A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume 2 of 2: Third edition, Revised and Expanded, in two volumesRobertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
Religion
A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume 2 of 2: Third edition, Revised and Expanded, in two volumes
Robertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
Free thought -- History
C. J. de. Récréations de philosophie et de
morale.
1785. Maréchal. Livre échappé au Déluge. [Author dismissed.]
1787. Marquis Pastoret. Zoroastre, Confucius, et Mahomet.
1788. Meister. De la morale naturelle.
1788. Pastoret. Moïse considéré comme legislateur et comme
moraliste.
1788. Maréchal. Almanach des honnêtes gens. [Author imprisoned;
book burnt.]
1789. Volney. Les Ruines des Empires.
1789. Duvernet, Abbé. Les Dévotions de Madame de Betzamooth.
1789. Cerutti (Jesuit Father). Bréviaire Philosophique, ou Histoire
du Judaisme, du Christianisme, et du Déisme.
1791-3. Naigeon. Dictionnaire de la philosophie ancienne et moderne.
1795. Dupuis. De l'origine de tous les Cultes. 5 tom.
1795. La Fable de Christ dévoilée; ou Lettre du muphti de
Constantinople à Jean Ange Braschy, muphti de Rome.
1797. Rep. of d'Holbach's Contagion sacrée, with notes by Lemaire.
1798. Maréchal. Pensées libres sur les prêtres. A Rome, et se
trouve à Paris, chez les Marchands de Nouveautés. L'An Ier de
la Raison, et VI de la République Française.
13. It will be noted that after 1770--coincidently, indeed, with a
renewed restraint upon the press--there is a notable falling-off in the
freethinking output. Rationalism had now permeated educated France;
and, for different but analogous reasons, the stress of discussion
gradually shifted as it had done in England. France in 1760 stood to
the religious problem somewhat as England did in 1730, repeating the
deistic evolution with a difference. By that time England was committed
to the new paths of imperialism and commercialism; whereas France,
thrown back on the life of ideas and on her own politico-economic
problems, went on producing the abundant propaganda we have noted,
and, alongside of it, an independent propaganda of economics and
politics. At the end of 1767, the leading French diarist [1028] notes
that "there is formed at Paris a new sect, called the Economists,"
and names its leading personages, Quesnay, Mirabeau the elder, the
Abbé Baudeau, Mercier de la Rivière, and Turgot. These developed the
doctrine of agricultural or "real" production which so stimulated
and influenced Adam Smith. But immediately afterwards [1029] the
diarist notes a rival sect, the school of Forbonnais, who founded
mainly on the importance of commerce and manufactures. Each "sect"
had its journal. The intellectual ferment had inevitably fructified
thought upon economic as upon historical, religious, and scientific
problems; and there was in operation a fourfold movement, all tending
to make possible the immense disintegration of the State which began
in 1789. After the Economists came the "Patriots," who directed
towards the actual political machine the spirit of investigation and
reform. And the whole effective movement is not unplausibly to be
dated from the fall of the Jesuits in 1764. [1030] Inevitably the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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