It is in the Lettres Philosophiques that Voltaire speaks of China for the first time. In these pages the oriental empire is already “la nation la plus sage et la mieux policée de l'univers.” By 1734 the cult of Chinese things had begun to exercise a decided influence on French art and thought. The movement had developed under two aspects: a material manifestation in the vogue of “chinoiseries” or “magots de la Chine,” and an intellectual manifestation which took the form of a profound admiration for Chinese culture and, more particularly, for Confucian thought. The first of these two aspects had made itself felt from the beginning of the reign of Louis XIV. Russian, Portuguese, and English merchants had brought to Europe a vast quantity of Chinese objets d'art which were greatly admired and extensively copied in the Western countries. Of the second aspect of the movement Leibnitz, in the seventeenth century, was the undoubted progenitor. The German scholar, the most universal mind of his time (to quote the opinion of Voltaire), read the maxims of Confucius, newly translated, and his brilliant imagination was fired by the wealth contained in the literature of the Eastern people. He dreamed of a universal culture in which Orient and Occident should pool their resources to produce a new intellectual universe. As instruments for the creation of this new culture he looked first to the Society of Jesus and then to Peter the Great. The former had already given ample reason for being chosen. Under the impulse of the literature produced by the missionaries of the Society, and particularly that polemic element which dealt with the famous quarrel over the Chinese ceremonies, Europe had begun to acquire extensive knowledge of the great Oriental empire, a knowledge hitherto inaccessible.