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+ float: left; + margin-right: 1em } + +.align-right { clear: right; + float: right; + margin-left: 1em } + +.align-center { margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto } + +div.shrinkwrap { display: table; } + +/* SECTIONS */ + +body { margin: 5% 10% 5% 10% } + +/* compact list items containing just one p */ +li p.pfirst { margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0 } + +.first { margin-top: 0 !important; + text-indent: 0 !important } +.last { margin-bottom: 0 !important } + +span.dropcap { float: left; margin: 0 0.1em 0 0; line-height: 1 } +img.dropcap { float: left; margin: 0 0.5em 0 0; max-width: 25% } +span.dropspan { font-variant: small-caps } + +.no-page-break { page-break-before: avoid !important } + +/* PAGINATION */ + +@media screen { + .coverpage, .frontispiece, .titlepage, .verso, .dedication, .plainpage + { margin: 10% 0; } + + div.clearpage, div.cleardoublepage + { margin: 10% 0; border: none; border-top: 1px solid gray; } + + .vfill { margin: 5% 10% } +} + +@media print { + div.clearpage { page-break-before: always; padding-top: 10% } + div.cleardoublepage { page-break-before: right; padding-top: 10% } + + .vfill { margin-top: 20% } + h2.title { margin-top: 20% } +} + +</style> +<title>VOLTAIRE: A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE AND WORKS</title> +<meta name="PG.Rights" content="Public Domain" /> +<meta name="PG.Title" content="Voltaire: A Sketch of his Life and Works" /> +<meta name="PG.Producer" content="David Widger" /> +<meta name="DC.Creator" content="J. M. Wheeler" /> +<meta name="DC.Creator" content="G. W. Foote" /> +<meta name="DC.Created" content="1894" /> +<meta name="PG.Id" content="39124" /> +<meta name="PG.Released" content="2012-03-10" /> +<meta name="DC.Language" content="en" /> +<meta name="DC.Title" content="Voltaire: A Sketch of his Life and Works" /> + +<link href="http://purl.org/dc/terms/" rel="schema.DCTERMS" /> +<link href="http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators" rel="schema.MARCREL" /> +<meta content="No title" name="DCTERMS.title" /> +<meta content="volt3.rst" name="DCTERMS.source" /> +<meta content="en" scheme="DCTERMS.RFC4646" name="DCTERMS.language" /> +<meta content="2012-03-12T23:44:29.397100+00:00" scheme="DCTERMS.W3CDTF" name="DCTERMS.modified" /> +<meta content="Project Gutenberg" name="DCTERMS.publisher" /> +<meta content="Public Domain in the USA." name="DCTERMS.rights" /> +<link href="http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/39124" rel="DCTERMS.isFormatOf" /> +<meta content="J. M. Wheeler" name="DCTERMS.creator" /> +<meta content="G. W. Foote" name="DCTERMS.creator" /> +<meta content="2012-03-10" scheme="DCTERMS.W3CDTF" name="DCTERMS.created" /> +<meta content="width=device-width" name="viewport" /> +<meta content="EpubMaker 0.3 by Marcello Perathoner <webmaster@gutenberg.org>" name="generator" /> +<style type="text/css"> +.pageno { position: absolute; right: 95%; font: medium sans-serif; text-indent: 0 } +.pageno:after { color: gray; content: '[' attr(title) ']' } +.lineno { position: absolute; left: 95%; font: medium sans-serif; text-indent: 0 } +.lineno:after { color: gray; content: '[' attr(title) ']' } +.toc-pageref { float: right } +pre { font-family: monospace; font-size: 0.9em; white-space: pre-wrap } +</style> +</head> +<body> +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 39124 ***</div> +<div class="document" id="voltaire-a-sketch-of-his-life-and-works"> +<h1 class="document-title level-1 pfirst title">VOLTAIRE: A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE AND WORKS</h1> +<div class="noindent vspace" style="height: 4em"> +</div> +<p class="noindent pfirst" id="pg-produced-by"><span>Produced by David Widger.</span></p> +<div class="noindent vspace" style="height: 1em"> +</div> +<p class="noindent pfirst"><span></span></p> +</div> +<div class="clearpage"> +</div> +<div class="center line-block noindent outermost"> +<div class="line"><span class="bold x-large">VOLTAIRE: A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE AND WORKS</span></div> +<div class="line"> </div> +<div class="line"><span class="small-caps">WITH SELECTIONS FROM HIS WRITINGS</span></div> +<div class="line"> </div> +<div class="line"><cite class="italics">By</cite></div> +<div class="line"> </div> +<div class="line"><span class="bold x-large">J. M. Wheeler & G. W. Foote.</span></div> +<div class="line"> </div> +<div class="line"> </div> +<div class="line"><span class="italics small">London</span></div> +<div class="line"> </div> +<div class="line"><span class="small-caps">1891</span></div> +</div> +<div class="clearpage"> +</div> +<div class="level-2 section" id="id1"> +<h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title">CONTENTS</h2> +<div class="container contents"> +<ul class="compact simple toc-list"> +<li class="level-2 toc-entry"><p class="first pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#introduction" id="id2">INTRODUCTION</a></p> +</li> +<li class="level-2 toc-entry"><p class="first pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#preface" id="id3">PREFACE</a></p> +</li> +<li class="level-2 toc-entry"><p class="first pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#early-life" id="id4">EARLY LIFE</a></p> +</li> +<li class="level-2 toc-entry"><p class="first pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#hegira-to-england" id="id5">HEGIRA TO ENGLAND</a></p> +</li> +<li class="level-2 toc-entry"><p class="first pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#examples-from-england" id="id6">EXAMPLES FROM ENGLAND</a></p> +</li> +<li class="level-2 toc-entry"><p class="first pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#at-cirey" id="id7">AT CIREY</a></p> +</li> +<li class="level-2 toc-entry"><p class="first pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#candide" id="id8">“CANDIDE”</a></p> +</li> +<li class="level-2 toc-entry"><p class="first pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#the-encyclopaedia" id="id9">THE ENCYCLOPÆDIA</a></p> +</li> +<li class="level-2 toc-entry"><p class="first pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#last-days" id="id10">LAST DAYS</a></p> +</li> +<li class="level-2 toc-entry"><p class="first pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#his-character-and-services" id="id11">HIS CHARACTER AND SERVICES</a></p> +</li> +<li class="level-2 toc-entry"><p class="first pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#tributes-to-voltaire" id="id12">TRIBUTES TO VOLTAIRE</a></p> +</li> +<li class="level-2 toc-entry"><p class="first pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#selections-from-voltaires-works" id="id13">SELECTIONS FROM VOLTAIRE’S WORKS</a></p> +</li> +<li class="level-2 toc-entry"><p class="first pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#history" id="id14">History</a></p> +</li> +<li class="level-2 toc-entry"><p class="first pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#wars" id="id15">Wars</a></p> +</li> +<li class="level-2 toc-entry"><p class="first pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#politics" id="id16">Politics</a></p> +</li> +<li class="level-2 toc-entry"><p class="first pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#the-population-question" id="id17">The Population Question</a></p> +</li> +<li class="level-2 toc-entry"><p class="first pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#natures-way" id="id18">Nature’s Way</a></p> +</li> +<li class="level-2 toc-entry"><p class="first pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#prayer" id="id19">Prayer</a></p> +</li> +<li class="level-2 toc-entry"><p class="first pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#doubt-and-speculation" id="id20">Doubt and Speculation</a></p> +</li> +<li class="level-2 toc-entry"><p class="first pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#dr-pangloss-and-the-dervish" id="id21">Dr. Pangloss and the Dervish</a></p> +</li> +<li class="level-2 toc-entry"><p class="first pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#motives-for-conduct" id="id22">Motives for Conduct</a></p> +</li> +<li class="level-2 toc-entry"><p class="first pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#self-love" id="id23">Self-Love</a></p> +</li> +<li class="level-2 toc-entry"><p class="first pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#go-from-your-village" id="id24">Go From Your Village</a></p> +</li> +<li class="level-2 toc-entry"><p class="first pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#religious-prejudices" id="id25">Religious Prejudices</a></p> +</li> +<li class="level-2 toc-entry"><p class="first pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#sacred-history" id="id26">Sacred History</a></p> +</li> +<li class="level-2 toc-entry"><p class="first pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#dupe-and-rogue" id="id27">Dupe And Rogue</a></p> +</li> +<li class="level-2 toc-entry"><p class="first pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#delenda-est-carthago" id="id28">“Delenda Est Carthago”</a></p> +</li> +<li class="level-2 toc-entry"><p class="first pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#jesus-and-mohammed" id="id29">Jesus and Mohammed</a></p> +</li> +<li class="level-2 toc-entry"><p class="first pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#how-faiths-spread" id="id30">How Faiths Spread</a></p> +</li> +<li class="level-2 toc-entry"><p class="first pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#superstition" id="id31">Superstition</a></p> +</li> +<li class="level-2 toc-entry"><p class="first pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#the-bible" id="id32">The Bible</a></p> +</li> +<li class="level-2 toc-entry"><p class="first pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#transubstantiation" id="id33">Transubstantiation</a></p> +</li> +<li class="level-2 toc-entry"><p class="first pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#dreams-and-ghosts" id="id34">Dreams and Ghosts</a></p> +</li> +<li class="level-2 toc-entry"><p class="first pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#mortifying-the-flesh" id="id35">Mortifying the Flesh</a></p> +</li> +<li class="level-2 toc-entry"><p class="first pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#heaven" id="id36">Heaven</a></p> +</li> +<li class="level-2 toc-entry"><p class="first pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#magic" id="id37">Magic</a></p> +</li> +<li class="level-2 toc-entry"><p class="first pfirst"><a class="reference internal" href="#detached-thoughts" id="id38">DETACHED THOUGHTS</a></p> +</li> +</ul> +</div> +</div> +<div class="clearpage"> +</div> +<div class="level-2 section" id="introduction"> +<h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title"><a class="toc-backref" href="#id2">INTRODUCTION</a></h2> +<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 3.00em">M</span><span class="dropspan">y</span> share in this little book on Voltaire is a very minor one. My old +friend and colleague, Mr. J. M. Wheeler, had written the greater part of +the following pages before he brought the enterprise to my attention. +I went through his copy with him, and assisted him in making some +alterations and additions. I also read the printer’s proofs, and +suggested some further improvements—if I may call them so without +egotism. This is all I have done. The credit for all the rest belongs to +him. My name is placed on the title-page for two reasons. The first is, +that I may now, as on other occasions, be associated with a dear friend +and colleague in this tribute to Voltaire. The second is, that +whatever influence I possess may be used in helping this volume to the +circulation it deserves.</p> +<ol class="upperalpha simple" start="7"> +<li><ol class="first upperalpha" start="23"> +<li><p class="first pfirst">FOOTE.</p> +</li> +</ol> +</li> +</ol> +<p class="pfirst">November, 1891</p> +<div class="clearpage"> +</div> +</div> +<div class="level-2 section" id="preface"> +<h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title"><a class="toc-backref" href="#id3">PREFACE</a></h2> +<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 3.00em">H</span><span class="dropspan">e</span> would be a bold person who should attempt to say something entirely +new on Voltaire. His life has often been written, and many are the +disquisitions on his character and influence. This little book, which at +the bicentenary of his birth I offer as a Freethinker’s tribute to +the memory of the great liberator, has no other pretension than that of +being a compilation seeking to display in brief compass something of the +man’s work and influence. But it has its own point of view. It is as +a Freethinker, a reformer, and an apostle of reason and universal +toleration that I esteem Voltaire, and I have considered him mainly +under this aspect. For the sketch of the salient points of his career +I am indebted to many sources, including Condorcet, Duvernet, +Desnoisterres, Parton, Espinasse, Collins, and Saintsbury, to whom the +reader, desirous of fuller information, is referred. Mr. John Morley’s +able work and Col. Hamley’s sketch may also be recommended.</p> +<p class="pnext">That we are this year celebrating the bicentenary of Voltaire’s birth +should remind us of how far our age has advanced from his, and also of +how much we owe to our predecessors. The spread of democracy and the +advance of science which distinguish our time both owe very-much to +the brilliant iconoclasts of the last century, of whom Voltaire was +the chief. In judging the work of the laughing sage of France we must +remember that in his day the feudal laws still obtained in France, and a +man might be clapped in prison for life without any trial. The poor were +held to be born into the world for the service of the rich, and it was +their duty to be subject to their masters, not only to the good and +gentle, but also to the froward. Justice was as easily bought as jewels. +The Church was omnipotent and freethought a crime. If Voltaire’s +influence is no longer what it was, it is because he has altered that. +We can no longer keenly feel the evils against which he contended. His +work is, however, by no means fully accomplished. While any remnant +of superstition, intolerance, and oppression remains, his unremitting +warfare against <em class="italics">l'infâme</em> should be an inspiration to all who are +fighting for the liberation and progress of humanity.</p> +<p class="pnext">Nov. 1894. J. M. WHEELER.</p> +<div class="clearpage"> +</div> +</div> +<div class="level-2 section" id="early-life"> +<h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title"><a class="toc-backref" href="#id4">EARLY LIFE</a></h2> +<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 3.00em">T</span><span class="dropspan">wo</span> hundred years ago, on November 21st, 1604, a child emerged on the +world at Paris. The baptismal register on the following day gave the +name François Marie Arouet, and the youth afterwards christened himself +Voltaire.(1) The flesh was so weakly that the babe was <em class="italics">ondovc</em> (the +term employed for informal sprinkling with water at home), lest there +might be no time for the ecclesiastical rite.</p> +<blockquote> +<div> +<p class="pfirst">1. He was a younger son. The name Voltaire is, perhaps, an +anagram of the Arouet 1. j. (le jeune) the u being converted +into r, and the j into r. In like manner, an old college- +tutor of his, Père Thoulié, transformed himself, by a +similar anagrammatic process, into the Abbé Olivet— +omitting the unnecessary h from his original name. This +method of reforming a plebeian name into one more +distinguished-looking seems not to have been uncommon in +those times, as Jean Baptiste Pocquelin took the name of +Molière, and Charles Secondât that of Montesquieu.</p> +</div> +</blockquote> +<p class="pfirst">Something may have been wrong with the performance of the sacred +ceremony, since the child certainly grew up to think more of “the world, +the flesh, and the devil” than of the other trinity of Father, Son, +and Holy Ghost. His father was a respectable attorney, and his mother +came of noble family. His godfather and early preceptor was the Abbé +de Chateauneuf, who made no pietist of him, but introduced him to his +friend, the famous Ninon l'Enclos, the antiquated Aspasia who is said to +have inspired a passion in the l’Abbé Gedouin at the age of eighty, +and who was sufficiently struck with young Voltaire to leave him a +legacy of two thousand francs, wherewith to provide himself a library.</p> +<p class="pnext">Voltaire showed when quite a child an unsurpassed facility for +verse-making. He was educated at a Jesuit college, and the followers +of Jesus have ever since reproached him with Jesuitism. Possibly he +did imbibe some of their “policy” in the propaganda of his ideas. +Certainly he saw sufficient of the hypocrisy and immorality of religious +professors to disgust him with the black business, and he said in +after-life that the Jesuits had taught him nothing worth learning.