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The System of Nature (Paperback)
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The System of Nature (Paperback)
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Holbach is best known for The System of Nature (1770) and
deservedly, since it is a clear and reasonably systematic
exposition of his main ideas. His initial position determines all
the rest of his argument. "There is not, there can be nothing out
of that Nature which includes all beings." Conceiving of nature as
strictly limited to matter and motion, both of which have always
existed, he flatly denies that there is any such thing as spirit or
a supernatural. Mythology began, Holbach claims, when men were
still in a state of nature and at the point when wise, strong, and
for the most part benign men were arising as leaders and lawgivers.
These leaders "formed discourses by which they spoke to the
imaginations of their willing auditors," using the medium of
poetry, because it "seem ed] best adapted to strike the mind."
Through poetry, then, and by means of "its images, its fictions,
its numbers, its rhyme, its harmony... the entire of nature, as
well as all its parts, was personified, by its beautiful
allegories." Thus mythology is given an essentially political
origin. These early poets are literally legislators of mankind.
"The first institutors of nations, and their immediate successors
in authority, only spoke to the people by fables, allegories,
enigmas, of which they reserved to themselves the right of giving
an explanation."
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