| 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, and courage | 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’s case | 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 by Descartes and Bayle | 29 |
| Voltaire continues the work, not wholly to the disadvantage of 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 working of 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 of real matter | 174 |
| The situation defined | 175 |
| Two conceptions of progress | 177 |
| From which of them the result of the Seven Years’ War is seen to be truly progressive | 180 |
| The Jesuits | 181 |
| Their repulse after the humiliation of Austria | 182 |
| Frederick’s probable unconsciousness of the ultimate bearings of 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’s allegations | 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 had pressed a previous question | 245 |
| (2) His method. |
| His instruments purely literary and dialectical | 248 |
| Leaves metaphysics of religion, and fastens on alleged records | 250 |
| The other side fell back on the least worthy parts of their system | 251 |
| Hence the narrow and literal character of Voltaire’s objections | 252 |
| His attack essentially the attack of the English deists | 255 |
| Rationalistic questions in scriptural and ecclesiastical records | 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 compared with 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 the eighteenth 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 studying the 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 victims of 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 |
