisition,\" vol. ii,\nch. xvi; also pp. 361-62, 374, 379. The falsity of the ordinary charges\nagainst Paine's character is finally made clear by Dr. Conway, ch. xix,\nand pp. 371, 383, 419, 423. Cp. the author's pamphlet, Thomas Paine: An\nInvestigation (Bonner). The chronically revived story of his death-bed\nremorse for his writings--long ago exposed (Conway, ii, 420)--is\ndefinitively discredited in the latest reiteration. That occurs in\nthe Life and Letters of Dr. R. H. Thomas (1905), the mother of whose\nstepmother was the Mrs. Mary Hinsdale, n\u00e9e Roscoe, on whose testimony\nthe legend rests. Dr. Thomas, a Quaker of the highest character,\naccepted the story without question, but incidentally tells of the\nold lady (p. 13) that \"her wandering fancies had all the charm of\na present fairy-tale to us.\" No further proof is needed, after the\nprevious exposure, of the worthlessness of the testimony in question.\n\n[1658] Conway, ii, 371.\n\n[1659] See the details in Conway's Life, ii, 280-81, and note. He\nhad also a scheme for a gunpowder motor (id. and i, 240), and various\nother remarkable plans.\n\n[1660] Conway, ii, 362-71.\n\n[1661] Testimonies quoted by R. D. Owen, as cited, pp. 231-32.\n\n[1662] Conway, ii, 422.\n\n[1663] Memoir of Sydney Smith, by his daughter, Lady Holland, ed. 1869,\np. 49. Lady Holland remarks on the same page that her father's religion\nhad in it \"nothing intolerant.\"\n\n[1664] Memoir of Sydney Smith, p. 142.\n\n[1665] Julien Luchaire, Essai sur l'\u00e9volution intellectuelle de\nl'Italie, 1906, pp. 5-7.\n\n[1666] Dr. Ramage, Nooks and Byeways of Italy, 1868, pp. 76,\n105-13. Ramage describes the helplessness of the better minds before\n1830.\n\n[1667] Luchaire, pp. 35, 36.\n\n[1668] Id. p. 30.\n\n[1669] Doblado (Blanco White), Letters from Spain, 1822. p. 358.\n\n[1670] Thus the traveller and belletrist J. G. Seume, a zealous\ndeist and opponent of atheism, and a no less zealous patriot,\npenned many fiercely freethinking maxims, as: \"Where were the most\nso-called positive religions, there was always the least morality\";\n\"Grotius and the Bible are the best supports of despotism\"; \"Heaven\nhas lost us the earth\"; \"The best apostles of despotism and slavery\nare the mystics.\" Apokryphen, 1806-1807, in S\u00e4mmtliche Werke, 1839,\niv, 157, 173, 177, 219.\n\n[1671] C. H. Cottrell, Religious Movements of Germany, 1849, p. 12 sq.\n\n[1672] Cp. the author's Evolution of States, pp. 138-39.\n\n[1673] When I thus planned the treatment of the nineteenth century in\nthe first edition of this book, it was known to me that Mr. Alfred\nW. Benn had in hand a work on The History of English Rationalism in\nthe Nineteenth Century; and the knowledge made me the more resolved\nto keep my own record condensed. Duly published in 1906 (Longmans,\n2 vols.), Mr. Benn's book amply fulfilled expectations; and to\nit I would refer every reader who seeks a fuller survey than the\npresent. Its freshness of thought and vigour of execution will more\nthan repay him. Even Mr. Benn's copious work, however--devoting as it\ndoes a large amount of space to a preliminary survey of the eighteenth\ncentury--leaves room for various English monographs on the nineteenth,\nto say nothing of the culture history of a dozen other countries.\n\n[1674] Lecky, Hist. of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century, ed. 1892,\niii, 382.\n\n[1675] Cp. Conway's Life of Paine, ii, 252-53.\n\n[1676] This translation, issued by \"Sherwood, Neely, and Jones,\nPaternoster Row, and all booksellers,\" purports to be \"with\nadditions.\" The translation, however, has altered d'Holbach's atheism\nto deism.\n\n[1677] By W. Huttman. The book is \"embellished with a head of Jesus\"--a\nconventional religious picture. Huttman's opinions may be divined from\nthe last sentence of his preface, alluding to \"the high pretentions\nand inflated stile of the lives of Christ which issue periodically\nfrom the English press.\"\n\n[1678] Cp. Dynamics of Religion, pp. 208-209.\n\n[1679] See Harriet Martineau's History of the Peace, ed. 1877, ii,\n87, and Mrs. Carlile Campbell's The Battle of the Press (Bonner,\n1899), passim, as to the treatment of those who acted as Carlile's\nshopmen. Women were imprisoned as well as men--e.g. Susanna Wright,\nas to whom see Wheeler's Dictionary, and last ref. Carlile's wife and\nsister were likewise imprisoned with him; and over twenty volunteer\nshopmen in all went to jail.\n\n[1680] Hone's most important service to popular culture was his issue\nof the Apocryphal New Testament, which, by co-ordinating work of the\nsame kind, gave a fresh scientific basis to the popular criticism of\nthe gospel history. As to his famous trial for blasphemy on the score\nof his having published certain parodies, political in intention, see\nbk. i, ch. x (by Knight) of Harriet Martineau's History of the Peace.\n\n[1681] Holyoake, Sixty Years of an Agitator's Life, i, 109-10. See\np. 111 as to other cases.\n\n[1682] Art. by Holyoake in Dict. of Nat. Biog. Cp. Sixty Years,\nper index.\n\n[1683] Articles in Dict. of Nat. Biog.\n\n[1684] Holyoake, Sixty Years, i, 47.\n\n[1685] Kirkup, History of Socialism, 1892, p. 64.\n\n[1686] \"From an early age he had lost all belief in the prevailing\nforms of religion\" (Kirkup, p. 59).\n\n[1687] Reformers of almost all schools, indeed, from the first\nregarded Owen with more or less genial incredulity, some criticizing\nhim acutely without any ill-will. See Podmore's Robert Owen, 1906, i,\n238-42. Southey was one of the first to detect his lack of religious\nbelief. Id. p. 222, n.\n\n[1688] Podmore, i, 246.\n\n[1689] Kirkup, as cited, p. 64.\n\n[1690] Podmore, ii, 640.\n\n[1691] \"Extraordinary self-complacency,\" \"autocratic action,\"\n\"arrogance,\" are among the expressions used of him by his ablest\nbiographer. (Podmore, ii, 641.) Of him might be said, as of Emerson\nby himself, \"the children of the Gods do not argue\"--the faculty\nbeing absent.\n\n[1692] Pamphlet sold at 1 1/2d., and \"to be had of all the\nBooksellers.\"\n\n[1693] Of George Combe's Constitution of Man (1828), a deistic work,\nover 50,000 copies were sold in Britain within twelve years, and 10,000\nin America. Advt. to 4th ed. 1839. Combe avows that his impulse came\nfrom the phrenologist Spurzheim.