Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers Part 2

On one occasion, Condorcet's imprudence extorts a whole series of pa.s.sionate remonstrants from him and his probable complaints--but the burden is always the same--"Tolerate the whispers of age! How often shall I have to tell you all that no one but a fool will publish such things unless he has 200,000 bayonets at his back? Each Encyclopaedist was apt to forget that, though he corresponded familiarly with Frederick, he was not a King of Prussia; and, by-and-by, not one of them more frequently made this mistake than Condorcet--for that gentleman's saintlike tranquillity of demeanor, though it might indicate a naturally languid pulse, covered copious elements of vital pa.s.sion. The slow wheel could not resist the long attrition of controversy; and when it once blazed, the flame was all the fiercer for its unseen nursing. 'You mistake Condorcet,' said D'Alembert, 'he is a volcano covered with snow.'"

When Turgot became Minister of Marine, he gave Condorcet a post as Inspector of Ca.n.a.ls; from this he was subsequently promoted to the Inspector of the Mint. When Turgot was replaced by Necker, Condorcet resigned his office.

In 1782 he was elected one of the forty of the Academy of Sciences, beating the Astronomer, Bailly, by _one_ vote. In the next year, D'Alembert, his faithful friend, died, leaving him the whole of his wealth; his uncle, the bishop, likewise died in the same year, from whom he would receive a fresh accession of property. Shortly after this, time, Condorcet married Madame de Grouchy--also celebrated as a lady of great beauty, good fortune, and an educated Atheist. The marriage was a happy one. The only offspring was a girl, who married General Arthur O'Connor, uncle to the late Feargus O'Connor, an Irish refugee who was connected with Emmett's rebellion.

During the excitement of the American War of Independence, Condorcet took an active part in urging the French Government to bestow a.s.sistance in arms and money, upon the United States; after the war was concluded, he corresponded with Thomas Paine, who gradually converted him to the extreme Republican views the "ill.u.s.trious needleman" himself possessed, which, in this case, rapidly led to the _denouement_ of 1791, when he was elected a member of the Legislative a.s.sembly by the department of Paris. In the next year he was raised to the rank of President by a majority of near one hundred votes. While in the a.s.sembly, he brought forward and supported the economical doctrines of Adam Smith, proposed the abolition of indirect taxation, and levying a national revenue upon derivable wealth in amount according to the individual, pa.s.sing over all who gained a livelihood by manual labor. He made a motion for the public burning of all doc.u.ments relating to n.o.bility--himself being a Marquis.

He took a conspicuous place in the trial of the king; he voted him guilty, but refused to vote for his death, as the punishment of death was against his principles. The speech he made on this occasion is fully equal to that of Paine's on the same occasion.

When the divergence took place between the Jacobins and Girondists, Condorcet strove to unite them; but every day brought fresh troubles, and the position of the Seneca of the Revolution was too prominent to escape the opposition of the more violent taction.

Robespierre triumphed; and in his success could be traced the doom of his enemies. An intercepted letter was the means of Condorcet's impeachment. Deprived of the support of Isnard, Brissot, and Vergniaud, the Jacobins proscribed without difficulty the hero whose writings had mainly a.s.sisted in producing the Revolution. His friends provided means for his escape. They applied to a lodging-house keeper, a Madame Vernet, if she would conceal him for a time; she asked was he a virtuous man--yes, replied his friend, he is the---- stay, you say he is a good man, I do not wish to pry into his secrets or his name. Once safe in this asylum, he was unvisited by either wife or friends; morover, such was the hurry of his flight, that he was without money, and nearly without books.

While in this forced confinement, he wrote the "_Esquisse d'un Tableau Historique des Progres de l'Esprit Humain_," and several other fragmentary essays. In this work he lays down a scheme of society similar to the "New Moral World," of Robert Owen. Opposing the idea of a G.o.d, he shows the dominion of science in education, political economy, chemistry, and applies mathematical principles to a series of moral problems. Along with the progress of man he combined the progress of arts--estimating the sanatory arrangements of our time, he prophecied on the gradual extension of longevity, amongst the human race; and with it, enjoyments increased by better discipline in gustatorial duties. He has similar views on the softer s.e.x to M. Proudhomme (his immediate disciple,) and, in the close of the work, Condorcet announced the possibility of an universal language, which is daily becoming more a.s.similated to modern ideas.

