A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume 2 of 2 by J. M. Robertson
1705. (Pref. to pt. i, ed. 1725.)
2314 words | Chapter 409
[521] See the note of Pope and Warburton on the Dunciad, iv, 462.
[522] See arts. in Dict. of Nat. Biog.
[523] Reprinted at Amsterdam, 1712.
[524] Essays as cited, p. 84.
[525] Id. p. 30.
[526] See Christianity not Founded on Argument (by Henry Dodwell,
jr.), 1741, pp. 11, 34. Waterland, as cited by Bishop Hurst, treats
the terms Reasonist and Rationalist as labels or nicknames of those
who untruly profess to reason more scrupulously than other people. The
former term may, however, have been set up as a result of Le Clerc's
rendering of "the Logos," in John i, 1, by "Reason"--an argument to
which Waterland repeatedly refers.
[527] Prof. Strowski, who is concerned to prove that the freethinkers
of the period were mostly men-about-town, claims Patin as a Frondeur
(De Montaigne à Pascal, p. 215). But Patin's attitude in this matter
was determined by his detestation of Mazarin, whom he regarded as an
arch-scoundrel. Naudé's defence of the Massacre is forensic.
[528] Lettres de Gui Patin, No. 188, édit. Reveillé-Parise, 1846,
i, 364.
[529] Cp. Reveillé-Parise, as cited, Notice sur Gui Patin,
pp. xxiii-xxvii, and Bayle, art. Patin.
[530] See the notices of him in Owen's Skeptics of the French
Renaissance; and in Sainte-Beuve. Port Royal, iii, 180, etc.
[531] De la Vertu des Payens, in t. v. of the 12mo ed. of OEuvres,
1669.
[532] Hanotaux, Hist. du Cardinal de Richelieu, 1893, i, pref. p. 7.
[533] Cp. Buckle, ch. viii, 1-vol. ed. pp. 305-10, 325-28.
[534] See the good criticism of M. Hanotaux in Perrens, Les Libertins
en France au xvii. siècle, p. 95 sq.
[535] OEuvres, ed. 1669, v, 4 sq. Bellarmin, as Le Vayer shows, had
similarly explained away Augustine. But the doctrine that heathen
virtue was not true virtue had remained orthodox.
[536] Ed. cited, iv, 125.
[537] Id. pp. 123-24.
[538] Tom. iii, 251.
[539] He wrote very many, the final collection filling three
volumes folio, and fifteen in duodecimo. The Cincq Dialogues faits
à l'imitation des Anciens were pseudonymous, and are not included in
the collected works.
[540] "On le régarde comme le Plutarque de notre siècle" (Perrault,
Les Hommes Illustres du XVIIe Siècle, éd. 1701, ii. 131).
[541] Perrault, ii, 132.
[542] Bayle, Dict. art. La Mothe le Vayer. Cp. introd. to L'Esprit de
la Mothe le Vayer, par M. de M. C. D. S. P. D. L. (i.e. De Montlinot,
chanoine de Saint Pierre de Lille), 1763, pp. xviii, xxi, xxvi.
[543] M. Perrens, who endorses this criticism, does not note that
some passages he quotes from the Dialogues, as to atheism being less
disturbing to States than superstition, are borrowed from Bacon's
essay Of Atheism, of which Le Vayer would read the Latin version.
[544] Perrens, p. 132.
[545] In French, 1631; in Latin, 1656, amended.
[546] Translated into English in 1688, and into French, under the
title Traité du Pyrrhonisme de l'église romaine, by N. Chalaire,
Amsterdam, 1721.
[547] Bouillier, Hist. de la Philos. cartésienne, 1854, i, 410 sq., 420
sq.; Lanson, Hist. de la litt. française, 5e édit. p. 396; Brunetière,
Études Critiques, 3e série, p. 2; Buckle, 1-vol. ed. p. 338. Bouillier
notes (i, 426) that the femmes savantes ridiculed by Molière are
Cartesians.
[548] Bouillier, i, 456; Lanson, p. 397.
[549] Bouillier, i, 411 sq.
[550] Id. p. 431 sq.
[551] Id. p. 437 sq.
