First his reasons for the book:


Preface


In the three essays I am submitting for appraisal by the German reader, I have attempted to interpret and expound Karl Marx’s materialist understanding of history, which is one of the greatest achievements of nineteenth-century theoretical thought.

I am well aware that this is a very modest contribution: to provide convincing proof of all the value and all the significance of that understanding of history a full history of materialism would have to be written. Since I am not in a position to write that work, I have had to limit myself to a comparison, in several monographs, of eighteenth-century French materialism with today’s.

Of all the representatives of French materialism, I have chosen Holbach and Helvetius, who, in my opinion, are in many respects outstanding thinkers who have not been duly appreciated to this day.

Helvetius has been impugned many a time; he has often been slandered, but few have gone to the trouble of trying to understand him. When I set about describing his writings and giving a critique of them, I had to turn virgin soil, if I may be permitted to use the expression. The only guidelines I could use were several cursory remarks I had come upon in the works of Hegel and Marx. It is not for rne to judge in what measure I have made proper use of what I have borrowed from these great teachers in the realm of philosophy.

Even in his lifetime, Holbach, who was less bold as a logician and less of a revolutionary thinker than Helvetius, shocked others far less than the author of De l’Esprit ever did. He was not feared as much as the latter was; he was held in less disfavour, and got more fair play. Yet he, too, was only half-understood.

Like any other modern philosophical system, materialist philosophy has had to provide an explanation of two kinds of phenomena: on the one hand, Nature’s; on the other, those of mankind’s historical development. The materialist philosophers of the eighteenth century – at least, those who stood close to Locke – had their own philosophy of history, in the same measure as they had a philosophy of Nature. To see that, one has only to read their writings with a modicum of attention. Therefore, the historians of philosophy should certainly set forth the French materialists’ ideas on history, and subject them to criticism just as they have done with their understanding of Nature. That task has not been accomplished however. Thus, for instance, when the historians of philosophy speak of Holbach, they usually give consideration only to his Système de la Nature, in which work they investigate only whatever has a hearing on the philosophy of Nature, and morals. They ignore Holbach’s historical views, which are scattered so plentifully throughout Système de la Nature and his other works. There is nothing surprising, therefore, in the public at large having not the least idea of those views, and having an entirely incomplete and false impression of Hoibach. If one also takes into account thai the French materialists’ ethics has almost invariably been misinterpreted, it has to be acknowledged that very much in the history of eighteenth-century French materialism stands in need of amendment.

It should also he remembered that the approach we have mentioned is to be met, not only in general courses in Ihe history of philosophy hut also in specialist writings on the history of materialism (which, incidentally, are still few in number), examples being the classical work of Friedrich Albert Lange, in German, and a book by the Frenchman Jules-Auguste Soury. [1*]

As for Marx, it will suffice to say that neither the historians of philosophy in general nor the historians of materialism in particular have gone to the trouble or even making mention of his materialist understanding of history.

If a board is warped, the distortion can be rectified by bending it in the opposite direction. That is how I have been constrained to act in these Essays: I have had, first and foremost, to describe the historical views of the thinkers I am dealing with.

From the viewpoint of the school of thought I have the honour of belonging to, “the ideal in nothing else than the material world, reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought”. [2*] Whoever wishes to regard the history of ideas from this point of view should try to explain how and in what manner the ideas of any period have been engendered by its social conditions, that is to say. ultimately by its economic relations. To provide such an explanation is a vast and noble task, whose accomplishment will utterly transform the history of ideologies. In these Essays, I have attempted an approach towards the accomplishment of that task. However. I have not been able to devote sufficient attention to it, and that, for a very simple reason: before answering the question why the development of ideas has proceeded in a definite way, one must first learn how that development has taken place. In respect of the subject of these Essays, that means that an explanation of why materialist philosophy developed in the way it did with Holbach and Helvetius in the eighteenth century, and with Marx in the nineteenth, is possible only after it is clearly shown what that philosophy was in reality which has been so often misunderstood and even quite distorted. The ground must be cleared before building can begin.

Another few words. The reader may find that I have dealt at insufficient length with these thinkers’ theory of cognition. To that I can object that I have done all I can to set forth their views in this respect with accuracy. However, since I do not number myself among the adherents of the theoretico-cognitive scholasticism that is in such vogue today, I have had no intention of dwelling on this absolutely secondary question.

