entifully bestowed upon
fanatics and heretics of all sects have enabled the understanding of
men to bear the light of truth, and prepared them for those inquiries
to which every intelligent mind ought to aspire. He has done much more
for the benefit of mankind than those grave philosophers whose books
are read by a few only. The writings of Voltaire are made for all and
read by all." On another occasion he observed to the same visitor, "I
cannot pardon the Emperor Joseph II., who pretended to travel as a
philosopher, for passing Ferney without doing homage to the historian
of the Czar Peter I. From this circumstance I concluded that Joseph
was but a man of inferior mind."[155]

One of the warmest of Smith's Swiss friends was Charles Bonnet, the
celebrated naturalist and metaphysician, who, in writing Hume ten
years after the date of this visit, desires to be remembered "to the
sage of Glascow," adding, "You perceive I speak of Mr. Smith, whom we
shall always recollect with great pleasure."[156] On the day this
letter was written by Bonnet to Hume, another was written to Smith
himself by a young Scotch tutor then in Geneva, Patrick Clason, who
seems to have carried an introduction from Smith to Bonnet, and who
mentions having received many civilities from Bonnet on account of his
being one of Smith's friends. Clason then goes on to tell Smith that
the Syndic Turretin and M. Le Sage also begged to be remembered to
him. The Syndic Turretin was the President of the Republic, and M. Le
Sage was the eminent Professor of Physics, George Louis Le Sage, who
was then greatly interested in Professor Black's recent discoveries
about latent heat and Professor Matthew Stewart's in astronomy, and
was one of a group who gathered round Bonnet for discussions in
speculative philosophy and morals, at which, it may be reasonably
inferred, Smith would have also occasionally assisted. Le Sage seems
to have met Smith first, however, and to have been in the habit of
meeting him often afterwards, at the house of a high and distinguished
French lady, the Duchesse d'Enville, who was living in Geneva under
Tronchin's treatment, and whose son, the young and virtuous Duc de la
Rochefoucauld, who was afterwards stoned to death in the Revolution,
was receiving instruction from Le Sage himself. Le Sage writes the
Duchesse d'Enville on 5th February 1766, "Of all the people I have met
at your house, that is, of all the _elite_ of our good company, I have