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(Before this period he had added to his own name that of VOLTAIRE, formed by an anagram from " Arouet. " The de that connected the two appeared afterwards as a mark of nobility, when the name Arouet disappeared. ) After his return, he published his Philosophical Letters, which had be- come well known in England in manuscript form, and were, in fact, first printed in English. There he draws the attention of his countrymen to the empiricism of Locke as opposed to the innate ideas of the Cartesians, to the enlightened deism of Bolingbroke as opposed to Catholicism and Jesuitism, and to the constitution of England as opposed to the absolute mon- archy of France. The Letters were burned by the public exe- cutioner ; but this did not make him shrink from the struggle against limitations and prejudices. prev next |