Revolution and the Republic

by Jeremy Jennings

  beneficent truths would again become visible.

  Nevertheless, as the century wore on, the expression of irreligious and materialist

  sentiments became increasingly common, many writers going beyond deism to

  voice a radical scepticism about the existence of God. These included such

  influential figures as Diderot, La Mettrie, Helvétius, and the baron d’Holbach.

  La Mettrie’s notorious L’Homme machine of 1747, for example, simply maintained

  that all our ideas and sentiments resulted from the self-motivated movement of

  matter. Accordingly, there was no substantial difference between men and animals

  and it was a mistake to talk of the immateriality of the soul. For his part, Helvétius

  argued in De l’Esprit of 1758 that man was primarily motivated by a desire to avoid

  pain and seek pleasure. The supreme law of his nature was that of self-interest.

  These atheistic conclusions were bolstered by the discoveries of natural scientists

  such as Buffon which challenged the biblical chronology described in the book of

  37 Bayle (1647–1706) was of the contrary view, maintaining that faith stood alone unaided by

  reason. Bayle’s masterwork was his Dictionnaire historique et critique of 1697. Selections can be found

  in English translation in Bayle, Political Writings (Cambridge, 2000).

  38 Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws (Cambridge, 1989). See books 24 and 25, where

  Montesquieu not only refutes what he terms ‘Bayle’s paradox’ but also establishes the superiority of

  Christianity over Islam.

  39 Ibid. 460.

  40 Voltaire, Essai sur les mœurs et l’esprit des nations (1963), i. 832.

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  Religion, Enlightenment, and Reaction

  Genesis. All the evidence suggested that human life evolved first in the sea. And so,

  over time, enlightened opinion increasingly dispensed with the notion of a distant

  but purposeful deity and came to adopt what was often a thinly disguised atheistic

  monism. Armed with a sensationalist epistemology introduced by Condillac, the

  parti philosophique (as it came to be known by mid-century) dismissed divine

  revelation and commandment as a guide to morality and set about the difficult

  task of providing a purely secular and non-transcendental basis to ethics. No longer

  was society to be held together by the threat of divine punishment and retribution.

  The chosen vehicle for this campaign was to be the Encyclopédie, seventeen

  volumes of which were published between 1751 and 1772. Its ambition, in the

  words of its editor, Denis Diderot, was nothing less than to assemble all ‘the

  knowledge scattered across the earth’ in order that ‘our descendants, in becoming

  better informed, may be at the same time more virtuous and content’. Such a

  project, Diderot avowed, could only be undertaken in ‘a philosophic age’ and by ‘a

  society of men of letters’ joined together in the name of ‘the general interests of

  humanity’. Everything was to be examined and investigated, without hesitation or

  exception, free from the yoke of authority and precedent.41 From this vast enter-

  prise was to be excluded any reliance upon organized religion and a providential

  God. Whether Diderot and his collaborators merited Rousseau’s description of

  them as ‘ardent missionaries of atheism’ is not clear, but when religion did find a

  place in the Encyclopédie, it was largely intended to expose outworn and ridiculous

  opinions. The entry on cannibalism, for example, cross-referenced the reader to

  articles on the Eucharist and Holy Communion. The article on consecrated bread

  estimated the huge cost of providing wafers for the celebration of the sacraments

  and suggested that the money would be better spent in feeding the poor.42

  Consequently, the philosophic spirit came to be seen as a concerted and relentless

  assault upon Christian values and the Holy Church. And, to the extent that the

  Revolution came to be seen as the vehicle and expression of a godless philosophy, it

  too was imagined to be anti-Christian.43

  No one gave clearer or stronger voice to the possibilities of a radiant future

  without the Christian religion than the ill-fated Marie-Jean-Nicolas Caritat de

  Condorcet.44 As he hid beneath the shadow of the guillotine, Condorcet sketched

  out a plan for the indefinite progress of mankind of unrivalled optimism. The

  purpose of his Esquisse d’un tableau historique des progrès de l’esprit humain, he

  declared, was to show that ‘Nature has set no term to the perfection of the human

  faculties; that the perfectibility of man is truly infinite; and that the progress of this

  perfectibility. . . . has no other limit that the duration of the globe upon which

  41 Diderot, ‘Encyclopédie’, in John Hope Mason and Robert Wokler (eds.), Denis Diderot: Political

  Writings (Cambridge, 1992), 21–7.

  42 See Joseph Edmund Barker, Diderot’s Treatment of the Christian Religion in the Encyclopédie

  (New York, 1941).

  43 See Nigel Aston, Religion and the Revolution in France 1780–1804 (Houndmills, 2000), 81–99.

  44 See Keith Michael Baker, Condorcet: From Natural Philosophy to Social Mathematics (Chicago,

  1975).

  Religion, Enlightenment, and Reaction

  307

  nature has cast us.’45 Whilst this progress might vary in speed, it could never be

  permanently reversed. Moreover, the progress of knowledge was indissolubly linked

  to that of liberty, virtue, and the rights of man.

