at all favorable. Holbach has always appealed to a certain type of
radical mind and his translators and editors have generally been men
who were often over-enthusiastic. For example, Mr. Wilkinson says of
the _Systeme de la Nature_, [64:15] "No work, ancient or modern, has
surpassed it in the eloquence and sublimity of its language or in the
facility with which it treats the most abstruse and difficult subjects.
It is without exception the boldest effort the human mind has yet
produced in the investigation of Morals and Theology. The republic
of letters has never produced another author whose pen was so well
calculated to emancipate mankind from all those trammels with which
the nurse, the school master, and the priest have successively locked
up their noblest faculties, before they were capable of reasoning and
judging for themselves."

It seems unnecessary to analyze the _Systeme de la Nature_. This
has been done by Damiron, Soury, Fabre, Lange, Morley, the historians
of philosophy, and encyclopaedists; and the book itself is easily
available in the larger libraries. The substance of Holbach's philosophy
is susceptible of clearer treatment apart from it or any one of his
books, although it permeates all of them.

M. Jules Soury has said, in describing a certain type of mind: "Il
est d'heureux esprits, des ames fortes et saines, que n'effraie point
le silence eternel des espaces infinis ou s'aneantissait la raison de
Pascal. Naives et robustes natures, males et vigoureux penseurs, qui
gardent toute la vie quelque chose des dons charmants de la jeunesse et
de l'enfance meme, une foi vive dans le temoinage immediat de nos sens
et de notre conscience, une humeur alerte, toute de joyeuse ardeur, et
comme une intrepidite d'esprit que rien n'arrete. Pour eux tout est
clair et uni; ou a peu pres, et la ou ils soupconnent quelque bas-bond