SOURCE: “The Ideas of Cyrano de Bergerac,” in French Free-Thought from Gassendi to Voltaire, The Athlone Press, 1960, pp. 48-66.

In the excerpt which follows, Spink examines the philosophical underpinnings of Cyrano's works.

Savinien de Cyrano, known as Cyrano de Bergerac, was one of the most daring speculative thinkers of his generation. It used to be thought that he was born at Bergerac in the South of France, but he was born in Paris in 1619, Bergerac being, in this case, not the town in the South of France, but a small family property near Paris. He was educated in Paris, possibly at the Collège de Beauvais. If so, he is not likely to have come in contact with many new ideas there, seeing that Grangier (a doughty champion of the University's rights but notorious as a narrow pedant) was at the head of it. The ferocity with which...