System of Nature by Baron D’Holbach 2 Volumes in One: Laws of the Physical World and of the Moral World

By Balraj K. Joshi

According to dHolbach, nature is a great chain of causes and effects. Nature is the great whole, comprising everything visible and invisible. Baron d Holbach gives the laws of the physical world
based on laws of motion and gravitation, as given by Newton, and he wants to apply the law of attraction and repulsion in the field of morality. All knowledge comes through the sense organs created by the impressions of the world and deposited in the brain, which is the real seat of thought. Man searches for happiness in this world, but the priesthood misguides the people by asking them to look for happiness in future life, as guided by the chimeras of religion.

Man living in society should be guided by reason, experience, and sciences by working for his happiness and contributing to the happiness of other members of the society by his hard work, talent, and virtues, by being useful to others by satisfying their needs while satisfying his own needs. Happiness is on this earth, and by reason and experience, he can be happy, and not as the priesthood preaches in another future life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 23, 2016
• ISBN: 9781514428245

Balraj K. Joshi

BALRAJ JOSHI, translator of System of Nature by Baron d’Holbach, has a doctorate in French literature and Diplomed’Etudes Approfondies in philosophy from the University of Paris–Sorbonne and has taught French language and literature at college and university level for more than thirty-five years.

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Rev. date: 04/18/2016

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CONTENTS

Preface Of The Author

Extract Of The Correspondence of grimm August, 1789

Translator’s Preface

SYSTEM OF NATURE VOLUME I

Chapter I    On Nature

Chapter II    On movement, motion and its origin

Chapter III    On matter, its different combinations and its diverse movements; or on the march of nature

Chapter IV    Laws of movement common to all the beings of nature. On Attraction & repulsion. On the Force of inertia. On Necessity

Chapter V    On Order, Disorder, Intelligence, Chance

Chapter VI    On man; on his distinction between physical and between moral man; on his origin

Chapter VII    On Soul and the system of spirituality

Chapter VIII    On intellectual faculties; all are derived from the faculty of feeling

Chapter IX    On the diversity of intellectual faculties; they depend on physical causes, like their moral qualities, natural principles of sociability, morality and politics

Chapter X    Our soul does not draw out its ideas out of itself. There are no innate ideas

Chapter XI    On the system of freedom of men

Chapter XII    Investigation of the opinion which maintains that the System of fatalism is dangerous

Chapter XIII    On the immortality of the soul; on the dogma of future life; fears of death

Chapter XIV    Education, morality and laws are sufficient for containing men of the desire of immorality: on suicide

Chapter XV    Interests of men or ideas which they form themselves of happiness. Men can not be happy without virtue

Chapter XVI    Errors of men on what constitutes happiness are the real source of their sufferings. Useless remedies which one has wished to apply them

Chapter XVII    The true ideas or founded on nature are the only remedies for the sufferings of men. Recapitulation of this first part. conclusion

Chapter XVIII    Origin of our ideas on divinity

Chapter XIX    On Mythology and Theology

SYSTEM OF NATURE VOLUME II

Chapter I    Confused and contradictory ideas of theology

Chapter II    Examination of the proofs of the existence of God, given by Clarke

Chapter III    Examination of the proofs of the existence of God, given by Descartes, Mallebranche, Newton etc.

Chapter IV    On Pantheism or natural causes of Divinity

Chapter V    On theism on deism, on the system of optimism and final causes

Chapter VI    Examination of the advantages which result for men from their notions on Divinity, or of their influence on morality, politics or the sciences, on the happiness of nations and individuals

Chapter VII    Theological notions cannot be the basis of morality. Parallel of theological morality and natural morality. Theology harms the progress of human mind

Chapter VIII    That man can conclude nothing form the ideas which are given to them of Divinity; inconsequence and inutility of their conduct in its respect

Chapter IX    Apology for the feelings, sentiments contained in this work. Impiety Do the atheists exist?

Chapter X    Is atheism compatible with morality?

Chapter XI    Motives which induce to atheism; can this system be dangerous? Can it be embraced by the commonplace?

Chapter XII    Epitome of the code of nature

Translation Of Latin Quotations Into English,

PREFACE OF THE AUTHOR

M an is miserable only because he refuses to know nature. His mind is so much infected with prejudices, that one would think him to be always condemned to error: the bandage of opinions with which he is muffled since his childhood, is tightly tied on him that it is with most difficulty that it can be removed. A dangerous leaven gets mingled with all his knowledge and makes them necessarily vacillating, obscure and false: he wished on account of his misfortune jump over the limits of globe, he tried to soar beyond the visible world; and incessantly cruel and repeated falls have uselessly warned him of the folly of his undertaking; he wanted to be metaphysician before being physicist; he despised the realities for meditating the chimeras, he neglected the experiment to feed himself with systems and conjectures; he did not dare to cultivate his reason; against which care had been taken toward him of early life. He pretended to know his fate in the imaginary regions of another life, before thinking of making himself happy in the sojourn where he was living. Briefly man disdained the study of nature for running after the phantoms which like those will of the wisps which the traveler comes across during the night, frightened him, dazzled him and made him leave the simple road to truth, without which he cannot attain happiness.

