The Eve of the French Revolution

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The sharpest blow was yet to fall. The "Encyclopaedia" was issued by an
association of publishers which paid Diderot a moderate salary for his
services. Of these publishers one, named Le Breton, was the chief. He is
said to have been a dull man, incapable of understanding any work of
literature. It was his maxim that literary men labor for glory, and
publishers for pay, and consequently he divided the income of the
"Encyclopaedia" into two parts, giving to Diderot the glory, the danger,
and the persecution, and reserving the money for himself and his
partners. From his position in Paris he felt sure of being able to
foresee any new order launched against the "Encyclopaedia" while the
printing was in progress, and of providing against it. But the time of
publication was likely to be marked by a new storm. Under these
circumstances Le Breton resorted to a trick. After Diderot had read the
last proof of every sheet, the publisher and his foreman secretly took
it in hand, erased and cut out all that seemed rash or calculated to
excite the anger of religious or conservative people, and thus reduced
many of the principal articles to fragments. Then, to make the wrong
irremediable, they burned the manuscripts, and quietly proceeded with
the printing. This process would seem to have been continued for more
than a year. One day in 1764, when the time of publication was drawing
near, Diderot, having occasion to consult an article under the letter S,
found it badly mutilated. Puzzled at first, he presently recognized the
nature of the trick that had been played him. He turned to various parts
of the book, to his own articles and to those of other writers, and
found in many places the marks of the outrage. Diderot was in despair.
His first thought was to throw up the undertaking and to announce the
fraud to the public. The injury that would have been done to Le Breton's
innocent partners, the danger of publishing the fact that the
"Encyclopaedia" was still in process of printing,--a fact of which the
officers of the government had only personal and not official
knowledge,--determined him to go on with the publication. It may be that
Le Breton's changes had been less extensive than Diderot, in his first
excitement on making the discovery, had been led to believe. In
examining the "Encyclopaedia" no alteration of tone is observable
between the first seven and the subsequent volumes; and Grimm, to whom
we owe the story, acknowledges that none of the authors engaged with
Diderot in the work complained or even noticed that their articles had
been altered.

In 1765 the ten volumes which completed the alphabet (making seventeen
of this part of the work) were delivered to the subscribers. As a
precautionary measure, those for foreign countries were sent out first,
then those for the provinces, and lastly those for Paris. The eleven
volumes of plates were not published until 1772. A supplement of four
volumes of text and one of plates appeared in 1776 and 1777, and three
years later a table of contents in two volumes.[Footnote: Several
volumes of the original edition have the imprint of Neufchatel, and the
supplement has that of Amsterdam, although all were actually printed in
Paris. The _Encyclopaedia_ was reprinted as a whole at Geneva and
at Lausanne. Editions also appeared at Leghorn and at Lucca; besides
volumes of selections and abbreviations. Morley, _Diderot_, i. 169.
For the _Encyclopaedia_, see Morley, _Diderot_, _passim._
Soberer, _Diderot_; the correspondence of D'Alembert and Voltaire
in the works of the latter. Diderot, _Memoires_, i. 431 (Nov. 10,
1760). Grimm, vii. 44, and especially ix. 203-217, an excellent article.
Barbier, v. 159, 169; vii. 125, 138, 141; also in the work itself the
word _Encyclopedie_ in vol. v. Mr. Morley thinks that the article
_Geneve_, in vol. vii. of the _Encyclopaedia_, especially
excited the church and the Parliament to desire its suppression. The
same article drew from Rousseau his letter to D'Alembert on the theatre
at Geneva, which marks the separation between Rousseau and the
Philosophers. But in the _Discours preliminaire_ D'Alembert had
attacked Rousseau's _First Discourse_. For the excitement caused at
Geneva by the article, see Voltaire, lvii. 438 (Voltaire to D'Alembert,
Jan. 8, 1758). It is perhaps superfluous to remark that Grimm's account
of the character and ideas of Le Breton, which has been followed above,
is probably not unbiased.]

