1 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. ↑
2 Lettres de Gui Patin, No. 188, édit. Reveillé-Parise, 1846, i, 364. ↑
3 Cp. Reveillé-Parise, as cited, Notice sur Gui Patin, pp. xxiii-xxvii, and Bayle, art. Patin. ↑
4 See the notices of him in Owen’s Skeptics of the French Renaissance; and in Sainte-Beuve. Port Royal, iii, 180, etc. ↑
5 De la Vertu des Payens, in t. v. of the 12mo ed. of Œuvres, 1669. ↑
6 Hanotaux, Hist. du Cardinal de Richelieu, 1893, i, pref. p. 7. ↑
7 Cp. Buckle, ch. viii, 1-vol. ed. pp. 305–10, 325–28. ↑
8 See the good criticism of M. Hanotaux in Perrens, Les Libertins en France au xvii. siècle, p. 95 sq. ↑
9 Œuvres, 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. ↑
13 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. ↑
14 “On le régarde comme le Plutarque de notre siècle” (Perrault, Les Hommes Illustres du XVIIe Siècle, éd. 1701, ii. 131). ↑
16 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. ↑
17 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. ↑
19 In French, 1631; in Latin, 1656, amended. ↑
20 Translated into English in 1688, and into French, under the title Traité du Pyrrhonisme de l’église romaine, by N. Chalaire, Amsterdam, 1721. ↑
21 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. ↑
22 Bouillier, i, 456; Lanson, p. 397. ↑
27 “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. ↑
30 See Bouillier, i, 460 sq.; ii, 373 sq.; and introd. to Œuvres philos. du Père Buffier, 1846, p. 4; and cp. Rambaud, Hist. de la civilisation française, 6e édit. ii, 336. ↑
33 Cp. Perrens, pp. 68–69, and refs. ↑
34 Cp. Strowski, De Montaigne à Pascal, p. 141. ↑
35 See Duvernet, Vie de Voltaire, ch. i, and note 1; and Perrens, pp. 74–80. ↑
36 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. ↑
37 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. ↑
38 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. ↑
39 Constant Coquelin, art. “Don Juan” in the International Review, September, 1903, p. 61—an acute and scholarly study. ↑
40 “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). ↑
41 Act II, sc. iv. in Œuvres Comiques, etc., ed. Jacob, rep. by Garnier, pp. 426–27. ↑
42 See Jacob’s note in loc., ed. cited, p. 455. ↑
43 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. ↑
44 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.). ↑
45 See the careful criticism of Perrens, pp. 248–50. ↑
46 Bibliophile Jacob, pref. to ed. cited, pp. i-ii. ↑
47 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. ↑
48 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. ↑
49 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. ↑
50 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. ↑
51 Pensées, ed. Faugère, ii, 168–69. The “abêtira” comes from Montaigne. ↑
52 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. ↑
53 De la Delicatesse, 1671, dial. v, p. 329, etc. ↑
54 Vinet, Études sur Blaise Pascal, 3e édit. p. 267 sq. ↑
55 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. ↑
56 Cp. Voltaire’s letter of 1768, cited by Morley, Voltaire, 4th ed. p. 159. ↑
57 Cp. Owen, French Skeptics, pp. 762–63, 767. ↑
58 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 Œuvres Compl. iii, 396, 404, 424) denouncing Huet’s Pyrrhonism as “impious” and perfectly adapted to the purposes of the freethinkers. ↑
59 Cp. Alexandre Westphal, Les Sources du Pentateuque, i (1888), pp. 64–68. ↑
60 Huet himself incurred a charge of temerity in his handling of textual questions. Id. p. 66. ↑
61 Pattison, Essays, 1889, i. 303–304. ↑
63 “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). ↑
64 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. ↑
65 Pattison, Essays, i, 299. Cp. Bouillier, i, 595. ↑
66 Fontenelle, Éloge sur Régis; Bouillier, Philos. cartés., i, 507. ↑
67 Réponse to Huet’s Censura philosophiæ cartes., 1691; Bouillier, i, 515. ↑
68 Usage de la raison et de la foi, 1704, liv. i, ptie. i, ch. vii; Bouillier, p. 511. ↑
70 Lettre de 10 août, 1677, No. 591, éd. Nodier. ↑
72 Méditations chrétiennes, ix, § 13. ↑
73 Entretiens métaphysiques, viii. ↑
75 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). ↑
76 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.” ↑
77 Des vrayes et des fausses idées, ch. xxviii. ↑
78 Recherche de la Vérité, liv. vi, ptie. ii, ch. iii. ↑
79 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. ↑
80 Cp. Bouillier, ii, 260–61. ↑
81 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. ↑
82 Traité des premières vérités, 1724, §§ 521–31. ↑
