  Holbach’s metaphysics, then, is mechanistic, in that any correct explanation of an event will refer only to matter, motion, and the laws which describe their combination. Holbach’s ambitious attempt to draw from this sparse metaphysics answers to questions often thought to involve something more than this, his Système de la nature, is badly marred, in some places, by over-simplification and, in others, by dogmatism. Indeed Goethe in his memoirs (Dichtung und Wahrheit vol. 9, 490–492) credits the account of nature in this work with forever turning him away from French philosophy. Nevertheless, Holbach’s metaphysics does form the basis for his engaging religious, ethical, and political views, and it does so by means of an innovative recasting of a traditional account of the properties of matter. 