Baron dHolbach

艰Baron d'Holbach

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Title: Baron d'Holbach
Author: Max Pearson Cushing
Release Date: May, 2004 [EBook #5621] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on July 24, 2002] [Most recently updated January 19, 2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
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Project Gutenberg E-Text of 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

This e-text transcribed by David Ross
Proofed by Richard Farris

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 _Antiquité dévoilée_.
Original Works: _Le Christianisme devoilé_. _Théologie portative_. _La Contagion sacrée_. _Essai sur les préjugés_. _Le bons-sens_.

CHAPTER III.
THE _Système 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Five unpublished letters to John Wilkes.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 extréme justesse d'esprit il joignait une simplicité de moeurs tout-à-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 siècle a son esprit qui le caractérise. L'esprit du n?tre semble être celui de la liberté. La première attaque contre la superstition a été violente, sans mesure. Une fois que les hommes ont osé d'une manière quelconque donner l'assaut à la barrière de la religion, cette barrière la plus formidable qui existe comme la plus respectée, il est impossible de s'arrêter. Dès qu'ils ont tourné des regards mena?ants contre la majesté du ciel, ils ne manqueront pas le moment d'après de les diriger contre la souveraineté de la terre. Le cable qui tient et comprime l'humanité est formé de deux cordes, l'une ne peut céder sans que l'autre vienne à 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 à rassembler les matériaux qui doivent servir à venger la mémoire du philosophe de la patrie de Leibnitz, et dans l'ouvrage que nous nous proposons de publier sous le titre "D'Holbach jugé par ses contemporains" nous espérons faire justement apprécier ce savant si estimable par la profondeur et la variété de ses connaissances, si précieux à sa famille et à ses amis par la pureté et la simplicité de ses moeurs, en qui la vertu était 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