n the two nationalities. The French endowed English
materialism with wit, with flesh and blood, with eloquence. They
invested it with grace and gave it the temperament that was still
lacking. They civilized it.

In Helvetius, who likewise took Locke as his starting point,
materialism receives its proper French character. He applied it
immediately to social life. (Helvetius, _de l'homme_.) Sensual
qualities and egoism, enjoyment and enlightened self-interests are
the foundations of all morality.

The natural equality of human intelligences, the harmony between the
progress of reason and the progress of industry, the natural goodness
of mankind, the omnipotence of education are the principal factors in
this system.

The writings of Lamettrie exhibit the union of Cartesian and English
materialism. Lamettrie utilizes the physics of Descartes down to its
utmost detail. His _l'homme machine_ is a performance executed on the
model of the animal machine of Descartes. In Holbach's _Systeme de la
nature_, the section devoted to physics likewise consists of the
synthesis of English and French materialism, just as the section
devoted to morals is based essentially on the morality of Helvetius.
Robinet (_de la nature_), the French materialist who more than all the
others kept in touch with metaphysics, expressly founds himself on
Leibnitz.

Of Volney, Dupuis, Diderot, etc., we do not need to speak any more
than of the physiocrats, now that we have shown the double derivation
of French materialism from the physics of Descartes, Spinoza,
Malebranche and Leibnitz. This antagonism could only be realized by
Germans after they themselves had come into conflict with speculative
metaphysics.

Just as Cartesian materialism branches into natural science, so the
other tendency of French materialism merges directly into socialism
and communism.

No special acuteness is required to perceive the necessary connection
of the original goodness and equally intelligent endowment of men, of
the omnipotence of experience, custom and education, the influence of
external circumstances on men, the extreme importance of industry, the
justification of enjoyment, etc., with communism and socialism.

If man receives all his impressions and forms all his conceptions from
the world of sense, and derives his experiences from the world of
sense, it follows that the empirical world ought to be so constructed
as to offer a wealth of truly human experiences