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The volume sketches the subject’s life from childhood and education through episodes of imprisonment, exile, foreign sojourns, and domestic retreats, charting the production of major writings and the circumstances of his later years while offering contemporary tributes and character assessments. It pairs the biographical narrative with curated selections of his prose and verse that illustrate recurring concerns: history and politics, war and population, critiques of religious authority and superstition, satire and moral reflection, and brief detached aphorisms. Together the sketches and extracts portray a public career devoted to reason, toleration, and literary engagement.
But how do you think, then, that my religion became established? Like all the rest. A man of strong imagination made himself followed by some persons of weak imagination. The flock increased; fanaticism commences, fraud achieves. A powerful man comes; he sees a crowd, ready bridled and with a bit in its teeth; he mounts and leads it.—Dial, et entr. ph., Dialogue 19.