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Updated: July 7, 2025
With Father Richeome's and even Bayle's permission, that is not at all the position of the matter.
Cyprian and Tertullian, opinion that Arnobius set forth with much force when he said to the pagans: "Do you not blush to reproach us with despising your gods, and is it not much more proper to believe in no God at all, than to impute to them infamous actions?" opinion established long before by Plutarch, who says "that he much prefers people to say there is no Plutarch, than to say 'There is an inconstant, choleric, vindictive Plutarch'"; opinion strengthened finally by all the effort of Bayle's dialectic.
Yet I am not altogether pleased with M. Bayle's manner of expression here on this subject, and I am not of the opinion 'that a more composite and less productive plan might be more capable of averting irregularities'. Rules are the expression of general will: the more one observes rules, the more regularity there is; simplicity and productivity are the aim of rules.
As it was of interest to ascertain what the increase of illuminating power was in a given lamp provided with the new chimney, Mr. Felix le Blanc undertook some photometric experiments. The trials were made with a Gagneau lamp provided with a chimney of the ordinary shape, and then with one of Mr. Bayle's. The measurements were made after each had been burned half an hour.
Those who hold a different opinion, and who make God the sole agent, are needlessly becoming involved in expressions whence they will only with difficulty extricate themselves without offence against religion; moreover, they unquestionably offend against reason. Here is, however, the foundation of M. Bayle's argument. He says that we do not do that of which we know not the way it is done.
Yet the extraordinary excitement aroused in France by Bayle's Dictionary was a proof of the extent to which the sceptical spirit had spread before the Encyclopædists were born. The great influence of Fontenelle was wholly in the same sceptical direction. There was a strong sceptical element in French Materialism, even when materialism was fully developed and seemed most dogmatic.
"For example, he had not read Montesquieu as this writer ought to be read, that is to say, in a way to accept or decidedly reject each of the thirty-one books of the 'Esprit des lois. He had not thus read Bayle's Dictionary nor the Essay on the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith.
I. 'God, he says, 'the Being eternal and necessary, infinitely good, holy, wise and powerful, possesses from all eternity a glory and a bliss that can never either increase or diminish. This proposition of M. Bayle's is no less philosophical than theological. To say that God possesses a 'glory' when he is alone, that depends upon the meaning of the term.
Do not the Thomists say, that there are as many species as individuals in angelic nature? Leibniz acknowledged Bayle's note in a further reply, which is written as though for publication. It was communicated to Bayle, but it was not in fact published. It is dated 1702. It may be found in the standard collections of Leibniz's philosophical works. It reads almost like a sketch for the Theodicy.
It was characteristic of decadent scholasticism, it squared with Luther's exaggerations about the impotence of reason in fallen man, and Pascal had given his own highly personal twist to it. Bayle has been hailed as a forerunner of Voltairean scepticism. It would be truer to say that a Voltairean sceptic could read Bayle's discussions in his own sense and for his own purposes if he wished.
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