The guillotine had not been idle during the few weeks of Condorcet's retreat. Fancying that (if discovered) he might be the means of injuring his benefactress, he resolved to escape from the house of Madame Vernet.

Previous to doing this, he made his will. M. Arago, describing this epoch in his closing days, says:--

"When he at last paused, and the feverish excitement of authorship was at an end, our colleague rested all his thoughts anew on the danger incurred by his hostess. He resolved then (I employ his own words) to quit the retreat which the boundless devotion of his tutelar angel had transformed into a paradise. He so little deceived himself as to the probable consequences of the step he meditated--the chances of safety after his evasion appeared so feeble--that before he put his plan into execution he made his last dispositions. In the pages then written, I behold everywhere the lively reflection of an elevated mind, a feeling heart, and a beautiful soul. I will venture to say, that there exists in no language anything better thought, more tender, more touching, more sweetly expressed, than the '_Avis d'un Proscrit a sa Fill_.' Those lines, so limpid, so full of unaffected delicacy, were written on that very day when he was about to encounter voluntarily an immense danger.

The presentiment of a violent end almost inevitably did not disturb him--his hand traced those terrible words, _Ma mort, ma mort prochaine!_ with a firmness which the Stoics of antiquity might have envied.

Sensibility, on the contrary, obtained the mastery when the ill.u.s.trious proscribed was drawn into the antic.i.p.ation that Madame de Condorcet also might be involved in the b.l.o.o.d.y catastrophe that threatened him. _Should my daughter be destined to lose all_--this is the most explicit allusion that the husband can insert in his last writing."

"The Testament is short. It was written on the fly-leaf of a 'History of Spain.' In it Condorcet directs that his daughter, in case of his wife's death, shall be brought up by Madame Vernet, whom she is to call her second mother, and who is to see her so educated as to have means of independent support either from painting or engraving. 'Should it be necessary for my child to quit France, she may count on protection in England from my Lord Stanhope and my Lord Daer. In America, reliance may be placed on Jefferson and Bache, the grandson of Franklin. She is, therefore, to make the English language her first study.'"

Such was the last epistle ever written by Condorcet. Notwithstanding the precautions taken by his friends, he escaped into the streets--from thence having appealed in vain to friends for a.s.sistance, he visited some quarries. Here he remained from the 5th to the evening of the 7th of April, 1794. Hunger drove him to the village of Clamait, when he applied at an hostelry for refreshment. He described himself as a carpenter out of employment, and ordered an omelet. This was an age of suspicion, and the landlord of the house soon discovered that the wanderer's hands were white and undisfigured with labor, while his conversation bore no resemblance to that of a common artificer. The good dame of the house inquired how many eggs he would have in his dish.

Twelve, was the answer. Twelve eggs for a joiner's supper! This was heresy against the equality of man. They demanded his pa.s.sport--he had not got one--the only appearance of anything of the sort was a sc.r.a.p of paper, scrawled over with Latin epigrams. This was conclusive evidence to the village Dogberries that he was a traitor and an aristocrat. The authorities signed the warrant for his removal to Paris. Ironed to two officers they started on the march. The first evening they arrived at Bourg-la-Reine, where they deposited their prisoner in the gaol of that town. In the morning the gaoler found him a corpse. He had taken a poison of great force, which he habitually carried in a ring. Thus ended the life of the great Encyclopaedist--a man great by his many virtues--who reflected honor on France by his science, his literary triumphs, and his moral heroism. He had not the towering energy of Marat, nor the gushing eloquence of Danton, neither had he the superst.i.tious devotion to abstract ideas which characterized the whole course of Robespierre's life. The oratory of Danton, like that of Marat, only excited the people to dissatisfaction; they struck down effete inst.i.tutions, but they were not the men to inaugurate a new society. It is seldom we find the pioneers of civilization the best mechanics. They strike down the forest--they turn the undergrowth--they throw a log over the stream, but they seldom rear factories, or invent tubular bridges.

