[143] Voltaire to Damilaville, 21 auguste, 1763. [↑]
[144] Cp. i, 2, 16, 56, 58, 65, 68, 70, 71, 73, 94; ii, 290, etc. [↑]
[145] For instance: “Je me recommande contr’eux [les prêtres] à Dieu le père, car pour le fils, vous savez qu’il a aussi peu de crédit que sa mère à Genève” (Lettre à D’Alembert, 25 mars, 1758).... “Une république où tout le monde est ouvertement socinien, exceptés ceux qui font anabaptistes ou moraves. Figurez-vous, mon cher ami, qu’il n’y a pas actuellement un chrétien de Genève à Berne; cela fait frémir!” (To the same, 8 fév. 1776.) [↑]
[146] On this see the correspondence of Voltaire and D’Alembert, under dates 8, 28, and 29 janvier, 1757. [↑]
[147] Lettre à D’Alembert, 27 août, 1757. [↑]
[148] Lettres sur le Déisme, 1759, p. 6. Cp. pp. 84, 94, 103, 105, 412. [↑]
Chapter XX
EARLY FREETHOUGHT IN THE UNITED STATES
1. Perhaps the most signal of all the proofs of the change wrought in the opinion of the civilized world in the eighteenth century is the fact that at the time of the War of Independence the leading statesmen of the American colonies were deists. Such were Benjamin Franklin, the diplomatist of the Revolution; Thomas Paine, its prophet and inspirer; Washington, its commander; and Jefferson, its typical legislator. But for these four men the American Revolution probably could not have been accomplished in that age; and they thus represent in a peculiar degree the power of new ideas, in fit conditions, to transform societies, at least politically. On the other hand, the fashion in which their relation to the creeds of their time has been garbled, alike in American and English histories, proves how completely they were in advance of the average thought of their day; and also how effectively the mere institutional influence of creeds can arrest a nation’s mental development. It is still one of the stock doctrines of religious sociology in England and America that deism, miscalled atheism, wrought the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution; when as a matter of fact the same deism was at the head of affairs in the American.