He was first attacked in sonic of the popular journals, with criticisms, which contained some truth and plausibili ty mingled with marks of the lowest superstition and igno rance, and which were animated with the bitterest style or denunciation and invective. The doctors of the Sorbonne issued their censures against his heresies, which they enu merated in such concise propositions as the following : That physical sensibility produces our ideas ; that pain and plea sure are the sources of thought and action ; that the desire of happiness is sufficient to conduct men to virtue ; that morality is, like physics, an ex pet imental science; that vices and virtues proceed from different modifications of the de sire of happiness; that virtuous actions are those which are useful to the public ; that it is by good laws that mankind are rendered virtuous ; and, that the chief cause of all ex isting vice is the ignorance of legislators, who set the in terests of individuals in opposition to that of the public.
His first and most zealous enemies were the Jansenists, whose influence in the parliament of Paris procured from that body a condemnation of his work. Their rivals, the Jesuits, who had been spared by Helvetius, and with some of whom he had lived on friendly terms, made no public appearance against him till called upon by the general voice, and a regard for the character of their order. One of their number, a friend of Helvetius, conceived the plan of procur ing from him a retractation of his errors. To gratify this friend, Helvetius subscribed a sort of apology, and after wards another, which was ampler and more humiliating, with a view to save from persecution the public censor, who had suffered his work to pass the ordeal required by law. This, however, was not satisfactory : Helvetius was deprived of his situation at court; Tercier,the public censor, lost his office; and the interference of the council was neces sary to save both of them from further severities, meditat ed by the Jansenists and the parliament of Paris.
The philosophical doctrines to which this author was at tached comprehend a subject too extensive to be discussed in this article : (See METAPHYSICS.) But we find his opi nions reprobated even by some liberal minds, along witli those of some of his cotemporaries, as tending to degrade human nature, and destroy the dignity of moral truth. We do not apprehend, that such tendencies arose from any me taphysical opinions on the nature of matter and mind, sub jects wholly unknown, and on which no opinion can be said to exist. The practical evils complained of seem to arise from a particular mode of employing words, tending to dis courage all elevated conceptions, and thus generate in some individuals a degree of indignation, while its plausibility seduces others, and insensibly mars their love of moral or der. An inordinate propensity to dwell on analytical views, sometimes withdraws the attention of the mind from the acknowledgment of magnificent objects. When the phe
nomena of mind are minutely dissected, and shown to cones list of the same materials with others of a trivial nature, such as the puncture of a pin, or the titillation of a feather, all the pleasure arising from the novel exercise of acute ness, implied in the tracing of these general analogies, is of short duration, and the utmost circumspection is afterwards necessary, to resist an exclusive tendency to cherish de tached sensibilities, and degenerate into a mean direction of sentiment and conduct. Persons thus influenced, consider all differences betwixt higher and meaner objects as de pending on differences of arrangement, without duly ac knowledging the importance of that principle of arrange ment which deserves their veneration much more than mi nor insulated objects. The error of not acknowledging the importance of differences, merely because we arc pleased with the generalization implied in the discernment of analo gies, is also a radical fault in the use of the intellectual powers, tending to the same moral confusion. It is not the mere pointing out of such analogies that does harm, but the undue rank that is assigned to them. To say that vir tuous and vicious actions arc equally explicable on the prin ciple of self-interest, has an apparent tendency to smooth over the difference between them. Our previous sense of their difference renders us averse to consider them as pos sessing any thing in common. But if any person should think it worthy of mention, that these two sets of phenome na agree in possessing the essential quality of activity, and are reducible to the varied motions of the human organs, no dangerous consequences could be apprehended, because such a position never could make a prominent figure in a moral treatise, so as to distract the mind from distinctions of essential importance.
Even a general test of morality is not sufficient to obvi ate the noxious effects of magnifying such analogies. The annunciation of this summary doctrine, that public utility, or the promotion of the greatest sum of pleasure, is the ulti mate end of virtue, is even productive of some disadvantage. Although it may have been tacitly acknowledged, those who are averse to innovation feel in it something different from what they have considered as a definition of virtue ; while those who are dazzled with it as an important disco very, satisfy themselves with vague appeals to this general ral test, in cases which require more minute discrimina tion, or perhaps the spirit of morality evaporates amidst the interminable disputes which those who trust in the all sufficiency of that principle maintain about its particular ap plications. Some launch into an ocean of the wildest con fusion, and merely because they associate their actions with the acknowledgment of this generalizing principle, ima gine that they are men of superior virtue. This mode of thinking has proved a frequent source of imprudence, un happiness, and misanthropy.