by Will Durant
Helvétius is a frank hedonist: the goal of life is happiness here on earth, happiness is a continuity of pleasure, and all pleasure is basically sensual or physiological.40 “The activity of the mind and the acquisition of knowledge” are the most permanently satisfying pleasures,41 but they too are fundamentally physical. Asceticism is foolish, sexual pleasure is quite legitimate if it injures no one. Virtue is not obedience to the laws of God, it is behavior that gives the greatest pleasure to the greatest number. Here Helvétius clearly formulates the utilitarian ethics already (1725) suggested by Hutcheson and later (1789) expounded by Bentham.
To be virtuous it is necessary to unite nobleness of soul with an enlightened understanding. Whoever combines these gifts conducts himself by the compass of public utility. This utility is the principle of all human virtues, and the foundation of all legislation … All laws should follow a single principle, the utility of the public—i.e., of the greatest number of the persons under the same government … This principle contains all morality and legislation.42
Nevertheless, in Helvétius’ view all actions, however moral and virtuous, are egoistic. They are not necessarily selfish; many actions are altruistic in the sense that they are intended to benefit others, sometimes at great cost to the agent; but even these actions are egoistic in the sense that they are motivated by the impulse to self-satisfaction; we are altruistic because, by instinct or training, we can take great pleasure in pleasing others; so the mother may sacrifice herself for her child, as the hero for his country. When we do good to others it is because we consciously or unconsciously remember with pleasure the returned love, or the social approval, that followed similar actions in the past; in this way certain altruistic deeds may become habitual, and we may feel discomfort or fear if we do not perform them. Religious asceticism or devotion may appear to be highly virtuous, but it is only a long-term investment in celestial securities. “If a hermit or a monk imposes upon himself the law of silence, flogs himself every night, lives on pulse and water, sleeps on straw, … he thinks by virtue of emaciation to gain a fortune in heaven.”43 If a cruel action is not condemned by the local community, these holy men will commit it without shame or recourse, as in burning heretics.44 Even friendship is egoistic: it is an exchange of services, if only of ears; where such exchange ceases, friendship fades; “nothing is more uncommon than a friendship of long standing.”45 “Ultimately it is always ourselves that we love in others.”46
Whereas La Rochefoucauld, in similarly reducing all motives to self-love, deplored it as a vice, Helvétius accepts it as a virtue insofar as it makes for self-preservation. In any case it is a universal fact of life; and “to be offended by the operations of self-love is to complain of the showers of spring, the heats of summer, … the frosts of winter.”47 It is precisely upon the universality of self-love that he proposes to establish a “scientific” morality. Education and legislation can mold character and habit into finding discomfort in unsocial actions, and pleasure in virtue—i.e., in action beneficial to the group. The philosopher should study human behavior and social needs with a view to discovering what forms of conduct are most beneficial to the largest number of people, and he should plead with educators and legislators to provide inducements and deterrents that, by appealing to self-love, will encourage social behavior. What benefits would accrue to mankind from such an entente between philosophers and kings! “The virtues and happiness of a people come not from the sanctity of their religion, but from the wisdom of their laws.”48
So, as the summit of his philosophy, Helvétius turned to study legislation and government. Politically he is the most radical of the philosophes. He does not share Voltaire’s faith in “enlightened despots”; such rulers would tend to suppress any opinions but their own, which might be mistaken and injurious. He quotes Frederick the Great as saying to the Berlin Academy, “Nothing is better than an arbitrary government under princes just, humane, and virtuous; but nothing is worse under the common race of kings.”49 A limited or constitutional monarchy like England’s is good; better is a federation of democratic republics pledged to united action against an aggressor.50 Theoretically aristocracy is unjust, since superior ability is a product of chance; but complete democracy is undesirable as long as the poor are uneducated and propertyless; consequently a wise legislator will aim to spread education and property.
This millionaire financier deplores the concentration of wealth and its facilitation by a money economy.
The almost universal unhappiness of men and nations arises from the imperfections of their laws, and the too unequal partition of their riches. There are in most kingdoms only two classes of citizens, one of which wants necessaries while the other riots in superfluities.51 … If the corruption of the people in power is never more manifest than in the ages of the greatest luxury, it is because in those ages the riches of a nation are collected into the smallest number of hands.52
The replacement of land with money as the symbol and fulcrum of power engenders such a race for riches as disturbs all social stability, sharpens the class war, and leads to a ruinous inflation.
In a nation gradually increasing in wealth and money—especially paper money—the cost of commodities and labor will continually rise.… As labor becomes very dear in a rich nation, that nation will import more from other nations than it will export to them. If all other factors remain the same, … the money of the rich nation will insensibly pass to the poorer nation, which, becoming opulent in turn, will ruin itself in the same way.53
Is there any escape from the concentration of wealth and the scramble for money?
