Voltaire A History That Never Moved Essay — страница 5

manners, since they are themselves indefinable as historical causes, were used to define movement. Voltaire thus surveyed the canvass, creating travel through space – events merely sufficed to fill that space. But the events never seemed to be commensurate with direction. They just happened for the sake of happiness. Since honour, love, humanity and every virtue under the stars has a place in the Voltairean universe, history likewise assumes a place. Till Voltaire enlivened it, history was cruel. Till he wrote it, history was murderous. When he finished, history was the picture of perfection, a picture of the smiling philosopher himself. “The great and only concern one should have is to live happily”. The smile that never changed, and a history that never moved.

Voltaire’s history was merely a history that happened. Bibliography Aldridge, A. O., Voltaire and the Century of Light (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1975) Besterman, T., Voltaire (London: Longman, 1969). Hibben, J. G., The Philosophy of the Enlightenment (London, Longmans Greene & Co., 1910). Howells, J., Mason, A., Mason, H. T., and Williams, D.(eds), Voltaire and His World: Studies Presented to W. H. Barber (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1985). Lanson, G., Voltaire, trs. Robert A. Wagner (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1966). Noyes, A., Voltaire (London: Faber & Faber, 1938). Outram, D., The Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Sontag, S.(ed), A Barthes Reader (New York: Hill & Wang, 1982). Wade, I., The Intellectual Development

of Voltaire (New Jersey: Princeton University Press 1969).