European Thought in the Eighteenth Century: From Montesquieu to Lessing

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EUROPEAN THOUGHT IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

EUROPEAN

THOUGHT

IN THE

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY FROM MONTESQUIEU TO LESSING by

PAUL HAZARD Member of the French Academy

NEW

YALE

HAVEN

UNIVERSITY 1954

PRESS

This translation from the original French, La Pensee Europeenne au

Siecle: De Montesquieu a Lessing (Boivin: Paris,

1946), was made by J. LEWIS MAY

^9

Printed in Great Britain

SUMMARY OF CONTENTS Preface

p. xvii

Part I CHRISTIANITY ON TRIAL Chapter I.

The Ubiquitous Critic

p. 3

The eighteenth century proclaims itself the era of universal criticism. From the irreverence in which the seventeenth century ended comes the irony which ushers in the new age, p. 3. Raillery and its three symptoms; burlesque and the mock heroic in favour, p. 4. Tales of imaginary travels whose authors show their wit at the expense of the institutions and customs of old Europe, p. 6. Old Utopias unearthed and reprinted, p. 7. Swift and his Gulliver, p. 7. Twofold character of the new satire. It arises from social discontent rather than from any pessimistic ideas about human life, p. 8. It betrays an obscure belief in the possibility of progress, p. 9. John Gay and The Beggar's Opera, p. 10. Parini and fl Maiiino and its sequel II Mese^ogiomo, p. 12. Criticism ends up with an appeal which soon becomes a demand for something of which man deems he has been cheated and which is called Happiness, p. 13.

Chapter II.

Happiness

P* 14

Happiness, the universal obsession of the age. The philosophers speculate freely on the felicity of men and races, p. 14. The only things that count now are the things that make for happiness, the search for which is the favourite theme of writers in verse or prose, p. 14. Dreams, evasions. The Kingdom of the Feliciens; Robinson Crusoe, p. 16. Colleges, salons, theatres, secret societies rival one another in their zealous quest for the wondrous Grail, p. 17. Closing its eyes to the ills of human kind, intellectual Europe takes refuge in the doctrine of Optimism, p. 18. Aspects of happiness according to the rationalists of the eighteenth century; it is first and foremost an earthly happiness, p. 18. Aridity of this type of happiness, p. 21. Before it, all longing for the absolute disappears, p. 23. Philosophy degenerates into a method for discovering the means to happiness and happiness becomes a right supplanting the idea of duty, p. 24. How previous ages went astray on this point, p. 24. Reaction of the new spirit which condemns the values hitherto regarded as the guide of life. The demand for reason and enlightenment, p. 25.

Chapter III.

Reason and Knowledge

p. 26

Limits imposed by the newcomers on the Empire of Reason proclaimed powerless in the metaphysical order, p. 26. Formerly regarded as an innate faculty, it was now told to limit itself to disengaging absolute ideas from sensedata and to noting the relations of ideas between themselves, p. 27. Hence its method, analysis, and its function, the establishment of general laws, p. 27.

SUMMARY OF CONTENTS

VI

Its safeguard against error. Experiment, p, 28. Its infallibility undermines authority and tradition; Pietro Verri and his Temple of Ignoratwe, p. 29. Its tmiversal character the criterion of truth, p. 30. Its beneficence, promising that happiness will come through knowledge, p. 31. The new age, the age of light: the Aufklarung, p. 31. The Aufklarung according to Kant: the setting free of thd mind by a cautious process of evolution which makes it ready, both in action and thought, to pass from a state of pupillage to one of freedom, p. 32. Facts which explain the Aufklarung; Bayle’s influence still active, p. 33. Setback for Vico and his Scierr^a Nova, p. 35. Success of Christian Wolff, apostle of universal rationalism, p. 37. The pre-eminence of John Locke whose Essay concerning Human Understanding was to remain until Kant came on the scene, the breviary of philosophers and men of the world, p. 41.

Chapter IV.

