Characteristically enough, Voltaire, at the last moment, did his best to reinforce his tentative metaphysical observations on ‘M.  Loke’ by slipping into his book, as it were accidentally, an additional letter, quite disconnected from the rest of the work, containing reflexions upon some of the Pensees of Pascal.  He no doubt hoped that these reflexions, into which he had distilled some of his most insidious venom, might, under cover of the rest, pass unobserved.  But all his subterfuges were useless.  It was in vain that he pulled wires and intrigued with high personages; in vain that he made his way to the aged Minister, Cardinal Fleury, and attempted, by reading him some choice extracts on the Quakers, to obtain permission for the publication of his book.  The old Cardinal could not help smiling, though Voltaire had felt that it would be safer to skip the best parts—­’the poor man!’ he said afterwards, ’he didn’t realise what he had missed’—­but the permission never came.  Voltaire was obliged to have recourse to an illicit publication; and then the authorities acted with full force.  The Lettres Philosophiques were officially condemned; the book was declared to be scandalous and ’contraire a la religion, aux bonnes moeurs, et au respect du aux puissances,’ and it was ordered to be publicly burned by the executioner.  The result was precisely what might have been expected:  the prohibitions and fulminations, so far from putting a stop to the sale of such exciting matter, sent it up by leaps and bounds.  England suddenly became the fashion; the theories of M. Loke and Sir Newton began to be discussed; even the plays of ’ce fou de Shakespeare’ began to be read.  And, at the same time, the whispered message of tolerance, of free inquiry, of enlightened curiosity, was carried over the land.  The success of Voltaire’s work was complete.

He himself, however, had been obliged to seek refuge from the wrath of the government in the remote seclusion of Madame du Chatelet’s country house at Cirey.  In this retirement he pursued his studies of Newton, and a few years later produced an exact and brilliant summary of the work of the great English philosopher.  Once more the authorities intervened, and condemned Voltaire’s book.  The Newtonian system destroyed that of Descartes, and Descartes still spoke in France with the voice of orthodoxy; therefore, of course, the voice of Newton must not be heard.  But, somehow or other, the voice of Newton was heard.  The men of science were converted to the new doctrine; and thus it is not too much to say that the wonderful advances in the study of mathematics which took place in France during the later years of the eighteenth century were the result of the illuminating zeal of Voltaire.