A Short History of French Literature
of the Church. His family had considerable influence, and at the age of
twenty-four he was appointed intendant of Limoges, a post which gave him
practical control of the government of a large, though barren and
neglected, province. His achievements in the way of administrative
reform here were remarkable, and, had they been generally imitated,
might have brought about a very different state of things in France.
After the death of Louis XV., he was recommended by Maurepas to a far
more important office, the controllership of finance. Here, too, he did
great things; but his attack on the privileged orders was ill-seconded,
and, after holding his post for about two years, he had to resign,
partly, it is true, owing to a certain unaccommodating rigidity of
demeanour, which was one of his least amiable characteristics. He died
in 1781. Turgot's literary work is not extensive, and it is not
distinguished by its style. It consists of certain discourses at the
Sorbonne, of memoirs on various political occasions, of some letters on
usury, of articles in the Encyclopaedia, of which the most noteworthy is
one on endowments, etc. All are remarkable as containing the germs of
what may be accepted as the modern liberal doctrines on the various
points of which they treat, while the second Sorbonne discourse is
entitled to the credit of first clearly announcing the principle of the
philosophy of history, the doctrine, that is to say, that human progress
follows regular laws of development, certain sets of causes invariably
tending to bring about certain sets of results.
[Sidenote: Condorcet.]
With the name of Turgot that of Condorcet is inseparably connected, and
though far less important in the history of thought, it is perhaps more
prominent in the history of literature, for the pupil and biographer (in
both of which relations Condorcet stood to Turgot) was, though a far
less original and vigorous thinker, a better writer than his master and
subject. Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat, styled Marquis de Condorcet,
was born in 1743, near St. Quentin, and early distinguished himself both
in mathematics and in the belles lettres. He became Secretary of the
Academy in 1777, and he afterwards wrote the Life of Turgot, whose
method of dealing with economic questions (a more practical and less
abstract one than that of the earlier economists) he had already
followed. He took a considerable part in the French Revolution, serving
both in the Legislative Assembly and in the Convention. In the latter he
became identified with the Girondist party, and shared their troubles.
His best known work, the _Esquisse des Progres de l'Esprit Humain_, was
written while he was a fugitive and in concealment. He was at last
discovered and arrested, but the day after he was found dead in his
prison at Bourg la Reine, having apparently poisoned himself (March,
1794). Condorcet's works are voluminous, and partake strongly of the
_philosophe_ character. He is not remarkable for originality of thought,
and may indeed be said to be for the most part a mere exponent of the
current ideas of the second stage of the _philosophe_ movement. But his
style has great merits, being clear, forcible, and correct, suffering
only from the somewhat stereotyped forms, and from the absence of
flexibility and colour which distinguish the later eighteenth century in
France.
[Sidenote: Volney.]
One more remarkable name deserves to be mentioned in this place as the
last of the _Philosophes_ proper, that is to say, of those writers who
carried out the general principles of the Encyclopaedist movement with
less reference to specialist departments of literature than to a certain
general spirit and tendency. This was Constantin Francois de
Chasseboeuf, Comte de Volney, by which latter name he is generally
known. Volney was born in 1757, at Caron, in Anjou, and was educated at
Angers, and afterwards at Paris. He studied both medicine and law, but
having a sufficient fortune, practised neither. In 1783 he set out on
his travels and journeyed to the East, visiting Egypt and Syria; an
account of which journey he published four years later. When he returned
to France he was from the beginning a moderate partisan of the
Revolution, and, like most such persons, he was arrested during the
Terror, though he escaped with no worse fate than imprisonment.
Immediately after Thermidor, Volney published his most celebrated work,
_Les Ruines_, a treatise on the rise and fall of empires from a general
and philosophical point of view. Shortly after this he visited the
United States, whence he returned in 1798. He had known Napoleon in
early days, and on the establishment of the Consulate he was appointed a
senator; nor was his resignation accepted, though it was tendered when
Bonaparte assumed the crown. His countship was Napoleonic, but he was
always an opponent of the emperor's policy. Accordingly, after the
Restoration, he was nominated by Louis XVIII. as a member of the new
House of Peers. He died in 1820. Besides the books already noticed he
published some studies in ancient history and many miscellaneous works,
including a project of a universal language. Volney was, as has been
said, the last of the _philosophes_, exhibiting, long after a new order
of thought had set in, their acute but negative and one-sided criticism,
their sterile contempt of Christianity and religion generally, their
somewhat theoretic acceptance of generalisations on philosophy and
history, and of large plans for dealing with politics and ethics. As a
traveller his observation is accurate and his expression vivid; as a
philosophical historian his acuteness is perhaps not sufficiently
accompanied by real breadth of view.