What was the great book whose history was so full of vicissitudes? Why
did the French government, the church, and the literary world so excite
themselves about a dictionary? The "Encyclopaedia" had in fact two
functions; it was a repository of information and a polemical writing.
Condorcet has thus stated the purpose of the book. Diderot, he says,
"intended to bring together in a dictionary all that had been discovered
in the sciences, what was known of the productions of the globe, the
details of the arts which men have invented, the principles of morals,
those of legislation, the laws which govern society, the metaphysics of
language and the rules of grammar, the analysis of our faculties, and
even the history of our opinions."[Footnote: D'Alembert,
_Oeuvres_, i. 79 (_Eloge par Condorcet_).] So comprehensive a
scheme was not without danger to those classes which claimed an
exclusive right to direct men's minds. As for the double nature of the
book, we have the words of two of the men most concerned in its
preparation. First there is an anecdote by Voltaire, certainly
inaccurate, probably quite imaginary, but setting forth most clearly one
cause of the interest which the "Encyclopaedia" excited.

"A servant of Louis XV. has told me that one day when the king his
master was supping at Trianon with a small party, the conversation
turned on shooting and then on gunpowder. Somebody said that the best
powder was made of equal parts of saltpetre, sulphur, and charcoal. The
Duke of La Valliere, better informed, maintained that for cannon the
proper proportion was one part of sulphur, one of charcoal, and five of
well-filtered, well-evaporated, and well-crystallized saltpetre.

"`It is absurd,' said the Duke of Nivernois, `that we should amuse
ourselves every day with killing partridges in the park of Versailles,
and sometimes with killing men or getting ourselves killed on the
frontier, and not know exactly what we kill with.'

"`Alas! we are in the same state about all things in the world,'
answered Madame de Pompadour. `I don't know of what the rouge is
composed that I put on my cheeks, and I should be much puzzled to say
how my stockings are made.'

"`It is a pity,' then said the Duke of La Valliere, `that His Majesty
should have confiscated our encyclopaedic dictionaries, which cost us a
hundred pistoles apiece. We should soon find in them the answers to all
our questions.'

"The king justified his confiscation. He had been warned that the
twenty-one volumes in folio, that were to be found on all the ladies'
dressing-tables, were the most dangerous thing in the world for the
French monarchy; and he wished to see for himself if that were true
before he allowed the book to be read. After supper he sent for a copy,
by three servants of his bed-chamber, each of whom brought in seven
volumes, with a good deal of difficulty.

"They saw, in the article on gunpowder, that the Duke of La Valliere
was right. Madame de Pompadour soon learned the difference between the
old-fashioned Spanish rouge, with which the ladies of Madrid colored
their cheeks, and the rouge of the ladies of Paris. She learned that
the Greek and Roman ladies were painted with the purple that came from
the murex, and consequently that our scarlet was the purple of the
ancients; that there was more saffron in the Spanish rouge and more
cochineal in the French.

"She saw how her stockings were made on the loom, and the machine used
for the purpose filled her with astonishment. `Oh, what a fine book,
sir!' she cried. `Have you confiscated this store-house of all useful
things in order to own it alone, and to be the only wise man in your
kingdom?'

"They all threw themselves upon the volumes, like the daughters of
Lycomedes on the jewels of Ulysses. Each found at once whatever he
sought. Those that had lawsuits on hand were surprised to find the
decision of their cases. The king read all the rights of his crown.
'But, really,' said he, `I don't know why they spoke so ill of this
book.'

"`Do you not see, sir,' said the Duke of Nivernois, `that it is because
it is very good? People do not attack poor and flat things of any kind.
When the women try to make a new-comer appear ridiculous, she is sure to
be prettier than they are.'

"All this time they were turning over the pages, and the Count of C----
said aloud, `Sir, you are too happy that men should have been found in
your reign able to know all the arts and to transmit them to posterity.
Everything is here, from the way of making a pin to that of casting and
of aiming your cannon; from the infinitesimal to the infinite. Thank God
for having given birth in your kingdom to men who have thus served the
whole world. Other nations are obliged to buy the "Encyclopaedia," or to
imitate it. Take all I have, if you like, but give me back my
"Encyclopaedia."'

"`But they say,' rejoined the king, `that this necessary and admirable
work has many faults.'

"`Sir,' replied the Count of C----, `at your supper there were two
ragouts that were failures. We did not eat them, but we had a very good
supper. Would you have had the whole of it thrown out of the window on
account of those two ragouts?' The king felt the force of this
reasoning, each one took back his book, and it was a happy day.

"But Envy and Ignorance did not consider themselves beaten; those two
immortal sisters kept up their cries, their cabals, their persecutions.
Ignorance is very learned in that way.

"What happened? Foreigners bought out four editions of this French work
which was proscribed in France, and made about eighteen hundred thousand
dollars.

