tolerance which sounds from Voltaire's plays and poems before he
has begun to assail credences was a signal and an inspiration to new
thinkers. Certain it is that the principle of toleration, passed on
by Holland to England, was regarded by the orthodox priesthood in
France as the abomination of desolation, and resisted by them with all
their power. But the contagion was unquenchable. It was presumably in
Holland that there were printed in 1738 the two volumes of Lettres sur
la religion essentielle à l'homme, distinguée de ce qui n'en est que
l'accessoire, by Marie Huber, a Genevese lady living in Lyons; also the
two following parts (1739), replying to criticisms on the earlier. In
its gentle way, the book stands very distinctly for the "natural" and
ethical principle in religion, denying that the deity demands from men
either service or worship, or that he can be wronged by their deeds,
or that he can punish them eternally for their sins. This was one
of the first French fruits, after Voltaire, of the English deistic
influence; [995] and it is difficult to understand how the authoress
escaped molestation. Perhaps the memory of the persecution inflicted
on the mystic Madame Guyon withheld the hand of power. As it was,
four Protestant theologians opened fire on her, regarding her doctrine
as hostile to Christianity. One pastor wrote from Geneva, one from
Amsterdam, and two professors from Zurich--the two last in Latin. [996]
From about 1746 onwards, the rationalist movement in eighteenth-century
France rapidly widens and deepens. The number of rationalistic
writers, despite the press laws which in that age inflicted the
indignity of imprisonment on half the men of letters, increased
from decade to decade, and the rising prestige of the philosophes
in connection with the Encyclopédie (1751-72) gave new courage to
writers and printers. At once the ecclesiastical powers saw in the
Encyclopédie a dangerous enemy; and in January, 1752, the Sorbonne
condemned a thesis "To the celestial Jerusalem," by the Abbé de
Prades. It had at first (1751) been received with official applause,
but was found on study to breathe the spirit of the new work, [997]
to which the Abbé had contributed, and whose editor, Diderot, was his
friend. Sooth to say, it contained not a little matter calculated
to act as a solvent of faith. Under the form of a vindication of
orthodox Catholicism, it negated alike Descartes and Leibnitz; and
declared that the science of Newton and the Dutch physiologists was
a better defence of religion than the theses of Clarke, Descartes,
Cudworth, and Malebranche, which made for materialism. The handling,
too, of the question of natural versus revealed religion, in which
"theism" is declared to be superior to all religions si unam excipias
veram, "if you except the one true," might well arouse distrust in a
vigilant Catholic reader. [998] The whole argument savours far more
of the scientific comparative method than was natural in the work
of an eighteenth-century seminarist; and the principle, "Either we
are ocular witnesses of the facts or we know them only by hearsay,"
[999] was plainly as dangerous to the Christian creed as to any
other. According to Naigeon, [1000] the treatise was wholly the work of
de Prades and another Abbé, Yvon; [1001] but it remains probable that
Diderot inspired not a little of the reasoning; and the clericals,
bent on putting down the Encyclopédie, professed to have discovered
that he was the real author of the thesis. Either this belief or a
desire to strike at the Encyclopédie through one of its collaborators
[1002] was the motive of the absurdly belated censure. Such a fiasco
evoked much derision from the philosophic party, particularly from
Voltaire; and the Sorbonne compassed a new revenge. Soon after came
the formal condemnation of the first two volumes of the Encyclopédie,
of which the second had just appeared. [1003]
D'Argenson, watching in his vigilant retirement the course of things
on all hands, sees in the episode a new and dangerous development,
"the establishment of a veritable inquisition in France, of which the
Jesuits joyfully take charge," though he repeatedly remarks also on
the eagerness of the Jansenists to outgo the Jesuits. [1004] But soon
the publication of the Encyclopédie is resumed; and in 1753 D'Argenson
contentedly notes the official bestowal of "tacit permissions to print
secretly" books which could not obtain formal authorization. The
permission had been given first by the President Malesherbes; but
even when that official lost the king's confidence the practice was
continued by the lieutenant of police. [1005] Despite the staggering
blow of the suppression of the Encyclopédie, the philosophes speedily
triumphed. So great was the discontent even at court that soon (1752)
Madame de Pompadour and some of the ministry invited D'Alembert and
Diderot to resume their work, "observing a necessary reserve in all
things touching religion and authority." Madame de Pompadour was in
fact, as D'Alembert said at her death, "in her heart one of ours,"
as was D'Argenson. But D'Alembert, in a long private conference with
D'Argenson, insisted that they must write in freedom like the English
and the Prussians, or not at all. Already there was talk of suppressing
the philosophic works of Condillac, which a few years before had gone
uncondemned; and freedom must be preserved at any cost. "I acquiesce,"
writes the ex-Minister, "in these arguments." [1006]
Curiously enough, the freethinking Fontenelle, who for a time (the
dates are elusive) held the office of royal censor, was more rigorous
than other officials who had not his reputation for heterodoxy. One
day he refused to pass a certain manuscript, and the author put the
challenge: "You, sir, who have published the Histoire des Oracles,
refuse me this?" "If I had been the censor of the Oracles," replied
Fontenelle, "I should not have passed it." [1007] And he had cause for
his caution. The unlucky Tercier, who, engrossed in "foreign affairs,"
had authorized the publication of the De l'Esprit of Helvétius,
was compelled to resign the censorship, and severely rebuked by
the Paris Parlement. [1008] But the culture-history of the period,
like the political, was one of ups and downs. From time to time the
philosophic party had friends at court, as in the persons of the
Marquis D'Argenson, Malesherbes, and the Duc de Choiseul, of whom
the last-named engineered the suppression of the Jesuits. [1009]
Then there were checks to the forward movement in the press, as when,
in 1770, Choiseul was forced to retire on the advent of Madame Du
Barry. The output of freethinking books is after that year visibly
curtailed. But nothing could arrest the forward movement of opinion.