Critical History of Eclecticism

[...friends] The text continues from the previous page: "If one persuades them... that all Religions are [tales/deceptions], then..." friends, and servants, all will set themselves at liberty; there will be no more curb to restrain them; the Laws of conscience are annihilated for them. They will have no other guide than their own inclinations: they will be able to say: I would be a fool not to be a traitor, a cheat, or a rogue, as soon as I find my satisfaction and my advantage in it. These are the lessons that I take from the fine wits original: "beaux esprits." A term often used sarcastically by critics of the Enlightenment to describe the fashionable, skeptical intellectuals of the salons. of our time.

The Propagators of Unbelief original: "l'Incrédulité." This refers to the skeptical or atheistic philosophy promoted by thinkers like Diderot and d'Holbach. protest in vain that nothing is dearer to them than the interests of the homeland. Could these zealous patriots be ignorant of the fact that Civil Society Civil Society: The framework of laws and social bonds that allow people to live together in an ordered community. has no better defense than Religion? What motive makes them act as if they hated it? Do they wish to persuade us that there is a certain genre of passions, which have no distinctly known object?