[bdgar] SHELLEY'S DEBT TO XVIIL CENTURY THOUGHT 193 



of a country are responsible for the crimes and errors of individuals. 

 The principle that general utility is the foundation of morality bore 

 fruit in the later utilitarian movement, whose leader, Bentham, acknow- 

 ledged his full indebtedness to Helvétius. 



The Baron d'Holbach, like Helvétius, was a German by birth and 

 a Frenchman by education. Like Helvétius also he was possessed of 

 large means, and his hospitable board was a rallying point for the bolder 

 thinkers of the day. His famous book, " Système de la Nature,^' 

 appeared in 1770, and startled the world by its boldness. Goethe 

 records in his autobiography (book xi.) the shudder of horror he ex- 

 perienced upon reading the book. " How hollow and empty did we 

 feel in this melancholy, atheistical half-night, in which the earth 

 vanished with all its images, the heaven with all its stars. There was 

 to be a matter existing from eternity, and eternally moved, and by this 

 motion to right and left and in every direction — by this and no more — 

 it was to produce the infinite phenomena of existence. Even with all 

 this we might have been satisfied, if the author, out of his matter in 

 motion, had really built up the world before our eyes. But he seemed 

 to know as little about nature as we did; for, having set up some general 

 ideas, he quits them at once, in order to change that which seems higher 

 than nature, or as a higher nature within nature, into dull material 

 nature moved indeed, but without direction or form ; and thus he fancies 

 that he has gained something important." From Goethe's words we 

 perceive the utter materialism of the doctrine. Matter and motion 

 are the only forces which operate in the universe. Man and the soul 

 of man are merely fortuitous combinations of molecular atoms. Moral 

 freedom is annihilated, and a stern necessarianism rules in its stead. 

 Immortality is stigmatized as a foolish dream, and that the soul should 

 survive is as probable as that a clock will strike the hour after it has 

 been- shivered into a thousand fragments. 



All these doctrines d'Holbach expounds with a calm, cold assurance. 

 The nearest approach to fervour is found when he proceeds to the attack 

 of human institutions. " Opinion believes itself to be universally in- 

 terested in maintaining received opinions ; the prejudices and the errors 

 which she judges necessary to assure her power are sustained by force, 

 which never reasons. Princes, themselves filled with false ideas of 

 happiness, power, grandeur and glory, are surrounded by flattering 

 courtiers, whose interest it is never to undeceive their masters; these 

 debased men never know virtue save to outrage it, and by degrees they 

 corrupt the people, which sees itself obliged to lend itself to the vices 

 of oreatness, and considers it a merit to imitate it in its disorders.. 



Sec. IL, 190L ]:?. 