One would be to multiply the number of proprietors by making a new distribution of the land.… When a man’s lands exceed a certain number of acres, they should be taxed at a rate exceeding the rent.… Such a redistribution is made almost impossible in a money economy, … [but] if wisely conceived it could be executed by continual and insensible alterations.54
Diminish the riches of some, augment those of others, and put the poor in such a state of ease that they may by seven or eight hours per day abundantly provide for the wants of themselves and their families. Then a people will become as happy as the nature of man will allow.55
3. Influence
Here, in two books and one man, are almost all the ideas that made the French Revolution, and almost all the ideas that agitate nations today. No wonder educated Frenchmen, in the third quarter of the eighteenth century, ranked Helvétius as almost the equal of Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot, and gave his first book such popularity and acclaim as was hardly accorded to any other volume of the age. “No book,” said Brunetière, “has made more noise in its time, or spread abroad more ideas destined to make their way in the world.”56 Brissot reported in 1775 that “the system of Helvétius has the greatest vogue”; Turgot, while opposing it, complained that it was praised “with a kind of fury”; another described it as “found on every toilette table.”57 All critics commended the clarity of its style, the force of its epigrams, and the evident humanitarianism of a man who, having everything, advocated a redistribution of wealth.
However, the philosophes themselves criticized his “system” as based on erroneous conceptions. Voltaire defended the claims of heredity; all men are not at birth equal in potential excellence of mind and character; geniuses, he thought, are born, not made.58 Diderot agreed with Voltaire. In a Réfutation de l’ouvrage d’Helvétius intitulé L’Homme (written in 1775, but not published till a hundred years later) he argued that sensations are transformed differently in different individuals by inherited differences in the structure of the brain.59
Man is not born blank. True, he is born without ideas and without directed passions; but from the first moment of his life he is endowed with a predisposition to conceive, compare, and retain some ideas with more relish than others; and with dominant tendencies later resulting in actual passions.60
Here Diderot, who had begun with Locke, turned back to Leibniz and held out
a hand to Kant. The influence of environment and schooling, in Diderot’s view, is always limited by heredity. “We cannot give what nature has refused; perhaps we destroy what she gives.… Education improves her gifts.”61 He resented the reduction of intellectual delights to sensual pleasure, and joined in the general outcry against Helvétius’ notion that all altruism is egoism unconscious or concealed.
Mme. du Deffand was one of the few who agreed on this point with Helvétius. “This man,” she said, “has revealed everybody’s secret [C’est un homme qui a dit le secret de tout le monde]”62 Adam Smith, following his friend Hume, insisted that altruism was founded upon feelings of sympathy as innate as egoism; but in The Wealth of Nations he based his economic theory on the universality of self-love. Mme. Roland, in the ecstasies of the Revolution, was repelled by Helvétius. “I felt myself impelled by a generosity which he never recognized.… I confronted his theories with the great … heroes that history has immortalized.”63
These problems cannot be solved in a paragraph. It seems clear that differences in hereditary or congenital constitution substantially affect the operation of environment and education; how else shall we explain the quite diverse character and development of brothers despite the similarity of origin and opportunities? And yet Helvétius was on the right track: within the limits decreed by heredity, immense changes can be effected in the behavior of individuals and groups by differences in environment, education, and legislation; how else shall we explain the emergence of man from barbarism to civilization?—Perhaps we should admit to Helvétius that no one consciously acts in a way more painful than its alternative. But certain social instincts—maternal love, gregariousness, love of approval—though they cannot rival the individualistic instincts in total force, are strong enough to generate altruistic actions before any conscious weighing of pleasure, pain, or result. Each of us is an ego, but some of us spread our egos to include our family, community, country, or mankind. In this sense the largest egos are the best.
In any case many men were moved to thought and action by Helvétius’ ideas. It was probably under his influence that La Chalotais began his campaign to replace the schools of village priests, and the Jesuit colleges, with a system of education controlled by the state. The public schools of America go back to the proposals of Condorcet, who called himself a disciple of Helvétius.64 Beccaria testified that the works of Helvétius inspired him to write his historic plea for the reform of penal law and policy. Bentham declared: “I owe to Helvétius’ De l’Esprit a great part of my ideas”—including the utilitarian principle of seeking in morality and in legislation the greatest happiness of the greatest number.65 The National Convention of 1792 certified its sense of Helvétius’ influence on the Revolution by giving his daughters the title filles de la nation. William Godwin based his Enquiry concerning Political Justice (1793) upon the teachings of Helvétius; and Godwin’s wife, Mary Wollstonecraft, was led to compose her epochal Rights of Woman (1792) partly by Helvétius’ claim that the intellectual inequalities between the sexes were largely due to inequalities of education and opportunity.66
Many of Helvétius’ contemporaries contrasted his theory of universal egoism with the kindness of his character and the benevolence of his life. Marmontel wrote of him: “There could not be a better man; liberal and generous without ostentation, and beneficent from the goodness of his heart.”67 Grimm, seldom lavish in praise, described Helvétius as a “true gentleman,” just, indulgent, free from all ill-humor, a good husband, a good father, a good friend, a good man.68 True of himself were the words that Helvétius wrote in De l’Esprit:
In order to love mankind we must expect little from them.… Every man, so long as his passions do not obscure his reason, will always be more indulgent in proportion as he is more enlightened.… If the great man is always the most indulgent, … if he pours over the faults of others the lenient balm of pity, and is slow in discovering those faults, it is because the elevation of his mind will not permit him to expatiate upon the vices and follies of individual persons, but only upon those of mankind in general.69
At Voré and in Paris he lived with his wife and children an idyl of devotion and happiness. In 1764 he traveled in England and Germany, met Hume and Gibbon and Frederick the Great. In 1770 he shared in financing Pigalle’s statue of Voltaire. He died in 1771, with d’Holbach and other friends at his bedside. His widow, loving his memory, refused all suitors for her hand, including Benjamin Franklin. She survived her husband by twenty-nine years, passed through the Revolution safely, and died in 1800, aged eighty-one.
