and lively style, the extensive but not always too accurate
erudition, and the somewhat captious and quibbling objections,
are intensely Voltairian. But there is little seriousness about it,
and certainly no kind of rancorous or deep-seated hostility.
With many, however, of Voltaire’s pupils and younger contemporaries
the case was altered. They were distinctively atheists
and anti-supernaturalists. The atheism of Diderot, unquestionably
the greatest of them all, has been keenly debated; but in
the case of Étienne Damilaville (1723–1768), Jacques André
Naigeon (1738–1810), Paul Henri Dietrich, baron d’Holbach,
and others there is no room for doubt. By these persons a
great mass of atheistic and anti-Christian literature was composed
and set afloat. The characteristic work of this school, its last The “System of Nature.”
word indeed, is the famous Système de la nature,
attributed to Holbach (1723–1789), but known to be,
in part at least, the work of Diderot. In this remarkable
work, which caps the climax of the metaphysical
materialism or rather nihilism of the century, the atheistic
position is clearly put. It made an immense sensation; and it so
fluttered not merely the orthodox but the more moderate freethinkers,
that Frederick of Prussia and Voltaire, perhaps the
most singular pair of defenders that orthodoxy ever had, actually
set themselves to refute it. Its style and argument are very
unequal, as books written in collaboration are apt to be, and
especially books in which Diderot, the paragon of inequality,
had a hand. But there is an almost entire absence of the heterogeneous
assemblage of anecdotes, jokes good and bad, scraps of
accurate or inaccurate physical science, and other incongruous
matter with which the Philosophes were wont to stuff their
works; and lastly, there is in the best passages a kind of sombre
grandeur which recalls the manner as well as the matter of
Lucretius. It is perhaps well to repeat, in the case of so notorious
a book, that this criticism is of a purely literary and formal
character; but there is little doubt that the literary merits of
the work considerably assisted its didactic influence. As the
Revolution approached, and the victory of the Philosophe
party was declared, there appeared for a brief space a group of
cynical and accomplished phrase-makers presenting some similarity
to that of which, a hundred years before, Saint-Évremond
was the most prominent figure. The chief of this group were Chamfort. Rivarol.
Nicolas Chamfort (1747–1794) on the republican side,
and Antoine Rivarol (1753–1801) on that of the royalists.
Like the older writer to whom we have compared them,
neither can be said to have produced any one work of eminence,
and in this they stand distinguished from moralists like
La Rochefoucauld. The floating sayings, however, which are
attributed to them, or which occur here and there in their
miscellaneous work, yield in no respect to those of the most
famous of their predecessors in wit and a certain kind of wisdom,
though they are frequently more personal than aphoristic.
18th-Century Moralists and Politicians.—Not the least part, however, of the energy of the period in thought and writing was devoted to questions of a directly moral and political kind. With regard to morality proper the favourite doctrine of the century was what is commonly called the selfish theory, the only one indeed which was suitable to the sensationalism of Condillac and the materialism of Holbach. The pattern book of this Helvétius. doctrine was the De l’esprit of Claude Adrien Helvétius (1715–1771), the most amusing book perhaps which ever pretended to the title of a solemn philosophical treatise. There is some analogy between the principles of this work and those of the Système de la nature. With the inconsistency—some would say with the questionable honesty—which distinguished the more famous members of the Philosophe party when their disciples spoke with what they considered imprudent outspokenness, Voltaire and even Diderot attacked Helvétius as the former afterwards attacked Holbach. But whatever may be the general value of De l’esprit, it is full of acuteness, though Thomas. that acuteness is as desultory and disjointed as its style. As Helvétius may be taken as the representative author of the cynical school, so perhaps Alexandre Gérard Thomas (1732–1785) may be taken as representative of the votaries of noble sentiment to whom we have also alluded. The works of Thomas chiefly took the form of academic éloges or formal panegyrics, and they have all the defects, both in manner and substance, which are associated with that style. Of yet a third school, corresponding in form to La Rochefoucauld and La Bruyère, and possessed of some of the antique vigour of preceding centuries, was Luc de Clapiers, marquis de Vauvenargues. Vauvenargues (1715–1747). This writer, who died very young, has produced maxims and reflections of considerable mental force and literary finish. From Voltaire downwards it has been usual to compare him with Pascal, from whom he is chiefly distinguished by a striking but somewhat empty stoicism. Between the moralists, of whom we have taken these three as examples, and the politicians may be placed Rousseau, who in his novels and miscellaneous works is of the first class, in his famous Contrat social of the second. All his theories, whatever their originality and whatever their value, were made novel and influential by the force of their statement and the literary beauties of its form. Of direct and avowed political writings there were few during the century, and none of anything like the importance of the Contrat social, theoretical acceptance of the established French constitution being a point of necessity with all Frenchmen. Nevertheless it may be said that almost the whole of the voluminous writings of the Philosophes, even of those who, like Voltaire, were sincerely aristocratic and monarchic in predilection, were of more or less veiled political significance. There was one branch of political writing, moreover, which could be indulged in without much fear. Political economy and administrative theories received much attention. The earliest writer of eminence on these subjects was the great engineer Sébastien le Prestre, marquis de Vauban (1633–1707), whose Oisivetés and Dîme royale exhibit both great ability and extensive observation. A more utopian economist of the same time was Charles Irénée Castel, abbé de Saint-Pierre (1658–1743), not to be confounded with the author of Paul et Virginie. Soon political economy in the hands of François Quesnay (1694–1774) took a regular form, and towards the middle of the century a great number of works on questions connected with it, especially that of free trade in corn, on which Ferdinand Galiani (1728–1787), André Morellet (1727–1819), both abbés, and above all Turgot, distinguished themselves. Of writers on legal subjects and of the legal profession, the century, though not less fertile than in other directions, produced few or none of any great importance from the literary point of view. The chief name which in this connexion is known is that of Chancellor Henri François d’Aguesseau (1668–1751), at the beginning of the century, an estimable writer of the Port Royal school, who took the orthodox side in the great disputes of the time, but failed to display any great ability therein. He was, as became his profession, more remarkable as an orator than a writer, and his works contain valuable testimonies to the especially perturbed and unquiet condition of his century—a disquiet which is perhaps also its chief literary note. There were other French magistrates, such as Montesquieu, Hénault (1685–1770), de Brosses (1706–1773) and others, who made considerable mark in literature; but it was usually (except in the case of Montesquieu) in subjects not even indirectly connected with their profession. The Esprit des lois stands alone; but as an example of work barristerial in kind, famous partly for political reasons but of some real literary merit, we may mention the Mémoire for Calas written by J. B. J. Élie de Beaumont (1732–1786).
18th-century Criticism and Periodical Literature.—We have said that literary criticism assumes in this century a sufficient importance to be treated under a separate heading. Contributions were made to it of many different kinds and from many different points of view. Periodical literature, the chief stimulus to its production, began more and more to come into favour. Even in the 17th century the Journal des savants, the Jesuit Journal de Trévoux, and other publications had set the example of different kinds of it. Just before the Revolution the Gazette de France was in the hands of J. B. A. Suard (1734–1817), a man who was nothing if not a literary critic. Perhaps, however, the most
