CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.
PRELIMINARY.
PAGE
Importance of Voltaire’s name	[1]
Catholicism, Calvinism, and the Renaissance	[1]
Voltairism the Renaissance of the eighteenth century	[4]
His power the result of his sincerity, penetration, andcourage	[6]
Different tempers proper for different eras	[11]
Voltaire’s freedom from intellectual cowardice	[12]
And from worldly indifference to truth and justice	[13]
Reason and humanity only a single word to him	[15]
His position towards the purely literary life	[17]
Enervating regrets that the movement had not a less violent leader	[19]
The share of chance in providing leaders	[20]
Combination of favourable circumstances in Voltaire’scase	[22]
Occasion and necessity of the movement	[24]
Age of Lewis XIV. entirely loyal to its own ideas	[25]
Subsequent discredit of these ideas	[26]
Preparation for abandonment of the old system byDescartes and Bayle	[29]
Voltaire continues the work, not wholly to the disadvantageof the old system	[31]
No ascetic element in the Voltairean revolt	[33]
Why primarily an intellectual movement	[34]
The hostile memory of Christians for it	[37]
Comte’s estimate of it	[37]
The estimate of culture	[40]
Some pleas on the other side	[40]
CHAPTER II.
ENGLISH INFLUENCES.
Significance of the journey to England	[44]
His birth and youthful history	[45]
Ninon de l’Enclos, Chaulieu, and the Regency	[46]
Manner of life from 1716	[49]
Affront from the Chevalier de Rohan	[53]
Leaves France	[54]
Had previously been no more than a vague esprit fort	[56]
Le Pour et le Contre	[57]
Freethinking a reality in England	[58]
Condorcet’s account of the effect of England upon Voltaire	[59]
Social and political consequence of men of letters	[59]
Evil effect of this in France	[60]
Freedom of speech	[61]
Newton’s discoveries	[65]
Their true influence on Voltaire	[67]
Locke	[67]
Profound effect of Lockian common-sense on Voltaire	[70]
Contrast between social condition of England and France	[73]
Voltaire’s imperfect appreciation of the value and workingof a popular government	[76]
Confounds two distinct conceptions of civil liberty	[79]
A confusion shared by most of his countrymen	[79]
The Church of England	[82]
The Quakers	[84]
Voltaire’s diligence in study of English literature	[86]
And in mastering one side of the deistical controversy	[88]
Through the influence of the deists on Voltaire, the genius of Protestantism entered France	[91]
Limited consistency of Voltaire’s philosophy	[93]
English deism contrasted with that of Leibnitz and with the atheism of D’Holbach	[95]
CHAPTER III.
LITERATURE.
Most just way of criticising character	[98]
Some traits in Voltaire	[99]
Acquaintance with the Marquise du Châtelet	[101]
Her character	[103]
Voltaire’s placableness	[105]
His money transactions	[107]
The life at Cirey	[111]
His attempts in physical science	[116]
Literature his true calling	[117]
Qualities of his style	[119]
Significance of literature as a profession	[125]
Voltaire’s dramatic art	[126]
Not deliberately art with a purpose	[126]
His plays a prolongation of the tradition of the great age of Lewis XIV.	[129]
His criticism on Hamlet	[132]
Merits of the French classic drama	[134]
Voltaire compared with Corneille and Racine	[136]
His ideas of dramatic renovation	[140]
His Roman subjects	[141]
His enlargement of dramatic themes	[143]
Failure in comedy	[144]
Arising from want of deep humour	[145]
The Pucelle: offends two modern sentiments	[147]
Its true significance	[148]
Peculiarity of the licence of the eighteenth century	[149]
Sophisms by which it was defended	[149]
Contempt for the middle ages	[152]
The Henriade	[153]
CHAPTER IV.
BERLIN.
Death of Madame du Châtelet	[158]
Voltaire and the court	[158]
He goes to Berlin	[161]
Character of literary activity in Prussia	[161]
The two movements of which Voltaire and the king were chiefs	[162]
Character of Frederick the Great	[166]
Breaking up of the European state-system in 1740	[171]
The first shock in 1733	[172]
Frederick raises international relations into the region ofreal matter	[174]
The situation defined	[175]
Two conceptions of progress	177
From which of them the result of the Seven Years’ Waris seen to be truly progressive	[180]
The Jesuits	[181]
Their repulse after the humiliation of Austria	[182]
Frederick’s probable unconsciousness of the ultimate bearingsof his policy	[184]
His type of monarchy	[186]
He sprang doubly from the critical school	[188]
Other statesmen affected by this school	[188]
Injustice of stamping Voltaire’s influence as merely destructive	[191]
Frederick the Great and France	[193]
Voltaire’s life at Berlin	[194]
Maupertuis	[196]
Collision between him and Voltaire	[198]
The Diatribe of Doctor Akakia	[199]
Voltaire’s departure from Berlin	[201]
The Frankfort episode	[202]
Unfortunate revelations in the Hirschel affair	[206]
Relations between Frederick and Voltaire henceforth	[207]
Voltaire fears to return to Paris	[210]
Geneva	[211]
The critical school not specially insensible to the picturesque	[212]
Voltaire buys Ferney (1758)	[215]
CHAPTER V.
RELIGION.
(1) Conditions of the Voltairean attack.