Amongst the whole of the heroes of the French Revolution, we must admire the Girondists, as being the most daring, and, at the same time, the most constructive of all who met either in the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly or the Convention. The Jacobin faction dealt simply with politics through the abstract notions of Rousseau: but of what use are "human rights" if we have to begin _de novo_ to put into operation?--rather let us unite the conservative educationalism of Socialism with the wild democracy of ignorance. Politics never can be successful unless married to Socialism.

It was not long after Condorcet's death, before the Committee of Public Instruction undertook the charge of publishing the whole of his works.

For this they have been censured on many grounds. We consider that it was one of the few good things accomplished by that Committee. There is nothing in the works of this writer which have a distinctive peculiarity to us; few great writers who direct opinion at the time they write, appear to posterity in the same light as they did to a public inflamed by pa.s.sion, and trembling under reiterated wrongs. When we look at the works of D'Holbach, we find a standard treatise, which is a land-mark to the present day; but at the time the "System of Nature" was written, it had not one t.i.the the popularity which it now enjoys; it did not produce an effect superior to a new sarcasm of Voltaire, or an epigram of Diderot. Condorcet was rather the co-laborer and _literateur_ of the party, than the prophet of the new school. Voltaire was the Christ, and Condorcet the St. Paul of the new faith. In political economy, the doctrines of the English and Scotch schools were elaborated to their fullest extent. Retrenchment in pensions and salaries, diminution of armies, equal taxation, the resumption by the State of all the Church lands, the development of the agricultural and mechanical resources, the abolition of the monopolies, total free trade, local government, and national education; such-were the doctrines for which Turgot fought, and Condorcet popularized. If they had been taken in time, France would have escaped a revolution, and Europe would have been ruled by peace and freedom. It may be asked, who brought about the advocacy of those doctrines, for they were not known before the middle of the eighteenth century? They were introduced as a novelty, and defended as a paradox.

France had been exhausted by wars, annoyed by _ennui_, brilliant above all by her genius, she was struck with la.s.situde for her licentious crimes. There was an occasion for a new school. Without it, France, like Carthage, would have bled to death on the hecatomb of her own l.u.s.t. Her leading men cast their eyes to England; it was then the most progressive nation in existence. The leading men of that country were intimate with the rulers of the French; the books of each land were read with avidity by their neighbors; a difference was observable between the two: but how that difference was to be reconciled was past the skill of the wisest to unravel. England had liberal inst.i.tutions, and a people with part of the substance, and many of the forms of Liberalism, along with a degree of education which kept them in comparative ignorance, yet did not offer any obstacles to raising themselves in the social sphere. Before France could compete with England, she had to rid herself of the feudal system, and obtain a Magna Charta. She was above four centuries behind-hand here. She had to win her spurs through revolutions, like those of Cromwell's and that of 1688, and the still greater ones of Parliament.

The Freethinkers of England prepared the Whig revolution of William, by advocating the only scheme which was at the time practicable, for of the two--the Protestant and the Catholic religion--the former is far more conducive to the liberties of a people than the latter, and at the time, and we may also say, nearer the present, the people were not prepared for any organic change. This being the case, it is not to be wondered at that the French Revolution was a failure as a constructive effort; it was a success as a grand outbreak of power; showing politicians where (in the future) to rely for success. The men who undertook to bring about this Revolution are not to be censured for its non-success. They wished to copy English inst.i.tutions, and adapt them to those of the French; for this purpose, the Continental League was formed, each member of which pledged himself to uproot, as far as lay in his power, the Catholic Church in France. A secret name was given to it--_L'Infame_--and an organized attack was speedily commenced. The men at the head of the movement, besides Voltaire and Frederick, were D'Alembert, Diderot, Grim, St. Lambert, Condillac, Helvetius, Jordan, Lalande, Montesquieu, and a host of others of less note. Con-dorcet, being secretary of the Academy, corresponded with, and directed the movements of all, in the absence of his chief. Every new book was criticised--refutations were published to the leading theological works of the age; but by far the roost effective progress was made by the means of poems, essays, romances, epigrams, and scientific papers. The songs of France at this era were written by the philosophers; and this spirit was diffused among the people. In a country so volatile and excitable as the French, it is difficult to estimate too highly the power of a ballad warfare. The morality of Abbots and Nuns were sung in strains as rhapsodical, and couplets as voluptuous as the vagaries of the Songs of Solomon.

