THE THEOPHILANTHROPISTS.
These (Gr. “Lovers of Gods and Men”) were a sect of Deists which appeared in France amid the confusion and disorder of the first Revolution. While the State was indifferent to all forms of Religion, and the Republican Directory was afraid of the Christianity which prevailed in the Church, a felt consciousness of the necessity of some religion led many to adopt a form of worship adapted to Natural Religion.
“This Sect” (says Southey, in the Quarterly Review, vol. xxviii.) “began with more circumstances in their favour than ever occurred to facilitate the establishment of a religion or of a sect. Many persons of considerable influence and reputation engaged in the project with zeal, and it was patronised by La Réveillère Lêpaux, one of the Directory.... His motives for putting himself at the head of the Theophilanthropists are said to have been twofold: if the scheme succeeded, he intended to become their High Priest; and he hated Christianity. Through his means the Theophilanthropists obtained a decree from the Government giving them a right of holding their meetings in the Churches, as national buildings, which were open to any religion, but belonged to none.
“Nearly twenty Churches in Paris were taken possession of; but by occupying so many, they injured themselves.... They took up too extended a position, and had neither numbers nor means answerable to the scale upon which they set out.... Their Service began at noon, and lasted about an hour and a half. It was, they said, a worship for those who had no other, and a moral society for those who had. The Ritual consisted of Prayers, Hymns original or selected from the best French Poets, readings from their Manual, and Discourses. The Hymns were, in general, judicious, and set to good music, and the Prayers well composed; but had their books been stript of all that they had borrowed from the Gospel, and from the works of Christian writers, they would have been meagre indeed. In one part of the Service there was a short pause, during which the congregation were expected to consider each in silence what his own conduct had been since the last of these meetings. A basket of fruit or flowers, according to the season, was placed upon the altar, as a mark of acknowledgment for the bounties of the Creator; and over the altar was the inscription, Nous croyons à l’existence de Dieu, et à l’immortalité de l’âme.... La Réveillère, in a speech at the Institute, declaiming against Christianity, as being opposed to the liberty of mankind, expressed his wish that a form of religion were adopted, which should have only a couple of articles. He wished also for a religion without priests; and this, it was pleasantly observed, would be like a Directory without a Director.
“This was the Creed of the Theophilanthropists. And on each side of it, the following sentences were inscribed in their temples, to take place of the Decalogue:—
“‘Adore God, cherish your fellow-creatures; render yourselves useful to your
country.
Good is whatever tends to preserve man, or to perfectionate him.
Evil is whatever tends to destroy him, or to deteriorate him.
Children, honour your fathers and mothers; obey them with affection, solace
their old age. Fathers and mothers, instruct your children.
Wives, behold in your husbands the heads of your houses. Husbands, love
your wives, and render yourselves mutually happy.’
“At Marriage the bride and bridegroom were to be coupled with ribands, or garlands of flowers, the ends of which were to be held on each side by the elders of their respective families. The Bride received a ring from her husband, and a medal of union from the head of the family. There was a rite also for infants.... When a member died, the other members of the Society were invited to place a flower upon the urn, and pray the Creator to receive the deceased into his bosom. The Decades and National Holidays were observed by these Anti-Christians, and they had four Holidays of their own, for Socrates, St. Vincent de Paule, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and Washington,—oddly assorted names! Two of them, however, stand well together in this kalendar, for the one, who was a Christian, established the Foundling Hospital at Paris; and the other, who was a sentimentalist, a philosopher, and a Theophilanthropist, sent his own children to it....
“La Réveillère used to take praise to himself for having, in his Directorial character, humbled the Pope and the great Turk. The Anti-Christian language of the Directory, and its persecution of the Clergy, are imputed to him; so far his colleagues were willing to go with him; but his zeal for Deism they regarded as ridiculous.... In the way of pecuniary aid, he could obtain little:—beaucoup d’argent was what the Directory were accustomed to demand, not to give....
“Their Service at Paris was numerously attended while it was a new spectacle, and the subject of conversation; but more than two-thirds of the persons thus assembled were idlers. But this concourse soon abated; there was nothing attractive in the ceremonies, nothing to impose upon the imagination or the senses. A propagandist reported from Montreuil that the readings and orations had been heard by an audience avide de morale, but he had observed with pain that the matériel of the worship was not what it should have been.... It was got up at Bourges in better style; the orator there officiated in a white sash ornamented with blue flowers, before an altar upon which an orange tree was placed: and at the fête des époux, the Theophilanthropists carried two pigeons in procession, as an emblem of conjugal tenderness, and placed them upon the altar of the country!”
[The literary association of Lamb with Coleridge and Southey [says Sir T. N. Talfourd, in his life of Lamb,] drew upon him the hostility of the young scorners of The Anti-Jacobin, who, luxuriating in boyish pride and aristocratic patronage, tossed the arrows of their wit against all charged with innovation, whether in politics or poetry, and cared little whom they wounded. No one could be more innocent than Lamb of political heresy; no one more strongly opposed to new theories in morality—which he always regarded with disgust. The very first number of The Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine [this was, however, a new work, by different hands, but imbued with the same spirit as The Anti-Jacobin] was adorned by a caricature of Gillray’s, in which Coleridge and Southey were introduced with asses’ heads, and Lloyd and Lamb as toad and frog. In the number of July, 1798 [of the original Anti-Jacobin] appeared the well-known poem of New Morality, in which all the prominent objects of the hatred of these champions of religion and order were introduced as offering homage to Lepaux, a French charlatan,—of whose existence Lamb had never even heard. Not content with thus confounding persons of the most opposite opinions and the most various characters in one common libel, the party returned to the charge in their number for September [of The Anti-Jacobin Review], and denounced the young poets in a parody on the Ode to the Passions, under the title of The Anarchists. They are reprinted in the present volume.—Ed.]