It is therefore important to seek to destroy the influences which are only well adapted to lead us astray. It is high time to draw out of nature the remedies against the evils which our enthusiasm has done to us: reason guided by experience should finally attack in their source the prejudices of which the human race was since long the victim. It is high time that this reason unjustly degraded, leave its chicken-hearted tone which made him accomplice of the untruths and deliriums. The truth is one; it is necessary for man, it can never harm him, its invincible power will make itself felt sooner or later. It must therefore be discovered to mortals; it is necessary to show them its charms in order to make them dislike the shameful cult which they do to error, which so often usurps their homage under the traits of truth; its glow can hurt only the enemies of mankind, whose power exists only by the obscure night which they spread on the human minds.

It is not at all to these perverted men that truth should speak; its voice is heard only by the honest hearts, accustomed to thinking, sensitive enough to groan over the numberless calamities which the religious and political tyranny makes the world to suffer; enlightened enough to see the huge chain of evils which error made to suffer in all times to the dismayed human beings. It is to error that are due oppressive chains which the tyrants and the priests forge everywhere for the nations. It is to error that is, due the slavery in which in almost all the countries the people have fallen whom the nature destined to work freely for their happiness. It is to error that are attributable these religious terrors which make men languish in their fear or to cut each other’s throat for the chimeras. It is to error that are due these deep-rooted hatreds, these barbarous persecutions; these continual massacres, these outrageous tragedies with whom under the pretext of the interests of the heaven, the earth became so many times the theater. In short it is to errors consecrated by religion that are due ignorance and the indecision in which man is, regarding his most evident of the duties, of his rights the most explicit, the most proved truths: he is in almost all climates only a degraded captive, deprived of the grandeur of the soul, reason, virtue, to whom the inhuman jailers never allow to see the light of the day.

Let us try to tear apart the clouds which prevent men from walking with a steady step in the path way of life; let us inspire him with courage and respect for his reason, that he should learn to know his essence and his legitimate rights, that he should consult experience and not an imagination led astray by authority; that he should renounce the prejudices of his childhood; that he should found his ethics on his nature, on his needs, the real advantages which the society procures him, that he should dare to love himself, that he should work for his own happiness while making others happy; in brief that he should be reasonable, virtuous, for being happy in this world, he should not give himself up to dangerous or useless reveries. If chimeras are necessary to him, he should at least allow others theirs different from his own, that he should get into his head finally that it is very important for the inhabitants of this earth to be just, benevolent, peaceful and that nothing is more unconcerned as their mode of thinking on objects inaccessible to reason.

Thus the aim of this work is to bring man round nature, to make him reason cherished, to make him adore virtue, dissipate the dark shadows which conceal him the lone way appropriate to lead him surely to the happiness which he desires, such are the sincere vows of the author. In good faith to himself, he presents to the reader only the ideas which a long and serious reflection have shown him as useful to the repose and the well being of man and as favorable to the progress of the human mind; therefore he invites him to discuss his principles, far from wishing to break for him the sacred ties of the morality, it aspires to draw them tighter and place virtue on the alters which up till now imposture, enthusiasm and fear have elevated to some dangerous phantoms.

About to enter in the grave, which the time has been digging for him since long, the author affirms solemnly to have meant in his work only the welfare of his counterparts. His only ambition is to merit the approbation of the small number of partisans of truth and the honest souls which search it sincerely. He is not at all writing for those men, immured to the call of reason, who judge only after their mean interests or their sinister prejudices: his cold ashes will fear neither their outcries nor their resentment, so terrible for those who dare, in their lifetime to proclaim the truth.

EXTRACT OF THE CORRESPONDENCEOFGRIMM

AUGUST, 1789

I saw M. Baron d’Holbach only during last years, of his life, but, for knowing him, for sharing the sentiments of esteem and veneration which all his friends had vowed to him which could not fail to inspire the character of his soul and his spirit, it was not necessary to have with him very intimate and very old connections. I shall try therefore to portray him as he appeared to me & I dare to satisfy myself that if his manes were hearing me, the frankness and the naturalness of my homages would not displeases them.

I hardly met a man more learned and more universally erudite than Mr. d’Holbach; I never saw any one who was so with so little of ambition, even with so little the desire, to appear that without the genuine interest which he took in the progress of all enlightenment of all knowledge, without the real need which he had to communicate to others all that he thought to be useful to them, one would always have not known the secret of his all embracing erudition. It was the same with his knowledgeas with his fortune which was for others as for him, but never for influencing opinion. One would have suspected him neither of one nor of the other, if he could excuse himself to show them without harming his own enjoyments and especially to those of his friends.

It is to Baron d’Holbach that in large part are due the quick progress which natural history and chemistry have made in our country since about thirty years. It is he who translated the best of the works which the Germans had published on sciences, almost unknown then in France, or at least very much overlooked. These translations are enriched with excellent notes. People will benefit by them in the course of time without knowing to whom one was indebted for them hardly, it is known to-day.

It is no more an indiscretion to say that he is the author of the book which caused an uproar in Europe, some eighteen to twenty years ago, the famous Systeme de la Nature (System of Nature). All the fame which enjoys this work can’t for a moment seduce his self esteem. If for a long time he had the fortune to be secure from suspicions his modesty served him still more in this respect than all the caution of his friends.

I cannot like the doctrine professed in this work; but all those who know the author owe to him the justice that no consideration, no personal view could attach to him to this system he became its apostle with an honesty of intentions, but with a self-abnegation which would have honored in the opinion of faith the holiest of the apostles of all the religions.