Geneva, New Year’s Day, 1896


Notes

1*. Friedrich Lange’s book Geschichte des Materialismus und Kritik seiner Bedeutung in der Gegenwart (History of Materialism and Criticism of Its Significance at the Present Time), which appeared in 1866, was an attempt at criticising materialism from neo-Kantian standpoint.
Jules Soury’s Breviaire de l’histoire du materialisme (Handbook on the History of Materialism), published in Paris in 1883, was a similar attempt.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/plekhanov/1893/essays/0-preface.htm

Continued...


I
Holbach

We are going to speak of a certain materialist.

But first: what is meant by materialism?

Let us address ourselves to the greatest of modern materialists.

“The great basic question of all philosophy, especially of more recent philosophy, is that concerning the relation of thinking and being,” says Frederick Engels in his excellent book Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, (Stuttgart, 1888). “But this question could for the first time be put forward in its whole acuteness, could achieve its full significance, only after humanity in Europe had awakened from the long hibernation of the Christian Middle Ages. The question of the position of thinking in relation to being, a question which, by the way, had played a great part also in the scholasticism of the Middle Ages, the question: which is primary, spirit or nature – that question, in relation to the church, was sharpened into this: Did God create the world or has the world been in existence eternally?

“The answers which the philosophers gave to this question split them into two great camps. Those who asserted the primacy of spirit to nature and, therefore, in the last instance, assumed world creation in some form or other... comprised the camp of idealism. The others, who regarded nature as primary, belong to various schools of materialism.” [1*]

Holbach would have accepted this definition of materialism with the utmost readiness. He himself said nothing else. To him, what we call the mental life of animals was nothing more than a natural phenomenon, and, in his opinion, there was no need to emerge from within the borders of Nature in search of a solution to the problems she has confronted us with. [1] This is very simple, and a far cry from the dogmatic assertions so often and so groundlessly ascribed to the materialists. True, Holbach saw in Nature nothing but matter or kinds of matter, and motion or motions. [2] And it is on this that the critics, Ph. Damiron for example, are out to entrap our materialist. They foist upon him their concept of matter arid, proceeding from that concept, attempt triumphantly to prove that matter, alone, is insufficient for an explanation of all natural phenomena. [3]

This is a facile but threadbare device. Critics of this calibre do not understand, or pretend not to understand, that one may have a concept of matter different from theirs. “If, by Nature,” Holbach says, “we shall mean an accumulation of dead substances, without any properties and purely passive, then, of course, we shall be obliged to seek outside of that Nature the principle of her motions; but if, by Nature, we mean what she actually is – a whole, in which the various parts have various properties, act according to those various properties, are constantly acting and reacting upon one another, possess weight, gravitate towards a common centre, while others depart towards the circumference; attract and repel one another, unite and separate, and, in constant collisions and comings together, produce and decompose all the bodies we see – then nothing can make us appeal to supernatural forces for an explanation of how the things and phenomena that we see are formed. [4]

Locke already thought it possible that matter could possess the faculty of thinking. To Holbach, this was a most probable assumption “even in the hypothesis of theology, that is to say, in supposing that there exists an omnipotent mover of matter”. [5] The conclusion drawn by Ifolbach is very simple and really very convincing: “Since Man, who is matter and has ideas only about matter, possesses the faculty of thinking, matter can think, or is capable of that specific modification which we call thought.” [6]

What does that modification depend on? Here Holbach advances two hypotheses, which he finds equally probable. It may be presumed that the sensitivity of matter is “the result of an organisation, a link inherent in an animal, so that dead and inert matter ceases to be dead and becomes capable of sensation when it is ‘animalised’, i.e. when it unites and is identified witli an animal”. Do we not see every day that milk, bread and wine turn into the substance of man, who is a creature endowed with sensitivity? These dead substances consequently become endowed with sensitivity when they combine with a creature that is endowed with sensitivity. The other hypothesis is that dealt with by Diderot in his excellent Conversation with D’Alembert. “Some philosophers think that sensitivity is a universal quality of matter. In this case, it would be useless to seek whence that quality comes to it, which we know by its effects. If one admits that hypothesis, then it will be in the same way as one distinguishes two kinds of motion in Nature – one that is known under the name of living force and another under the name of dead force – then one will distinguish two kinds of sensitivity: one that is active or living, and another that is inert or dead, and then animalising a substance will mean nothing but destroying the obstacles that prevent it from being active and sensitive.” However that may be, and whichever of these hypotheses of sensitivity we accept, “the nonextensive being the human soul is supposed to be cannot be a subject”. [7]

