Essai sur les mœurs et l'esprit des nations (1756). Voltaire's most ambitious historical work, pirated originally as the Abrégé de l'histoire universelle (1753). Constantly sceptical of the evidence available to the historian, increasingly aware of the interplay between commerce, economics, politics, culture, customs, and manners, this was Voltaire's revolutionary approach to the story of mankind and the Enlightenment's surer guide to the ‘meaning of life’ than Bossuet's equally vast but providentialist explanation. Isolating the causes and symptoms of a prosperous, civilized society, Voltaire proposes that—despite much cruelty and obscurantism, and despite the baneful influence of Christianity—mankind does make progress and is, on the whole, responsible for its own destiny. Between 1753 and 1778 this work went through 27 editions.

[John Renwick]

The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French. Copyright © 1995, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.