l
deliverance of man depends on his intellectual deliverance, and that the
key to his intellectual deliverance is only to be found in the
substitution of Naturalism for Theism. What he means by Naturalism we
shall proceed shortly to explain. The style, we may remark,
notwithstanding the energy and coherence of the thought, is often
diffuse and declamatory. Some one said of the _System of Nature_, that
it contained at least four times too many words. Yet Voltaire, while
professing extreme dislike of its doctrine, admitted that the writer had
somehow caught the ear of the learned, of the ignorant, and of women.
"He is often clear," said Voltaire, "and sometimes eloquent, yet he may
justly be reproached with declamation, with repeating himself, and with
contradicting himself, like all the rest of them."[150] Galiani made an
over-subtle criticism on it, when he complained of the want of coolness
and self-possession in the style, and then said that it looked as if the
writer were pressed less to persuade other people than to persuade
himself. This was a crude impression. Nobody can have any doubt of the
writer's profound sincerity, or of his earnest desire to make
proselytes. He knows his own mind, and hammers his doctrines out with a
hard and iterative stroke that hits its mark. Yet his literary tone, in
spite of its declamatory pitch, not seldom sinks into a drone. Holbach's
contemporaries were in too fierce contact with the tusks and hooked
claws of the Church, to have any mind for the rhythm of a champion's
sentences or the turn of his periods. But now that the efforts of the
heterodox have taught the Churches to be better Christians than they
were a hundred years ago, we can afford to admit that Holbach is hardly
more captivating in style, and not always more edifying in temper, than
some of the Christian Fathers themselves.

[150] _Dict. Phil._, s. v. Dieu, Sec. 4.

What then is the system of Nature, and what is that Naturalism which is
to replace the current faith in the deities outside of observable
nature? The writer makes no pretence of feeling a tentative way towards
an answer. From the very outset his spirit is that of dogmatic
confidence. He is less a seeker than an expounder; less a philosopher
than a preacher; and he boldly dismisses proof in favour of exhortation.

"Let man cease to search outside the world in which he dwells for beings
who may procure him a happiness that nature refuses to grant; let h