His Systeme Social (Social System) and Morale Universelle (Universal Ethics) created much less stir than his Systeme de la Nature (System of Nature); but these two works demonstrate equally well that after having wanted to overthrow the antique barrier which human weakness had believed necessary to oppose up till then to the vices & the passion which bring shame upon him. The author felt only more acutely the necessity of raising to it new ones; it is in the progress of reason enlightened by a good education and by good laws, that he claims to find all the resources which can affirm the empire of virtue and luckily to its happy influence procure for all the rest & all the well being to which our nature is sensitive.

Systeme de la Nature (System of Nature) is written in an uneven style, but there prevails in general a tone of enthusiasm of philosophy and of eloquence imposing enough; it has whole pages, and they are in large number where one easily recognizes the pen of a superior writer, and that is quite simple, for these pages are of Diderot.

Fellow-Citizen friend since childhood of the famous Lavater, one should excuse me to outline a bit at his physiognomy. I am always struck by the relation which was between the features of the face of M. Holbach and those of his spirit. He had all the features regular enough, beautiful enough, and he was not however a handsome man. His large and uncovered forehead bore the mark of a vast scope of his mind, but less sinuous, less round, it indicated neither the same glow, nor the same energy, nor same fecundity; his look portrayed only the gentleness, the usual sincerity of his soul.

Baron d’Holbach must be believing without much difficulty in the power of reason: for his passions (and ours are always those after which we judge those of our counterparts) his passions were exactly such as they ought to be, enhancing the authority for insisting on the ascendancy of good principles. He loved women, he was very fond of pleasures of the table, but without being the slave of any of his tastes. he could not hate anybody, however it was not easily that he concealed his natural horror for the priests, for all the henchmen of despotism and superstition while talking of them, his gentle temper become irritated in spite of himself, his geniality often become bitter and provoking.

M.d’Holbach had as friends the most famous men of this country such as M.s Helvetius, Diderot, d’ Alembert, Naigeon, Condillac, Turgot, Buffon, J.J. Rousseau and several foreigners worthy of being their associates such as MM Hum, Garrick; abbot Galiani-, Etc. If the charm of such a distinguished society was proper to give to his spirit more strength and more scope, it has been observed with the same truth that there was not a single of these illustrious men to whom he did not teach may useful and strange things. He owned a very beautiful library and the range of his memory was sufficient for all the knowledge with which his studies had enriched him, He remembered easily all that was worthy to be remembered. Whatever system his imagination may form, told me more than once Diderot, I am sure that my friend d’ Holbach would find me facts and authorities to justify it. One of the most estimable feature of d’Holbach was his benevolence; nothing more can be added to the touching example which M. Naigron reported in the journal de Paris & we confine ourselves to copy it here.

There was in his company a man of letters, M.S. who appeared to him since sometime dreaming, silent & very melancholic. Troubled by the condition in which he saw his friend, M.d’ Holbach runs to him. I do not forestall a confidence in which you do not think of doing to me, I respect your secret, but I see you sad and sick and your plight makes me uneasy and tortures me. I know your little fortune, you could be having needs which I do not know, I bring you ten thousand francs which I don’t need and which you will not refuse to accept if you have friendship towards me and which you return to me somewhat earlier or latter, when fortune will smile on you. This friend touched, moved, as he ought to be, assures him that he is in no need of money, that his grief has another cause & did not accept the service which was offered to him, but he has not forgotten it and it is from himself that I am getting the testimony.

TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE

B aron d’Holbach was a great soul who contributed to human thought by remaining anonymous. His whole aim was to propagate truth in the field of natural sciences, human sciences so that the darkness and fears created by selfish theologians, priests, the kings and nobility are removed from the minds of the common man who was suffering under these powers which wanted the people to remain always under their yoke.

D’ Holbach has made an attempt at founding morality, politics ethics on the physical foundations as given by the laws of nature as reflected and exposed by the material thinkers of antiquity like Epicurus, Lucretius. Democretius, Aristotle and the modern physcists like Newton, Francis Bacon. Morality and politics have been founded on imaginary, fictitious, illusory theological foundations for confounding the poor and helpless subjects of all the nations in the different countries of the world.

D’ Holbach by his writings has raised his voice against these tyrannical powers so that people can become conscious of the designs of kings and clergy, understand their intentions and find a way for themselves for making their lives happy by helping each other, by contributing to each other’s happiness by satisfying mutual needs and thus live in harmony and not look for their happiness in the imaginary heavens on false hopes of a future happy life in heaven.

In his System of Nature, he maintains that nature is a great chain of causes and effects which have to be known by reason and experience. Experience and reason are our guides and the torch for finding the laws of Nature and apply them for human, social, and political good of the society.

D’Holbach after having shown the laws of motion, of attraction and repulsion as given by great Newton, he applies them in the field of morality and politics. According to d’Holbach all our relations in human societies are based on love and hatred, which have their physical foundations in the laws of attraction and repulsion. All our thoughts are motions of ideas in our brain created by the impressions of objects on our sense organs and arranged and reflected in the brain.

D’ Holbach gives great importance to our sense organs, for they are the means of gaining knowledge about the world in which we live. Since after death, sense organs are destroyed, there is no knowledge by the soul, as maintain the religious and philosophical thinkers. Body is the recipient of knowledge; in it work the mind, the desires, instincts and life is an attempt to satisfy all our needs, desires ambitions in the society with the help of other beings with whom we live.

D’Holbach says: For man the most useful creature is the man. He is to live with them in harmony for his own happiness.

In System of Nature, he expounds his natural and physical philosophy, regarding Nature as a great chain of causes and effects whose laws, we are to know and apply them for our happiness., In his Systeme de la Nature, he gives:

Laws of the physical world.