The God of the Christians Impeached

p. 44

“Enlightenment” in the attack on the Christian faith, p. 43. Opening of the case against the Christian God, without distinction of church or sect, p. 46. The newcomers demand accounts, and denounce the incoherence of the divine plan, p. 48. Pietro Giannone and his passionate demonstration of the encroach¬ ments of the Church on the civil power in the Istoria civile del regno di Napoli, p. 50. Jean MesUer, p. 33. Johann Christian Edelmann in his Unschuldige Wahrheiten, proclaims the doctrine of religious indifferentism and in Die GdttliAkeit der Vemunft, goes the length of deifying Reason, p, 36.

Chapter V.

Revealed Religion

P- 59

Rationalist dialectic: in the logical sphere; in the historical, p. 3 9. The various fields of battle. England, where, since Toland and Collins, everyone was for substituting Reason for Revelation, especially Tindal who, in his Christianity as old as the Creation, makes the Gospel a p^se of eternal revelation, p. 60. Polemics, less keen from 1740 onwards, continues to supply material abroad, p. 61, In France, the opposition, impatient of exegesis, are popularizers working for the general public; Voltaire, Montesquieu, Toussaint, Helvetius—they attack at all points. Their shafts, sometimes in Pharisaic disguise, are often barbed with a dash of sensual libertinism, p. 62. In Germany, the struggle, a little late in starting, betrays a twofold current: one a worldly one, coming from France and England, Wieland for example; the other learned and of Lutheran origin, the true Aufklarung of the German Universities, p. 63. J. D. Michaelis proposes to defend the Scriptures by abandoning the writings which are the subject of dispute, p. 69. Lastly, Semler sees in the various religions only local and ocrasiond forms of eternal revelation, and at the expense of dogma, reduces religion to the level of morality, thus getting at the essence of Christianity, p. 71.

Chapter VI.

Christian Apologetics

p. 74

Attimde of the civil powers in face of the onslaught. It varies in the different countries, p. 74. In France the chief weapon of the anti-philosophers is ridicule: The Histoire des Cacouacs, p. 73. Palissot’s Philosophes, p. 76. Freron especially, in the Annie litteraire, campaigns with as much keenness as common sense, p. 77! Torrent of apologetic literature, p. 78. The apologists regroup their forces; their efforts to reconcile religion and reason, p. 80. The Anglican apologists, p. 82. A general movement in Europe to make Christianity acceptable to reason by means of liberalism in doctrine and strictness in moral conduct, p. 86. Part played by the Congregations, p. 87. In the view of Antonio Genovesi, an Italian priest, the whole dispute arose from ignorance, and he founded his apologetic on a profounder doctrinal instruction, p. 89. Transference of Christian thought from nation to nation, p. 91.

SUMMARY

Chapter VII.

OF

CONTENTS

vii

The Growth of Unbelief ; Jansenism ; The Expulsion of the Jesuits

P- 93

Apologetics, ponderous, boring and sometimes absurd, p. 93. Philosophy, the atmosphere of the times. Secret organizations and tricks for the diffusion of freethinking ideas and the circulation of forbidden books, p. 94. Complicity of the governments who secretly encourage what they outwardly condemn. Malesherbes controller of the book-trade, p. 98. The obstacles giye way one after another; the final phase and the death of Jansenism, p. loi. With Jansenism disappears one of the most powerful dams against the ravages of the philosophic flood, p. 104. The expulsion of the Jesuits; at Lisbon, de Pombal; in France, Pire Berruyer, P^re La Valette; in Spain, banishment mam militari, p. 104. The Jesuits victims of the Enlightenment and of the policy of seculariza¬ tion, p. 108. The philosophers deem they haye destroyed the last rampart against the rising tide of impiety: by what do they propose to replace Christianity ? p. no.

Part II THE CITY OF MEN Chapter I.