83 Bouillier, introd. to Buffier’s Œuvres philosophiques, 1846, p. xiii. ↑
84 Remarques sur les principes de la metaphysique de Locke, passages cited by Bouillier. ↑
85 Œuvres, éd. Bouillier, p. 329. ↑
86 Cp. Bouillier, Hist. de la philos. cartés., ii, 391. ↑
87 Malebranche, Traité de Morale, liv. ii, ch. 10. Cp. Bouillier, i, 582, 588–90; ii, 23. ↑
88 Cp. Westphal, Les Sources du Pentateuque, 1888, i, 67 sq. ↑
89 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.) ↑
90 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. ↑
91 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. ↑
92 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. ↑
93 Kuno Fischer, Descartes and his School, pp. 254–68. ↑
94 Colerus (i.e., Köhler), Vie de Spinoza, in Gfrörer’s ed. of the Opera, pp. xlv–xlvii. ↑
95 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. ↑
96 “Novitates Cartesianæ multis parasangas superunt Arminianas.” ↑
97 Nichols, Works of Arminius, 1824, i, 257 b (paging partly duplicated). ↑
98 Cp. Bouillier, i, 293–94. ↑
99 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. ↑
100 As set forth by Joel, Beiträge zur Gesch. der Philos., Breslau, 1876. See citations in Land’s note to his lecture in Spinoza: Four Essays, 1882, pp. 51–53. ↑
101 Land, “In Memory of Spinoza,” in Spinoza: Four Essays, pp. 57–58; Sigwart, as there cited; Pollock, Spinoza, p. 12. Cp. however, Martineau, p. 101, note. ↑
102 Renati Des Cartes Princip. Philos. more geometrico demonstratæ, 1663. ↑
103 Cp. Martineau, pp. 46, 57. ↑
104 Reprinted in 1674, without place-name, and with the imprint of an imaginary Hamburg publisher. ↑
107 Epp. lviii, lx, to Boxel. ↑
108 Ep. xxiii, to Oldenburg. ↑
110 Ep. xxxiv, to W. van Bleyenberg. ↑
111 Ep. xlvii, to Jellis, Feb. 1671. ↑
112 Ep. xix, 1675, to Oldenburg. ↑
113 “Spinozism is atheistic, and has no valid ground for retaining the word ‘God’” (Martineau, p. 349). This estimate is systematically made good by Prof. E. E. Powell of Miami University in his Spinoza and Religion (1906). See in particular ch. v. The summing-up is that “the right name for Spinoza’s philosophy is Atheistic Monism” (pp. 339–40). ↑
114 Ethica, pt. i, App.; pt. ii, end; pt. v, prop. 41, schol. Cp. the Letters, passim. ↑
115 The solution is, of course, that the attitude of the will in the forming of opinion may or may not be passionally perverse, in the sense of being inconsistent. To show that it is inconsistent may be a means of enlightening it; and an aspersion to that effect may be medicinal. Spinoza might truly have said that passional perversity was at least as common on the orthodox side as on the other. In any case, he quashes his own criticism of Bacon. Cp. the author’s essay on Spinoza in Pioneer Humanists. ↑
116 Pt. iv, prop. 68, schol. ↑
118 Colerus, as cited, p. liv. Cuper appears to have been genuinely anti-Spinozist, while his opponent, Breitburg, or Bredenburg, of Rotterdam, was a Spinozist. Both were members of the society of “Collegiants,” a body of non-dogmatic Christians, which for a time was broken up through their dissensions. Mosheim, 17 Cent. sec. ii, pt. ii, ch. vii, § 2, and note. ↑
119 Theologisch, Philosophisch, en Historisch process voor God, tegen allerley Atheisten. By Francis Ridder, Rotterdam, 1678. ↑
120 L’Impiétié Convaincu, “par Pierre Yvon,” Amsterdam, 1681. Really by the Sieur Noël Aubert de Versé. This appears to have been reprinted in 1685 under the title L’Impie convaincu, ou Dissertation contre Spinosa, ou l’on réfute les fondemens de son athéisme. ↑
121 See Fox Bourne’s Life of Locke, ii, 282–83, as to Locke’s friendly relations with the Remonstrants in 1683–89. ↑
122 See the summary of his argument by Alexandre Westphal, Les Sources du Pentateuque, 1888, i, 78 sq. ↑
123 Mosheim, Reid’s ed. p. 836; Martineau, pp. 327–28. The first MS. of the treatise of Spinoza, De Deo et Homine, found and published in the nineteenth century, bore a note which showed it to have been used by a sect of Christian Spinozists. See Janet’s ed. 1878, p. 3. They altered the text, putting “faith” for “opinion.” Id. p. 53, notes. ↑
124 Edwards, Gangræna, as before cited. ↑
125 Discourse of Freethinking, p. 28. ↑
126 Colerus, as cited, p. lviii. ↑
127 First ed. Rotterdam, 2 vols. folio, 1696. ↑
128 Albert Cazes, Pierre Bayle, sa vie, ses idées, son influence, son œuvre, 1905, pp. 6, 7. ↑
129 A movement of skepticism had probably been first set up in the young Bayle by Montaigne, who was one of his favourite authors before his conversion (Cazes, p. 5). Montaigne, it will be remembered, had been a fanatic in his youth. Thus three typical skeptics of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries had known what it was to be Catholic believers. ↑
