Democratic Enlightenment

The Diffusion 787
Even so, notable local oscillations in the pattern stand out. The main specialist
book-seller retailing illicit literature at Rennes, Blouet, placed eleven orders with the
Société between October 1772 and September 1776 for copies of 120 forbidden works
in which four other works of d’Holbach—the Bon-Sens, Histoire critique de Jésus-
Christ, Le Christianisme dévoilé, and the Théologie portative—besides Thérèse philosophe
all outstripped the Système. At La Rochelle, the firm of Pavie placed fourteen
orders between March 1772 and March 1784, in which requests for Mirabeau’s Essai
and d’Holbach’s Théologie portative outstripped the Système. 28 But all evidence for
provincial France, as also for Paris, without exception, confirms that d’Holbach
achieved a greater degree of penetration than any other radical writer and not only
via his Système but also a whole spectrum of other works. The proof is conclusive also
that other radical authors such as Helvétius, Raynal, Diderot, d’Argens, Mercier,
Mirabeau, Mably, Brissot, and the main reviser of Le Militaire philosophe, Naigeon,
penetrated deeply everywhere.
An uncommonly fierce anti-religious work supposedly published ‘à Londres’, in
1768, Le Militaire philosophe, had by 1776 been reissued in at least four other
editions. 29 Naigeon, besides being a notable anti-Rousseauist radical author in his
own right, was a key functionary in the wider mechanism of the diffusion of Radical
Enlightenment and not least the Système. An expert in the forbidden philosophical
manuscripts at quite a young age, researching originals, authors, and variants, it is
doubtless this which first brought him to Diderot’s attention leading to his being
brought into the inner circle of the encyclopédistes. It was also Diderot, in or around
1765, who first introduced him to d’Holbach. A well-known connoisseur of the
Parisian art scene and artists with a taste for classical authors but little of d’Holbach’s
appetite for science or economics, he was also, we have seen, the author of the key
entry ‘Unitaires’—judged ‘terrible’ (tremendous) by Voltaire—in the Encyclopédie. 30
Among his later projects was his collaboration with the tutor of d’Holbach’s children,
La Grange (1738–75), in preparing a special (and luxurious) edition of Lucretius
(1768) and another of Seneca, left incomplete when La Grange died in 1775 and
finally published with the encouragement of both Diderot and d’Holbach in 1778. 31
A declared atheist, Naigeon headed the team of assistants labouring in the engineroom,
so to speak, of d’Holbach’s ‘synagogue’. Methodical and exact, Diderot and
d’Holbach both came to rely on him to an unusual extent, the former naming him
his literary executor and the latter remaining his intimate collaborator throughout
his last years. In 1789, along with Deleyre and Madame Helvétius, Naigeon became
an ardent révolutionnaire.
With the help of his younger brother, likewise a professed atheist, Naigeon
organized the checking, stylistic correction (to remove Germanisms), and transcription
of d’Holbach’s manuscripts (to render them unidentifiable by his hand). He also
28 29
Ibid. 219–20. Ibid. 121–2; Vercruysse, Bibliographie, 24, 26, B2.
30
Voltaire to Damilaville, 12 Mar. 1766, in Voltaire, Corr. xxx. 133; Vercruysse, Bibliographie, 19.
31
Wickwar, Baron d’Holbach, 105; Naville, Paul Thiry d’Holbach, 98.