Natural Religion

P*

Prestige of Nature, the source of enlightenment and the guarantee of Reason. Religion, from now onwards natural, is reduced to the affirmation of the existence of God, the Supreme Being, and to belief in final causes, p. 113. External practices, sacraments, rites, statues, anthropomorphic representations give place to the inward cult, aU that is necessary, p. 114. Deism the only really universal religion, p. 116. Excuses, indulgence and sympathy of the age for atheism, p. 117. Tendency towards philosophic materialism, p. 119. Tendency to scientific materialism; mechanistic explanations of Nature, of the world and of life; hLlsAsttne. 2Ln6L')ah Homme-machine 2Lnd Homme-plante, p. 121. Vulgarization of atheism; a professional atheist, the Baron d’Holbach; his Systhme de la Nature, p. 124. The band of executants appear to be victims of a monomania, p. 126. Other countries refuse to go these lengths and scarcely get beyond the deism stage, p. 127. In France, deists like d’Alembert and Voltaire make a stand against atheism, and the age more worried than convinced by the blatant activities of the atheists remains, generally speaking, deist, p. 128.

Chapter II.

Natural Science

P-13°

The natural sciences take precedence over mathematics, as does observation over abstraction. To the reign of Descartes succeeds the reign of Newton, p. 131. The taste for curiosities of nature; the thing has become the fashion of the day, p. 132. Pullulation of scientific publications; new Academies, p. 133. Ideal republic of the scientists: the Cassinis, de Saussure, Linnaeus, the Jussieus, Reaumur, etc., Galvani and Lavoisier, p. 134. _ Difficulty, of getting away from ideologies: Linnaeus and his classification of plants, p. 137. Joy over the ' enslavement of Nature through scientific discoveries. The promise of happiness; unbounded hopes, p. 139. Buffbn, representative genius of the times, p. 141. His theories cause a static conception of knowledge to be replaced by an evolu¬ tionary conception, p. 141. The immense effort of the period results in a demonstration of the prime importance of observation in scientific activities, p. 144.

SUMMARY

Vlll

Chapter III.

Law

OF

CONTENTS

P- i45

The new Law; natuml law. Specialists endeavour to put law on a rational basis, p. 145. Hence the works of Heinecke, J. C. Wolff, Strube de Piermont, d’Aube, Burlamaqui, Hubner, Filangieri, p. 145. Montesquieu’s magnificent effort to introduce order into the chaos; labours, studies, voyages, meditations. His Esprit des Lois, p. 153. His definition of law; necessary relationships arising from the nature of things, p. 134. Difficulty of giving practical effect to results of the speculative order, p. 133. Meantime a desire for justice is abroad and men’s minds are ripe for reforms, p. 136.

Chapter IV.

Morals

p.

i6o

Need to install a new morality on the remains of the Christian, Stoic or worldly systems, p. 160. The new morality, illumined by the light of knowledge, and founded on the natural goodness of man, on obedience to the laws of Nature, and on the instinct which prompts us to pursue happiness, p. 161. Rehabilitation of passion, pleasure and sensual delights as being natural and therefore rational, p. 162. Justification of amour-propre regulated by regard for the interests of others, p. 164. Being thus based on reason, morality takes on the aspect of experimental science, p. 166. Active propaganda in favour of the new ethics, p. i 66. Grimm and his Essai de caUchisme pour les enfants. Saint Lambert and his Catechisme universel, p. 168. Three virtues needed in the new morality: tolerance, beneficence and humanity, p. 169.

Chapter V.

Government

P- 172

The appearance in Europe of a crowd of theorists proclaiming a policy of which virtue was to be the basis, good faith the instrument, and prosperity the recompense, p. 172. From the idea of a primitive social contract proceeds, by way of the concept of nature, the idea of political liberty and of equality, p. 173. Nature and limitations of the said equality; it is acceptable on the political plane, but out of the question on the social plane where it comes up against the im¬ passable barrier of property, p. 174. Criticism of the law of property; MoreUy and his Code de la Nature ; Mably, the apostle of the community of property and his treatise la Legislation, p. 176. Howbeit the period continues mrnly attached to the idea of property, especially landed property, p. 178. Apology of Freedom of every kind and of the liberal state, p. 179. The form of government is a matter of indifference, but a just balance between the elements which compose the Constitution is essential, p. 180. The English Constitution looked on as the model, p. 181. Reciprocal duties of nations a consequence of natural law, whence the need for pacts to settle the conflict of interests and to prevent war, p. 182. The Abbe de Saint Pierre and his Projet de paix perpetuelle en Europe, p. 183. Evolution of the terms of the political problem, of which interests of state take the first place. The sovereign subordinated to the nation. The subject is now the citizen, p. 186. These new ideas seen in practice; the revolutions in America and France are the logical outcome of the ideas of the philosophers, p. 187,

Chapter VI.