"Frenchmen, try hereafter to understand your own interests."[Footnote:
This story is printed among "Faceties." Morley points out that Mme. de
Pompadour died before the volumes containing "Poudre" and "Rouge" were
published. Voltaire, xlviii. 57.]

We see by this anecdote, written probably to puff the book, that the
"Encyclopaedia" was recommended for the same advantages which have since
given value to scores of similar works. No other collection of general
information so large and so useful was then in existence. Elaborate
descriptions of mechanism abound in it, and are illustrated by beautiful
plates. We see before us the simple beginnings of the great
manufacturing movement of modern times. There are articles on looms, on
cabinet work, on jewelry, side by side with all that the science of that
day could teach of anatomy, medicine, and natural history. Nor were more
frivolous subjects forgotten. Nine plates are given to billiards and
tennis. Choregraphy, or the art of expressing the figures of the dance
on paper, occupies six pages of text and two of illustrations, with the
remark that it is one of the arts of which the ancients were ignorant,
or which they have not transmitted to us. There is a proposal for a new
and universal language, based of course on French; and we are reminded
by an article on Alcahest, a mysterious drug of the alchemists, to which
two columns and a half are devoted, that the eighteenth century was
nearer to the Middle Ages than the nineteenth. It was an idea of the
compilers of the "Encyclopaedia" that if ever civilization should be
destroyed mankind might turn to their volumes to learn to restore it.
[Footnote: History and geography are almost passed over in the
Encyclopaedia, while the arts and sciences are fully treated. The
contempt for history, as the tale of human errors, was common among the
Philosophers.]

Yet all this mere learning was not what came nearest to the heart of
Diderot and his fellow-workers. In a moment of excitement, when smarting
from the excisions of the publisher Le Breton, he was able to write that
the success of the book was owing in no degree to ordinary, sensible,
and common things; that perhaps there were not two men in the world who
had taken the trouble to read in it a line of history, geography,
mathematics, or even of the arts; and that what all sought in the
"Encyclopaedia" was the firm and bold philosophy of some of its writers.
[Footnote: When in a cooler mood Diderot boasts that there are people
who have read the book through. See the word _Encyclopedie_, vol.
v.]

This philosophy appears in the Preliminary Discourse by D'Alembert; it
comes up again time after time throughout the volumes. The metaphysics
are founded chiefly on those of Locke, who "may be said to have created
metaphysics as Newton created physics," by reducing them to "what in
fact they should be, the experimental physics of the soul." Beyond this
there is little unity of opinion, although much agreement of spirit. We
have articles on government and on taxation, liberally conceived, but
not agreeing as to actual measures. We have a prejudice in favor of
democracy, as the ideal form of government, and the worship of
theoretical equality, but contempt for the populace, "which discerns
nothing;" the reduction of religion to the sentiments of morality and
benevolence, and great dislike for its ministers and especially for the
members of monastic orders; the belief in the Legislator, in natural
laws and liberties, including the inalienable right of every man to
dispose of his own person and property and to do all things that the
laws allow; faith in the Philosopher, a man governed entirely by reason
as the Christian is governed by grace. To him, Truth is not a mistress
corrupting his imagination. He knows how to distinguish what is true,
what is false, what is doubtful, and he glories in being willing to
remain undetermined when he has not the material for judgment. The
Philosopher understands as well the doctrines that he rejects as those
that he adopts. His spirit brings everything to its true principles. The
nations will be happy when kings are Philosophers, or when Philosophers
are kings.

There was no uniformity of execution in the "Encyclopaedia." The editors
were not free to reject all that they did not approve. They had to
consider the feelings of their writers, and sometimes, no doubt, to
print a poor article by a valued hand. There were many long
dissertations where short articles would have been more to the purpose.
Diderot was not the man to repress the natural tendency of contributors
to wordiness. Then official censors and possible prosecutors had to be
considered. "Doubtless," says D'Alembert to Voltaire, in reply to the
latter's remonstrances, "doubtless we have bad articles on theology and
metaphysics; but with theological censors and a privilege, I defy you to
make them better. There are other articles less conspicuous where all is
repaired. Time will enable people to distinguish what we thought from
what we have said." ... "It is certain," he says in another place, "that
several of our workers have put in worthless things, and sometimes
declamation; but it is still more certain that I have not had it in my
power to alter this state of things. I flatter myself that the same
judgment will not be passed on what several of our authors and I myself
have furnished for this work, which apparently will go down to posterity
as a monument of what we would and what we could not do." On the whole
the chief of the Philosophers was satisfied. "Oh, how sorry I am," he
exclaims, "to see so much paste among your fine diamonds; but you shed
your lustre on the paste."[Footnote: Correspondence of Voltaire and
D'Alembert (A. to V., July 21, 1757; Jan. 11, 1758; V. to A., Dec. 29,
1757). Voltaire, lvii. 296, 444, 421.]

