The System of Nature, Volume 1

by Paul-Henri Thiry d'Holbach

TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL FRENCH OF M. DE MIRABAUD, Introduction by Robert D. Richardson, Jr.

Genres: Philosophy, Religion, Atheism, Nonfiction

312 pages, Paperback

First published March 31, 2004

About the author

Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d'Holbach (born Paul Heinrich Dietrich), was a philosopher, encyclopedist, and prominent figure in the French Enlightenment well known for his atheism and voluminous writings against religion.

Reviews

[Onyango Makagutu · Rating 5 out of 5]

d'Holdbach will dissuade anyone from any superstition. I loved the book immensely

[Garth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very quote worthy but difficult to read...

This man's artistry of circumlocution is extraordinary. He has the ability to say in four or five pages what most people can say in ten words. And the tangents he goes on!! I'll have to say that his rhetoric is about as sharp as a red brick in a wool sock... This was written with the obvious purpose of bludgeoning his opponent to paste. Still, the man was a genius and is the "Patron Saint of Atheism" and I respect him immensely as the days when he existed were full of religious fanatics.

[Usfromdk]

First a small sidenote: I did not actually read this particular edition of the book - rather I read an edition which contained reprints from the collection of the University of Michigan Library; that specific edition is not to be found on the current list of publications of this work on goodreads, however as the book does not have an identifiable ISBN I feel hesitant to add it to goodreads.

The book's strengths lie mainly in the fact that you get some insight into what a guy like d'Holbach, who wrote this stuff more than 250 years ago, thought about various topics. It's very much impossible (in my opinion) to give the book a 'fair' rating, so I decided against rating it. To put it bluntly, the author would if judged by modern standards be considered an ignorant fool (examples of topics covered: humorism (example quote: "thofe who are deprived of imagination are commonly thefe men in whom the phlegm predominates over that facred fire, which is in us the principle of mobility, of the warmth of fentiment, and which vivifies all our intellectual faculties"), phlogiston, physiognomy...), and I'd much rather take medical advice from e.g. an illiterate peasant from, say, Alabama than I would take medical advice from him. A lot of the stuff included is in the 'not even wrong' category, where you sort of find it hard to even know where to start to make the guy appreciate how far off base he is.

He was right about the gods, but you should not read D'Holbach to get a good account about why 'religion is wrong'. The fact that the author had the right idea about some things but was simultaneously hilariously wrong about a lot of other things because of his lack of knowledge is what makes this book worth reading. I believe what the book actually does best is to illustrate in various indirect ways just how far we've actually come in the last 250-300 years.

[Chad · Rating 3 out of 5]

A foundational work of materialist/atheist philosophy. Nevertheless, the arguments are often more blunt than subtle, and the style can be excruciatingly repetitive: Holbach often strings together example after example to illustrate a point (presumably for rhetorical effect) and then revisits the point again and again. (If you see a long string of phrases separated by colons, it is quite safe to skip immediately to the end and read "in sum" what he is on about.) It may be preferable to read "Common Sense," a more condensed version of "System of Nature."

[Craig Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

Social commentary and political critique. Contemplations on mankind's sources of happiness and discontent, and ruminations concerning origins of error and evils within civilization.
Well worth the several months that it took me to read through this Volume 1 of d'Holbach's work from 1770. I found that I needed to read nearly every paragraph at least 2 if not 3 or 4 times to sound out the cadence, the phrasing, and the intent of many of the passages.


I'm fairly certain that the publisher/printer of the two volumes of this work that I purchased several years ago is no longer in business... the website listed on the title page, with the publishing date of 2007, has the website of the company when accessing the URL, either directly or from the link on what appears to be an inactive Facebook page, only takes one to a screen stating "This domain is PARKED".