of the one "Infame" which it
was the object of his life to crush. If he hated one more than another,
it was probably the last; while D'Holbach, and the extreme left of the
free-thinking best, were disposed to show no more mercy to Deism and
Pantheism.

The sceptical insurrection of the eighteenth century made a terrific
noise and frightened not a few worthy people out of their wits; but cool
judges might have foreseen, at the outset, that the efforts of the later
rebels were no more likely than those of the earlier, to furnish
permanent resting-places for the spirit of scientific inquiry. However
worthy of admiration may be the acuteness, the common sense, the wit,
the broad humanity, which abound in the writings of the best of the
free-thinkers; there is rarely much to be said for their work as an
example of the adequate treatment of a grave and difficult
investigation. I do not think any impartial judge will assert that, from
this point of view, they are much better than their adversaries. It must
be admitted that they share to the full the fatal weakness of _a priori_
philosophising, no less than the moral frivolity common to their age;
while a singular want of appreciation of history, as the record of the
moral and social evolution of the human race, permitted them to resort
to preposterous theories of imposture, in order to account for the
religious phenomena which are natural products of that evolution.

For the most part, the Romanist and Protestant adversaries of the
free-thinkers met them with arguments no better than their own; and with
vituperation, so far inferior that it lacked the wit. But one great
Christian Apologist fairly captured the guns of the free-thinking array,
and turned their batteries upon themselves. Speculative "infidelity" of
the eighteenth century type was mortally wounded by the _Analogy_; while
the progress of the historical and psychological sciences brought to
light the important part played by the mythopoeic faculty; and, by
demonstrating the extreme readiness of men to impose upon themselves,
rendered the calling in of sacerdotal co-operation, in most cases, a
superfluity.

Again, as in the fourteenth and the sixteenth centuries, social and
political influences came into play. The free-thinking _philosophes_,
who objected to Rousseau's sentimental religiosity almost as much as
they did to _L'Infame_, were credited with the responsibility for all
the evil deeds of Rousseau's Jacobi