Note 37 — LA METTRIE’S RELATION TO HIS PREDECESSORS AND TO HIS SUCCESSORS.
Gertrude Carman Bussey translation
La Mettrie regards experience as the only teacher. Holbach dwells on this same idea, and insists that experience is our only source of knowledge in all matters.37 Holbach likewise teaches that man is a purely material being. He disbelieves in any spiritual reality whatsoever, and makes matter the only substance in the world. He lays stress, also, on one thought which is a natural consequence of La Mettrie’s teaching. La Mettrie has limited the action of the will and has insisted that the will is dependent on bodily conditions. Holbach goes further and declares repeatedly that all freedom is a delusion, and that man is controlled in every action by rigid necessity.38 This teaching seems to be the natural outcome of the belief that man is a machine.