ABSTRACT
The philosophical enterprise which Bayle started to execute was a twofold enterprise, it comprised two parts, or two tasks which were equally difficult to fulfil, which required the same amount of time to complete, which called for the same care and the same kind of efforts, and which had to be accomplished in succession. The clergy had forged nearly all the ideas then in circulation, and had linked them together so as to form a general theological system; or rather they had reduced the system of people ideas to no more than a system of theology. To break a chain which had taken so much trouble, time, and care to form was certainly a great enterprise. The philosophers of the eighteenth century convinced people in general to accept the right of the individual to practise his own religion and to decide which religion his children should be taught.
