sophic way of considering things, however humble the
philosophy may be.[143] He hardly took more pains to understand Holbach
than Johnson took to understand Berkeley. In truth it was a
characteristic of Voltaire always to take the social, rather than the
philosophic view of the great issues of the theistic controversy. One
day, when present at a discussion as to the existence of a deity, in
which the negative was being defended with much vivacity, he astonished
the company by ordering the servants to leave the room, and then
proceeding to lock the door. "Gentlemen," he explained, "I do not wish
my valet to cut my throat to-morrow morning." It was not the truth of
the theistic belief in itself that Voltaire prized, but its supposed
utility as an assistant to the police. D'Alembert, on the other hand,
viewed the dispute as a matter of disinterested speculation. "As for the
existence of a supreme intelligence," he wrote to Frederick the Great,
"I think that those who deny it advance far more than they can prove,
and scepticism is the only reasonable course." He goes on to say,
however, that experience invincibly proves both the materiality of the
soul, and a material deity--like that which Mr. Mill did not
repudiate--of limited powers, and dependent on fixed conditions.[144]

[143] Lange's _Gesch. d. Materialismus_, i. 369; where the author
shows how entirely Voltaire failed to touch Holbach's position as to
the meaning of Order in the universe.

[144] _Oeuv._, v. 296, 303, etc.

Let us now turn to the book itself. And first, as to its author. The
reader of the _New Heloisa_ will remember that the heroine, after her
repentance and her marriage, has only one chagrin in the world; that is
the blank disbelief of her husband in the two great mysteries of a
Supreme Being and another world. Wolmar, the husband, has always been
supposed to stand for Rousseau's version of Holbach, and Holbach would
hardly have complained of the portrait. The Wolmar of the novel is
benevolent, active, patient, tranquil, friendly, and trustful. The
nicely combined conjunction of the play of circumstance with the action
of men pleases him, just as the fine symmetry of a statue or the
skilful contrivance of dramatic effects would please him. If he has any
dominant passion, it is a passion for observation; he delights in
reading the hearts of men.[145]

[145] _Nouvelle Heloise_, IV. xii.

All this seems to have been as true of