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The reader must not, however, conclude at once that the following pages are so many red-hot charges into the tottering ranks of mediæval dogmas. My aim has been to illustrate the versatility of Voltaire’s genius, and to exhibit his own sincere creed no less than his most penetrating scourges of what most educated men in his time and ours regard as utterly antiquated delusions. There are pages here that might receive a place of honour in the most orthodox religious journals of England; other pages in which the irony is so subtle and the temper so polite that, without the terrible name, they would puzzle many a clergyman. In the Questions of Zapata, however, and in parts of one or two other essays, I have given specimens of the Voltaire who was likened to Antichrist.

The selection opens with the Treatise on Toleration, which has a mainly historical interest, and illustrates the finest side of Voltaire’s work and character. It shows him as a profound humanitarian, putting aside, in his seventieth year, his laughter and his comfort to take up the cause of an obscure sufferer, and shaking France, as Zola did in our time, with his denunciation of a judicial crime. The story of the crime is told in the essay itself; but it is not told, or in any way conveyed, that, but for the action of the aged rationalist, not a single effort would have been made to secure redress. His splendid action on that and a few similar occasions has been held by critical students of his career to atone for all his errors. Many Protestants who scoff at “Voltaire the scoffer” may learn with surprise that his noble and impassioned struggle earned for them the right to live in Southern France. The treatise was published in 1763. I have omitted a number of lengthy and learned notes and one or two chapters which are incidental to the argument and of little interest to-day.