Education

p.

Rollin and his TraiU des &udes, belated charter of classical discipline and of the tastes of the previous era, p. 189. Reaction of the newcomers who denounce the educational system hitherto in force as out of date and routine-like, p. 192. The needs of modem life are to be the basis of modern teaching. The Humanities wiU largely give way to living languages, modem history, geography science especially natural science, p. 193. Basedow emphasizes the value of the pro¬ gressive element in education, which should be in due ratio to the pupil’s physical

SUMMARY

OF

CONTENTS

IX

intellectual and moral development, p. 195. Self-denial and prudence are qualities required in the new schoolmaster. Love and devotion should replace the rod, p. 196. Civic and national character of education; this idea incites the state to lay down the law in educational matters; the Abbe de Saint Pierre, la Chalotais, p. 197. All these ideas, fully elaborated, will be confronted by the genius of Rousseau, p. 198.

Chapter VII.

The Encyclopaedia

P- ^99

Its twofold character responds to the demands of the age: it is at once scientific and popular, p. 199. Compiled in obedience to the law of Reason and the law of Nature, the Encyclopaedia is to be the independent, faithful and living inventory of all things known to man at the date of its publication, p. 202. Enthusiasm at the start of this philosophic crusade increased by the dramatic excursions and alarms which attended it, p. 204. Difficulty of making alphabetical order fit in with logical order, and of fixing on a principle for the classification of the sciences, p. 205. Its compilers adopt a mode of classification based on the three faculties: memory, imagination and reason, whence all knowledge proceeds, p. 207. Thus man, God being omitted from the picture, finds himself at the centre of the Universe, p. 208. Being a work of “ vulgarization ” the Encyclopaedia fulfils one of the requirements of the time, p. 208. Social im¬ portance of its object which lends dignity to the workman and gives to his work a value at least equal to that of the brain-workers inasmuch as it is the direct instrument of well-being resulting from material progress, p. 210. Defects of the Encyclopedie, borrowed matter, errors, unequal editing, contradictions, repetitions, omissions, p. 211. Its influence; slowly but surely by an all¬ permeating hostility it undermines ancient standards and substitutes the social sanction for the divine, p. 212. Was it a tool of the Freemasons? p. 213. Its effects assisted by its vast circulation, p. 213.

Chapter VIIL

The World of Letters and Ideas

p- 215

The age of Louis XIV the ideal pattern of the times; hence all over Europe and in every branch of composition a literature of imitation, p. 215. Though all but exhausted in France, classicism, in the other European countries, holds out rich possibilities, as is shown by numerous works on the Ars Poetica appearing among them, p. 218. The age looks for a reassessment of values; development of literary criticism, p. 219. Giuseppe Baretti and his Frusta ktteraria, p. 220. Samuel Johnson and his criticism of Paradise Lost, conservative and traditional; his criticism of Shakespeare considered in the light of his truth to the things depicted; his dislike of novelties, p. 221. Literature of the intellect; Marivaux, Goldoni, Ramon de la Cruz, Wieland, p. 223. Wit, the flower of the age, the Abbe Galiani, Voltaire, p. 228. Lack of the poetical sense; prose must be plain, direct and limpid, p. 229. The literature of social pleasures; letter-writing, Mme du Deffand, Abne de Graffigny, etc., Horace Walpole, Frederick II, Voltaire, p. 231. Gazettes and reviews, national and international, p. 233. Smaller types preferred to the larger, p. 233. Metastasio’s opera, Voltaire’s lighter verses, or the Musarion of Wiel^d, a perfect expression of the literature of pleasure, p. 237. Factual literature. History; the wish to renovate historic methods, p. 239. Obstacles encountered by the renovators, p. 240. Their positive and constructive aims; fable to be replaced by the pronouncements of witnesses, p. 243. Their aim limited to monographs, p. 244. Abandonment of the marvellous, including the supernatural, p. 243. In the end, assignment of the first priority to the study of Civilization; Voltaire and the Essai sur les Moeurs, p. 243. Despite these endeavours they fail to get at concrete reality in all its complex aspects, p. 247. They have not entirely given up Metaphysics and the conflict between their empirical philosophy and their tendency towards the abstract, determined the character of their historical labours, p. 248. E.T.—a*

X

SUMMARY

Chapter IX.

