The progress of Materialism is evident; progress in the learned world and in the unlearned world, in the name of the scientific studies and of popular tendencies. A contemporary spiritualistic philosopher, as distinguished by intellectual probity as by the independence and the moderation of his opinions, of whom the Duke de Broglie, on learning his death, exclaimed, "We have lost a sage"--M. Damiron I mean--published eight years ago his "Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de la philosophie au 18 siècle;" he had read it in successive parts to the _Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques_. He said in his preface, "Men are disposed a second time to have Sensualism; they insist upon something that they may oppose to and substitute for pure and simple Spiritualism: be it so; but then let them at least well understand what it is that they are asking for. {332} It is not merely Locke, the moderate chief of the school, nor is it d'Alembert, nor Saint-Lambert, nor even Helvetius; these keep themselves relatively within bounds: it is Diderot who has so little moderation, it is d'Holbach, it is Naigeon, it is Lalande, and de la Mettrie; it is a whole order of minds, not very eminent, but very decided and very consistent and logical in their materialism; materialists in all and for all, from the soul up to God--not forgetting, be it remembered, liberty, duty, a future life, etc. ... These men, with their heads in the air and their masks in their hand, with a confidence in themselves and a faith almost confounding itself with religion, profess openly as truth, fatalism, egotism, and atheism. This is what men want, and what, if they wish to be logical, men must want, when, closely or remotely, they adhere to a philosophy that reduces everything to sensation, and that which is the object of sensation. Let there then be no illusion upon this subject; all the principles of morals and of religion are at stake. Sensualism _is_ what it is, and _can_ be nothing else. It was made a complete system in the eighteenth century; nothing remains in it that can be either made or remade; and if men recur to it in our days, the mechanism and the form may be altered--for these are variable--but not the essential substance, for that is _not_ so. {333} There are not two manners of being consequent any more in this system than in any other; however the attempt may be made, men can never by any reproduction render it what it is not, and what its nature prevents it from ever being; so we must take it or we must leave it alone; we cannot change its principles." [Footnote 71] [Footnote 71: Memoires pour servir à l'histoire de la philosophie au 18 siècle, by Ph. Damiron, member of the Institute; vol. i, p. xiv. 1858.]