History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion Part 13

Nor was the cause of liberty more hopeful in relation to the state than the church. The crown, in pa.s.sing through a similar struggle against the feudal n.o.bility to that of other countries, had succeeded in securing its victory without yielding those concessions to the demands of the people which in our own country were extorted from it by the civil war. The strength gained by the defeat of the n.o.bility in the wars of the Fronde, offered the opportunity for an able sovereign like Louis XIV to dry up all sources of independent power, by centralizing all authority in the monarchy. Proud in the consciousness of internal power and foreign victory, surrounded by wealth and talent, with a court and literature which were the glory of the country, he seemed likely to transmit his power to coming generations. But the inherent weakness of despotism was soon apparent. Unrestrained authority appertains only to the Divine government, because power is there synonymous with goodness; but it is always unsafe in human. The wisdom which partially supplied the place of goodness in Louis XIV being wanting in his successor, unchecked selfishness produced the corruption which brought inevitable ruin.

These remarks on the political state of France will sufficiently show why a free criticism directed against either religion or tyranny should a.s.sume revolutionary tendencies, and should manifest an antipathy to social and ecclesiastical inst.i.tutions, as well as to the principles on which they were supposed to depend.

But the forces operating in the world of mind, as well as in society, must also be understood, in order to estimate the influence of unbelief in France. In a previous lecture we have seen that in the middle of the seventeenth century the philosophy of Descartes had created a complete revolution in modes of thought. It was only in the philosophy of Spinoza that it produced theological unbelief; but by its indirect influence it had led generally to an entire reconsideration of the first data of reasoning, and the method of establis.h.i.+ng truth; and thus had stimulated the struggle of reason against faith, of inquiry against credulity, of progress against reaction, and of hopefulness in the future against reverence for the past. The activity of mind displayed in the literature of the reign of Louis XIV is its first expression.(501) But thoughts ferment long in society before they fully express themselves in form: they first exist as suggestions; then they become doubts; lastly, they pa.s.s into disbelief. It was not until the time of the regency,(502) which ensued after the death of Louis, that the literature became impressed with a thoroughly new tone.(503)

Other causes of a more direct kind cooperated. The English philosophy of Locke, which marked an epoch in speculation, was introduced at that time.

This philosophy however could not have resulted in those speculations which arose in France, if it had not been carried farther by the a.n.a.lysis which Condillac employed in that country, a.n.a.logous to that of Hume in Scotland. In itself it expressed the reasoning type of mind and thought which reigned throughout the English literature; but the corollaries from it which produced harm were no part of the original system.(504) Condillac, desiring to carry out the a.n.a.lysis of the origin of knowledge, lost sight of the intellectual element in Locke's account of the process of reflection; denied the existence of innate faculties as well as innate ideas; and attempted to show that man's mind is so pa.s.sive, so dependent on the evidence of the senses for the material of its thoughts, and on language for the power to combine them, that its very faculties are transformed sensations.(505) From these premises it was not hard for his followers to draw the inferences of materialism(506) in philosophy, selfishness in morals, and an entire denial of those religious truths which cannot be proved by sensuous evidence. This philosophy began to leaven the mind of France, and was accepted by nearly the whole of French unbelievers.

Such was the intellectual state of France in reference to the standard of appeal contemporaneously with the political and ecclesiastical condition before described. In the state and church all was authority; all was of the past; in the world of literature and philosophy all was criticism, activity, hope in the future. Into a soil thus prepared the seeds of unbelief on the subject of religion were introduced. We cannot deny that they were imported mainly from England. Doubt had indeed not been wholly wanting in France. In the preceding centuries Montaigne(507) and Charron,(508) and, at the commencement of the one of which we speak, Bayle(509) and Fontenelle,(510) were probably hara.s.sed with disbelief, and their influence was certainly productive of doubt. And free thought, in the form of literary criticism of the scriptures, had brought down the denunciation of the French church on Richard Simon.(511) But undoubtedly the direct parent of the French unbelief was English deism.(512) In no age of French history has English literature possessed so powerful an influence.(513) England had recently achieved those liberties of which France felt the need. It had safely outlived civil war and revolution, and had established const.i.tutional liberty and religious toleration. In England the victims of the French oppression found shelter. Being itself free, it became the refuge for the exile, the shelter for the oppressed.

It thus became the object of study to the politician, and of love to the philanthropist. Its literature too, in two branches, viz. political inquiry, and, towards the middle of the century, romance, offered subjects for imitation. Montesquieu studied the former; Rousseau and Diderot the latter. But England furnished also a series of fearless inquirers on the subject of religion, whose works became the subject of study and of translation.(514) Voltaire spent three years of exile in England,(515) at the time when the ferment existed concerning Woolston's attack on miracles, and both knew Bolingbroke personally, and translated his writings.

Having now explained the sources of doubt in France; we must next direct our attention to the course of its speculations, and to the chief authors.