OF

CONTENTS

p. 249

Ideas and Manners

Social types of the day; the Adventurer.' Love of travel engenders the cosmopolitan. The tendency grows stronger, and up starts the Adventurer; Cagliostro and Casanova, p. 249. Woman. From the pursuit of pleasure and sensuous delights we must logically ascribe the apotheosis of Woman, Queen of the Age: the Temple de Guide, the Voyage d Paphos, the Congresso di Citera, Angola. Mistresses; aU, kings, grandees, even philosophers, have them. Paris sets the tune; Europe follows suit, p. 254. Women take part in the intellectual move¬ ment; their role; Voltaire and Mme du Chatelet; the salons, Mrs. Montagu in London, others elsewhere, especially Mme du Deffand in Paris, p. 257. The Man of Letters; he lives by his caUing now, which means the increase of his social dignity. Emancipated from the patronage of the great the man of letters is the leader of public opinion, p. 259. The Bourgeois; a new class comes into being; the Bourgeois tends to supplant the Nobleman, whose social worth is now contested. He puts up a poor defence, p. 263. Personal merit henceforth the sole title to social advancement, p. 264. Between the dethroned nobility and the uneducated proletariat comes the new class whose patent rests on the idea of freedom and on power based on property, p. 266. The Freemason; representing the spirit of the age, he repudiates austerity, preaches and practises concord, calls for political freedom, declares war on despots and on privilege, and stands forth as the apostle of Deism, p. 267. Originating in England, Freemasonry rapidly spreads all over Europe. Despite the condemnation of the Church, kings and nobles join the movement, p. 269. The Philosopher: a new pattern of humanity. His essential character. The spirit of enquiry, con¬ trolled by reason, put at the service of mankind, p. 271. Victory near at hand; England, France and Switzerland very much to the fore; the Latin countries lag behind, but the Northern countries and their sovereigns lead the way for the rest, p. 274. “The face of Europe almost completely changed in the last hfly years”, says Voltaire, p. 276. I

Part III DISAGGREGATION Book I Chapter I.

“Becoming”

p, 279

Seeds of decay within the philosophic doctrine itself; triple causes which were to lead to its defeat. The philosophers’ primary error regarding Nature clearly brought to light by Kant, who in his Critique of Pure Reason, by reducing all problems to the nature of knowledge, reinstated the soul in its due place, p. 279. On the other hand, the heart had not relinquished its rights; the Abbe Prevost and Manon Lescaut, Richardson and Pamela, Rousseau and la Nouvelle Hlloise, Goethe and Werther, Bemardin de Saint-Pierre and the jStudes de la Nature, all foretell the appearance of the Man of Feeling, p. 280. The lack of unity and coherence in the doctrine of the philosophers and their divergent views regarding Deism is the major cause of their failure, p. 282. Such are the phases in the history of the philosophy of Enlightenment, p. 283.

Chapter IL

Nature and Reason

p. 284

Contradictions which defeat the attempt of the philosophers to identify Nature and Reason; lack of any precise definition of the concept of Nature. Voltaire’s criticism, p. 283. Empiricism itself by confining knowledge to the perception

SUMMARY

OF

CONTENTS

XI

o£ sense^ata denies any right to postulate the existence of anything external to the mind, such as Nature. Criticism of Knowledge; Berkeley in his Dialogues 1 •

