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Baron D'Holbach : a Study of Eighteenth Century Radicalism in France by Max Pearson Cushing
page 73 of 141 (51%)
will and unending consciousness apart from his machine is an idle tale
built on his desires, not on his experiences nor his knowledge of nature.
This imputation of a will or soul to nature, independent of it or in
any sense above it, is a still more idle one derived from his renunciation
of the witness of his senses and his following after the phantoms of
his imagination. It is ignorance or disregard of nature then that has
given rise to supernatural ideas that have "no correspondence with true
sight," or, as Holbach expressed it, have no counterpart in the external
object. In other words, theology, or poetry about God, as Petrarch
said, is ignorance of natural causes reduced to a system.

Man is a purely natural or physical being, like a tree or a stone.
His so-called spiritual nature (l'homme moral) is merely a phase
of his physical nature considered under a special aspect. He is
all matter in motion, and when that ceases to function in a particular
way, called life, he ceases to be as a conscious entity. He is so
organized, however that his chief desires are to survive and render
his existence happy. By happiness Holbach means the presence of
pleasure and the absence of pain. In all his activity, then, man
will seek pleasure and avoid pain. The chief cause of man's misery
or lack of well being is his ignorance of the powers and possibilities
of his own nature and the Universal Nature. All he needs is to
ascertain his place in nature and adjust himself to it. From the
beginning of his career he has been the dupe of false ideas, especially
those connected with supernatural powers, on whom he supposed he was
dependent. But, if ignorance of nature gave birth to the Gods,
knowledge of nature is calculated to destroy them and the evils
resulting from them, the introduction of theistic ideas into politics
and morals. In a word, the truth, that is, _correct ideas of nature_
is the one thing needful to the happiness and well-being of man.
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