</p> +<p class="pnext">He learnt a certain amount of Latin and a parcel of stupidities. But, +indifferent as this education was, it served to encourage his already +marked literary tendency. Voltaire is said to have told his father when +he left college, at the age of fifteen, “I wish to be a man of +letters, and nothing else.” “That,” M. Arouet is reported to have +replied, “is the profession of a man who wishes to be a burden to +his family and to die of starvation.” He would have no such nonsense. +Francois must study law; and to Paris he went with that intent. For +three years he was supposed to do so, but he bestowed more attention on +the gay society of the Temple, to which his godfather introduced him, +“the most amusing fellow in the world,” and which was presided over +by the Abbé de Chaulieu. The time which he was compelled to spend in +law studies, and at the desk of a <em class="italics">procureur</em>, was by no means lost to +his future fortunes, whether in the pursuit of fame or wealth. During +that hated apprenticeship he doubtless caught up some knowledge of law +and business, which stood him in good stead in after years. He tells us +that his father thought him lost, because he mixed with good society and +wrote verses. For these he got sufficient reputation to be first +exiled to Tulle, then to Sully, and finally thrown into the Bastille +on suspicion of having written lampoons on the government. The current +story tells how the Regent, walking one day in the Palais Royal, met +Voltaire, and accosted him by offering to bet that he would show him +what he had never seen before. “What is that?” asked Voltaire. +“The Bastille.” “Ah, monseigneur! I will take the Bastille as +seen.” On the next morning, in May, 1717, Voltaire was arrested in his +bedroom and lodged in the Bastille.</p> +<p class="pnext">After nearly a year’s imprisonment, during which he gave the finishing +touches to his tragedy of <em class="italics">Œdipus</em>, and sketched the epic <em class="italics">Henriade</em>, +in which he depicts the massacre of Bartholomew, the horrors of +religious bigotry, and the triumph of toleration under Henry IV., he was +released and conducted to the Regent. While Voltaire awaited audience +there was a thunderstorm. “Things could not go on worse,” he said +aloud, “if there was a Regency above.” His conductor, introducing +him to the Regent, said, repeating the remark, “I bring you a young +man whom your Highness has just released from the Bastille, and whom +you should send back again.” The Regent laughed, and promised, if he +behaved well, to provide for him. “I thank your Highness for taking +charge of my board,” returned Voltaire, “but I beseech you not to +trouble yourself any more about my lodging.”</p> +<p class="pnext">In his first play, <em class="italics">Œdipe</em>, appeared the celebrated couplet:</p> +<blockquote> +<div> +<div class="line-block outermost"> +<div class="line"><cite class="italics">“Nos prêtres ne sont pas ce qu’un vain peuple pense!</cite></div> +</div> +<div class="line-block outermost"> +<div class="line"><cite class="italics">Notre crédulité fait toute leur science.” (1)</cite></div> +</div> +<p class="pfirst">1. “Our priests are not what foolish people suppose; all +their science is derived from our credulity.”</p> +</div> +</blockquote> +<p class="pfirst">These lines were afterwards noted by Condorcet as “the first signal of +a war, which not even the death of Voltaire could extinguish.” It was +at this period that he first took the name of Arouet de Voltaire. He +produced two more tragedies, <em class="italics">Artemire</em> and <em class="italics">Mariamne</em>; a comedy, <em class="italics">The +Babbler</em>; and prepared his world-famous <em class="italics">Henriade.</em> A portrait, painted +by Largillière at about this period, has often been engraved. It +exhibits a handsome young gentleman, full of grace and spirit, with a +smiling mouth, animated eyes, intellectual forehead, and a fine hand in +a fine ruffle.</p> +</div> +<div class="level-2 section" id="hegira-to-england"> +<h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title"><a class="toc-backref" href="#id5">HEGIRA TO ENGLAND</a></h2> +<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 3.00em">T</span><span class="dropspan">he</span> story of how Voltaire came to England is worth the telling, as it +illustrates the condition of things in France in the early part of last +century. Voltaire left France for England, which his acquaintance with +Lord Bolingbroke induced him to desire to visit. It was his Hegira, +whence he returned a full-fledged Prophet of the French. He went a poet, +he returned a philosopher. Dining at the Duke of Sully’s table he +presumed to differ from the Chevalier de Rohan—Chabot, a relative of +Cardinal Rohan. The aristocrat asked, “Who is that young fellow who +talks so loudly?” “Monsieur le Chevalier,” replied Voltaire, “it +is a man who does not bear a great name but who knows how to honor the +name he does bear.”(1) It was insufferable that the son of a bourgeois +should thus speak his mind to a Rohan. A few days afterwards, when again +dining with the Duke, he was called out by a false message, and seized +and caned by ruffians until a voice cried “Enough.” That word was a +fresh blow, for the young poet recognised the voice of the Chevalier. He +returned to the Duke and asked him to assist in obtaining redress. His +grace shrugged his shoulders and took no further notice of this insult +to his guest. Voltaire never visited the Duke again, and, it is said, +erased his ancestor’s name from the <em class="italics">Henriade</em>. He was equally +unsuccessful in seeking redress from the Regent. “You are a poet, and +you have had a good thrashing; what can be more natural?” He retired, +to study English and fencing; and reappeared with a challenge to the +Chevalier, who accepted it, but informed his relations. It was against +the law for a commoner to challenge a nobleman. Next morning, instead +of meeting de Rohan, he met officers armed with a <em class="italics">lettre de cachet</em> +consigning him to the Bastille. After nearly a month’s incarceration +he was liberated on condition that he left the country. Having no wish +to spend a second year in prison, he had himself applied for permission +to visit England. Voltaire felt keenly the indignity to which he had +been subjected. In a letter of instruction written from England to his +agent he says: “If my debtors profit by my misfortune and absence to +refuse payment, you must not trouble to bring them to reason: ’tis but +a trifle.” Yet a book has been written on Voltaire’s avarice.</p> +<blockquote> +<div> +<p class="pfirst">1. Some of the accounts say that Voltaire said, “You, my +lord, are the last of your house; I am the first of mine.”</p> +</div> +</blockquote> +<p class="pfirst">Voltaire was conducted to Calais and arrived in England on Whit-Monday, +1726. He landed near Greenwich and witnessed the Fair. All seemed +bright. The park and river were full of animation. Here there was no +Bastille, no fear of the persecution of the great or the spies of the +police. He had excellent introductions. Bolingbroke he had met in +exile at La Source in 1721, and he had learnt to regard the illustrious +Englishman who possessed “all the learning of his country and all the +politeness of ours.” Voltaire, like Pope, may be said to have been, at +any rate for a time, an eager disciple of the exiled English statesman. +Now Voltaire was the exile; Bolingbroke, for a while, the host, at +Dawley, near Uxbridge. But he had other English friends, notably Mr. +(afterwards Sir Everard) Falkener, an English merchant trading in the +Levant, from whose house at Wandsworth most of his letters are dated. +For Sir Everard, Voltaire always retained the warmest feelings of +friendship, and forty years later returned hospitality to his sons.</p> +<p class="pnext">Voltaire spent two years and eight months in England, living during part +of the time in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, and during another part at +Wandsworth. This visit was probably the most important event in his +life. It was here he lit the torch of Freethought with which he fired +the continent. Here he mastered the arguments of the English deists, +Bolingbroke, Toland, Tindal, Shaftesbury, Chubb, Collins, and Woolston, +which he afterwards used with such effect. Here he saw the benefits of +parliamentary government. Here he imbibed the philosophy of Locke and +the science of Newton. Indeed it may be said there is hardly one of +Voltaire’s important works but bears traces of his visit to our +country. Yet of this momentous epoch of his life the records are scanty. +When he grew famous every letter and anecdote was preserved, but in 1727 +Voltaire was but a young man of promise. Carlyle, in the tenth book +of his <em class="italics">Frederick the Great</em>, says: “But mere inanity and darkness +visible reign in all his Biographies over this period of his life, which +was above all others worth investigating.” Messrs. J. C. Collins and +A. Ballantyne have since done much to elucidate this noteworthy period.</p> +<p class="pnext">Pope was one of the persons Voltaire desired to see. He had already +described him as “the most elegant, most correct, and most harmonious +poet they ever had in England.” Pope could only speak French with +difficulty, and Voltaire could not make himself understood. The result +being unsatisfactory, Voltaire did not seek further company until he +had acquired the language. An anecdote in Chetworth’s <em class="italics">History of the +Stage</em> relates that he was in the habit of attending the theatre with +the play in his hand. By this method he obtained more proficiency in +the language in a week than he could otherwise have obtained in a month. +Madame de Genlis had the audacity to assert that Voltaire never knew +English, yet it is certain he could, before he was many months in this +country, both speak and write it with facility. By Nov. 16, 1726, +he wrote to Pope, after that poet's accident while driving near +Bolingbroke’s estate at Dawley. In writing to his friend Thieriot, in +France, he sometimes used English, for the same reason, he said, that +Boileau wrote in Latin—not to be understood by too curious people. +Voltaire is said to have once found his knowledge of English of +practical use. The French were unpopular, and in one of his rambles he +was menaced by a mob. He said: “Brave Englishmen, am I not already +unhappy enough in not having been born among you?” His eloquence had +such success that, according to Longchamp and Wagnière, the people +wished to carry him on their shoulders to his house.</p> +<p class="pnext">While in this country he wrote in English a portion of his tragedy +<em class="italics">Brutus</em>, inspired by and dedicated to Bolingbroke,</p> +<p class="pnext">and two essays, one on the Civil Wars of France, and one on Epic Poetry. +In the introduction to the essays he expresses his conception of his +own position as a man of letters in a foreign country. As these essays, +although popular at the time, are now rare, I transcribe a paragraph or +two from them:</p> +<p class="pnext">“The true aim of a relation is to instruct men, not to gratify their +malice. We should be busied chiefly in giving a faithful account of +all the useful things and extraordinary persons, whom to know, and to +imitate, would be a benefit to our country. A traveller who writes in +that spirit is a merchant of a nobler kind, who imports into his native +country the arts and virtues of other nations.”</p> +<p class="pnext">In his <em class="italics">Essay on Epic Poetry</em> Voltaire shows he had made a study of +Milton, though his criticism can scarcely, be considered an advance upon +that of Addison. He displays constant admiration for Tasso, to whom +he was perhaps attracted by his sufferings at the hands of an ignoble +nobility. He says:</p> +<p class="pnext">“The taste of the English and of the French, though averse to any +machinery grounded upon enchantment, must forgive, nay commend, that of +Armida, since it is the source of so many beauties. Besides, she is a +Mahometan, and the Christian religion allows us to believe that those +infidels are under the immediate influence of the devil.” In this +essay appears the first mention of the story of Newton and the apple +tree.</p> +<p class="pnext">Voltaire closely studied all branches of English literature. He +read Shakespeare, and admired his “genius” while censuring his +“irregularity.” He was the first to introduce him to his countrymen, +though he subsequently sought to lessen what he considered their +exorbitantly high opinion. The works of Dryden, Waller, Prior, Congreve, +Wycherley, Vanbrugh, Rochester and Addison were all devoured, and +he took an especial interest in Butler’s witty <em class="italics">Hudibras</em>. He was +acquainted with the popular sermons of Archbishop Tillotson and the +speculations of Berkeley. He had read the works of Shaftesbury, Tindal, +Chubb, Garth, Mandeville and Woolston.</p> +<p class="pnext">Voltaire became acquainted with most of the celebrities in England. He +visited the witty Congreve, who begged his guest to consider him not as +an author but as a gentleman. Voltaire answered with spirit: “If you +had the misfortune to be merely a gentleman, I should never have come to +see you.” He knew James Thomson of <em class="italics">The Seasons</em>, and “discovered +in him a great genius and a great simplicity.” With didactic Young, +of the <em class="italics">Night Thoughts</em>, who glorified God with his “egoism turned +heavenward,” he formed a friendship which remained unbroken despite +their differences of opinion on religion. He pushed among his English +friends the subscription list for the <em class="italics">Henriade</em>, which proved a great +success—although King George II. was not fond of “boetry”—reaching +three editions in a short period. The money thus obtained formed +the foundation of the fortune which Voltaire accumulated, not by his +writings, but by his ability in finance. At that time, in France, as our +author remarked, “to make the smallest fortune it was better to say +four words to the mistress of a king than to write a hundred volumes.” +His sojourn in England may be said to have secured him both independence +of mind and independence of fortune.</p> +<p class="pnext">What pleased him most in England was liberty of discussion. In the year +in which he came over, Elwall was acquitted on a charge of blasphemy, +the collected works of Toland were published, and also Collins’s +<em class="italics">Scheme of Literal Prophecy</em>, and the First Discourse of Woolston on +Miracles. The success of this last work, which boldly applied wit and +ridicule to the Gospel narrative, struck him with admiration. In the +very month, however, when Voltaire left England (March 1729) Woolston +was tried and sentenced to a year’s imprisonment and a fine of £100. +Voltaire volunteered a third of the sum, but the brave prisoner refused +to give an assurance that he would not offend again, and died in prison +in 1733. Voltaire always spoke of Woolston with the greatest respect.</p> +<p class="pnext">Voltaire retained his esteem for England and the English to the last. +Oliver Goldsmith relates that he was in his company one evening when one +of the party undertook to revile the English language and literature. +Diderot defended them, but not brilliantly. Voltaire listened awhile in +silence, which was, as Goldsmith remarks, surprising, for it was one of +his favorite topics. However, about midnight, “Voltaire appeared at +last roused from his reverie. His whole frame seemed animated. He began +his defence with the utmost elegance mixed with spirit, and now and then +he let fall his finest strokes of raillery upon his antagonist; and his +harangue lasted until three in the morning. I must confess that, whether +from national partiality or from the elegant sensibility of his manner, +I never was more charmed, nor did I ever remember so absolute a victory +as he gained in this dispute.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Voltaire corresponded with English friends to the latest period of his +life. Among his correspondents were Lord and Lady Bolingbroke, Sir E. +Falkener, Swift, Hume, Robertson, Horace Walpole, George Colman and Lord +Chatham. We find him asking Falkener to send him the <em class="italics">London Magazine</em> +for the past three years. To the same friend he wrote from Potsdam in +1752, hoping that his <em class="italics">Vindication of Bolingbroke</em> was translated, as it +would annoy the priests, “whom I have hated, hate, and shall hate till +doomsday.” In the next year, writing from Berlin, he says: “I hope +to come over myself, in order to print my true works, and to be buried +in the land of freedom. I require no subscription, I desire no benefit. +If my works are neatly printed, and cheaply sold, I am satisfied.”</p> +<p class="pnext">To Thieriot he said: “Had I not been obliged to look after my affairs +in France, depend upon it I would have spent the rest of my days in +London.” Long afterwards he wrote to his friend Keate: “Had I not +fixed the seat of my retreat in the free corner of Geneva, I would +certainly live in the free corner of England; I have been for thirty +years the disciple of your ways of thinking.” At the age of seventy +he translated Shakespeare’s <em class="italics">Julius Cœsar</em>. Mr. Collins says: “The +kindness and hospitality which he received he never forgot, and he +took every opportunity of repaying it. To be an Englishman was always +a certain passport to his courteous consideration.” He compared the +English to their own beer, “the froth atop, dregs at bottom, but the +bulk excellent.” When Martin Sherlock visited him at Ferney in 1776, +he found the old man, then in his eighty-third year, still full of his +visit to England. His gardens were laid out in English fashion, his +favorite books were the English classics, the subject to which he +persistently directed conversation was the English nation.