[Sidenote: La Mettrie]
[Sidenote: Helvetius]
Between these philosophers, in the local and temporary sense of the
word, who dealt only with what would now be called the sociological side
of philosophy in its bearings on politics, religion, ethics, and
economics, and the strictly philosophical school of Condillac and his
followers, a small but very influential sect of materialists, who were
yet not purely philosophical materialists, has to be considered. Three
members of this school have importance in literature--La Mettrie,
Helvetius, and Holbach. La Mettrie was a native of Britanny: he entered
the medical service of the French army, acquired a speedy reputation for
heterodoxy and disorderly living, and fled for shelter to the general
patron of heterodox Frenchmen, Frederick of Prussia; at whose court he
died, at a comparatively early age, it is said in consequence of a
practical joke. La Mettrie's chief work is a paradoxical exercise in
materialist physics called _L'Homme-Machine_, in which he endeavours to
prove the purely automatic working of the human frame, and the absence
of any mind in the spiritualist sense. This he followed by a similar but
less original work, called _L'Homme-Plante_, and by some other minor
publications. La Mettrie was a very unequal thinker and writer, but he
has, as Voltaire (who disliked him) expressed it, _traits de flamme_
both in thought and style. Claude Adrian Helvetius was of Swiss descent,
and of ample fortune. Born in 1715, he was appointed to the high post of
Farmer-General when he was little more than twenty-three; but he did not
hold this appointment very long, and became Chamberlain to the Queen. He
was very popular in society, and was of a benevolent and philanthropic
disposition, though he seems to have got into trouble at his country
seat of Vore by excessive game preserving. He married, in 1751, the
beautiful Mademoiselle de Ligneville, who was long afterwards one of the
chief centres of literary society in Paris. In 1758 his book _De
l'Esprit_ appeared, and made a great sensation, being condemned as
immoral, and burnt by the hangman. Helvetius subsequently travelled in
England and Germany, dying in 1771. A second treatise, _De l'Homme,_
which appeared posthumously, is much inferior to _De l'Esprit_ in
literary merit. It was even more fiercely assailed than its predecessor,
and Diderot himself, the leader of the more active section of the
_philosophe_ party, wrote an elaborate refutation of it, which, however,
has only recently been published. The book _De l'Esprit_ is wanting in
depth, and too anecdotic in style for a serious work of philosophy,
though this very characteristic makes it all the more amusing reading.
It endeavours to make out a theory of morals based on what is called the
selfish system; and it was the naked manner in which this selfish system
of ethics, and the materialist metaphysics which it implies, are
manifested in the book which gave occasion to its ill repute. As a mere
work of literature, however, it is well, and in parts even brilliantly
written, and amid much that is desultory, inconclusive, and even
demonstrably unsound, views of extreme shrewdness and originality on
social abuses and inconsistencies are to be found.
[Sidenote: Systeme de la Nature.]
None of the writers hitherto mentioned made open profession of atheism,
and it is doubtful whether even Diderot deserves the appellation of a
consistent atheist. There was, however, a large anti-theistic school
among the _philosophes_, which increased in numbers and strength towards
the outbreak of the Revolution. The most striking work by far of this
school (which included Damilaville, Naigeon, and a few other names of no
great distinction in literature) was the _Systeme de la Nature_, which
appeared in 1770. This remarkable book, which even Voltaire and
Frederick II. set themselves seriously to refute, contains a complete
materialist system in metaphysics and theology. It represents the
existence of God as a mere creation of the superstition of men, unable
to assign a cause for the evils under which they suffer, and inventing a
supernatural entity to satisfy themselves. The book (to consider its
literary style only) is extremely unequal, passages of remarkable vigour
alternating with long and dreary tracts of inconclusive and monotonous
declamation. It appeared under the name of a dead man, Mirabaud, a
person of some slight and chiefly official name in science and letters.
It is, however, believed, if not certainly known, to be the work of the
Baron d'Holbach (who unquestionably wrote various other books of a
similar tendency), with the assistance of divers of his friends, and
especially of Diderot. The _Systeme_ is a very singular production,
animated by a kind of fanatical, and in parts almost poetical aspiration
after the annihilation of all supernatural belief, which is hardly to be
found elsewhere except in Lucretius. It had great influence, though
that influence was one of repulsion as well as of conversion, and it may
be said to be, up to the present day, the furthest step taken in the
direction of philosophical as opposed to political Nihilism. It should,
however, be observed that in parts there is a strong political tinge
observable in it.
[Sidenote: Condillac.]
In all this century of so-called philosophy, France possessed hardly
more than one really eminent and considerable metaphysician. This was
Etienne Bonnot de Condillac, brother of the Abbe de Mably, who was born
in 1715, and died in 1780. Condillac himself was an abbe, and possessing
a sufficient benefice, he lived for the most part quietly upon it, and
took no part in the political, or even the literary life of the times.
In 1746 he published his _Essai sur l'Origine des Connoissances
Humaines_; in 1749 his _Traite des Systemes_, a work critical rather
than constructive; and in 1754 the _Traite des Sensations_, his
principal work, which completes his theory. The influence of Locke was
the most powerful single influence in the _philosophe_ movement of