A PHILOSOPHICAL DICTIONARY
VOLUME I
By
VOLTAIRE
EDITION DE LA PACIFICATION
THE WORKS OF VOLTAIRE
A CONTEMPORARY VERSION
With Notes by Tobias Smollett, Revised and Modernized
New Translations by William F. Fleming, and an
Introduction by Oliver H.G. Leigh
A CRITIQUE AND BIOGRAPHY
BY
THE RT. HON. JOHN MORLEY
FORTY-THREE VOLUMES
One hundred and sixty-eight designs, comprising reproductions
of rare old engravings, steel plates, photogravures,
and curious fac-similes
VOLUME V
E.R. DuMONT
PARIS—LONDON—NEW YORK—CHICAGO
1901
THE WORKS of VOLTAIRE
"Between two servants of Humanity, who appeared eighteen hundredyears apart, there is a mysterious relation. * * * * Let us say itwith a sentiment of profound respect: JESUS WEPT: VOLTAIRE SMILED.Of that divine tear and of that human smile is composed thesweetness of the present civilization."
VICTOR HUGO.
VOLTAIRE AT THE AGE OF THIRTY—Frontispiece
MAHOMET
LOUIS AND MDLLE. DE LA VALLIÈRE
ANCIENT GREECE
A PHILOSOPHICAL DICTIONARY.
The DICTIONNAIRE PHILOSOPHIQUE is Voltaire's principal essay inphilosophy, though not a sustained work. The miscellaneous articles hecontributed to Diderot's ENCYCLOPÉDIE which compose this Dictionaryembody a mass of scholarly research, criticism, and speculation, lit upwith pungent sallies at the formal and tyrannous ecclesiasticism of theperiod and the bases of belief on which it stood.
These short studies reflect every phase of Voltaire's sparkling genius.Though some of the views enunciated in them are now universally held,and others have become obsolete through extended knowledge, they werestartlingly new when Voltaire, at peril of freedom and reputation,spread them before the people of all civilized nations, who read themstill with their first charm of style and substance.
Oliver H.G. Leigh
VOLTAIRE
A PHILOSOPHICAL DICTIONARY
IN TEN VOLUMES
VOL. I
A, B, C—APPARITION
A.
The letter A has been accounted sacred in almost every nation, becauseit was the first letter. The Egyptians added this to their numberlesssuperstitions; hence it was that the Greeks of Alexandria called ithier'alpha; and,