and their works are of no weight or interest. _L'Impie demasque_ is a
brutal work which qualifies Holbach as a "vile apostle of vice and crime,"
and the _Systeme de la Nature_ as the most impudent treatise on atheism
that has yet dishonored the globe--one which covers the century with
shame and will be the scandal of future generations.

The work of Paulian is of a different sort. Coming comparatively late,
it attempted to review the hostile opinions of many years and then mass
them in an overwhelming final attack on the _Systeme de la Nature_. To
this end Paulian rewrites the entire book chapter by chapter, giving the
"true version." He then reviews Holland's outline and Bergier's comments,
together with seven articles directed explicitly against the _Systeme de
la Nature_ in such works as the _Lettres Helviennes_, of Abbe Barruel,
_Dict. des Philosophes_, _Dict. anti-philosophe_, his own _Dict.
theologique_, etc., besides many other writings against the new philosophy
in general. He then reviews articles by members of the philosophic
school against materialism and then goes back to Holbach's sources,
Diderot, Bayle, Spinoza, Lucretius, Epicurus, etc. The work is not
scholarly but comprehensive and evidently discouraged further formal
refutations.

The _Systeme de la Nature_ had many critics in the stormy days that
followed 1789. Delisle de Sales found it a monstrosity--a _fratras_;
La Harpe called it an infamous book, "un amas de betises qu'on ose
appeler philosophie, inconcevables inepties, un immense echafaudage
de mensonge et d'invective"; M. Villemain is much more calm and fair;
Lord Brougham, like Damiron, Buzonniere, and many others, found it
seductive but full of false reasoning; Lerminier was so severe that
St.-Beuve was moved to defend Holbach against him. Samuel Wilkinson,
the English translator of 1820, is one of the few whose criticism is