And Laws of the Moral world.

By the moral world, he means: social, political and ethical world.

D’Holbach in his Morale Universelle, gives the universal principles of morality. It is one of the treatise on morality based on common sense and reason without philosophical trappings which can confuse the common man. Here are the moral laws valid for all the human beings suitable for the peoples of all the nations.

Systeme Social gives the laws for men living, in the society for their different organizations, the family, the society and other social units which form the human social system in all countries.

Ethocratie is an example of d’Holbach’s vision of a political society governed by moral and ethical laws. What is lacking in all political systems is good faith. D’ Holbach wants the political system should be governed by ethical laws, based on good moral grounds and not on mean, selfish sordid interests of the particular states.

Politique Naturelle gives the real political theory for the good governance of the different states. It has 2 volumes. D’Holbach has in detail given his clear, just rational system of political view, how the states should be governed. According to d’Holbach politics is not the art of deceiving the people of a nation, but the art of guiding them for their welfare. Politique Naturelle is a real, rational treatise on the theory of politics., for enlightening the public about their rights and duties.

Bon Sens gives the laws of common sense. D’Holbach says that common sense or reasoning faculty is not commonly used by the majority of men, that is, by the common man who lets himself swayed by opinion and example of others or the traditions prevalent in the society. Common Sense is the faculty to be developed by observation and experience. Judging the ignorance prevalent in human societies all over the world, d’Holbach says that in human societies, of all the faculties common sense among the common man is the most uncommon.

Christianism Devoilee Christianity Unveiled. In this book d’Holbach shows the negative influence of superstition and theological propaganda for keeping the credulous people under the yoke of religious beliefs..and exploiting their ignorance and keep them in fear for controlling them for their benefit.

D’ Holbach founds all his thoughts human, moral, social political on firm and solid physical, psychological and economic grounds. Utility is the social virtue on which all human relations are to be founded Every man can be useful to the other, by one’s labor, hard work, knowledge, wealth can contribute to other’s happiness who in return will make happy other members of the society. But this utility is not like the slavery of the helpless people for the few rich and powerful.

An other book which is attributed to Baron d’Holbach is La Raison. This small book is a real treatise on the art of reasoning based on observation and experience which can guide the common man and the scientist. The translator found a copy of the book in Bibliotheque Sainte Genevieve Paris and also in Bibliotheque Nationale of Paris.

D’Holbach knows that the clergy and the kings have been since centuries using the dictum Divida et Impera, Divide and Rule by creating misunderstandings and false opinions, they have been keeping the people away from each other. By spreading social justice and informing the people about their rights, by being useful to each other, they can live in peace and harmony in the society and attain happiness in this world by discarding the hopes of a future happiness in heaven.

D’ Holbach owes much of his thought human and social to Cicero and Seneca and he has extensively quoted them in all his writings.

D’Holbach is influenced very much by the English thinkers Hobbes, and locke and quotes them well.

Happiness is only on this earth and reason and experience show the path of happiness for people living and working for each other’s good.

Balraj K. Joshi

Mississauga

Canada.

SYSTEM OF NATURE

VOLUME I

On Nature & its laws, on man, on soul &

its faculties on dogma of immortality, on happiness

………………………………………………….

CHAPTER I

On Nature

M en are always mistaken when they abandon experience for systems produced by imagination ¹. Man is the work of nature He exists in nature, he is subject to its laws, he can’t break way from it, he can’t even by thought, can’t go out of its ambit; it is in vain that his mind wishes to soar beyond the limits of the visible world, he is always obliged to return to it. For a being formed by nature and circumscribed by it, there exits nothing beyond the grand whole of which he is the part & whose influences he undergoes. The beings which are supposed to be above nature or distinct from it, will always be chimeras of whom it will never be possible for us to have veritable ideas, not to talk of the place they occupy and their mode of action. There is nothing & nothing can there be outside the precinct which contains all be beings.

Man should therefore stop to look out of the world which he is living, beings which according to him procure him happiness which nature refuses him; that he should study this nature, that he should learn its laws, that he should meditate over its energy & the immutable way in which it acts, that he should apply his discoveries for his own happiness & that he should submit himself silently to the laws from which nothing can make him escape; that he should consent to ignore the causes wrapped in an impenetrable veil; that he should suffer without grumbling the decrees of universal force which can’t retrace its steps, or which never deviate from the rules which its essence lays down for it.

Obliviously people have misused the distinction which so often has been made about the physical; the moral man. Man is a being purely physical; the moral man is this physical being considered under a certain point of view, that is to say relatively to some of its modes of action, due to its peculiar physical organization. But is not this organization the work of nature? The movements or the modes of action of which it is susceptible, aren’t they physical? His visible actions, as well as invisible movements stirred up within him, which originate from his will or from his thought, are equally natural effects, the necessary consequences of his own mechanism & the impulse which he receives from the beings by which he is surrounded. All that the human spirit has successively invented for changing or for improving its mode of existence and for making it more happy, was only a necessary consequence of the own essence of man and that of beings which act upon him. All our institutions, our reflections, our learnings have object only to procure for us a happiness towards which our own nature obliges us to tend incessantly. All that we do or think, all that we are & that we shall be is never but a consequence of what the universal nature has made us: all our ideas, our wills, our actions are necessary effects of the essence and qualities which this nature has put in us, and the circumstances by which it forces us to pass and be modified. In brief art is nothing but nature acting with the aid of instruments which it has made.

