Who reads ‘The System of Nature’ now? It never was in any sense a great book. But it certainly was one of the three or four most famous books of an age richer in them than any other age in history. It was, after all, simply the logical outcome, the natural, though the extreme result of the rationalistic criticism of the fifty or sixty years which preceded it. The philosophers had sought to define God. D’Holbach said aloud, what the fool of David’s time said in his heart, ‘THERE IS NO GOD.’ In Part I. he disposed of Kings as effete, luxurious, war-making, and tyrannical. Then he expounded his views on Happiness. Men will never be happy till they are enlightened, and never enlightened till they have ceased to believe in a God. Study Nature, and obey Nature’s laws--that is the way to felicity, if way there be. Then he went on to Mind. All Mind is Matter. Of Free Will he denied the existence, as twelve years earlier his friend Helvétius had denied it in his book ‘On the Mind.’ Still, even if one cannot help one’s wrong-doing, punishments there must be, for the good of society; only such punishments should be reformative and never cruel. In his protest against torture and the brutalising effect of public executions, one sees for a moment the man behind the book. With regard to the Immortality of the Soul, since there is no such thing as soul, it cannot be immortal. The false doctrine of Hell is useless even as a deterrent from sin. Part II. contains what is certainly the most burning and outspoken attack on the Existence of God to be found in literature. That there is a Force behind Matter, I admit. He who does not admit this, must be a madman. But further I will not go. As for morality depending on a belief in a Deity--not at all. Nature bids man do right as his own best interest. Let each try to do his utmost for the greatest good of the greatest number, and there stands established a high and an unselfish ideal. Preached, as these doctrines were, in a style not a little vehement and abundant, with much Teutonic pomposity and rhetoric, it could soon be said of d’Holbach that he had ‘accommodated atheism to chambermaids and to hairdressers.’ More learned critics disliked his manner as much as his matter. ‘Four times too many words in the book,’ says Voltaire acidly. But the uneducated, or the half-educated, prefer both their oratory and their literature rich and fruity.