</p> +<p class="pnext">The memory of Voltaire has been but scurvily treated in the land he +loved so well. For over a century, calumny and obloquy were poured upon +him. Johnson said of Rousseau: “I would sooner sign a sentence for his +transportation than that of any felon who has gone from the Old Bailey +these many years.” <em class="italics">Boswell</em>: “Sir, do you think him as bad a man +as Voltaire?” <em class="italics">Johnson</em>: “Why, sir, it is difficult to settle the +proportion of iniquity between them.” And this represents an opinion +which long endured among the religious classes. But it is at length +being recognised that, with all his imperfections, which were after all +those of the age in which he lived, he devoted his brilliant genius to +the cause of truth and the progress of humanity. He made his exile in +England an occasion for accumulating those stores of intelligence +with which he so successfully combated the prejudices of the past and +promulgated the principles of freedom, and justified his being ranked +foremost among the liberators of the human mind.</p> +</div> +<div class="level-2 section" id="examples-from-england"> +<h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title"><a class="toc-backref" href="#id6">EXAMPLES FROM ENGLAND</a></h2> +<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 3.00em">S</span><span class="dropspan">everal</span> incidents combined to direct Voltaire’s attention to +clericalism as the enemy of progress and humanity. Soon after his return +to France, the famous actress, Adrienne Lecouvreur, for whom he had a +high esteem, and who had represented the heroines of his plays, +died. The clergy of Paris refused her Christian burial because of her +profession, and her corpse was put in a ditch in a cattle-field on the +banks of the Seine. Voltaire, who regarded the theatre as one of the +most potent instruments of culture and civilisation, at once avenged and +consecrated her memory in a fine ode, burning with the fire of a deep +pathos, in which he takes occasion to contrast the treatment in England +of Mrs. Oldfield, the actress, who was buried in Westminster Abbey. Mr. +Lecky says: “The man who did more than any other to remove the stigma +that rested upon actors was unquestionably Voltaire. There is, indeed, +something singularly noble in the untiring zeal with which he directs +poetry and eloquence, the keenest wit, and the closest reasoning to the +defence of those who had so long been friendless and despised.”</p> +<p class="pnext">When Voltaire published his <em class="italics">Letters on the English Nation</em> the copies +were seized by the Government and the publisher was thrown into the +Bastille. The author would have again tasted the discomforts of that +abode if he had not had timely warning from his friend D’Argental, and +taken refuge in Lorraine, and afterwards on the Rhine, while his book +was torn to pieces and burned in Paris by the public executioner, as +offensive to religion, good morals, and respect for authority. Voltaire +had apparently good reason to apprehend treatment of unusual rigor if he +had obeyed the summons to give himself up into custody, as he took good +care not to do. “I have a mortal aversion to prison,” he wrote to +D’Argental. “I am ill; a confined air would have killed me, and I +should probably have been thrust into a dungeon.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Voltaire’s <em class="italics">Letters on the English</em> reads at the present day as so +mild a production that it is hard to understand its suppression. Yet it +was a true instinct which detected that the work was directed against +the principle of authority. The introduction of English thought was +destined to become an explosive element shattering the feudalism of +Europe. There were, moreover, some hard hits at the state of things +in France. “The English nation,” says Voltaire, “is the only +one which has succeeded in restricting the power of kings by resisting +it.” Again: “How I love the English boldness, how I love men who say +what they think!”</p> +<p class="pnext">Voltaire gives a peculiar reason for the non-appreciation by the English +of Molière’s <em class="italics">Tartuffe</em>, the original of Mawworm if not of Uriah +Heep. He says they are not pleased with the portrayal of characters they +do not know. “One there hardly knows the name of devotee, but they +know well that of honest man. One does not see there imbeciles who put +their souls into others’ hands, nor those petty ambitious men who +establish a despotic sway over women formerly wanton and always weak, +and over men yet more weak and contemptible.” We fancy Voltaire must +have seen society mainly as found among the Freethinkers. Could he give +so favorable a verdict did he visit us now? The same remark applies to +his statement that there was “no privilege of hunting in the grounds +of a citizen, who, at the same time, is not permitted to fire a gun in +his own field.” But this, as well as the more important passage that +“no one is exempted from taxation for being a nobleman or priest,” +was probably intended exclusively for the benefit of his compatriots. +He was, however, not without a little touch of ridicule at the +incongruities he detected in our countrymen. Thus he notes in one of his +letters: “They learn Vanini and translate Lucretius for Monsieur le +Dauphin to get by heart, and then, while they deride the polytheism of +the ancients, they worship the Congregation of the Saints.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Those educated in the current delusion that Voltaire was a mere mocker +will be surprised to find the temperate way in which he speaks of the +Quakers. Here, where there was such excellent opportunity for raillery, +Voltaire shows he had a genuine admiration for their simplicity of life, +the courage of their convictions, their freedom from priestcraft, and +their distaste for warfare. In these <em class="italics">Letters,</em> as in all his writings, +he proves how far he was the embodiment of the new era by his boldly +expressed preference for industrial over military pursuits.</p> +<p class="pnext">In his remarks on the Church of England, Voltaire, however, gives an +unmistakable touch of his quality: “One cannot have public employment +in England or Ireland, without being of the number of faithful +Anglicans. This reason, which is an excellent proof, has converted so +many Nonconformists that not a twentieth part of the nation is out of +the pale of the dominant church.”</p> +<p class="pnext">After alluding to the “holy zeal” of ministers against dissenters, +and of the lower House of Convocation, who “from time to time burnt +impious books, that is, books against themselves,” he says: “When +they learn that, in France, young fellows noted only for debauchery and +raised to the prelacy by female intrigue, openly pursue their amours, +compose love-songs, give every day elaborate delicate suppers, then +go to implore the illumination of the Holy Spirit, boldly calling +themselves the successors of the Apostles—they thank God they are +Protestants. But they are abominable heretics, to be burnt by all the +devils, as Master François Rabelais says; and that is why I do not +meddle with their affairs.”</p> +<p class="pnext">The Presbyterians fare little better, for Voltaire relates that, when +King Charles surrendered to the Scots, they made that unfortunate +monarch undergo four sermons a day. To them it is owing that only +genteel people play cards on Sunday: “the rest of the nation go either +to church, to the tavern, or to see their mistresses.”</p> +<p class="pnext">His admiration for English philosophy was startling to the French mind. +Locke’s Essay became his philosophical gospel. “For thirty years,” +he writes in 1768, “I have been persecuted by a crowd of fanatics +because I said that Locke is the Hercules of Metaphysics, who has fixed +the boundaries of the human mind.”</p> +</div> +<div class="level-2 section" id="at-cirey"> +<h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title"><a class="toc-backref" href="#id7">AT CIREY</a></h2> +<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 3.00em">A</span><span class="dropspan"> common</span> admiration for Locke and Newton cemented his attachment to the +Marquise du Châtelet, a lady distinguished from others of her age by +her love of the sciences. With her Voltaire lived for over fifteen years +at the Chateau of Cirey, in Campagne, “far from the madding crowd’s +ignoble strife,” and, as Voltaire phrased it, “nine miles from a +lemon.” Voltaire was at the outset forty and Madame twenty-seven, +neither handsome nor well-formed, yet pleasing. She united learning +with a zest for pleasure, and with the handsome fortune which Voltaire +brought to the establishment was enabled to satisfy both tastes. Life at +Cirey was varied by jaunts to Paris, Brussels and Sceaux, at which last +place he wrote <em class="italics">Zadig</em>, one of his lightest and most characteristic +burlesque stories.</p> +<p class="pnext">Madame du Chàtelet has been much laughed at; but in the days when +ladies take prizes in mathematics, that should be a thing of the +past. Hard intellectual labor rather than the pursuit of pleasure +characterised life at Cirey, or rather its inmates found their pleasure +in their work. Madame would be translating Newton or studying Leibnitz. +Her mathematical tutor worked at physical science in a gallery which had +been built expressly for him. Voltaire would be aiding each in turn, or, +ever faithful to his first love the drama, occupied with the writing or +production of a tragedy or comedy for the theatre also attached to the +premises. His production was as ever incessant. At the time of his +first settlement there, Pope’s <em class="italics">Essay on Man</em> had been published. It +suggested a <em class="italics">Discourse on Man</em>, in which he sought not to justify the +ways of God to man, but to make man contented with his lot, not vainly +inquiring into the why and wherefore of things. With Madame he wrote +<em class="italics">Elements of the Newtonian Philosophy</em>, a work highly praised by Lord +Brougham, who says: “The power of explaining an abstract subject in +easy and accurate language, language not in any way beneath the dignity +of science, though quite suited to the comprehension of uninformed +persons, is unquestionably shown in a manner which only makes it a +matter of regret that the singularly gifted author did not carry +his torch into all the recesses of natural philosophy.” The French +Government, despite the influence of aristocratic friends, refused to +print a work opposed to the system of Descartes, and the volume had to +be printed in Holland. For Madame, who despised the “old almanack” +histories then current, in place of which Voltaire aimed at producing +something more profitable to the readers, he wrote his <em class="italics">Essay on the +Manners and Spirit of Nations</em>, in which for the first time in modern +literature he applied philosophy to the teaching of history. He +dissipated the dull dreams and deceits of the monks, and fixed attention +on the real condition of things. With Voltaire, the commonest invention +which improves the human lot is of more importance than battles and +sieges. He gives importance to the physical and intellectual improvement +of man. Brougham remarks that Voltaire’s Philosophy of History was +written as a prelude to the Essay on the Spirit of Nations, but the +whole work deserves that title. Buckle classes him with Bolingbroke and +Montesquieu, the fathers of modern history, and all sceptics; and +even now, says Lecky, no historian can read him without profit. +Other contributions to history were the <em class="italics">History of Charles XII.</em>, a +masterpiece of vivid and vigorous narrative, and <em class="italics">The Age of Louis +XIV</em>. It was here he wrote his too famous <em class="italics">Pucelle</em>, which he afterwards +described as “piggery,” as well as some of the most famous of +his plays, including. <em class="italics">Ilzire, Zuline, L'Enfant Prodigue, Mahomet and +Mérope</em>, the best of his tragedies. With that impish spirit in which he +ever delighted, he induced the Pope to accept the dedication of his +play of <em class="italics">Mahomet</em>, and then laughed at his infallible Holiness for being +unable to see that the shafts supposed to be directed at the impostor of +Arabia were really aimed at fanaticism in another quarter.</p> +<p class="pnext">To his first and last love, the French theatre, Voltaire contributed +nearly sixty pieces, the majority of which are tragedies. <em class="italics">Zaire</em> and +<em class="italics">Mérope</em> suffice to show the excellence he obtained in the classic +drama. The first-named was written in three weeks, a wonderful <em class="italics">tour de +force. Olympic</em>—written in old age—occupied but six days, though in +this we must agree with the friend who told the author that he should +not have rested on the seventh day. Voltaire’s plays indeed contain +occasional fine passages, but they have not the rich delineation of +character necessary for works of the first rank. It has been well +remarked that in his dramas, as in history, he sought to portray not +so much individuals as epochs. In <em class="italics">Mahomet</em> his subject is a great +fanaticism; in <em class="italics">Alzire</em>, the conquest of America; in <em class="italics">Brutus</em>, the +formation of the Roman power; in the <em class="italics">Death of Cœsar</em>, the rise of the +empire or the ruin of that power. It is noteworthy that, despite his +excess of comic talent, Voltaire preferred to devote his mind to tragedy +rather than to comedy, in which one might have fancied he would have +excelled. In truth, his desire to support the dignity of the stage stood +in the way of his shining in comedy. Voltaire also at this period wrote +a <em class="italics">Life of Molière</em>, in which he mingled criticism with biography.</p> +<p class="pnext">Madame de Grafigny, who visited at Cirey, says he was so greedy of his +time, so intent upon his work, that it was sometimes necessary to +tear him from his desk for supper. “But when at table, he always has +something to tell, very facetious, very odd, very droll, which would +often not sound well except in his mouth, and which shows him still as +he has painted himself for us—</p> +<blockquote> +<div> +<div class="line-block outermost"> +<div class="line"><cite class="italics">Toujours un pied dans le cercueil,</cite></div> +</div> +<div class="line-block outermost"> +<div class="line"><cite class="italics">De l’autre faisant des gambades.”(1)</cite></div> +</div> +<ol class="arabic simple"> +<li><p class="first pfirst">Ever one foot in the grave,</p> +</li> +</ol> +<p class="pfirst">And gambolling with the other.</p> +</div> +</blockquote> +<p class="pfirst">“To be seated beside him at supper, how delightful!” she adds. +Voltaire at Cirey was out of harm’s way, and could and did devote +himself to his natural bent in literary work. Madame du Châtelet was +sometimes “gey ill to live with.” but she preserved him from many +annoyances and helped him somewhat at Court. Thanks to the Duc de +Richelieu, his patron and debtor, he was appointed historiographer-royal +in 1745, with a salary of two thousand livres attached, and in the +following year was elected one of the Forty of the French Academy.</p> +<p class="pnext">His life with Madame du Châtelet had shown him the possibility of woman +being man’s intellectual companion. With what scorn does he make a +lady, who claims equal rights in the matter of divorce with her husband, +say:</p> +<p class="pnext">“My husband replies that he is my head and my superior, that he is +taller than me by more than an inch, that he is hairy as a bear, and +that, consequently, I owe him everything and that he owes me nothing.” +This was long before woman’s rights were thought of.</p> +<p class="pnext">Voltaire and Frederick the Great.</p> +<p class="pnext">While still at Cirey, Voltaire received many a flattering invitation +from the Prince Royal of Prussia. Their correspondence, in the words +of Carlyle, “sparkles notably with epistolary grace and vivacity,” +though now mainly interesting as an illustration of two memorable +characters and of their century. Voltaire helped him with his +<em class="italics">Anti-Machiavelli</em>, remarking afterwards that had Machiavelli had a +prince for a pupil, the very first thing he would have advised him to do +would have been so to write. Frederick was bent on having the personal +acquaintance and attendance of the renowned poet and philosopher. Much +incense and mutual admiration passed, and at length, when he ascended +the throne, Voltaire paid him several visits. On one occasion it was a +diplomatic one, to cement a union between France and Prussia. Macaulay +sneers at this “childish craving for political distinction,” +and Frederick remarks that he brought no credentials with him. +The correspondence and mutual admiration continued. Carlyle +characteristically says: “Admiration sincere on both sides, most so +on the Prince's, and extravagantly expressed on both sides, most so on +Voltaire’s.” In one of his letters, Frederick says “there can +be in nature but one God and one Voltaire.” If Voltaire was more +extravagant than this, at least the paint was laid on more delicately. +Frederick’s flattery, indeed, was not very carefully done. Thus, in +writing to Voltaire he says: “You are like the white elephant +for which the King of Persia and the Great Mogul make war; and the +possession of which forms one of their titles. If you come here you +will see at the head of mine, ‘Frederick by the Grace of God, King of +Prussia, Elector of Brandenburg, Possessor of Voltaire, &c., &c.’” +But the Marquise du Chàtelet considered that no King should displace +a lady. She loved him; <em class="italics">“jamais pour deux”</em> she says; and perhaps, at +the bottom of her heart, regretted the reputation which must have been +ever a rival. At her death, Frederick renewed his invitation, expressing +himself as now “one of your oldest friends,” and Voltaire, cut loose +from his moorings, submitted to be tempted to the atmosphere of a court +which he had before found little suited to a lover of truth, justice, +and liberty.