THE NICW SCHAFF-HERZOG
In this spirit the main reh'gious topics were treated, but by a subtle infusion of the spirit of Bayle and the expedient of cross-references from these articles to topics which might be handled with greater freedom, Diderot succeeded in supplying the desired corrective.
It was the circle of Holbach (q.v.; d. 1789) that dared to apply the most extreme consequences of materialism to religious questions. Helv6tius (q.v.; d. 1771) prepared the way with his De I'esprlt (1758), in which he expounded a materialistic psychology and ethics. Their moral theories, deriving though they did from Hobbes and Hume, lost aU connection with the position of Deism, which became for them a mere armory of weapons for the destruction of aU religion with its consequences, intolerance and moral corruption. Holbach is undoubtedly the author of the Systeme de la nature, which appeared in 1770 as the work of Mirabaud. The Systeme is not original in ascribing the beginnings of religion to human hope and fear and to ignorance of the laws of nature. Fraud, ambition, and unhealthy enthusiasm have made use of it as a means of political and social influence and have succeeded in crystallizing its primitive emotions into positive creeds, within which animistic tendencies have been developed and subtilized into systems of metaphysics and theology — the sources of irrational intolerance. Christianity 3. Holbach (g Galilean doctrines translated
^Theo'^ into Platonic metaphysics, and its logical theology to the present day hovers School, between the extremest anthropomorphism and the most abstract specu-lation. The natural religion of the Deists differs from the concrete religions only in that it proceeds not from fear and ignorance but from an optimistic interpretation of life; however, in attempting to prove by natural science the goodness of God and man and the adaptation of the world to the purpose of creation, it is but a halfmatured critical method vainly endeavoring to reconcile the old irrationalism with the spirit of the new sciences. It is guUty of clinging to the naive view which regards the world as anthropocentric instead of recognizing the existence of laws to which man is indifferent — the purely causal, not teleological force of matter. Further, the whole scheme of identifying morality with religion — the psychological support of the Deistic position — is repudiated by Holbach, who defines morality as based solely on the natural law of self-preservation and self-perpetuation. Step by step Deism is thus stripped of its connection with revelation, with metaphysics, and finally with morality, and nothing is retained but its method of interpreting religion and its criticism of the facts of Christianity. From Holbach and his circle, and from the cognate group of the Encyclopedists, proceeded the so-called ideological school, who held the main problem of philosophy to be the analysis of the mental conceptions aroused by sensations from the material world (Condorcet, Sieyos, Naigeon, Garat, Volney, Dupuis, Saint-Lambert, Laplace, Cabanis, De Tracy, .1. B. Say, Benjamin Constant, Bichat, Lamarck, Saint-Simon, Thurot, Stendhal). Out of this
school, in turn, developed the positivism of Comte. J. J. Rousseau (q.v.; d. 1778) gave quite a different tendency to Deism. Accepting in the main the sensualism of Locke and the metaphysics of Clarke and Newton, he maintains after the manner of Shaftesbury and Diderot a belief in inborn moral instincts which he distinguishes as " sentiments " 4 Rous ^'"O™ mere acquired ideas; he is true seau " position of Deism in coimecting
this moral " sentiment " with a belief in God, and he protests against the separation between the two which the skepticism of Diderot had brought about. He was influenced by Richardson, as well as by Locke. " Sentiment " becomes the basis of a metaphysical system built up out of the data of experience under the influence of the Deistic philosophy, but redeemed from formalism by constant reference to sentimentality and emotion as the primary sources of religion. The nature of religion is not dogmatic but moralistic, practical, emotional. Rousseau, therefore, finds the essence of religion, not (like Voltaire) in the cultivated intellect, but in the naive and disinterested understanding of the uncultured. Conscious, rational progress in civilization, no less than supernaturalism in Church and State, is an outcome of the fall, when the win chose intellectual progress in preference to simple felicity. With Rousseau natural religion takes on a new meaning; " nature " is no longer universality or rationality in the cosmic order, in contrast to special supernatural and positive phenomena, but primitive simplicity and sincerity, in contrast to artificiality and studied reflection. In his scheme of the rise of religions he sets out from the common standpoint of the discrepancies and contradictions prevailing among historic creeds. Yet positive religion to him is not so much the product of ignorance and fear as the corruption of the original instinct through the selfishness of man, who has erected rigid creeds that he might arrogate to himself unwarranted privilege or escape the obligations of natural morality. Something of the true religion is to be found in evfery faith, and of all creeds Christianity has retained the greatest measure of the original truth, and the purest morality. So sublime and yet so simple does Rousseau find the Gospel that he can scarcely believe it the work of men. Its irrational elements he attributes to misconception on the part of the followers of Christ and especially of Paul, who had no personal intercourse with him. It was natural that between the advocate of such views and the party of the materialists strife should arise, and in fact Rousseau's religious influence in France was slight. On the rising German idealism, however, he exercised a mighty influence. (E. Tboeltsch. )
Bibliography: On the preparation for Deism in the Aufklarung (" enlightenment ") consult: H. Henke, Geschichte der christlichen Kirche, vols, iv.— vi., Brunswick, 1804; K. Erdmann, Die Aufklarung, Hamburg, 1845; H. von Busche, Die freie religiose Aufklarung, Darmstadt, 1846; F. C. Schlosser, Geschichte dea 18. Jahrhunderts, 7 vols., Heidelberg, 1853-57; E. Henke, Neuere Kitchen^ geschichte, vol. ii., Halle, 1878; O. Pfleiderer, Religions- Philosophie, Berlin, 1896, Eng. transl.. Philosophy of Religion, 4 vols, London, 1886-88.