sb. and a. [f. the later name of the French author François Marie Arouet (1694–1778), who from 1718 styled himself de Voltaire.]
A. sb. A follower or adherent of Voltaire in respect of opinions or the manner of expressing them; one whose views on social and religious questions are characterized by a critical and mocking scepticism.
α. 1871. Morley, Condorcet, in Crit. Misc., Ser. I. (1878), 51. He [Condorcet] was a Voltairean in the intensity of his antipathies to the Church.
1885. Athenæum, 2 May, 567/1. His father, a country squire, and, as the fashion then was, a thorough-going Voltairean, had married one of his own serfs.
β. 1875. Gladstone, Glean. (1879), VI. 225. We are now engaged in training a nation to consist of Voltairians and of Clericals.
1883. M. Pattison, Mem. (1885), 212. If it is against the Church it is a fiction of the Voltairians.
B. adj. Of, belonging to, or resembling Voltaire; holding opinions like those of Voltaire, or expressing them in his style.
α. 1879. Morley, Burke, viii. 176. The eager, bustling, shrill-tongued crowd of the Voltairean age.
1885. ‘Mrs. Alexander,’ At Bay, i. A shrewd, worldly, voltairean woman.
β. 1876. L. Stephen, Hours in Library, 189. Walpole must be reckoned as belonging both in his faults and his merits to the Voltairian school of literature.
1896. W. K. Leask, H. Miller, v. 125. There is still the Voltairian type of thinker.
Hence Voltairianism (also -ean-), = VOLTAIRISM.
1832. Athenæum, 1 Dec., 778/3. He [the Abbé Chatel] undertook to prove, that a belief in Christianity was not in the least incompatible with philosophy, even with Voltairianism. Ibid. (1890), 19 July, 92/2. He [Victor du Bled] interprets Voltairianism as ‘a school based on destructive irony, injuring the generous impulses of great and vigorous conceptions, and incapable of raising or fortifying the human mind.’
1846. Examiner, 17 Jan., 2/3. They borrowed from Christianity its spiritualism, from Voltairianism its freedom of examination, and they endeavoured to make a compromise betwixt them.
1848. W. K. Kelly, trans. L. Blanc’s Hist. Ten Y., II. 187. In order not to offend the Voltairianism of several of his friends, he had forborne to base his constitution on religion.
