, one of the earliest French infidels, who assumed the name of philosophers
, one of the earliest
French infidels, who assumed the name of philosophers
was born at Paris in 1722, and died therein 1759, aged
only thirty -seven. During his education, he is said to
have come out of the college of Beauvais almost as ignorant
as he went in; hut, struggling hard against his inaptitude
to study, he at length overcame it. At seventeen years of
age he began to apply himself to mathematics and architecture; and,n three or lour years made such progress
as to be usefrl to the baron of Thiers, whom he accompanied to thearmy in quality of engineer. Afterwards he
had the supervision of the highways and bridges, and executed severa public works in Champagne, Burgundy, and
Lorrain. Ii cutting through mountains, directing and
changing tie courses of rivers, and in breaking up and
turning ov<r the strata of the earth, he saw a multitude of
different substances, which (he thought) evinced the great
antiquity of it, and a long series of revolutions which it
must hav undergone. From the revolutions in the globe,
he passei to the changes that must have happened in the
manner?of men, in societies, in governments, in religion
and fomed many conjectures upon all these. To be farther saisfied, he wanted to know what, in the history of
ages, lad been said upon these particulars; and, that he
might be informed from the fountain-head, he learned
first latin, and then Greek. Not yet content, he plunged
into clebrew, Syriac, Chaldaic, and Arabic and from
these studies accumulated a vast mass of singular and paradoxical opinions which he conveyed to the public in the
followng works: 1. “Traite du Despotisme Oriental,
” 2
vols. 2mo, 2. “L'antiquite devoile, par ses usages,
” 3
vols. 12mo. This was posthumous. 3. Another work, entitle! “Le Christianisme demasqu6,
” 8vo, is attributed
to Hm, but it is not certain that he was the author of it.
4. le furnished to the Encyclopedic the articles Deluge,
C-rvde, and Societe. 5. A dissertation on Elisha and
Eioch. 6. He left behind him in ms. a dictionary, which
my be regarded as a concordance in antient and modern
Jjnguages. Voltaire, the baron D'Holbach, and other disgminators of infidelity, made much use of Boulanger’s
works, and more of his name, which, it is supposed, they
prefixed to some of their own compositions. Barruel gives
some reason for thinking that Boulanger retracted his
opinions before his death. His name, however, still remained of consequence to the party; and as late as 1791,
an edition of his works, entitled the Philosophical
Library, was published at the philosophic press in Swisserland.