CHAPTER III. THE SYSTÈME DE LA NATURE.
Early in 1770 appeared the famous Système de la Nature, ou Des Loix du Monde Physique et du Monde Morale, Par M. Mirabaud, Secrétaire Perpétuel et l'un des Quarante de l'Académie Française, Londres (Amsterdam), 1770. This work has gone through over thirty editions in France, Spain, Germany, England and the United States. No book of a philosophic or scientific character has ever caused such a sensation at the time of its publication, excepting perhaps Darwin's Origin of Species, the thesis of which is more than hinted at by Holbach. There were several editions in 1770. A very few copies contain a Discours préliminaire de l'Auteur of sixteen pages which Naigeon had printed separately in London. The Abrégé du Code de la Nature, which ends the book was also published separately and is sometimes attributed to Diderot, 8vo, 16 pp. [54:1]
There is also a book entitled Le vrai sens du Système de la Nature, 1774, attributed to Helvetius, a very clear, concise epitome largely in Holbach's own short and telling sentences, and much more effective than the original because of its brevity. Holbach himself reproduced the Système de la Nature in a shortened form in Bon-sens, 1772, and Payrard plagiarized it freely in De la Nature et de ses Lois, Paris, 1773. The book has been attributed to Diderot, Helvetius, Robinet, Damilaville and others. Naigeon is certain that it is entirely by Holbach, although it is generally held that Diderot had a hand in it. It was published under the name of Mirabaud to obviate persecution. The manuscript, it was alleged, had been found among his papers as a sort of "testament" or philosophical legacy to posterity. This work may be called the bible of scientific materialism and dogmatic atheism. Nothing before or since has ever approached it in its open and unequivocal insistence on points of view commonly held, if at all, with reluctance and reserve. It is impossible in a study of this length to deal fully with the attacks and refutations that were published immediately. We may mention first the condemnation of the book by the Parlement de Paris, August 18, 1770, to be burned by the public hangman along with Voltaire's Dieu et les Hommes, and Holbach's Discours sur les Miracles, La Contagion sacrée and le Christianisme dévoilé, which had already been condemned on September 24, 1769. [55:2]
The Réquisitoire of Seguier, avocat général, on the occasion of the condemnation of the Système de la Nature was so weak and ridiculous that the Parlement de Paris refused to sanction its publication, and it was printed by the express order of the King. As Grimm observed, it seemed designed solely to acquaint the ignorant with this dangerous work, without opposing any of its propositions. One would look in vain for a better example of the conservatism of the legal profession. [55:3]
Le poison des nouveautés profanes ne peut corrompre la sainte gravité des moeurs qui caractérise les vrais Magistrats: tout peut changer autour d'eux, ils restent immuables avec la loi (page 496).
N'est-ce pas ce fatal abus de la liberté de penser, qui a enfanté cette multitude de sectes, d'opinions, de partis, et cet esprit d'indépendance dont d'autres nations ont éprouvé les sinstres révolutions. Le même abus produira en France des effets peut-être plus funestes. La liberté indéfinie trouveroit, dans la caractère de la nation, dans son activité, dans son amour pour la nouveauté, un moyen de plus pour préparer les plus affreuses révolutions (p. 498).
The most interesting private attacks on the Système de la Nature came from two somewhat unexpected quarters, from Ferney and Sans Souci. Voltaire, as usual, was not wholly consistent in his opinions of it, as is revealed in his countless letters on the subject. Grimm attributed his hostility to jealousy, and the fear that the Système de la Nature might "renverse le rituel de Ferney et que le patriarcat ne s'en aille au diable avec lui." [56:4] George Leroy went so far as to write a book entitled Réflexions sur la jalousie, pour servir de commentaire aux derniers ouvrages de M. de Voltaire, 1772. Frederick II naturally felt bound to defend the kings who, as Voltaire said, were no better treated than God in the Système de la Nature. [56:5]
Voltaire's correspondence during this period is so interesting that it seems worth while to quote at length, especially from his letters to Fredrick the Great. In May 1770, shortly after the publication of the Système de la Nature Voltaire wrote to M. Vernes: [56:6] "On a tant dit de sottises sur la nature que je ne lis plus aucun de ces livres là." But by July he had read it and wrote to Grimm: [56:7] "Si l'ouvrage eut été plus serré il aurait fait un effet terrible, mais tel qu'il est il en a fait beaucoup. Il est bien plus éloquent que Spinoza... J'ai une grande curiosité de savoir ce qu'on en pense à Paris." In writing to d'Alembert about this time he seemed to have a fairly favorable impression of the book. "Il m'a paru qu'il y avait des longueurs, des répétitions et quelques inconséquences, mais il y a trop de bon pour qu'on n'éclate avec fureur contre ce livre. Si on garde le silence, ce sera une preuve du prodigieux progrès que la tolérance fait tous les jours." [57:8] But there was little likelihood that philosophers or theologians would keep silent about this scandalous book. Before the end of the month Voltaire was writing to d'Alembert about his own and the king of Prussia's refutations of it, and the same day wrote to Frederick: "Il me semble que vos remarques doivent être imprimées; ce sont des leçons pour le genre humain. Vous soutenez d'un bras la cause de Dieu et vous écrasez de l'autre la superstition." [57:9] Later Voltaire confessed to Frederick that he also had undertaken to rebuke the author of the Système de la Nature. "Ainsi Dieu a pour lui les deux hommes les moins superstitieux de l'Europe, ce que devrait lui plaire beaucoup" (p. 390).