[552] Id. pp. 449-50.
[553] "Il disait très souvent," said Pascal's niece:--"Je ne puis
pardonner à Descartes: il aurait bien voulu, dans toute sa philosophie,
pouvoir se passer de Dieu; mais il n'a pu s'empêcher de lui accorder
une chiquenade, pour mettre le monde en mouvement; après cela il
n'a plus que faire de Dieu." Récit de Marguerite Perier ("De ce
que j'ai ouï dire par M. Pascal, mon oncle"), rep. with Pensées,
ed. 1853. pp. 38-39.
[554] Bouillier, p. 453.
[555] Id. p. 455 sq.
[556] See Bouillier, i, 460 sq.; ii, 373 sq.; and introd. to OEuvres
philos. du Père Buffier, 1846, p. 4; and cp. Rambaud, Hist. de la
civilisation française, 6e édit. ii, 336.
[557] Bouillier, i, 465.
[558] Perrens, pp. 84-85.
[559] Cp. Perrens, pp. 68-69, and refs.
[560] Cp. Strowski, De Montaigne à Pascal, p. 141.
[561] See Duvernet, Vie de Voltaire, ch. i, and note 1; and Perrens,
pp. 74-80.
[562] For all that is known of Petit see the Avertissement to
Bibliophile Jacob's edition of Paris ridicule et burlesque au
17ième siècle, and refs. in Perrens, p. 153. After Petit's death,
his friend Du Pelletier defended him as being a deist; but he seems
in his youthful writings to have blasphemed at large, and he had
been guilty of assassinating a young monk. He was burned, however,
for blaspheming the Virgin.
[563] Guizot, Corneille et son temps, ed. 1880, p. 200. The circle of
the Hôtel Rambouillet were especially hostile. Cp. Palissot's note to
Polyeucte, end. On the other hand, Corneille found it prudent to cancel
four skeptical lines which he had originally put in the mouth of the
pagan Severus, the sage of the piece. Perrens, Les Libertins, p. 140.
[564] Under whom he studied in his youth with a number of other notably
independent spirits, among them Cyrano de Bergerac. See Sainte-Beuve's
essay on Molière, prefixed to the Hachette edition. Molière held by
Gassendi as against Descartes. Bouillier, i, 542 sq.
[565] Constant Coquelin, art. "Don Juan" in the International Review,
September, 1903, p. 61--an acute and scholarly study.
[566] "Molière is a freethinker to the marrow of his bones" (Perrens,
p. 280). Cp. Lanson, p. 520; Fournier, Études sur Molière, 1885,
pp. 122-23; Soury, Brêv. de l'hist. du matér. p. 384. "Ginguené,"
writes Sainte-Beuve, "a publié une brochure pour montrer Rabelais
précurseur de la révolution française: c'étoit inutile à prouver sur
Molière" (essay cited).
[567] Act II, sc. iv. in OEuvres Comiques, etc., ed. Jacob, rep. by
Garnier, pp. 426-27.
[568] See Jacob's note in loc., ed. cited, p. 455.
[569] E.g. his Lettre contre un Pédant (No. 13 of the Lettres
Satiriques in ed. cited, p. 181), which, however, appears to have
been mutilated in some editions; as one of the deistic sentences
cited by M. Perrens, p. 247, does not appear in the reprint of
Bibliophile Jacob.
[570] E.g. the Histoire des Oiseaux in the Histoire Comique des états
et empires du Soleil, ed. Jacob (Garnier), p. 278; and the Fragment
de Physique (same vol.).
[571] See the careful criticism of Perrens, pp. 248-50.
[572] Bibliophile Jacob, pref. to ed. cited, pp. i-ii.
[573] Perrens, p. 302. Compare Bossuet's earlier sermon for the Second
Sunday of Advent, 1665, cited by Perrens, pp. 253-54, where he speaks
with something like fury of the free discussion around him.
[574] Cousin plausibly argues that Pascal began writing Pensées
under the influence of a practice set up in her circle by Madame de
Sablé. Mme. de Sablé, 5e édit. p. 124 sq.