If we estimate its course by literary works, or by social and political movements, we may distribute the history of it into two periods; one comprising the first half of the century, wherein it attacks the French church and Christianity; the other, the latter half, wherein it mingles itself with the demand for political change, and a.s.saults the state,(516) until its effects are seen in the anarchy of the French revolution. In the former of these periods the unbelief is tentative and suggestive. About the time of the transition to the second, in the pride of supposed victory it becomes dogmatic. Christianity is supposed to be exploded. Philosophy seeks to occupy its place in the social and intellectual world. The early doubters and Voltaire mark the former of these epochs. Diderot and the French encyclopaedists, with the ramification of their school at the court of Frederick II of Prussia, form the point of transition. Rousseau marks the opening of the second period, when unbelief was attempting to reconstruct society and remodel education. The selfish philosophy of Helvetius and his friends then carries on the course of the history of unbelief, until in the storm of the revolution it shows itself in the teaching of Volney, and the absurd acts of the theophilanthropists.

The name of Voltaire, which the logical and chronological order introduces first to our notice, is so preeminent, that his character and teaching may express the history of the early movement in France.

The story of his life, so far as we require now to be made acquainted with it, can be briefly told.(517) Born toward the close of the seventeenth century, he manifested, as a legend a.s.sures us, such a doubting spirit, even in boyhood, that his priestly preceptor predicted that he would prove a Coryphaeus of deism. His rare precocity of intellect early acquired for him a reputation in the world of letters. Compelled to become an exile in England,(518) he studied its politics, its science, and its scepticism. On his return to France, he endeavoured to introduce among his countrymen the cosmical and mathematical doctrines of Newton; and made himself conspicuous in history, in poetry, in fiction, and above all, in theology, by his attacks on revealed religion and the French church. About the middle of the century, accepting an invitation to the court of Frederick the Great of Prussia, he aided thence the introduction of infidel doctrines in Germany. A few years later he withdrew into retirement at Ferney, but was able from his seclusion to wield an intellectual power throughout Europe.

It was from this retirement that he denounced the acts of tyranny, or supposed injustice, inflicted by the French church. His indignant denunciations in the cases of the Sirven,(519) of La Barre,(520) and above all of the Calas,(521) gained for him the commendation and sympathy of Europe, and remain as monuments of the power of the pen.

Such was his life. Let us search in it for the secret of his power, and inquire what were his views in the department which we are studying.

His character has been a.n.a.lysed by so many critics, especially by one of our own countrymen in an essay of rare power, now become cla.s.sical, that the opportunity of original investigation is impossible, and the attempt undesirable.(522)

In the opinion of this writer, the secret of Voltaire's strength was the tact which he displayed in expressing the wants of his time to his countrymen in the precise mode most suited to them.(523) He belonged to the cla.s.s of those who exercise their influence in their own lifetime-men of the present, not men of the future; accordingly, whether he be viewed as a man, in his own personal qualities, in the moral and intellectual properties which const.i.tuted his character, or as an artist, in the manner in which he conveyed his thoughts to the world, he will be found to be the loftiest exponent and type of the spirit of his age. It was an age without originality, without spiritual insight, careful of manners rather than morals, corrupted by selfishness, led by ambition, dissatisfied with the present, and anxious for deliverance; but unable to espy the real causes of the mischief, and to escape confusing principles with men; fond of form rather than material; cla.s.sical rather than Gothic; critical rather than reverent; proud of its own discoveries, without appreciation of the efforts of the past.-Such are the qualities which characterised the times of Voltaire,(524) and in their most striking form marked his mind.

