Note 108 — Chapter XVII · FRENCH FREETHOUGHT IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Even among some rationalists, however, who are content to take hearsay report on these matters, there appears still to subsist a notion that the main body of the French freethinkers of the eighteenth century were mere scoffers, proceeding upon no basis of knowledge and with no concern for research. Such an opinion is possible only to those who have not examined their work. To say nothing more of the effort of Boulanger, an erudition much more exact than Voltaire’s and a deeper insight than his and Rousseau’s into the causation of primitive religion inspires the writings of men like Burigny and Fréret on the one hand, and Fontenelle and Meister on the other. The philosophic reach of Diderot, one of the most convinced opponents of the ruling religion, was recognized by Goethe. And no critic of the “philosophes” handled more uncompromisingly than did Dumarsais108 the vanity of the assumption that a man became a philosopher by merely setting himself in opposition to orthodox belief. Dumarsais, long scholastically famous for his youthful treatise Des Tropes, lived up to his standard, whatever some of the more eminent philosophes may have done, being found eminently lovable by pietists who knew him; while for D’Alembert he was “the La Fontaine of the philosophers” in virtue of his lucid simplicity of style.109 The Analyse de la religion chrétienne printed under his name in some editions of the Évangile de la Raison has been pronounced supposititious. It seems to be the work of at least two hands110 of different degrees of instruction; but, apart from some errors due to one of these, it does him no discredit, being a vigorous criticism of Scriptural contradictions and anomalies, such as a “Jansenist atheist” might well compose, though it makes the usual profession of deistic belief.