of
Comte and Crousse are as thoroughly atheistic as those of D'Holbach
himself. For, however irreligious and profane Voltaire and his
associates might be, and however devoted to their avowed object of
crushing Christ and his cause, so significantly indicated by their motto
and watchword, "Ecrasez l'Infame;"[25] yet they continued, as a party,
to advocate Deism, and seemed at least to oppose the bolder speculations
of the author of the "Systeme de la Nature." Both Voltaire and
Frederick the Great wrote in reply to its atheistic tenets.[26] But now,
in France, these tenets are openly avowed and zealously propagated. Nor
is this fatal moral epidemic confined to our continental neighbors:
there is too much reason to fear that it has infected, to some extent,
the artisans of our own manufacturing towns, and even, in some quarters,
the inhabitants of our rural districts. The Communists of France have
their analogues in the Socialists of Britain; and the periodical press,
although for the most part sound, or at least innocuous, has lent its
aid to the dissemination of the grossest infidelity which the Continent
has produced. The "Leader" gives forth Lewes's version of Comte's
Philosophy; and the "Glasgow Mechanics' Journal," a digest of his Law of
Human Progress, which is essentially atheistic.[27] Nor is indigenous
Atheism wanting. Mr. Mackay in his "Progress of the Intellect," Atkinson
and Martineau in their "Letters on the Laws of Man's Nature and
Development," and Mr. G. Holyoake in "The Reasoner," have sufficiently
proved that if Atheism be an exotic, it is capable of taking root and
growing up in the land of Bacon, Newton, and Boyle.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] BUDDAEI, "Theses Theologicae de Atheismo et Superstitione," cap. I.

[3] J. C. WOLFIUS, "De Atheismi falso Suspectis."

[4] BUDDAEI, "Theses Theologicae," cap. III., "De dogmatibus quae cum
Atheismo conjuncta sunt, aut ad eum ducunt," p. 240.

[5] COUSIN, "Introduction Generale a l'Histoire de la Philosophie," I.
169:--"Que toute pensee implique une foi spontanee a Dieu, et qu'il n'y
a pas d'Atheisme naturel. Croit-il qu'il existe, par exemple? S'il croit
cela, cela me suffit,"--"il a donc foi au principe de la pensee;--or la
est Dieu,"--"Selon moi, toute parole prononcee avec confiance, n'est pas
moins qu'une profession de la foi a la pensee,--a la raison en
soi,--c'est a dire a Dieu."

[6] M. HELVETIUS, "Treatise on Man, his Intellectual Faculties and
Education: tr