The Crisis of the European Mind 1680-1715

by Paul Hazard

  He did not, however, imitate those weaklings of whom he had mockingly declared, “They make a mighty brave show of their hostility to God when health and prosperity are on their side, but when sickness comes upon them, and misfortune, or old age, they mostly change their tune, and become the veriest slaves of superstition; and when they think they are drawing near to death, they make the most elaborate preparations for their journey hence.” He remained a fighter to the end of his days. With whom had he not crossed swords? Sherlock, Tillotson, Cudworth, W. King, Le Clerc, Jurieu, Arnauld, Nicole, Bernard and, finally, M. Jaquelot. M. Jaquelot, who had attacked the Dictionnaire and claimed to have established a synthesis between Faith and Reason, was something more than an antagonist. He was a living symbol of ideas which shrink from being definitely brought out into the daylight, of difficulties which shrink from being resolved by reason, a symbol, in short, of human frailty. Utterly weary, tortured by a persistent cough, with attacks of haemorrhage of the lungs, worn out with fever, Bayle devoted his dying hours to formulating yet another answer. If he had anything to regret, it was being compelled to depart this life before refuting the errors of M. Jaquelot.[22]

  Bayle’s brand of criticism is much too potent to be taken neat. It needed to be diluted, to have something added to it, and that was what happened. Being decanted into the Dictionnaire it was removed from the province of purely theological controversy and came within reach of people in general: there were the arguments, plain as plain could be, and so it became the inspirer of heterodoxy in every land, the sceptic’s bible. “It is notorious that the works of M. Bayle have unsettled a large number of readers, and cast doubt on some of the most widely accepted principles of morality and religion.”[23]

  The ideological battles of the XVIth century had been followed by proposals for peace. All those problems which had so long tormented the minds of men, why not regard them as settled? If that were done, men could live in peace, without being a prey to everlasting doubts and fears, without reopening old sores again and again. It should be a time for doing things, a time for achievement. Man’s zeal for creating should be directed towards things of the spirit; people would enjoy the amenities of social life, and, having learned to live amicably together, they would be, if not completely and absolutely happy, at all events content. There should be a touch of the grandiose, the heroic in this mutual arrangement, and even their patched up peace would have a hint of the sublime about it, just as in the organization, the hierarchical disposition of a hive of bees, in its productive activities, there is a rule, an order, which presupposes sacrifices without number.

  But how was such a peace to be made lasting, if the psychological foundations on which it was based began to change even before it had been properly established? Travellers, wanderers, seekers after new things, the hungry-hearted, those who turn with disdain from the ordered, regulated life; and those modernizers, those who see in history, and historians, nought but childishness and make-belief; and those newcomers to the scene, who have not so much as an inkling of the classical tone of mind; and all those doubters and fault-finders who regard the political question as anything but settled, still less the religious—how should all this heterogeneous and multitudinous agglomeration of human beings keep themselves within any settled or enduring bounds? To that question the answer was war, and, to begin with, war on traditional beliefs.

  [1]Bayle to Pinson de Riolles, Rotterdam, 25 June, 1693.

  [2]Bayle to Basnage, 5 May, 1675.

  [3]Bayle to Minutoli, 27 February 1673.

  [4]Nouvelles de la République des Lettres, Juillet, 1685, Art. 9. Réflexions sur la tolérance des livres hérétiques.

  [5]La France toute catholique sous le règne de Louis le Grand, ou Entretiens de quelques protestants français, Lyon, 1684.

  [6]Lettre écrite de Londres à M. l’abbé de . . . , chanoine de N. D. de . . . Ce que c’est que la France toute catholique sous le règne de Louis le Grand, Saint-Omer, chez Jean Pierre Lami, 1686.

  [7]Conformité de la conduite de l’Église de France pour ramener les protestants avec celle de l’Église d’ Afrique pour ramener les Donatistes, 1685.

  [8]Commentaire philosophique sur ces paroles de Jésus-Christ: “Contrains-les d’entrer”; où l’on prouve par plusieurs raisons démonstratives qu’il y a rien de plus abominable que de faire des conversions par la contrainte, et où l’on réfute tous les sophismes des convertisseurs à contrainte, et l’apologie que saint Augustin a faite des persécutions. Traduit de l’anglais du sieur Jean Fox de Bruges, par M. J. F. (1686).

