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Baron Paul Henri Thiry d’Holbach (1723–1789)
Holbach, Paul Heinrich Dietrich, Baron von (G. pron. hol’bäċh; F. pron. ōl-bäk’). A French philosopher and writer; born at Heidelsheim, in the Palatinate, in 1723; died on June 21, 1789. He inherited great wealth from his father, and entertained in his elegant house a number of eminent writers and thinkers of the day, among them Rousseau, Diderot, and Buffon. He was himself a man of no ordinary talent, and held materialistic and atheistic views characteristic of the period preceding the French Revolution, which are expounded in ‘Christianity Unveiled’ (1767); ‘Spirit of the Clergy’ (1767); ‘Sacerdotal Imposture’ (1767); ‘The System of Nature’ (1770); ‘The Social System’ (1773).