The System of Nature or, the Laws of the Moral and Physical World is a 1770 work of philosophy by Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d'Holbach.
Opening page of The System of Nature
Opening page of The System of Nature.
Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d'Holbach, known as d'Holbach, was a Franco-German philosopher, encyclopedist and writer, who was a prominent figure in the French Enlightenment. He was born Paul Heinrich Dietrich in Edesheim, near Landau in the Rhenish Palatinate, but lived and worked mainly in Paris, where he kept a salon. He helped in the dissemination of "Protestant and especially German thought", particularly in the field of the sciences, but was best known for his atheism and for his voluminous writings against religion, the most famous of them being The System of Nature (1770) and The Universal Morality (1776).
Portrait by Alexander Roslin
Insight into the Ludwigstrasse in Edesheim (Rhineland-Palatinate). The birthplace of Paul Henri Thiry d'Holbach was in the house n° 4. Old picture postcard from 1940.
Segment of his baptism certificate
Franz Adam Holbach's, or Adam François d'Holbach's house in Edesheim, Schloss Kupperwolf