  [9]Commentaire philosophique, Première partie, I, 1.

  [10]Bayle to his cousin Naudé, 22 May, 1692.

  [11]Dictionnaire, art. Calius, note D.

  [12]Dictionnaire, art. Capet, lettre Y.

  [13]Ibid., art. Pyrrhon.

  [14]Dictionnaire, art. Takiddin.

  [15]Dictionnaire, art. Manichéens, note D.

  [16]Réponse aux questions d’un provincial, vol. III, 1706, ch. CXXVIII.

  [17]Ibid., ch. CXXXIV. “Les Religionnaires (permettez-moi de me servir de ce mot pour désigner en commun les Juifs, les Payens, les Chrétiens, les Mahométans, etc.)”

  [18]Réponse aux questions d’un provincial, ch. CXLII.

  [19]Ibid., Ch. LXXIV et seq. Refutation of W. King’s treatise, De origine Mali, London, 1702.

  [20]Ibid., ch. CIII.

  [21]Ibid., vol. I, ch. XIII, 1704.

  [22]Isaac Jaquelot, Conformité de la foi avec la raison; ou Défense de la religion contre les principales difficultés répandues dans le Dictionnaire historique et critique de M. Bayle, Amsterdam, 1705. These were the brave old days when no one would willingly suffer an adversary to have the last word, when stubborn warriors pursued the foe to the death, ay, and beyond it. See Le Clerc, Bibliothèque choisie, vol. XII, 1707; art. V; art. VII, Remarques sur les Entretiens posthumes de M. Bayle; and Foreword: “I knew everything M. Bayle could say against me and I made up my mind that I would put up with all his fury, all his insults rather than give him the satisfaction of having the last word, which was what he was so eagerly longing for.”

  [23]Bibliothèque germanique, vol. XVIII, 1729.

  PART TWO

  The War on Tradition

  I

  THE RATIONALISTS

  WHEREAS for some years past an obscure person, who goes by the name of Reason, has been attempting to make forcible entry into the schools of our University; and whereas the said person, aided and abetted by certain comical quidnuncs calling themselves Gassendists, Cartesians, Malebranchistes, vagabonds all of them, designs to arraign, and then to expel, Aristotle . . .[1]

  It was even so. Reason, all primed for battle, was coming on to the field. It was not only Aristotle she insisted on putting through the mill, but anybody who had philosophized, anybody who had done any writing at all. She gave out that she was going to make a clean sweep of all the old lumber and then start life again on a fresh lease. She was not unknown; not by any means; every age had called her in; but now she came in a new guise. The cause, and in particular the causa causans, the final cause? No; she had given up claiming to be that. Well then, was she a “faculty” whereby man is supposed to be distinguished from the lower animals, and wherein it is evident he greatly surpasses them? Yes; that would be acceptable enough, provided no limits were set to the operations of this faculty, provided it could go to any lengths, even the most daring. Its province was to lay down certain definite, incontrovertible principles, and then, in the light of those same principles, to deduce conclusions equally definite and incontrovertible. Its essential function was to examine, to enquire into things, and its initial task, the first item on its agenda, was to go into the question of the mysterious, the unexplained, the hidden, in order to dispel the shadows, to give a little light to the world. The world was full of errors, errors born of human self-illusion and encouraged by irresponsible authority, disseminated by the favouring winds of credulity and indolence, intrenched and f
ortified by Time. The first thing then she had to do was to effect an enormous clearance, to get rid of that gigantic mass of error. That was what she had to do, and she was impatient to get through with it. It was a mission she took on herself, a mission which the consciousness of her own worth justified her, she considered, in undertaking.

  Active, zealous, full of daring, the rationalists hastened to obey her call. From France they came, from England, from Germany and Holland, too. A Jew, but a Jew detested by the Ghetto, Spinoza put his genius at the disposal of the cause. What a motley crowd they were, hailing from the most divergent starting points, and all uniting in a single aim. It was a concentration of force that stirred the imagination.

