Note 210 — Chapter XVII · FRENCH FREETHOUGHT IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

(a) That many of the leading men among the revolutionists were deists is true; and the fact goes to prove that it was chiefly the men of ability in France who rejected Christianity. Of a number of these the normal attitude was represented in the work of Necker, Sur l’importance des idées religieuses (1787), which repudiated the destructive attitude of the few, and may be described as an utterance of pious theism or Unitarianism.210 Orthodox he cannot well have been, since, like his wife, he was the friend of Voltaire.211 But the majority of the Constituent Assembly was never even deistic; it professed itself cordially Catholic;212 and the atheists there might be counted on the fingers of one hand.213