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Updated: June 27, 2025
When we think of the reckless themes that were so recklessly discussed by Holbach, Diderot, and the rest of that indefatigable band, we feel that, as against the French philosophic party, an English Tory like Johnson and an English Whig like Burke would have found their own differences too minute to be worth considering.
Baron Holbach was an amiable and good man, the constant friend of the Encyclopaedists. At his house they often met, so that it came to be known among them as the Cafe de l'Europe, and its master as the "maitre d'hotel" of Philosophy. But these nicknames were used in good part. Holbach had none of the flippancy of Helvetius.
Holbach, not yet author of the memorable System of Nature, compiled a vast number of the articles on chemistry and mineralogy, chiefly and avowedly from German sources, he being the only writer of the band with a mastery of a language which was at that moment hardly more essential to culture than Russian is now.
Men found nature deaf to their cries; they therefore imagined an intelligent master over it, hoping that he would listen to them. This theme is elaborated by Holbach throughout his second volume. Here as elsewhere he writes with seriousness and conviction, although some of his logical positions are assailable.
He heard all that Brian had to say he listened to his wild ramblings as to the voice of an oracle; and then, when Brian had poured out his little stock of argument in favour of materialism, had quoted Aristotle, and Holbach, and Hume, and Comte, and Darwin, and had perverted their arguments against a personal God into the divine right of man to ruin his soul and body, John Jardine, who had read more of Aristotle than Brian knew of all the metaphysicians put together, and who had Plato, Kant, and Dugald Stewart in his heart of hearts, gravely took up the strain, and made mincemeat of Mr.
It even claims to afford hints for a rule for his life, at least so we gather from the Preface, where, alluding to "that group of freethinkers, including d'Alembert, Diderot, Holbach and Voltaire," the author tells us that they "first dared to follow the consequences of a mechanistic science incomplete as it then was to the rules of human conduct, and thereby laid the foundation of that spirit of tolerance, justice, and gentleness which was the hope of our civilisation until it was buried under the wave of homicidal emotion which has swept through the world."
But the received view Is that the Girondins were Voltairean, and the Jacobins Rousseauite, while Danton was of the school of the Encyclopaedia, and Hébert and Chaumette were inspired by Holbach. The author seems to us greatly to exaggerate the whole position of Rousseau, and even in a certain sense to mistake the nature of his influence.
Holbach cared most for the physical sciences. Marmontel brought a vein of sentimentalism, and Helvétius a vein of cynical formalism.
All the 'proofs' and apologetic arguments ruin the work unfortunately, the eloquence and dialectics of Rousseau, Diderot, Helvetius, Holbach, and even Voltaire, differing very much from those of Abbé Gérard. It is the same with the libertines' reasons refuted by the father of the Comte de Valmont. It must be a very dangerous thing to bring forward mischievous doctrines with so much force.
Holbach was a rash and rather superficial metaphysician, but the warm-hearted and honest pages which follow this opening inspire a deep respect for the man.
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