CHAPTER VIII. THE ENCYCLOPAEDISTS AND ECONOMISTS
1.
The intellectual movement which prepared French opinion for the Revolution and supplied the principles for reconstituting society may be described as humanistic in the sense that man was the centre of speculative interest.
"One consideration especially that we ought never to lose from sight," says Diderot, "is that, if we ever banish a man, or the thinking and contemplative being, from above the surface of the earth, this pathetic and sublime spectacle of nature becomes no more than a scene of melancholy and silence... It is the presence of man that gives its interest to the existence of other beings... Why should we not make him a common centre?... Man is the single term from which we ought to set out." [Footnote: The passage from Diderot's article Encyclopedie is given as translated by Morley, Diderot, i, 145.] Hence psychology, morals, the structure of society, were the subjects which riveted attention instead of the larger supra-human problems which had occupied Descartes, Malebranche, and Leibnitz. It mattered little whether the universe was the best that could be constructed; what mattered was the relation of man's own little world to his will and capacities.
Physical science was important only in so far as it could help social science and minister to the needs of man. The closest analogy to this development of thought is not offered by the Renaissance, to which the description HUMANISTIC has been conventionally appropriated, but rather by the age of illumination in Greece in the latter half of the fifth century B.C., represented by Protagoras, Socrates, and others who turned from the ultimate problems of the cosmos, hitherto the main study of philosophers, to man, his nature and his works.
In this revised form of "anthropo-centrism" we see how the general movement of thought has instinctively adapted itself to the astronomical revolution. On the Ptolemaic system it was not incongruous or absurd that man, lord of the central domain in the universe, should regard himself as the most important cosmic creature. This is the view, implicit in the Christian scheme, which had been constructed on the old erroneous cosmology. When the true place of the earth was shown and man found himself in a tiny planet attached to one of innumerable solar worlds, his cosmic importance could no longer be maintained. He was reduced to the condition of an insect creeping on a "tas de boue," which Voltaire so vividly illustrated in Micromegas. But man is resourceful; [words in Greek]. Displaced, along with his home, from the centre of things, he discovers a new means of restoring his self-importance; he interprets his humiliation as a deliverance. Finding himself in an insignificant island floating in the immensity of space, he decides that he is at last master of his own destinies; he can fling away the old equipment of final causes, original sin, and the rest; he can construct his own chart and, bound by no cosmic scheme, he need take the universe into account only in so far as he judges it to be to his own profit. Or, if he is a philosopher, he may say that, after all, the universe for him is built out of his own sensations, and that by virtue of this relativity "anthropo-centrism" is restored in a new and more effective form.
Built out of his own sensations: for the philosophy of Locke was now triumphant in France. I have used the term Cartesianism to designate, not the metaphysical doctrines of Descartes (innate ideas, two substances, and the rest), but the great principles which survived the passing of his metaphysical system—the supremacy of reason, and the immutability of natural laws, not subject to providential interventions. These principles still controlled thought, but the particular views of Descartes on mental phenomena were superseded in France by the psychology of Locke, whose influence was established by Voltaire and Condillac. The doctrine that all our ideas are derived from the senses lay at the root of the whole theory of man and society, in the light of which the revolutionary thinkers, Diderot, Helvetius, and their fellows, criticised the existing order and exposed the reigning prejudices. This sensationalism (which went beyond what Locke himself had really meant) involved the strict relativity of knowledge and led at once to the old pragmatic doctrine of Protagoras, that man is the measure of all things. And the spirit of the French philosophers of the eighteenth century was distinctly pragmatic. The advantage of man was their principle, and the value of speculation was judged by its definite service to humanity. "The value and rights of truth are founded on its utility," which is "the unique measure of man's judgements," one thinker asserts; another declares that "the useful circumscribes everything," l'utile circonscrit tout; another lays down that "to be virtuous is to be useful; to be vicious is to be useless or harmful; that is the sum of morality." Helvetius, anticipating Bentham, works out the theory that utility is the only possible basis of ethics. Bacon, the utilitarian, was extolled like Locke. [Footnote: The passages quoted on utility are from d'Holbach, Systems de la nature, i. c. 12, p. 224; c. 15, p. 312; Diderot, De I'interpretation de la nature in OEuvres, ii. p. 13; Raynal, Histoire des deux Indes, vii. p. 416. The effectiveness of the teaching may be illustrated from the Essay on Man, by Antoine Rivarol, whom Burke called the Tacitus of the Revolution. "The virtues are only virtues because they are useful to the human race." OEuvres choisis (ed. de Lescure), i. p. 211.] As, a hundred years before, his influence had inspired the foundation of the Royal Society, so now his name was invoked by the founders of the Encyclopaedia. [Footnote: See d'Alembert's tribute to him in the Discours preliminaire.]
Beneath all philosophical speculation there is an undercurrent of emotion, and in the French philosophers of the eighteenth century this emotional force was strong and even violent. They aimed at practical results. Their work was a calculated campaign to transform the principles and the spirit of governments and to destroy sacerdotalism. The problem for the human race being to reach a state of felicity by its own powers, these thinkers believed that it was soluble by the gradual triumph of reason over prejudice and knowledge over ignorance. Violent revolution was far from their thoughts; by the diffusion of knowledge they hoped to create a public opinion which would compel governments to change the tenor of their laws and administration and make the happiness of the people their guiding principle. The optimistic confidence that man is perfectible, which means capable of indefinite improvement, inspired the movement as a whole, however greatly particular thinkers might differ in their views.
Belief in Progress was their sustaining faith, although, occupied by the immediate problems of amelioration, they left it rather vague and ill-defined. The word itself is seldom pronounced in their writings. The idea is treated as subordinate to the other ideas in the midst of which it had grown up: Reason, Nature, Humanity, Illumination (lumieres). It has not yet entered upon an independent life of its own and received a distinct label, though it is already a vital force.
In reviewing the influences which were forming a new public opinion during the forty years before the Revolution, it is convenient for the present purpose to group together the thinkers (including Voltaire) associated with the Encyclopaedia, who represented a critical and consciously aggressive force against traditional theories and existing institutions. The constructive thinker Rousseau was not less aggressive, but he stands apart and opposed, by his hostility to modern civilisation. Thirdly, we must distinguish the school of Economists, also reformers and optimists, but of more conservative temper than the typical Encyclopaedists.