first campaign results in carrying the enemy's out-works and
his frontier fortresses, the philosophical army being led by Voltaire.
To combat hereditary prejudice, other prejudices are opposed to it
whose empire is as extensive and whose authority is not less recognized.
Montesquieu looks at France through the eyes of a Persian, and Voltaire,
on his return from England, describes the English, an unknown species.
Confronting dogma and the prevailing system of worship, accounts
are given, either with open or with disguised irony, of the various
Christian sects, the Anglicans, the Quakers, the Presbyterians, the
Socinians, those of ancient or of remote people, the Greeks, Romans,
Egyptians, Muslims, and Guebers, of the worshippers of Brahma, of the
Chinese and of pure idolaters. In relation to established laws and
customs, expositions are made, with evident intentions, of other
constitutions and other social habits, of despotism, of limited
monarchy, of a republic, here the church subject to the state, there the
church free of the state, in this country castes, in another polygamy,
and, from country to country, from century to century, the diversity,
contradiction and antagonism of fundamental customs which, each on its
own ground, are all equally consecrated by tradition, all legitimately
forming the system of public rights. From now on the charm is broken.
Ancient institutions lose their divine prestige; they are simply human
works, the fruits of the place and of the moment, and born out of
convenience and a covenant. Skepticism enters through all the breaches.
With regard to Christianity it at once enters into open hostility, into
a bitter and prolonged polemical warfare; for, under the title of a
state religion this occupies the ground, censuring free thought, burning
writings, exiling, imprisoning or disturbing authors, and everywhere
acting as a natural and official adversary. Moreover, by virtue of being
an ascetic religion, it condemns not only the free and cheerful ways
tolerated by the new philosophy but again the natural tendencies it
sanctions, and the promises of terrestrial felicity with which it
everywhere dazzles the eyes. Thus the heart and the head both agree in
their opposition.--Voltaire, with texts in hand, pursues it from one end
to the other of its history, from the first biblical narration to the
latest papal bulls, with unflagging animosity and energy, as critic,
as historian, as geographer, as logic