Just published: Complete Works of Voltaire, vol.6C, Lettres sur les Anglais (III): Lettre sur M. Locke.

Letter 13 of Voltaire’s “Lettres sur les Anglais” discusses Locke and the question of the soul. The first version of this text, the “Lettre sur M. Locke” – which we present in this volume – was suppressed in 1733 because of its quasi-materialist implications which put the whole publication at risk, and was duly replaced by the toned-down version that we now know as letter 13. However, Voltaire took up the original “Lettre” again in 1736 and developed the comparison between man and animal, suggesting that there existed an essential link between the organisation of bodies and their cognitive properties. The “Lettre” escaped Voltaire’s control and was circulated in both manuscript and printed form throughout the eighteenth century, and was to play a role in the emergence of materialist thought at the heart of the French Enlightenment.

Voltaire, Lettres sur les Anglais (III), general editor Nicholas Cronk
Lettre sur M. Locke, critical edition by Antony McKenna and Gianluca Mori
Oxford, Voltaire Foundation, 2020, ISBN 978-0-7294-1217-9, hb, xvi+328 pp.

https://www.voltaire.ox.ac.uk/book/lettres-sur-les-anglais-iii