Frederick, however, hesitated to make his refutation public, and wrote to Voltaire: "Lorsque j'eus achevé mon ouvrage contre l'athéisme, je crus ma réfutation très orthodoxe, je la relus, et je la trouvai bien éloignée de l'être. Il y a des endroits qui ne saurait paraître sans effaroucher les timides et scandaliser les dévots. Un petit mot qui m'est échappé sur l'éternité du monde me ferait lapider dans votre patrie, si j'y étais né particulier, et que je l'eusse fait imprimer. Je sens que je n'ai point du tout ni l'âme ni le style théologique." [57:10] Voltaire, in his "petite drôlerie en faveur de la Divinité" (as he called his work) and in his letters, could not find terms harsh enough in which to condemn the Système de la Nature. He called it "un chaos, un grand mal moral, un ouvrage de ténèbres, un péché contre la nature, un système de la folie et de l'ignorance," and wrote to Delisle de Sales: "Je ne vois pas que rien ait plus avili notre siècle que cette énorme sottise." [58:11] Voltaire seemed to grow more bitter about Holbach's book as time went on. His letters and various works abound in references to it, and it is difficult to determine his motives. He was accused, as has been suggested, by Holbach's circle "de caresser les gens en place, et d'abandonner ceux qui n'y sont plus." [58:12] M. Avenel believed that he suspected Holbach himself of making these accusations. Voltaire's letter to the Duc de Richelieu, Nov. 1, 1770, [58:13] seems to give them foundation.
A very different reaction was that of Goethe and his university circle at Strasburg to whom the Système de la Nature appeared a harmless and uninteresting book, "grau," "cimmerisch," "totenhaft," "die echte Quintessenz der Greisenheit." To these fervent young men in the youthful flush of romanticism, its sad, atheistic twilight seemed to cast a veil over the beauty of the earth and rob the heaven of stars; and they lightheardedly discredited both Holbach and Voltaire in favor of Shakespeare and the English romantic school. One would look far for a better instance of the romantic reaction which set in so soon and so obscured the clarity of the issues at stake in the eighteenth century thought. [58:14]
The leading refutations directed explicitly against the Système de la Nature are:
1. 1770, Rive, Abbé J. J., Lettres philosophiques contre le Système de la Nature. (Portefeuille hebdomadaire de Bruxelles.)
2. Frederick II, Examen critique du livre intitulé, Système de la Nature. (Political Miscellanies, p. 175.)
3. Voltaire, Dieu, Réponse de M. de Voltaire au Système de la Nature. Au château de Ferney, 1770, 8 vo, pp. 34.
4. 1771, Bergier, Abbé N. F., Examen du matérialisme, ou Réfutation du Système de la Nature. Paris, Humbolt, 1771, 2 vols., 12mo.
5. Camuset, Abbé J. N., Principes contre l'incrédulité, a l'occasion du Système de la Nature. Paris, Pillot, 1771, 12mo, pp. viii + 335.
6. Castillon, J. de (Salvernini di Castiglione), Observations sur le livre intitulé, Système de la Nature. Berlin, Decker, 1771, 8vo. (40 sols broché.)
7. Rochford, Dubois de, Pensées diverses contre le système des matérialistes, à l'occasion d'un écrit intitulé; Système de la Nature. Paris, Lambert, 1771, 12mo.