\n\n[1694] See the details in his Last Trial by Jury for Atheism in\nEngland.\n\n[1695] The Gospel its Own Witness, 1799. rep. in Bohn's ed. of\nThe Principal Works and Remains of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, 1852,\npp. 136-37.\n\n[1696] See Prof. Flint's tribute to the reasoning power of Bradlaugh\nand Holyoake in his Anti-Theistic Theories, 4th ed. pp. 518-19.\n\n[1697] See Mrs. Bradlaugh Bonner's Charles Bradlaugh, i, 149, 288-89.\n\n[1698] For a full record see Part II of Mrs. Bradlaugh Bonner's\nCharles Bradlaugh.\n\n[1699] After Bradlaugh had secured his seat, the noble lord even\nsought his acquaintance.\n\n[1700] Though young Conservative members, after 1886, privately\nprofessed sympathy.\n\n[1701] Work cited, p. 524.\n\n[1702] Coquerel, Essai sur l'histoire g\u00e9n\u00e9rale du christianisme,\n1828, pr\u00e9f.\n\n[1703] Dr. Christopher Wordsworth, Diary in France, 1845, pp. 75-77.\n\n[1704] \"The miserable and deistical principle of the equality of all\nreligions\" (id. p. 188). Cp. pp. 151, 153.\n\n[1705] Id. pp. 15, 37, 45, 181, 185, 190.\n\n[1706] Id. pp. 157-61. As to the general vogue of rationalism in France\nat that period, see pp. 35, 204: and compare Saisset, Essais sur la\nphilosophie et la religion, 1845; The Progress of Religious Thought as\nillustrated in the Protestant Church of France, by Dr. J. R. Beard,\n1861; and Wilson's article in Essays and Reviews. As to Switzerland\nand Holland, see Pearson, Infidelity, its Aspects, etc., 1853,\npp. 560-64, 575-84.\n\n[1707] Louis Philippe sought to suppress this book, of which many\neditions had appeared before 1830. See Blanco White's Life, 1845,\nii. 168.\n\n[1708] Prof. E. Lavisse, Un Ministre: Victor Duruy, 1895 (rep. of\nart. in Revue de Paris, Janv. 15 and Mars 1, 1895), p. 117.\n\n[1709] Id. pp. 99-105.\n\n[1710] Id. pp. 107-118.\n\n[1711] Id. pp. 118-27.\n\n[1712] Llorente, Hist. crit. de l'Inquisition de l'Espagne, 2e \u00e9dit,\niv, 153.\n\n[1713] Rapport of Ch. Fulpius in the Almanach de Libre Pens\u00e9e, 1906.\n\n[1714] Squier, Notes on Central America, 1856, p. 227.\n\n[1715] Before 1840 the popular freethought propaganda had been partly\ncarried on under cover of Radicalism, as in Carlile's Republican, and\nLion, and in various publications of William Hone. Cp. H. B. Wilson's\narticle \"The National Church,\" in Essays and Reviews, 9th ed. p. 152.\n\n[1716] Described as \"our chief atheistic organ\" by the late\nF. W. Newman \"because Dr. James Martineau declined to continue\nwriting for it, because it interpolated atheistical articles between\nhis theistic articles\" (Contributions ... to the early history of the\nlate Cardinal Newman, 1891, p. 103). The review was for a time edited\nby J. S. Mill, and for long after him by Dr. John Chapman. It lasted\ninto the twentieth century, under the editorship of Dr. Chapman's\nwidow, and kept a free platform to the end.\n\n[1717] Pastor W. Baur, Hamburg, Religious Life in Germany during the\nWars of Independence, Eng. tr. 1872, p. 41. H. J. Rose and Pusey,\nin their controversy as to the causes of German rationalism, were\nsubstantially at one on this point of fact. Rose, Letter to the Bishop\nof London, 1829, pp. 19, 150, 161.\n\n[1718] Id. p. 481.\n\n[1719] Ueber die Religion: Reden an die gebildeten unter ihren\nVer\u00e4chtern. These are discussed hereinafter.\n\n[1720] Lichtenberger, Hist. of Ger. Theol. in the Nineteenth\nCent. Eng. tr. 1889, pp. 122-23.\n\n[1721] See the same volume, passim.\n\n[1722] Karl von Raumer, Contrib. to the Hist. of the German\nUniversities, Eng. tr. 1859, p. 79. The intellectual tone of\nW. Baur and K. von Raumer certainly protects them from any charge of\n\"enlightenment.\"\n\n[1723] Laing, Notes of a Traveller, 1842, p. 181.\n\n[1724] C. H. Cotterill, Relig. Movements of Germany in the Nineteenth\nCentury, 1849, pp. 39-40.\n\n[1725] Id. pp. 27-28, 41-42.\n\n[1726] Cp. Laing, as cited, pp. 206-207, 211.\n\n[1727] Cotterill, as cited, p. 84.\n\n[1728] Cotterill. as cited, pp. 43-47.\n\n[1729] Rapport de Ida Altmann, in Almanach de Libre Pens\u00e9e, 1906,\np. 20.\n\n[1730] The principal have been: Das freie Wort and Frankfurter Zeitung,\nFrankfort-on-Main; Der Freidenker, Friedrichshagen, near Berlin; Das\nfreireligi\u00f6se Sonntagsblatt, Breslau; Die freie Gemeinde, Magdeburg;\nDer Atheist, Nuremberg; Menschentum, Gotha; Vossische Zeitung, Berlin;\nBerliner Volkszeitung, Berlin; Vorw\u00e4rts (Socialist), Berlin; Weser\nZeitung, Bremen; Hartungsche Zeitung, K\u00f6nigsberg; K\u00f6lnische Zeitung,\nCologne.\n\n[1731] Studemund, Der moderne Unglaube in den unteren St\u00e4nden, 1901,\np. 14.\n\n[1732] Id. p. 22.\n\n[1733] A. D. McLaren, An Australian in Germany, 1911, pp. 181, 184.\n\n[1734] Studemund, Der moderne Unglaube in den unteren St\u00e4nden, 1901,\npp. 17, 21.\n\n[1735] Glossen zu Yves Guyot's und Sigismund Lacroix's \"Die wahre\nGestalt des Christentums.\"\n\n[1736] Studemund, p. 22.\n\n[1737] Id. p. 23.\n\n[1738] Id. p. 27.\n\n[1739] Id. pp. 37-38.\n\n[1740] Id. pp. 40-42. Cp. p. 43. Pastor Studemund cites other\ninquirers, notably Rade, Gebhardt, Lorenz, and Dietzgen, all to the\nsame effect.\n\n[1741] E.g. Pastor A. Kalthoff's Was wissen wir von Jesus? 1901. Since\nthat date the opinion has found new and powerful supporters in Germany.\n\n[1742] \"The people in the country do not read; in the towns they read\nlittle. The journals are little circulated. In Russia one never sees\na cabman, an artisan, a labourer reading a newspaper\" (Ivan Strannik,\nLa pens\u00e9e russe contemporaine, 1903, p. 5).\n\n[1743] Cp. E. Lavigne, Introduction \u00e0 l'histoire du nihilisme russe,\n1880, pp. 149, 161, 224; Arnaudo, Le Nihilisme, French trans. pp. 37,\n58, 61, 63, 77, 86, etc.; Tikhomirov, La Russie, p. 290.\n\n[1744] Tikhomirov, La Russie, pp. 325-26, 338-39.\n\n[1745] Cp. Priestley, Essay on the First Principles of Government,\n2nd ed. 1771, pp. 257-61, and Conway's Centenary History of South\nPlace, pp. 63, 77, 80.