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men IS Cjod, p. 287. Enquiries designed to determine whether sensation is whether it corresponds to something external to us; theories Berkeley confirmed by the experiments of Cheseldon and Hiimer, p. 290. Condillac in his essay in refutation of Berkeley begins with empiricism and ends with a belief in the spiritual, p. 292. Hume complains that the Deists picture their Supreme Being as a kind of Superman, p. 294. According to hirn causality is merely succession in time; his pure pyrrhonism, P; 296. Contradiction between the notion of evidence as defined by the em¬ piricists, with empiricisrn itself: the said notion derives from Descartes. The iMuence of Descartes still active and running parallel, though in the opposite Locke s, is fostered by Fontenelle, the Abbe Terrasson, Mairan; by Fere Andre and the Jesuits who are won over in time, and by materialists like Da Mettrie who do not forget the animal-machines, p. 297. The age is equally taken ^ith Locke’s empiricism and Descartes’ rationalism, mutually contradictory mough tMy are, p. 300. The influence of Leibniz still persists: d’Alembert, Diderot, Buffon pay tribute to his genius which brings about the victorious reaction of metaphysics over the spirit of the times, p. 303. The influence of bpmoza, feeble to begin with, progressively increases • and his metaphysical p^theism is absorbed in the philosophy of the Auff^larer, p. 305. All these clivers elements. Empiricism, Cartesianism, Leibnizianism and Spinozaism, more OT less harmoniously mingled, introduce a number of incoherences into the theory of knowledge which must wait for Kant to adjust them, p. 307.

Chapter III.

Nature and Goodness :

Optimism

P-309

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PREFACE

here is scarcely a chapter in this book but deals with some deep, conscience-stirring problem; scarcely a chapter but records some movement whose repercussions have persisted down to our own day. Not that it all began in 1715. We ourselves have shown in a previous work that the first symptoms of the great moral and intellectual crisis that was to come about in Europe were discernible as far back as the year 1680. Other writers in their turn have pointed out the various by-paths by which the Renaissance and its ideas came to link up with the eighteenth century. 1 However, it was from 1715 onwards that there became apparent an effervescence and a diffusion of ideas so remarkable in its nature, so far-reaching in its extent as to be without parallel in history. Ideas that had been slowly maturing out of sight suddenly burst forth into the light of day; theories that had hitherto been confined to an exclusive intellectual Hite became the property of the many; notions that had scarcely dared to show themselves now came boldly forward and challenged the world at large. Rich and weighty as were the legacies bequeathed to us by old Greece and Rome, by the Middle Ages and by the Renaissance, the fact remains that it is the eighteenth century of which we are the direct and lineal descendants. We do not propose to trace the interrelations and mutual bearings of ideas, or to draw conclusions regarding their influence one upon another. That task we leave to others. Nor is it our intention to play the prophet-in-retrospect, still less the doctrin¬ aire, and least of all the partisan. Our sole concern is with the facts themselves, the facts, not as they shoxild have been, nor as iM. Rossi, Alle fonti del deismo e del materialismo tnoderni, Firenze, 1942.—R. Lenoble, Mersenne, ou la naissance du mecanisme, 1943.—R. Pintard, Le libertinage (rudit dans la premiere moitii duXVIIe siecle, 1943.

XVlll

PREFACE

they might have been, but as they were. Such is our one and only preoccupation. No obligation has weighed with us so imperiously as that of displaying the facts in the fullest light of objective truth. We have had no dearer aim than to be undeviatingly faithful to history. The scene, as we beheld it, was more or less as follows: first there were the critics in full cry, filling the air with their vociferations. It was the chorus of the new generation up¬ braiding their predecessors for saddling them with so illconceived a social order, an order which was the child of illusion and the parent of ill. What had the long process of time resulted in? Disaster. Why, they asked, was this? Thereupon, they openly preferred a charge the like of which for sheer audacity had never before been heard of. Now, the culprit was dragged into open court, and behold, the culprit was Christ 1 It was more than a reformation that the eighteenth century demanded, it was the total overthrow of the Cross, the utter repudiation of the belief that man had ever received a direct communication from God; of the belief, in other words, in Revelation. What the critics were determined to destroy, was the religious interpreta¬ tion of life. That is why we call Part I of our work, Christianity on Trial. But these bold men would do more than destroy; they would build up something new. The light of reason, they declared, should dispel the great masses of darkness that enshrouded the earth. They would rediscover Nature’s plan. Once they had done that, all they would have to do would be to conform to it, and so restore to the human race its long-lost birthright of happiness. They would set up a new law, a new moral standard, and it should have nothing to do with divine law; the new moral code should be quite unfettered by theology. In the new political structure there were to be “subjects” no more; only “citizens”. And so that no children of theirs should ever slip back into the bad old ways, they would bring them up on an entirely new system. Then, indeed, it would be heaven upon earth. In the beautiful bright buildings they would erect, all would be well with the generations of the future; no need* for them to seek life’s meaning, its happiness, its grandeur other¬ where than in themselves alone. We propose to accompany these innovators; we shall watch them at work, and examine

