Ideas

by Peter Watson

  Then, in 1753, Jean Astruc, a French doctor with an interest in biblical studies, argued that Genesis was actually the fruit of two basic documents that had been amalgamated, or intertwined. He said that there is one source which describes God as ‘Elohim’ and a second source which refers to God as ‘Jehovah’. These came to be known, and are still accepted, as the E and J sources.79 Astruc was followed by a German, Karl David Ilgen, who argued that, in fact, there are nearly twenty documents that make up Genesis, assembled by three groups of writers. This is essentially the view that still prevails.* Thomas Burnet, in his Archaeologiae and Theory of the Visible World (1736), calculated the amount of water that fell in the forty days of the flood. He found it insufficient by a long way to drown the earth, and to inundate the highest mountains.81 His calculations were later incorporated into Thomas Browne’s massive attack on miracles.82

  This obsession with the accuracy of the Bible brought with it a new examination of the age of the earth. In the Judaeo/Christian view human history was reckoned to have begun with Adam. The Jewish chronology calculated that the Creation had taken place in 3761 BC, but Christians had a more symbolic, and more symmetrical, view. Under their scheme, there would be seven symbolic ages of man, based on the idea, described in Chapter 10, of a cosmic week–seven ages, each lasting a thousand years (see page 235 above, for a more detailed discussion of the cosmic week). This involved Creation taking place in 4000 BC, and assumed that the Christian era would last two thousand years, after which there would be a final millennium. (Luther was one of those who agreed with this scheme; he argued that Noah had lived at 2000 BC.) Various other scholars made their own calculations. Using the genealogies in the Bible, Joseph Justus Scaliger worked out that Creation took place on 23 April 3947 BC, Kepler chose 3992 BC, while Archbishop James Ussher went still further, in his Annals of the Old and New Testament (1650–1653), in which he calculated that the week of Creation began on Sunday, 23 October 4004 BC, and that Adam was created on Friday, 28 October 4004 BC. Finally, John Lightfoot (1602–1675), a rabbinical scholar, added to Ussher’s calculations, working out that Adam was born on Friday, 28 October 4004 BC, at nine o’clock in the morning.83

  Not everyone agreed with Scaliger, Ussher or Lightfoot. As more and more people began to lose faith in the Bible, so the calculations of the earth’s age based on the scriptures lost support also. The scientific discoveries–both here on earth and above, in the heavens–began to suggest that the earth must be a great deal older than it said in the Bible. This realisation was associated with the birth of geology, the main task of which in its early days was to understand that very process by which the earth had formed. One of the early insights stemmed from the study of extinct volcanoes in France, in particular in the Puy de Dôme district (near Clermont-Ferrand).84 This led to the discovery that basalt, a rock found everywhere, was in fact solidified lava. The early geologists gradually realised that layers of basalt had been laid down many years ago (by a process that could still be observed–and measured–today, where there were active volcanoes) and that the deeper layers were very ancient. In the same way, the newly-established geologists observed sedimentary layers, the rate of deposition of which could also be calculated. Those layers were regularly 10,000 feet thick, and sometimes 100,000 feet thick, making it ever clearer that the earth was very ancient indeed. At the same time it was observed that water–streams and rivers–had cut into many layers of rock, revealing that such layers could be folded, twisted, even turned over completely, showing that the planet had a violent history and, again by implication, that it was much older than it said in the Bible. Robert Hooke, at the Royal Society in London (whose journal, Philosophical Transactions, was strangely silent on this, the greatest philosophical question of the day), had observed that fossils, now recognised for what they were, showed animals that no longer existed.85 He therefore put forward the idea that certain species had once flourished on earth and then died out. This too suggested that the earth was older, much older, than the Bible said: these species had come and gone before the scriptures were written.86

  And so, at that stage, although the church regarded any figure that was substantially at variance from 4000 BC as heresy, the French natural historian Georges Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon, in his Les époques de la nature (1779), calculated the age of the earth, first, as 75,000 years, later as 168,000 years, though his private opinion, never published in his lifetime, was that it was nearer half a million years old.87 To sugar this bitter pill for the orthodox, he too recognised seven ‘epochs’: one, when the earth and planets were formed; two, when the great mountain ranges erupted; three, when water covered the mainland; four, when the water subsided and the volcanoes began their activity; five, when the elephants and other tropical animals inhabited the north; six, when the continents were separated from one another (he recognised that the fauna and flora of America and Eurasia were similar and concluded that they must have been connected at one point); and seven, when man appeared. Here too, then, was a remarkably modern set of views, which anticipated both continental drift and evolution.