\n\n[1746] See Rev. Joseph Hunter, An Historical Defence of the Trustees of\nLady Henley's Foundations, 1834; The History, Opinions, and Present\nLegal Position of the English Presbyterians (official), 1834; An\nExamination and Defence of the Principles of Protestant Dissent,\nby the Rev. W. Hamilton Drummond, of Dublin, 1842.\n\n[1747] Conway, Autobiography, 1905, i, 123.\n\n[1748] So Prof. William James, The Will to Believe, etc., 1897, p. 133.\n\n[1749] Conway, Emerson at Home and Abroad, 1883, ch. vii.\n\n[1750] Hagenbach, Kirchengeschichte des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts,\n1848, ii, 422. Rationalism seems to have spread soonest in the canton\nof Z\u00fcrich. Id. ii, 427.\n\n[1751] Grote, Seven Letters concerning the Politics of Switzerland,\npp. 34-35. Hagenbach (Kirchengeschichte, ii, 427-28) shows no shame\nover the insurrection at Z\u00fcrich. But cp. Beard, in Voices of the\nChurch in Reply to Dr. Strauss, 1845, pp. 17-18.\n\n[1752] Cp. the rapport of Ch. Fulpius in the Almanach de Libre\nPens\u00e9e, 1906.\n\n[1753] G. M. Theal, South Africa (\"Story of the Nations\" series),\npp. 340, 345. Mr. Theal's view of the mental processes of the Boers\nis somewhat \u00e0 priori, and his explanation seems in part inconsistent\nwith his own narrative.\n\n[1754] An English acquaintance of my own at Cape Town, who before\nthe war not only was an orthodox believer, but found his chief weekly\npleasure in attending church, was so astounded by the general attitude\nof the clergy on the war that he severed his connection, once for\nall. Thousands did the same in England.\n\n[1755] I write on the strength of personal testimonies spontaneously\ngiven to me in South Africa, some of them by clergymen of the Dutch\nReformed Church.\n\n[1756] See the evidence collected in the pamphlet The Churches and\nthe War, by Alfred Marks. New Age Office, 1905.\n\n[1757] For the survey here reduced to outline I am indebted to two\nSwedish friends.\n\n[1758] Cp. Lamon's Life of Lincoln, and J. B. Remsburg's Abraham\nLincoln: Was he a Christian? (New York, 1893.)\n\n[1759] Remsburg, pp. 318-19.\n\n[1760] Personal information.\n\n[1761] Remsburg, p. 324.\n\n[1762] Of these the New York Truthseeker has been the most energetic\nand successful.\n\n[1763] White, Warfare, i, 81.\n\n[1764] White, Warfare, i, 84, 86, 314, 317, 318.\n\n[1765] This view is not inconsistent with the fact that popular\nforms of credulity are also found specially flourishing in the\nWest. Cp. Bryce, The American Commonwealth, 3rd ed. ii, 832-33.\n\n[1766] As to the absolute predominance of rationalistic unbelief\n(in the orthodox sense of the word) in educated Germany in the first\nthird of the century, see the Memoirs of F. Perthes, Eng. tr. 2nd\ned. ii, 240-45, 255, 266-75. Despite the various reactions claimed by\nPerthes and others, it is clear that the tables have never since been\nturned. Cp. Pearson, Infidelity, pp. 554-59, 569-74. Schleiermacher was\ncharged on his own side with making fatal concessions. Kahnis, Internal\nHist. of German Protestantism, Eng. tr. 1856, pp. 210-11; Robins,\nA Defence of the Faith, 1862, i, 181; and Quinet as there cited.\n\n[1767] Aus Schleiermachers Leben: In Briefen, 1860, i, 42, 84. The\nfather's letters, with their unctuous rhetoric, are a revelation of\nthe power of declamatory habit to eliminate sincere thought.\n\n[1768] Werke, 1843, i, 140.\n\n[1769] See Kabnis, p. 214, and refs. as to his relations with\nFrau Grunow. \"He belonged to the circle of Prince Louis, in which\nintellect and art, but not morality,\" reigned. Ib. Compare the\nsympathetic Lichtenberger, Hist. of Ger. Theol. in the Nineteenth\nCent. Eng. tr. 1889, pp. 103-104. It was of course his clerical\ncharacter that disadvantaged Schleiermacher in such matters.\n\n[1770] Lichtenberger, as cited, p. 87.\n\n[1771] Lichtenberger, as cited, p. 89.\n\n[1772] Id. p. 109.\n\n[1773] Id. pp. 123-24.\n\n[1774] Id. p. 119.\n\n[1775] Id. p. 129.\n\n[1776] Strauss, Die Halben und die Ganzen, 1865, p. 18.\n\n[1777] For estimates of his work cp. Baur, Kirchengeschichte des\n19ten Jahrh., p. 45; Kahnis, as last cited; Pfleiderer, Development\nof Theology in Germany, 1893, bk. i, ch. iii; bk. ii, ch. ii;\nLichtenberger, as cited; and art. by Rev. F. J. Smith in Theol. Review,\nJuly, 1869.\n\n[1778] Reuss, History of the Canon, Eng. tr. 1890, p. 387. Cp. Strauss,\nEinleitung in Das Leben Jesu, \u00a7 10.\n\n[1779] See a good account of the development in Strauss's Introductions\nto his two Lives of Jesus.\n\n[1780] In a volume entitled Offenbarung und Mythologie.\n\n[1781] Hebr\u00e4ische Mythologie des alten und neuen Testaments.\n\n[1782] Evangeliencommentar, 1800-1804; Leben Jesu, 1828.\n\n[1783] Probabilia de Evangelii et Epistolarum Joannis Apostoli indole\net origine.\n\n[1784] It is thus inaccurate--Strauss himself being the witness--to\nsay, as does Dr. Conybeare (Hist. of N. T. Crit. p. 107), that\nStrauss was the first German writer to discern the unhistoricity of\nthe Fourth Gospel.\n\n[1785] Das Leben Jesu, pref. to first ed. end.\n\n[1786] Hausrath, David Friedrich Strauss und die Theologie seiner Zeit,\n1878, ii, 233-34.\n\n[1787] Pref. to work cited. Eng. tr. 1875, i, 86, 89.\n\n[1788] Lichtenberger, as cited, p. 391.\n\n[1789] Kritik der evang. Gesch. der Synoptiker, ed. 1846, Vorrede,\npp. v-xiii.\n\n[1790] Baur, Kirchengesch. des 19ten Jahrh., pp. 388-89.\n\n[1791] Gesch. der Politik, Kultur, und Aufkl\u00e4rung des 18ten Jahrh. 4\nBde. 1843-45; Gesch. der franz\u00f6s. Revolution, 3 Bde. 1847.\n\n[1792] Russland und das Germanenthum, 1847.\n\n[1793] Lichtenberger, p. 378.\n\n[1794] Philo, Strauss, Renan, und das Urchristenthum, 1874; Christus\nund die C\u00e4saren, 1877.\n\n[1795] Das Christenthum und die chr. Kirche, 1854, p. 34.\n\n[1796] Das Leben Jesu f\u00fcr das deutsche Volk bearbeitet, \u00a7 41, 3te\nAufl. p. 254, 1st par.\n\n[1797] Id. ib.\n\n[1798] Cp. Christianity and Mythology, pt. iii, div. ii, \u00a7 6.\n\n[1799] Pref. to second Leben Jesu, ed. cited, p. xv.\n\n[1800] Zeller, David Friedrich Strauss, 2te Aufl. p. 113.\n\n[1801] Cheyne, Founders of Old Testament Criticism, 1893,\np. 16. Eichhorn seems to have known Astruc's work only at second-hand,\nyet, without him, it might be contended, Astruc's work would have\nbeen completely lost to science. (Id. p. 23.)