</p> +<p class="pnext">The first of these visits, in September 1740, is thus satirically +described by Voltaire: “I was conducted into his majesty’s +apartment, in which I found nothing but four bare walls. By the light of +a wax candle I perceived a small truckle bed, two feet and a half wide, +in a closet, upon which lay a little man, wrapped up in a morning gown +of blue cloth. It was his majesty, who lay sweating and shaking, beneath +a beggarly coverlet, in a violent ague fit. I made my bow, and began my +acquaintance by feeling his pulse, as if I had been his first physician. +The fit left him, and he rose, dressed himself, and sat down to +table with Algarotti, Keizerling, Maupertuis, the ambassador to the +states-general, and myself; where, at supper, we treated most profoundly +on the immortality of the soul, natural liberty, and the <em class="italics">Androgynes</em> of +Plato.” Frederick says, in a letter to Jordan, dated September 24th: +“I have at length seen Voltaire, whom I was so anxious to become +acquainted with; but, alas! I saw him when I was under the influence of +my fever, and when my mind and my body were equally languid. Now, with +persons like him, one must not be ill; on the contrary, one must be very +well, and even, if possible, in better health than usual. He has the +eloquence of Cicero, the mildness of Pliny, and the wisdom of Agrippa: +he unites, in a word, all that is desirable of the virtues and talents +of three of the greatest men of antiquity. His intellect is always at +work; and every drop of ink that falls from his pen, is transformed at +once into wit. He declaimed to us <em class="italics">Mahomet</em>, an admirable tragedy he has +composed, which transported us with delight: for myself, I could only +admire in silence.”</p> +<p class="pnext">The intercourse and disruption of the friendship between Voltaire and +Frederick—“the two original men of their century,” as Carlyle calls +them—has been inimitably told by that great writer whose temperament +and training enabled him to do so much justice to the one and so little +to the other. Voltaire must be excused for wishing to lead the King in +the path of reason and enlightened toleration to peace. But the Court of +Potsdam was in truth no place for him, and the Frenchmen not unnaturally +regarded him as a deserter. Macaulay says: “We have no hesitation in +saying that the poorest author of that time in London, sleeping in +a hulk, dining in a cellar with a cravat of paper and a skewer for +a shirt-pin, was a happier man than any of the literary inmates of +Frederick’s Court.” Voltaire’s position was sure to excite +jealousy, and his scathing wit was bound to get him in trouble. He could +touch up the King’s French verses for a consideration, but could not +be kept from laughing at his poetry. “I have here a bundle of the +King’s dirty linen to bleach,” he said once, pointing to the MSS. +sent to him for correction; and the bearers of course conveyed the +sarcasm to his Majesty. On the other side Voltaire heard from Julien +Offray de la Mettrie, author of <em class="italics">Man a Machine</em>, whom Voltaire called +the most frank atheist in Europe, that the King had said: “I still +want Voltaire for another year—one sucks the orange before throwing +away the skin.” That orange-skin stuck in Voltaire’s throat, and +when atheist La Mettrie died 11th November,</p> +<p class="pnext">1751, from eating a pie supposed to be of pheasant but in reality of +eagle and pork, Voltaire observes: “I should have liked to put to La +Mettrie, in the article of death, fresh inquiries about the orange-skin. +That fine soul, on the point of quitting the world, would not have dared +to-lie. There is much reason to suppose that he spoke the truth.” +Voltaire could neither submit to the domination of the Court coterie nor +to that of their master. He offended Frederick, not so much by writing +as by publishing his merciless ridicule of Maupertuis, the President of +the Berlin Academy of Sciences—an institution suggested by Voltaire, +who had indeed recommended Maupertuis as President—in his inimitable +<em class="italics">Diatribe of Doctor Akakia, Physician to the Pope</em>, which Macaulay says, +even at this time of day, it is not easy for any person who has the +least perception of the ridiculous to read without laughing till he +cries. But a public insult to the President of his Academy was an insult +to the King, and the work was publicly burnt and Voltaire placed under +arrest. But the matter blew over, though Voltaire sent back his cross +and key of office, which the King returned. Voltaire wisely tried to rid +himself of the intolerable constraint, and made ill-health the pretext +of flight, going first to Plombières to take the waters. But he could +not resist sending another shot at poor Maupertuis; and the King, +perhaps considering he had forfeited claim to consideration, resolved to +punish him. At Frankfort, nominally a free city but really dominated +by a Prussian resident, he was arrested, together with his niece Madame +Denis, and detained in an inn, even after he had given up his gold key +as chamberlain, his cross and ribbon of the Order of Merit, and his copy +of a privately printed volume of the royal rhymester’s poetry, for +which he was ordered to be arrested. The volume was evidently the most +important article in such mischievous hands, especially as it was said +to contain satires on reigning potentates. Voltaire had left it at +Leipsic, and had to wait, guarded by soldiers, till it arrived, and +also till the King’s permission was accorded him to pass on to France. +Voltaire relieved his rage by composing what he called <em class="italics">Memoirs of the +Life of M. de Voltaire</em>, in which all the king’s faults and +foibles, real and imaginary, as well as his literary pretensions, +were unsparingly ridiculed. Frederick forgave Voltaire for having +been ill-used by him, and some time after took the first step in +reconciliation by sending him back the volume of poems. An amicable +correspondence was renewed, though probably each felt they were better +at a distance. Voltaire, even while he kept in his desk this libellous +<em class="italics">Life</em> which perhaps he never, intended to publish, was generous and +far-sighted enough to seek to make peace between Prussia and France at +a time when Frederick was at the lowest ebb of his fortunes; while +Frederick was great enough to permit the free circulation of the libel +in Berlin. Morley says: “To have really contributed in the humblest +degree, for instance, to a peace between Prussia and her enemies, in +1759, would have been an immeasurably greater performance for mankind +than any given book which Voltaire could have written. And, what is +still better worth observing, Voltaire’s books would not have been the +powers they were but for this constant desire in him to come into the +closest contact with the practical affairs of the world.” “What +sovereign in Europe do you fear the most?” was once asked of +Frederick, who frankly replied “<em class="italics">Le roi Voltaire</em>,” for here he knew +was a potentate whose kingdom had no bounds, and who would transmit his +influence to posterity. Frederick lived to pronounce a panegyric upon +him before the Berlin Academy, in the year of his death. “The renown +of Voltaire,” he predicted, “will grow from age to age, transmitting +his name to immortality.”</p> +</div> +<div class="level-2 section" id="candide"> +<h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title"><a class="toc-backref" href="#id8">“CANDIDE”</a></h2> +<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 3.00em">A</span><span class="dropspan">fter</span> this disastrous termination of court life Voltaire determined to +try complete independence. Permission to establish himself in France +being refused, he purchased an estate near Geneva. His residence here +brought him into correspondence, at first amicable, with the most +famous of her citizens, Jean Jacques Rousseau. There was a natural +incompatibility of temper which speedily led to a quarrel. Both were +sensitive, and Rousseau could not bear even kindly-meant banter. On +Rousseau’s <em class="italics">Social Contract</em> Voltaire said it so convinced him of the +beauty of man in a state of nature that, after reading it, he ran round +me room on all fours. His reply to Rousseau’s rebuke for his pessimist +poem on the earthquake of Lisbon was the immortal <em class="italics">Candide</em>, and +Rousseau’s revenge was to say, slightingly, that he had not read +it. When Rousseau thought fit to include Voltaire in the imaginary +machinations against him, with which he absurdly changed Hume, Voltaire +wrote to D’Alembert: “I have nothing to reproach myself with, save +having thought and spoken too well of him.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Voltaire at first seems to have been captivated by the doctrine of +Pope’s <em class="italics">Essay on Man.</em> He, however, afterwards wrote: “Those who +exclaim that all is well are charlatans. Shaftesbury, who first made +the fable fashionable, was a very unhappy man. I have seen Bolingbroke +a prey to vexation and rage, and Pope, whom he induced to put this sorry +jest into verse, was as much to be pitied as any man I have ever known, +misshapen in body, dissatisfied in mind, always ill, always a burden to +himself, and harassed by a hundred enemies to his very last moment. +Give me, at least, the names of some happy men who will tell me 'All is +well.’” His optimism got injured during his journey through life, +and was completely shattered by the earthquake at Lisbon in 1755. On +this subject he produced a grave poem, notable for its confession of +the difficult reconciling the evil of the world with the Beneficence of +God? The same subject was dealt with in grotesque fashion in <em class="italics">Candide</em>, +one of the wisest as well as one of the wittiest of works. A philosophy +was never more triumphantly reasoned and ridiculed out of court than +is optimism in <em class="italics">Candide</em>. Incident crowds on incident, argument jostles +satire, illustration succeeds raillery, all to show the miseries of +existence disprove this being the best of all possible worlds. At +one moment we are forced to tears at contemplating the atrocities of +inhumanity; the next we are forced to laugh at its absurdities. Prudes +may be shocked at some incidents. Voltaire said he was not born to sing +the praises of saints. He was himself no saint, but rather one of those +sinners who had done the world more good than all its saints. But the +influence of the work is profoundly good. It is purely humanitarian, +War, persecution for religion, slavery, torture, and all forms of +cruelty are made hateful by a recital of their facts; and all this is +done in so charming, even flippant a manner, that we are laughing all +the while we are most profoundly moved. Schopenhauer and Hartmann both +enjoyed life, while Voltaire was an invalid most of his days; but +they never threw into their pessimism the gaiety of <em class="italics">Candide</em>. And his +peculiarity is, that he makes all man’s lower instincts ridiculous as +well as detestable.</p> +<p class="pnext">This character appears in all his work, but, as a fantastic tale, +<em class="italics">Candide</em> stands alone. It brings out Voltaire’s most characteristic +qualities: his keen eye for whimsicalities and weaknesses; his +abhorrence of cruelty and iniquity in high places; his contempt for +shams and absence of all veneration for the majesty of nonsensical +custom. For mordant satire it is surpassed by <em class="italics">Gulliver's Travels</em>. +But it is briefer; the touch is lighter, and instinct not with +morose misanthropy, but hearty philanthropy. The characters are +gross caricatures. Was there ever so preposterous an absurdity as Dr. +Pangloss? And the incidents are improbable. Was ever so luckless a hero +as Candide? What a succession of misfortunes! Candide travels the world +in search of his lost beloved Cunégonde, meeting war, the Inquisition, +torture, shipwreck, piracy, and slavery, with all their attendant +horrors. Even the earthquake of Lisbon is brought in; yet with whimsical +pertinacity, Pangloss clings to his flimsy philosophy.</p> +<p class="pnext">When he re-meets Candide, who had left his tutor as dead, he thus +relates his adventures: “But,” my dear Pangloss, “how happens +it that I see you again?” said Candide. “It is true,” answered +Pangloss, “you saw me hanged; I ought properly to have been burnt; +but, you remember, it rained in torrents when they were going to roast +me. The storm was so violent they despaired of kindling the fire; so I +was hanged, because they could do no better. A surgeon bought my body, +carried it home, and dissected me. He made first a crucial incision from +the navel to the neck. One could not have been more badly hanged than +I. The executioner of the Holy Inquisition was a sub-deacon, and truly +burnt people capitally, but, as for hanging, he was a novice; the cord +was wet, and not slipping properly, the noose did not join—in short, I +still continued to breathe. The crucial incision made me shriek so that +my surgeon fell back, and, imagining it was the devil he was dissecting, +ran away in mortal fear, tumbling downstairs in his fright. His wife, +hearing the noise, flew from the next room, and saw me stretched upon +the table with my crucial incision. Still more terrified than her +husband, she ran down also, and fell upon him. When they had a little +recovered themselves, I heard her say to the surgeon, ‘My dear, how +could you think of dissecting a heretic? Don’t you know that the devil +is always in them? I’ll run directly to a priest, to come and exorcise +the evil spirit.’ I trembled from head to foot at hearing her talk +in this manner, and exerted what little strength I had left to cry out, +‘Have pity on me!’ At length, the Portuguese barber took courage, +sewed up my wound, and his wife even nursed me. I was upon my legs in +about a fortnight. The barber got me a place as lacquey to a Knight of +Malta, who was going to Venice; but finding my master had no money to +pay me my wages, I entered into the service of a Venetian merchant, and +went with him to Constantinople. One day I took the fancy to enter +a mosque, where I saw no one but an old Iman and a very pretty young +female devotee, who was saying her prayers. Her neck was quite bare, +and in her bosom she had a fine nosegay of tulips, roses, anemones, +ranunculuses, hyacinths, and auriculas. She let fall her bouquet. I +ran to take it up, and presented it to her with a bow. I was so long in +replacing it, that the Iman began to be angry, and, perceiving I was +a Christian, he cried out for help. They took me before the Cadi, +who ordered me to receive one hundred bastinadoes, and sent me to the +galleys. We were continually whipt, and received twenty lashes a day, +when the concatenation of sublunary events brought you on board our +galley to ransom us from slavery.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Well, my dear Pangloss,” said Candide to him, “now you have been +hanged, dissected, whipped, and tugging at the oar, do you continue to +think that everything in this world happens for the best?” “I have +always abided by my first opinion,” replied Pangloss; “for, after +all, I am a philosopher; it would not become me to retract. Leibnitz +could not be wrong, and ‘pre-established harmony’ is, besides, the +finest thing in the world, as well as a ‘plenum’ and the ‘materia +subtilis’.”</p> +<p class="pnext">When Cunégonde is at last found, she is no longer beautiful—but +sunburnt, blear-eyed, haggard, withered, and scrofulous. Though ready to +fulfil his promise, her brother, a baron whom Candide has rescued from +slavery, declares that sister of his shall never marry a person of less +rank than a baron. The book is a mass of seeming extravagance, with a +deep vein of gold beneath. All flows so smoothly, the reader fancies +such fantastic nonsense could not only be easily written, but easily +improved. Yet when he notices how every sally and absurdity adds to +the effect, how every lightest touch tells, he sees that only the most +consummate wit and genius could thus deftly dissect a philosophy of the +universe for the amusement of the multitude.