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TITLE: BARON D'HOLBACH
AUTHOR: MAX PEARSON CUSHING
EBOOK: E00369 (O'Briens Book Cellar)

Baron D'Holbach: A Study of Eighteenth Century Radicalism in France
by Max Pearson Cushing (27-Oct-1886 to 12-Jan-1951)
Originally published 1914

BARON D'HOLBACH
A Study of Eighteenth Century Radicalism in France

by

MAX PEARSON CUSHING

Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements
for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, in
the Faculty of Political Science,
Columbia University

New York
1914

Press of
The New Era Printing Company
Lancaster, PA

TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Introduction.

  CHAPTER I.  HOLBACH THE MAN.

     Early Letters to John Wilkes.

     Holbach's family.

     Relations with Diderot, Rousseau, Hume, Garrick
       and other important persons of the century.

     Estimate of Holbach.  His character and personality.

  CHAPTER II.  HOLBACH'S WORKS.

     Miscellaneous Works.

     Translations of German Scientific Works.

     Translations of English Deistical Writers.

     Boulanger's _Antiquite devoilee_.

     Original Works: _Le Christianisme devoile_.
     _Theologie portative_.
     _La Contagion sacree_.
     _Essai sur les prejuges_.
     _Le bons-sens_.

  CHAPTER III.  THE _Systeme de la Nature_ AND ITS PHILOSOPHY.

     Voltaire's correspondence on the subject.

     Goethe's sentiment.

     Refutations and criticisms.

     Holbach's philosophy.

  APPENDIX.  HOLBACH'S CORRESPONDENCE.

     Five unpublished letters to John Wilkes.

  [ENDNOTES]

  BIBLIOGRAPHY.

    Part I.  Editions of Holbach's works in Chronological Order.

    Part II.  General Bibliography.

BARON D'HOLBACH

     A une extreme justesse d'esprit il joignait une simplicite
     de moeurs tout-a-fait antique et patriarcale.

              J. A. Naigeon, _Journal de Paris_, le 9 fev. 1789

INTRODUCTION

Diderot, writing to the Princess Dashkoff in 1771, thus analysed
the spirit of his century:

Chaque siecle a son esprit qui le caracterise.  L'esprit du notre
semble etre celui de la liberte.  La premiere attaque contre la
superstition a ete violente, sans mesure.  Une fois que les hommes
ont ose d'une maniere quelconque donner l'assaut a la barriere de
la religion, cette barriere la plus formidable qui existe comme la
plus respectee, il est impossible de s'arreter.  Des qu'ils ont tourne
des regards menacants contre la majeste du ciel, ils ne manqueront
pas le moment d'apres de les diriger contre la souverainete de la
terre.  Le cable qui tient et comprime l'humanite est forme de deux
cordes, l'une ne peut ceder sans que l'autre vienne a rompre.
[Endnote 1:1]

The following study proposes to deal with this attack on religion
that preceded and helped to prepare the French Revolution.  Similar
phenomena are by no means rare in the annals of history;
eighteenth-century atheism, however, is of especial interest,
standing as it does at the end of a long period of theological
and ecclesiastical disintegration and prophesying a reconstruction
of society on a purely rational and naturalistic basis.  The
anti-theistic movement has been so obscured by the less thoroughgoing
tendency of deism and by subsequent romanticism that the real
issue in the eighteenth century has been largely lost from view.
Hence it has seemed fit to center this study about the man who
stated the situation with the most unmistakable and uncompromising
clearness, and who still occupies a unique though obscure position
in the history of thought.

