A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern 94

A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern 94

I. There are very few good wits [bons Esprits] in the world;

and the fools, that is to say, the common run of men, are not

capable of our doctrine; therefore it will not do to speak freely,

but in secret, and among trusting and cabalistic souls.

 

II. Good wits [beaux Esprits] believe in God only by way of form,

and as a matter of public policy (par Maxime d'Etat).

 

III. A bel Esprit is free in his belief, and is not readily to

be taken in by the quantity of nonsense that is propounded to

the simple populace.

 

IV. All things are conducted and governed by Destiny, which

is irrevocable, infallible, immovable, necessary, eternal, and

inevitable to all men whomsoever.

 

V. It is true that the book called the Bible, or the Holy

scripture, is a good book (un gentil livre), and contains a lot of

good things; but that a bon esprit should be obliged to believe

under pain of damnation all that is therein, down to the tail of

Tobit's dog, does not follow.

 

VI. There is no other divinity or sovereign power in the world but

Nature, which must be satisfied in all things, without refusing

anything to our body or senses that they desire of us in the

exercise of their natural powers and faculties.

 

VII. Supposing there be a God, as it is decorous to admit, so

as not to be always at odds with the superstitious, it does not

follow that there are creatures which are purely intellectual

and separated from matter. All that is in Nature is composite,

and therefore there are neither angels nor devils in the world,

and it is not certain that the soul of man is immortal.

 

VIII. It is true that to live happily it is necessary to extinguish

and drown all scruples; but all the same it does not do to appear

impious and abandoned, for fear of offending the simple or losing

the support of the superstitious.

 

 

This is obviously neither candid [2201] nor competent writing; and as

it happens there remains proof, in the case of the life of La Mothe le

Vayer, that "earnest freethought in the beginning of the seventeenth

century afforded a point d'appui for serious-minded men, which neither

the corrupt Romanism nor the narrow Protestantism of the period could

furnish." [2202] Garasse's own doctrine was that "the true liberty

of the mind consists in a simple and docile (sage) belief in all that

the Church propounds, indifferently and without distinction." [2203]

The later social history of Catholic France is the sufficient comment

on the efficacy of such teaching to regulate life. In any case the

new ideas steadily gained ground; and on the heels of the treatise of

Garasse appeared that of Marin Mersenne, L'impieté des Déistes, Athées

et Libertins de ce temps combattue, avec la refutation des opinions

de Charron, de Cardan, de Jordan Brun, et des quatraines du Déiste

(1624). In a previous treatise, Quæstiones celeberrimæ in Genesim

... in quo volumine Athei et Deisti impugnantur et expugnantur (1623),

Mersenne set agoing the often-quoted assertion that, while atheists

abounded throughout Europe, they were so specially abundant in France

that in Paris alone there were some fifty thousand. Even taking the

term "atheist" in the loosest sense in which such writers used it,

the statement was never credited by any contemporary, or by its author;

but neither did anyone doubt that there was an unprecedented amount of

unbelief. The Quatraines du Déiste, otherwise L'Antibigot, was a poem

of one hundred and six stanzas, never printed, but widely circulated

in manuscript in its day. It is poor poetry enough, but its doctrine

of a Lucretian God who left the world to itself sufficed to create

a sensation, and inspired Mersenne to write a poem in reply. [2204]

Such were the signs of the times when Pascal was in his cradle.

 

 

Mersenne's statistical assertion was made in two sheets of the

Quæstiones Celeberrimæ, "qui ont été supprimé dans la plupart

des exemplaires, à cause, sans doute, de leur exagération"

(Bouillier, Hist. de la philos. cartésienne, 1854, i, 28, where

the passage is cited). The suppressed sheets included a list of

the "atheists" of the time, occupying five folio columns. (Julian

Hibbert, Plutarchus and Theophrastus on Superstition, etc., 1828;

App. Catal. of Works written against Atheism, p. 3; Prosper

Marchand, Lettre sur le Cymbalum Mundi, in éd. Bibliophile

Jacob, 1841, p. 17, note; Prof. Strowski, De Montaigne à Pascal,

1907, p. 138 sq.) Mersenne himself, in the preface to his book,

stultifies his suppressed assertion by declaring that the impious

in Paris boast falsely of their number, which is really small,

unless heretics be reckoned as atheists. Garasse, writing against

them, all the while professed to know only five atheists, three

of them Italians (Strowski, as cited).

