Voltaires Philosophical Dictionary is a series of short essays, hortatory and propagandist, over an enormously wide range of subjects.
It was deliberately planned as a revolutionary book and was duly denounced on all sides and described as a deplorable monument of the extent to which inteligence and erudition can be abused. The subjects treated include Abraham, Angel and Anthropophages; Baptism, Beauty and Beasts; Fables, Fraud and Fanaticism; Metempsychosis, Miracles and Moses; all of them exposed to Voltaires lucid scrutiny, his elegant irony and his passionate love of reason and justice.