The Crisis of the European Mind 1680-1715

by Paul Hazard

  In England, a political discussion was going on: who was to succeed to the throne when Queen Anne departed this life? Toland in his Anglia libera (1701) definitely plumped for the House of Hanover. England must never risk falling under the Papal yoke again; she must safeguard her political freedom, immeasurably the most precious of all her national assets. Such sentiments, we may well imagine, were by no means disagreeable to Hanoverian ears. John Toland became a political agent in the pay of the government. He was continually starting off on confidential missions to somewhere or other abroad. He was to be seen in Berlin, Hanover, Düsseldorf, Vienna, Prague, The Hague. Sophia Charlotte, Queen of Prussia, the same lady that had asked Leibniz to explain the fundamental cause of things, questioned this queer looking gentleman about his philosophy, involving him in arguments with the learned men and Biblical scholars in her entourage. It was thus that he came to address to her his Letters to Serena (1704) which contain, perhaps, the pith and marrow of his ideas.

  He assured her that belief in the immortality of the soul was not an exclusively Christian doctrine. According to him, it was of pagan origin, and the Egyptians had been the first to profess it. Belief in a personal God, he further explained, was the fruit of idolatry; mankind had decreed divine honours to beings of their own species, built temples to them, raised altars, erected statues, and instituted a priestly and sacrificial order. At a very early date, the people were encouraged to look on God as a being closely resembling their own rulers and that is how it was that God came to be regarded as capricious, changeful, jealous, revengeful and despotic. There is nothing new about these ideas; we have heard them all before, and we need not dilate upon them here. As far as his ideas went, Toland, whose writings were designed with the express purpose of refuting Spinoza, was none the less influenced by him; indeed, it was he and none other who first gave currency to the word pantheist. He did not look very closely into things, and a few contradictions caused him no very serious embarrassment.

  Yet how thoroughly is our second impression of him borne out. What vehemence! What a tempest of anti-religious fury! No sooner does he come to touch on the subject of “superstition”, than he flares up and flies into an ungovernable rage. What he calls our “prejudice” is, he tells us, in our very flesh and blood. He sees it everywhere; indeed he sees nothing else; the thing is an obsession with him. From the moment of our birth, “le prèjugé” lies in wait for us:

  The very midwife hands us into the world with superstitious ceremonys, and the good women assisting at the labor have a thousand spells to avert the misfortune, or to procure the happiness of the infant; making several ridiculous observations, to discover the omen of his future state of life. Nor is the priest in some places behind-hand with these gossips, to initiate him betimes into his service, by pronouncing certain forms of words as so many powerful charms, and using the gentle symbols of salt or oil, or the severer applications of iron or fire, or by marking him after some other manner, as his own right and property for the future.[27]

  As the child grows up, the effect of these superstitions grows with it. His nurses tell him stories about werewolves: the servants tell him fairy-tales; his schoolmasters talk to him of Genii, of Nymphs, of Satyrs, Metamorphoses and all manner of other strange or miraculous things. They make him read the poets, fabulists and orators, all of them adepts in the art of lying. When they go up to the university they get no better, no wiser. Their teachers, who have to do what the law tells them, are neither free nor sincere. “The Universities are positive hot-beds of superstition . . .”

  All our life long, superstitions are on the watch to lead us astray, and when death draws near, it is still from superstition that we gain our hopes, from superstition that we draw our fears. But he, Toland, has none of these superstitious ideas. His business in life is to combat them in others; that is what he was born for; in him is the truth. He never had the faintest doubt about that. His vanity, his intrepidity, his ferocious energy find expression even in the words he composed for his epitaph: Here lies John Toland who was born in Ireland, near Londonderry, and in his youth studied in Scotland, in Ireland and at Oxford. Having visited Germany more than once, he passed his adult years in the neighbourhood of London. He cultivated the various literatures, and was acquainted with more than ten languages. The Champion of Truth, the Defender of Liberty, he bound himself to no man, on no man did he fawn. Neither threats nor misfortunes deterred him from his appointed course, which he pursued to the very end, always subordinating his own interest to the pursuit of the Good. His soul is united with the Heavenly Father, from whom he first proceeded. Beyond all doubt he will live again unto all eternity, yet never will there be another Toland. He was born on the 30th November: for the rest consult his writings.