To qualities which were thus in some sense formed in him by circ.u.mstances, he added remarkable ones which were Nature's special gift to him. His extraordinary tact and good sense, both in dealing personally with individuals and in literary criticism; his fiery ardour, and vehement spirit of proselytism; his singular penetration of vision, and power to arrange in the clearest mode the thoughts which he wished to transmit; above all, his wit and wonderful power of satire were qualities which, though in some degree shared by his countrymen, cannot be explained by mere circ.u.mstances, but are natural gifts. These three intellectual endowments, acuteness, order, and satire,(525) are regarded by the authority that we are taking for our guide, as the qualities which formed the secret of his power as a writer, and at the same time as the sources of intellectual temptation which prevented him from gaining a deeper insight into truth, and deprived him of influence with posterity. For his quickness prevented the exercise of the reflection, the patient meditation, which is the only high road to solve the mysteries of existence. It has been well said,(526) that Voltaire saw so much more deeply at a glance than other men, that no second glance was ever given by him. His power of order a.s.sisting his quickness, was a still further temptation. Though far inferior in erudition to some of his contemporaries, such as Diderot, and in depth of feeling to Rousseau, lacking originality, and borrowing most of his philosophical thoughts at second hand, he yet surpa.s.sed them all by a matchless power of arrangement. The perfection of form diverted attention from the subject matter. He possessed method rather than genius, intellect rather than imagination. But above all his other powers, his most singular gift was his power of satire. When stimulated by a sense of injustice, or of hatred against men or systems, it made him omnipotent in destruction. This satirical power contributed to preclude the possession of depth of reflection. Ridicule has an office in criticism. It is the true punishment of folly. But it has been well observed,(527) that it is dangerous to him who employs it, as being directly opposed to humility. The satirist places himself above that which he ridicules, and makes himself the judge: the humility of the listener is laid aside; the selfish belief of his own infallibility is fostered; forbearance and sympathy are laid aside. The critic argues, the satirist only laughs. Pity may be compatible with humour, but only contempt with satire. Voltaire was by nature a satirist; and when his mockery was applied to a subject like Christianity or religion, his utter want of reverence not only caused him to subst.i.tute a caricature for a picture, but prevented him from exercising discrimination in distinguis.h.i.+ng Christianity from its counterfeit, religion from the ministers of it. Hence his attacks on Christianity partake of the tone of blasphemy; and he manifests in reference to religion, which to most readers was the most sacred of subjects, a tone of indescribable scurrility, which was not only inexcusable and disgraceful if viewed merely in a literary point of view, but const.i.tuted politically a public outrage against the dearest feelings of others which no citizen has a right to perpetrate.(528) This tone too was mainly his own; and is not to be found, except in rare instances, in the English deists from whom he borrowed.

We have tried to comprehend the mind of Voltaire, to notice his peculiarities and faults, before considering his opinions; because his influence was due to his mental and personal character rather than to the matter of his writings. It remains to state his views on religion, and the grounds of his attack on revelation. The chief materials for ascertaining them are the four volumes in the vast collection of his works, which contain his philosophical and theological writings.(529) They partake of every variety of form,-essays, letters, treatises, pamphlets, translations, commentaries. They include, besides smaller works, a commentary on the Old Testament; translations of parts of Bolingbroke and of Toland; an investigation concerning the establishment of Christianity; deist sermons which he pretends had been delivered; discourses written under false names;(530) and doubts proposed and solved after the manner of preceding philosophers. Yet in these numerous treatises there is no claim to originality. His doubts and his beliefs are taken mainly from the English deists; and chiefly from Bolingbroke, the most French in mind of any of the English school.

A few words therefore will suffice to characterise his opinions. It appears that he believed in a G.o.d,(531) but firmly disbelieved the divine origin of the revealed religion, Jewish and Christian. The main purpose of his life however was not affirmation, but denial.(532) Accordingly the sole object of all his efforts was to destroy belief in the plenary inspiration of the scriptures, and the divine origin of revelation which is attested by them. There is hardly a book in scripture that he did not attack. Successively surveying the narrative of Jewish history, the Gospels, and statements of early church history,(533) he tried to show absurdities and contradictions in them all; not so much literary differences in the authors as difficulties of belief in the material revealed. In his views of Judaism and of Christianity he seems to have fluctuated between attributing them to the fraud or mistake of their propagators, and denying their originality. The science of historical criticism was beginning in his day, and was applied to the legends of Roman history. Voltaire embodied the spirit of this inquiry. In his histories he exemplified the cold, worldly, modern mode of looking at events, as opposed to the providential and theocratic view of them which had found expression as recently as in the works of Bossuet.(534) And he transferred this method to the treatment of holy scripture. No new branch of information was left unused by him for contributing to his impious purpose. The numerous works of travels which were affording an acquaintance with the mythology of other nations, were made to furnish him with the materials for hastily applying one solution to all the early Jewish histories, which he failed to invalidate by the application of the historic method just described. By an inversion of the argument of the early Christian apologists, he pretended that the early history preserved among the Hebrews was borrowed from the heathens, instead of claiming that the heathen mythology was a trace of Hebrew tradition; and, with a view to sustain this opinion, he discredited the integrity of the Hebrew literature. In nothing is his singular want of poetic taste, and of the power to appreciate the beauties of the literature of young nations, and the ethical value of moral inst.i.tutions, more visible, than in denying the literary and monumental value of the Bible, and the moral influence of Christianity.(535) Infidels who have hated revealed religion as bitterly as Voltaire, have at least not had the meanness or the want of taste to depreciate the literary and moral interest which attaches to it.

Such was the character of the man, and of the efforts which he directed to the injury of revelation. It has been said(536) that to obliterate his influence from the history of the eighteenth century would be to produce a greater difference than the absence of any other individual in it would occasion; and would be similar to the omission of Luther from the sixteenth. The a.n.a.logy, though startling, is true in the particulars which it is intended to ill.u.s.trate. The influence of each was European in his respective century; and the doctrine acted not only on the world of thought, but of action.

