The Martyrdom of Man (1872) is a secular, "universal" history of the Western world. Structurally, it is divided into four "chapters": the first chapter, "War", discusses the imprisonment of men's bodies, the second, "Religion", that of their minds, the third, "Liberty", is the closest thing to a conventional European political and intellectual history, and the fourth, "Intellect", which discusses the cosmogony characteristic of a "universal history".