  To start with, there were the Freethinkers, English members of that brotherhood, like William Temple, who, emancipated now from the ties and the cares of office, sought solace and repose in a life of quiet, mildly Epicurean seclusion. Next, and more especially, there were the Freethinkers of France. They were not a recent growth, these Freethinkers. They had disseminated, and, in the process, diluted, at least two philosophies; the Paduan school, with Pomponazzi and Cardan, to begin with; then came Gassendi and his system, at least the non-Christian part of it. Gassendi’s ideas derived from Epicurus, with his atoms and his materialistic conception of the soul, but it was an Epicurus refined upon and made more complicated. However, they attained the dignity of a philosophy, these ideas, but a philosophy not at all easy to understand, a philosophy which united the glamour of novelty with the prestige of ancient tradition. Those who professed it formed a distinct group, and gained in dignity and importance.

  Gassendi having challenged Descartes, the result was a duel, with some lively exchanges. The adversaries joined battle before an audience who were keenly interested in the issue of the combat. “O mens! O spirit pure and immaterial!” cried Gassendi to Descartes. “Say rather, I beg of you, O flesh!” said Descartes to Gassendi.[2]

  Gassendi got the worst of the encounter. True, he still counted some disciples; there were some in England, some in Germany, some in Switzerland, and some in Italy, but they were a scanty remnant, overshadowed, eclipsed, by the glory of Descartes, who had the whole of Europe at his feet, and soon after by Locke, a new planet in the intellectual firmament. In Paris, in the year 1674, François Bernier brought out an Abrégé de la Philosophie de M. Gassendi. It was very well received by the public and ran into several editions. It kept alive the influence of a doctrine which its author had received from the lips of the master himself. He praised it, but not quite with the same ardour, the same conviction as of old. He praised it, but with a qualifying “After all” which rather limited the range of his panegyric. “Gassendi’s philosophy”, he says, “which, after all, seems to me the most reasonable, the simplest, the most sensitive, the most understandable of them all. . . .” The dominant element in his intellectual make-up was doubt. “For more than thirty years now I’ve been philosophizing; about some things very confidently. But now I confess I am beginning to have my doubts about them.” He was like Simonides, who was asked by Hiero to tell him what God was. Simonides asked for one day’s grace to think it over. Next day, when Hiero repeated his question, he asked for two days more, the day after that, for four days, and so on. On Hiero expressing his astonishment thereat, Simonides confessed that the more he pondered on the matter, the more involved he found it.

  These Freethinkers had no very hard and fast doctrine of their own. They were not very profound—we may as well confess it—these dilettanti, dinner-party philosophers. The Odes of Horace were their customary breviary. Their metaphysics did not go very far. How came they, then, to cause so much commotion among the guardians of orthodoxy? Precisely because their metaphysical sense was lacking. They are, by nature, rebels, malcontents, obstinate; their aristocratic culture did but reinforce their scepticism. They are like those little sparkling rivulets so often encountered in the intellectual field, little tributaries that go to swell the broad river of incredulity. Claiming to think for themselves, refusing to be dictated to by anyone, profound philosophers they are not, but “philosophers” all the same, for whom a mystery is merely a riddle so far unsolved, just that and nothing more. And if they can’t solve it, they just ignore it.

  What does it matter? They live on the margin of religion, not within it. Since shadows there are, and we cannot dispel them, let us make the most of our allotted span; let us enjoy, with taste and elegance, the pleasures it has to offer, and when the time to take our leave arrives, submit with a good grace to the will of destiny. A moral surrender, if you will, a making the best of a sorry business, but, nevertheless, a modus vivendi which in those days commended itself to many, and those by no means of the common herd.

  Take the French freethinkers, for example. Over-refined, too delicate by half, they must needs invigorate their stock by bringing in a rougher and a tougher breed, or perish. Such a one was Jean Dehénault, who followed in the steps of Guy Patin and La Mothe Le Vayer. Like many another, he translated Lucretius, more skilfully than most, and gave melodious utterance to his mournful but monotonous negations:

  Tout meurt en nous quand nous mourons;

  La mort ne laisse rien et n’est rien elle-même;

  Du peu de temps que nous vivons

  Ce n’est que le moment extrême.

  Cesse de craindre ou d’espérer

  Cet avenir qui la doit suivre.

  Que la peur d’être éteint, que l’espoir de revivre

  Dans ce sombre avenir cessent de t’égarer.

  L’état dont la mort est suivie

  Est semblable à l’état qui précède la vie.

  Nous sommes dévorés du temps.