The reader will perhaps claim that neither hypothesis is marked by sufficient, clarity. We are well aware of that, and Holbach realised it no less than we do. That property of matter which we call sensitivity is an enigma that is very difficult of solution. But, says Holbach, “the simplest movements of our bodies are, to any man who gives thought to them, enigmas just as difficult to solve as thought is.” [8]

During a conversation with Lessing, Jacobi once said, “Spinoza is good enough in my opinion, yet his name is a poor kind of salvation for us!” To which Lessing replied, “Yes! If you wish it so!... Yet ... do you know of anything better?” [9]

To all reproaches from their opponents, the materialists can reply in just the same way: “Do you know of anything better?” Where is that something better to be sought? In Berkeley’s subjective idealism? In Hegel’s absolute idealism? In the agnosticism or the neo-Kantianism of our times?

“Materialism,” Lange assures us, “stubbornly takes the world of sensory appearance for the world of real things.” [10]

He wrote this remark apropos of Holbach’s argument against Berkeley. It creates the impression that Holbach was ignorant of many very simple things. Our philosopher could have replied for himself, “We do not know the essence of any being, if by the word ’essence’ one understands that which constitutes the nature that is peculiar to it; we know matter only through the perceptions, the sensations, and the ideas it gives us; it is only later that we judge whether it is good or bad, in accordance with the structure of our organs.” [11]

“We know neither the essence nor the true nature of matter, although we are able to define some of its properties and qualities according to how it affects us.” [12]

“We do not know the elements of the body, but we do know some of their properties or qualities and we distinguish between their different substances according to the effects or changes they produce on our senses, that is to say, by the various changes that their presence brings forth in us.” [13]

Strange, is it not? Here we see our kindly old Holbach as an epistemologist of today. How was it that Lange failed to recognise in him a comrade-in-philosophy?

Lange saw all philosophical systems in Kant, in just the same way as Malebranche saw all things in God. He found it unimaginable that, even before the publication of Kritik der reinen Vernunft [2*], there could have been people, and even among the materialists, who had a knowledge of certain truths, which were, properly speaking, meagre and barren, but, seemed to him the greatest discoveries in contemporary philosophy. He had read Holbach with a prejudiced eye.

But that is not all. There is a vast difference between Holbach and Lange. To Lange, as to any Kantian, a “thing-in-itself” was absolutely incognisable. To Holbach, as to any materialist, our reason, i.e., science, was fully capable of discovering at least certain properties of a “thing-in-itself”. On this point, too, the author of Système de la Nature was not mistaken.

Let us apply the following line of reasoning. We are building a railway. Expressed in Kantian terms, that means we are engendering certain phenomena. But what is a phenomenon? It is the result of a “thing-in-itself” acting upon us. So when we are build ing our railway, we are making a “thing-in-itself” act on us in a certain way that is desirable to us. But what is it that gives us the means of acting upon a “thing-in-itself” in such a manner? It is a knowledge of its properties, and nothing but that knowledge.

Our being able to get a sufficiently close knowledge of a “thing-in-itself” happens to be very useful to us. Otherwise, we could not exist here on Earth, and would most probably have been denied the pleasure of indulging in metaphysics.

The Kantians aver that a “thing-in-itself” is incognisable. That incognisability, in their opinion, gives Lampe, and all the worthies of philistinism, the inalienable right to their own more or less “poetical” or “ideal” God. [3*] Holbach reasoned differently.

“It is being incessantly repeated to us,” he says, “that our senses show us only the outside of things, and that our limited minds cannot conceive a God. Let us admit that is so; but those senses do not show us even the outside of the Divinity ... As we are constituted, that means that we have no ideas about what does not exist for us.” [14]