  Such were the Rationalists.

  Dragging along behind them companions as different from the main body as Malebranche, who followed them reluctantly, protesting all the while, they set forth on the long trail, to regions where evidence, and logic, and order were to reign supreme. Any obstacles that got in their way, well, they just had to be removed. They began to play the critic: Siamo nel secolo dei censuristi; we live it seems in a fault-finding age.[28] They were always attacking something or other. They condemned all slavish submission, apathetic acquiescence, any sort of sham or absurdity. Once more they set themselves the task, the ever needful task, of freeing us not only from error, but also from cowardice. When they argued that they were doing a good turn to the believers themselves by forcing them to give reasons for their beliefs instead of passively accepting them, they were, in a way, not so very wide of the mark. They deserved respect for their sincerity, their courage and their daring. It was no primrose path that they had chosen, but a very thorny one on which they well knew the difficulties they would have to encounter from the start. They had not got the big battalions to back them, nor the influence of the powers that be; they were, on the contrary, but an inconsiderable minority, and knew they had no one to rely on but themselves. “The trouble one has to take in looking for the truth with one’s own eyes is mighty indeed when one reflects how easy it is to be one of the blind following the blind.”[29] “The longer error has held sway, the more pluck it takes to attack it.” “I must say that it causes much less fuss to combat errors before they have had a chance to take root in the minds of men in general, than it does when time has conferred on them a sort of sacrosanctity. But there is no statute of limitations where truth is concerned, and it would be wrong to let it remain perpetually buried in oblivion on the grounds that no one had ever recognized it.”[30] The trouble they went to, the scandal they provoked, they regarded as a measure alike of the need, and of the greatness of their mission. “I think far more highly of a man who swims against a rushing tide than of one who lets himself be carried unresistingly along with the current. Similarly, my opinion of a man who thinks things out for himself and who, on occasion, makes a stand against some general view, however long established, is infinitely higher than it is of people who take their ideas from their ancestors, and who cling to them for no other reason than their antiquity or their lofty lineage.”[31] The thing to note, however, is that these champions of reason were displaying just as much of the dictatorial spirit as the most imperious of their religious antagonists, whom they held in such detestation. They never thought of asking themselves how it was that countless generations of Jews, Mohammedans and Christians had had recourse to prayer; never paused to enquire whether these people had nourished in their hearts a religious fire that nothing could extinguish. They had simplified the problem, as they thought, and deemed that they had said the last word when they brought in such terms as “Prejudice” and “Superstition”. They never stopped to enquire whether, in those very terms prejudice and superstition justly so called, they were not including beliefs that were at once lawful and necessary. Hasty, presumptuous, they likened history to a huge sheet of paper covered all over with creases. Those creases had to be ironed out, and the sheet rest
ored to its pristine smoothness; that was all; as if it were an easy thing to do; as if it could be done at all; as if, in the long course of our immemorial pilgrimage, man had done nothing but pile error upon error. They had eyes for the crimes and aberrations of mankind, they had none for their deeds of heroism and devotion; they forgot all about the saints and the martyrs. They assumed in their pride that they had laid bare the whole truth; that they had kindled the light that should make the shadows flee away and dispel the darkness, so that in the last resort they made a god of man himself. “By obeying reason we depend on no one but ourselves and so, in a sense, we, too, become as gods.”[32]

  [1]François Bernier et N. Boileau Despréaux, Requête des maîtres es arts . . . 1671.

  [2]Petri Gassendi Disquisitio metaphysica, seu dubitationes et instantiae adversus Renati Cartesii metaphysicam, et responsa. Amstelodami, 1644.

  [3]All dies in us when we come to die; death leaves nothing behind and is nothing itself; of the short time we have to live, it is but the final moment. Fear no more, and hope no more about what follows after. Let the fear of annihilation, or the hope of living again in that sombre future mislead you no more. Your state when life is ended will be even as it was before your life began. We are the prey of all-devouring time. Nature is for ever calling us back to chaos, satisfying, at our expense, her never-ending love of change. As she gave us all, even so she takes all away. The doom of death balances the happy hour of birth, and man dies wholly, even as he was born.

  Adapted from the chorus of the second act of Seneca’s Phoenissae, Miscellaneous Works, 1670; quoted by Frédéric Lachèvre, Les œuvres de Jean Dehénault, 1922, p. 27.