\n\n[1802] See Dr. Cheyne's surveys, which are those of a liberal\necclesiastic--a point of view on which he has since notably advanced.\n\n[1803] Cheyne, pp. 187-88.\n\n[1804] Kuenen, The Hexateuch, Eng. tr. introd. pp. xiv-xvii.\n\n[1805] Dr. Beard, in Voices of the Church in Reply to Strauss, 1845,\npp. 16-17.\n\n[1806] Zeller, D. F. Strauss, Eng. tr. 1879, p. 56.\n\n[1807] See Gunkel, Zum religionsgeschichtlichen Verst\u00e4ndnis des Neuen\nTestaments, 1903, pp. 1-2, note.\n\n[1808] Mythen der alten Perser als Quellen christlicher Glaubenslehren,\n1835; Der Mystagog, oder Deutung der Geheimenlehren, Symbole und Feste\nder christlichen Kirche, 1838; Rabbinische Quellen und Parallelen\nzu neutestamentlichen Schriftstellen, 1839; Biblische Mythologie des\nalten und neuen Testaments, 1842; Der Festkalender, 1847, etc.\n\n[1809] Der Mystagog, 1838, p. vii, note, and p. 241.\n\n[1810] See Nork's preamble on Hr. Fr. Daumer, ein kurzweiliger\nMolochsf\u00e4nger, in his Biblische Mythologie, Bd. i.\n\n[1811] After being acquitted in 1880. The first charge was founded\non his Britannica article \"Bible\"; the second on the article \"Hebrew\nLanguage and Literature,\" which appeared after the acquittal.\n\n[1812] These utterances were noted for their \"vigour and independence\"\nby Kuenen, and also by Dr. Cheyne, who remarks that the earlier\nwork of Kalisch on Exodus (1855) was somewhat behind the critical\nstandpoint of contemporary investigators on the Continent. (Founders\nof Old Testament Criticism, p. 207.)\n\n[1813] See his Introduction to the Study of the Old Testament,\npref. \"It is the spirit of compromise that I chiefly dread for our\nyounger students,\" wrote Dr. Cheyne in 1893 (Founders, p. 247). His\ncourteous criticism of Dr. Driver does not fail to point the moral\nin that writer's direction.\n\n[1814] Conrad, The German Universities for the Last Fifty Years,\nEng. tr. 1885, p. 74. See p. 100 as to the financial measures taken;\nand p. 105 as to the essentially financial nature of the \"reaction.\"\n\n[1815] Id. p. 103.\n\n[1816] Id. p. 104.\n\n[1817] Id. p. 112. See pp. 118-19 as to Austria.\n\n[1818] Id. pp. 97-98.\n\n[1819] White, Warfare, i, 239. In February, 1914, on a given Sunday,\nout of a Protestant population of over two millions, only 35,000\npersons attended church in Berlin. Art. on \"Creeds, Heresy-Hunting,\nand Secession in German Protestantism To-day,\" in Hibbert Journal\nfor July, 1914, p. 722.\n\n[1820] See Haeckel's Freedom in Science and Teaching, Eng. tr. with\npref. by Huxley, 1879, pp. xix, xxv, xxvii, 89-90; and Clifford.\n\n[1821] B\u00fcchner, for straightforwardly renouncing his connection with\nthe State Church a generation ago, was blamed by many who held his\nphilosophic opinions. In our own day, there has arisen a considerable\nAustrittsbewegung, or \"Withdrawal Movement\"; while creedless clerics\nstrive to remain inside a Church bent on ejecting them. A. D. McLaren,\nin Hibbert Journal for July, 1914, art. cited.\n\n[1822] Tracts for the Times, vol. ii, ed. 1839; Records of the Church,\nNo. xxiv.\n\n[1823] Tracts for the Times, No. 3.\n\n[1824] Id. No. 32.\n\n[1825] Cross's Life, 1-vol. ed. p. 79.\n\n[1826] Account of the Printed Text of the Greek N. T., 1854, pref. and\npp. 47, 112-13, 266.\n\n[1827] A third brother, Charles Robert, became an atheist. This,\nas well as his psychic infirmity, insures him sufficiently severe\ntreatment at the hands of his theistic brother in the introduction\nto the latter's Contributions Chiefly to the Early History of the\nlate Cardinal Newman, 1891.\n\n[1828] Latterly abandoned by the learned author, who before his death\ndisclosed his name--W. R. Cassels.\n\n[1829] See the testimonies of Pfleiderer, The Development of Theology\nsince Kant, Eng. tr. 1890, p. 397, and Dr. Samuel Davidson, Introd. to\nthe Study of the New Testament, pref. to 2nd ed.\n\n[1830] Ptie. i, liv. i, ch. v.\n\n[1831] Id. i, liv. iii, ch. ii.\n\n[1832] It is further to be remembered, however, that Mr. Matthew\nArnold saw fit to defend Chateaubriand, calling him \"great,\" when\nhis fame was being undone by common sense.\n\n[1833] C. Wordsworth, Diary in France, 1845, pp. 55-56, 124, 204.\n\n[1834] Essais sur la philosophie et la religion, 1845, p. 193.\n\n[1835] Histoire, tom. vii, Renaissance, introd. \u00a7 6.\n\n[1836] M. Faguet writes (\u00c9tudes sur le XIXe Si\u00e8cle, p. 352) that\n\"Michelet croit \u00e0 l'\u00e2me plus qu'\u00e0 Dieu, encore que profond\u00e9ment\nd\u00e9iste. Les th\u00e9ories philosophiques modernes lui \u00e9taient\np\u00e9nibles.\" This may be true, though, hardly any evidence is offered\non the latter head; but when M. Faguet writes, \"Est-il chr\u00e9tien? Je\nn'en sais rien ... mais il sympathise avec la pens\u00e9e chr\u00e9tienne,\"\nhe seems to ignore the preface to the later editions of the Histoire\nde la r\u00e9volution fran\u00e7aise. To pronounce Christianity, as Michelet\nthere does, essentially anti-democratic, and therefore hostile to\nthe Revolution, was, for him, to condemn it.\n\n[1837] Letter to Sainte-Beuve, cited by Levallois, Sainte-Beuve,\n1872, p. 14.\n\n[1838] Lanson, Hist. de la litt. fran\u00e7aise, p. 951.\n\n[1839] \"L'incr\u00e9dulit\u00e9 de Sainte-Beuve \u00e9tait sinc\u00e8re, radicale,\net absolue. Elle a \u00e9t\u00e9 invariable et invincible pendant trente\nans. Voil\u00e0 la v\u00e9rit\u00e9\" (Jules Levallois, Sainte-Beuve, 1872,\npr\u00e9f. p. xxxiii). M. Levallois, who writes as a theist, was one of\nSainte-Beuve's secretaries. M. Zola, who spoke of the famous critic's\nrationalism as \"une n\u00e9gation n'osant conclure,\" admitted later that\nit was hardly possible for him to speak more boldly than he did\n(Documents Litt\u00e9raires, 1881, pp. 314, 325-28). And M. Lavisse has\nshown (as cited above, p. 406) with what courage he supported Duruy in\nthe Senate against the attacks of the exasperated clerical party. See\nalso his letter of 1867 to Louis Viardot in the avant-propos to that\nwriter's Libre Examen: Apologie d'un Incr\u00e9dule, 6e \u00e9dit. 1881, p. 3.\n\n[1840] That Wordsworth was not an orthodox Christian is fairly\ncertain. Both in talk and in poetry he put forth a pantheistic\ndoctrine. Cp. Benn, Hist. of Eng. Rationalism, i, 227-29; and\nColeridge's letter of Aug. 8, 1820, in Allsopp's Letters, etc.,\nof S. T. Coleridge, 3rd ed. 1864, pp. 56-57.