Much discretion was required, that no separate species of warfare should be overdone, lest a nausea of sentiment should revert upon the authors, and thus lead to a reaction more sanguinary than the force of the philosophers could control. In all those cases Condorcet was the prime mover and the agent concerned. He communicated with Voltaire on every new theory, and advised him when and how to strike, and when to _rest_.

In all those matters Condorcet was obeyed. There was a smaller section of the more serious philosophers who sympathized with, yet did not labor simultaneously for the common cause--those men, the extreme Atheists--clever but cautious--men who risked nothing--Mirabeau and D'Holbach were the types of this cla.s.s. It is well known that both Frederick, Voltaire, and Condorcet opposed those sections, as likely to be aiming at too much for the time.

When it was considered prudent to take a more decided step, the Encyclopaedia was formed. Condorcet had a princ.i.p.al part in this work, which shook priestcraft on its throne; it spread consternation where-ever it appeared, and was one of the main causes of the great outbreak. No one can sufficiently praise a work of such magnitude; nor can any one predicate when its effects will cease.

In the "Life of Condorcet," by Arago, there is a curious extract copied from a collection of anecdotes, said to be compiled from his note-books, and dignified with the t.i.tle of "Memoires de Condorcet." It relates to a conversation between the Abbe Galiana and Diderot, in which it is said Condorcet acquiesced. The subject is the fair s.e.x:--

Diderot.--How do you define woman?

Galiana.--An animal naturally feeble and sick.

Diderot.--Feeble? Has she not as much courage as man?

Galiana.--Do you know what courage is? It is the effect of terror. You let your leg be cut off, because you are afraid of dying. Wise people are never courageous--they are prudent--that is to say, poltroons.

Diderot.--Why call you woman naturally sick!

Galiana.--Like all animals, she is sick until she attains her perfect growth. Then she has a peculiar symptom which takes up the fifth part of her time. Then come breeding and nursing, two long and troublesome complaints. In short, they have only intervals of health, until they turn a certain corner, and then _elles ne sont plus de malades peut-etre--elles ne sont que des reilles_.

Diderot.--Observe her at a ball, no vigor, then, M. l'Abbe?

Galiana.--Stop the fiddles! put out the lights! she will scarcely crawl to her coach.

Diderot.--See her in love.

Galiana.--It is painful to see anybody in a fever.

Diderot.--M. l'Abbe, have you no faith in education?

Galiana.--Not so much as in instinct. A woman is habitually ill. She is affectionate, engaging, irritable, capricious, easily offended, easily appeased, a trifle amuses her. The imagination is always in play. Fear, hope, joy, despair, and disgust, follow each other more rapidly, are manifested more strongly, effaced more quickly, than with us. They like a plentiful repose, at intervals company; anything for excitement. Ask the doctor if it is not the same with his patients. But ask yourself, do we not all treat them as we do sick people, lavish attention, soothe, flatter, caress, and get tired of them?

Condorcet, in a letter, remarking on the above conversation, says:--"I do not insist upon it as probable that woman will ever be Euler or Voltaire; but I am satisfied that she may one day be Pascal or Rousseau." This very qualification, we consider, is sufficient to absolve Condorcet from, the charge of being a "woman hater." His opponents, when driven from every other source, have fallen back on this, and alleged that he viewed the s.e.xes as unequal, and that the stronger had a right to lord it over the weaker. But which is the weaker? Euler and Voltaire were masculine men. A woman to be masculine, in the true sense of the word, is an anomaly, to be witnessed with pain.

She is not in a normal condition. She is a monster. Women should live in society fully educated and developed in their physical frame, and then they would be more feminine in proportion as they approach the character of Mary Wollstonecraft. They have no right to domineer as tyrants, and then fall into the most abject of slaves. In each of the characters of Pascal and Rousseau, was an excess of sensibility, which overbalanced their other qualities, and rendered their otherwise great talents wayward, and, to a certain extent, fruitless. The peculiarity of man is physical power, and intellectual force; that of woman is an acute sensibility. Condorcet, then, was justified in expressing the opinions he avowed upon the subject.

