Chapter 1.2.III: Questionable
Summary
“Victorious analysis” — the enlightenment's intensely skeptical mindset — has carried out a ruthless critique of all that exists. The Catholic Church, which used to burn people for petty doctrinal differences (which, if nothing else, demonstrated their vitality), now can't even bring itself to take out the most unrepentant heretics.
What is left after all of this critique is uncertain. The main idea left seems to be that “pleasure is pleasant.”
Despite the increasing hedonism bordering on nihilism, there is a lot of ruin in a nation and the Ancien Regime putters along.
Notes
King Popinjay A popinjay is a vain, conceited person generally more concerned with appearance than reality
Maurepas Government See above Chapter 1.2.I regarding Maurepas’ effective control of the government at this time.
Loménie Brienne Clergyman, future Cardinal and finance minister, on whom more later. Contrary to the implication of this passage, he was not generally regarded as a particularly fervent believer. Upon the suggestion that he might replace Beaumont, who had died, as archbishop of Paris, Louis allegedly objected on the grounds that the Archbishop of Paris should probably believe in God.
Baron Holbach Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d'Holbach was a French-German philosophe(r) best known for his atheism as expressed in The System of Nature and The Universal Morality.
provender animal fodder
Jezebel Symbolically associated with false prophets, King Ahab's wife Jezebel brought the downfall of her dynasty by instituting the worship of Baal and exiling Yahweh's prophets in the Book of Kings.
like some buried Enceladus; who, to gain the smallest freedom, must stir a whole Trinacria with it Ætnas. Enceladus was a giant of Greek mythology that Zeus buried under Mount Aetna in Sicily (anciently known as Trinacria). Carlyle's implication is that to move at all, Enceladus must cause an eruption.
Erebus In Greek mythology, the personification of darkness.