The Mind of William Paley (review)

94 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY great intellectual change that dominated the eighteenth century and the political upheaval at the end of the century. Condorcet was the only majorphilosophe still alive in 1789, and in spite of his radical views, he was a victim of the Reign of Terror. Other minor figures such as the abb6 Raynalturned against the Revolution and became counter-Revolutionaries. The evidence from studies in economic, political, social, and intellectual history now requires that we rethink what the connection between the French Enlightenmentand the French Revolution may have been. Wade's characterization of both the giant and the ordinary figures of the Enlightenment is also open to dispute, and specialists are sure to enter the flay and to challenge him. One thing that makes argument easier is that Wade provides practically no footnotes to justify his views. He also rarely gives sources for his citations from eighteenth-century authors (and also more recent ones). No explanation is offered for this. It is obvious that Wade read and studied a vast amount of the primary and secondary sources. In his earlier work he sometimes supplied footnotes (as in The Intellectual Origins of the French Enlightenment) and sometimes did not (as in The Intellectual Development of Voltaire). Considering that many of Wade's interpretations and theories are highly controversial, it is difficult to decide whether to accept, reject, or modify them without examining the evidence on which they are based. Without evidence some of them sound like pronouncements from Mount Sinai. Wade's latest two-volume study is a treasure for those concerned with comprehending what went on in the French Enlightenment. Wade constantly seeks the organic unity both of the intellectual movement and of the individual thinkers. In so doing he not only informs the reader of a great deal, but forces the reader to think through his own interpretation of the aspects of the French Enlightenment with which he is concerned, and to see how they fit with this overall picture. We should all be grateful to Wade for providing us with such a vast canvas, based on a lifetime of study. It will broaden and deepen our appreciation of the great intellectual changes that occurred in France in the eighteenth century. RICHARDH. POPKIN Washington University D. L. LeMahieu. The Mind of William Paley. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1976. Pp. xi + 215. $12.95. This is a much-needed contribution to the now scanty literature on Paley (1743-1805). An expansion of a Harvard dissertation, it is a worthy contribution by a Doctor of the American Cambridge to a Doctor of the English one. In his early days a Fellow of Christ's College, Paley quickly became renowned as the most brilliant teacher in the University. Two of his books, written after he left Cambridge, were prescribed as compulsory reading for the University'sexamination . He came into national fame when he had moved to a parish in the North, and thence to Carlisle as its Archdeacon (1782). The latest edition of his collected Works appeared in 1851. Thereafter he was the object not of admiration but of uncomprehendingcriticism, some of it curt and contemptuous. One of the merits of LeMahieu's volume is that the first chapter is an account of Paley's life, not a petty summary of external facts but a fleshly studied presentation of his character, rightly entitled Portrait. He tries to get under Paley's skin. This sympathetic approach enabled him, without whitewashing, to illuminate Paley's reticent passages and apparent contradictions. Only Paley's three major philosophical books are dealt with at length: Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy (1785), View of the Evidences of Christianity (1794), and Natural Theology (1802). In his other major work, Horae Paulinae (1790), he contended that the Scriptures should be exposed to the scrutiny of reason; in particular, he faced the problem of the reliability of Acts BOOK REVIEWS 95 and of the attribution of the letters traditionally ascribed to Paul. Not being philosophical, it is only lightly touched on by Le Mahieu. His Natural Theology is, of course, strictly philosophical, a study of religion without appeal to revelation or to ecclesiastical authority. Its main...