[851] In 1689, the same year this paragraph first appeared, seventy-nine royal censors had been appointed, and no book could be printed without their permission.
[852] The last sentence of the above paragraph was added in the fifth edition of the “Characters,” published in 1690, about one year after Fénelon had been appointed teacher of the Duke of Burgundy, the grandson of Louis XIV. Fénelon became archbishop of Cambrai in 1695.
[853] See page [27], note 97. Several eminent divines had already written against “freethinkers,” and about a year before the first edition of the “Characters” appeared, Fénelon preached a sermon against them. Those freethinkers were not deists nor atheists, but somewhat like those persons, at present called agnostics, who neither affirm nor deny anything, but simply state that they know nothing for certain. Among their sect might be reckoned at the time our author wrote the celebrated traveller Bernier, Saint Evremond, Bayle, Fontenelle, Chaulieu, La Fare, the Dukes de Nevers and de Bouillon, the Grand Prior de Vendôme, and many others.
[854] The French name for “freethinker” is esprit fort, literally “strong mind.”
[855] Another play on words in the original on esprit fort and esprit faible.
[856] This is perhaps an allusion to the traveller F. Bernier, a pupil of Gassendi, who visited Assyria, Egypt, and India, and published a narrative of his travels in 1670.
[857] Libertin was another name for freethinker in French. See p. [161], note 319.
[858] The original has une personne libre, to which our author adds in a note, une fille.
[859] An allusion to some such men as the Duke de la Feuillade, the Minister de Louvois, and the Marquis de Seignelay, who have been mentioned before, and who almost all died after a very short illness.
[860] Whenever our author has an opportunity he always opposes esprits forts to esprits faibles, or faibles génies, as in the above paragraph.