  La nature au chaos sans cesse nous rappelle.

  Elle entretient à nos dépens

  Sa vicissitude éternelle.

  Comme elle nous a tout donné,

  Elle aussi reprend tout notre être.

  Le malheur de mourir égale l’heur de naître,

  Et l’homme meurt entier, comme entier il est né.[3]

  Such, too, was Mme. Deshoulières, and such was Ninon de Lenclos, who was convinced that she had no soul, and never abandoned that conviction, not even in advanced old age, not even at the hour of death.

  However the choicest flower of them all was messire Charles de Saint-Denis, Brigadier-General in the armies of His Most Christian Majesty. In 1661, he fled to England to avoid the consequences of ministerial and royal disfavour, and thenceforth, until the day of his death in 1703, Saint-Évremond had little else to do but to live the life of the cultured sceptic. Thus he became the type and exemplar of his set, the sceptic par excellence. As such, he appeared to the French, who lamented his departure from their midst, and to the English who loved him, and also to the Dutch with whom he abode for some considerable time. He may have been a little old-fashioned, in his appearance as well as in some of his ideas; a man suddenly called upon, in his riper years, to change his habits and his mode of life, naturally finds it a little difficult to divest himself of the associations in which he had been brought up. That is why he never ceased to be a “gentleman” when examples of the breed were growing scarcer and scarcer about him, and when that fine type of humanity, ceasing to be a reality, was fast becoming but a memory, a tradition of a vanished age. Being a gentleman, he did not blow his own trumpet, and if he frequently took up the pen he was careful to make it clear that he did so, not as one having a lesson to impart, or presuming to lay down the law, but as a man of the world who, having an abundance of time on his hands, wanted to pass it as agreeably as possible. Those mathematics, those physics, in which the people about him were so deeply immersed, were very little to his taste. In his view, the only branches of intellectual activity which it became a gentleman to concern himself with were ethics, politics and polite letters; an attitude of mind decidedly out of date at a time when Science would soon be aiding and supplementing the work of the philosophers, and when, to hold oneself aloof from Science was to ru
n the risk of finishing up in a backwater. Saint-Évremond took a scholar’s pleasure in studying the writers of classical antiquity, in the nice comparisons by which the discerning critic brings out the special qualities whereby the orator or the historian lends distinction to his work, the parallels, the portraits, all the divers directions in which a mind, naturally acute, finds occasion for the exercise of his psychological powers. Needless to say, he cultivated the art of conversation. When Hortense Mancini, Duchesse de Mazarin, settled in London and opened a salon there, a salon to which he could daily resort, he found therein the focal point in which life for him had hitherto been lacking. He was definitely an Epicurean, believing that of all the views laid down by the various philosophers regarding the summum bonum, there was none which made a more powerful appeal to reason than the system of Epicurus. His aim was to live according to nature, and if we are forced to admit that he had no very clear idea as to what he meant by nature, there is no denying that he was wonderfully successful in ensuring for himself a most comfortably cushioned existence. Protected by the powers that be, even when the sceptre passed from James II to William III, parcelling out his days into a number of little regular occupations; fond, perhaps a little too fond, of the pleasures of the table; taking his diversions in scrupulously measured doses, the better to appreciate their savour, he was no doubt an egoist, but a very engaging one. The very notion of going without, of self-denial, of mortifying the flesh, of asceticism gave him the horrors. Moderation, restraint, a temperament naturally proof against the fury of the passions, a delicate and discerning selfishness—all these he looked on as necessary virtues, these, and a due attention to bodily health, which, when we regularly enjoy it, we may be sometimes tempted to take too much as a matter of course. On attaining the age of seventy or thereabouts, he became troubled with a distressing infirmity. “M. de Saint-Évremond had blue eyes, keen and sparkling, a broad forehead, bushy eyebrows, a shapely mouth, a quizzical smile, a lively and engaging expression, an erect and well-proportioned figure and a general air of distinction and good-breeding. Twenty years before his death he was troubled with a wen which made its appearance between his eyes and increased considerably as time went on.” So we are told by des Maizeaux, his earliest biographer and his publisher. But he took the wen philosophically. Suppose you do get a great wen between the eyes, what matter, if you go on living? “Better a week of life, than a week of fame after you are dead.”