, and of love to the
philanthropist. Its literature too, in two branches, viz. political
inquiry, and, towards the middle of the century, romance, offered subjects
for imitation. Montesquieu studied the former; Rousseau and Diderot the
latter. But England furnished also a series of fearless inquirers on the
subject of religion, whose works became the subject of study and of
translation.(514) Voltaire spent three years of exile in England,(515) at
the time when the ferment existed concerning Woolston's attack on
miracles, and both knew Bolingbroke personally, and translated his
writings.

Having now explained the sources of doubt in France; we must next direct
our attention to the course of its speculations, and to the chief authors.

If we estimate its course by literary works, or by social and political
movements, we may distribute the history of it into two periods; one
comprising the first half of the century, wherein it attacks the French
church and Christianity; the other, the latter half, wherein it mingles
itself with the demand for political change, and assaults the state,(516)
until its effects are seen in the anarchy of the French revolution. In the
former of these periods the unbelief is tentative and suggestive. About
the time of the transition to the second, in the pride of supposed victory
it becomes dogmatic. Christianity is supposed to be exploded. Philosophy
seeks to occupy its place in the social and intellectual world. The early
doubters and Voltaire mark the former of these epochs. Diderot and the
French encyclopaedists, with the ramification of their school at the court
of Frederick II of Prussia, form the point of transition. Rousseau marks
the opening of the second period, when unbelief was attempting to
reconstruct society and remodel education. The selfish philosophy of
Helvetius and his friends then carries on the course of the history of
unbelief, until in the storm of the revolution it shows itself in the
teaching of Volney, and the absurd acts of the theophilanthropists.

The name of Voltaire, which the logical and chronological order introduces
first to our notice, is so preeminent, that his character and teaching may
express the history of the early movement in France.

The story of his life, so far as we require now to be made acquainted with
it, can be briefly told.(517) Born toward the close of the seventeenth
century, he manifested, as a legend assures us, such a doubting spirit,
ev