[575] It is to be remembered that the work as published contained
matter not Pascal's. Cp. Brunetière, Études, iii, 46-47; and the
editions of the Pensées by Faugère and Havet.
[576] As to some of these see Perrens, pp. 158-69. They included the
great Condé and some of the women in his circle; all of them unserious
in their skepticism, and all "converted" when the physique gave the
required cue.
[577] Pensées, ed. Faugère, ii, 168-69. The "abêtira" comes from
Montaigne.
[578] Thus Mr. Owen treats Pascal as a skeptic, which philosophically
he was, insofar as he really philosophized and did not merely catch
at pleas for his emotional beliefs. "Les Pensées de Pascal," writes
Prof. Le Dantec, "sont à mon avis le livre le plus capable de renforcer
l'athéisme chez un athée" (L'Athéisme, 1906, pp. 24-25). They have
in fact always had that effect.
[579] De la Delicatesse, 1671, dial. v, p. 329, etc.
[580] Vinet, Études sur Blaise Pascal, 3e édit. p. 267 sq.
[581] Cp. the Éloge de Pascal by Bordas Demoulin in Didot ed. of
the Lettres, 1854, pp. xxii-xxiii, and cit. from Saint-Beuve. Mark
Pattison, it seems, held that the Jesuits had the best of the
argument. See the Letters of Lord Acton to Mary Gladstone, 1904,
p. 207. As regards the effect of Jansenism on belief, we find De
Tocqueville pronouncing that "Le Jansenisme ouvrit ... la brêche
par laquelle la philosophie du 18e siècle devait faire irruption"
(Hist. philos. du règne de Louis XV, 1849, i, 2). This could truly
be said of Pascal.
[582] Cp. Voltaire's letter of 1768, cited by Morley, Voltaire,
4th ed. p. 159.
[583] Cp. Owen, French Skeptics, pp. 762-63, 767.
[584] This was expressly urged against Huet by Arnauld. See the Notice
in Jourdain's ed. of the Logique de Port Royal, 1854, p. xi; Perrens,
Les Libertins, p. 301; and Bouillier Hist. de la philos. cartésienne,
1854, i, 595-96, where are cited the letters of Arnauld (Nos. 830,
834, and 837 in OEuvres Compl. iii, 396, 404, 424) denouncing Huet's
Pyrrhonism as "impious" and perfectly adapted to the purposes of
the freethinkers.
[585] Cp. Alexandre Westphal, Les Sources du Pentateuque, i (1888),
pp. 64-68.
[586] Huet himself incurred a charge of temerity in his handling of
textual questions. Id. p. 66.
[587] Pattison, Essays, 1889, i. 303-304.
[588] Pattison, as cited.
[589] "After all, a book [the Bible] cannot make a stand against the
wild, living intellect of man." Newman, Apologia pro Vita Sua, 1st
ed. p. 382; ed. 1875, p. 245. The same is said by Newman of religion
in general (p. 243).
[590] Pattison disparages it as colourless, a fault he charges on
Jesuit Latin in general. But by most moderns the Latin style of Huet
will be found pure and pleasant.
[591] Pattison, Essays, i, 299. Cp. Bouillier, i, 595.
[592] Fontenelle, Éloge sur Régis; Bouillier, Philos. cartés., i, 507.
[593] Réponse to Huet's Censura philosophiæ cartes., 1691; Bouillier,
i, 515.
[594] Usage de la raison et de la foi, 1704, liv. i, ptie. i, ch. vii;
Bouillier, p. 511.
[595] Bouillier, i, 521-25.
[596] Lettre de 10 août, 1677, No. 591, éd. Nodier.
[597] Bouillier, ii, 10.
[598] Méditations chrétiennes, ix, § 13.
[599] Entretiens métaphysiques, viii.
[600] Id. viii, ix.
[601] Bouillier, ii, 33. So Kuno Fischer: "In brief, Malebranche's
doctrine, rightly understood, is Spinoza's" (Descartes and his School,
Eng. tr. 1890, p. 589. Cp. p. 542).