Two elements underlying Voltaire’s enmity to Christianity	[216]
Failure of Catholicism as a social force	[217]
Utility of Protestantism in softening the transition	[218]
Compared with repression of free debate in France	[219]
Voltaire did not assail modern theosophies	[221]
The good inextricably bound up with the bad in the old system	[224]
Jesuits and Jansenists	[225]
Voltaire declared the latter to be the worst foes	[227]
Morellet’s Manual for Inquisitors	[228]
A reflex of the criminal jurisprudence of the time	[229]
Cases of Rochette, Calas, and Sirven	[229]
Of La Barre	[230]
Fervour of Voltaire’s indignation	[232]
Protests against cynical acquiescence	[233]
Disappointment of the philosophers, and their courage	[235]
The reactionary fanaticism a proof of the truth of Voltaire’sallegations	[237]
Necessity of transforming spiritual basis of thought	[238]
Voltaire’s abstention from the temporal sphere	[239]
His chief defect as leader of the attack	[241]
Crippling his historic imagination	[243]
The just historic calm impossible, until Voltaire hadpressed a previous question	[245]
(2) His method.
His instruments purely literary and dialectical	[248]
Leaves metaphysics of religion, and fastens on allegedrecords	[250]
The other side fell back on the least worthy parts of theirsystem	[251]
Hence the narrow and literal character of Voltaire’sobjections	[252]
His attack essentially the attack of the English deists	[255]
Rationalistic questions in scriptural and ecclesiasticalrecords	[257]
In doctrine	[258]
Argument from comparison with other myths	[259]
His neglect of primitive religions	[260]
His conviction that monotheism is the first religious form	[261]
Difficulties which he thus passed over	[264]
Hume’s view	[266]
Voltaire did not assail the general ideas of Christianity	[267]
Such as the idea of evil inherent in matter	[270]
And the idea of a deity as then conceived	[271]
Hence the acerbity of the debate	[273]
And the want of permanence in Voltaire’s writings comparedwith Bossuet or Pascal	[274]
His criticism on Dante	[275]
(3) His approximation to a solution.
Voltairean deism	[276]
Never accepted by the mass of men	[278]
Nor is it likely to be accepted by them	[279]
Voltaire’s imperfect adherence to the deistical idea	[280]
Reasons for this	[282]
Does not accept belief in the immortality of the soul	[286]
Asserts less than Rousseau, and denies less than Diderot	[287]
A popular movement begun by Bayle’s Dictionary	[288]
Compromising method of Rousseau	[290]
Voltaire’s view of an atheistical society	[291]
His belief in the social sufficiency of an analytic spirit	[292]
Synthesis necessary, but more than one is possible	[293]
CHAPTER VI.
HISTORY.
Extraordinary activity in historical composition in theeighteenth century	[295]
Explanation of it	[296]
Circumstances under which Voltaire thought about the philosophy of history	[297]
The three historical styles	[299]
Voltaire’s histories of two kinds	[301]
Rousseau’s disregard for history	[302]
Voltaire’s acute sense	[303]
His diligence in seeking authentic materials	[305]
Throws persons and personal interests into the second place	[307]
Changed view of the true subject matter of history	[308]
War always an object of Voltaire’s antipathy	[311]
His distrust of diplomacy	[315]
Bossuet’s Discourse on Universal History	[316]
Introduction to the Essay on Manners	[318]
Irrational disparagement of the Jews	[319]
Panegyric on the Emperor Julian	[320]
False view of the history of the church	[322]
Avoids the error of expressing barbarous activity in terms of civilisation	[323]
Real merit of Voltaire’s panorama	[325]
He was not alive to the necessity of scientifically studyingthe conditions of the social union	[326]
CHAPTER VII.
FERNEY.
His life at Ferney	[329]
Madame Denis	[329]
His vast correspondence	[333]
Consulted by Vauvenargues, Chastellux, Turgot, and others	[334]
Complaisance of his letters	[336]
Sophistical defence of the practice of denying authorship	[339]
Voltaire’s just alarm for his own safety	[340]
His Easter communion of 1768	[341]
Further proceedings with the Bishop of Annecy	[342]
Voltaire made temporal father of the Capucins of Gex	[344]
Voltaire’s influence on Rousseau	[345]
Difference between their respective schools	[347]
Their rivalry represents the social dead-lock of the time	[348]
Voltaire the more far-sighted of the two	[350]
Two signal effects of Rousseau’s teaching	[352]
Diderot and the Encyclopædia	[354]
Voltaire’s constant efforts to secure redress for the victimsof wrong	[357]
Calas, Sirven, La Barre	[357]
Count Lally	[358]
Admiral Byng	[359]
His interest in the pretended liberation of Greece	[360]
In the partition of Poland	[361]
In the accession of Turgot to power	[362]
Visit to Paris and death	[363]

τὰ μὲν γὰρ σωφρόνων ἤθη σφόδρα μὲν εὐλαβῆ καὶ δίκαια καὶ σωτήρια, δριμύτητος δὲ καί τινος ἰταμότητος ὀξείας καὶ πρακτικῆς ἐνδεῖται.... τὰ δ’ ἀνδρεῖά γε αὖ πρὸς μὲν τὸ δίκαιον καὶ εὐλαβὲς ἐκείνων ἐπιδεέστερα, τὸ δ’ ἐν ταῖς πράξεσι διαφερόντως ἴσχει. πάντα δὲ καλῶς γίγνεσθαι τὰ περὶ τὰς πόλεις, τούτοιν μὴ παραγενομένοιν ἀμφοῖν, ἀδύνατον.—Politicus, 311 A.

πότερον τοὺς ἀνδρείους θαῤῥαλέους λέγεις, ἢ ἄλλο τι; Καὶ ἴτας γε, ἔφη, ἐφ’ ἃ οἱ πολλοὶ φοβοῦντας ἰέvαι.—Protagoras, 349 E.