[The cause of Coleridge, Southey, Lloyd, and Lamb, being thus satirized as persons of the same politics, was the conjoint publication of their works. In the spring of 1796, Coleridge published vol. i. of his Juvenile Poems, including three Sonnets by Lamb; in May, 1797, there appeared a new edition, with many poems by Lloyd and Lamb. The Fall of Robespierre, an historic drama, was published Sept. 22, 1794: the first act written by Coleridge, the second and third by Southey. It is not difficult to understand why Coleridge was so severely attacked by the Government writers. In 1795, at the early age of 23, he delivered, at Bristol, some public lectures, reflecting in warm terms on the measures of Pitt. Three of them were published at Bristol at the end of 1795—the first two together, with the title of Conciones ad Populum; the third as The Plot Discovered. The eloquent passage in conclusion of the first of these addresses was written by Southey. That he was considered by ministers a dangerous character is proved by his having been for some months watched by a Government spy while residing at Stowey, providing for his scanty maintenance by writing verses for The Morning Post. It was his fortune also to excite the ire of Buonaparte, by his anti-gallican writings in the same paper; and a benevolent intimation of his danger by Baron von Humboldt and Cardinal Fesch alone prevented his being arrested while in Italy. (See p. [284].)
Southey thus alludes to the attack upon him (by Gillray, in his famous caricature), in a letter addressed to C. W. W. Wynn, dated Hereford, August 15, 1798:—“I have seen myself Bedfordized, and it has been a subject of much amusement. Holcroft’s likeness is admirably preserved. I know not what poor Lamb has done to be croaking there. What I think the worst part of The Anti-Jacobin abuse is the lumping together men of such opposite principles; this was stupid. We should have all been welcoming the Director, not the Theophilanthrope. The conductors of The Anti-Jacobin will have much to answer for in thus inflaming the animosities of this country. They are labouring to produce the deadly hatred of Irish faction; perhaps to produce the same end. Such an address as you mention might probably be of great use; that I could assist you in it is less certain. I do not feel myself at all calculated for anything that requires methodical reasoning; and though you and I should agree in the main object of the pamphlet, our opinions are at root different. The old systems of government, I think, must fall; but in this country the immediate danger is on the other hand,—from an unconstitutional and unlimited power. Burleigh saw how a Parliament might be employed against the people, and Montesquieu prophesied the fall of English liberty when the Legislature should become corrupt. You will not agree with me in thinking his prophecy fulfilled. Violent men there undoubtedly are among the democrats, as they are always called; but is there any one among them whom the ministerialists will allow to be moderate?” The Anti-Jacobin certainly speaks the sentiments of Government.’—Ed.]
Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey (page [284]).
[“The passionate verdicts given, both pro and con, in reference to Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey, may now be looked back upon with some wonder, but all three had made themselves obnoxious to the charge of renegadism. Wordsworth had accepted the office of stamp-distributor from Lord Lonsdale; Southey, after attempting to suppress his demagogical drama of Wat Tyler, became a violent Tory, bringing a hot partisanship into the ranks to which he fled; and Coleridge, a Tom-Paineite in politics and a preaching Unitarian, ended by adopting all the doctrines of orthodoxy.”—Sir John Bowring.—Ed.]
Edmund Burke (page [286]).
“Adair told me a great many things about Burke, and Fox, and Fitzpatrick, and all the eminent men of that time with whom he lived when he was young. He said ... that Fitzpatrick was the most agreeable of them all, but Hare the most brilliant. Burke’s conversation was delightful, so luminous and instructive. He was very passionate; and Adair said that the first time he ever saw him he unluckily asked him some question about the wild parts of Ireland, when Burke broke out: ‘You are a fool and a blockhead. There are no wild parts in Ireland.’ ... There was an attempt to bring about a reconciliation between him and Fox, and a meeting for that purpose took place of all the leading men, at Burlington House. Burke was on the point of yielding when his son suddenly made his appearance unbidden, and, on being told what was going on, he said: ‘My father shall be no party to such a compromise,’ took Burke aside, and persuaded him to reject the overtures. That son Adair described as the most disagreeable, violent, and wrong-headed of men, but the idol of his father, who used to say that he united all his own talents and acquirements with those of Fox and everybody else, &c.”—See The Greville Memoirs, i. 136–7.—[Ed.]
[The following remarkable passage occurs in a pamphlet written by Tom Paine, entitled: Thomas Paine to the People of England, on the Invasion of England; Philadelphia, printed at the Temple of Reason Press, Arch Street, 1804.
“The original plan, formed in the time of the Directory (but now much more extensive) was to build one thousand boats, each sixty feet long, sixteen feet broad, to draw about two feet water, to carry a twenty-four or thirty-six pounder in the head and a field-piece in the stern, to be run out as soon as they touched ground. Each boat was to carry a hundred men, making in the whole one hundred thousand, and to row with twenty or twenty-five oars on a side. Bonaparte was appointed to the command, and by an agreement between him and me, I was to accompany him, as the intention of the expedition was to give the people of England an opportunity of forming a government for themselves, and thereby bring about peace.”—Ed.]