We have described Voltaire alone; not because he was isolated by any interval of time from a general movement, but because his attack is more rudimentary, being directed rather to disintegrate Christianity than dogmatically to affirm unbelief. He was perhaps rather logically prior to the others than chronologically; being really connected with two bodies of men, which formed the centres of two infidel movements, the one in Paris, the other at the court of Frederick at Berlin.

Frederick the Great surrounded himself with French literary men.(537) They were mostly persons who were exiles from France to escape persecution for their opinions, who had first found a refuge in Holland, and thence endeavoured by means of the Dutch booksellers to introduce their writings into France. From about 1740-60 several such teachers of infidelity were invited to the Prussian court, and dispersed their influence in Germany; the effects of which we shall subsequently find. One of them was the physician La Mettrie,(538) who wrote works on physiology marked by a low materialism. Such also was De Prades,(539) and more especially D'Argens.(540) The latter, struck with the force of "the Persian Letters"

of Montesquieu, threw his doubts into an epistolary form, "the Jewish Letters;" in which the traditional opinions and ruling systems of the time were attacked with great freedom. He translated also some ancient works to serve his purpose, especially the fragments of the abusive work of the emperor Julian against Christianity, written in favour of the state religion of the Greeks and Romans.

While this was the character of some of the Frenchmen at the court of Frederick, whom Voltaire subsequently joined; men who, imbued with the most extravagant form of the philosophy of sensation, verged upon materialism; there were coteries of literary persons in Paris, which were the rallying point of sceptical minds, and centres of irreligious influence.

The existence of them is due in part to the altered position already named which literature a.s.sumed in reference to the court during the regency.

Instead of being fostered, it was discouraged; and Fleury manifested an almost puritan spirit, and has left on record the expression of his alarm at the growing sceptical tone of literary works, and the imitation of the English spirit. Owing accordingly to the absence of patronage, and to the lavishment of those favours on extravagance which the elder Louis had bestowed on the fostering of intellect, literature became disjoined from court influences; and hence there grew up small centres of literary influence, a.n.a.logous to those preceding the times of Louis XIV,(541) and nuclei for intellectual movement, where of old the various bodies had all moved round one central sun.

It would be irrelevant to enter into the details of these coteries. (23) Some were simply of fas.h.i.+on and taste; but others were undoubtedly gatherings of powerful thinkers, imbued with infidel principles, whose character belongs to French literature and the mental and moral culture of the time. One of the most remarkable of these coteries included names noted in French literature, such as Voltaire, Diderot, D'Alembert,(542) D'Holbach, Marmontel,(543) Helvetius, Grimm,(544) St. Lambert,(545) and Raynal.(546) We must notice some of them in detail, in order at once to appreciate the character of their works, and to ill.u.s.trate the relation of their unbelief to the philosophy which they adopted.(547)

Diderot,(548) next to Voltaire, was the most able of the infidel writers, and greatly superior to the other members of the same cla.s.s. His history is one of those narratives of struggle and suffering which so often have been the lot of men of letters. Those who have been the teachers of the world have too often been also its martyrs. The great peculiarity of Diderot, as of Johnson, was his encyclopaedic knowledge, and his versatility in comprehending a variety of subjects. Less critical than Voltaire, and less philosophical than Rousseau, he exceeded both as the practical teacher. But in unbelief he unhappily advanced farther than either; his temper lacked moral earnestness; and in later life he was an atheist. A growth of unbelief may be traced in him: at first he was a doubter, next he became a deist, lastly an atheist. In the first stage he only translated English works, and even condemned some of the English deists. His views seem gradually to have altered, probably under the influence of Voltaire's writings, and of the infidel books smuggled into France; and he thenceforth a.s.sumed a tone bolder and marked by positive disbelief. In 1746 he wrote his _Pensees Philosophiques_, intended to be placed in opposition to the _Pensees_ of Pascal. Pascal, by a series of sceptical propositions, had hoped to establish the necessity of revelation. Diderot tried by the same method to show that this revelation must be untrue.(549) The first portion of the propositions(550) bore upon philosophy and natural religion, but at length he came to weaken the proofs for the truth of Christianity, and controverted miracles, and the truth of any system which reposes on miracles; yet even in this work he did not evince the atheism which he subsequently avowed. It was soon after the imprisonment in which he was involved by this book, that he projected the plan of the magnificent work, the _Encyclopedie_, or universal dictionary of human knowledge. Its object however was not only literary, but also theological; for it was designed to circulate among all cla.s.ses new modes of thinking, which should be opposed to all that was traditionary. Voltaire's unbelief was merely destructive: this was reconstructive and systematic. The religion of this great work was deism: the philosophy of it was sensationalist and almost materialist; seeming hardly to allow the existence of anything but mechanical beings. Soul was absorbed in body; the inner world in the outer;-a tendency fostered by physics. It was the view of things taken by the scientific mind, and lacks the poetical and feeling elements of nature-a true type of the cold and mechanical age which produced it. Diderot's atheism is a still further development of his unbelief. It is expressed in few of his writings, and presents no subject of interest to us; save that it seeks to invalidate the arguments for the being of a G.o.d, drawn from final causes. It has been well observed, that the lesson to be derived from him(551) is, that the mechanical view of the world is essentially atheistic; that whosoever will admit no means of discovering G.o.d but common logic, cannot find him.

