The Spirit of the Laws
The important works of the philosophes belonged to a variety of different genres, such as the tale illustrating a particular philosophical point;("Zadig" (1747) or "Candide" (1759), both by Voltaire in 1759); or satire on French life disguised as letters from an exotic country ("Lettres persanes" by Montesquieu in 1721); or essays ("The Spirit of the Laws" by Montesquieu in 1748, "An Essay on Tolerance" by Voltaire in 1763; "The Social Contract" by Rousseau in 1762; The "Supplement to a voyage of Bougainville" by Diderot, or The "History of the Two Indias" by the Abbé Guillaume-Thomas Raynal).