Foototes

1. Cf. Le bon sens puisé dans la nature, suivi du testament du curé Meslier, à Paris, l’an Ier de la République, I, p.175.
2. “Nature, understood in the broadest sense of the word, is a vast whole resultant from a compound of different substances, their different combinations and different motions, as observed by us in the Universe.” (Système de la Nature ou, des Loix du Monde Physique et du Monde Moral, Londres 1781, I, p.3). Holbach also recognised four elements, which the ancient philosophy recognised before him: air, fire, earth and water.
3. Thus, according to Damiron, matter cannot possess the faculty of thinking. Why? Because “matter does not think, does not cognise, does not act” (Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de la philosophie au XVIIIe siècle, Paris 1858, p.409).
What, amazing logic! Incidentally, in their struggle against the materialists, Voltaire and Rousseau were also in error in this question. Thus, for instance, Voltaire assured the reader that “any active matter reveals its non-material essence, which acts upon it”. To Rousseau matter was “dead”; he could never “imagine a live molecule”.
4. Système de la Nature, I, p.21. The quotation is from the 1781 edition.
5. Le bon sens, I, p.170.
6. Système de la Nature, I, p.81. Note 26.
7. Système de la Nature, I, pp.90-91. La Mcttrie also considers the two hypotheses almost equally probable. Lange has been totally wrong in ascribing a different opinion to him. This will be seen from a perusal of Chapter VI of Traité de l’âme. La Mettrie even supposes that “the philosophers of all ages” (with the exception of the Cartesians, of course) “recognised that matter had the faculty of sensation” (Cf. Œuvres, Amsterdam 1764, I, pp.97-100).
8. Le bon sens, I, p.177.
9. Jacobi’s Werke, IV, S.54.
10. Geschichte des Materialismus, 2. Aufl., Iserlohn 1873, I, S.378.
11. Système de la Nature, II, pp.91-92.
12. ibid., p.116.
13. ibid., I, p.28.
14. Système de la Nature, II, pp.109-13. Feuerbach said the same thing. In general, his critique of religion contains much that resembles Holbach’s. As for the conversion of a “thing-in-itself” into God, it is noteworthy that the Fathers of the Church denned their God in exactly the same way as the Kantians define their “thing-in-itself”. Thus, according to St. Augustine, God does not fit into any category: “ut sic intelligamus Deum, si possumus, quantum possumus, sine qualitate bonum, sine quantitate magnum, sine indigentia creatorem, sine situ praesidentem, sine loco ubique totum, sine tempore sempiternum”. “So this may be our notion of God, if and so far as it be within our powers, a creator wanting in nothing, good without quality, great without quantity, present without abode, whole everywhere without location, everlasting without time.” (Cf. Ueberweg’s Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie, Berlin 1881, II.) We shall refer to Hegel those readers who would like to get an idea of all the contradictions of a “thing-in-itself”. [4*]

Continued...


The almost complete absence of any kind of idea of evolution was undoubtedly a weak point in eighteenth-century French materialism, as it was, in general, in any kind of materialism prior to Marx. True, such people as Diderot sometimes arrived at masterly conjectures which would have done credit to the most outstanding of our present-day evolutionists; such instances of insight, however, were not connected with the essence of their doctrine, but were merely exceptions, which, as such, merely confirmed the rule. Whether they were dealing with Nature, morals or history, the “philosophers” tackled the problem with the same absence of the dialectical method, and from the same metaphysical viewpoint. It is of interest to see how indefatigably Holbach tried to find some probable hypothesis of the origin of our planet and the human race. Problems now conclusively resolved by evolutionary natural science were seen as impossible of solution by the eighteenth-century philosophers. [15]

The Earth was not always the same as it now is. Does that mean that it was formed gradually, during a lengthy process of evolution? No. It might have been as follows: “Perhaps this Earth is a mass detached at a certain moment from some other celestial body; perhaps it is the result” (!) “of the spots or crusts that astronomers observe on the Sun’s disc, whence they could spread in our planetary system; perhaps this globe is an extinct and displaced comet which once occupied a different place in the regions of space.” [16]

Primitive man perhaps differed from his counterpart of today more than a quadruped does from an insect. Like everything else that exists on our globe and on all other heavenly bodies, Man can be imagined as being in a process of constant change. “Thus there is no contradiction in thinking that the species vary incessantly.” [17] This sounds perfectly in the spirit of evolutionism. It should not be forgotten, however, that Holbach saw this hypothesis as probable given “changes in the position of our globe”. Whoever does not accept this condition can consider Man “a sudden result of Nature.” Holbach does not adhere quite firmly to the hypothesis of the evolution of the species. “If one should reject the preceding conjectures, and if one affirms that Nature acts by a certain sum of immutable and general laws; if one should believe that Man, the quadruped, the fish, the insect, the plant, etc., are of all eternity and will forever remain what they are; if one should grant that the stars have shone in the firmament since all eternity” (thus, “a certain sum of immutable and general laws” would consequently preclude any development! – G.P.); “if one should say that it should not be asked why Man is what he is, any more than why Nature is as we see it, or why the world exists – we would not object to all that. Whatever system one adopts, it will, perhaps, reply equally well to the difficulties that embarrass one – It is not given to Man to know everything; it is not given to him lo know his origin; it is not given to him to penetrate into the essence of things or to reach the prime principles.” [18]

All this seems almost unbelievable to us today, but one should not forget the history of natural science. It should be recalled that, long after the publication of Système de la Nature, the great scientist Cuvier was up in arms against any idea of evolution in the natural sciences.