  The advent of doubt could not but have a major effect on ethical thinking. The supernatural basis for morality had been questioned since the emergence of humanism, in particular in the essays of Montaigne, mentioned earlier in this chapter. But the most specific development during this period, after Montaigne, was the line of thinking that led from Thomas Hobbes through Shaftesbury and Hume to Helvétius and Jeremy Bentham. Hobbes, it is no surprise to learn, argued that man’s ethics, like the rest of his psychology, are based on self-interest. Life, its predicaments and attendant emotions, may be divided into the pleasurable and the painful. Hobbes thought that the conduct of life should be organised around attempts to maximise one’s pleasure while causing the least pain to others. Shaftesbury (and Bayle, for that matter) accepted the implicit notion encased in this view, that religion and morality did not necessarily have anything to do with one another.88 Many people found the separation of religion and morality shocking, but the tide was running. Hume, Helvétius and Holbach all shared what would come to be called a utilitarian view of ethics, that man is essentially hedonistic–pleasure-seeking, but he is also a social animal. The test therefore of any doctrine or policy was, as Helvétius put it in a phrase that became famous, ‘the greatest good for the greatest number’.89 Social well-being, as well as individual happiness, must be taken into account. Bentham (1748–1832) publicised this approach most in what came to be called his ‘felicific calculus’, the core of utilitarian ethics, which assumed that man is a coldly rational animal and that, therefore, the greatest good for the greatest number is an achievable aim for politicians.

  The arguments against God, therefore, not only brought about a decline of faith, in a strictly religious sense, but stimulated a new attitude to history (that the past went back much further than anyone thought), laid the grounding for much of modern science (evolution, continental drift, sociology), for modern economics (Adam Smith’s economic theories, discussed later, in Chapter 26) and for modern politics. ‘The greatest good for the greatest number’ is yet another of those statements/clichés that we take for granted today. But it was unthinkable before scepticism and doubt had brought about the great divorce between religion and morality.

  26

  From Soul to Mind: the Search for the Laws of Human Nature

  To Chapter 26 Notes and References

  In 1726, the French writer Voltaire arrived in England. He was thirty-two and in exile. Not long before, at the Opera in Paris, he had been insulted by an aristocrat, the chevalier de Rohan. ‘M. de Voltaire, M. Arouet [Voltaire’s real name], what’s your name?’ The implication was that Voltaire, in using the ‘de’, was giving himself pretentious airs and graces. Voltaire, never one to duck a fight, shot back: ‘The name I bear is not a great one, but at least I know how to bring it honour.’ A fight nearly broke out there and then, and both men had to be restrained. A few nights later, however
, the chevalier had Voltaire ambushed by six of his men and beaten up. Undaunted, Voltaire challenged the chevalier to a duel, a response so daring and presumptuous that the Rohan clan had him thrown into the Bastille. Voltaire could only regain his freedom by agreeing to leave France. He chose England.1

  This episode, though it didn’t feel like it at the time–to Voltaire at any rate–was fortuitous. The abuse of privilege exercised by the French aristocracy, epitomised by the duel that never was, incensed the writer and, in a sense, his career became a lifelong duel with the authorities. The three years Voltaire spent in England had a profound effect on him and helped shape the views that he would express so well on his return. Voltaire, more than anyone else, was the focus of the set of events which came to be known as the French Enlightenment and though he died a full decade before the French Revolution broke out, it was his ideas, exercising an influence on people like Denis Diderot and Pierre-Augustin de Beaumarchais, that provided one of the intellectual underpinnings for the events of1789.

  During the time that Voltaire spent in England, the most significant episode for him was almost certainly the death of Sir Isaac Newton. An old man of eighty-four, Newton was President of the Royal Society and held in the highest esteem. And it was this that impressed Voltaire, that a man from a modest background, but blessed with great intellectual gifts, could rise so high in society and be so respected by his fellow men, whatever their own background. It contrasted hugely with his own country, ‘just emerging from the shadow of Louis XIV’ and where, as Voltaire’s own predicament showed, the privileges of birth were still paramount. Voltaire’s letters reveal that he was very impressed by the intellectual and political organisation in England, by the status of the Royal Society, the freedom allowed to Englishmen to write whatever they liked, and what he saw as the rational’ system of parliamentary government. In France, the Estates General had not met since 1614, more than a century before, and, though he would never know it, would not meet again until 1789. The death of Newton, while Voltaire was in England, helped to stimulate his interest in the physicist’s discoveries and theories and it was to be Voltaire’s crowning achievement to amalgamate those ideas with the theories of Descartes and John Locke to create his own blend of understanding. According to one anecdote, when he returned to France, and his mistress, his first act (or at least his second) was to teach her the principles of Newton’s theory of motion, involving gravity. His Philosophical Letters Concerning the English was widely praised, though the government, showing that very intolerance and high-handedness which he was criticising, had the book burned as a ‘scandalous work, contrary to religion and morals and to the respect due to the established powers’.2

