are what they must be, that all hatred
against them is unjust, that a fool produces follies just as a wild
shrub produces sour berries, that to insult him is to reproach the oak
for bearing acorns instead of olives.[135] All this is as wise and
humane as words can be so, and it really represents the aim and temper
of Helvetius's teaching. Unfortunately for him and for his generation,
his grasp was feeble and unsteady. He had not the gift of accurate
thinking, and his book is in consequence that which, of all the books of
the eighteenth century, unites most of wholesome truth with most of
repellent error.

[135] _Disc._ ii. 10.

CHAPTER VI.

HOLBACH'S SYSTEM OF NATURE.

The _System of Nature_ was published in 1770, eight years before the
death of Voltaire and of Rousseau, and it gathered up all the scattered
explosives of the criticism of the century into one thundering engine of
revolt and destruction. It professed to be the posthumous work of
Mirabaud, who had been secretary to the Academy. This was one of the
common literary frauds of the time. Its real author was Holbach. It is
too systematic and coherently compacted to be the design of more than
one man, and it is too systematic also for that one man to have been
Diderot, as has been so often assumed. At the same time there are good
reasons for believing that not only much of its thought, but some of the
pages, were the direct work of Diderot. The latest editor of the
heedless philosopher has certainly done right in placing among his
miscellanea the declamatory apostrophe which sums up the teachings of
this remorseless book. The rumour imputing the authorship to Diderot was
so common, and Diderot himself was so disquieted by it, that he actually
hastened away from Paris to his native Langres and to the Baths of
Bourbonne, in order to be ready to cross the frontier at the first hint
of a warrant being out against him.[136] Diderot has recorded his
admiration of his friend's work. "I am disgusted," he said, "with the
modern fashion of mixing up incredulity and superstition. What I like is
a philosophy that is clear, definite, and frank, such as you have in the
_System of Nature_. The author is not an atheist in one page, and a
deist in another. His philosophy is all of one piece."[137]

[136] _Oeuv._, xvii. 329.

[137] _Ib._ ii. 398.

No book has ever produced a more widespread shock. Everybody insisted on
reading it, and almost everybody