Note 154 — Chapter VI · HOLBACH’S SYSTEM OF NATURE.

This is not original in Holbach. Diderot’s article on Suicide in the Encyclopædia (Œuv., xvii. 235) contains the usual arguments of the Church against suicide, with some casuistic illustrations, but it also contains an account of Dr. Donne’s vindication of Suicide, called Bia-thanatos, 1651, in which these remarks of Holbach occur verbatim. Hallam found Donne’s book so dull and pedantic that he declares no one would be induced to kill himself by reading such a book unless he were threatened with another volume.