8. 1773, L'Impie démasqué, ou remontrance aux écrivains incrédules. Londres, Heydinger, 1773
9. Holland, J. H., Réflexions philosophiques sur le Système de la Nature. Paris, 1773, 2 vols., 8vo.
10. 1776, Buzonnière, Nouel de, Observations sur un ouvrage intitulé le Système de la Nature. Paris, Debure, père, 1776, 8vo, pp. 126. (Prix 1 livre, 16 sols broché.)
11. 1780, Fangouse, Abbé, La religion prouvée aux incrédules, avec une lettre à l'auteur du Système de la Nature par un homme du monde. Paris, Debure l'aîné, 12mo, p. 150. Same under title Réflexions importantes sur la religion, etc., 1785.
12. 1788, Paulian, A. J., Le véritable système de la nature, etc., Avignon, Niel, 2 vols., 12mo.
13. 1803, Mangold, F. X. von, Unumstossliche Widerlegung des Materialismus gegen den Verfasser des Systems der Natur. Augsburg, 1803.
Of these and other refutations of materialism such as Saint-Martin's Des erreurs et de la vérité, Dupont de Nemours' Philosophie de l'univers, Delisles de Sales' Philosophie de la nature, etc., which are not directed explicitly against the Système de la Nature, the works of Voltaire and Frederick the Great are the most interesting but by no means the most serious or convincing. Morley finds Voltaire very weak and much beside the point, especially in his discussion of order and disorder in nature which Holbach had denied. Voltaire's argument is that there must be an intelligent motor or cause behind nature (p. 7). This is God (p. 8). He admits at the outset that all systems are mere dreams but he continues to insist with a dogmatism equal to Holbach's on the validity of his dream. He repeatedly asserts without foundation that Holbach's system is based on the false experiment of Needham (pp. 5, 6), and even goes so far as to ridicule the evolutionary hypothesis altogether (p. 6). He speaks of the necessity of a belief in God, by a kind of natural logic. God and matter exist in the nature of things, "Tout nous announce un Être suprême, rien ne nous dit ce qu'il est." God himself seems to be a kind of fatalistic necessity. "C'est ce que vous appellerez Nature et c'est ce que j'appelle Dieu." At the end he shifts the argument from the base of necessity to that of utility. Which is the more consoling doctrine? If the idea of God has prevented ten crimes I hold that the entire world should embrace it (p. 27). As Morley has said, such arguments could scarcely have convinced Voltaire himself.
Frederick was surprised that Voltaire and D'Alembert had found anything good in the book. His refutation was more methodical than that of Voltaire, who called it a "homage to the Divinity" but wrote to D'Alembert that it was written in the style of a notary. Two other refutations emanating from the Academy of Berlin were those of Castillon and Holland. The first of these is a very heavy and learned work, formidable and forbidding in its logic. Castillon reduces Holbach's propositions to three. The self-existence of matter, the essential relation of movement to it, and the possibility of deriving everything from it or some mode of it. Castillon concludes after five hundred pages of reasoning that matter is contingent, movement not inherent in it, and that purely spiritual beings exist in independence of it. Hence the Système de la Nature is a "long and wicked error." Holland's is a still more serious work, which the Sorbonne recommended strongly as an antidote against Holbach's Système which it qualified as "une malheureuse production que notre siècle doit rougir d'avoir enfantée." But when it was discovered that Holland was a Protestant his work was condemned forthwith, Jan. 17, 1773.
Bergier's refutation is interesting as an attack from a churchman of extraordinary keenness and insight into the progress of the new philosophy. In the Système de la Nature he recognized the hand of the author of La Contagion sacrée and the Essai sur les préjugés and dealt with it as he did the Christianisme dévoilé. Buzonniere, Rochfort and Fangouse are milder and more naive in their demonstrations and their works are of no weight or interest. L'Impie démasqué is a brutal work which qualifies Holbach as a "vile apostle of vice and crime," and the Système de la Nature as the most impudent treatise on atheism that has yet dishonored the globe—one which covers the century with shame and will be the scandal of future generations.
The work of Paulian is of a different sort. Coming comparatively late, it attempted to review the hostile opinions of many years and then mass them in an overwhelming final attack on the Système de la Nature. To this end Paulian rewrites the entire book chapter by chapter, giving the "true version." He then reviews Holland's outline and Bergier's comments, together with seven articles directed explicitly against the Système de la Nature in such works as the Lettres Helviennes, of Abbé Barruel, Dict. des Philosophes, Dict. anti-philosophe, his own Dict. théologique, etc., besides many other writings against the new philosophy in general. He then reviews articles by members of the philosophic school against materialism and then goes back to Holbach's sources, Diderot, Bayle, Spinoza, Lucretius, Epicurus, etc. The work is not scholarly but comprehensive and evidently discouraged further formal refutations.