 

 

 

END OF VOL. I.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NOTES

 

 

[1] Cp. Lechler, Geschichte des englischen Deismus, 1841, p. 458;

A. S. Farrar, Critical History of Freethought, 1862, p. 588; Larousse's

Dictionnaire, art. Libre Pensée; Sayous, Les déistes anglais et le

Christianisme, 1882, p. 203.

 

[2] Jesus is made to apply it either to his disciples or to willing

followers in Matt. xvii, 17, where the implication seems to be that

lack of faith alone prevents miraculous cures. So with apistia in

Matt. xiii, 58. In the Epistles, a pagan as such is apistos--e.g.,

1 Cor. vi, 6. Here the Vulgate has infideles: in Matt. xiii, 58,

the word is incredulitatem.

 

[3] Cp. Luke xii, 46; Tit. i, 15; Rev. xxi, 8.

 

[4] In the prologue to the first print of the old (1196) Revelation

of the Monk of Evesham, 1482.

 

[5] Bayle, Dictionnaire, art. Viret, Note D.

 

[6] Essais, liv. iii. ch. 12. Édit. Firmin-Didot, 1882, ii, 518.

 

[7] See F. T. Perrens, Les Libertins en France au xviie Siècle, 1896,

Introd. § 11, for a good general view of the bearings of the word. It

stood at times for simple independence of spirit, apart from religious

freethinking. Thus Madame de Sevigné (Lettre à Mme. de Grignan,

28 juin, 1671) writes: "Je suis libertine, plus que vous."

 

[8] Stähelin, Johannes Calvin, 1863, i, 383 sq.; Perrens as cited,

pp. 5-6; Mosheim, Eccles. Hist., 13 Cent., part ii, ch. v, §§ 9-12,

and notes; 14 Cent., part ii, ch. v, §§ 3-5; 16 Cent., § 3, part ii,

ch. ii. §§ 38-42.

 

[9] A. Bossert, Calvin, 1906. p. 151.

 

[10] Burckhardt, Renaissance in Italy, Eng. tr. ed. 1892, p. 542, note.

 

[11] Answer to Sir T. More, Parker Soc. rep. 1850, pp. 53-54.

 

[12] Controversy with Harding, Parker Soc. rep. of Works, 1845, i, 305.

 

[13] Paradise Lost, i, 582; Samson Agonistes, 221.

 

[14] The New Inn, 1628-9, Act iii. Sc. 2.

 

[15] The New English Dictionary gives instances in 1526 and 1552.

 

[16] If Mr. Froude's transcript of a manuscript can here be relied

on. History, ed. 1870, x, 545. (Ed. 1872, xi, 199.)

 

[17] Four Questions Propounded (pref. to Acts and Monuments).

 

[18] Answer to the Bishop of Winchester, Parker Soc. rep., p. 129.

 

[19] Works, ed. 1850, ii, 752.

 

[20] B. V, ch. i, § 3. Works, i, 429.

 

[21] De civitate Dei, xx, 30, end; xxi, 5, beginn., etc.

 

[22] Religio Medici, 1642, pt. i. §§ 19, 20.

 

[23] Essay II, Of Scepticism and Certainty (rep. of reply to Thomas

White, app. to Scepsis Scientifica in 1665) in Glanvill's collected

Essays on Several Important Subjects in Philosophy and Religion,

1676, pp. 38, 44.

 

[24] Plus Ultra: or, The Progress and Advancement of Knowledge since

the Days of Aristotle, 1668, p. 146.

 

[25] History of the Royal Society, 1667, p. 73. Describing the

beginnings of the Society, Sprat remarks that Oxford had at that time

many members "who had begun a free way of reasoning" (p. 53).

 

[26] Buckle, Introd. to Hist. of Civ. in Eng., 1-vol. ed. p. 211.

 

[27] Sprat, p. 375 (printed as 367).

 

[28] Id., p. 83. The French Academy had the same rule.

 

[29] Some of Sprat's uses of the term have a very general sense, as

when he writes (p. 87) that "Amsterdam is a place of Trade without the

mixture of men of freer thoughts." The latter is an old application,

as in "the free sciences" or "the liberal arts."

 

[30] Cited by Archbishop Trench, The Study of Words, 19th ed., p. 230,

from the Clarendon State Papers, App. Vol. III, p. 40.

 

[31] Art. Rationalismus and Supernaturalismus in Herzog and Plitt's

Real-Encyk. für prot. Theol. und Kirche, 1883. xii, 509.

 

[32] Philosophical Works of Bacon, ed. Ellis and Spedding, iii,

583. See the same saying quoted among the Apophthegms given in