Nature sends man naked and destitute of any help in this world which has to be his sojourn: shortly he succeeds to clothe himself with skin, gradually we see him spin gold & silk. For a being high above in the earth & who from the height of the atmosphere would contemplate the human race with all its progress & its change man would not appear less subject to the laws of nature, when they wander all naked in the forests for searching with difficulty their food, than when living in civilized societies, that is enriched by a greater number of experiences and end by being steeped in luxury, they invent from day to day thousand new needs and discover thousand means of satisfying them. All the steps which we make for modifying our being, can’t but be regarded as a long sequence of cause and effects, which are only the developments of the first impulses which nature has given to us. The same animal; because of its constitution, passes successively from simple to more complex needs, but which are no less sequel of his nature. It is in this way that the butterfly whose beauty we admire, begins by being a lifeless egg, out of which heat brings out a worm which becomes chrysalis and then transforms itself into a winged insect which we see adorn itself with the most vivid colors having attained this form, it reproduces itself and multiplies itself, at last, stripped of its embellishments, it is obliged to disappear after having fulfilled the task which the nature had assigned it, or trace the circle of changes which it has set for the beings of its species.

We see analogous changes and progress in all the vegetables. It is a result of the combination, of tissue, of primal energy given to the aloe by nature, that this plant imperceptibly grown and modified, produces after a great number of years, flowers which are the announcements of its death.

It is the same with man, who in all his progresses, in all the variations which he undergoes, acts only after the laws peculiar to his constitution and the matters with which the nature has composed him. The physical man is the man acting by the impetus of causes which our sense organs reveal to us; the moral man is the man acting by physical causes which our prejudices prevent us to know. The savage man is the child devoid of experience, incapable of working for his felicity. The civilized man is he whom experience & the social life bring within the reach of taking advantage of nature for his own happiness.

Enlightened good man is the man in his maturity or in his perfection². The happy man is he who knows to enjoy benefits of nature; the unfortunate man is he who is in the incapacity to take advantage of its benefits.

It is therefore to the physical and to experience that man must have recourse in all his researches. It is they that he must consult in his religion, in his morals, in his legislation, in his political government, in the sciences & in the arts, in his pleasures and in his pains. Nature acts by simple uniform, invariable laws, which experience brings us within the comprehension to know; it is by our sense organs that we are linked with the universal nature. It is by our senses that we can put it into experiences and discover its secrets; as soon as we abandon experience we fall within the void where our imagination leads us astray. All the errors of men are physical errors, they are mistaken, only when they neglect to retrace to the source in nature; consult its rules, call experience to its scour. It is thus that, for lack of experience, they formed imperfect ideas of matter, its properties, its combinations, of its forces, of its mode of action or of the energy which results from its essence; seeing that the whole of universe has become for them only a theatre of illusions. They did not know nature, they refused to know its laws, they did not see the necessary road which traces to all that it encloses in itself. What do I say? They refused to know themselves, all their system, the conjectures, their reasoning, from which experience was banished, were only a long pack of errors and absurdities.

All error is harmful, it is on account of being deceived, that humanity has become miserable. For lack of knowing nature, it formed itself gods who become the only object of its hopes and fears³. Men did not feel that their nature deprived of kindness as well as malice, only peruses immutable & necessary laws by producing & destroying beings, by making sometimes suffer those which it has made sensible, by distributing them pleasures & pains, by altering them incessantly: they did not see at all that it was in nature itself and in its own forces, that man had to look for his needs, remedies against pains and the means to make themselves happy; they expected these things from some imaginary beings whom they supposed to be authors of their pleasures and misfortunes. Whence it is to be observed that it is on account of ignorance of nature that are due these unknown powers under whom the human race has so long trembled and these superstitious cults which were the sources of all its sufferings, evils.

It is on account of failure of knowing his nature, his own tendency, his needs and his rights that man in society fell from freedom into slavery; he neglected or thought himself obliged to stifle the desires of his heart and sacrifice his well-being to the caprices of his chiefs; he did not know the end of association and government. He submitted himself without reserve to men like him, whom his prejudices made them consider as beings of a superior order as the gods on earth; the latter took advantage of his error for enslaving him, to corrupt him, make vicious and miserable. Thus it is for having ignored his own nature, that human race fell in bondage and was ill-governed.

It is for having underrated himself & for having been ignorant of the relations which exist between him and the beings of species that man has neglected his duties towards others – he did not feel that they were necessary for his own happiness. He did not see any more that he owed to himself, the excesses which he must avoid for making himself soundly happy, the passion which he had to resist or indulge for his own happiness; in brief, he did not know his real interests. From that all his profligacies, his intemperance, his shameful delights, & all the vices in which he indulged himself to the detriment of his lasting well-being. Thus it is ignorance of human nature which prevented man from obtaining enlightenment on morals; besides the depraved governments to which he was subject, always prevented him from practicing it, even when he had known it.