Let us now consider Holbach’s moral philosophy.

In one of his comedies, Charles Palissot, an author who lias been completely forgotten, but attracted considerable attention in the last century, has one of his characters (Valere) say the following:

Du globe ou nous vivons despote universel,
Il n’est qu’un seul ressort, l’intérêt personnel [19]

To which another character (Carondas) replies:

J’avais quelque regret à tromper Cydalise
Mais je vois clairement que la chose est permise. [20]

Thus Palissot tried to hold up the philosophers’ ideas to scorn. “It is a question of achieving happiness, no matter how” – this aphorism of Valère expresses Palissot’s view of the “philosophers’” ethics. Palissot was merely a “miserable ink-slinger”, yet were there many writers on the history of philosophy who advanced any other judgement on the materialist ethics of the eighteenth century? Throughout the present century, this ethics has almost universally been considered something scandalous, a doctrine unbefitting a worthy scholar or self-respecting philosopher; people such as La Mettrie, Holbach and Helvetius were considered dangerous sophists who preached nothing but sensual enjoyment and selfishness. [21] Yet none of these writers ever preached anything of the kind. Any reading of their books with a modicum of attention will bear this out. “To do good, promote the happiness of others, and to come to their aid – that is virtuous. Only that can be virtuous which is conducive to the weal, happiness and security of society.”

“Humaneness is the prime social virtue. It epitomises all the other virtues. Taken in its broadest aspect, it is the sense that gives all beings of our species the rights to our heart. Grounded in a cultivated sensibility, it enables us to do all the good on” faculties render us capable of. It results in love, beneficence, generosity, forbearance and compassion to our fellow-creatures.” [22]

Where does this so groundless accusation spring from? How could it have been believed almost universally?

In the first place, ignorance is to blame. The French materialists are much spoken of, but not read. It is therefore hardly surprising that, having struck deep root, the prejudice lives on.

The prejudice itself has two sources, both equally abundant.

Eighteenth-century materialist philosophy was a revolutionary philosophy. It was merely the ideological expression of the revolutionary bourgeoisie’s struggle against the clergy, the nobility, and the absolute monarchy. It goes without saying that, in its struggle against an obsolete system, the bourgeoisie could have no respect for a world-outlook that was inherited from the past and hallowed that despised system. “Different times, different circumstances, a different philosophy,” as Diderot so excellently put it in his article on Hobbes in the Encyclopédie. The philosophers of the good old days, who tried to live in peace with the Church, had no objections to a morality which claimed revealed religion as its source. The philosophers of the new times wanted morals to be free of any alliance with “superstition”. “Nothing can be more disadvantageous to human morals than having them blended with divine morals. In linking sensible morals, based on experience and reason, with a mystical religion that is opposed to reason and based on imagination and authority, one could only muddle, weaken and even destroy the former.” [23]

This divorcement of morals from religion could not have been to everybody’s liking, and it already provided grounds to revile the materialists’ ethics. But that was not all. “Religious morals” preached humility, mortification of the flesh, and quelling of the passions. To those who suffer here on Earth they promised recompense in the world to come. The new morality reinstated the flesh, reinstated the rights of the passions [[24], and made society responsible for the misfortunes of its members. [25] Like Heine, it wanted “to set up the Kingdom of Heaven here on Earth”. [5*] Therein lay its revolutionary side, but therein, too, was its wrongness in the eyes of those who stood for the then existent social structure.

In his Correspondance littéraire [6*], Grimm wrote that, following the publication of Helvetius’s De l’Esprit, a certain comic verse circulated throughout Paris, expressing the apprehension of “respectable folk”:

“Admirez tous cet auteur-la
Qui de ‘l’Esprit’ intitula
Un livre qui n’est que matière.” [[26]

Indeed, all materialist morals were merely “matter” to those who did riot understand them, and also to those who, though understanding them excellently, preferred “tippling wine in secret, while preaching water-drinking in public”. [7*]

This will be sufficient to explain how and why materialist morals, to this day, make the hair of all philistines of all “civilised” nations stand on end.

Yet there were, among the opponents of materialist morals, such men as Voltaire and Rousseau. Were they philistines too?

As for Rousseau, he was no philistine in this instance, but it must be admitted that the Patriarch of Ferney [8*] brought a substantial portion of philistinism into the discussion.