  [4]Loved by more than one king, dear to more than one lady, he felt but little pride and little of love’s flame. To do some writing, to eat well, for these he had a two-fold talent. He was passionately fond of life, knew little of God, and nothing of his soul.

  [5]An uncertain mixture of mind and matter causes us to live with too much or too little light to have any true notion of our good and ill. Change the dubious state in which you keep us, Nature, and either raise us to the brightness of the angels, or lower us to the level of mere animals.

  Quoted by A. M. Schmidt, Saint-Évremond ou l’humaniste impur, 1932, p. 141.

  [6]In 1706, vol. IX.

  [7]Gustave Cohen, Le Séjour de Saint-Évremond en Hollande et l’entrée de Spinoza dans le Champ de la pensée française, 1926. Dehénault undertook the journey to Holland for the express purpose of meeting Spinoza. He was a man of brains and learning, taking his pleasures with taste and refinement and his grosser indulgencies with a certain amount of delicacy and art. But he suffered under the greatest handicap a man could possibly have: he plumed himself on his atheism, he bragged about it, and flaunted it abroad with detestable flamboyance and affectation. He had elaborated three separate theories about the immortality of the soul and went to Holland on purpose to propound them to Spinoza who, however, formed no great opinion of his learning. (Dubos to Bayle, 27 April, 1696; in Choix de la Correspondance de Pierre Bayle, by E. Gigas, 1890.)

  [8]To reply to your songs it would be necessary to borrow a few arguments from Nature as described by Lucretius or Epicurus; but as touching the divine essence I hate their temerity, I only like their teaching when they treat of Pleasure. I follow that triumphant attraction, that sweet inclination of my soul which Nature with a stroke of fire engraved in the depths of my heart. In a state of blessed acquiescence I give ear to all my desires; I believe that wisdom tells us to follow the path of pleasure.

  [9]Pierre Bayle, Dictionnaire, article Arcesilas: “The real principles which regulate our moral conduct have so little to do with the speculative conclusions we form regarding the nature of things, that nothing is more common than to see orthodox Christians living evil lives and freethinkers living good ones.”

  [10]Pierre Bayle, Pensées sur la Comète, § CXXXIX.

  [11]Historia Rationis, author D.P.D.J.U.D. (P. Collet), 1685, Art. XIII, p. 107.

  [12]Menéndez y Pelayo, Historia de las ideas esteticas, Siglo XVIII. Introdución.

  [13]Praelectio de Matheseos usu in theologia habita a Jb. Jacobo Scheuchzero. Med. D. Math. P., Tiguri, 1711.

  [14]Nouvelles de la République des Lettres, Nov. 1684, Art. I.

  [15]G. Lanson, Etudes d’bistoire littéraire, 1930.

  [16]Jurieu, L’esprit de M. Arnauld, 1684, p. 78.

  [17]L. A. Caraccioli, Dialogue entre le siècle de Louis XIV et le siècle de Louis XV, 1751, p. 39.

  [18]Réponse aux questions d’un provincial, vol. III, ch. CLI.

  [19]De tribus impostoribus magnis liber, cura editus Christiani Kortholti, S. Theo. D. et Professoris Primarii, Kilonii, 1680.

  [20]Léon Brunschvicg, Spinoza et ses contemporains, 3rd edn., 1923, p. 105.

  [21]Ethics, part II, Of the soul.

  [22]Ethics, part V, Of the Soul’s Freedom.

  [23]Léon Brunschvicg, loc. cit., chap XIV, p. 150.

  [24]Léon Brunschvicg, Le progrès de la conscience dans la philosophie occidentale, 1927, p. 188.

  [25]Bayle, Dictionnaire, article Spinoza.

  [26]Bayle, Dictionnaire, article Spinoza.

  [27]First letter to Serena.

  [28]Gregorio Leti, Il Teatro britannico, 1684, Preface; Aaron Hill, The Ottoman Empire, 1709, Preface.

  [29]Claude Gilbert, Histoire de Caléjava, 1700, p. 35.

  [30]Pierre Bayle, Pensées diverses . . . à l’occasion de la comète, 1683.

  [31]Tyssot de Patot, Voyages et aventures de Jacques Massé , pp. 28-29.

  [32]Claude Gilbert, Histoire de Caléjava, p. 57.