Diderot's unbelief may be considered to embody that which resulted from the abuse at once of erudition, physical science, and the sensational theory in metaphysics.

Among the band of friends who from connexion with the Encyclopaedia acquired the name of Encyclopaedists, was also Helvetius.(552) He was the moralist of the sensational philosophy, one of those who applied the philosophy of Condillac to morals. Each man's tastes are so far affected by circ.u.mstances, that it is possible that Helvetius's exclusive a.s.sociation with the selfish circles of the French society, which never lived for the good of others, together with the perception of the hollowness of the respect which persons paid him for his wealth and influence, led him to regard self-love as the sole motive of conduct. His philosophy is expressed in two works;(553) the one on the spirit, the other on man: the former a theoretical view of human nature, the latter a practical view of education and society. His primary position is, that man owes all his superiority over animals to the superior organization of his body. Starting from this point, he argues that all minds are originally equal, and owe their variation to circ.u.mstances;(554) that all their faculties and emotions are derivable from sensation; that pleasure is the only good, and self-interest the true ground of morals and the framework of individual and political right.(555)

If in Diderot we have met with atheism, and in Helvetius with the selfish theory of morals; in the author of "the System of Nature" we meet with utter materialism, and the two former evils as corollaries from it. This work, which was published about 1774, though bearing a different author's name on the t.i.tle, was probably the work of D'Holbach,(556) aided by Diderot and Helvetius, and other members of the society which met at D'Holbach's house. It is a work of unquestionable talent and eloquence, in which materialism, fatalism, and atheism, combine to form a view of human nature which even Voltaire is said to have denounced.

The grand object of this work being to show that there is no G.o.d, the first part is occupied by the most rigorous materialism, and is designed to prove that there is no such thing as mind, nothing beyond the material fabric,(557) which is maintained by simple and invariable laws; and that the soul is a mode of organism,(558) the mere action of the body under different functions. The freedom of the will(559) and immortality(560) are accordingly denied. The first part having been directed to disprove the existence of mind, the second part is designed against religion. The author attributes the idea which man has formed of a first Cause to fear,(561) generated through suffering; and attempts to show the insufficiency of the _a priori_ argument in favour of a G.o.d,(562) omitting the consideration of the arguments derived from final causes. Nature becomes in his scheme a machine; man an organism; morality self-interest; deity a fiction.

The work we have just named formed the crowning result of infidelity.(563) Voltaire showed philosophy shrinking from the hard materialism, morality from the fatalism, and religion from the atheism, to which they afterwards attained. In these steps, as witnessed in the circle of intellect just sketched, we see the ramification of the French sensational philosophy pushed to its farthest limits.

The writers lately described, though in some degree eminent, do not, like Voltaire, stand in the first rank of the French literary writers. Amid the circle of unbelievers, however, another of the highest rank was found, who, though he must be cla.s.sed with the others, stood so apart in taste, in sympathy, in purpose, and in belief, that the study of his life and character is an interruption to the series of the materialist writers whom we are describing. Rousseau(564) was not an atheist like Diderot, nor a materialist like D'Holbach, nor a moralist of the selfish school like Helvetius, nor a scoffer like Voltaire. We discover in him a spirit endowed with deep feeling, and trained by much greater experience of life and of internal sorrow. His writings also mark the period when French philosophy ceased to attack the church, and found itself strong enough to act against the state. The greater portion of his works lies out of the range of our inquiry. Even his political writings, which indirectly injured religion in the world of action by stimulating the revolutionary hatred to the church, require notice only so far as they involved principles fundamentally opposed to the teaching of revealed religion.

It was about the middle of the century(565) that Rousseau commenced the "Political Essays" which made his name famous, and unhappily afterwards formed as it were the very bible of the French revolution. Retaining through life the preference for the simple inst.i.tutions of the republic in which he had been born, he saw in French society the abuses which appertain to civilization; and, with somewhat of the same feeling which Tacitus exhibits in his portraiture of the Germans, was led to study the comparative advantages of a primitive and refined age, and to maintain the paradox that the empire of corruption and inequality was to be regarded as the artificial creation of civilization. Ignoring the natural sinfulness and selfishness of the human race, he sought deliverance for mankind in the return to a primeval state, in which all should be free, equal, and independent. The inartificial state of society was the beau-ideal. And from this philosophical origin he traced society in the historical formation of an actual polity, describing how the social contract, while subordinating individual liberty to the collective will of a society, recompensed men by investing them with rights of civilization.