  What Voltaire did, in essence, was to adapt the Cartesian tradition to the new thinking in Britain, as epitomised by Newton and Locke. Descartes, as a rationalist, started with the more traditional a priori ‘essence of things’, as grasped by intuition, plus the all-important role of doubt. Voltaire adopted the Newtonian system, which gave priority to experience, derived from disinterested observation, and then the principles were deduced afterwards. Most important of all, perhaps, he applied this to human psychology, which is where Locke came in, for he too looked about him, and described what he saw. This is what Voltaire had to say about Locke: ‘After so many speculative gentlemen had formed this romance of the soul, one truly wise man appeared, who has, in the most modest manner imaginable, given us its real history. Mr Locke has laid open to man the anatomy of his own soul, just as some learned anatomists have done that of the body.’3 Voltaire thought that science had shown that the universe was governed by ‘natural laws’ which applied to all men, and that countries–kingdoms, states–should be governed in the same way. This, Voltaire believed, gave men certain ‘natural rights’ and it was this set of core beliefs that would, in the end, give rise to revolutionary doctrine. Impressed by the achievements of Newtonian science, Voltaire became convinced that, through work, religious ideas would eventually be replaced by scientific ones. He insisted that man need no longer lead his life on the basis of atoning for his original sin and that instead he should work to improve his existence here on earth, by reforming the institutions of government, church, education and so on. ‘Work and projects were to take the place of ascetic resignation.’4 A further factor in Voltaire’s importance, at least in France, is that the changes in thinking he recommended coincided with a desire on the part of many people to get rid of the ancien régime. The new thought therefore became a symbol of that desire. Many of the traditional concerns of French philosophy–freedom of the will and the nature of grace–were dismissed by Voltaire and his followers as meaningless; instead they argued that more practical matters were of greater importance.

  In France, this all took place against a background in which protest and discontent were growing. As early as 1691, François de Salignac de la Mothe Fénelon had published his Examination of Conscience for a King and later his Letter to Louis XIV, where he drew a bleak portrait of the so-called Sun King’s realm: ‘Your peoples are dying of hunger. Agriculture is almost at a standstill, all the industries languish, all commerce is destroyed. France is a vast hospital.’5 In 1737 René Louis, marquis d’Argenson, had written Considerations on the Past and Present Government of France, which exposed the abuses and corruption at the heart of the French system. So corrupt that the book couldn’t be published until 1764.

  It was against this background, largely created by Voltaire, that Denis Diderot launched the Encyclopédie. This too was originally an English idea, because at first all that Diderot intended was a translation of Ephraim Chambers’ Cyclopaedia, originally released in Britain in 1728. The idea grew, however, beyond just technical subjects and statistics, to encompass the state of contemporary culture, a comprehensive description and a social and intellectual audit of all France. Diderot’s declared aim was not only to produce a body of knowledge but to deliberately manufacture a change in the way men thought: pour changer la façon commune de penser.6 The publication of the Encyclopédie is itself a chapter in the history of ideas. First appearing in 1751, it took twenty years to appear in full, and was alternately welcomed and suppressed by the censors.7 Financially, it was very profitable for the publishers but Diderot was sent to prison more than once and several plates and articles were confiscated.

  The Encyclopédie first found its feet in the twice-weekly dinners in Baron d’Holbach’s hôtel in the rue Royale Saint-Roche (now 8 rue des Moulins), which became known as a ‘synagogue of atheists’.8 By the end of 1750, eight thousand copies of the prospectus for the Encyclopédie had been prepared: subscribers were to pay sixty livres on account and further sums amounting to 280 livres. Eight volumes, plus two of plates, were promised (though in all twenty-eight volumes were published, and more than 71,000 articles). The first volume, covering the letter A, appeared in June 1751 with its full title: Dictionnaire Raisonné des Sciences, Arts et Métiers, with a ‘Preliminary Discourse’ by Jean Le Rond d’Alembert, in which he explained that the work would serve as both encyclopaedia and dictionary, giving an ‘eagle’s-eye’ view of knowledge that would show ‘the secret routes’ that connected different branches. The discourse described d’Alembert’s view of intellectual progress since the Renaissance, which he pictured as a ‘great chain’ of propositions.9 Of this great chain, he said, ‘humanity has discovered only a very few links’. Indeed, there are only two kinds of certain knowledge, he said, knowledge of our own existence and the truths of mathematics. P. N. Furbank, in his critical biography of Diderot, argues that the Encyclopédie can only be fully understood via its authors’ reactions to the attempts by the authorities to censor articles (for example, cross-referring was intended to direct readers to heretical or even seditious views in unlikely places).10

  The first volume sold well, with the print run raised at the last moment from 1,625 to over 2,000. Later volumes had to contend with the censors but Diderot found a friend in Lamoignon de Malesherbes, the minister
responsible for the book trade, who believed passionately in a free press and who hid manuscripts in his own home–presumably the safest place in all France. This proved Voltaire’s point, of course–in England, as Jacob Bronowski and Bruce Mazlish point out, the book could have been printed untouched, even with much more daring material. But by the early 1760s even the king and Madame de Pompadour came round to the idea of the Encyclopédie.11

  Diderot’s many volumes were, in the end, more influential than, say, Chambers’ Cyclopaedia, which came first, partly because it was a more ambitious project but also because, in the eighteenth century, France was what Norman Hampson has called ‘the cultural dictator’ of Europe. People looked to France as the model and standard of taste in literature, art, architecture and the ancillary arts that had blossomed and even today occupy a special position: furniture, fashion and cuisine. More important still, by now the French language had replaced Latin as the common tongue of aristocratic Europe.12 Even Frederick William I, the very embodiment of the Prussian spirit, spoke better French than German.13