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The movement begins in the middle of the thirties, when Montesquieu commences to naturalize Locke's political views in France, and Voltaire does the same service for Locke's theory of knowledge, and Newton's natural philosophy, which had already been commended by Maupertuis. The year 1748, the year also of Hume's Essay, brings Montesquieu's chief work and La Mettrie's Man a Machine.
"Ran to Holland, and there continued blurting more at large, decidedly stupid for most part, thinks Voltaire, 'but with glorious Passages, worth your Majesty's attention; upon which, D'Alembert too helping, poor De Prades was invited to the Readership, vacant by La Mettrie's eagle-pie; and came gladly, and stayed.
And yet and yet ?" Words cannot express the agonizing doubts, the questionings, occasionally the horror of Voltaire: poor sick soul, keeping a Dionysius'-Ear to boot! This blurt of La Mettrie's goes through him like a shot of electricity through an elderly sick Household-Cat; and he speaks of it again and ever again, though we will not farther.
The number of books of a similar strong anti-Catholic tendency that were burnt in these years before the outbreak of the Revolution should be noticed as helping to explain that event. Their titles in most cases may suffice to indicate their nature. De la Mettrie's L'homme Machine was written and burnt in Holland, its author being a doctor, of whom Voltaire said that he was a madman who only wrote when he was drunk. Of a similar kind was the Testament of Jean Meslier, published posthumously in the Evangile de la Raison, and condemned to the flames about 1765. On June 11th, 1763, the Parlement of Paris ordered to be burnt an anonymous poem, called La Religion
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