CHAPTER XVII.

HELVETIUS, HOLBACH AND CHASTELLUX.

There are two books issuing so directly from what may be called the
orthodox school of Philosophers, and so closely connected with the
"Encyclopaedia" and its authors, that they should be noticed next to the
great compilation itself. One of them has already been mentioned. It
bears the untranslatable title "De l'Esprit," a word which in this
simple and unmodified form means exactly neither wit nor spirit, but
something between the two and different from either.

The author, Helvetius, was one of those clever men whose ambition it is
to shine. The son of a fashionable physician, he had made a fortune as a
farmer of the revenue. He had been addicted, in his youth, to the
pursuit of women and of literature, and had subsequently shown
moderation in leaving his lucrative office and the dissipations of the
town and retiring into the country with a charming wife. For eight
months in the year they lived at Vore, not unvisited by Philosophers;
for four they kept open house in Paris. Both were good natured,
charitable, and benevolent. Among the Philosophers Helvetius held the
place of the rich and clever worldling, so often found in literary
circles.

The treatise "De l'Esprit" has for its object the setting forth of the
doctrine of utility in its extreme form. As a preliminary argument all
the operations of the mind are reduced to sensation. "When by a
succession of my ideas, or by the vibration which certain sounds cause
in the organ of my ears, I recall the image of an oak, then my interior
organs must necessarily be nearly in the same situation as they were at
the sight of that oak. Now this situation of the organs must necessarily
produce a sensation; it is, therefore, evident that memory is sensation.

"Having stated this principle, I say further that it is in the capacity
which we have of perceiving the resemblances or the differences, the
agreement or the disagreement, which different objects have with each
other, that all the operations of the mind consist. Now this capacity is
nothing else than physical sensibility; therefore everything is reduced
to sensation."

Utility, according to Helvetius, is the foundation of all our moral
feelings. Each person praises as just in others only those actions which
are useful to himself; every nation or society praises what is useful to
it in its corporate capacity. "If a judge acquits a guilty man, if a
minister of state promotes an unworthy one, each is just, according to
the man protected. But if the judge punishes, or the minister refuses,
they will always be unjust in the eyes of the criminal and of the
unsuccessful."... "The Christians who justly spoke of the cruelties
practiced on them by the pagans as barbarity and crime, did they not
give the name of zeal to the cruelties which they, in their turn,
practiced on these same pagans?" As the physical world is subject to
laws of motion, so is the moral world to those of interest. All men
alike strive after their own happiness. It is the diversity of passions
and tastes, some of which are in accordance with the public interest and
others in opposition to it, which form our virtues and our vices. We
should, therefore, not despise the wicked, but pity them, and thank
heaven that it has given us none of those tastes and passions which
would have obliged us to seek our happiness in other people's
misfortunes. This opinion, although extravagantly stated, was, as we
have seen, but the caricature of the doctrine of utility, as taught by
Locke and held by his followers.

Helvetius took great pains to make the treatment of his theme
interesting. He labored long over every chapter. His pages overflow with
anecdotes, with sneers at monks, and with excuses for lust. They show
the belief in the omnipotence of legislation which was common in his
day. A large space is devoted to minimizing the natural inequality of
mankind, and attributing the differences observable among men to chance
or to education. If Galileo had not happened to be walking in a garden
in Florence where certain workmen asked him a question about a pump, he
would not, according to Helvetius, have discovered the weight of the
atmosphere. It was the fall of the apple which gave Newton his theory of
gravitation. Such puerilities as these disgust us in the book; yet the
theory that greatness is but the result of an inconsiderable accident,
was not unnatural in one who had probably hit on an idea which struck
him as telling, and believed that he had thereby achieved greatness.
[Footnote: Helvetius, i. 130, 183; ii. 7, and passim. For Helvetius, see
Nouvelle Biographie universelle. Morley, Diderot, ii. 141. Grimm, iv.
80. Morellet, i. 71, 140. Morellet represents himself as a tame cat in
Helvetius's house. Marmontel, ii. 115 (liv. vi.) an excellent
description. Compare Locke, i. 261, ii. 97. The doctrine of utility is
probably nearly as old as philosophy itself. It has been well suggested
that although not the ultimate motive of virtue, utility may be the test
of morals. It was, in a measure, Helvetius that inspired Bentham.
Morley, Diderot, ii. 154.]