\n\n[1841] Leslie Stephen, George Eliot, p. 27.\n\n[1842] Mr. Benn (Hist. of Eng. Rationalism, i, 226, 309 sq.) has some\ninteresting discussions on Scott's relation to religion, but does\nnot take full account of biographical data and of Scott's utterances\noutside of his novels. The truth probably is that Scott's brain was\none with \"watertight compartments.\"\n\n[1843] At the age of twenty-five we find him writing to Gifford: \"I\nam no bigot to infidelity, and did not expect that because I doubted\nthe immortality of man I should be charged with denying the existence\nof God\" (letter of June 18, 1813).\n\n[1844] By the Court of Chancery, in 1822, the year in which copyright\nwas refused to the Lectures of Dr. Lawrence. Harriet Martineau,\nHistory of the Peace, ii, 87.\n\n[1845] W. Sharp, Life of Severn, 1892, pp. 86-87, 90, 117-18.\n\n[1846] On reading Lamb's severe rejoinder, Southey, in distress,\napologized, and Lamb at once relented (Life and Letters of John\nRickman, by Orlo Williams, 1912, p. 225). Hence the curtailment of\nLamb's letter in the ordinary editions of his works.\n\n[1847] William Allingham: A Diary, 1907, p. 253. Cp. p. 268.\n\n[1848] Id. p. 232.\n\n[1849] Allingham, as cited, p. 254.\n\n[1850] Id. p. 211. Carlyle said the same thing to Moncure Conway.\n\n[1851] Cp. Prof. Bain's J. S. Mill, pp. 157, 191; Froude's London\nLife of Carlyle, i, 458.\n\n[1852] Bain, p. 128.\n\n[1853] See Brougham's letters in the Correspondence of Macvey Napier,\n1879, pp. 333-37. Brougham is deeply indignant, not at the fact, but\nat the indiscreet revelation of it--as also at the similar revelation\nconcerning Pitt (p. 334).\n\n[1854] My Relations with Carlyle, 1903, p. 2.\n\n[1855] Morning Post, March 9, 1849.\n\n[1856] Germany, by Bisset Hawkins, M.D., F.R.S., F.R.C.P., Inspector\nof Prisons, late Professor at King's College, etc., 1838, p. 171.\n\n[1857] History, ch. xix. Student's ed. ii, 411.\n\n[1858] Sometimes he gives a clue; and we find Brougham privately\ndenouncing him for his remark (Essay on Ranke's History of the Popes,\n6th par.) that to try \"without the help of revelation to prove the\nimmortality of man\" is vain. \"It is next thing to preaching atheism,\"\nshouts Brougham (Letter of October 20, 1840, in Correspondence of\nMacvey Napier, p. 333), who at the same time hotly insisted that\nCuvier had made an advance in Natural Theology by proving that there\nmust have been one divine interposition after the creation of the\nworld--to create species. (Id. p. 337.)\n\n[1859] In 1830, for instance, we find a Scottish episcopal D.D. writing\nthat \"Infidelity has had its day; it, depend upon it, will never\nbe revived--NO MAN OF GENIUS WILL EVER WRITE ANOTHER WORD IN ITS\nSUPPORT.\" Morehead, Dialogues on Natural and Revealed Religion, p. 266.\n\n[1860] Cp. the author's Modern Humanists, pp. 189-94.\n\n[1861] Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System (1797),\n8th ed. p. 368. Wilberforce points with chagrin to the superiority\nof Mohammedan writers in these matters.\n\n[1862] \"In point of tendency I should class her books among the most\nirreligious I ever read,\" delineating good characters in every aspect,\n\"and all this without the remotest allusion to Christianity, the only\ntrue religion.\" Cited in O. Gregory's Brief Memoir of Robert Hall,\n1833, p. 242. The context tells how Miss Edgeworth avowed that she had\nnot thought religion necessary in books meant for the upper classes.\n\n[1863] Art. \"The Faith of Richard Jefferies,\" by H. S. Salt, in\nWestminster Review, August, 1905, rep. as pamphlet by the R. P. A.,\n1906.\n\n[1864] The writer of these scurrilities is Mr. Bramwell Booth, War Cry,\nMay 27, 1905.\n\n[1865] Cp. Mrs. Sutherland Orr's article on \"The Religious Opinions of\nRobert Browning\" in the Contemporary Review, December, 1891, p. 878;\nand the present writer's Tennyson and Browning as Teachers, 1903.\n\n[1866] Apropos of his Theatrocrat, which he pronounced \"the\nmost profound and original of English books.\" Mr. Davidson in a\nnewspaper article proclaimed himself on socio-political grounds an\nanti-Christian. \"I take the first resolute step out of Christendom,\"\nwas his claim (Daily Chronicle, December 20, 1905).\n\n[1867] See Talks with Emerson, by C. J. Woodbury, 1890, pp. 93-94.\n\n[1868] It was in his old age that Whitman tended most to \"theize\"\nNature. In conversation with Dr. Moncure Conway, he once used the\nexpression that \"the spectacle of a mouse is enough to stagger a\nsextillion of infidels.\" Dr. Conway replied: \"And the sight of the\ncat playing with the mouse is enough to set them on their feet again\";\nwhereat Whitman tolerantly smiled.\n\n[1869] Kahnis, Internal Hist. of Ger. Protestantism, Eng. tr. 1856,\np. 78.\n\n[1870] Gest\u00e4ndnisse, end (Werke, ed. 1876, iv, 59).\n\n[1871] Zur Gesch. der Relig. und Philos. in Werke, ed. cited, iii, 80.\n\n[1872] See Ernest Newman's Study of Wagner, 1899, p. 390, note,\nas to the vagueness of Wagnerians on the subject.\n\n[1873] Tikhomirov, La Russie, 2e \u00e9dit. p. 343.\n\n[1874] See Comte de Vogu\u00eb's Le roman russe, p. 218, as to his\npropaganda of atheism.\n\n[1875] Arnaudo, Le Nihilisme et les Nihilistes, French tr. 50.\n\n[1876] Tikhomirov, p. 344.\n\n[1877] \"Il [Tourgu\u00e9nief] \u00e9tait libre-penseur, et d\u00e9test\u00e2t l'apparat\nreligieux d'une mani\u00e8re toute particuli\u00e8re.\" I. Pavlovsky, Souvenirs\nsur Tourgu\u00e9nief, 1887, p. 242.\n\n[1878] See the article \"Un Pr\u00e9curseur d'Henrik Ibsen, Soeren\nKierkegaard,\" in the Revue de Paris, July 1, 1901.\n\n[1879] Prof. A. D. White, Hist. of the Warfare of Science with\nTheology, 1896, i, 17, 22.\n\n[1880] The phrase is used by a French Protestant pastor. La v\u00e9rit\u00e9\nchr\u00e9tienne et la doute moderne (Conf\u00e9rences), 1879, pp. 24-25.\n\n[1881] Antiquities of the Jews, by William Brown, D.D., Edinburgh,\n1826, i, 121-22. Brown quotes \"from a friend\" a demonstration of the\nmonstrous consequences of a stoppage of the earth's rotation.