</p> +<p class="pnext">Voltaire tried to save England from the judicial murder of Admiral Byng, +who was sacrificed to national pride and political faction in 1757, yet +how lightly he touches the history in a sentence: “Dans ce pays ci +il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les +autres.” The pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war had no +charms for Voltaire. He shows it in its true colors as multitudinous +murder and rapine. Religious intolerance and hypocrisy, court domination +and intrigue, the evils attendant on idlers, soldiers and priests, are +all sketched in lightest outline, and the reader of this fantastic +story finds he has traversed the history of last century, seen it at its +worst, and seen, too, the forces that tended to make it better, and is +ready to exclaim: Would we had another Voltaire now!</p> +<p class="pnext">The philosophy of <em class="italics">Candide</em> is that of Secularism. The world as we find +it abounds in misery and suffering. If any being is responsible for it, +his benevolence can only be vindicated by limiting his power, or his +power credited by limiting his goodness. Our part is simply to make +the best of things and improve this world here and now. “Work, then, +without disputing; it is the only way to render life supportable.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Carlyle did much to impair the influence of Voltaire in England. Yet +what is Carlyle’s essential doctrine but “Do the work nearest +hand,” and what is this but a translation of the conclusion of +<em class="italics">Candide</em>: “Il faut cultiver nôtre jardin”?</p> +<p class="pnext">Those who forget how far more true it is that man is an irrational +animal than that he is a rational one, may wonder how Voltaire, having +in <em class="italics">Candide</em> sapped the foundations of belief in an all-good God by a +portrayal of the evils afflicting mankind, could yet remain a Theist. +The truth seems to be that Voltaire had neither taste nor talents for +metaphysics. In the <em class="italics">Ignorant Philosopher</em> Voltaire seeks to answer +Spinoza, without fully understanding his monistic position. He appears +to have remained a dualist or modern Manichean—an opinion which James +Mill considered was the only Theistic view consistent with the facts. +Writing to D’Alembert on the 15th of August, 1767, Voltaire says: +“Give my compliments to the Devil, for it is he who governs the +world.” It is curious that on the day he was writing these lines, one +Napoleon Bonaparte had just entered upon the world.</p> +<p class="pnext">Voltaire appears to have been satisfied with the design argument as +proving a deity, though he considered speculation as to the nature +of deity useless. He showed the Positivist spirit in his rejection of +metaphysical subtleties. “When,” he writes, “we have well disputed +over spirit and matter, we end ever by no advance. No philosopher has +been able to raise by his own efforts the veil which nature has spread +over the first principles of things.” Again: “I do not know the <em class="italics">quo +modo</em>, true. I prefer to stop short rather than to lose myself.” Also: +“Philosophy consists in stopping where physics fail us. I observe the +effects of nature, but I confess I know no more than you do about first +principles.” But a deist he ever remained.</p> +<p class="pnext">Baron de Gleichen, who visited him in 1757, relates that a young author, +at his wits’ end for the means of living, knocked one day at the +poet’s door, and to recommend himself said: “I am an apprentice +atheist at your service.” Voltaire replied: “I have the honor to be a +master deist; but though our trades are opposed, I will give you some +supper to-night and some work to-morrow. I wish to avail myself of your +arms and not of your head.”</p> +<p class="pnext">He thought both atheism and fanaticism inimical to society; but, said +he, “the atheist, in his error, preserves reason, which cuts his +claws, while those of the fanatic are sharpened in the incessant madness +which afflicts him.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Voltaire seems to have been at bottom agnostic holding on to the narrow +ledge of theism and afraid to drop.</p> +<p class="pnext">He says: “For myself, I am sure of nothing. I believe that there is +an intelligence, a creative power, a God. I express an opinion to-day; +I doubt of it to-morrow; the day after I repudiate it. All honest +philosophers have confessed to me, when they were warmed with wine, that +the great Being has not given to them one particle more evidence than to +me.” He believed in the immortality of the soul, yet expresses himself +dubiously, saying to Madame du Deffand that he knew a man who believed +that when a bee died it ceased to hum. That man was himself.</p> +<p class="pnext">On the appearance, however, in 1770 of the Baron d’Holbach’s +<em class="italics">System of Nature</em>—in which he was very considerably helped by +Diderot—Voltaire took alarm at its openly pronounced atheism. “The +book,” he wrote,</p> +<p class="pnext">“has made all the philosophers execrable in the eyes of the King and +his court. Through this fatal work philosophy is lost for ever in the +eyes of all magistrates and fathers of families.” He accordingly took +in hand to combat its atheism, which he does in the article <em class="italics">Dieu</em> in +the <em class="italics">Philosophical Dictionary</em>, and in his <em class="italics">History of Jenni</em> (Johnny), +a lad supposed to be led on a course of vice by atheism and reclaimed to +virtue by the design argument. Voltaire’s real attitude seems fairly +expressed in his celebrated mot: “S’il n’y avait pas un dieu, +il fraudrait l’inventer”—“If there was not a God it would be +necessary to invent one,” which, Morin remarks, was exactly what had +been done. Morley says: “It was not the truth of the theistic belief +in itself that Voltaire prized, but its supposed utility as an assistant +to the police.”</p> +</div> +<div class="level-2 section" id="the-encyclopaedia"> +<h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title"><a class="toc-backref" href="#id9">THE ENCYCLOPÆDIA</a></h2> +<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 3.00em">V</span><span class="dropspan">oltaire</span> was a great stimulator of the French <em class="italics">Encyclopædia</em>, a work +designed to convey to the many the information of the few. Here again +the inspiration was English. It was the success of the <em class="italics">Cyclopcedia of +Arts and Sciences</em>, edited by the Freethinker Ephraim Chambers, in 1728, +which suggested the yet more famous work carried out by Diderot and +D’Alembert, with the assistance of such men as Helvetius, Buffon, +Turgot, and Condorcet. Voltaire took an ardent interest in the work, and +contributed many important articles. The leading contributors were all +Freethinkers, but they were under the necessity of advancing their ideas +in a tentative way on account of the vigilant censorship. Voltaire +not only wrote for the <em class="italics">Encyclopædia</em>, but gave valuable hints and +suggestions to Diderot and D’Alembert, as well as much sound advice. +He cautioned them, for instance, against patriotic bias. “Why,” he +asks D’Alembert, “do you say that the sciences are more indebted +to France than to any other nation? Is it to the French that we are +indebted for the quadrant, the fire-engine, the theory of light, +inoculation, the seed-sower? <em class="italics">Parbleu!</em> you are jesting! We have +invented only the wheelbarrow.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Voltaire wrote the section on History. The first page contained a +Voltairean definition of sacred history which even an ignorant censor +could hardly be expected to pass. “Sacred History is a series of +operations, divine and miraculous, by which it pleased God formerly to +conduct the Jewish nation, and to-day to exercise our faith.” The +iron hand beneath the velvet glove was too evident for this to pass +the censorship. Vexatious delay and the enforced excision of important +articles attended the progress of the work.</p> +<p class="pnext">It was the attempted suppression of <em class="italics">l'Encyclopcedie</em> which showed +Voltaire that the time had come for battle.</p> +<p class="pnext">In 1757 a new edict was issued, threatening with death any one who +wrote, printed, or sold any work attacking religion or the royal +authority. The same edict assigned the penalty of the galleys to whoever +published writings without legal permit. Within six months advocate +Barbier recorded in his diary some terrible sentences. La Martelière, +verse-writer, for printing clandestinely Voltaire’s <em class="italics">Pucelle</em> and +other “such” works, received nine years in the galleys; eight +printers and binders employed in the same printing office, the pillory +and three years’ banishment. Up to the period of the Revolution +nothing could be legally printed in France, and no book could be +imported, without Government authorisation. Mr. Lecky says, in his +<em class="italics">History of England in the Eighteenth Century</em>: “During the whole of +the reign of Lewis XV. there was scarcely a work of importance which +was not burnt or suppressed, while the greater number of the writers +who were at this time the special, almost the only, glory of France were +imprisoned, banished, or fined.” Voltaire determined to render the +bigots odious and contemptible, and henceforth waged incessant war, +continued to the day of his death. In satire on one of the bigots +he issued his <em class="italics">Narrative of the Sickness, Confession, Death and +Reappearance of the Jesuit Berthier</em>, as rich a burlesque as that which +Swift had written predicting and describing the death of the astrologer +Partridge, in accordance with the prediction. Every sentence is a hit. A +priest of a rival order is hastily summoned to confess the dying Jesuit, +who is condemned to penance in purgatory for 333,333 years, 3 months, 3 +weeks, and 3 days, and then will only be let out if some brother Jesuit +be found humble and good enough to be willing to apply all his merits to +Father Berthier. Even putting his enemy in purgatory, he only condemned +the Jesuit every morning to mix the chocolate of a Jansenist, read aloud +at dinner a Provincial Letter, and employ the rest of the day in mending +the chemises of the nuns of Port Royal.</p> +<p class="pnext">From Ferney he poured forth a wasp-swarm of such writings under all +sorts of pen-names, and dated from London, Amsterdam, Berne, or Geneva. +He had sufficient stimulus in the bigotry, intolerance, and atrocious +iniquities perpetrated in the name of religion.</p> +<p class="pnext">Voltaire, moreover, determined himself to uphold the work of the +<em class="italics">Encyclopædia</em> in more popular form. He put forward first his +<em class="italics">Questions upon the Encyclopædia</em>, in which he deals with some +important articles of that work, with others of his own. This was the +foundation of the most important of all his works, the <em class="italics">Philosophical +Dictionary</em>, which he is said to have projected in the days when he was +with Frederick at Berlin. In this work he showed how a dictionary could +be made the most amusing reading in the world. Under an alphabetical +arrangement, he brought together a vast variety of sparkling essays on +all sorts of subjects connected with literature, science, politics and +religion. Some of his headings were mere stalking-horses, under cover of +which he shot at the enemy. Some are concerned with matters now out +of date; but, on the whole, the work presents a vivid picture of his +versatile genius. An abridged edition, containing articles of abiding +interest, would be a service to Free-thought at the present day.</p> +<p class="pnext">Here is a slight specimen of his style taken from the article on +Fanaticism: “Some one spreads a rumor in the world that there is a +giant in existence 70 feet high. Very soon all the doctors discuss the +questions what color his hair must be, what is the size of his thumb, +what the dimensions of his nails; there is outcry, caballing, fighting; +those who maintain that the giant’s little finger is only an inch and +a half in diameter, bring those to the stake who affirm that the little +finger is a foot thick. ‘But, gentlemen, does your giant exist?’ +says a bystander, modestly.</p> +<p class="pnext">“‘What a horrible doubt!’ cry all the disputants; ‘what blasphemy! +what absurdity!’ Then they all make a little truce to stone the +bystander, and, after having assassinated him in due form, in a manner +the most edifying, they fight among themselves, as before, on the +subject of the little finger and the nails.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“L’Infâme.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Voltaire had other provocations to his attack on the bigots, and as he +greatly concerned himself with these, they must be briefly mentioned. In +1761 a tragedy of mingled judicial bigotry, ignorance, and cruelty was +enacted in Languedoc. On October 13th of that year, Marc Antoine, the +son of Jean Calas, a respectable Protestant merchant in Toulouse, a +young man of dissolute habits, who had lived the life of a scapegrace, +hanged himself in his father’s shop while the family were upstairs. +The priestly party got hold of the case and turned it into a religious +crime. The Huguenot parents were charged with murdering their son to +prevent his turning Catholic. Solemn services were held for the repose +of the soul of Marc Antoine, and his body was borne to the grave with +more than royal pomp, as that of a martyr to the holy cause of religion. +In the church of the White Penitents a hired skeleton was exhibited, +holding in one hand a branch of palm, emblem of martyrdom, and in the +other an inscription, in large letters, “abjuration of heresy.’’ +The populace, who were accustomed yearly to celebrate with rejoicing +the Massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Day, 1572, were excited against the +family. The father, who for sixty years had lived without reproach, was +arrested, with his wife and children. The court before whom the case was +brought, at first was disposed to put the whole family to the torture, +never doubting that the murder would be confessed by one or other of +them. But they ended by only condemning the father to be tortured, in +order to extract a confession of guilt before being broken on the wheel, +after which his body was to be burned and the ashes scattered to the +winds. He was submitted first to the <em class="italics">question ordinaire</em>. In sight of +the rack he was asked to reveal his crime. His answer was that no crime +had been committed. He was stretched on the rack until every limb was +dislocated and the body drawn out several inches beyond. He was then +subjected to the <em class="italics">question extraordinaire</em>. This consisted in pouring +water into his mouth from a horn, while his nose was pinched, till his +body was swollen to twice its size, and the sufferer endured the anguish +of a hundred drownings. He submitted without flinching to all the +excruciating agony. Finally, he was placed upon a tumbril and +carried through the howling mob to the place of execution. “I am +innocent.” he muttered from time to time. At the scaffold he was +exhorted to confess by a priest: “What!” said he, “you, too, +believe a father can kill his own son!” They bound him to a wooden +cross, and the executioner, with an iron bar, broke each of his limbs +in two places, striking eleven blows in all, and then left him for two +hours to die. The executioner mercifully strangled him at last, +before burning the body at the stake. To the last he persisted in his +innocence: he had no confession to make. By his unutterable agony he +saved the lives of his wife and family. Two daughters were thrown into +a convent, and the property was confiscated. The widow and son escaped, +and were provided for by Voltaire.</p> +<p class="pnext">He spared no time, trouble, or money to arrive at the truth, and that +once reached, he was as assiduous in his search for justice. He went +to work with an energy and thoroughness all his own. He interested the +Pompadour herself in the case. By his own efforts he forced justice to +be heard. “The worst of the worthy sort of people,” he said, “is +that they are such cowards. A man groans over his wrong, shuts his lips, +takes his supper, and forgets.” Voltaire was not of that fibre. Wrong +went as a knife to his heart. He suffered with the victim, and might +have justly used the words of Shelley, who compared himself unto +“a nerve, o’er which do creep the else unfelt oppressions of the +world.” Voltaire had to fire others with his own fervor. He issued +pamphlet after pamphlet in which the shameful story was told with +pathetic simplicity. He employed the best lawyers he could find to +vindicate the memory of the murdered man. For three years he left no +stone unturned, until all that was possible was done to right the foul +wrong of those in authority. During this time no smile escaped him of +which he did not reproach himself as a crime. Carlyle speaks of this as +“Voltaire’s noblest outburst, into mere transcendant blaze of pity, +virtuous wrath, and determination to bring rescue and help against the +whole world.”</p> +<p class="pnext">He had his pamphlets on the Calas case, seven in number, translated and +published in England and Germany, where they produced a profound effect. +A subscription for the Calas family was headed by the young Queen of +George III. When at length judgment was given, reversing the sentence, +he wrote to Damilaville: “My dear brother, there is, then, justice +upon the earth! There is, then, such a thing as humanity! Men are not +all wicked rascals, as they say! It is the day of your triumph, my dear +brother; you have served the family better than anyone.”