  Within this ten-stage chronology of human development, organized religion

  unambiguously figured as one of those ‘widespread errors which have somewhat

  retarded or suspended the progress of reason and which have, as often as political

  events, even caused man to fall back into ignorance’.46 The art of deceiving men,

  Condorcet suggested, was established early and there soon emerged a class of men

  expert in the mysteries of religion and the practices of superstition. They sought

  truth in order to propagate error. They exploited the vices of ordinary language to

  play upon the meanings of words and to confuse. Christianity was no exception to

  this rule. Its triumph, Condorcet wrote, ‘was the signal for the complete decadence

  of philosophy and the sciences’.47 The human mind went into dramatic decline.

  ‘Man’s only achievements’, he added, ‘were theological day-dreams and supersti-

  tious impostures; his only morality was religious intolerance.’48

  Yet, Condorcet argued, the priests were powerless to prevent the spread of the

  spirit of liberty and of free inquiry. Little by little, and in face of relentless

  persecution meted out by ‘armies of fanatics’, the human mind gradually recovered

  its strength and energy. The moral depravity and scandalous greed of the priests

  could no longer be hidden beneath the mask of hypocrisy. Over time, ‘men of good

  sense’ came to see that all religions were incapable of combating the vices and

  passions of mankind. The practice of writing in Latin declined and the use of the

  vernacular spread, further reducing the domination of the priests. Philosophy and

  science now shook off the yoke of authority and reason moved towards its ‘moment

  of liberation’. The key figures here for Condorcet were Bacon, Galileo, and

  Descartes. They demonstrated that, if ‘the human
mind was not yet free, it was

  formed to be so’.49 Next came the discovery that man was ‘a sentient being, capable

  of reasoning and acquiring moral ideas’.50 From this, it had been possible to

  ‘deduce’ the true rights of man and to conclude that ‘the maintenance of these

  rights was the sole object for which men came together in political societies’.51 The

  world could no longer be divided into those born to obey and those born to rule.

  It was at this moment that John Locke made his decisive contribution to the

  progress of human knowledge. ‘At last’, Condorcet wrote, ‘Locke seized the thread

  by which [philosophy] was to be guided: he showed that an exact and precise

  analysis of ideas, by reducing them step by step to other ideas of more immediate

  origin or of simpler composition, was the only means of avoiding being lost in the

  chaos of incomplete, incoherent and indeterminate notions which chance has

  presented to us randomly and which we have accepted unthinkingly.’52 Locke, in

  short, was the first philosopher to establish the nature of the truths we could come

  to know and the objects that we could comprehend, and his method was quickly

  adopted by all philosophers. Not only this, but this same method destroyed the

  45 Condorcet, Esquisse d’un tableau historique des progrès de l’esprit humain (1795), 4.

  46 Ibid. 15.

  47 Ibid. 136.

  48 Ibid. 144.

  49 Ibid. 231.

  50 Ibid. 240.

  51 Ibid.

  52 Ibid. 249–50.

  308

  Religion, Enlightenment, and Reaction

  prejudices of the masses and taught them that they were not forever condemned to

  accept their opinions from others. There emerged then a new philosophy, trans-

  ported across Europe by ‘the almost universal French language’, and which became

  a ‘common faith’ guiding public opinion. Preached by a ‘solid phalanx’ of philo-

  sophers united against all forms of error and tyranny, at its core was a belief in

  ‘reason, toleration, and humanity’.53 Such, Condorcet proclaimed, was the new

  philosophy and such, he implied, was the philosophy that was to inspire the French

  Revolution. A great revolution, he believed, was simply inevitable.

  Whatever the explanation, Condorcet’s optimism proved unfounded and the

  policies pursued by the Revolution towards the Church proved to be an abject

  failure as well as a political disaster.54 After an initial move towards religious

  toleration, the attempt to institute the Civil Constitution of the Clergy led not

  only to schism with the papacy but also proved to be the point at which Louis XVI

  resolved that no further compromises could be made. The effect was to divide

  the country and to radicalize the Revolution, leading ultimately to what amounted

  to a veritable war against Christianity and those who stubbornly persisted in the

  maintenance of their faith.55 With the fall of the Jacobins, the campaign of

  de-Christianization eased but the hostility remained. Indeed, it continued under

  the Directory, where the Thermidorian leaders showed no enthusiasm to repeal

  existing legislation directed against the Church or to allow the public expression

  of religious worship. In line with the policy of neutrality in religious matters so

  admired by Aulard, state funding of the Church was withdrawn. The armies of the

  Directory carried these reforms with them across Europe, looting churches as they

  went and banning the celebration of religious ceremonies. After the fall of Rome

  in 1798, Pope Pius VI was imprisoned in Valance (where he remained until his

  death a year later). Yet, as Aulard had also observed, the period of the Directory saw

  a marked religious revival, and one fuelled by popular sentiment. Priests came back

  to France and the laity (often unaided by the clergy) did their utmost to resurrect

  the frequently archaic religious practices and public rituals of the ancien régime.

