One of the worst misrepresentations in theological literature is the account of Helvétius by the late Principal Cairns (Unbelief in the Eighteenth Century, 1881, p. 158) as appealing to government "to promote luxury, and, through luxury, public good, by abolishing all those laws that cherish a false modesty and restrain libertinage." Helvétius simply pressed the consequences of the existing theory of luxury, which for his own part he disclaimed. De l'Esprit, Disc. ii, ch. xv. Dr. Pünjer (i, 462) falls so far below his usual standard as to speak of Helvétius in a similar fashion. As against such detraction it is fitting to note that Helvétius, like La Mettrie, was one of the most lovable and most beloved men of his time, though, like him, sufficiently licentious in his youth.
It was at once suppressed by royal order as scandalous, licentious, and dangerous, though Helvétius held a post at court as maître d'hôtel to the Queen. Ordered to make a public retractation, he did so in a letter addressed to a Jesuit; and this being deemed insufficient, he had to sign another, "so humiliating," wrote Grimm, [1092] "that one would not have been astonished to see a man take refuge with the Hottentots rather than put his name to such avowals." The wits explained that the censor who had passed the book, being an official in the Bureau of Foreign Affairs, had treated De l'Esprit as belonging to that department. [1093] A swarm of replies appeared, and the book was formally burnt, with Voltaire's poem Sur la loi naturelle, and several obscure works of older standing. [1094] The De l'Esprit, appearing alongside of the ever-advancing Encyclopédie, [1095] was in short a formidable challenge to the powers of bigotry.
Its real faults are lack of system, undue straining after popularity, some hasty generalization, and a greater concern for the air of paradox than for persuasion; but it abounds in acuteness and critical wisdom, and it definitely and seriously founds public ethics on utility. Its most serious error, the assumption that all men are born with equal faculties, and that education is the sole differentiating force, was repeated in our own age by John Stuart Mill; but in Helvétius the error is balanced by the thoroughly sound and profoundly important thesis that the general superiorities of nations are the result of their culture-conditions and politics. [1096] The over-balance of his stress on self-interest [1097] is an error easily soluble. On the other hand, we have the memorable testimony of Beccaria that it was the work of Helvétius that inspired him to his great effort for the humanizing of penal laws and policy; [1098] and the only less notable testimony of Bentham that Helvétius was his teacher and inspirer. [1099] It may be doubted whether any such fruits can be claimed for the teachings of the whole of the orthodox moralists of the age. For the rest, Helvétius is not to be ranked among the great abstract thinkers; but it is noteworthy that his thinking went on advancing to the end. Always greatly influenced by Voltaire, he did not philosophically harden as did his master; and though in his posthumous work, Les Progrès de la Raison dans la recherche du Vrai (published in 1775), he stands for deism against atheism, the argument ends in the pantheism to which Voltaire had once attained, but did not adhere.