The Age of Reason | Page 5

opinion not approved by the
"Mountain," it will appear probable that the offence given Couthon by Paine's book
involved danger to him and his translator. On May 31, when the Girondins were accused,
the name of Lanthenas was included, and he barely escaped; and on the same day Danton
persuaded Paine not to appear in the Convention, as his life might be in danger. Whether
this was because of the "Age of Reason," with its fling at the "Goddess Nature" or not,
the statements of author and translator are harmonized by the fact that Paine prepared the
manuscript, with considerable additions and changes, for publication in English, as he has
stated in the Preface to




Part II.
A comparison of the French and English versions, sentence by sentence, proved to me
that the translation sent by Lanthenas to Merlin de Thionville in 1794 is the same as that
he sent to Couthon in 1793. This discovery was the means of recovering several
interesting sentences of the original work. I have given as footnotes translations of such
clauses and phrases of the French work as appeared to be important. Those familiar with
the translations of Lanthenas need not be reminded that he was too much of a literalist to
depart from the manuscript before him, and indeed he did not even venture to alter it in
an instance (presently considered) where it was obviously needed. Nor would Lanthenas
have omitted any of the paragraphs lacking in his translation. This original work was

divided into seventeen chapters, and these I have restored, translating their headings into
English. The "Age of Reason" is thus for the first time given to the world with nearly its
original completeness.
It should be remembered that Paine could not have read the proof of his "Age of Reason"
(




Part I.) which went through the press while he
was in prison. To this must be ascribed the permanence of some sentences as abbreviated
in the haste he has described. A notable instance is the dropping out of his estimate of
Jesus the words rendered by Lanthenas "trop peu imite, trop oublie, trop meconnu." The
addition of these words to Paine's tribute makes it the more notable that almost the only
recognition of the human character and life of Jesus by any theological writer of that
generation came from one long branded as an infidel.
To the inability of the prisoner to give his work any revision must be attributed the
preservation in it of the singular error already alluded to, as one that Lanthenas, but for
his extreme fidelity, would have corrected. This is Paine's repeated mention of six planets,
and enumeration of them, twelve years after the discovery of Uranus. Paine was a
devoted student of astronomy, and it cannot for a moment be supposed that he had not
participated in the universal welcome of Herschel's discovery. The omission of any
allusion to it convinces me that the astronomical episode was printed from a manuscript
written before 1781, when Uranus was discovered. Unfamiliar with French in 1793,
Paine might not have discovered the erratum in Lanthenas' translation, and, having no
time for copying, he would naturally use as much as possible of the same manuscript in
preparing his work for English readers. But he had no opportunity of revision, and there
remains an erratum which, if my conjecture be correct, casts a significant light on the
paragraphs in which he alludes to the preparation of the work. He states that soon after
his publication of "Common Sense" (1776), he "saw the exceeding probability that a
revolution in the system of government would be followed by a revolution in the system
of religion," and that "man would return to the pure, unmixed, and unadulterated belief of
one God and no more." He tells Samuel Adams that it had long been his intention to
publish his thoughts upon religion, and he had made a similar remark to John Adams in
1776. Like the Quakers among whom he was reared Paine could then readily use the
phrase "word of God" for anything in the Bible which approved itself to his "inner light,"
and as he had drawn from the first Book of Samuel a divine condemnation of monarchy,
John Adams, a Unitarian, asked him if he believed in the inspiration of the Old Testament.
Paine replied that he did not, and at a later period meant to publish his views on the

subject. There is little doubt that he wrote from time to time on religious points, during
the American war, without publishing his thoughts, just as he worked on the problem of
steam navigation, in which he had invented a practicable method (ten years before John
Fitch made his discovery) without publishing