II. AUXILIARIES
A very swarm of minor philosophes, in the third quarter of the eighteenth century, joined in the attack upon Christianity. They labored with all the industry and enthusiasm of early Christians spreading the new Gospel, or of Spanish Christians expelling Moors. They poured forth a stream of tracts and treatises, and when their own profusion ebbed they translated all the antireligious literature they could find, from Lucretius to Hobbes. They devised a new calendar of saints and martyrs, canonizing Julian the Apostate and idolizing Pomponazzi, Bruno, Campanella, Vanini, Bayle, and other victims of persecution. They condemned the Jews not for charging interest on loans but for having begotten Christianity. They dethroned Jehovah as a monster of cruelty, a god of war, the first of the genocides. They laughed at original sin, and the God who had to send himself down to earth as his son, to be scourged and crucified to appease the anger of himself as Father piqued by a woman’s desire for apples or knowledge. They branded the Crusades as a land-grabbing, commerce-cornering expedition. They scorned the Middle Ages as all Dark Ages, and looked down upon the Gothic cathedrals as barbarous and grotesque. D’Alembert noted about him “a certain exaltation of ideas,” a “fermentation,” a “general effervescence of minds, … [which] with a kind of violence has swept along with it everything that stood in its way.”70
There was Jacques André Naigeon, whom Sainte-Beuve described as “a fanatical beadle of atheism”;71 he came to live and work with d’Holbach as translator and editor; together they published in ten years thirty books, large or small, original or imported, all against Christianity; “it is raining bombs in the house of the Lord,” said Diderot.72 There was Nicolas Boulanger, another friend of d’Holbach, who labored in the cause till his death (1759), and left behind him a manuscript entitled Antiquité dévoilée (Antiquity Unveiled). D’Holbach kept this in storage till 1765, when the chief minister was Choiseul, friendly to the philosophes; then he sent it to the press with a flaming introduction by Diderot. Religion, said Boulanger, arose through primitive man’s fears of floods and other apparently supernatural catastrophes; it was organized by priests and kings in a conspiracy to sanctify tyranny in return for tyrannical enforcement of orthodox belief; and mankind would never escape from that dark conspiracy except by following the light of reason in defiance of priests and kings.73
More important was André Morellet, another Jesuit product, one more abbé wandering in rebel ranks. Born in 1727, he lived long enough to be described by Mme. Necker as “a bear” who nevertheless “had candor, probity, and a thousand good qualities, and enough religion to suspect that there may be a God, and sometimes to admit it to his friends, relying on their discretion not to reveal his credulity.”74 Under Diderot’s tutelage he wrote some articles for the Encyclopédie. At d’Holbach’s dinners he displayed so mordant a wit that Voltaire called him the Abbé Mord-les—“the Reverend Mr. Bite-Them”; but Marmontel wrote that he had “profound ideas … and a heart as upright as it is sound.”75 In 1762 he published a Manuel des Inquisiteurs, composed of selections from the Directorium Inquisitorum of Nicolás Eymerico, who had zealously served as Grand Inquisitor from 1356 to 1399. Frenchmen had almost forgotten the Spanish Inquisition; Morellet refreshed their memory by merely quoting the procedures and penalties of that institution in its heyday. Malesherbes gave Morellet governmental permission to print the book, for, he said, the penal code of France was still
practically identical with that of the Inquisitors.76 Morellet could hardly believe it, but in the year that saw his book go to press Jean Calas was broken on the wheel by the Parlement of Toulouse.
Of another abbé, Guillaume Raynal, the usually calm Grimm reported in his Correspondance for 1772: “Since Montesquieu’s Esprit des lots our literature perhaps has produced no monument that is worthier to pass to the remotest posterity, and to consecrate the progress of our enlightenment, than Raynal’s Philosophical and Political History of European Settlements and Commerce in the Two Indies.”77 Probably Grimm was especially well disposed to the author because it was Raynal who had inaugurated in 1753, and bequeathed to Grimm in 1755, the Correspondance littéraire which ever since had buttered Grimm’s bread; moreover, Grimm’s friend Diderot had had a hand in preparing Raynal’s immortal and now unopened book. Grimm’s judgment seemed confirmed by the immediate popularity of the Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes, published in 1772. Forty editions were sold out before 1789; there were uncounted pirated editions and translations; Franklin, Gibbon, and Robertson praised it; Toussaint L’Ouverture found in it the inspiration for his slave-liberating devotion and campaign (1791). An erudite critic thought it had more influence upon the French Revolution than even the Social Contract of Rousseau.78