1st Edition

The System of Nature Volume 1

By Paul Henri Thiery Copyright 1984
372 Pages
by Routledge

372 Pages
by Routledge

372 Pages
by Routledge

Originally published in 1984. Paul Henri Thiery, Baron d'Holbach (1723-1789), was the center of the radical wing of the philosophers. Holbach wrote, translated, edited, and issued a stream of books and pamphlets, often under other names, that has made him the despair of bibliographers but has connected his name, by innuendo, gossip, and association, with most of what was written in defeense of... Read more

Preface. Part I: Laws of Nature.—Of man.—The faculties of the soul.—Doctrine of immortality.—On happiness. Chapter 1: Nature and her laws. Chapter 2: Of motion and its origin. Chapter 3: Of matter—of its various combinations—of its diversified motion—or of the course of Nature. Chapter 4: Laws of motion common to every being of Nature—attraction and repulsion—inert force—necessity. Chapter 5: Order and confusion—intelligence—chance. Chapter 6: Moral and physical distinctions of man—his origin. Chapter 7: The soul and the spiritual system. Chapter 8: The intellectual faculties derived from the faculty of feeling. Chapter 9: The diversity of the intellectual faculties; they depend on physical causes, as do their moral qualities.—The natural principles of society—morals—politics. Chapter 10: The soul does not derive its ideas from itself—it has no innate ideas. Chapter 11: Of the system of man’s free-agency. Chapter 12: An examination of the opinion which pretends that the system of fatalism is dangerous. Chapter 13: Of the immortality of the soul—of the doctrine of a future state—of the fear of death. Chapter 14: Education, morals, and the laws suffice to restrain man—of the desire of immortality—of suicide.

Biography

Paul Henri Thiery