When a man comes into the world, he brings with him only the faculty of sensation, what is known as the intellectual faculties all develop from this faculty. Some of the impressions or sensations a man gets from the objects he meets please him, while others cause him suffering. He approves of some of them, which he wants to last or become renewed in him; he regards others with disapproval, and avoids them as much as he can. In other words, a man likes some sensations and the objects that produce them, and dislikes other impressions and that which evokes them. Since man lives in society, he is surrounded by creatures like himself, who feel exactly what he does. All these creatures seek enjoyment, and fear suffering. They call good whatever gives them enjoyment, and evil whatever causes them suffering. Whatever is of constant use to them they call virtue, while whatever is injurious to them in the make-up of those that surround them is called vice. One who does good to his fellow-men is good; he who causes them harm is evil. Hence it follows, in the first place, that man does not stand in need of divine aid to distinguish virtue from vice; in the second place, for men to be virtuous, the performance of virtue should give them pleasure, be pleasing to them. Man should love vice if it makes him happy. A man is evil only because it is to his advantage to be so. Evil and wicked men are so often to be met in this world of ours only because no government exists that could enable them to find advantage in justice, honesty and charity; conversely, the vested interests everywhere drive them to injustice, evil and crime. “Thus, it is not Nature that creates evil people, but our institutions that make them such.” [27]

NOTES:

15. It is really surprising that Diderot admires the moral doctrine of Heraclitus, hut says nothing of his dialectics, or, if you wish, merely a few insignificant words, in considering his physics. Œuvres de Diderot, Paris 1818, II, pp.625–26 (Encyclopédie).
16. Système de la Nature, I, p.70.
17. ibid., p.73.
18. Système de la Nature, I, p.75. Among the problems whose solution is not given to Man, Holbach also includes the question, “What came first: the animal before the egg, or the egg before the animal?” This is a caution to scholars who like to expatiate on the uncrossablc borderlines of science!
19. [Universal despot of the world we live in and sole motive of everything – personal Interest.]
20. [I have some regret at deceiving Cydalise, But I see clearly that the thing is permitted.]
21. “De La Mettrie and Helvetius are sophists of materialistic ethics” (Hettner, Literaturgeschichte des 18. Jahrhunderts, Braunschweig 1881, II, S.388). “What is fatal to materialism is that it indulges, nourishes and encourages man’s lowest instincts, the baseness out of which he was created” (Fritz Schultze, Die Grundgedanken des Materialismus und die Kritik derselben, Leipzig 1887, S.50).
22. La Politique naturelle ou discours sur les vrais principes du gouvernement, par un ancient magistra (Holbach), 1773, pp.45-46.
23. Système social ou Principes naturels de la morale et de la politique. Avec un examen de l’influence du gouvernement sur les mœurs. Par l’auteur du Système de la Nature, Londres, 1773, I, p.36. Cf. with the Preface to Morale universelle by the same author: “We shall not deal here with religious morals, which do not recognise the rights of reason, since they pursue the aim of leading people along supernatural roads.”
24. “Passions are true counterweights to passions; let us not seek to destroy them but try to give them direction; let us balance those that are detrimental with those that are useful to society. Reason, the fruit of experience, is merely the art of choosing, for our own happiness, the passions we should listen to” (Système de la Nature, I, p.304).
25. “Let them not tell us that no government can make all its subjects happy; no doubt, it cannot please the whims of a few idle citizens who do not know what to think up to dispel their ennui; it can and must, however, engage in satisfying the real needs of the multitude. A society enjoys all the happiness it is capable of when the greatest number of its members are fed, clothed and housed – in a word, can, without excessive labour, satisfy the needs that Nature has made necessary to them.... As a consequence of human follies, entire nations are obliged to toil, sweat, and water the soil with their tears so as to provide for the luxury, whims and corruption of a small number of madmen, a handful of useless people, for whom happiness has become impossible because their unbridled imagination knows no bounds” (ibid., p.298).
26. [Admire this author, all of you, who has entitled his book On the Spirit, though it contains nothing but matter.]
27. Système de la Nature, I, p.306.

Ha, am I seeing a pattern here? Then it was "anything but materialism", now it's 'anything but communism', idealism dethroned yet still serving the ruling class.

Ha, am I seeing a pattern here? Then it was "anything but materialism", now it's 'anything but communism', idealism dethroned yet still serving the ruling class.

Yeah, can't seem to separate the two. Without idealism, folks start getting that clear-eyed view of things - can't have that!