In a paper, in the year 1766, read before the "Academy," on "Ought Popular Errors to be Eradicated!" Condorcet says, "If the people are often tempted to commit crimes in order that they may obtain the necessaries of life, it is the fault of the laws; and, as bad laws are the product of errors, it would be more simple to abolish those errors than to add others for the correction of their natural effects. Error, no doubt, may do some good; it may prevent some crimes, but it will occasion mischiefs greater than these. By putting nonsense into the heads of the people, you make them stupid; and from stupidity to ferocity there is but a step. Consider--if the motives you suggest for being just make but a slight impression on the mind, that will not direct the conduct--if the impressions be lively, they will produce enthusiasm, and enthusiasm for error. Now, the ignorant enthusiast is no longer a man; he is the most terrible of wild beasts. In fact, the number of criminals among the men with prejudices (Christians) is in greater proportion to the total number of our population, than the number of criminals in the cla.s.s above prejudices (Freethinkers) is to the total of that cla.s.s. I am not ignorant that, in the actual state of Europe, the people are not, perhaps, at all prepared for a true doctrine of morals; but this degraded obtuseness is the work of social inst.i.tutions and of superst.i.tions. Men are not born blockheads; they become such. By speaking reason to the people, even in the little time they give to the cultivation of their intellect, we might easily teach them the little that it is necessary for them to know. Even the idea of the respect that they should have for the property of the rich, is only difficult to be insinuated among them--first, because they look on riches as a sort of usurpation, of theft perpetrated upon them, and unhappily this opinion is in great part true--secondly, because their excessive poverty makes them always consider themselves in the case of absolute necessity--a case in which even very severe moralists have been of their mind--thirdly, because they are as much despised and maltreated for being poor, as they would be after they had lowered themselves by larcenies. It is merely, therefore, because inst.i.tutions are bad, that the people are so commonly a little thievish upon principle."

We should have much liked to have given some extended quotations from the works of Condorcet; but, owing to their general character, we cannot extract any philosophic formula which would be generally interesting.

His "Lettres d'un Theologien" are well deserving of a reprint; they created an astounding sensation when they appeared, being taken for the work of Voltaire--the light, easy, graceful style, with deeply concealed irony, the crushing retort and the fiery sarcasm. They made even priests laugh by their Attic wit and incongruous similes. But it was in the "Academy" where Condorcet's influence was supreme. He immortalized the heroes as they fell, and pushed the cause on by his professional duties.

He was always awake to the call of duty, and n.o.bly did he work his battery. He is now in the last grand sleep of man--the flowers of poesy are woven in amarynth wreaths over his tomb.

A.C.

SPINOZA.

Baruch Spinoza, or Espinoza, better known under the name of Benedict Spinoza (as rendered by himself in the Latin language,) was born at Amsterdam, in Holland, on the 24th of November, 1632. There is some uncertainty as to this date, as there are several dates fixed by different authors, both for his birth and death, but we have adopted the biography given by Dr. C. H. Bruder, in the preface to his edition of Spinoza's works. His parents were Jews of the middle, or, perhaps, somewhat humbler cla.s.s. His father was originally a Spanish merchant, who, to escape persecution, had emigrated to Holland. Although the life of our great philosopher is one full of interesting incidents, and deserves to be treated fully, we have but room to give a very brief sketch, referring our readers, who may wish to learn more of Spinoza's life, to Lewes's "Biographical History of Philosophy," _Westminster Review_, No. 77, and "Encyclopaedia Brittannica." p. 144. His doctrines we will let speak for themselves in his own words, trusting thereby to give the reader an opportunity of knowing who and what Spinoza really was. One man shrinks with horror from him as an Atheist. Voltaire says, that he was an Atheist, and taught Atheism. Another calls him "a G.o.d-intoxicated man." We present him a mighty thinker, a master mind, a n.o.ble, fearless utterer of free and n.o.ble thoughts, a hard-working, honest, independent man; as one who, two centuries ago, gave forth to the world a series of thinkings which have crushed, with resistless force, the theological sh.e.l.l in the centre of which the priests hide the kernel "truth."

