Europe, Philosophy and religion, Philosophy of Religion 

The Story of Civilization 

The Age of Voltaire is the penultimate volume in the monumental Durant series chronicling The Story of Civilization, representing almost fifty years of dedicated research, exacting scholarship and creative and inspiring authorship. It is by far the best known, most popular and most comprehensive history of mankind now available, forming a vast panoramic picture of civilization, from the earliest days to the French Revolution. The nine volumes already published, now available in ten languages, have won the authors international acclaim and have become "basic books" in millions of homes the world over, constituting the foundation of a liberal education. It is not just the clarity, the "wisdom winged with with" of their writing, their brilliant mastery of complex fact, that have won the Durants so great a global readership; it is, above all, their method - for it is the aim of Dr. and Mrs. Durant to present each period of history in total perspective, giving the reader an integrated and unified narrative of all the facets of a given age or culture - including government, economy, religion, morals, manners, literature, art, music, science and philosophy. Their history is not a chronicle of battles, dates, kings and events, though these have their places in it; it is a record of man's great achievements, failures and hopes, in short, the whole vast heritage of countless generations and cultures which we call civilization.

This latest volume, The Age of Voltaire, is, like its predecessors, an independent and self-contained whole. It is the biography of a great man and the great period of history which he embodied, the story of the revolution in thought and spirit that was the forerunner of the French Revolution.

The volume begins with the youth of Voltaire, and describes the French Regency, a period of corruption and debauchery marching hand in hand with polished manners and elegant art. Here is the saga of John Law, the affable Scots banker whose system plunged France into bankruptcy. Here are the incomparable artists of the Regency, brushing to one side the ornate gilding and the sedate phrases of the Sun King's now unfashionable age, to create a new world of simplicity, sensuality and skepticism: Watteau, the painter; Lesage, the satirist; and the young Voltaire himself, brilliant, dangerously satiric, moving from the court to the salons and the theater, and from them to the Bastille.

We follow Voltaire's banishment to England, and study with him the flowering of the Augustan Age. Five chapters describe the civilization of England under the first two Georges, already swiftly changing with the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution, already noted for its prosperity, its laws and its self-absorption. In politics, it is the age of Robert Walpole and the elder Pitt; in religion, the age of Wesley; in philosophy, the age of Hume; in literature, the age of Pope, Richardson, Fielding and Smollett. We examine London in the early part of the eighteenth century, its manners and morals, its laws and punishments; we study the painting of Hogarth and the music of Handel.

Returning to France with Voltaire, the Durants describe the France of Louis XV, the complex relationships between nobility, clergy, bourgeoisie and peasantry, in which lay the seeds of revolution. They provided a brilliant picture of the fabulous court in the reign of Mme. de Pompadour; they put into perspective the writings of Montesquieu, including the Persian Letters and Spirit of Laws; they show us the art of Boucher and the triumph of rococo; the acting of Adrienne Lecouvreur, the works of Marivaux, Crebillon fils and the Abbe Prevost. They describe Voltaire's idyl with Mme. du Chatelet in Cirey, and his departure for Germany in 1750.

With that departure we move east, crossing Germany from the Rhine to Berlin, studying the life and art of the major cities on the way. The Durants explore the career and music of Johann Sebastian Bach, and deliniate the struggle between Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, and Maria Theresa of Austria. They trace the youth, accession and the Machiavellian diplomacy of the Prussian King, and his admiration for and quarrel with Voltaire. In Frederick the Great we see, as Voltaire did, the age-old German conflict between art and war. Leaving Germany, we travel with Voltaire to his sanctuary in Switzerland, and examine the history, the religious conflicts, and the singular independence of that remarkable country.

Three extensive chapters discuss the growth of knowledge in the eighteenth century, the "scholarly revelation" of alien cultures and the expanding quest of science. Here are accounts of the life and works of such men as Euler, Lagrange, Joseph Priestley, Lavoisier, Herschel, Laplace, Linnaeus and Buffon, as well as such quacks as Mesmer. . . .

The culminating chapters relate the "Attack upon Christianity" by the French philosophes: the atheism and communism of the priest Meslier, the materialism of La Mettrie, the Encyclopedie of Diderot, the atheism of d'Holbach, the campaign of Voltaire and his associates to "Ecraser l'Infame," a campaign which reached its triumph in the fall of the Jesuits and the "retreat of religion" in the decades just before the Revolution.

Finally, the Durants have provided a unique and altogether unexpected pleasure for the reader, an "Epilogue in Elysium," recording an imaginary discussion between Pope Benedict XIV and Voltaire, a dialogue on the significance and value of religion, which probes deeply and brilliantly both sides of such a discourse-at-the-summit.

Taken from the inside front flaps.