Helvetius had endeavored to carry the doctrines of the French followers
of Locke to their last logical conclusions, but the successful
accomplishment of that task was reserved for a stronger and steadier
hand than his. Baron Holbach was an amiable and good man, the constant
friend of the Encyclopaedists. At his house they often met, so that it
came to be known among them as the Cafe de l'Europe, and its master as
the "maitre d'hotel" of Philosophy. But these nicknames were used in
good part. Holbach had none of the flippancy of Helvetius. His book, the
"System of Nature," is a solemn, earnest argument, proceeding from a
clear brain and a pure heart. Our nature may revolt at his theories, but
we cannot question his honesty or his benevolence. The book, published,
as the fashion was, under a false name, yet expresses the inmost
convictions of the writer.[Footnote: The name assumed was that of
Mirabaud, once secretary to the Academy, who had died before the book
appeared. See Morley, _Diderot_, ii. 173, as to the authorship of
the _System of Nature_. It has sometimes been attributed to
Diderot, but it seems clear from internal evidence that Diderot could
not have written it. The style and the thought are both too compact to
proceed from that diffuse thinker and writer. But Diderot, who had great
influence on many men, may have suggested some of the ideas.]

"Men," he says, "will always make mistakes, when they abandon experience
for systems born of the imagination." Man exists in nature and can
imagine nothing outside of nature. Let him, therefore, cease to seek
beyond the world he inhabits for beings which shall procure for him that
happiness which nature refuses to give him. "Man is a being purely
physical. Moral man is but that being considered from a certain point of
view, that is to say, relatively to some of his ways of acting, due to
his particular organization." All human actions, visible and invisible,
are the necessary consequences of man's mechanism, and of the impulsions
which it receives from surrounding entities.

The universe is made up of matter and motion, cause and effect. Nature
is the great whole, resulting from the assemblage of different matters,
combinations, and motions. By motion only do we know the existence and
properties of other beings and distinguish them from each other. There
is continual action and reaction in all things. Love and hate in men are
like attraction and repulsion in physics, with causes more obscure. All
beings, organic and inorganic, tend to self-preservation. This tendency
in man is called self-love.

There is in reality no order nor disorder, since all things are
necessary. It is only in our minds that there exists the model of what
we call order; like other abstract ideas, it corresponds to nothing
outside of ourselves. Order is no more than the faculty of coordinating
ourselves with the beings that surround us, or with the whole of which
we form a part. But if we wish to apply the word to nature, it may stand
for a succession of actions or motions which we suppose to contribute to
a given end. We call beings intelligent when they are organized like
ourselves, and can act toward an end which we understand.

No two beings are exactly alike; differences, whether called physical or
moral, being the result of their bodily qualities. These differences are
the cause and the support of human society. If all men were alike they
would not need each other. It is a mistake to complain of this
inequality, by which we are put under the fortunate necessity of
combining. In coming together men have made an explicit or implied
compact, by which they have bound themselves to render mutual services
and not to injure each other. But as each man's nature leads him to seek
to satisfy his own passions or caprices without regard to others, law
was established to bring him back to his duty. This law is the sum of
the wills of the society, united to fix the conduct of its members, or
to direct their actions towards the common aim of the association. For
convenience, certain citizens are made executors of the popular will,
and are called monarchs, magistrates, or representatives, according to
the form of the government. But that form may be changed, and all the
powers of all persons under it revoked, at the will of the society
itself, by which and for which all government is established. Laws, to
be just, must have for their invariable end the general interests of
society; they must procure for the greatest number of citizens the
advantages for which those citizens have combined. A society whose
chiefs and whose laws do not benefit its members loses all rights over
them. Chiefs who do harm to any society lose the right to command it. By
not applying these maxims the nations are made unhappy. By the
imprudence of nations, and by the craft of those to whom power had been
entrusted, sovereigns have become absolute masters. They have claimed to
hold their powers from Heaven and not to be responsible to any one on
earth. Hence politics have become corrupt and no more than a form of
brigandage. Man unrestrained soon turns to evil. Only by fear can
society control the passions of its rulers. It must, therefore, confer
but limited powers on any one of them, and divide those forces which, if
united, would necessarily crush it.[Footnote: Holbach is clearly
indebted both to Rousseau and to Montesquieu.]

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