The Eve of the French Revolution Part 14

The publication of the "Encyclopaedia" lasted many years, and met with many vicissitudes. The first volume appeared in 1751, the second in January, 1752. The book immediately excited the antagonism of the church and of conservative Frenchmen generally. On the 12th of February, 1752, the two volumes were suppressed by an edict of the Council, as containing maxims contrary to royal authority and to religion. The edict forbade their being reprinted and their being delivered to such subscribers as had not already received their copies. The continuation of the work, however, was not forbidden. It was believed at the time that the administration took this step in order to silence the Jesuits, to please the Archbishop of Paris, and perhaps to be beforehand with the Parliament, which might have taken severer measures. It was also intimated that certain booksellers, jealous of the success of the undertaking, were exerting influence on the authorities. All these enemies of the "Encyclopaedia" were not content with their first triumph. A few days after the appearance of the edict, the ma.n.u.scripts and plates were seized by the police. They were restored to the editors three months later. The work was one in the performance of which many Frenchmen took pride. It is said that the Jesuits had tried to continue it, but had failed even to decipher the papers that had been taken from Diderot. The attack of the archbishop, who had fulminated against the great book in an episcopal charge, had served the purpose of an advertis.e.m.e.nt; such was the wisdom and consistency of the repressive police of that age.

From 1753 to 1757 the publication went on without interruption, one volume appearing every year. Seven volumes had now been published, bringing the work to the end of the letter G. The subscription list, originally consisting of less than two thousand names, had nearly doubled. But the forces of conservatism rallied. In 1758 appeared Helvetius's book "De l'Esprit," of which an account will be given in the next chapter, and which shocked the feelings of many persons, even of the Philosophic school. Few things could, indeed, have made the Philosophers more unpopular than the publication by one of their own party of a very readable book, in which the attempt was made to push their favorite ideas to their last conclusions. This is a process which few abstract theories can bear, for the limitations of any statement are in fact essential parts of it. But human laziness so loves formulas, so hates distinctions, that extreme and unmodified expressions are seized with avidity by injudicious friends and exulting foes.

The feeling of indignation awakened in the public by the doctrines of Helvetius gave opportunity to the opponents of the "Encyclopaedia." That work was denounced to the Parliament of Paris, together with the book "De l'Esprit." The learned court promptly condemned the latter to the flames. The great compilation, on the other hand, of which the volume of Helvetius was said to be a mere abridgment, was submitted to nine commissioners for examination, and further publication was suspended until they should report. While proceedings before the Parliament were still pending, the Council of State intervened, and the "Encyclopaedia"

was arbitrarily interdicted, its privilege taken away, the sale of the volumes already printed, and the printing of any more, alike forbidden.

It is characteristic of the condition of things existing under the weak and vacillating government of Louis XV, that the interdict p.r.o.nounced against the "Encyclopaedia" did not stop its printing. The editor and the publishers determined to prepare in private the ten volumes that were still unmade, and to launch them on the world at one time. To this work Diderot turned with boundless energy. D'Alembert, however, was discouraged, and retired from the undertaking. For six years Diderot labored on, never safe from interference on the part of the government, and managing a great enterprise, with its staff of contributors and its scores of workmen, while constantly liable to arrest and imprisonment.

Diderot worked indefatigably also with his pen; writing articles on all sorts of subjects,--philosophy, arts, trades, and manufactures. To learn how things were made he visited workshops and handled tools, baffled at times by the jealousy and distrust of the workmen, who were afraid of his disclosing their secret processes, or of his giving information to the tax-gatherer.

The sharpest blow was yet to fall. The "Encyclopaedia" was issued by an a.s.sociation 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 circ.u.mstances 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 princ.i.p.al articles to fragments. Then, to make the wrong irremediable, they burned the ma.n.u.scripts, 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 publis.h.i.+ng 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_, _pa.s.sim._ 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 a.n.a.lysis 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 cla.s.ses 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-fas.h.i.+oned 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 G.o.d 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 ill.u.s.trated 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. Ch.o.r.egraphy, or the art of expressing the figures of the dance on paper, occupies six pages of text and two of ill.u.s.trations, 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 pa.s.sed 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 wors.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sed 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 l.u.s.tre 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 t.i.tle "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 s.h.i.+ne. The son of a fas.h.i.+onable 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 pa.s.sions 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 pa.s.sions 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 l.u.s.t. They show the belief in the omnipotence of legislation which was common in his day. A large s.p.a.ce 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 pa.s.sim. 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 "matre 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 fas.h.i.+on was, under a false name, yet expresses the inmost convictions of the writer.[Footnote: The name a.s.sumed was that of Mirabaud, once secretary to the Academy, who had died before the book appeared. See Morley, _Diderot_, ii. 173, as to the authors.h.i.+p 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 ent.i.ties.

The universe is made up of matter and motion, cause and effect. Nature is the great whole, resulting from the a.s.semblage 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 pa.s.sions 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 a.s.sociation. 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 pa.s.sions 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.]