  Pilgrimages and the celebration of saints’ day festivals made their return.56

  Faced with this unexpected resurgence and convinced of a continuing incom-

  patibility between Catholicism and the Revolution, the leaders of the Directory

  renewed their efforts to instil a republican culture among the French population.

  Civic education was to be fostered by a new set of republican festivals, the culte

  décadaire, replete with its own secular catechisms and covering everything from

  birth and marriage to the seasons and the founding moments of the Republic.57

  The government also promoted a new religion: theophilanthropy. Described by

  53 Condorcet, Esquisse d’un tableau historique des progrès de l’esprit humain (1795), 259.

  54 See John McManners, The French Revolution and the Church (London, 1969).

  55 See Aston, Religion and the Revolution, 122–276.

  56 See Suzanne Desan, Reclaiming the Sacred: Lay Religion and Popular Politics in Revolutionary

  France (Ithaca, NY, 1990); Desan, ‘The French Revolution and Religion, 1795–1815’, in Brown and

  Tackett, Cambridge History of Christianity, vii. 556–64; and Aston, Religion and the Revolution,

  279–315.

  57 See Mona Ozouf, Festivals and the French Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1988), 106–283.

  Religion, Enlightenment, and Reaction

  309

  Nigel Aston as ‘the crankiest religious manifestation of the 1790s’,58 this amounted

  to an eclectic mix of moral teachings drawn from the world’s religions and the

  histories of ancient republics served up as a reconstituted, lukewarm deism.59 The

  doctrine of original sin was explicitly denied and its creed was to be one of extreme

  simplicity: there was to be no dressing up in priestly costumes and temples were to

  be austere. Above all, the purpose of theophilanthropy was to enhance the civic

  commitment of the population. Apart from a few misguided writers and poets, few

  people took it (or the new festivals) seriously, although many people were no doubt

  either bemused or annoyed by official attempts to ban fish markets on Fridays.

  Of far greater significance was the establishment in 1795 of the Institut National

  des Sciences et des Arts. If the name had been invented by Talleyrand, the

  pedagogical blueprint for this project had been set out by the Marquis de Con-

  dorcet in 1792. Intended to replace the learned academies of the ancien régime, all

  of which had been abolished in 1793, the second of its three classes was designated

  as the ‘Classe des Sciences morales et politiques’. The first and third classes were to

  be devoted to the physical and mathematical sciences and to literature and the fine

  arts respectively. The second class was itself subdivided into six sections: the analysis

  of sensations and ideas; ethics; social science and legislation; political economy;

  history; and geography. The establishment of the Institut was directly linked to

  plans to found a national scheme of public and secular education.

  If members of the Idéologue circle did not constitute the majority of the second

  class, they certainly were a vocal minority, being both disproportionately active

  in its deliberations and providing its most coherent intellectual programme.60 No

  one more than they could claim to be the intellectual descendants of Helvétius,

  Condillac, and Condorcet and no one dis
played a greater commitment to the

  development of a science of morals than the two most prominent members of the

  circle, Destutt de Tracy and Pierre Cabanis.61 The moralist and the doctor,

  Cabanis ventured in his Rapports du physique et du moral de l’homme,62 had an

  equal interest in the study of man as a physical mechanism. Physical sensitivity, he

  concluded, was the source of all the ideas and habits that made up the mental and

  moral existence of man.

  As we have seen, the primary purpose of idéologie was to purge our moral and

  political concepts of the unsound and disordered accretions of the past, a task

  achieved through the decomposition of complex ideas into their simplest elements.

  The intellectual possibilities and practical applications of this new analytical science

  appeared almost limitless.63 Its end result would be the perfection and the

  58 Aston, Religion and the Revolution, 280.

  59 The best study remains Albert Mathiez, La Théophilanthropie et le Culte Décadaire 1796–1801:

  Essai sur l’histoire religieuse de la Révolution (1904).

  60 See Martin S. Staum, Minerva’s Message: Stabilizing the French Revolution (Montreal and Kingston,

  1996), 33–55.

  61 See Martin S. Staum, Cabanis: Enlightenment and Medical Philosophy in the French Revolution

  (Princeton, NJ, 1980).

  62 Cabanis, Rapports du physique et du moral de l’homme (1830), i. 5–20. This work consisted of

  twelve memoirs written between 1796 and 1802.

  63 See Cabanis, Du Degré de certitude de la médecine (1798), 2–8.

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  Religion, Enlightenment, and Reaction

  happiness of man. This was so because the moral and political sciences could

  achieve the same level of certainty as the physical sciences and, upon this basis,

  society could be reformed without fear of descent into anarchy. Beginning with an

  analysis of the self and our sensations, idéologie, as set out by Destutt de Tracy

  himself, would first explore grammar (the science of communicating ideas), then

  logic (the science of discovering new truths), before moving on to investigate

  education, morality, and, ultimately, politics. From the perspective of a unified

  scientific method, therefore, it was idéologie, and not religion or the accidental

  opinions of an earlier age, which would be our infallible guide. Philosophers and