[50.] Boindin (Nicolas), French scholar and author, born the twenty-ninth of May 1676 at Paris, where he died the thirtieth of November 1751. He was in the army for a while, but retired on account of ill health. He then gave himself up to literature, and wrote several plays. In 1706 he was elected Royal censor and associate of the Academy of Inscriptions. His liberty, or, as it was then called, license of mind, shut the doors of the French Academy to him, and would have caused his expulsion from the Academy of Inscriptions if he had not been so old. He died without retracting his opinions.[59]
[51.] Denis Diderot (1713–1784) was one of the leaders of the intellectual movement of the eighteenth century. He was at first influenced by Shaftsbury, and was enthusiastic in his support of natural religion. In his “Pensées philosophiques” (1746) he tries to show that the discoveries of natural science are the strongest proofs for the existence of God. The wonders of animal life are enough to destroy atheism for ever. Yet, while he opposes atheism, he also opposes vigorously the intolerance and bigotry of the church. He claims that many of the attributes ascribed to God are contrary to the very idea of a just and loving God.
Later, Diderot was influenced by La Mettrie and by Holbach, and became an advocate of materialism which he set forth in “Le rêve d’Alembert” and in the passages contributed to the “Système de la nature.” Diderot was the editor of the “Encyclopédie.”[60]
[52.] Trembley. See [note 27].
[53.] “Nothing which happens, could have failed to happen.” An enunciation of the doctrine so insisted upon by Holbach. “The whole universe ... shows us only an immense and uninterrupted chain of cause and effect.”[61]... “Necessity which regulates all the movements of the physical world, controls also those of the moral world.”[62]
[54.] “All these evidences of a creator, repeated thousands ... of times ... are self-evident only to the anti-Pyrrhonians.” La Mettrie holds an opinion contrary not only to that of Descartes and Locke, but also to that of Toland, Hobbes, and Condillac. Descartes, for instance, says: “Thus I very clearly see that the certitude and truth of all science depends on the knowledge alone of the true God.”[63] Hobbes asserts: “For he that from any effect he seeth come to pass should reason to the next and immediate cause thereof, and from thence to the cause of that cause, ... shall at last come to this, that there must be, as even the heathen philosophers confessed, one first mover, that is a first and an eternal cause of all things, which is that which men mean by the name of God.”[64] Toland’s words are: “All the jumbling of atoms, all the Chances you can suppose for it, could not bring the Parts of the Universe into their present Order, nor continue them in the same, nor cause the Organization of a Flower or a Fly.... The Infinity of Matter ... excludes ... an extended corporeal God, but not a pure Spirit or immaterial Being.”[65] Condillac writes: “A first cause, independent, unique, infinite, eternal, omnipotent, immutable, intelligent, free, and whose providence extends over all things: that is the most perfect notion of God that we can form in this life.”[66] Locke declares: “From what has been said it is plain to me we have a more certain knowledge of the existence of a God than of anything our senses have not immediately discovered to us. Nay I presume I may say, that we more certainly know that there is a God, than that there is anything else without us.”[67]
[55.] “Lucretius (Titus Lucretius Carus). Born at Rome, probably about 96 B.C., died October 15, 55 B.C. A celebrated Roman philosophical poet. He was the author of ‘De rerum natura,’ a didactic and philosophical poem in six books, treating of physics, of psychology, and (briefly) of ethics from the Epicurean point of view. He committed suicide probably in a fit of insanity. According to a popular but doubtless erroneous tradition, his madness was due to a love-philter administered to him by his wife.”[68]
[56.] “Lamy (Bernard) was born in Mans in the year 1640. He studied first in the college of this city. He later went to Paris, and at Saumar studied philosophy under Charles de la Fontenelle, and theology under André Martin and Jean Leporc. He was at length called to teach philosophy in the city of Angers. He wrote a great many books on theological subjects. His philosophical works are: ‘L’art de parler’ (1675), ‘Traité de méchanique, de l’équilibre, des solides et des liqueurs’ (1679), ‘Traité de la grandeur en général’ (1680), ‘Entretiens sur les sciences’ (1684), ‘Eléments de géométrie,’ (1685).”[69]
[57.] “The eye sees only because it is formed and placed as it is.” La Mettrie doubts whether there is any purpose in the world. Condillac, on the other hand, teaches that purpose and intelligence are shown forth in the universe. “Can we see the order of the parts of the universe, the subordination among them, and notice how so many different things compose such a permanent whole, and remain convinced that the cause of the universe is a principle without any knowledge of its effects, which without purpose, without intelligence, relates each being to particular ends, subordinated to a general end?”[70]
[58.] “Non nostrum inter vos tantas componere lites.” Vergil, Eclogue III, line 108.