</p> +<p class="pnext">It was while the Calas case was pending that Voltaire composed his noble +<em class="italics">Treatise on Toleration</em>, a work which, besides its great effect in +Europe, caused Catherine II. to promise, if not to grant, universal +religious toleration throughout the vast empire she governed.</p> +<p class="pnext">This Calas case was scarce ended when another, almost as bad an +exhibition of intolerance, occurred. Sirven, a respectable Protestant +land surveyor, had a Catholic housekeeper, who, with the assent of the +Bishop of Castres, spirited away his daughter for the good of her soul, +and placed her in a convent, with a view to her conversion. She returned +to her parents in a state of insanity, her body covered with the marks +of the whip. She never recovered from the cruelties she had endured at +the convent. One day, when her father was absent on his professional +duties, she threw herself into a well, at the bottom of which she was +found drowned. It was obvious to the authorities that the parents had +murdered their child because she wished to become a Roman Catholic. They +most wisely did not appear, and were sentenced to be hanged when they +could be caught. In their flight the married daughter gave premature +birth to a child, and Madame Sirven died in despair.</p> +<p class="pnext">It took Voltaire eight years to get this abominable sentence reversed, +and to turn wrong into right. He was now between seventy and eighty +years of age, yet he threw himself into the cause of the Sirvens with +the zeal and energy which has vindicated Calas; appealing to Paris +and Europe, issuing pamphlets, feeing lawyers, and raising a handsome +subscription for the family.</p> +<p class="pnext">Another case was that of the Chevalier de la Barre. In 1766 a crucifix +was injured—perhaps wantonly, perhaps by accident. The Bishop of Amiens +called for vengeance. Two young officers were accused; one escaped, and +obtained by Voltaire’s request a commission in the Prussian service. +The other, La Barre, was tortured to confess, and then condemned to have +his tongue cut out, his hand cut off, and to be burned alive. Voltaire, +seventy years old, devoted himself with untiring energy to save him. +Failing in that, he wrote one of his little pamphlets, a simple, graphic +<em class="italics">Narrative of the Death of Chevalier de la Barre</em>, which stirred every +humane heart in France. For twelve years this infidel vindicated the +memory of the murdered man and exposed his oppressors. One of the +authorities concerned in this judicial atrocity threatened Voltaire +with vengeance for holding them up to the execration of Europe. Voltaire +replied by a Chinese anecdote. “I forbid you,” said a tyrannical +emperor to the historiographer, “to speak a word more of me.” +The mandarin began to write. “What are you doing now?” asked the +emperor. “I am writing down the order that your majesty has just +given me.” Voltaire had sought to save Admiral Byng. He contended in +a similar case at home. Count Lally had failed to save India from the +English, had been taken prisoner, but allowed to go to Paris to clear +his name from charges made against him. The French people, infuriate +at the loss of their possession, demanded a victim, and Lally, after a +process tainted with every kind of illegality, was condemned to death on +the vague charge of abuse of authority. The murdered man’s son, known +in the Revolution as Lally Tollendal, was joined by Voltaire in the +honorable work of procuring revision of the proceedings, and one of the +last crowning triumphs of Voltaire’s days was the news brought to him +on his dying bed that his long effort had availed.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Ecrasez L'infàme.”</p> +<p class="pnext">These are samples of what was occuring when Voltaire was exhorting +his friends to <em class="italics">crush the infamous</em>—a phrase which gave rise to much +misunderstanding, and which priests have even alleged was applied to +Jesus, their idol. A sufficient disproof, if any were needed, is that +Voltaire treats “l’infàme” as feminine. <em class="italics">Si vous pouvez écraser +l'infâme, ecrasez-la, et aimez-moi.” That oft-repeated phrase was +directed at no person. Nor was it, as some Protestants have alleged, +directed only at Roman Catholicism. As Voltaire saw and said, +“fanatic Papists and fanatic Calvanism are tarred with one brush.” +“L’infàme” was Christian superstition claiming supernatural +authority and enforcing its claim, as it has ever sought to do, by +pains and penalties. He meant by it the whole spirit of exclusiveness, +intolerance, and bigotry, persecuting and privileged orthodoxy, which +he saw-as the outcome of the divine faith. Practically, as D. F. Strauss +justly remarked, “when Voltaire writes to D’Alembert that he wishes +to see the ‘Infâme’ reduced in France to the same condition +in which she finds herself in England, and when Frederick writes to +Voltaire that philosophers flourished amongst the Greeks and Romans, +because their religion had no dogmas—‘*mais les dogmes de notre +infàme gâtent tout</em>’—it is clear we must understand by the +‘Infâme,’ whose destruction was the watchword of the Voltairian +circle, the Christian Church, without distinction of communions, +Catholic or Protestant.”</p> +<p class="pnext">The Catholic Joseph de Maistre shrieks: “With a fury without example, +this insolent blasphemer declared himself the personal enemy of the +Savior of men, dared from the depths of his nothingness to give him a +name of ridicule, and that adorable law which the Man-God brought to +earth he called ‘l’infame.’” This is a judgment worthy of a +bigot, who dares not look into the reason why his creed is detested. Let +us try and understand this insolent blasphemer to-day.</p> +<p class="pnext">Voltaire looked deep into the heart of the atrocities that wrung his +every nerve with anguish. They were not new: only the humanity and +courage that assailed them were new. They were the natural outcome of +what had been Christian teaching. It was not simply that, as a matter +of fact, priests and theologians were the opponents of every kind of +rational progress, but their intolerance was the logical result of their +creed. These atrocities could not have been perpetrated had not priests +and magistrates had behind them a credulous and fanatical populace, +whose minds were suborned from childhood to believing that they had +themselves the one and divine faith, and that all heretics were +enemies of God. He saw that to destroy the intolerance he must sap the +superstition from which it sprang. He saw that the core of the Christian +superstition lay in Bibliolatry, and that while Christians believed they +had an exclusive and infallibly divine revelation, they would deem all +opposition to their own beliefs a sin, meriting punishment. Mr. Morley +says, with truth: “If we find ourselves walking amid a generation of +cruel, unjust, and darkened spirits, we may be assured that it is their +beliefs on what they deem highest that have made them so. There is +no counting with certainty on the justice of men who are capable of +fashioning and worshipping an unjust divinity; nor on their humanity, so +long as they incorporate inhuman motives in their most sacred dogma; nor +on their reasonableness, while they rigorously decline to accept reason +as a test of truth.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Voltaire warred on Christian superstition because he keenly felt its +evils. He saw that intolerance naturally flowed from the exclusive and +dogmatic claims which alone differentiated it from other faiths. Its +inducements to right-doing he found to be essentially ignoble, appealing +either to brutal fear of punishment or base expectation of reward, +and in each case alike mercenary. He saw that terrorism engendered +brutality, that a savage will think nothing of slaughtering hundreds +to appease his angry God. He saw that it had been a fine religion for +priests and monks—those caterpillars of the commonwealth, living on the +fat of the land while pretending to hold the keys of heaven, a race of +parasites on the people, who toil not neither do they spin, and whose +direct interest lay in fostering their dupes ignorance and credulity. +The Christian tree was judged, as its founder said it should be, by its +fruits. Men do not gather grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles. +He saw Christianity as Tacitus described it—“a maleficent +superstition.” It was a upas tree, to be cut down; and hence +he reiterated his terrible <em class="italics">Delenda est Carthago,</em> “Ecrasez +l’Infàme”—“Destroy the monster.”</p> +<p class="pnext">He wrote to D’Alembert from Ferney: “For forty years I have endured +the outrages of bigots and scoundrels. I have found there is nothing to +gain by moderation, and that it is a deception. I must wage war openly +and die nobly, 'on a crowd of bigots slaughtered at my feet.’” His +war was relentless and unremitting. He assailed “l’Infàme” +with every weapon which learning, wit, industry, and indignation could +supply.</p> +<p class="pnext">Frederick wrote to him from the midst of his own wars: “Your zeal +burns against the Jesuits and superstitions. You do well to combat +error, but do you credit that the world will change? The human mind is +weak. Three-fourths of mankind are formed to be the slaves of the +absurdest fanaticism. The fear of the devil and hell is fascinating to +them, and they detest the sage who wishes to enlighten them. I look in +vain among them for the image of God, of which the theologians assure us +they carry the imprint.” Madame du Deffand wrote in a similar strain. +She assured him that every person of sense thought as he did; why then +continue? No remonstrance moved him. He had enlisted for the war, and +might have said with Luther: <em class="italics">Hier stehe ich; ich kann nicht anders</em>.</p> +<p class="pnext">Much nonsense has been written about Voltaire’s employment of ridicule +against religious beliefs. I am reminded of Bishop South’s remark to +a dull brother bishop, who reproved him for sprinkling his sermon with +witticisms. “Now, my lord, do you really mean to say that, if God had +given you any wit, you would not have used it?” Voltaire ridiculed +what he esteemed ridiculous. But there is nothing more galling to +superstitionists than to find that others find food for mirth in their +absurdities.</p> +<p class="pnext">“You mock at sacred things,” said the Jesuits to Pascal when he +exposed their casuistry. Doubtless the priests of Baal said the same +when Elijah asked them whether their God was asleep, or peradventure on +a journey. The artifice of inculcating a solemn and reverential manner +of treating absurdities is the perennial recipe for sanctifying and +perpetuating superstition. “Priests of all persuasions,” says Oliver +Goldsmith, “are enemies to ridicule, because they know it to be a +formidable antagonist to fanaticism, and they preach up gravity to +conceal their own shallowness of imposture.” Approach the mysteries +of the faith with reverence and you concede half the battle. Christian +missionaries do not thus treat the fetishism and sorcery of heathen +lands. To overcome it they must expose its absurdities. Ridicule has +been a weapon in the hands of all the great liberators, Luther, Erasmus, +Rabelais, Bruno, Swift, but none used it more effectively than Voltaire. +Buckle well says; “He used ridicule, not as the test of truth, but as +the scourge of folly.” And he adds: “His irony, his wit, his pungent +and telling sarcasms produce more effect than the gravest arguments +could have done; and there can be no doubt he was fully justified in +using those great resources with which nature had endowed him, since by +their aid he advanced the interests of truth, and relieved men from some +of their most inveterate prejudices.” Victor Hugo puts the case in +poetic fashion when he declares that Voltaire was irony incarnate for +the salvation of mankind. “Ridicule is not argument”! Well, it is a +pointed form of polemic, the <em class="italics">argumentum ad absurdum</em>. “Mustapha,” +said Voltaire, “does not believe, but he believes that he believes.” +To shame him out of hypocrisy, there is nothing better than laughter; +and if a true believer, laughter will best free him from terror of his +bogey devil and no less bogey god. Ridicule can hurt no reality. You +cannot make fun of the multiplication table. The fun begins when the +theologians assert that three times one are one. Shaftesbury, who +maintained that ridicule was a test of truth, remarked with justice, +“’tis the persecuting spirit that has raised the bantering one.” +Ridicule is the natural retort to those who seek not to convert but +to convict and punish. Ridicule comes like a stream of sunlight to +dissipate the fogs of preconceived prejudice. A laugh, if no argument, +is a splendid preparative. Often, in Voltaire, ridicule takes an +argumentative form. Thus, alluding to a Monsieur Esprit’s book on the +Falsity of Human Virtues, he says: “That great genius, Mons. Esprit, +tells us that neither Cato, Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius, nor Epictetus +were good men, and a good reason why, good men are only found among +Christians. Again, among the Christians, Catholics alone are virtuous, +and of the Catholics, the Jesuits, enemies of the Oratorians, must be +excepted. Therefore, there is scarce any virtue on earth, except among +the enemies of the Jesuits.”</p> +<p class="pnext">All his characteristic scorn and ridicule come out when dealing with the +fetish book of his adversaries. The <em class="italics">Philosophical Dictionary</em> is full +of wit upon biblical subjects. I content myself with an excerpt from the +less known <em class="italics">Sermon of Fifty</em>: “If Moses changed the waters into blood, +the sages of Pharoah did the same. He made frogs come upon the land; +this also they were able to do. But when lice were concerned, they were +vanquished; in the matter of lice, the Jews knew more and could do more +than the other nations.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Finally, Adonaï caused every first-born in Egypt to die, in order +that his people might be at their ease. For his people the sea is cloven +in twain; and we must confess it is the least that could be done on this +occasion. All the other marvels are of the same stamp. The Jews wander +in the desert. Some husbands complain of their wives. Immediately water +is found, which makes every woman who has been faithless to her husband +swell and burst. In the desert the Jews have neither bread nor dough, +but quails and manna are rained upon them. Their clothes are preserved +unworn for forty years; as the children grow, their clothes grow with +them. Samson, because he had not undergone the operation of shaving, +defeats a thousand Philistines with the jaw-bone of an ass. He ties +together three hundred foxes, which, as a matter of course, come quite +readily to his hand.</p> +<p class="pnext">“There is scarcely a page in which tales of this sort are not found. +The ghost of Samuel appears, summoned by the voice of a witch. +The shadow of a dial—as if miserable creatures like the Jews had +dials—goes back ten degrees at the prayer of Hezekiah, who, with great +judgment, asks for this sign. God gives him the choice of making the +hour advance or recede, and the learned Hezekiah thinks that it is not +difficult to make the shadow advance, but very difficult to make it +recede. Elijah mounts to heaven in a chariot of fire; children sing in a +hot and raging furnace. I should never stop if I entered into the detail +of all the monstrous extravagances with which this book swarms. Never +was common sense outraged so vehemently and indecently.” Noticing +the comparison in the Song of Solomon, “Her nose is like the tower of +Damascus,” etc., he says: “This, I own, is not in the style of the +Eclogues of the author of the Æneid; but all have not a like style, and +a Jew is not obliged to write like Virgil.”</p> +<p class="pnext">This, it may be objected, is caricature and not criticism. But all that +Voltaire sought was that his blows should tell. He did not expect to be +taken <em class="italics">au pied du lettre</em>. Some of his biblical criticism is faulty, +but it is hard for the reader to recover from the tone of banter +and contempt with which he treats the sacred book. When the idol is +shattered, it is not much use saying its mouth was not quite so big and +ugly as it was represented to be. Priests have never yet been troubled +by dull criticism. They left Tindal and Chubb alone; but when Woolston, +Annet and Paine added liveliness to their infidelity, they loudly called +for the police.</p> +<p class="pnext">Leslie Stephen well says: “Men have venerated this or that grotesque +monstrosity because they have always approached it with half-shut eyes +and grovelling on their faces in the dust: a single hearty laugh will +encourage them to stand erect and to learn the latest of lessons—that +of seeing what lies before them. And if your holy religion does really +depend upon preserving the credit of Jonah’s whale, upon justifying +all the atrocities of the Jews, and believing that a census was punished +by a plague, ridicule is not only an effective but an appropriate mode +of argument.