\n\n[1882] Theopneustia: The Plenary Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures,\nEng. trans. Edinburgh, 1850, pp. 246-49. Gaussen elaborately argues\nthat if eighteen minutes were allowed for the stoppage of the earth's\nrotation, no shock would occur. Finally, however, he argues that there\nmay have been a mere refraction of the sun's rays--an old theory,\nalready set forth by Brown.\n\n[1883] Dr. C. R. Edmonds, Introd. to rep. of Leland's View of the\nDeistical Writers, Tegg's ed. 1837, p. xxiii.\n\n[1884] The work consists of twelve \"M\u00e9moires\" or treatises, six of\nwhich were read in 1796-1797 at the Institute. They appeared in book\nform in 1802.\n\n[1885] Rapports, Ier M\u00e9moire, \u00a7 ii, near end. (\u00c9d. 1843,\np. 73.) Cp. Pr\u00e9f. (pp. 46-47).\n\n[1886] Ed. cited, p. 54. Cp. p. 207, note.\n\n[1887] Not published till 1824.\n\n[1888] Ueberweg, ii, 339.\n\n[1889] Cp. Luchaire, as cited, p. 36.\n\n[1890] Lange, Gesch. des Materialismus, ii, 134.\n\n[1891] \"Since Cabanis, the referring back of mental functions to\nthe nervous system has remained dominant in physiology, whatever\nindividual physiologists may have thought about final causes\" (Lange,\nii, 70). Compare the tribute of Cabanis's orthodox editor Cerise\n(ed. 1843, Introd. pp. xlii-iii).\n\n[1892] Rapports, IIe M\u00e9moire, near end. (Ed. cited, p. 122.)\n\n[1893] See the already cited introduction of Cerise, who solved the\nproblem religiously by positing \"a force which executes the plans\nof God without our knowledge or intervention\" (p. xix). He goes on\nto lament the pantheism of Dr. Dubois (whose Examen des doctrines de\nCabanis, Gall, et Broussais (1842) was put forward as a vindication\nof the \"spiritual\" principle), and of the German school of physiology\nrepresented by Oken and Burdach.\n\n[1894] Lawrence's Lectures on Physiology, Zoology, and the Natural\nHistory of Man, 8th ed. 1840, pp. 1-3. The aspersion of Abernethy is\ntypical of the orthodox malignity of the time. Cabanis in his preface\nhad expressly contended for the all-importance of morals. The orthodox\nDr. Cerise, who edited his book in 1843, while acknowledging the high\ncharacter of Cabanis, thought fit to speak of \"the materialists\" as\n\"interested in abasing man\" (introd. p. xxi). On the score of fear\nof demoralization, the champions of \"spirit\" themselves exhibited\nthe maximum of baseness.\n\n[1895] Lawrence's Lectures, p. 9, note.\n\n[1896] Id. pp. 168-69.\n\n[1897] Yet Lawrence was created a baronet two months before his\ndeath. So much progress had been made in half a century.\n\n[1898] Work cited, pp. 355 sq., 375 sq. The tone is at times expressive\nof a similar attitude towards historical religion--e.g.: \"Human\ntestimony is of so little value ... that it cannot be received with\nsufficient caution. To doubt is the beginning of wisdom.\" Id. p. 269.\n\n[1899] Cp. Whewell, Hist. of the Inductive Sciences, 3rd ed. iii, 505.\n\n[1900] White, as cited, i, 222-23, gives a selection of the language\nin general use among theologians on the subject.\n\n[1901] The early policy of the Geological Society of London (1807),\nwhich professed to seek for facts and to disclaim theories as premature\n(cp. Whewell, iii, 428; Buckle, iii, 392), was at least as much\nsocially as scientifically prudential.\n\n[1902] See the excellent monograph of W. M. Mackenzie, Hugh Miller:\nA Critical Study, 1905, ch. vi; and cp. Spencer's essay on Illogical\nGeology--Essays, vol. i; and Baden Powell's Christianity without\nJudaism, 1857, p. 254 sq. Miller's friend Dick, the Thurso naturalist,\nbeing a freethinker, escaped such error. (Mackenzie, pp. 161-64.)\n\n[1903] Cp. the details given by Whewell, iii, 406-408, 411-13,\n506-507, as to early theories of a sound order, all of which came to\nnothing. Steno, a Dane resident in Italy in the seventeenth century,\nhad reached non-Scriptural and just views on several points. Cp. White,\nHist. of the Warfare of Science with Theology, i, 215. Leonardo da\nVinci and Frascatorio had reached them still earlier. Above, vol. i,\np. 371.\n\n[1904] Metamorphoses, lib. xv.\n\n[1905] He had just completed a work on the subject at his\ndeath. Cp. Mackenzie, Hugh Miller, as cited, pp. 134-35, 146-47.\n\n[1906] Christianity and Judaism, pp. 256-57.\n\n[1907] See Charles Darwin's Historical Sketch prefixed to the Origin\nof Species.\n\n[1908] Meding, as cited by Darwin, 6th ed. i, p. xv. Goethe seems\nto have had his general impulse from Kielmeyer, who also taught\nCuvier. Virchow, G\u00f6the als Naturforscher, 1861, Beilage x.\n\n[1909] Memoirs of Newton, i, 131. Cp. More Worlds than One, 1854,\npp. vi, 226.\n\n[1910] See Darwin's Sketch, as cited.\n\n[1911] Letter of March 16, 1845, in Life of Whewell, by Mrs. Stair\nDouglas, 2nd ed. 1882, pp. 318-19. If this statement be true as to\nOwen, he shuffled badly in his correspondence with the author of the\nVestiges. See the Life of Sir Richard Owen, 1894, i, 251.\n\n[1912] Mackenzie, Hugh Miller, p. 185.\n\n[1913] Foot-Prints of the Creator, end.\n\n[1914] Oxford Essays, 1856, p. 5.\n\n[1915] Hist. of the Inductive Sciences, 3rd ed. iii, 479-83; Life,\nas above cited. Whewell is said to have refused to allow a copy of the\nOrigin of Species to be placed in the Trinity College Library. White,\ni, 84.\n\n[1916] White, i, 70 sq.\n\n[1917] Edward Clodd, Thomas Henry Huxley, 1902, pp. 19-20.\n\n[1918] Luthardt, Fundamental Truths of Christianity, Eng. tr. 1865,\np. 74.\n\n[1919] See the many examples cited by White. As late as 1885 the\nScottish clergyman Dr. Lee is quoted as calling the Darwinians\n\"gospellers of the gutter,\" and charging on their doctrine \"utter\nblasphemy against the divine and human character of our incarnate Lord\"\n(White, i, 83). Carlyle is quoted as calling Darwin \"an apostle of\ndirt-worship.\" His admirers appear to regard him as having made amends\nby admitting that Darwin was personally charming.\n\n[1920] E.g. the Education, small ed. pp. 41, 155.\n\n[1921] I am informed on good authority that in later life Huxley\nchanged his views on the subject. He had abundant cause. As early as\n1879 he is found complaining (pref. to Eng. tr. of Haeckel's Freedom\nin Science and Teaching, p. xvii) of the mass of \"falsities at present\nfoisted upon the young in the name of the Church.