His doctrine was false theologically in its view of human nature; false philosophically in attempting to investigate an historical question by means of abstract metaphysical a.n.a.lysis; and false politically in drawing the attention of men away from practical and possible schemes of reform to visionary ones. It typified the movement of the French revolution in its extravagant hopes and its errors, in its destructive, not its remedial aspect.(566)

It was a few years later than the publication of these speculations that Rousseau wrote his celebrated treatise on education, the _Emile_,(567) which is the chief source for ascertaining his religious opinions. It has been called the Cyropaedia of modern times, an attempt to show the education which a philosopher would give his pupil, in contradistinction to the religious and Jesuit training common in Rousseau's time.

In examining the religious education to be given to the young, he introduces a Savoyard vicar, the original of which his own early travels had suggested to him, to narrate the history of his convictions, and explain the nature of his creed. This creed is deism, and bears a very striking resemblance to that taught by the English deists. Rejecting tradition and philosophy,(568) the vicar grounds his creed on reason, the interior light. Commencing with sensation, he shows how step by step we arrive at the doctrine of the being and attributes of one G.o.d. Though he does not reject the argument from final causes, he seems to lay more stress on the metaphysical argument of the necessity of the divine existence. He first proves the existence of personality and will,(569) and uses this idea for the purpose of exploring the outer world; arguing that matter is inert and not self-active, he regards matter in motion as indicating force, and therefore volition; uniformity in its motion as proving a law, and therefore an intelligent will,(570) in which wisdom, power, and goodness combine.(571) This being is G.o.d, to whom man is subject. The universe is universal order. The physical evil therein originates in our vices, the moral in our free will.(572)

Having established the being of a G.o.d, he next proceeds to give reasons for believing in immortality. He bases it on the fact of the goodness of G.o.d, which leads Him to recompense with happiness the suffering good; and he disbelieves the eternity of punishment for the bad.(573) Having fixed the objects of belief, he next lays down the rule of duty in conscience, which he regards as an innate and infallible guide.(574) After thus establis.h.i.+ng natural religion, he proceeds to criticise revealed, arguing its want of irrefragable evidence,(575) the discrepant(576) opinions in reference to it, the improbability of portions of its history;(577) attacking strongly the external evidence of prophecy and miracles; the former on the alleged want of proof of agreement between prophecy and its fulfilment; the latter on the ground of the alleged circle, that miracles are made to prove doctrine, and doctrine miracles.(578) He accordingly rejects the idea of Christianity being necessary to salvation; but renders a tribute of praise to its moral precepts, and regards the gospels, though partly fict.i.tious, as containing indestructible moral truths; and concludes with the well-known comparison of Socrates to Christ, showing the stupendous superiority of the death and example of the latter. "If the death of Socrates," he says, "was that of a sage, that of Jesus was that of a G.o.d."(579)

It would have been thought that such teaching as this would hardly have excited a legal prosecution, in comparison with the more violent attacks that were made on religion: but the wide reputation and fascinating style of the author, the extraordinary ability of the work, above all the fact that many of the previous infidel doctrines had been published without the writers' names, were the means of subjecting him to persecution which they escaped. Voltaire and the infidel party were indignant at Rousseau's partial acceptance of Christianity. The French clergy were angry at his rejection of the remainder. The parliament ordered the book to be burned, and the author to be imprisoned. Rousseau had to seek refuge in Switzerland, and there defended his views of Christianity and miracles in a series of celebrated letters, which in their political effects have been compared with the letters of Junius. Driven out from Switzerland, he found a shelter in England, with Hume; and, until he could safely return to France, employed his time in writing his _Confessions_;(580)-the celebrated work, a mixture of romance and fact, which takes its place in the first rank of autobiographies,-a sad witness to the desperate wickedness of the human heart, and to the impotence of even a high moral creed, which we know Rousseau elsewhere expressed,(581) in creating morality, without Christian motives to give practical efficacy to it.

Such was Rousseau, an enemy of artificial society, of Roman catholic education, and of supernatural revelation; yet far removed from Voltaire and the other infidels, both in tone and literary character.(582) While Voltaire aimed only to destroy, Rousseau sought to reconstruct. Voltaire was a flippant, hasty reviler of Christianity, without originality in the material of his works, without depth of soul: Rousseau was serious, fresh, full of pathos. Voltaire either had no creed, or thought one unimportant, and was actuated by malignant hatred against Judaism and Christianity: Rousseau had a firm creed, and spoke with decency of the religion which he rejected. Voltaire was devoid of taste for ancient literature, witty under a mask, a selfish sycophant to the ancient political regime: Rousseau never denied the authors.h.i.+p of his writings, was democratic in tastes, and was the means of exciting a love for antiquity. Finally rejecting to a great degree the sensational philosophy; rising above it in heart, if not in thought, Rousseau taught a spiritual philosophy, destined to bear fruit when the dreams of the revolution had pa.s.sed. He stands alone however at present in this respect, like Montesquieu in politics(583) and Buffon in science; and the course of our history again brings before us men who must be cla.s.sed with the materialists that preceded him.