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Voltaire is often sneered at as a mere destructive. The charge is +not true, and, even if it were, he would none the less deserve the +admiration of posterity for his destructive work. It is as necessary for +the gardener to clear away the rubbish and keep down the weeds as to sow +and water. Mr. Morley justly observes: “He had imagination enough and +intelligence enough to perceive that they are the most pestilent of all +the enemies of mankind, the sombre hierarchs of misology, who take away +the keys of knowledge, thrusting truth down to the second place, and +discrowning sovereign reason to be the serving drudge of superstition or +social usuage.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Voltaire was the arch iconoclast of his age, a mere destructive, if you +will. Buckie truly remarks: “All great reforms have consisted, not +in making something new, but in unmaking something old.” W. J. Fox +eloquently said: “The destruction of tyranny is political freedom. The +destruction of bigotry is spiritual and mental emancipation. Positive +and negative are mere forms. Creation and destruction, as we call +them, are just one and the same work, the work which man has to do—the +extraction of good from evil.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Much has been made of the pseudonymous character of his attacks on +Christianity, and of the subterfuges and fibs with which he sought to +evade responsibility. One might as well complain of ironclads wearing +armor in warfare.</p> +<p class="pnext">It was the necessity of his position. He wanted to do his work, not to +become a martyr, leaving it to unknown hands. It should be remembered +that Voltaire had sometimes to bribe publishers to bring out his +writings; and, in such circumstances, the pseudonymity is surely open to +no suspicion of baseness. His poem on <em class="italics">Natural Religion</em> was condemned +to the flames by the decree of the Parliament of Paris, 23rd January, +1759. His <em class="italics">Important Examination of the Scriptures</em>, which he falsely +attributed to Lord Bolingbroke, was condemned with five other of his +pieces by a decree of the Court of Rome, 29th November, 1771. Could +the author have been caught, he would have had a good chance, if not +of sharing the fate of his book, at least of permanent lodgment in +the Bastille, of which he had already sufficient taste. He knew that +although Bolingbroke had no hand in its composition he largely shared +its ideas, and he obtained at once publicity and security by attributing +it to the dead friend who, Morley says, “was the direct progenitor of +Voltaire’s opinions in religion.” If he stuck at no subterfuge to +achieve his work, his lies injured no one. One of the funniest was +the signing one of his heterodox publications as the Archbishop of +Canterbury, a lie which may remind us of the drunken Sheridan announcing +himself as William Wilberforce. Voltaire had been Bastilled twice, and +verily believed that another taste would end his days. “I am,” +he said, “a friend of truth, but no friend at all to martyrdom.” +Shelter behind any ambush was necessary in such guerilla warfare as +his. Over fifty of his works were condemned, and placed upon the Index. +Voltaire used no fewer than one hundred and thirty different pen-names, +which have enabled bibliographers to display their erudition.(1) But for +this underground method, he might have been laid by the heels instead of +living to old age, with the satisfaction of seeing the world becoming a +little more humane and tolerant through his efforts. In such warfare the +only test is success, and the fact remains that Voltaire’s blows told. +He cleared the course for modern science, and it is not for those who +benefit by his labors to sneer because he did not become a martyr in the +struggle.</p> +<blockquote> +<div> +<p class="pfirst">1. Special mention should be made of the <em class="italics">Bibliographie +Voltairienne</em> of M. L. Querard, and <em class="italics">Voltaire: Bibliographie +de ses Œuvres</em>, in four volumes, by M. G. Bengesco, 1882- +1890.</p> +</div> +</blockquote> +<p class="pfirst">Condorcet says: “His zeal against a religion which he regarded as the +cause of the fanaticism which has desolated Europe since its birth, +of the superstition which had burst about it, and as the source of the +mischief which the enemies of human nature still continued to do, seemed +to double his activity and his forces. ‘I am tired,’ he said one +day, ‘of hearing it repeated that twelve men were enough to establish +Christianity. I want to show them that one will be enough to destroy +it.’” What one man could do he did. But it took not twelve legendary +apostles, but the labor of countless thousands of men, through many +ages, to build up the great complex of Christianity, and it will need +the labors of as many to destroy it. Voltaire himself came to see this, +and wrote, in the year before his death, “I now perceive that we must +still wait three or four hundred years. One day it cannot but be that +good men will win their cause; but before that glorious day arrives, how +many disgusts have we to undergo, how many dark persecutions, without +reckoning the La Barres of whom they will make an <em class="italics">auto de fe</em> from time +to time.”</p> +<p class="pnext">John Morley remarks: “The meaner partisans of an orthodoxy, which can +only make wholly sure of itself by injustice to adversaries, has always +loved to paint the Voltairean school in the characters of demons, +enjoying their work of destruction with a sportive and impish delight. +They may have rejoiced in their strength so long as they cherished the +illusion that those who first kindled the torch should also complete +the long course and bear the lamp to the goal. When the gravity of +the enterprise showed itself before them, they remained alert with all +courage, but they ceased to fancy that courage necessarily makes men +happy. The mantle of philosophy was rent in a hundred places, and bitter +winds entered at a hundred holes; but they only drew it the more closely +around them.”</p> +<p class="pnext">It may remain an inspiration to others, as it assuredly is a proof of +the temperance and moderation of his own life, that much of Voltaire’s +best work was done after he had reached his sixtieth year. <em class="italics">Candide</em>, +his masterpiece, was written at the age of sixty-four. Four years later +he produced his <em class="italics">Sermon of the Fifty</em>, and he was sixty-nine when he +published his epoch-making <em class="italics">Treatise upon Toleration</em>, and <em class="italics">Saul</em>, the +wittiest of his burlesque dramas. At the age of seventy he issued his +most important work, the <em class="italics">Philosophical Dictionary</em>, and his burlesque +upon existing superstitions, which he entitled <em class="italics">Pot-Pourri</em>. This +was, indeed, the period of his greatest literary activity against +“l’Infame.” His <em class="italics">Questions on the Miracles</em>, his <em class="italics">Examination of +Lord Bolingbroke</em>, the <em class="italics">Questions of Zapata</em>, the <em class="italics">Dinner of Count +de Boulainvilliers</em> (the charming <em class="italics">resumé</em> of Voltaire’s religious +opinions, which had the honor to be burnt by the hand of the hangman), +the <em class="italics">Canonisation of St. Cucufin</em>, the romance of the <em class="italics">Princess of +Babylon</em>, the <em class="italics">A. B. and C.</em>, the collection of <em class="italics">Ancient Gospels</em>, and +his <em class="italics">God and Men</em>, all being issued while he was between seventy and +seventy-five. It was at this time he edited the <em class="italics">Recueil Nécessaire +avec l'Evangile de la Raison</em>, a collection of anti-Christian tracts +dated Leipsic and London, but printed at Amsterdam. He was eighty when +he put forth his <em class="italics">White Bull</em> (one of the funniest of his pieces, which +was translated by Jeremy Bentham), and his ridiculous skit on Bababec +and the Fakirs; eighty-two when he wrote <em class="italics">The Bible Explained</em> and <em class="italics">A +Christian against Six Jews</em>; and eighty-three when he published his +<em class="italics">History of the Establishment of Christianity</em>.</p> +<p class="pnext">It was thus in the last twenty years of his long life that Voltaire +did his best work for the destruction of prejudice and the spread of +enlightenment. At the same time he maintained a large correspondence, +both with the principal sovereigns of Europe, whom he urged in the +direction of tolerance, and with the leading writers, whom he wished to +combine in a great and systematic attempt to sap the creed he believed +to be at the root of superstition and intolerance.</p> +<p class="pnext">It is in his lengthy and varied correspondence with intimates, extending +over sixty years, that Voltaire most truly reveals himself. He is +therein his own minute biographer, revealing not only his actions, +but their actuation. We see him therein not merely the prince of +<em class="italics">persifleurs</em>, but the serious sensitive thinker, keenly alive to +friendship, love, and work for the higher interests of humanity. His +letters are among the most varied, interesting, and delightful of any +left by a great man of letters. Like all his other productions, they +display the fertility of his genius. Over ten thousand separate letters +are catalogued by Bengesco. Their very extent prevents their being +widely read, but they reveal the perennial brightness of his mind, his +delight in work, his love of literature and liberty, his constant gaiety +and goodness of heart, with here and there only a flash of indignation +and contempt. They are imbued with the spirit of friendship, abound in +anecdotes and pleasantries, mingled with a passionate earnestness for +the interest of mankind. Constantly we find him endeavoring to elevate +the literary class, to raise the drama, continually seeking to encourage +talent, to relieve suffering, and to defend the oppressed.</p> +</div> +<div class="level-2 section" id="last-days"> +<h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title"><a class="toc-backref" href="#id10">LAST DAYS</a></h2> +<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 3.00em">W</span><span class="dropspan">ith</span> the authorities at Geneva Voltaire had got into dispute, owing +to his attempt to establish a private theatre in the territory still +dominated by the ghost of Calvin. Moreover, he was continually reminding +them of Servetus. When D’Alembert’s article on Geneva appeared the +citizens were enraged, and Voltaire thought proper to also purchase +an estate near Lausanne, in the Vaud Canton, which was somewhat less +austere in theatrical matters. Here Gibbon was also residing at the +time.</p> +<p class="pnext">Stupid stories have been told of Gibbon’s attempts to see Voltaire, +and of their mutual laughter at each other’s ugliness. Voltaire is +said to have refused himself to the young Englishman, which is very +unlikely, and that he replied: “You are like the Christian God: he +permits one to eat and drink, but will never show himself.” It is said +that he got Voltaire’s mare let loose on purpose to see the old man +chase after him. Voltaire sent a servant to charge him twelve sous for +seeing the great beast, whereupon he gave twenty-four, with the remark, +“that will pay for a second visit.” Gibbon himself, speaking of the +winter of 1757-58, which he spent in the neighborhood of Lausanne, says: +“My desire of beholding Voltaire, whom I then rated above his real +magnitude, was easily gratified. He received me with civility as an +English youth, but I cannot boast of any peculiar notice or distinction. +The highest gratification which I derived from Voltaire’s residence at +Lausanne was the uncommon circumstance of hearing a great poet declaim +his own productions on the stage. He had formed a company of gentlemen +and ladies, some of whom were not destitute of talents. My ardor, which +soon became conspicuous, seldom failed of procuring me a ticket.... +The wit and philosophy of Voltaire, his table and theatre, refined in a +visible degree the manners of Lausanne; and, however addicted to study, +I enjoyed my share of the amusements of society.”</p> +<p class="pnext">This taste for directing theatrical representations was shared, perhaps +we might say followed, by his great German admirer Goethe. It was +Voltaire’s relaxation. One of his most particular friends was the +great actor Le Kain. The drama was with him an instrument of education. +He believed it to be a means both of softening and refining manners, and +also of dispersing intolerance and superstition.</p> +<p class="pnext">Voltaire soon afterwards purchased a third estate at Ferney, just a +little over the French border, and here, eventually, he lived <em class="italics">en +grande seigneur</em>, and was known as the “patriarch of Ferney.” A +philosopher, he said, with hounds at his heels, like a fox should never +trust to one hole. Accordingly, he had within easy distance the choice +of three distinct governments wherein to find a place of refuge, for, as +Carlyle remarks, he “had to keep his eyes open and always have covert +within reach, under pain of being torn to pieces, while he went about +in the flesh, or rather in the bones, poor lean being.” He now had +wealth, independence, and an assurance of safety, and had come to that +time of life when most men who are able think they may fairly retire +from their labors. But now was the time when he, casting aside all +other pleasures and ambitions, threw himself with unflagging energy and +unsurpassed industry into the great task of his life. It was from Ferney +he issued all the remarkable works of his later years.</p> +<p class="pnext">At Ferney, the old church obstructing his view of the Alps, he built +a new one, and got into trouble for doing so. He had inscribed on +it, “Deo erexit Voltaire, 1761,” a phrase which betrayed rather +patronage than devotion.</p> +<p class="pnext">“It is,” he remarked, “the only church dedicated to God alone; all +the others are dedicated to saints. For my part, I would rather worship +the master than the valets.” On another occasion, he said: “Yes, I +adore God; but not monsieur his son, and madame his mother.” It was +observed of the inscription that he had only a single word between +himself and God. From the wall of his church he also built a tomb for +himself. “The wicked will say that I am neither inside nor outside,” +he remarked. Of the church he remarked: “The wicked will say, no +doubt, that I am building this church in order to throw down the one +which conceals a beautiful prospect, and to have a grand avenue; but +I let the impious talk, and go on working out my salvation.” If the +wicked made the remarks predicted, they doubtless spoke the truth. It +was even reported that Voltaire personally superintended the removal of +the old ruinous one, saying, “Take away that gibbet” when pointing +to the crucifix. The <em class="italics">cure</em> of Moens, the parish adjoining Ferney, cited +Voltaire before the ecclesiastical official of Gex as guilty of impiety +and sacrilege, and Wagnière, Voltaire’s secretary, says: “Those +gentlemen indulged the confident hope that M. de Voltaire would be +burned, or at least hanged, for the greater glory of God and the +edification of the faithful. This they said publicly.” Voltaire +was enabled to strike terror to his persecutor by producing a royal +ordinance of 1627 forbidding a <em class="italics">cure</em> to serve either as prosecutor or +judge in such cases. The church remains, but the celebrated inscription +was effaced during the Restoration of the Monarchy.</p> +<p class="pnext">Ferney became an asylum for the oppressed both from France and +Switzerland. Many of these Voltaire located in and about his château, +but, as their number increased, he built nice stone houses, and, in a +little time, the miserable hamlet which before his arrival had been a +wilderness, became a prosperous colony of twelve hundred individuals and +a veritable free State. There were both Protestants and Catholics +among them, but such was the unanimity in which they lived under his +protection, that we are told no one could conceive that different +religions existed among them. Among this colony he established the +manufacture of weaving and of watches, by means of which his people +presently became wealthy; the Empress Catherine II., even when engaged +in her Turkish campaigns, paying her <em class="italics">bon ami</em> Voltaire the compliment +of assisting the Ferney colony by an order for watches to the value of +some thousand roubles. He pushed the work of his colonists into repute +throughout the world, and was justified in saying to the Duke of +Richelieu, “Give me a fair chance, and I am the man to build a +city.