130 Cp. the essay on The Skepticism of Bayle in Sir J. F. Stephen’s Horæ Sabbaticæ, vol. iii, and the remarks of Perrens, Les Libertins, pp. 331–37. ↑
131 Éloge de M. le Cardinal Polignac prefixed to Bougainville’s translation, L’Anti-Lucrèce, 1767, i, 141. Bayle’s quoted words are: “Oui, monsieur, je suis bon Protestant, et dans toute la force du mot; car au fond de mon âme je proteste contre tout ce qui se dit et tout ce qui se fait.” ↑
132 Cp. the testimony of Bonet-Maury, Histoire de la liberté de conscience en France, 1900, p. 55. Besides the writings above cited, note, in the Dictionnaire, art. Mahomet, § ix; art. Conecte; art. Simonide, notes H and G; art. Sponde, note C. ↑
133 Commentaire philosophique sur la parabole: Contrains-les d’entrer, 2e ptie, vi. Cp. the Critique générale de l’histoire du Calvinisme du Père Maimbourg, passim. ↑
134 See pref. to Eng. tr. of Hotman’s Franco-Gallia, 1711. ↑
135 Rep. at Amsterdam, 1788, under the title, Vœux d’un Patriote. Jurieu’s authorship is not certain. Cp. Ch. Nodier, Mélanges tirés d’une petite bibliothèque, 1829, p. 357. But it is more likely than the alternative ascription to Le Vassor. The book made such a sensation that the police of Louis XIV destroyed every copy they could find; and in 1772 the Chancelier Maupeou was said to have paid 500 livres for a copy at auction over the Duc d’Orléans. ↑
137 The Tractatus Theologico-Politicus had been translated into French in 1678 by Saint-Glain, a Protestant, who gave it no fewer than three other titles in succession to evade prosecution. (Note to Colerus in Gfrörer’s ed. of Spinoza, p. xlix.) In addition to the work of Aubert de Versé, above mentioned, replies were published by Simon, De la Motte (minister of the Savoy Chapel, London), Lami, a Benedictine, and others. Their spirit may be divined from Lami’s title, Nouvel athéisme renversé, 1706. ↑
138 Tom. I. § ii, ch. ix (ed. 1864, i, 134. 177). ↑
139 The destruction of Protestant liberties was not the work of the single Act of Revocation. It had begun in detail as early as 1663. From the withholding of court favour it proceeded to subsidies for conversions, and thence to a graduated series of invasions of Protestant rights, so that the formal Revocation was only the violent consummation of a process. See the recital in Bonet-Maury, Histoire de la liberté de conscience en France, 1900, pp. 46–52. ↑
140 As to the loss to French industry see Bonet-Maury, as cited, p. 59, and refs. ↑
141 See Duruy, Hist. de la France, ii, 253; Bonet-Maury, as cited, pp. 53–66. ↑
142 As to whose attitude at this crisis see O. Douen, L’Intolérance de Fénelon, 1880. ↑
143 Lanson, Hist. de la litt. française, p. 627. ↑
144 Id ib. Cp. Demogeot, p. 468. ↑
145 Not printed till 1743, in the Nouvelles libertés de penser; and still read in MS. by Grimm in 1754. Fontenelle was also credited with a heretical letter on the resurrection, and an essay on the Infinite, pointing to disbelief. It should be noted, however, that he stands for deism in his essay, De l’existence de Dieu, which is a guarded application of the design argument against what was then assumed to be the only alternative—the “fortuitous concourse of atoms.” ↑
146 But Voltaire and he were not at one. He is the “nain de Saturne” in Micromégas. ↑
147 B. 1613; d. 1703. A man who lived to ninety can have been no great debauchee. ↑
148 Cp. Dynamics of Religion, p. 172. ↑
149 Cp. Gidel, Étude prefixed to Œuvres Choisies de Saint-Evremond, ed. Garnier, pp. 64–69. ↑
150 Caractères (1687), ch. xvi: Les Esprits Forts. ↑
151 “Is embarrassed” in the first edition. ↑
152 Des ouvrages de l’esprit, near end. § 65 in ed. Walckenaer, p. 176. ↑
153 M. Le Vassor, De la véritable religion, 1688, préf. Le Vassor speaks in the same preface of “this multitude of libertins and of unbelievers which now terrifies us.” His book seeks to vindicate the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, inspiration, prophecies, and miracles, against Spinoza, Le Clerc, and others. ↑
154 Cp. Huet, Huetiana, § 1. ↑
155 The question is discussed in the author’s Buckle and his Critics, pp. 324–42, and ed. of Buckle’s Introduction. Buckle’s view, however, was held by Huet, Huetiana, § 73. ↑
156 Cp. Perrens, pp. 310–14. ↑
157 Letter of the Duchesse d’Orléans, cited by Rocquain, L’Esprit révolutionnaire avant la révolution, 1878, p. 3, note. ↑