It is hard for us today to go back to the 18th century and feel and sense the important impact of populations being informed that reason was better than emotion in politics and in wider society. Even harder to realise it was France that produced some of the finest thinkers like Voltaire whose cross-pollination with writers like Swift formed the vanguard of the Age of Reason. We don’t always see people thinking before they act on the world stage but that used to be the lesson they had learned: to trade, to write better treaties, to have a social conscience; even some Muslims got the bug though they were the first to go backwards.
There is very little left of Voltaire anywhere but in France.