But their efforts paid off, and tomes have since been written, by authors from Diderot to Richard Dawkins, about the triumph of secular man.

Denis Diderot, an important enlightenment thinker and editor of the Encyclopédie, did not see the question as quite so simple.

One of his earliest acquaintances there was Denis Diderot, a fellow-provincial who was committed to making the most of that decade’s relatively free intellectual climate.