Like most of his distinguished contemporaries he was a Deist.  On his deathbed he received the usual rites of the Church in the presence of his household, and then told the priest that he did not believe a word of all that.  His real views are transparent in some of his works through the conventional disguises in which prudent writers of the time were wont to wrap their assaults on orthodoxy.  To attack Mohammedanism by arguments which are equally applicable to Christianity was a device for propagating rationalism in days when it was dangerous to propagate it openly.  This is what the Abbe did in his Discourse against Mohammedanism.  Again, in his Physical Explanation of an Apparition he remarks:  “To diminish our fanatical proclivities, it would be useful if the Government were to establish an annual prize, to be awarded by the Academy of Sciences, for the best explanation, by natural laws, of the extraordinary effects of imagination, of the prodigies related in Greek and Latin literature, and of the pretended miracles told by Protestants, Schismatics, and Mohammedans.”  The author carefully keeps on the right side of the fence.  No Catholic authorities could take exception to this.  But no intelligent reader could fail to see that all miracles were attacked.  The miracles accepted by the Protestants were also believed in by the Catholics.

He was one of the remarkable figures of his age.  We might almost say that he was a new type—­a nineteenth century humanitarian and pacifist in an eighteenth century environment.  He was a born reformer, and he devoted his life to the construction of schemes for increasing human happiness.  He introduced the word bienfaisance into the currency of the French language, and beneficence was in his eyes the sovran virtue.  There were few departments of public affairs in which he did not point out the deficiencies and devise ingenious plans for improvement.  Most of his numerous writings are projets—­ schemes of reform in government, economics, finance, education, all worked out in detail, and all aiming at the increase of pleasure and the diminution of pain.  The Abbe’s nimble intelligence had a weak side, which must have somewhat compromised his influence.  He was so confident in the reasonableness of his projects that he always believed that if they were fairly considered the ruling powers could not fail to adopt them in their own interests.  It is the nature of a reformer to be sanguine, but the optimism of Saint-Pierre touched naivete.  Thousands might have agreed with his view that the celibacy of the Catholic clergy was an unwholesome institution, but when he drew up a proposal for its abolition and imagined that the Pope, unable to resist his arguments, would immediately adopt it, they might be excused for putting him down as a crank who could hardly be taken seriously.  The form in which he put forward his memorable scheme for the abolition of war exhibits the same sanguine simplicity.  All his plans, Rousseau observed, showed a clear vision of what their effects would be, “but he judged like a child of means to bring them about.”  But his abilities were great, and his actual influence was considerable.  It would have been greater if he had possessed the gift of style.