It is again for lack of studying nature and its laws, searching to discover its resources & its properties that man sunk into ignorance, or made so slow and so uncertain steps for improving his lot. His laziness found it to his advantage to let itself guided by example, by his routine, by authority, rather than by experience which demands activity, & by reason which requires reflection. Thence this aversion which men manifest for all that appears to them to deviate from rules to which they are accustomed, thence their stupid & scrupulous respect for the antiquity and for most foolish institutions of their fathers; thence the fears which grip them when most advantageous changes are proposed to them, or the most probable endeavors. That is why we see the nations languishing in a shameful lethargy, bewail under the misuses transmitted from century to century, and shudder even at the idea of what could be a remedy for their ills. It is by this very inertia by lack of experience, that medicine, physics, agriculture, in brief, all the useful sciences are doing a progress so little perceptible and remain for so long in the shackles of authority: those who profess sciences, prefer to follow the rut traced out for them; than to plough their own new way; they prefer the deliriums of their imaginations & their unfounded conjectures, to the toilsome experiment which alone would be capable to force out of nature its secrets.

In short, men, either by laziness or by fear, having given up the testimony of the sense-organs, were no more guided in all their actions & undertakings, than by imagination, enthusiasm, habit, the prejudice and above all by authority, which knew to take advantage of their ignorance for deceiving them. Imaginary systems took the place of experiments, of reflections, of reason: souls rattled by terror and intoxicated by the wonderful or torpid with laziness, and guided by the credulity which produces inexperience, created for themselves ridiculous opinions, or adopted, without examining, all the Chimeras with which one wished to feed them.

It is thus that, for having neglected nature and its ways, for having disdained experiences, for having desired the wonderful and the supernatural, at last for having trembled, the human race has remained in a long childhood, from which it has no much difficulty to extract itself. He had only puerile hypotheses, of which he, never dared to examine the foundations & the proofs, He got used to regard them as sacred, as the recognized truths of whom it was not allowed to him to doubt for a moment; his ignorance made him credulous; his curiosity made him swallow the marvelous in long draughts; time confirmed him in his opinions, delivered from race to race his conjectures for the realities; the tyrannical force held him in his notions, became necessary to enslave the society, in short the knowledge of men in all genre was only a pack of lies, obscurities, contradictions, interspersed sometime with low lights of truth, furnished by nature, from which he could never be totally deviated, because necessity always brought him round.

Let us rise then above the cloud of prejudice. Let us go out of the dense atmosphere which is surrounding us for considering opinions of men & their diverse systems. Let us be warry of a wild imagination; let us take experience as guide; let us consult nature, let us try to draw in her true ideas on the objects which it contains; let us take recourse to our sense-organs; which have falsely been made to be regarded as questionable; let us interrogate reason which has been shamefully calumniated and degraded; let us contemplate attentively upon the visible world & let us see if it does not suffice us to consider the unknown grounds of the intellectual world; perhaps we shall find that one did not have grounds to distinguish them & that it is without motive that the two empires have been separated which are equally the domain of nature.

The universe, this vast assemblage of all that exists, does not offer to us everywhere but matter & motion; its whole shows to us only an immense uninterrupted chain of causes and effects; some of its causes are known to us; because they strike immediately our sense-organs, others are unknown to us because they act on us only by effects very often, very remote from their first causes.

Matters very much varied & combined in an infinity of ways, receive and communicate incessantly by diverse movements. Different properties of these matters, their different combinations, their so varied modes of action, which are their necessary sequels, constitute for us the essences of beings; and it is from these diversified essences that result different orders, ranks or systems which these beings occupy, whose sum total is what we call nature.

Thus nature, in its most wide significance is the big whole which results from the assemblage of different matters, from their different combinations, and their different movements which we see in the universe. Nature is in a less wide, sense, or considered in each being, is the whole which results from the essence, that is to say from the properties, combinations, movements or modes of action which distinguish it from other beings. It is in this way that man is endowed with the particular properties, whose arrangement is called organization, & whose essence is to feel, to think, to act, in brief to move in a way which distinguishes him from other beings with whom he compares himself; after this comparison man classifies himself in an order, in a system, in a class apart, which differs from those of the animals, in whom he does not see the same properties as in himself. The different systems of beings, or if one wishes, their peculiar natures, depend upon the general system of the great whole upon the universal nature of which they form part & to which all that exists is necessarily linked.

N.B. After having fixed the sense which must be attached to the word nature, I think it a duty to forewarn the reader, once for all, that when in the course of this work I say that nature produces an effect, I don’t at all assert to personify this nature, which is an abstract being, but I mean that the effect of whom I am speaking is the necessary result of the properties of some one of the bodies which compose the great whole which we see. Thus, when I say: the nature wants man to work for his happiness, it is to avoid the circumlocutions and the unnecessary repetitions & I mean by that it is of the essence of a being who feels, thinks, wants, acts, to work for his happiness. At last I call natural that which is consistent with essence of things, or laws which nature prescribes to all the bodies which it includes, in the different orders which these bodies occupy & the different circumstances by which they are obliged to pass through. Thus health is natural to man in a certain state; disease is a state natural for him in other circumstances; death is natural state of the body deprived of some of its things necessary for the maintenance, for the existence of the animal etc. By ESSENCE, I mean that which constituted a being, what is, the sum of the properties or qualities after which it exists & acts as it does. When it is said that the essence of a stone is to fall, it is as if one said that the fall is a necessary effect of its weight, its density, the relations to its parts, the elements of which it is composed. In brief essence of the being or body is its individual & particular nature.

CHAPTER II

On movement, motion and its origin

M ovement is an effort by which a body changes, or tends to change its place, that is, to correspond successively to different parts of space, or well to change distance relatively to other bodies. It is motion alone which establishes relations between our organs and the beings which are within or without us. It is only by movement that these bodies, beings impress us that we know their existence, that we judge their properties, that we distinguish them one from the other, that we distribute them in different classes.