The Système de la Nature had many critics in the stormy days that followed 1789. Delisle de Sales found it a monstrosity—a fratras; La Harpe called it an infamous book, "un amas de bêtises qu'on ose appeler philosophie, inconcevables inepties, un immense échafaudage de mensonge et d'invective"; M. Villemain is much more calm and fair; Lord Brougham, like Damiron, Buzonnière, and many others, found it seductive but full of false reasoning; Lerminier was so severe that St.-Beuve was moved to defend Holbach against him. Samuel Wilkinson, the English translator of 1820, is one of the few whose criticism is at all favorable. Holbach has always appealed to a certain type of radical mind and his translators and editors have generally been men who were often over-enthusiastic. For example, Mr. Wilkinson says of the Système de la Nature, [64:15] "No work, ancient or modern, has surpassed it in the eloquence and sublimity of its language or in the facility with which it treats the most abstruse and difficult subjects. It is without exception the boldest effort the human mind has yet produced in the investigation of Morals and Theology. The republic of letters has never produced another author whose pen was so well calculated to emancipate mankind from all those trammels with which the nurse, the school master, and the priest have successively locked up their noblest faculties, before they were capable of reasoning and judging for themselves."
It seems unnecessary to analyze the Système de la Nature. This has been done by Damiron, Soury, Fabre, Lange, Morley, the historians of philosophy, and encyclopaedists; and the book itself is easily available in the larger libraries. The substance of Holbach's philosophy is susceptible of clearer treatment apart from it or any one of his books, although it permeates all of them.
M. Jules Soury has said, in describing a certain type of mind: "Il est d'heureux esprits, des âmes fortes et saines, que n'effraie point le silence éternel des espaces infinis où s'anéantissait la raison de Pascal. Naïves et robustes natures, mâles et vigoureux penseurs, qui gardent toute la vie quelque chose des dons charmants de la jeunesse et de l'enfance même, une foi vive dans le témoinage immédiat de nos sens et de notre conscience, une humeur alerte, toute de joyeuse ardeur, et comme une intrépidité d'esprit que rien n'arrête. Pour eux tout est clair et uni; ou à peu près, et là où ils soupçonnent quelque bas-bond insondable, ils se détournent et poursuivent fièrement leur chemin. Comme cet Epicurien dont parle Cicéron au commencement du De natura deorum, ils ont toujours l'air de sortir de l'assemblée des dieux et de descendre des intermondes d'Epicure."
Such was Holbach. His philosophy is based on the child-like assumption that things are as they seem, provided they are observed with sufficient care by a sufficient number of people. This brings us at once to the very heart of Holbach's method which was experimental and inductive to the last degree. Holbach was nourished on what might be called scientific rather than philosophical traditions. As M. Tourneux has pointed out, he had been a serious student of the natural sciences, especially those connected with the constitution of the earth. These studies led him to see the disparity between certain accepted and traditional cosmologies and a scientific interpretation of the terrestrial globe and the forms of life which flourish upon it. Finding the supposed sacred and infallible records untrustworthy in one regard, he began to question their veracity at other points. Being of a critical frame of mind, he took the records rather more literally than a sympathetic, allegorical apologist would have done, although it cannot be said that he used much historical insight. After having studied the sacred texts for purposes of writing or having translated other men's studies on Moses, David, the Prophets, Jesus, Paul, the Christian theologians and saints, miracles, etc., he concluded that these accounts were untrustworthy and mendacious. He knew ancient and modern philosophy and found in the greater part of it an unwarranted romantic or theological trend which his scientific training had caused him to suspect. It must be admitted that however false or illogical Holbach's conclusions may be considered, he was by no means ignorant of the subjects he chose to treat, as some of his detractors would have one believe. His theory of knowledge was that of Locke and Condillac, and on this foundation he built up his system of scientific naturalism and dogmatic atheism.
His initial assumption is, as has been suggested, that experience (application réitérée des sens) and reason are trustworthy guides to knowledge. By them we become conscious of an external objective world, of which sentient beings themselves are a part, from which they receive impressions through their sense organs. These myriad impressions when compared and reflected upon form reasoned knowledge or truth, provided they are substantiated by repeated experiences carefully made. That is, an idea is said to be true when it conforms perfectly with the actual external object. This is possible unless one's senses are defective, or one's judgment vitiated by emotion and passion.
