Philosophical Letters and Treatise on Tolerance

Introduction

The Philosophical Letters, also called the Letters on the English, record what Voltaire learned in three years of exile in England. In twenty-five letters he presents to French readers England's religious toleration, parliamentary government and commercial spirit, the philosophy of Bacon and Locke, the science of Newton and the drama of Shakespeare, implicitly contrasting them throughout with French absolutism and bigotry. Called 'the first bomb thrown at the Old Regime', the book was ordered burned by the Parlement of Paris as soon as it appeared, and Voltaire had to flee the city. The Treatise on Tolerance was written in 1763 after Jean Calas, a Protestant merchant of Toulouse, was falsely accused of murdering his son to stop him converting to Catholicism and was broken on the wheel; Voltaire fought for three years to clear his name and wrote this plea for religious tolerance and reason. This volume contains these two landmark works of the Enlightenment.