The beings, the substances of the various bodies of which nature is the assemblage, themselves effects of certain combinations or causes, become causes in their turn. A cause is a being which puts another in motion or which produces some change in it. The effect is the change which a body produces in another with the help of movement. Each being, by virtue of his essence or his particular nature, is susceptible to produce receive and communicate diverse movements, thereby some beings are capable of striking at our sense-organs, & the latter are capable of receiving the impression from them, or undergo changes in their presence; those which can’t act upon any of our organs, either immediately & by themselves, or by mediation or by the intervention of other bodies, do not exist for us, since they can neither move us, nor consequently furnish us ideas, neither be known or judged by us. To know an object, it is to be moved by it; seeing is being moved by the organ of vision, hearing is being impressed the organ of hearing etc. In short in any manner a body may act upon us, we have knowledge about it only by some change which it has produced in us.

Nature, as has been said, is the assemblage of all the beings, bodies and all the movements which we know, as well as many others which we can’t know, because they are inaccessible to out sense-organs. From the continual action & reaction of all the bodies & beings which the nature contains, there results a sequence of causes & effects or movements, guided by constant & invariable laws characteristic of each being, necessary or inherent to its particular nature, which cause always that it (being) acts or moves in the determined way; different principles of each of these movements are unknown to us because we do not know what constitutes originally the essences of these beings, bodies; the elements of the bodies elude our sense organs, we know them only in mass, we do not know their innermost combinations, the properties of the same combinations, from which must necessarily result modes of action, movements or very different effects.

Our sense-organs show us generally two sorts of movements in the bodies & beings which surround us, one is a motion of mass by which an entire body is transferred from one place to another; the motion of this kind is perceptible to us. It is in this way that we see a stone falling, a ball roll, an arm move or change its position. Other is a internal and hidden movement which depends upon the energy peculiar to a body; that is to say, on essence, combination; action & reaction of insentient molecules of matter, of which this body is composed, this movement does not show itself to us, we know it only by altercations or changes which we notice after some time on the bodies or on their mixtures. Of this type are the hidden movements which fermentation gives to the molecules of flour, which scattered & separated as they were, become thickened & form a total mass that we call bread. Such are still the imperceptible movements by which we see a plant or an animal grow, grow stronger, change, acquire new qualities without our eyes being capable of following the progressive movements or causes which produced these effects. In short such are again the internal movements which pass inside man, which we called his intellectual faculties, his thoughts, his passions, his will of which we are within the reach to judge only by actions, that is, the perceptible effects which accompany or follow them. It is in this way when we see a man flee, we judge that he is internally flurried by the passions of fear etc.

The movements, either visible or hidden are called acquired motions or impetus, when they are communicated to a body by a foreign cause or by a force existing outside it, which our sense organs make us perceive, it is thus we called impressed, the movement, which the wind gives to the sails of a vessel. We call spontaneous the movements roused in a body which contains in itself the causes of changes, which we see working in it, then we see this body acting & moving by its own energy. Of this kind are the movements of a man who is walking, talking, thinking, & however if we look at the thing more closely we shall be convinced, that strictly speaking, there are no spontaneous movements in the different bodies of nature, considering that they act continually on each other, & that all the changes are due to either visible, or hidden causes which move them. The will of man is moved or determined secretly by external causes which cause a change in him, we believe that it urges itself, because we see neither the cause which determines it, nor its mode of action, nor the organ which it sets into action.

We call simple movements, those which are stirred in a body by one cause or a single force; we call compound, the movements produced by several causes or refined forces, whether these forces be equal or unequal, contributing or contrary, simultaneous or successive, unknown or known.

Of whatever nature be movements of beings, they are always necessary sequence of their essences or properties which constitute them & those of the causes of which they feel the effect. Each being can act only & move in a particular way, that is to say following laws which depend upon its essence, upon its own combinations, its own nature, in brief, on it own energy and that of the bodies from whom it receives impetus. It is that which constitutes the invariable laws of motion; I say invariable because they can’t change, without there being a reversal in the very essence of the beings. It is thus that a weighing body must necessarily fall, if it does not meet an obstacle capable of stopping it in its fall. It is thus that sensitive being must necessarily seek pleasure and shun pain. It is thus the matter of fire must necessarily burn & diffuse etc.

Each being has therefore laws of motion which are its own, unless a stronger cause does not interrupt its action. It is thus that fire ceases to burn combustible materials, as soon as water is used for stopping its progress. It is thus that sensible being ceases to seek pleasure, as soon as he fears thereby results an evil for him.

The communication of motion, or the passage of effect of one body in another, occurs still more according to certain & necessary laws; each being can communicate only by relation of similarity. Conformity, analogy, or the points of contact which it has with others. Fire increases only when it meets materials containing in themselves principles analogous to it; it is extinguished when it meets bodies which it can’t inflame that is to say those which do not have a certain relation with it.

All is in movement/motion in the universe. The essence of nature is to act & if one examines attentively its parts, we shall see that there is not a single one which enjoys an absolute rest; those which appear deprived of motion, are only in an relative or apparent rest; they feel so imperceptible or so little noticeable movement that we can’t be aware of their changes⁴. All that seems to us in rest, does not remain however in the same state; all the beings are only continually coming to life, growing, decreasing, & dissipate with more or less slowness or speed. The insect ephemera (may-fly) comes to life and perishes the same day, consequently it feels very promptly considerable changes in its existence. The combinations formed by the most solid bodies dissolve & decompose in the long run, the hardest of the stones destroy themselves gradually by contact with the air; a mass of iron, that we see rusty & eaten away by time, must have been in movement since the moment of its formation in the womb of the earth, till the one when we see it in this state of dissolution. Physicists, for the most part do not seem to have reflected enough on what they have called nisus: that is on the continual strain which exert on each other bodies which appear besides enjoying rest.