We have stated that by the middle of the century the infidel writers turned their attention from the attack on the church to that on the state; and had already made such impression on the government, that it joined them in expelling the Jesuits.(584) For more than a quarter of a century before the revolution the literary writers were infidel. At length the evils of the state grew incurable, and the storm of the revolution burst.

It is possible in the present age to take a much more dispa.s.sionate view of that vast event than was taken by contemporaries.(585) It can now be adjusted to its true historic perspective, and its function in the scheme of history can be clearly perceived. The vastness of the movement consisted in this, that it was at once political, social, and religious.(586) It aimed at redressing the grievances under which France had suffered, and reconstructing society with guarantees for future liberty. It sought not merely to destroy the feudalism which had outlived its time, and to equalize the unfair distribution of the public burdens, as means to accommodate society to modern wants; but it tried to effect these changes among a people whose minds were fully persuaded both that the privileges of particular cla.s.ses and the existence of an established religion were the chief causes of the public misfortune. When so many movements combined, the catastrophe was intensified. It is indeed possible now to see that in the end the solid advantages of the revolution were reaped, while the mischief was temporary; but the severity of the storm while it lasted was increased by the infidel views with which society had become impregnated. For the revolution attempted to embody in its political aspect those poetical but wild theories of society which sceptical students had taught; and was founded on the false a.s.sumption of the perfectibility of man, and the perfect goodness of human nature, except as depraved by human government.

At first, under the National a.s.sembly,(587) the attack was only made on the property of the church; but on the establishment of the Convention, when the nation had become frantic at the alarm of foreign invasion, to which the king and clergy were supposed to be instrumental, the monarchy was overthrown, and religion also was declared obsolete. The munic.i.p.ality and many of the bishops abjured Christianity; the churches were stripped; the images of the Saviour trampled under foot; and a fete was held in November 1793,(588) in which an opera-dancer, impersonating Reason as a G.o.ddess, was introduced into the Convention, and then led in procession to the cathedral of Notre Dame; and there, elevated on the high altar, took the place of deity, and received adoration from the audience. The services of religion were abandoned; the churches were closed; the sabbath was abolished; and the calendar altered. On all the public cemeteries the inscription was placed, "Death is an eternal sleep." Robespierre himself saw the necessity for the public recognition of the being of a G.o.d; and after the fall of the Girondists, obtained an edict for that purpose shortly before his death, in 1794; which event marks the return of society from atheism and materialism back to deism.(589) When the horrors of the dictators.h.i.+p of Robespierre closed, and a regular government was established under the Directory, the priests obtained liberty to reopen the churches provided they maintained them at their own expense.(590) But the great majority of the people lived wholly without G.o.d in the world; while some sought refuge in the extravagant creed of a deist sect called the Theophilanthropists.(591) Nor was it till the year 1802 that Napoleon was able, and even then amid much opposition, to reestablish the Sunday.(592) Christianity was then reinaugurated by a public ceremony(593) in the cathedral, polluted eight years before by the blasphemy of the G.o.ddess of Reason. But the total cessation of religious instruction snapped asunder a chain of faith which had descended unbroken from the first ages; and to this must be ascribed the irreligious mode of spending the Sunday in French society.

The reign of atheism in religion was fortified by a philosophy; and the works of one infidel writer preserve the expression of the view which it took of Christianity and religion. As soon as the excitement of the revolution allowed leisure to return to the study of mental facts, there arose the extreme form of sensationalism, which was called (in a different meaning from the present popular use of the term) Ideology, (24). Cabanis and Destutt de Tracy are the best exponents of its physiological and psychological aspects; and the well-known Volney of its moral and religious side. Starting from the principles of Condillac and Helvetius, that the very faculties as well as ideas are derived from sensation, and moral rules from self-love, it almost reaches the same point as D'Holbach.

Mental science was approached from the physiological side, and so viewed that mind seemed to be made a property of brain.(594)

