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He visited Catherine the Great of Russia. He
also lived at Geneva for a while, but even there he failed to keep
peace with the magistrates.
Such conflicts with established authority only increased his fame.
Moreover, his three years' exile in England (1726-1729) had been of
untold value, for they had given him a first-hand acquaintance with
English rationalism. He had been brought up to discount religious
"superstition" but the English thinkers provided him with a well-
considered philosophy. Full of enthusiasm for the ideas of his English
friends, he wrote _Letters on the English_--a triumph of deistic
philosophy and sarcastic criticism of church and society.
The opinions which Voltaire henceforth never ceased to expound had long
been held by English rationalists. He combined (1) admiration for
experimental science with (2) an exalted opinion of his own ability to
reason out the "natural laws" which were supposed to lie at the base of
human nature, religion, society, the state, and the universe in
general.


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