16. Of the new Epicureans, the most famous in his day was Saint-Evremond, [673] who, exiled from France for his politics, maintained both in London and in Paris, by his writings, a leadership in polite letters. In England he greatly influenced young men like Bolingbroke; and a translation (attributed to Dryden) of one of his writings seems to have given Bishop Butler the provocation to the first and weakest chapter of his Analogy. [674] As to his skepticism there was no doubt in his own day; and his compliments to Christianity are much on a par with those paid later by the equally conforming and unbelieving Shaftesbury, whom he also anticipated in his persuasive advocacy of toleration. [675] Regnard, the dramatist, had a similar private repute as an "Epicurean." And even among the nominally orthodox writers of the time in France a subtle skepticism touches nearly all opinion. La Bruyère is almost the only lay classic of the period who is pronouncedly religious; and his essay on the freethinkers, [676] against whom his reasoning is so forcibly feeble, testifies to their numbers and to the stress of debate set up by them. Even he, too, writes as a deist against atheists, hardly as a believing Christian. If he were a believer he certainly found no comfort in his faith: whatever were his capacity for good feeling, no great writer of his age betrays such bitterness of spirit, such suffering from the brutalities of life, such utter disillusionment, such unfaith in men. And a certain doubt is cast upon all his professions of opinion by the sombre avowal: "A man born a Christian and a Frenchman finds himself constrained [677] in satire: the great subjects are forbidden him: he takes them up at times, and then turns aside to little things, which he elevates by his ... genius and his style." [678]
M. Lanson remarks that "we must not let ourselves be abused by the last chapter [Des esprits forts], a collection of philosophic reflections and reasonings, where La Bruyère mingles Plato, Descartes, and Pascal in a vague Christian spiritualism. This chapter, evidently sincere, but without individuality, and containing only the reflex of the thoughts of others, is not a conclusion to which the whole work conducts. It marks, on the contrary, the lack of conclusion and of general views. What is more, with the chapter On the Sovereign, placed in the middle of the volume, it is destined to disarm the temporal and spiritual powers, to serve as passport for the independent freedom of observation in the rest of the Caractères" (p. 599).