  II

  MIRACLES DENIED: COMETS, ORACLES AND SORCERERS

  MIRACLES, rudely violating the laws of Nature; miracles with their grandiose pretensions—they were the enemy par excellence. Miracles bedazzled the multitude, and it was the multitude, people in general, religious folk who went to church to say their prayers, the women, these it was that the rationalists sought to convince, to win over.

  Miracles—yes; but they had to tread warily. Impossible to risk a frontal attack. Nevertheless, it was open to them to single out some particular form of superstition; and there were plenty to choose from. They therefore proceeded to assail some more or less obvious popular delusion, showing how absurd it was, and how harmful. They dug down to the bed-rock origin of such errors—authority, general consent, custom; and as it was authority, general consent and custom that bolstered up belief in miracles, they contrived to return to their main objective by this circuitous route. The attack falls into three separate stages.

  Journal des Savants, Monday, 1st January, 1681:

  “Everybody is talking about the comet, and there is no doubt that the comet is the outstanding event of the early part of the year. The astronomers are busy charting its course, and everyone says it portends all manner of disasters. . . .”

  This was a reference to a comet that made its appearance in December, 1680. It was followed by others in the ensuing years. All this was the signal for a recrudescence of an old controversy, which this time, however, took on quite a different tone.

  Comets are a danger in themselves, said some. They consist of a mass of gaseous exhalations given off by the earth. When these exhalations catch fire, it betokens some major disturbance of the elements, and some notable upheaval invariably follows. That is precisely what the old-fashioned philosophers used to say, said the other side, but nowadays we know better; we know that these comets are just ordinary celestial bodies, and that our earth has nothing whatever to fear from them.

  Comets are portents, said the credulous, warnings from above of the coming of some great retribution which mankind have brought upon themselves. When comets appear, woe unto them who repent not of their sins. Remember that throughout the ages their appearance has ever been the precursor of dire events to follow; kings foully done to death, earthquakes, wars, pestilence, and famine. Weep, then, and pray. Crime has reached its peak,
God is declaring His wrath, and sends forth these messengers from heaven.

  “Are we such important folk as all that?” ask the others. “So important as to imagine that the heavenly powers should go out of their way on purpose to send us a comet?” Look where we will, we can discover nothing to support the popular belief, nothing in what learned men have to say about the matter, nothing in Holy Writ to warrant us in adopting such a conclusion. What are comets but unusually beautiful stars, jewels of the sky? Suppose, if you like, that a comet is a collection of nebulous vapours, why should we regard it as an omen? Could a wholly material body, devoid alike of thought and feeling, give us any inkling of the shape of things to come? Comets obey the laws of nature as laid down by God, laws whose harmonious working no taint of original sin has ever marred. Comets obey those laws; they do not change them. O vis superstitionis, quantos motus, quantas tempestates in illorum animis excitas, quos oppresisti! O mighty superstition, what troubles, what tempests thou stirrest up in the minds of those whom thou hast enslaved!

  Here Bayle intervenes,[1] analysing the difficulties one by one, in due order. On what, I ask you, does the belief that comets are the sign, nay, more than the sign, the cause, of disaster repose? On what the poets, those professional purveyors of falsehood, have to tell us? On the authority of the chroniclers of strange events? On astrology, the world’s supreme absurdity? The fact is, the belief has no logical foundation at all. Even if it were established that comets have always been followed by a series of disasters, that would be no ground for saying that they were either the sign or the cause thereof: “Unless, of course, you are prepared to allow that, because a woman cannot look out of a window in the rue Saint-Honoré without seeing a lot of carriages go by, she has a right to assume that she is the cause of the phenomenon; or at any rate that her appearance at the window ought to warn her neighbours that carriages would soon be going by . . .” In point of fact—and facts duly authenticated are, or should be, the sole criteria in these matters—it is not true that the years immediately following the appearance of a comet have been specially fruitful of disaster. There have been comets without disasters, and disasters without comets. To discern a sequence of cause and effect in what is merely a fortuitous coincidence, is an abuse of common sense; to affirm that such a sequence occurred when it did no such thing, is downright lying. Leave the comets to mind their own business. They have no concern with men. Only conceit, stupidity, or mental inertia, all potent allies of error, could ever lead us to imagine that we are of any interest to them.