The chief work in which Volney expresses his unbelief is ent.i.tled the "Ruins, or Meditations on the Revolutions of Empires."(595) It is a poem in prose. Volney imagines himself falling into a meditation, amid the ruins of Palmyra, on the fall of empires.(596) The phantom of the ruins appears, and, entering into converse with him, causes him to see the kingdoms of the world, and guides him in the solution of the mysteries which puzzle him.(597) It unveils to him the view of nature as a system of laws, and of man as a being gifted with self-love. It traces the origin of society in a manner not unlike Rousseau,(598) and refers the source of evil to self-love; states the cause of ancient prosperity and decline, and draws the moral lesson from the past.(599) While Volney is despondent at the prospect of the future, a vision is unveiled to him of a new age. It is of a nation ridding itself of privileged cla.s.ses, and arming itself when its young liberties were threatened by foreign powers.(600) It is an apocalyptic vision of France in his time. Then suddenly the vision changes, and an a.s.sembly of the nations of the world is gathered as in one common arena, to ascertain how they may arrive at unity and peace.(601) Their differences are ill.u.s.trated by the discrepant opinions which they utter on religion; and the origin of each religion on the earth is traced.(602) It is here that Volney makes his speaker convey his own scepticism. He tracks the origin of the religious ideas(603) through the wors.h.i.+p prompted by fear of the physical elements(604) and the stars(605) to that of symbols or idols,(606) with its accompanying mysteries and orders of priests; and then onward through dualism(607) to the belief of an unseen world;(608) then through mythology(609) and pantheism(610) to the belief in a Creator;(611) next, to Judaism(612) as the wors.h.i.+p of the soul of the world; and lastly, through the Persian(613) and Hindu(614) systems to Christianity,(615) which he attempts to show to be the wors.h.i.+p of the sun under the cabalistic names of Christ and Jesus. Availing himself of some of the fragments of mythology which such writers as Eusebius have preserved, and with a faint perception of the nature of mythology, he tries to resolve the narrative of the fall of man into solar mythology; and, pointing to contact with the Persians at the captivity as the source from which the Jews borrowed their ideas of a symbolic system, he regards the incarnation and life of Christ as the mistaken literalization on the part of contemporaries of their preconceived opinions. The conclusions to which Volney makes his interlocutor come(616) is, that nothing can be true, nothing be a ground of peace and union, which is not visible to the senses. Truth is conformity with sensations.

The book is interesting as a work of art; but its a.n.a.lysis of Christianity is so shocking, that its absurdity alone prevents its becoming dangerous.

It is the most unblus.h.i.+ng attempt to resolve the n.o.blest of effects into the most absurd of origins; and embodies in the consideration of religion the school of philosophy which he represented.

We have now completed the history of unbelief in France during the eighteenth century. We have seen how literature gradually emanc.i.p.ated itself from the power of the court, and, under the influence of a sceptical stimulus received from the importation of English free thought, was changed into political and ecclesiastical antipathy, and acquired a mastery over the public mind, until it involved the state, the church, and Christianity, in a common ruin. History offers no parallel instance of the victory of unbelief, through the power of the pen, nor of the union of the political with the theological movement, and of the intimate connexion of both with the current philosophy of the time.

The theological movement has contributed nothing of permanent literary value. The few apologies written were unimportant; and the thoughts of those who attacked Christianity were neither new nor characterised by depth. Their criticism was shallow, and was marked by the feature of which traces were observed in a few English authors, the disposition to charge imposture on the writers of the holy scriptures; so that they not only failed to appreciate the literary excellence of the works, but scarcely even allowed the possibility of unintentional deception on the part of the writers. The doubts were chiefly the reproduction of the English point of view, with the addition of a few physical difficulties;(617) protests of free thought against dogma in natural science. The view entertained concerning deity was eventually grovelling; the greatness of nature seemed to inspire no reverence. Unbelief gradually lost hold of monotheism; and in doing so never ascended in grandeur to the idea of pantheism, but fell into blank atheism. The theoretical morality of the English deists, even when depending on expedience, was n.o.ble; but in place of it the French school presented the lowest form of theory which ethical science has ever stated, and which finds its refutation with the philosophy that gave it birth.

No age exhibits a body of sceptical writers whose characters are so unattractive as the French unbelievers; whose coa.r.s.eness of mind in failing to appreciate that which is beautiful in Christianity is so evident, that charity could not forbid us to doubt, even if there were not independent proof, that faults of character contributed very largely to the formation of their unbelief. Nevertheless, the political aspect of the movement carries a solemn warning to the Christian church, not to endanger the everlasting Gospel of the Son of G.o.d by making it the b.u.t.tress to support corrupt political and ecclesiastical inst.i.tutions. It is true that Christ will not abandon his true church. Whatever is divine and eternally true will always as in this case survive the catastrophe. But this period of history shows that Providence will not work a miracle to save religion from a temporary eclipse, if the church forgets that Christ's kingdom is not of this world; and that the mission which he has given it is to convert souls to him; and that learning and piety are intellectual and moral means for effecting this object.(618) The political faults or shortcomings of the church are no apology for the infidelity of France; but they must be taken into account in explaining its intensity.

A theological movement so vast could not fail to exercise an influence in other lands. Incidental allusions have already been made to its effects at the court of Prussia,(619) and to the traces of its tone in some of the later of the English deists.

The remainder of this lecture will be employed in tracing the history of free thought in England, from the date at which the narrative was interrupted to a little later than the end of the century; especially noticing the mode in which it was influenced by the movement in France.