Our Wretched Species Is So Made

From Voltaire's Dictionnaire philosophique (1764), this observation distills his experience as a reformer who spent decades campaigning against religious persecution, judicial torture, and censorship. Those who challenged established orthodoxies — whether scientific, theological, or political — faced not engagement but hostility: the Church, the Parlement of Paris, and royal censors repeatedly banned, burned, and prosecuted Voltaire's works. The image of stone-throwing is particularly apt: the well-trodden path requires no justification; the new road demands one. Frederick the Great, who sheltered Voltaire at Sanssouci from 1750 to 1753, saw the same dynamic in the resistance of courtiers and clerics to Enlightenment ideas.