Note 122 — Chapter XVII · FRENCH FREETHOUGHT IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Reading edition
Grimm notices Astruc’s Dissertations sur l’immortalité, l’immaterialité, et la liberté de l’âme, published in 1755 (Corr. i, 438), but not his Conjectures. At his death (1766) he pronounces him “un des hommes les plus decriés de Paris,” “Il passait pour fripon, fourbe, méchant, en un mot pour un très-malhonnête homme.” “Il était violent et emporté, et d’une avarice sordide.” Finally, he died “sans sacremens” after having “fait le dévot” and attached himself to the Jesuits in their day of power. Corr. v, 98. But Grimm was a man of many hates, and not the best of historians. ↑