WorkBaron d'Holbach

The System of Nature, or, the Laws of the Moral and Physical World

Condemned by the Paris parlement, burned, and answered by Voltaire and by a Prussian king — all under the name of a man ten years dead.

by Baron d'Holbach1,022 passages held

English, a translation held here, and your language

Original title: Système de la nature
First published: 1770(aged 47)
Original language: French

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Overview

Few books of the century were answered by a king. When it appeared in 1770 — "London" printed on the title page, though the work came off a press in Amsterdam, and credited to Jean-Baptiste de Mirabaud, a secretary of the Académie française dead since 1760 — the Parlement de Paris condemned it and had it burned, Voltaire wrote against it, and Frederick the Great of Prussia composed a refutation of his own. What drew them was a universe with no God in it anywhere: matter in motion is all there is, human beings included, so that thought, choice and virtue are the workings of physical causes, and a designing creator is not only unproven but unneeded. Its real author, Baron d'Holbach, put his name to none of it; Diderot's hand and Jacques-André Naigeon's editing are worked into the text, assembled and polished within Holbach's Paris salon. The book set out atheism and materialism as a finished system rather than a suspicion, which is why it frightened even other unbelievers — Voltaire among them, who wanted no God abolished so completely. It became the great reference-point of eighteenth-century atheism, the book a whole generation of clergy were set to refute, and it carried its dead man's name for years before Holbach's was firmly attached to it.

Key concepts

What is materialism in this book?

The doctrine that matter in motion is all that exists. There is no spirit, no soul and no God, only one kind of substance behaving according to necessary laws. Everything, including thought and feeling, is a physical process. Holbach presents this not as a hunch but as a complete system, the fullest statement Enlightenment materialism produced, worked out to cover mind and morals as well as physics.

What does Holbach mean by necessity or determinism?

That every event, human actions included, is the inevitable result of prior physical causes. Nothing happens outside the chain of cause and effect, so the will is not free in the sense the moralists assume; a person's choices follow necessarily from their temperament and circumstances. Determinism is not a gap in his system but its backbone, the same lawfulness running through matter and mind alike.

Why does Holbach say a designing God is unneeded?

Because nature already explains itself. Order is the effect of necessary law, not of a designer, so the apparent evidence of design is simply matter behaving as it must. Adding a creator explains nothing further and raises new problems. For Holbach God is not so much disproven as made redundant, a superfluous cause invoked for a universe that is complete without it.

What grounds good and evil for Holbach?

Nature and utility, not divine command. Given the kind of beings humans are, what promotes their happiness and self-preservation is good and what harms these is evil. Morality becomes a branch of the study of human nature, discoverable by reason and answerable to consequences. No god is required to make an act right or wrong; the effects on human well-being decide it.

Why was it published under Mirabaud's name?

For safety, and it worked for years. The title page credited Jean-Baptiste de Mirabaud, a secretary of the Academie francaise dead since 1760 and beyond prosecution, with London falsely given as the place though it was printed in Amsterdam. The real author, Holbach, aided by Diderot and edited by Naigeon, signed none of it. The book carried the dead man's name long before Holbach's was firmly attached.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Matter in motion, and nothing else

Is anything real besides matter and its movements? Holbach answers no: nature is matter in motion throughout, and a designing creator is not merely unproven but unneeded to explain any of it.

The book lays out atheism and materialism as a finished system rather than a suspicion. There is one kind of stuff, matter, and one kind of event, motion governed by necessary cause; from these everything follows, with no God required at any point. Order in nature is not evidence of design but of law, and a creator would be a needless addition to a universe already complete in itself. This was bold enough to frighten other unbelievers, Voltaire among them, who wanted no God abolished so absolutely. Condemned by the Paris parlement and burned, it became the great reference-point of eighteenth-century atheism, and carried a dead man's name for years.

materialism
nature
causality
metaphysics
naturalism
atheism
necessity
empiricism

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The human being inside nature's chain

If matter and cause are all there is, where does that leave choice, virtue and the self? Holbach's answer is unflinching: a person is part of nature, and thought and will are physical causes like any other.

Holbach refuses to exempt the human being from the order he describes. Thought, choice and virtue are the workings of physical causes, so the will is not free in the sense the moralists assume, and character is the product of temperament and circumstance. Yet he does not conclude that ethics collapses. Morality is refounded on nature and utility: what conduces to happiness in a being so constituted is good, and no divine command is needed to ground it. This determinism, applied to the self and to conduct alike, is what made the book frightening as well as famous, since it left no room for the soul the age still assumed.

determinism
human nature
morality
ethics
psychology
virtue
happiness
causality
necessity

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Within this work

passages held: 1,022
distinct concepts: 898
by passages held, corpus-wide: #61

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “epistemology” and “theology”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 26 pairings. 81 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
epistemology	theology	47
epistemology	materialism	37
materialism	naturalism	36
reason	superstition	28
religion	superstition	28
epistemology	naturalism	26
epistemology	reason	21
materialism	theology	19
naturalism	superstition	19
epistemology	superstition	17
naturalism	reason	17
naturalism	religion	17
epistemology	religion	16
determinism	materialism	15
naturalism	theology	15
materialism	religion	13
determinism	naturalism	12
reason	religion	12
religion	theology	8
materialism	reason	6
reason	theology	6
superstition	theology	6
determinism	reason	4
determinism	religion	3
materialism	superstition	2
determinism	epistemology	1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

1766 Christianity Unveiled: Being an Examination of the Principles and Effects of the Christian Religion (Le Christianisme dévoilé)
The opening work in the run of anonymous antireligious books Holbach produced with his circle; the System of Nature and Good Sense that followed would build the philosophy out, where this one simply indicts the religion.
EN
1768 Letters to Eugenia; Or, A Preservative Against Religious Prejudices (Lettres à Eugénie)
Cast as letters to a young woman rather than as a treatise, this is Holbach turning his irreligion toward a single ordinary believer's formation; quieter and more intimate than the systematic books, and aimed at readers they were not.
EN
1770 Ecce Homo! Or, A Critical Inquiry into the History of Jesus of Nazareth: Being a Rational Analysis of the Gospels (Histoire critique de Jésus-Christ)
Where Christianity Unveiled indicts the religion and the System of Nature builds the philosophy, this one goes at the source texts, applying to the Gospels the historical scrutiny Holbach's circle applied to everything held sacred.
EN
1770 The System of Nature, or, the Laws of the Moral and Physical World (Système de la nature) you are here EN
1772 Good Sense (Le Bon-Sens)
The popular abridgement of the System of Nature, written to carry the same atheism to readers who would never open the larger book; lighter, blunter, and the one of Holbach's works that reached furthest.
EN

— or open another of their works