[602] The work of Arnauld was reprinted in 1724 with a remarkable
Approbation by Clavel, in which he eulogizes the style and the
dialectic of Arnauld, and expresses the hope that the book may "guérir,
s'il se peut, d'une étrange préoccupation et d'une excessive confiance,
ceux qui enseignent ou soutiennent comme evident ce qu'il y a de plus
dangereux dans la nouvelle philosophie non-obstant les défenses faites
par le feu Roi Louis XIV à l'Université d'Angers en l'année 1675 et à
l'Université de Paris aux années 1691 et 1704 de le laisser enseigner
ou soutenir."
[603] Des vrayes et des fausses idées, ch. xxviii.
[604] Recherche de la Vérité, liv. vi, ptie. ii, ch. iii.
[605] This was the main theme of the finished Éloge of Fontenelle, and
was acknowledged by Bayle, Daguesseau, Arnauld, Bossuet, Voltaire, and
Diderot, none of whom agreed with him. Bouillier, ii, 19. Fontenelle
opposed Malebranche's philosophy in his Doutes sur le système physique
des causes occasionelles. Id. p. 575.
[606] Cp. Bouillier, ii, 260-61.
[607] He is not mentioned by Ueberweg, Lange, or Lewes. His importance
in æsthetics, however, is recognized by some moderns, though he is
not named in Mr. Bosanquet's History of Æsthetic.
[608] Traité des premières vérités, 1724, §§ 521-31.
[609] Bouillier, introd. to Buffier's OEuvres philosophiques, 1846,
p. xiii.
[610] Remarques sur les principes de la metaphysique de Locke,
passages cited by Bouillier.
[611] OEuvres, éd. Bouillier, p. 329.
[612] Cp. Bouillier, Hist. de la philos. cartés., ii, 391.
[613] Malebranche, Traité de Morale, liv. ii, ch. 10. Cp. Bouillier,
i, 582, 588-90; ii, 23.
[614] Cp. Westphal, Les Sources du Pentateuque, 1888, i, 67 sq.
[615] Præadamitæ, sive Exercitatio super versibus 12, 13, 14 cap. 5,
Epist. D. Pauli ad Romanos, Quibus inducuntur Primi Homines ante
Adamum conditi. The notion of a pre-Adamite human race, as we saw,
had been held by Bruno. (Above, p. 46.)
[616] My copies of the Præadamitæ and Systema bear no place-imprint,
but simply "Anno Salutis MDCLV." Both books seem to have been at once
reprinted in 12mo.
[617] Bayle, Dictionnaire, art. Peyrere. A correspondent of Bayle's
concludes his account of "le Préadamite" thus: "Le Pereire étoit le
meilleur homme du monde, le plus doux, et qui tranquillement croyoit
fort peu de chose." There is a satirical account of him in the Lettres
de Gui Patin, April 5,1658 (No. 454, ed. Reveillé-Parise, 1846, iii,
83), cited by Bayle.
[618] See the account of his book by Mr. Lecky, Rationalism in
Europe, i, 295-97. Rejecting as he did the Mosaic authorship of the
Pentateuch, he ranks with Hobbes and Spinoza among the pioneers of
true criticism. Indeed, as his book seems to have been in MS. in 1645,
he may precede Hobbes. Patin had heard of Peyrère's Præadamitæ as
ready for printing in 1643. Let. 169, ed. cited, i, 297.
[619] Kuno Fischer, Descartes and his School, pp. 254-68.
[620] Colerus (i.e., Köhler), Vie de Spinoza, in Gfrörer's ed. of
the Opera, pp. xlv-xlvii.
[621] Cited by George Sinclar in pref. to Satan's Invisible World
Discovered, 1685,rep. 1871. I have been unable to meet with a copy
of Mastricht's book.
[622] "Novitates Cartesianæ multis parasangas superunt Arminianas."
[623] Nichols, Works of Arminius, 1824, i, 257 b (paging partly
duplicated).
[624] Cp. Bouillier, i, 293-94.
[625] Colerus, Vie de Spinoza, in Gfrörer's ed. of Opera, p. xxv;
Martineau, Study of Spinoza, 1882, pp. 20-22; Pollock, Spinoza,
2nd ed. 1899, pp. 10-14.
[626] As set forth by Joel, Beiträge zur Gesch. der Philos., Breslau,
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