Claude-Adrien, a famous French philosopher of the last century, was born at Paris in 1715. He was educated at the Jesuit College of Louis-le-Grand in that city, and while there gave no sign of that talent which afterwards carried him on to such distinction. While his class-fellows were busy with their themes, he was assiduously developing the personal advantages he had received from nature. He was eminently handsome, was one of the best fencers and dancers of his day, and was so popular with the fair sex, that he had good reason to boast, as he often did, of his bonnes fortunes. After a short apprenticeship under his uncle M. D'Armancourt, directeur des fermes at Caen, he obtained, through the influence of the queen Marie Lezzinska (whose physician his father had been), the office of fermier-general. With the vast fortune thus placed at his disposal he performed many acts of kindness, selecting chiefly as the objects of his generosity the struggling litterateurs of the day. He settled an annual pension of 3000 francs on Saurin, and a nearly equal sum on Marivaux. These and countless other acts of generosity he managed with that delicate tact which carefully avoided to humble or wound the self-respect of his proteges, whom he always succeeded in persuading that he was the obliged party. On one occasion Marivaux, in a hot dispute with his benefactor, lost his temper and became grossly abusive. When he left the room Helvetius merely remarked, "How I would have answered him, had he not laid me under an obligation by accepting my good offices." This extreme gentleness of heart showed itself afterwards on a greater scale. When he found that the faithful discharge of his duties involved an oppression of his countrymen similar to that at one time practised by the English towards their subjects in Eastern India, he resigned his highly lucrative appointment, after vain attempting to reconcile himself to the work by the gentlest possible exercise of his authority. With his savings he pur- chased the office of maître d'hôtel to the queen; and as it did not necessitate a constant residence in Paris, he retired to the estate of Voré in La Perche which he had purchased. He took with him his newly-married wife, Mlle. de Ligneville, niece of the famous Madame Graffigny. In compliment to her he had reformed his dissolute habits of life, and directed into the field of literary enterprise his mind which still craved morbidly after distinction of any kind. So insatiable indeed was his appetite for applause, that he once danced on the stage of the opera, under the mask and name of the famous Javillier. His beautiful figure, graceful carriage, and exquisite dancing, prevented the trick from being discovered. A higher ambition, however, had seized him before he retired from Paris. He aspired to scientific and literary fame. He began with mathematics, which Maupeu had made the fashion; and his ambition was fired to rival that philosopher, whom he had seen in the gardens of the Tuileries surrounded by a circle of the most brilliant court beauties, and engrossing their attention despite his grotesque bearing and strange dress. Then he thought to rival Voltaire by philosophical epistles, a poem on Happiness, and a tragedy. The prodigious success of Montesquieu's Esprit des Lois, published in 1748, decided him to raise a monument which he hoped posterity would allow to stand beside that of his illustrious countryman. Immediately on his retiring into the country he began the composition of the work that was to divide the praises of future times with that of Montesquieu. Though he worked at it with the most conscientious assiduity, he yet found time to fulfil his duties at court (where he regularly spent four months of the year), and also towards his own tenantry, whose condition he did his best to improve, by administering justice among them, establishing manufactures, and teaching improved modes of agriculture. He was very jealous, however, of his seignorial rights, and was particularly severe in punishing infractions of the game-laws. The right of hunting he reserved strictly for himself and his friends. These duties and pleasures engrossed his spare time during the seven years he spent on the composition of his work. At last, in 1758, it was published anonymously under the title of De l'Esprit. The motto from Lucretius prefixed to the work, indicates its object better than any exposition:

unde animi constet natura videndum, Qua flant ratione, et qua vi quoque gerantur In terris.

The Encyclopedists and their partizans received the book warmly, and sounded its praises everywhere; but it was denounced at court by the priests as subversive alike of good government and sound morality. The first to express his dissatisfaction with the author and his work, was the dauphin (the son of Louis XV.), and Helvetius, terrified at the storm which he had raised, sought to allay the tempest by a series of recantations, each more humbly penitent than its predecessor. His apologies, however, were unavailing, especially as the priest party, then powerful at court, succeeded in persuading the court that the De l'Esprit was nothing other than a résumé of all the dangerous and immoral tenets of the Encyclopédie. The doctors of the Sorbonne took up the question, and formally condemned the work, which was forthwith burned publicly by the common hangman, along with some others of an equally obnoxious cast. The doctrines themselves which excited such general reprobation were merely those that had been brought into fashion by the Encyclopedists, expounded with the grossest literality. He posits as an axiom, that man is purely a creature of sensations; that these sensations when they impel to action, show themselves under different modes called passions; that pleasure or pain are the end and object of all human existence; and that consequently to seek the former and avoid the latter, is the only duty and object of man.

As natural results of these postulates self-interest comes to be the sole principle of all our actions and judgments, and virtue and vice only another way of distinguishing the agreeable or disagreeable, the useful or hurtful qualities of things. The other parts of Helvetius's system are of a piece with those already stated. He maintained that as all men had received from nature the same physical constitution, they are naturally on a footing of equality in regard to their intellectual and moral powers; that the passions are the only mode of all development; and that to cultivate these passions is to educate the man. It were time thrown away here to refute a system so irremediably gross and grovelling, and which, after a brief career of fashion rather than of popular acceptance, passed away even before its author. It only remains to say, that as a literary performance, the De l'Esprit is well and consistently argued throughout. The arguments are enforced by numerous and often apt illustrations; while the style is viciously rhetorical. To escape the storm he had unwittingly raised, Helvetius passed over to England in 1764, and in the following year visited the Great Frederic of Prussia, who received him with every mark of honour and respect. After leaving the Prussian court Helvetius returned to his own country, where he died, Dec. 26, 1771. His posthumous work, De l'Homme, de ses facultés intellectuelles et de son Éducation, may be regarded as a sort of commentary on the work which first made him famous, though in a literary point of view it is infinitely superior. Many of the old theories, however, are rejected, others are greatly modified, and an attempt made to establish the principles on a better foundation.

There are numerous editions of Helvetius's complete works, of which may be mentioned those of Liège, 1774; London, 1777; Paris, 1794, again in 1796, and a third time in 1818. They have also been translated into most of the languages of modern Europe.