\"\n\n[1922] See a choice collection in the pamphlet What Men of Science\nsay about God and Religion, by A. E. Proctor; Catholic Truth Society.\n\n[1923] Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, ed. 1888, iii, 179.\n\n[1924] It is doubtful whether C. A. Walckenaer should be so\ndescribed. His Essai sur l'histoire de l'esp\u00e8ce humaine (1798) has\nreal scientific value.\n\n[1925] See the author's Buckle and his Critics, 1895.\n\n[1926] Europe during the Middle Ages, 11th ed. i, 377.\n\n[1927] Cp. his Decline of the Roman Republic, 1864, i, 345-47; and\nnote on p. 447 of his translation of Plutarch's Brutus, Bohn ed. of\nLives, vol. iv.\n\n[1928] See The Dynamics of Religion, pp. 227-33.\n\n[1929] It is difficult to understand the claim made for Hegel by his\ntranslator, the Rev. E. B. Speirs, that any student of his lectures\non the Philosophy of Religion \"will be constrained to admit that in\nthem we have the true 'sources' of the evolution principle as applied\nto the study of religion\" (edit. pref. to trans. of work cited, i,\np. viii). To say nothing of Fontenelle and De Brosses, Constant had\nlaid out the whole subject before Hegel.\n\n[1930] Primitive Culture, i. 2.\n\n[1931] Life and Letters, i, 151.\n\n[1932] Principles of Sociology, 3 vols. 1876-96.\n\n[1933] Cp. Saintes, Hist. crit. du rationalisme en Allemagne, p. 323.\n\n[1934] Id. pp. 322-24.\n\n[1935] As to Hegel's mental development cp. Dr. Beard on \"Strauss,\nHegel, and their Opinions,\" in Voices of the Church in Reply to\nStrauss, 1845, pp. 3-4.\n\n[1936] E. Caird, Hegel, 1883, p. 94.\n\n[1937] E.g. Philos. of Religion, introd. Eng. tr. i, 38-40.\n\n[1938] Id. p. 41. Cp. pp. 216-17.\n\n[1939] Id. p. 219.\n\n[1940] Cp. Morell, as cited, and pp. 195-96; and Feuerbach, as\nsummarized by Baur, Kirchengeschichte des 19ten Jahrh. p. 390.\n\n[1941] Cp. Michelet as cited by Morell, ii, 192-93.\n\n[1942] As to Strauss cp. Beard, as above cited, pp. 21-22, 30; and\nZeller, David Friedrich Strauss, Eng. tr. pp. 35, 47-48, 71-72, etc.\n\n[1943] As to Vatke see Pfleiderer, as cited, p. 252 sq.; Cheyne,\nFounders of O. T. Criticism, 1893, p. 135.\n\n[1944] E.g. Dr. Hutchison Stirling. See his trans. of Schwegler's\nHandbook of the History of Philosophy, 6th ed. p. 438 sq.\n\n[1945] Baur, last cit. p. 389.\n\n[1946] Gest\u00e4ndnisse, Werke, iv, 33. Cp. iii, 110.\n\n[1947] Cp. Hagenbach, pp. 369-72; Farrar, Crit. Hist. of Freethought,\npp. 387-88. On Bauer's critical development and academic career see\nBaur, Kirchengesch. des 19ten Jahrh. pp. 386-89.\n\n[1948] Die Selbstzersetzung des Christenthums und die Religion der\nZukunft, 2te Aufl. 1874 trans. in Eng. as The Religion of the Future,\n1886.\n\n[1949] See Schopenhauer's dialogues on Religion and Immortality,\nand his essay on The Christian System (Eng. tr. by T. B. Samplers),\nand Nietzsche's Antichrist. The latter work is discussed by the writer\nin Essays in Sociology, vol. ii.\n\n[1950] Prof. Seth Pringle-Pattison, who passes many just criticisms\non their work (Philos. of Relig. in Kant and Hegel, rep. with The\nPhilosophical Radicals), does not seem to suspect this determination.\n\n[1951] Baur gives a good summary, Kirchengeschichte, pp. 390-94.\n\n[1952] \"M. Feuerbach et la nouvelle \u00e9cole h\u00e9g\u00e9lienne,\" in \u00c9tudes\nd'histoire religieuse.\n\n[1953] A. Kohut, Ludwig Feuerbach, sein Leben und seine Werke, 1909,\np. 48.\n\n[1954] Die Halben und die Ganzen, p. 50. \"Feuerbach a ruin\u00e9 le syst\u00e8me\nde Hegel et fond\u00e9 la positivisme.\" A. L\u00e9vy, La philosophie de Feuerbach\net son influence sur la litt. allemande, 1904, introd. p. xxii.\n\n[1955] E.g. \"All knowledge, all conviction, all piety ... is based\non the principle that in the spirit, as such, the consciousness of\nGod exists immediately with the consciousness of itself.\" Philos. of\nRelig. Eng. tr. introd. i. 42-43.\n\n[1956] Essence of Christianity, Eng. tr. 1854, p. 12.\n\n[1957] Kirchengeschichte des 19ten Jahrhunderts, pp. 393-94.\n\n[1958] Cp. A. L\u00e9vy, as cited, ch. iv.\n\n[1959] Id. ch. ii.\n\n[1960] Reden \u00fcber Religion, ihr Entstehen und Vergehen, an die\nGebildeten unter ihren Verehrern--a parody of the title of the famous\nwork of Schleiermacher.\n\n[1961] Work cited, p. 119.\n\n[1962] B\u00fcchner expressly rejected the term \"materialism\" because of its\nmisleading implications or connotations. Cp. in Mrs. Bradlaugh Bonner's\nCharles Bradlaugh the discussion in Pt. ii, ch. i, \u00a7 3 (by J. M. R.).\n\n[1963] While the cognate works of Carl Vogt and Moleschott have\ngone out of print, B\u00fcchner's, recast again and again, continues to\nbe republished.\n\n[1964] Cp. Paul Deschanel, Figures Litt\u00e9raires, 1889, pp. 130-32,\n171-73; L\u00e9vy-Bruhl, The Philosophy of Auguste Comte, Eng. tr. 1903,\np. 190; and Ch. Adam, La Philosophie en France, 1894. p. 228.\n\n[1965] Adam, as cited, pp. 227-30.\n\n[1966] In his M\u00e9langes philosophiques (1833), Eng. trans. (incomplete)\nby George Ripley, Philos. Essays of Th. Jouffroy, Edinburgh, 1839, ii,\n32. Ripley, who was one of the American transcendentalist group and\na member of the Brook Farm Colony, indicates his own semi-rationalism\nin his Introductory Note, p. xxv.\n\n[1967] M\u00e9langes philosophiques, trans. as cited, ii, 95.\n\n[1968] Essai, cited, i, 232, 237.\n\n[1969] Id. pp. 241-43.\n\n[1970] Id. p. 221.\n\n[1971] Correspondance, 1858-86, letter of May 26, 1833.\n\n[1972] Letters of August 1 and November 25.\n\n[1973] Cp. Ch. Adam, La Philosophie en France, 1894, p. 105.\n\n[1974] Id. p. 84.\n\n[1975] Littr\u00e9, Auguste Comte et la philosophie positive, pp. 123,\n125-26.\n\n[1976] Article in 1844, rep. in Essais sur la philosophie et la\nreligion, 1845, p. 1.\n\n[1977] See M. L\u00e9vy-Bruhl's Philosophy of Auguste Comte,\nEng. tr. pp. 10-15. M. L\u00e9vy-Bruhl really does not attempt to meet\nLittre's argument, which he puts aside.\n\n[1978] Cp. Prof. Botta's chapter in Ueberweg's Hist. of Philos. ii,\n513-16.\n\n[1979] Veitch's Memoir of Sir William Hamilton, 1869,\np. 54. Cp. Hamilton's own Discussions, 1852, p. 187 (rep. of article\nof 1839).\n\n[1980] Veitch, p. 214.\n\n[1981] In his Church of Englandism and its Catechism Examined (1818),\nand Not Paul but Jesus (1823), by \"Gamaliel Smith.