Holbach has been very much neglected by writers on the eighteenth
century.  He has no biographer.  M. Walferdin wrote (in an edition
of Diderot's Works, Paris, 1821, Vol. XII p. 115): "Nous nous
occupons depuis longtemps a rassembler les materiaux qui doivent
servir a venger la memoire du philosophe de la patrie de Leibnitz,
et dans l'ouvrage que nous nous proposons de publier sous le titre
"D'Holbach juge par ses contemporains" nous esperons faire justement
apprecier ce savant si estimable par la profondeur et la variete de
ses connaissances, si precieux a sa famille et a ses amis par la
purete et la simplicite de ses moeurs, en qui la vertu etait devenue
une habitude et la bienfaisance un besoin."  This work has never
appeared and M. Tourneux thinks that nothing of it was found among
M. Walferdin's papers. [2:2]  In 1834 Mr. James Watson published
in an English translation of the _Systeme de la Nature_,
_A Short Sketch of the Life and the Writings of Baron d'Holbach_
by Mr. Julian Hibbert, compiled especially for that edition from
Saint Saurin's article in Michaud's _Biographie Universelle_
(Paris, 1817, Vol. XX, pp. 460-467), from Barbier's _Dict. des
ouvrages anonymes_ (Paris, 1822) and from the preface to the Paris
edition of the _Systeme de la Nature_ (4 vols., 18mo, 1821).  This
sketch was later published separately (London, 1834, 12mo, pp. 14)
but on account of the author's sudden death it was left unfinished
and is of no value from the point of view of scholarship.  Another
attempt to publish something on Holbach was made by Dr. Anthony
C. Middleton of Boston in 1857.  In the preface to his translation
to the _Lettres a Eugenia_ he speaks of a "Biographical Memoir of
Baron d'Holbach which I am now preparing for the press."  If ever
published at all this _Memoir_ probably came to light in the
_Boston Investigator_, a free-thinking magazine published by
Josiah P. Mendum, 45 Cornhill, Boston, but it is not to be found.
Mention should also be made of the fact that M. Assezat intended
to include in a proposed study of Diderot and the philosophical
movement, a chapter to be devoted to Holbach and his society; but
this work has never appeared. [3:3]

Of the two works bearing Holbach's name as a title, one is a piece
of libellous fiction by Mme. de Genlis, _Les Diners du baron d'Holbach_
(Paris, 1822, 8vo), the other a romance pure and simple by
F. T. Claudon (Paris, 1835, 2 vols., 8vo) called _Le Baron d'Holbach_,
the events of which take place largely at his house and in which he
plays the role of a minor character.  A good account of Holbach,
though short and incidental, is to be found in M. Avezac-Lavigne's
_Diderot et la Societe du Baron d'Holbach_ (Paris, 1875, 8vo), and
M. Armand Gaste has a little book entitled _Diderot et le cure
de Montchauvet, une Mystification litteraire chez le Baron d'Holbach_
(Paris, 1895, 16vo).  There are several works which devote a chapter
or section to Holbach. [3:4]  The French critics and the histories of
philosophy contain slight notices; Rosenkranz's "Diderot's Leben"
devotes a chapter to Granval, Holbach's country seat, and life there
as described by Diderot in his letters to Mlle. Volland; and he is
included in such histories of ideas as Soury, J., "Breviaire
de l'histoire de Materialisme" (Paris, 1881) and Delvaille, J.,
_Essai sur l'histoire de l'idee de progres_ (Paris, 1910); but
nowhere else is there anything more than the merest encyclopedic
account, often defective and incorrect.

The sources are in a sense full and reliable for certain phases of
his life and literary activity.  His own publications, numbering
about fifty, form the most important body of source material for
the history and development of his ideas.  Next in importance are
contemporary memoirs and letters including those of Voltaire,
Rousseau, Diderot, Grimm, Morellet, Marmontel, Mme. d'Epinay,
Naigeon, Garat, Galiani, Hume, Garrick, Wilkes, Romilly and others;
and scattered letters by Holbach himself, largely to his English
friends.  In addition there is a large body of contemporary hostile
criticism of his books, by Voltaire, Frederick II, Castillon,
Holland, La Harpe, Delisle de Sales and a host of outraged
ecclesiastics, so that one is well informed in regard to the
scandal that his books caused at the time.  Out of these materials
and other scattered documents and notices it is possible to
reconstruct--though somewhat defectively--the figure of a man who
played an important role in his own day; but whose name has long
since lost its significance--even in the ears of scholars.  It is
at the suggestion of Professor James Harvey Robinson that this
reconstruction has been made.  If it shall prove of any interest
or value he must be credited with the initiation of the idea as
well as constant aid in its realization.  For rendering possible
the necessary investigations, recognition is due to the administration
and officers of the Bibliotheque Nationale, the British Museum, the
Library of Congress, the Libraries of Columbia and Harvard
Universities, Union and Andover Theological Seminaries, and the
Public Libraries of Boston and New York.

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