Spinoza appears in his boyhood to have been an apt scholar, and to have rapidly mastered the tasks set him by his teachers. Full of rabbinical lore he won the admiration of the Rabbi Moses Mortira, but the pupil rose higher than his master, and attempted to solve problems which the learned rabbis were content to reverence as mysteries not capable of solution. First they remonstrated, then threatened; still Spinoza persevered in his studies, and in making known the result to those around him. He was threatened with excommunication, and withdrew himself from the synagogue. One more effort was made by the rabbis, who offered Spinoza a pension of about 100 a-year if he would attend the synagogue more frequently, and consent to be silent with regard to his philosophical thinkings. This offer he indignantly refused. Reason failing, threats proving futile, and gold being treated with scorn, one was found sufficiently fanatic to try a further experiment, which resulted in an attempt on Spinoza's life; the knife, however, luckily missed its aim, and our hero escaped. At last, in the year 1660, Spinoza, being then twenty-eight years of age, was solemnly excommunicated from the synagogue. His friends and relations shut their doors against him. An outcast from the home of his youth, he gained a humble livelihood by polishing gla.s.ses for microscopes, telescopes, etc., at which he was very expert. While thus acquiring, by his own handiwork, the means of subsistence, he was studying hard, devoting every possible hour to philosophical research. Spinoza became master of the Dutch, Hebrew, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin languages, the latter of which he acquired in the house of one Francis Van den Ende, from whom it is more than probable he received as much instruction in Atheism as in Latin. Spinoza only appears to have once fallen in love, and this was with Van den Ende's daughter, who was herself a good linguist, and who gave Spinoza instruction in Latin. She, however, although willing to be his instructress and companion in a philogical path, declined to accept his love, and thus Spinoza was left to philosophy alone. After his excommunication he retired to Rhynsburg, near the City of Leyden, in Holland, and there studied the works of Descartes. Three years afterwards he published an abridgment of the "Meditations" of the great father of philosophy, which created a profound sensation. In an appendix to this abridgment were contained the germs of those thinkings in which the pupil outdid the master, and the student progressed beyond the philosopher. In the month of June, 1664, Spinoza removed to Woorburg, a small village near the Hague, where he was visited by persons from different parts, attracted by his fame as a philosopher; and at last, after many solicitations he came to the Hague, and resided there altogether. In 1670 he published his "Tractatus Theologico-Politicus." This raised him a host of opponents; many writers rushed eager for the fray, to tilt with the poor Dutch Jew. His book was officially condemned and forbidden, and a host of refutations (?) were circulated against it. In spite of the condemnation it has outlived the refutations.

Spinoza died on the 21st or 22nd of February, 1677, in his forty-fifth year, and was buried on the 25th of February at the Hague. He was frugal in his habits, subsisting independently on the earnings of his own hands. Honorable in all things, he refused to accept the chair of Professor of Philosophy, offered to him by the Elector, and this because he did not wish to be circ.u.mscribed in his thinking, or in the freedom of utterance of his thoughts. He also refused a pension offered to him by Louis XIV, saying that he had no intention of dedicating anything to that monarch. The following is a list of Spinoza's works:--"Principiorum Philosophise Renati Descartes;" "Tractatus Theologico-Politicus;" "Ethica;" "Tractatus Politi-cus;" "De Emandatione Intellectus;" "Epistolae;" "Grammaticus Hebracae," etc. There are also several spurious works ascribed to Spinoza. The "Tractatus Politicus"

has been translated into English by William Maccall, who seems fully to appreciate the greatness of the philosopher, although he will not admit the usefulness of Spinoza's logic. Maccall does not see the utility of that very logic which compelled him to admit Spinoza's truth. We are not aware of any other translation of Spinoza's works except that of a small portion of his "Ethica," by Lewes. This work, which was originally published in 1677, commenced with eight definitions, which, together with the following axioms and propositions, were reprinted from the _Westminster Review_ in the _Library of Reason_:--

DEFINITIONS.

I. By cause of itself I understand that, the essence of which involves existence: or that, the nature of which can only be considered as existent.

II. A thing finite is that which can be limited (terminari potest) by another thing of the same nature--_ergo_, body is said to be finite because it can always be conceived as larger. So thought is limited by other thoughts. But body does not limit thought, nor thought limit body.

III. By substance I understand that which is in itself, and is conceived _per se_--that is, the conception of which does not require the conception of anything else as antecedent to it.

IV. By attribute I understand that which the mind perceives as const.i.tuting the very essence of substance.