century, pervaded in its upper classes by a freethought partly
born of the knowledge that religion counted for little but harm
in public affairs, partly the result of such argumentation as had
been thrown out by Montaigne and codified by Charron. That it was
not the freethinking of mere idle men of the world is clear when
we note the names and writings of La Mothe le Vayer (1588-1672),
Gui Patin (1601-1671), and Gabriel Naudé (1600-1653), all scholars,
all heretics of the skeptical and rationalistic order. The last
two indeed, sided with the Catholics in politics, Patin approving
of the Fronde, and Naudé of the Massacre, on which ground they are
sometimes claimed as believers. [527] But though in the nature of
the case their inclusion on the side of freethought is not to be
zealously contended for, they must be classed in terms of the balance
of testimony. Patin was the admiring friend of Gassendi; and though
he was never explicitly heretical, and indeed wrote of Socinianism
as a pestilent doctrine, [528] his habit of irony and the risk of
written avowals to correspondents must be kept in view in deciding
on his cast of mind. He is constantly anti-clerical; [529] and the
germinal skepticism of Montaigne and Charron clearly persists in him.
It is true that, as one critic puts it, such rationalists were not
"quite clear whither they were bound. At first sight," he adds,
"no one looks more negative than Gui Patin.... He was always
congratulating himself on being 'delivered from the nightmare';
and he rivals the eighteenth century in the scorn he pours on
priests, monks, and especially 'that black Loyolitic scum from
Spain' which called itself the Society of Jesus. Yet Patin was
no freethinker. Skeptics who made game of the kernel of religion
came quite as much under the lash of his tongue as bigots who
dared defend its husks. His letters end with the characteristic
confession: 'Credo in Deum, Christum crucifixum, etc.; ... De
minimis non curat prætor'" (Viscount St. Cyres in Cambridge
Modern History, v, 73). But the last statement is an error, and
Patin did not attack Gassendi, though he did Descartes. He says
of Rabelais: "C'étoit un homme qui se moquoit de tout; en verité
il y a bien des choses dont on doit raisonnablement se moquer
... elles sont presque tous remplies de vanité, d'imposture et
d'ignorance: ceux qui sont un peu philosophes ne doivent-ils
pas s'en moquer?" (Lett. 485, éd. cited, iii, 148). Again he
writes that "la vie humaine n'est qu'un bureau de rencontre et
un théâtre sur lesquels domine la fortune" (Lett. 726, iii,
620). This is pure Montaigne. The formula cited by Viscount
St. Cyres is neither a general nor a final conclusion to the
letters of Patin. It occurs, I think, only once (18 juillet, 1642,
à M. Belin) in the 836 letters, and not at the end of that one
(Lett. 55, éd. cited, i, 90).
Concerning his friend Naudé, Patin writes: "Je suis fort de
l'avis de feu M. Naudé, qui disoit qu'il y avait quatre choses
dont il se fallait garder, afin de n'être point trompé, savoir,
de prophéties, de miracles, de révélations, et d'apparitions"
(Lett. 353, éd. cited, ii, 490). Again, he writes of a symposium
of Naudé, Gassendi, and himself: "Peut-être, tous trois, guéris
de loup-garou et delivrés du mal des scrupules, qui est le
tyran des consciences, nous irons peut-être jusque fort près du
sanctuaire. Je fis l'an passé ce voyage de Gentilly avec M. Naudé,
moi seul avec lui tête-à-tête; il n'y avait point de témoins,
aussi n'y en falloit-il point: nous y parlâmes fort librement de
tout, sans que personne en ait été scandalisé" (Lett. 362, ii,
508). This seems tolerably freethinking.
All that the Christian editor cares to claim upon the latter
passage is that assuredly "l'unité de Dieu, l'immortalité de l'âme,
l'égalité des hommes devant la loi, ces verités fondamentales de
la raison et consacrées par le Christianisme, y étaient placées au
premier rang" in the discussion. As to the skepticism of Naudé the
editor remarks: "Ce qu'il y a de remarquable, c'est que Gui Patin
soutenait que son ami ... avait puisé son opinion, en général très
peu orthodoxe, en Italie, pendant le long séjour qu'il fit dans
ce pays avec le cardinal Bagni" (ii, 490; cp. Lett. 816; iii, 758,
where Naudé is again cited as making small account of religion).
Certainly Patin and Naudé are of less importance for freethought than
La Mothe le Vayer. That scholar, a "Conseiller d'Estat ordinaire,"
tutor of the brother of Louis XIV, and one of the early members of
the new Academy founded by Richelieu, is an interesting figure [530]
in the history of culture, being a skeptic of the school of Sextus
Empiricus, and practically a great friend of tolerance. Standing
in favour with Richelieu, he wrote at that statesman's suggestion a
treatise On the Virtue of the Heathen, [531] justifying toleration by
pagan example--a course which raises the question whether Richelieu
himself was not strongly touched by the rationalism of his age. If it
be true that the great Cardinal "believed as all the world did in his
time," [532] there is little more to be said; for unbelief, as we have
seen, was already abundant, and even somewhat fashionable. Certainly no
ecclesiastic in high power ever followed a less ecclesiastical policy;
[533] and from the date of his appointment as Minister to Louis
XIII (1624), for forty years, there was no burning of heretics or
unbelievers in France. If he was orthodox, it was very passively. [534]
And Le Vayer's way of handling the dicta of St. Augustine and Thomas
Aquinas as to the virtues of unbelievers being merely vices is for
its time so hardy that the Cardinal's protection alone can explain its
immunity from censure. St. Augustine and St. Thomas, says the critic
calmly, had regard merely to eternal happiness, which virtue alone
can obtain for no one. They are, therefore, to be always interpreted
in this special sense. And so at the very outset the ground is
summarily cleared of orthodox obstacles. [535] The Petit discours
chrétien sur l'immortalité de l'âme, also addressed to Richelieu,
tells of a good deal of current unbelief on that subject; and the
epistle dedicatory professes pain over the "philosopher of our day
[Vanini] who has had the impiety to write that, unless one is very
old, very rich, and a German, one should never expatiate on this
subject." But on the very threshold of the discourse, again, the
skeptic tranquilly suggests that there would be "perhaps something
unreasonable" in following Augustine's precept, so popular in later
times, that the problem of immortality should be solved by the dictates
of religion and feeling, not of "uncertain" reason. "Why," he asks,
"should the soul be her own judge?" [536] And he shows a distinct
appreciation of the avowal of Augustine in his Retractationes that
his own book on the Immortality of the Soul was so obscure to him
that in many places he himself could not understand it. [537] The
"Little Christian Discourse" is, in fact, not Christian at all;
and its arguments are but dialectic exercises, on a par with those
of the Discours sceptique sur la musique which follows. He was,
in short, a skeptic by temperament; and his Preface d'une histoire
[538] shows his mind to have played on the "Mississippi of falsehood
called history" very much as did that of Bayle in a later generation.
Le Vayer's Dialogues of Oratius Tubero (1633) is philosophically
his most important work; [539] but its tranquil Pyrrhonism was
not calculated to affect greatly the current thought of his day;
and he ranked rather as a man of all-round learning [540] than as
a polemist, being reputed "a little contradictory, but in no way
bigoted or obstinate, all opinions being to him nearly indifferent,
excepting those of which faith does not permit us to doubt." [541]
The last phrase tells of the fact that it affects to negate: Le Vayer's
general skepticism was well known. [542] He was not indeed an original
thinker, most of his ideas being echoes from the skeptics of antiquity;
[543] and it has been not unjustly said of him that he is rather of
the sixteenth century than of the seventeenth. [544]