ife on the brink of the grave;
nevertheless his vitality has probably never been surpassed in the
history of the world. Here, indeed, was the one characteristic which
never deserted him: he was always active with an insatiable activity; it
was always safe to say of him that, whatever else he was, he was not at
rest. His long, gaunt body, frantically gesticulating, his skull-like
face, with its mobile features twisted into an eternal grin, its
piercing eyes sparkling and darting--all this suggested the appearance
of a corpse galvanized into an incredible animation. But in truth it was
no dead ghost that inhabited this strange tenement, but the fierce and
powerful spirit of an intensely living man.

Some signs had already appeared of the form which his activity was now
about to take. During his residence in Prussia he had completed his
historical _Essai sur les Moeurs_, which passed over in rapid review the
whole development of humanity, and closed with a brilliant sketch of the
age of Louis XIV. This work was highly original in many ways. It was the
first history which attempted to describe the march of civilization in
its broadest aspects, which included a consideration of the great
Eastern peoples, which dealt rather with the progress of the arts and
the sciences than with the details of politics and wars. But its chief
importance lay in the fact that it was in reality, under its historical
trappings, a work of propaganda. It was a counterblast to Bossuet's
_Histoire Universelle_. That book had shown the world's history as a
part of the providential order--a grand unfolding of design. Voltaire's
view was very different. To him, as to Montesquieu, natural causes alone
were operative in history; but this was not all; in his eyes there was
one influence which, from the earliest ages, had continually retarded
the progress of humanity, and that influence was religious belief. Thus
his book, though far more brilliant and far more modern than that of
Bossuet, was nevertheless almost equally biased. It was history with a
thesis, and the gibe of Montesquieu was justifiable. 'Voltaire,' he
said, 'writes history to glorify his own convent, like any Benedictine
monk.' Voltaire's 'convent' was the philosophical school in Paris; and
his desire to glorify it was soon to appear in other directions.

The _Essai sur les Moeurs_ is an exceedingly amusing narrative, but it
is a long and learned work filling several volumes, and the fruit