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BOOK REVIEWS 269 A single general complaint is offered: now and then there are too many concessions to post-mediaeval authors (e.g., to Foresti and Schedel). As a complementary remark, the reviewer feels that, as lociof the philosophers' histories, one should add at least the commentaries to De civitateDei by N. Trevet and T. Waleys, which circulated in the English area since the first half of the fourteenth century. Moreover, the author could have quoted, as further/oc/, the literary ones, putting forward some examples such as the work of John Golonna. Finally, it should be observed that John of Salisbury 's probabilistic trend, which in the Polycraticus"represents a kind of theological framework," (97) can be explicitly found in the Metalogicontoo (prologue and IV, 3x). BARBARA FAES DE MOTTONI Centro di Studio del PensieroAntico, CNR Rome Elisabeth Labrousse. Bayle. Translated by Denys Potts. Past Masters. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. Pp. vi + 97. $1~.95. Though less than a hundred pages in length, this publication is of major importance for the history of philosophy. It is the first general study of Pierre Bayle (1647-17o6) in English in over fifty years (for the rest, the deficiencies of the last one, Robinson's Bayb the Sceptic [1931 ] have been obvious for decades). It is the first substantial publication in English by one of France's finest historians of philosophy and, all knowledgeable persons agree, the greatest Bayle scholar who ever lived. Finally, the book itself is superb--the best possible introduction to Bayle for anyone, layman or potential specialist, that one could imagine. As scholars of Bayle's period are aware, Mme. Labrousse has already written three major works on the Philosopher of Rotterdam: first came the Inventory of his correspondence (],961), in itself a signal achievement; next she published the most complete biography of Bayle ever written (1963), in fact, it is the definitive biography ; finally she wrote a large study of his thought (1964). No one before her has known Bayle so completely, and probably no one will ever_again have the kind of command of all the source material, printed and manuscript, which she does. Mine. Labrousse knows everything first-hand. It cannot be emphasized sufficiently that Bayle, whom we know chiefly for the enormous folios of his Dictionnaire historique et critique (dated x697, but actually appearing , Mme. Labrousse discovered, in the last days of 1696) and the treatise on religious toleration known as the Commentairephilosophique (a686-1687), exerted an influence in France during the next century that has few parallels---one has to look to figures such as Newton or Locke for something comparable. No one suspected he was destined for such celebrity while he was alive. Yet, even then, he was internationally renowned, and today, thanks largely to Mme. Labrousse, we can move closer to his true personality. We see him as a courageous, even heroic figure in the battles he waged throughout his literary life. His voice is still able to intrigue, to worry, and to move us in our time. 270 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY And yet, no matter how rewarding in the end, he is also one of the most difficult authors of this period, in fact he is next to impossible: his vast erudition is of a size and quality extremely difficult to duplicate today. He was often deliberately obscure, so that his daring ideas flicker in and out so ambiguously, we wonder whether they actually existed; in his endlessly long sentences, the ironies of this partisan style li~cut in so many directions we cannot be sure he truly knew where his own bottom line was. Indeed it was a fortunate moment for the Republic of Letters when Mme. Labrousse decided to devote her scholarly life to this baffling enigmatic figure. We may note, too, that only a scholar who had mastered all the issues could have written a book that, like hers, is short. It may be surprising to some that .Mme. Labrousse sees Bayle, first of all, as a Calvinist, or at least someone who was constantly grappling with the theological and moral issues raised by Calvinism, as his own thought evolved. Bayle also dealt...

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