A stone of five hundred pounds seems to us rest on earth, however it does not cause for a moment to weigh with force on this earth which resists it or which repels it in turn, can it be said that this stone & this earth are not in action? For believing it, it would be sufficient to interpose the hand between the stone & earth & it would be realized that this stone has however the force to break our hand in spite of the rest it seems to be enjoying. There can’t be in the bodies action without reaction. A body which feels an impulse, and attraction or some pressure, to which it resists, shows to us that it reacts by this same resistance; thence (vis-inertioe) which extends against another force; what proves clearly that this force of inertia is capable of acting and reacting effectively. In short one will feel that the forces which are called dead, and the forces which are called live or kinetic, are forces of the same kind which spread, exert still in a different way⁵.

Can’t one go still further & say that in the bodies & masses whose whole seems to us in rest, there is however a continual action & reaction, constant strains, resistances & uninterrupted impulses, in a word nisus, by which the parts of the bodies keep them together & so work that these parts become a mass, a body, a combination whose whole appears us to be in rest, while each of their parts do not cease really to be in action? The bodies appear to be in rest only by the equality of the action of forces which act in them.

Thus even the bodies which seem to be in perfect rest, receive however really, either on their surface, or in their interior, continual impulses on the parts of the bodies which surround them, on those which penetrate them, which dilate them, which rarefy them, condense them, in short those ones which compose them; thereby parts of these bodies are really in action & reaction or in continual movement, whose effects show themselves at last by very distinct changes. Heat dilates & rarefies the metals, thence we see that an iron rod, by the sole variations of the atmosphere, must be in continuous motion and in it there is not a single particle which enjoys for an instant real rest. As a matter of fact in the hard bodies whose all parts are snug and contiguous, how conceive that, air, cold and warmth can act on a lone of their parts even external, without movement being communicated by degrees up to their innermost parts? How to conceive without movement the way our olfactory sense is affected by the emanations escaped from the most compact bodies, whose all parts seem to us at rest. At last will our eyes be able to see with help of a telescope the stars most remote from us, if there were not a progressive movement from these stars up to out retina.

In a word, pondered over observation must convince us that all in nature is in continuous movement; that there is none of its parts which be in real rest; finally that nature, if it did not act, or in which without movement, nothing could be produced, nothing can preserve itself, nothing can act. Thus the idea of nature includes necessarily in itself the idea of movement. But it would be said, from where did this nature receive its movement? We shall reply that it is from itself: since it is the great whole, out of which consequently nothing can exist. We shall say that movement is a mode of being which results necessarily from the essence of matter; that it moves by its own energy; that its movements are due to forces which are inherent to it; that the diversity of its movements and phenomena which result from it, come from the diversity of properties, qualities, combinations which are found originally in the different primitive matters of which nature is the assemblage.

The physicists, for the most part, have regarded as inanimate or as deprived of the faculty of moving, the bodies which were moved only with the help of some agent or external cause, they believed to conclude from it that matter which constitutes these bodies was perfectly inert by its nature, they were not undeceived by this error, though they saw that all the times that a body was left to itself, or freed from the obstacles which oppose to its action, it had a tendency to fall or approach the centre of the earth by a movement uniformly accelerated;they preferred to suppose an imaginary external cause, of which they had no idea as to admit that these bodies get their movement from their own nature.

The same way, though these philosophers saw above their head and infinite number of immense globes which moved very fast around a common centre, they did not stop to suppose chimerical causes of these movements, until immortal Newton had demonstrated that they were the effect of the gravitation of these heavenly bodies towards each others⁶. A very simple observation would have however sufficed to make feel to the physicist anterior to Newton how much insufficient must be the causes which they admitted, for working so big effects:

They had grounds to convince themselves in the shock of bodies which they could observe, & by the known laws of motion, that the latter communicated always on account of the density of the bodies from which they must have naturally inferred that the density of the subtle matter or ether being infinitely less than those of the planets, could communicate to them only a very weak movement.

If the nature had been observed without bias, one would be since long be convinced that, matter acts by its own forces, & does not need any external impulse for being put in motion; one would have realized that all the times that the mixtures are put in position to act on each other, movement is produced on the spot and that these mixtures act with a force capable of producing the most surprising effects, In mixing together fillings of iron, of Sulphur and of water, thus put in position of acting on each other they warm up slowly and finish by blazing. By making wet the flour with water and on shutting up this mixture, one finds after some time, with the help of microscope, that it has produced organized beings which enjoy a life of which on thought wheat & water incapable⁷.

It is thus that inanimate matter can pass into life, which is nothing but an assemblage of movements.

One can above all observe the generation of movement or its development, as well as the energy of matter, in all the combinations in which fire, air and water are joined together; these elements, or rather these mixtures, which are the most fugitive & the most volatile of the beings, are nevertheless in the hands of nature the main agents which it uses for operating its most striking phenomena; it is to them that are due the effects of thunder, the eruptions of volcanoes, the earthquakes. Industry offers an agent of an astonishing force in the gun powder, as soon as fire comes to join in it. In a word the most terrible effects are caused by combining the matters which are thought to be lifeless & inert.

All these