Note 207 — Chapter XVII · FRENCH FREETHOUGHT IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Lettres de Memmius à Cicéron (1771); Histoire de Jenni (1775). In the earlier article, Athée, in the Dictionnaire Philosophique, he speaks of having met in France very good physicists who were atheists. In his letter of September 26, 1770, to Madame Necker, he writes concerning the Système de la Nature: “Il est un peu honteux à notre nation que tant de gens aient embrassé si vite une opinion si ridicule.” And yet Prof. W. M. Sloane, of Columbia University, still writes of Voltaire, in the manner of English bishops, as “atheistical” (The French Revolution and Religious Reform, 1901, p. 26). ↑