[121] Bayle, Dictionnaire historique et critique, vi. 239, art. Erasme.
[122] Ibid. ii. 463, art. Artaxata.
[123] Ibid. i. 472, art. Alting (Henri).
[124] Voltaire, Dictionnaire philosophique, art. Guerre (Œuvres complètes, xl. 562).
[125] Ibid. p. 564.
[126] Montesquieu, De l’esprit des lois, x. 2 (Œuvres complètes, p. 256).
[127] Voltaire, loc. cit. p. 565.
[128] Ibid. pp. 466, 564. For Voltaire’s condemnation of war, see Morley, Voltaire, p. 311 sq. I have availed myself of Lord Morley’s translation of some of the passages quoted.
[129] Encyclopédie méthodique, Art militaire, ii. 618 sq.
However vehemently Voltaire and the Encyclopedists condemned war, they did not dream of a time when all wars would cease. Other writers were more optimistic. Already in 1713 Abbé Saint-Pierre—whose abbotship involved only a nominal connection with the Church—had published a project of perpetual peace, which was based on the idea of a general confederation of European nations.[130] This project was much laughed at; Voltaire himself calls its author “un homme moitié philosophe, moitié fou.” But once called into being, the idea of a perpetual peace and of a European confederation did not die. It was successively conceived by Rousseau,[131] Bentham,[132] and Kant.[133] But on the other hand it met with a formidable enemy in the awakening spirit of nationalism.