PREFACE

XIX

the ground-plan and general lay-out of this city of theirs, the

City of Men.

However, we must beware of assuming that these ideas retained in the later stages of their development all their original purity, all the clear-cut logic of an abstraction, of a theorem. The generations, as they came and went, never bequeathed to their successors anything but the derelict shell of a building. What they erected always fell in before they were able to complete it. Other ideologists kept arriving in their wake, shoving them out of the way, as they themselves had done to the people they found on the site. So, in their turn, these newcomers moved on like the rest, leaving behind them, not the order they had dreamed of, but confusion worse confounded. We shall have to deal with some of the most clear-headed thinkers the world has ever seen, yet they too, for all their clarity of vision, left behind in their system, luminous as it was, some hidden defects which time brought to light and which in the end were fated to destroy it. Instead of taking a general bird’seye view of the philosophy of the period we shall rather make it our task to detect and bring to light the flaws that finally spelt its undoing. We shall take account not only of the manner in which a school of ideas essays to establish itself but also of the remorseless flux of things which eventually carries it away. This, the third portion of our work, we entitle Disaggregation. In order to limit our field of investigation—no one could complain that it was too restricted already—we have confined our attention to one particular class or order of minds. If we refer to such writers as the Abbe Prevost with his Manon Lescauty to Richardson with his Pamela and his Clarissa, to Goethe and his Werther, this is merely to point a contrast; we have not studied them. We have, indeed, deliberately by-passed the portrayers of the Sensitive Soul, and all that tumultuous stream of sentiment which flows throughout the eighteenth century. We finish our present survey with the Philosophers and the Rationalists. Arid, matter-of-fact spirits those, who, by the very aridity of their nature, brought about, by way of reaction, the unsealing of the wells of passion and of mysticism. But they were combative also, brooking no ideas that conflicted with their own; unvisited, too, by any love of forest, sea or mountain; cold, pitiless intellects, they failed to attain those lofty peaks

XX

PREFACE

to which Spinoza, Bayle, Fenelon, Bossuet, Leibniz won their way. They were but pale shadows of those soaring geniuses. Not but what they too were geniuses in their way and front-line actors in the drama of ideas. Certainly, they were not the sort of men passively to acquiesce in the state of affairs as they found it. They were men of mettle and they dared high things. They were obsessed to a degree which we of today can hardly imagine by the great, fundamental problems of life. Their worldly affairs, amusements, pastimes, even the squandering of their own intellectual energies seemed to them of small importance com¬ pared with those age-old riddles. What is Truth? What is Justice? What is Life? Importunate voices, they were never silenced. Always, the same questions arose. If by chance at evening they seemed to have given them their quietus, back again they returned with the morning. It were well worth while to study the other collateral branch of the intellectual family, the restless hearts, the faltering wills, the yearning spirits; worth while to contemplate the slaves of desire, the victims of love, earthly or divine; to give heed to their petitions, their appeals; to contemplate their transports, their ecstasies, with them to discover the treasures of the sequestered life, with them to behold the suns that glitter on the fields of night. To complete our survey of the eighteenth century, we ought to record the birth and development of the Man of Feeling, to track him right down to the French Revolution. On that enterprise we have already embarked. One day, perchance, we shall complete it. One day, si vis suppeditat, as the Romans used to say.

PART ONE

CHRISTIANITY ON TRIAL

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