Dictionnaire philosophique portatif, Le. Voltaire's compact, personal response to the cumbersome Encyclopédie of which he said: ‘Twenty folio volumes will never make a revolution. It is the little portable volumes costing thirty sous that are to be feared. Had the Gospel cost twelve hundred sesterces the Christian religion would never have been established.’ Voltaire was working on his Dictionnaire in that spirit as early as September 1752, and restarted work on it in 1760 following the ban on the Encyclopédie. When it appeared (July 1764), incorporating 73 articles of vastly differing lengths, its kaleidoscopic variety of styles and stances (ranging from the serious of the ironic to the mock-naïve, the comic, or the grotesque) did not even momentarily obscure the fact that this work exemplified the radical, utilitarian spirit of the Enlightenment. It was equally evident (particularly to the authorities who repeatedly banned it) that the Dictionnaire, with its pitiless examination of morals and the religion of the arrogant established Church (which he presents as the source of countless ills), also had an underlying unity of purpose. For it presented a coherent counter-image of Voltaire's ideal society: a laicized place of free thought which is quintessentially tolerant, for tolerance is the key to stability, prosperity, and happiness. Such was the success of the work that, by 1769, it had already had 16 editions (sometimes appearing under the title La Raison par alphabet), and had been expanded to include an extra 45 articles. In 1770 Voltaire started producing an overlapping companion (the Questions sur l'Encyclopédie), which itself went through a dozen editions before his death.
[John Renwick]
