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The three great divisions of the Comedie Humaine are "Etudes de Moeurs," "Etudes Philosophiques," and "Etudes Analytiques"; and the "Etudes de Moeurs" comprise many subdivisions, each of which, in Balzac's mind, is connected with some special period of life.
The first disturbance of his childish faith, and the coincident reading of the Lettres Philosophiques, had been followed by a period of moral perturbation, during which he suffered from that sense of bewilderment, of inability to classify the phenomena of life, that is one of the keenest trials of inexperience.
Voltaire had just inaugurated the great national tragedy of his country, as he had likewise given it the only national epopee attempted in France since the Chansons de Geste; by one of those equally sudden and imprudent reactions to which he was always subject, it was not long before he himself damaged his own success by the publication of his Lettres philosophiques sur les Anglais.
In the deep silence which surrounded me, in the glowing eyes of my audience, in the murmurs of applause which greeted me, I saw that I was still Voltaire, and that the hangman's hands, which had burned my 'Lettres Philosophiques, had not destroyed my fame or extinguished my genius. While I read, a servant entered upon tiptoe, to rekindle the fire. The Duchess Ventadour sat near the chimney.
He entered upon the really significant period of his activity at an age when most men have already sought repose. That he ever entered upon this last period of his career seems in itself to have depended as much on accident as his fateful residence in England. After the publication of the Lettres Philosophiques, he had done very little to fulfil the promise of that work.
Apart from politics and metaphysics, there were two directions in which the Lettres Philosophiques did pioneer work of a highly important kind: they introduced both Newton and Shakespeare to the French public. The four letters on Newton show Voltaire at his best succinct, lucid, persuasive, and bold. The few paragraphs on Shakespeare, on the other hand, show him at his worst.
Be this as it may, he was certainly in France early in April 1729; a few days later he applied for permission to return to Paris; this was granted on the 9th of April, and the remarkable incident which had begun at the Opera more than three years before came to a close. It was not until five years later that the Lettres Philosophiques appeared.
See also "Fragmens Philosophiques," Preface, second edition, p. XXVII.; "Nouveaux Fragments," pp. 9, 160. M. AD. FRANCK, "De la Certitude," Preface, p. M. A. JAVARI, "De la Certitude," p. 509. AMAND SAINTES, "Histoire de la Vie et des Ouvrages de Spinoza," pp. 208, 210. ABBÉ MARET, "Essai sur le Panthéisme dans les Sociétés Modernes," pp. 6, 11, 31.
The reason for this was that the letters, having been judicially condemned, might have brought their publishers into trouble if they had appeared under their own title. Bengesco, ii. 9. Desnoiresterres, Voltaire a Cirey, 28, Voltaire, xxxvii. 113. The "Lettres philosophiques" may be considered the first of Voltaire's polemic writings.
M. ED. MERCIER, "De la Certitude, dans ses Rapports avec la Science et la Foi," 1844. M. A. VERA, "Problème de la Certitude," 1843. ABBÉ GERBET, "Des Doctrines Philosophiques sur la Certitude, dans leur Rapports avec les Fondemens de la Theologie." ABBÉ DE LAMENNAIS, "Du Fondement de la Certitude," 1826. Vols. II. and III. of the "Essai sur l'Indifference en Matiére de la Religion." 4 vols., 1844.
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