c; that whosoever will
admit no means of discovering God but common logic, cannot find him.
Diderot's unbelief may be considered to embody that which resulted from
the abuse at once of erudition, physical science, and the sensational
theory in metaphysics.

Among the band of friends who from connexion with the Encyclopaedia
acquired the name of Encyclopaedists, was also Helvetius.(552) He was the
moralist of the sensational philosophy, one of those who applied the
philosophy of Condillac to morals. Each man's tastes are so far affected
by circumstances, that it is possible that Helvetius's exclusive
association with the selfish circles of the French society, which never
lived for the good of others, together with the perception of the
hollowness of the respect which persons paid him for his wealth and
influence, led him to regard self-love as the sole motive of conduct. His
philosophy is expressed in two works;(553) the one on the spirit, the
other on man: the former a theoretical view of human nature, the latter a
practical view of education and society. His primary position is, that man
owes all his superiority over animals to the superior organization of his
body. Starting from this point, he argues that all minds are originally
equal, and owe their variation to circumstances;(554) that all their
faculties and emotions are derivable from sensation; that pleasure is the
only good, and self-interest the true ground of morals and the framework
of individual and political right.(555)

If in Diderot we have met with atheism, and in Helvetius with the selfish
theory of morals; in the author of "the System of Nature" we meet with
utter materialism, and the two former evils as corollaries from it. This
work, which was published about 1774, though bearing a different author's
name on the title, was probably the work of D'Holbach,(556) aided by
Diderot and Helvetius, and other members of the society which met at
D'Holbach's house. It is a work of unquestionable talent and eloquence, in
which materialism, fatalism, and atheism, combine to form a view of human
nature which even Voltaire is said to have denounced.

The grand object of this work being to show that there is no God, the
first part is occupied by the most rigorous materialism, and is designed
to prove that there is no such thing as mind, nothing beyond the material
fabric,(557) which is maintained by simple and invariable laws; and that
the soul is a mode of organi