Holbach's contention is that if one applies experience and reason to the external universe, or nature, "ce vaste assemblage de tout ce qui existe"; it reveals a single objective reality, i. e., matter, which is in itself essentially active or in a state of motion.
From matter in motion are derived all the phenomena that strike our senses. All is matter or a function of it. Matter, then, is not an effect, but a cause. It is not caused; it is from eternity and of necessity. The cardinal point in Holbach's philosophy is an inexorable materialistic necessity. Nothing, then, is exempt from the laws of physics and chemistry. Inorganic substance and organic life fall into the same category. Man himself with all his differentiated faculties is but a function of matter and motion in extraordinary complex and involved relations. Man's imputation to himself of free will and unending consciousness apart from his machine is an idle tale built on his desires, not on his experiences nor his knowledge of nature. This imputation of a will or soul to nature, independent of it or in any sense above it, is a still more idle one derived from his renunciation of the witness of his senses and his following after the phantoms of his imagination. It is ignorance or disregard of nature then that has given rise to supernatural ideas that have "no correspondence with true sight," or, as Holbach expressed it, have no counterpart in the external object. In other words, theology, or poetry about God, as Petrarch said, is ignorance of natural causes reduced to a system.
Man is a purely natural or physical being, like a tree or a stone. His so-called spiritual nature (l'homme moral) is merely a phase of his physical nature considered under a special aspect. He is all matter in motion, and when that ceases to function in a particular way, called life, he ceases to be as a conscious entity. He is so organized, however that his chief desires are to survive and render his existence happy. By happiness Holbach means the presence of pleasure and the absence of pain. In all his activity, then, man will seek pleasure and avoid pain. The chief cause of man's misery or lack of well being is his ignorance of the powers and possibilities of his own nature and the Universal Nature. All he needs is to ascertain his place in nature and adjust himself to it. From the beginning of his career he has been the dupe of false ideas, especially those connected with supernatural powers, on whom he supposed he was dependent. But, if ignorance of nature gave birth to the Gods, knowledge of nature is calculated to destroy them and the evils resulting from them, the introduction of theistic ideas into politics and morals. In a word, the truth, that is, correct ideas of nature is the one thing needful to the happiness and well-being of man.
The application of these principles to the given situation in France in 1770 would obviously have produced unwelcome results. Holbach's theory was that religion was worse than useless in that it had inculcated false and pernicious ideas in politics and morals. He would do away completely with it in the interest of putting these sciences on a natural basis. This basis is self-interest, or man's inevitable inclination toward survival and the highest degree of well-being, "L'objet de la morale est de faire connaître aux hommes que leur plus grand intérêt exige qu'ils pratiquent la vertu; le but du gouvernement doit être de la leur faire pratiquer."
Government then assumes the functions of moral restraint formally delegated to religion; and punishments render virtue attractive and vice repugnant. Holbach's theory of social organization is practically that of Aristotle. Men combine in order to increase the store of individual well-being, to live the good life. If those to whom society has delegated sovereignty abuse their power, society has the right to take it from them. Sovereignty is merely an agent for the diffusion of truth and the maintenance of virtue, which are the prerequisites of social and individual well-being. The technique of progress is enlightenment and good laws.
Nothing could be clearer or simpler than Holbach's system. As Diderot so truly said, he will not be quoted on both sides of any question. His uncompromising atheism is the very heart and core of his system and clarifies the whole situation. All supernatural ideas are to be abandoned. Experience and reason are once for all made supreme, and henceforth refuse to share their throne or abdicate in favor of faith. Holbach's aim was as he said to bring man back to nature and render reason dear to him. "Il est tempts que cette raison injustement dégradée quitte un ton pusillamine qui la rendront complice du mensonge et du délire."
If reason is to rule, the usurper, religion, must be ejected; hence atheism was fundamental to his entire system. He did not suppose by any means that it would become a popular faith, because it presupposed too much learning and reflection, but it seemed to him the necessary weapon of a reforming party at that time. He defines an atheist as follows: "C'est un homme, qui détruit des chimères nuisibles au genre humain, pour ramener les hommes à la nature, à l'expérience, à la raison. C'est un penseur qui, ayant médité la matière, ses propriétés et ses façons d'agir, n'a pas besoin, pour expliquer les phénomènes de l'univers et les opérations de la nature, d'imaginer des puissances idéales, des intelligences imaginaires, des êtres de raison; qui loin de faire mieux connaître cette nature, ne font que la rendre capricieuse, inexplicable, et méconnaissable, inutile au bonheur des hommes."