\"\n\n[1982] Under the pseudonym of Philip Beauchamp. See The Minor Works of\nGeorge Grote, edited by Professor Bain, 1873, p. 18; Athen\u00e6um, May 31,\n1873; J. S. Mill's Autobiography, p. 69; and Three Essays on Religion,\np. 76.\n\n[1983] Cp. Morell, Spec. Philos. of Europe in the Nineteenth Century,\nii, 620; and Life and Corr. of Whately, by E. Jane Whately, abridged\ned. p. 159.\n\n[1984] Articles in the Edinburgh Review (1829-30); and professorial\nlectures at Edinburgh (1839-56).\n\n[1985] Cp. Veitch's Memoir, pp. 195-97.\n\n[1986] Bampton Lectures on The Limits of Religious Thought, 4th\ned. pref. p. xxxvi, note. After thus declaring all metaphysics to be\nprofoundly delusive, Mansel shows at his worst (Philosophy of the\nConditioned, 1866, p. 188) by disparaging Mill as an incompetent\nmetaphysician.\n\n[1987] Id. p. xxxviii.\n\n[1988] Spencer has avowed in his Autobiography (ii, 75) what might be\nsurmized by critical readers, that he wrote the First Part of First\nPrinciples in order to guard against the charge of \"materialism.\" This\nmotive led him to misrepresent \"atheism,\" and there was a touch of\nretribution in the general disregard of his disavowal of materialism,\nat which he expresses surprise. The broad fact remains that for\nprudential reasons he set forth at the very outset of his system a\nset of conclusions which could properly be reached only at the end,\nif at all.\n\n[1989] As to his fluctuations, which lasted till his death, cp. the\nauthor's New Essays towards a Critical Method, 1897, pp. 144-47,\n149-54, 168-69.\n\n[1990] Baur, Die christliche Lehre der Vers\u00f6hnung, 1838, pp. 54-63,\n124-31.\n\n[1991] Benrath, Bernardino Ochino, Eng. tr. pp. 248-87.\n\n[1992] Field's Memoirs of Parr, 1828, ii, 363, 374-79.\n\n[1993] See Pearson's Infidelity, its Aspects, Causes, and Agencies,\n1853, p. 215 sq. The position of Maurice and Parr (associated with\nother and later names) is there treated as one of the prevailing forms\nof \"infidelity,\" and called spiritualism. In Germany the orthodox\nmade the same dangerous answer to the theistic criticism. See the\nMemoirs of F. Perthes, Eng. tr. 2nd. ed. ii, 242-43.\n\n[1994] Ed. cited, pp. 158-59.\n\n[1995] Pearson, as cited, pp. 560-62, 568-79, 584-84.\n\n[1996] Letter in W. L. Courtney's J. S. Mill, 1889, p. 142.\n\n[1997] Cp. Schechter, Studies in Judaism, 1896, pp. 59, 71. Schechter\nwrites with a marked Judaic prejudice.\n\n[1998] Id. pp. 117-18.\n\n[1999] This title imitates that of the famous More Nebuchim of\nMaimonides.\n\n[2000] Zunz, cited by Schechter, p. 79.\n\n[2001] Whence Krochmal is termed the Father of Jewish\nScience. Id. p. 81.\n\n[2002] A Life of Mr. Yukichi Fukuzawa, by Asatar\u00f4 Miyamori, revised\nby Prof. E. H. Vickers, Tokyo, 1902, pp. 9-10.\n\n[2003] Pamphlet cited, p. 16.\n\n[2004] A curious example of sporadic freethought occurs in a pamphlet\npublished towards the end of the eighteenth century. In 1771 a writer\nnamed Motoori began a propaganda in favour of Shint\u00f4ism with the\npublication of a tract entitled Spirit of Straightening. This tract\nemphatically asserted the divinity of the Mikado, and elicited a\nreply from another writer named Ichikawa, who wrote: \"The Japanese\nword kami (God) was simply a title of honour; but in consequence of\nits having been used to translate the Chinese character shin (sh\u00ean)\na meaning has come to be attached to it which it did not originally\npossess. The ancestors of the Mikados were not Gods, but men, and were\nno doubt worthy to be reverenced for their virtues; but their acts were\nnot miraculous nor supernatural. If the ancestors of living men were\nnot human beings, they are more likely to have been birds or beasts\nthan Gods.\" Art.: \"The Revival of Pure Shinto,\" by Sir E. N. Satow,\nin Trans. Asiatic Society of Japan.\n\n[2005] Lafcadio Hearn, Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation, 1904,\np. 313; cp. p. 46.\n\n[2006] Thus the third emperor of the Ming dynasty in China (1425-1435),\nreferring to the belief in a future life, makes the avowal: \"I am fain\nto sigh with despair when I see that in our own day men are just as\nsuperstitious as ever\" (Prof. E. H. Parker, China and Religion, 1905,\np. 99).\n\n[2007] See Hearn, as cited, passim.\n\n[2008] Cp. Sir F. S. P. Lely, Suggestions for the Better Governing\nof India, 1906, p. 59.\n\n[2009] See article on \"The Future of Turkey\" in the Contemporary\nReview, April, 1899, by \"A Turkish Official.\"\n\n[2010] Yet, as early as the date of the Crimean War, it was noted by\nan observer that \"young Turkey makes profession of atheism.\" Ubicini,\nLa Turquie actuelle, 1855, p. 361. Cp. Sir G. Campbell, A Very Recent\nView of Turkey, 2nd ed. 1878, p. 65. Vamb\u00e9ry makes somewhat light of\nsuch tendencies (Der Islam im 19ten Jahrhundert, 1875, pp. 185,187);\nbut admits cases of atheism even among mollahs, as a result of European\nculture (p. 101).\n\n[2011] Ubicini (p. 344), with Vamb\u00e9ry and most other observers,\npronounces the Turks the most religious people in Europe.\n\n[2012] H. M. Baird, Modern Greece, New York, 1856, pp. 123-24.\n\n[2013] Id., p. 320.\n\n[2014] Id., p. 339.\n\n[2015] Id., p. 86.\n\n[2016] Id., p. 340.\n\n[2017] Prof. Neocles Karasis, Greeks and Bulgarians in the Nineteenth\nand Twentieth Centuries, London, 1907, pp. 15-17, citing a Bulgarian\njournal.\n\n[2018] In the Edinburgh Mirror of 1779 (No. 30) Henry Mackenzie speaks\nof women freethinkers as a new phenomenon.\n\n[2019] \"She bought 2,000 acres in Tennessee, and peopled them with\nslave families she purchased and redeemed\" (Wheeler, Biog. Dict.).\n\n[2020] See Lord Morley's Life of Gladstone, 1903, ii, 110-11, as to\nthe embarrassment felt in English official circles at the time of\nGaribaldi's visit.\n\n[2021] On the whole case see The Life, Trial, and Death of Francisco\nFerrer, by William Archer: Chapman & Hall, 1911; and The Martyrdom\nof Ferrer, by Joseph McCabe: R. P. A., 1910.","title":"A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume 2 of 2: Third edition, Revised and Expanded, in two volumes","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":248134}