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Though everywhere maligned as an infidel and a scoffer, his life was one +long act of benevolence. The watches of Ferney became known as those of +Geneva. “Fifteen years ago,” said a visitor, “there were barely +at Ferney three or four cottages and forty inhabitants; now it is +astonishing to see a numerous and civilised colony, a theatre, and +more than a hundred pretty houses.” “His charities,” says General +Hamley, “were munificent. When the Order of Jesuits was suppressed +he took one of the body, Father Adam, into his house, and made him his +almoner, a post which was far from being a sinecure.” Hearing that +Mademoiselle Corneille, the grandniece of the poet, was in poverty, +Voltaire, in the most delicate manner, invited her to his house, treated +her as a relation, and gave her an education suitable to her descent. +“It is,” he said, “the duty of an old soldier to be useful to +the daughter of his general.” That she might not feel under personal +obligation, he devoted to her dowry the profits of his <em class="italics">Commentaries on +Corneille</em>.</p> +<p class="pnext">“A description is given of him in his last days at Ferney, seated +under a vine, on the occasion of a <em class="italics">fête</em>, and receiving the +congratulations and complimentary gifts of his tenantry and neighbors, +when a young lady, whom he had adopted, brought him in a basket a +pair of white doves with pink beaks, as her offering. He afterwards +entertained about 200 guests at a splendid repast, followed by +illuminations, songs, and dances, and was himself so carried away in +an access of gaiety as to throw his hat into the air. But his merriment +ended in a tempest of wrath; for learning, in the course of the evening, +that the two doves which had figured so prettily in the <em class="italics">fête</em> had been +killed for the table, his indignation at the stolid cruelty which could +shed the blood of the creatures they had all just admired and caressed, +knew no bounds.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Diderot, who shares with Voltaire the glory of being the intellectual +landmark of last century, and who equalled him as an artist and excelled +him as a philosopher, only met Voltaire a little before his death. +The fame of Voltaire’s wealth had kept him from Ferney. Speaking +of Voltaire in old age, Diderot says: “He is like one of those old +haunted castles, which are falling into ruins in every part; but you +easily perceive that it is inhabited by some ancient magician.” +Diderot was the better critic, and controverted the patriarch as to +the merits of Shakespeare, whom he compared to the statue of Saint +Christopher at Notre Dame—unshapely and rude; but: such a colossus that +ordinary petty men could pass between his legs without touching him.</p> +<p class="pnext">Late in life, Voltaire adopted Reine Philiberte de Vericourt, a young +girl of noble but poor family, whom he had rescued from a convent life, +installed in his own house, and married to the Marquis de Villette. +Her pet name was <em class="italics">Belle et Bonne</em>, and no one had more to do with the +happiness of the last years of Voltaire than she. She watched by the +dying Voltaire’s bedside, and Lady Morgan thus records her report: +“To his last moment everything he said and did breathed the +benevolence and goodness of his character. All announced in him +tranquility, peace, resignation; except a little moment of ill-humor +which he showed to the <em class="italics">cure</em> of St. Sulpice when he begged him to +withdraw, and said, 'Let me die in peace.’”</p> +<p class="pnext">Voltaire himself wrote to Mme. du Deffand: “They say sometimes of +a man, 'He died like a dog’; but, truly, a dog is very happy to die +without all the ceremony with which they persecute the last moments of +our lives. If they had a little charity for us, they would let us +die without saying anything about it. The worst is that we are then +surrounded by hypocrites, who worry us to make us think as they do not +in the least think; or else by imbeciles, who desire us to be as stupid +as they are. All this is very disgusting. The only pleasure of life at +Geneva is that people can die there as they like; many worthy persons +summon no priest at all. People kill themselves if they please, without +any one objecting; or they await the last moment, and no one troubles +them about it.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Under suffering, age, and impending death, Voltaire’s bearing, as +Carlyle acknowledges, “one must say is rather beautiful.” Voltaire +had all his life “enjoyed” bad health. He had always a feeble +constitution, and was a confirmed invalid for the greater part of his +life, suffering from bladder disorder, and a variety of other diseases +that would have soon finished an ordinary man. We may say he was +sustained by his work, which was ever gay, even when most pessimistic. +“My eyes are as red as a drunkard’s,” he writes, “and I have not +the honor to be one.” His wit lasted in old age. A visitor to Ferney, +hearing him praise Haller enthusiastically, told him that Haller did not +do him equal justice. “Ah,” said Voltaire, lightly, “perhaps we +are both mistaken.” To Bailly, the astronomer, he wrote, at the age of +eighty-one: “A hundred thanks for the book of medicine which you sent +me, together with your own [<em class="italics">History of Ancient Astronomy</em>], when I was +very unwell. I have not opened the first. The second I have read and +feel much better.” He kept himself at work with coffee. His interest +was ever in his work. At the very last, the new dictionary he had +proposed to the Academy was on his mind; it was not proceeding as +rapidly as his indefatigable spirit desired. “J'ai fait un pen de +bien; c'est mon meilleur ouvrage”—“I have done a little good; that +is my best work,” was one of his latest utterances.</p> +<p class="pnext">His physicians gave their opinion that he might have lived even longer +than he did had he not been lured to Paris by his niece (unprepossessing +Madame Denis) to superintend the production of his last tragedy <em class="italics">Irene</em>. +Asked at the barrier if there was anything contraband in the carriage, +he replied, “Only myself.” On entering Paris he received a shock +in the news that his friend Le Kain, the actor, had been buried the day +before. He was visited by Benjamin Franklin, who brought his grandson, +whom they desired to kneel for the patriarch’s blessing. Pronouncing +in English the words, “God, Liberty, Toleration”—“this,” +said Voltaire, “is the most suitable benediction for the grandson of +Franklin.” Poems, addresses and deputations came thick upon him, and +his hotel was thronged with visitors of rank and eminence. The popular +voice hailed the aged patriarch, especially as the defender of Calas, +the apostle of universal toleration; and this title was more gratifying +to him than any other.</p> +<p class="pnext">In one house where Voltaire called on his last visit to Paris, the +mistress reproached him for the obstinacy with which, in extreme old age +(over eighty-three), he continued to assail the Church and its beliefs. +“Be moderate and generous,” said she, “after the victory. What +can you fear now from such adversaries? The fanatics are prostrate (<em class="italics">à +terre</em>). They can no longer injure. Their reign is over.” Voltaire +replied: “You are in error, madame; it is a fire that is covered but +not extinguished. Those fanatics, those Tartuffes, are mad dogs. They +are muzzled, but they have not lost their teeth. It is true they bite +no more; but on the first opportunity, if their teeth are not drawn, you +will see if they will not bite.” All that one man could do was done +by Voltaire. More than any other, he helped to muzzle the mad dog of +religious intolerance, lassoing it dexterously with his finespun silken +thread, since replaced by a stronger cord. But the beast even yet is not +dead; its teeth are not all drawn. Give it a chance and it will still +bite. What we have to thank Voltaire for is, that he has left works +which, as he himself said, are “scissors and files to file the teeth +and pare the talons of the monsters.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Voltaire was, as he said, stifled in roses. He sat up at night +perfecting <em class="italics">Irene</em>, and his unwearied activity induced him at his great +age to begin a Dictionary upon a novel plan which he prevailed upon +the French Academy to take up. At the performance of his tragedy he was +crowned with laurel in his box, amid the plaudits of the audience. To +keep himself up under the excitement, he exceeded even his usual excess +of coffee. These labors and dissipation brought on spitting of blood, +and sleeplessness, to obviate which he took opium. Condorcet says +the servant mistook one of the doses, which threw him into a state of +lethargy, from which he never recovered. He lingered for some time, but +at length expired on the 30th of May, 1778, in his eighty-fourth year.</p> +<p class="pnext">Of course lying tales of dying horrors were floated, and disbelieved in +by all who knew him. He wished to rest in his own churchyard, and let +the <em class="italics">abbé</em> Gaultier and the <em class="italics">curé</em> de St. Sulpice squabble as to who +should have, the honor of his conversion. His secretary, being alone +with him, begged him to state what his view continued to be when he +believed himself dying; and received this written declaration: “I +die adoring God, loving my friends, not hating my enemies, detesting +superstition”—“Je meurs eti adorant dieu, en aimant mes amis, en +ne baissant pas mes ennemis, de testant superstition.” This dying +declaration may be seen at the <em class="italics">Bibliothèque Nationale</em>, Paris +(Fr. 11,460), written, signed and dated by him in a still firm hand, +February, 1778.</p> +<p class="pnext">Into the stories told of Voltaire’s dying moments and many similar +legends, my colleague, Mr. G. W. Foote, has fully entered in his +<em class="italics">Infidel Deathbeds</em>. He quotes the following extract from a letter by +Dr. Burard, who, as assistant physician, was constantly about Voltaire +in his last moments:</p> +<p class="pnext">“I feel happy in being able, while paying homage to truth, to destroy +the effect of the lying stories which have been told respecting the last +moments of Mons. de Voltaire. I was, by office, one of those who +were appointed to watch the whole progress of his illness, with MM. +Tron-chin, Lorry, and Try, his medical attendants. I never left him for +an instant during his last moments, and I can certify that we invariably +observed in him the same strength of character, though his disease was +necessarily attended with horrible pain. (Here follow the details of +his case.) We positively forbade him to speak, in order to prevent the +increase of a spitting of blood, with which he was attacked; still he +continued to communicate with us by means of little cards, on which +he wrote his questions; we replied to him verbally, and if he was +not satisfied, he always made his observations to us in writing. +He therefore retained his faculties up to the last moment, and the +fooleries which have been attributed to him are deserving of the +greatest contempt. It could not even be said that such or such person +had related any circnmstance of his death, as being witness to it; for +at the last, admission to his chamber was forbidden to any person. Those +who came to obtain intelligence respecting the patient, waited in the +saloon, and other apartments at hand. The proposition, therefore, which +has been put in the mouth of Marshal Richelieu is as unfounded as the +rest.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Paris, April 3rd, 1819.</p> +<p class="pnext">“(Signed) Burard.”</p> +<p class="pnext">The actual facts are thus told by Mr. Parton: “Ten minutes before +he breathed his last he roused from his slumber, took the hand of his +valet, pressed it, and said to him: ‘Adieu, my dear Morand; I am +dying.’ These were his last words.”</p> +<p class="pnext">D’Alembert, in a letter to Frederick, written after Voltaire’s +death, thus recorded the impression made on him by the dying man. Having +described the stupefying effects of the opium which left his head clear +only for brief intervals, D’Alembert, who saw him during one of them, +proceeds: “He recognised me and even spoke to me some friendly words. +But the moment after he fell back into his state of stupor, for he was +almost always dying. He awoke only to complain and to say ‘he had come +to Paris to die.’” Throughout his illness, D’Alembert adds, “he +exhibited, to the extent which his condition permitted, much tranquility +of mind, although he seemed to regret life. I saw him again the day +before his death, and to some friendly words of mine he replied, +pressing my hand, ‘You are my consolation.’”</p> +<p class="pnext">It is certain the heads of the French Church did not consider that +Voltaire had made a death-bed conversion, for they refused his body +burial in consecrated ground. They had anathematised him when alive and +proscribed him when dead. He had prepared a tomb for himself under the +sky, where he had grown old and done good, but he was cheated out of his +rights, and it was decided that he who built the church had no right to +have his bones bleach in the cemetery. Letters were sent to the Bishop +of Annecy, in whose diocese Ferney was, enjoining him to prohibit the +<em class="italics">cure</em> thereof from giving Voltaire’s remains Christian burial in his +own churchyard. Voltaire’s nephew, the <em class="italics">abbé</em> Mignot, held a ruined +abbey at Scillieres, in Champagne, a hundred miles or so from Paris; and +here the body was secretly hurried off and interred. On the very day of +interment the Bishop of the diocese wrote to the Prior forbidding the +burial. There was even some talk of having the body exhumed, and the +clergy clamored for the expulsion of the Prior. Grimm relates that +“the players were forbidden to act M. de Voltaire’s pieces till +further orders, the editors of the public papers to speak of his death +in any terms, either favorable or unfavorable, and the preceptors of the +colleges to suffer any of their scholars to learn his verses.”</p> +<p class="pnext">In 1791, by a decree of the National Assembly and amid the acclamation +of the people, his body was brought and placed in the Pantheon, where it +rested beside that of Rousseau. At the Restoration in 1814 some bigoted +Royalist stole away the bones, which were thrown into a hole with lime +poured on them.</p> +<p class="pnext">In person Voltaire was always slim, with the long head which, +Carlyle says, “is the best sign of intelligence.” His thinness is +commemorated by the poor but well-known epigram attributed to Young, and +identifying him at once with “Satan, Death, and Sin.” In old age he +became a mere skeleton, with eyes of great brilliancy peering beneath +his wig. He was sober and temperate save in coffee, which he drank as +inveterately as Johnson did tea. Conversation and literature were, as +with Johnson, the gods of his idolatry.</p> +</div> +<div class="level-2 section" id="his-character-and-services"> +<h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title"><a class="toc-backref" href="#id11">HIS CHARACTER AND SERVICES</a></h2> +<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 3.00em">B</span><span class="dropspan">olingbroke</span> finely said of Marlborough: “He was so great a man that I +forget his errors.” One can as justly say the same of Voltaire. I +have scant sympathy with those who, dealing with great men, seek every +opportunity of bringing them down to the common level. Voltaire was +by no means a faultless character. He was far indeed from being an +immaculate hero: he had the failings of his age and of his training. But +they form no essential part of his work. How much has been made of the +coarseness and immorality of Luther by men like Father Anderdon! All +men have the defects of their qualities. Condorcet, in his <em class="italics">Life of +Voltaire</em>, has placed on record this just criticism: “The happy +qualities of Voltaire were often obscured and distorted by a natural +mobility, aggravated by the habit of writing tragedies. He passed in +a moment from anger to sympathetic emotion; from indignation to +pleasantry. His passions, naturally violent, sometimes transported +him too far; and his excessive mobility deprived him of the advantages +ordinarily attached to passionate tempers—firmness in conduct—courage +which no terrors can withhold from action, and which no dangers, +anticipated beforehand, can shake by their actual presence. Voltaire has +often been seen to expose himself rashly to the storm—seldom to meet it +with fortitude. These alternations of audacity and weakness have often +afflicted his friends, and prepared unworthy triumphs for his envenomed +enemies.”</p> +<p class="pnext">He was too ready to lash the curs who barked at his heels, thereby +stimulating them to further noise. Scandalous ex-Jesuit Desfontaines, +L’Ane de Mirepoix, Thersites Fréron and the rest, would be forgotten +had he not condescended to apply the whip. Voltaire was always something +of a spoilt child, over-sensitive to every reproach. His petulance +impelled him to absurd displays of weakness and frenzy, which he was the +first to regret. He was generous even to his enemies when they were +in trouble. The weaknesses of Voltaire were, like his smile, on the +surface, but there was a great human heart beating beneath.</p> +<p class="pnext">The restlessness of Voltaire has been contrasted with the repose of +Goethe, and Gallic fury with calm Teutonic strength. But which of the +two men did most for humanity? Voltaire might have been as calm as +Goethe had he been indifferent to everything but his own culture and +comfort. No! he loved the fight. When the battle of freedom raged, there +was he in the thick of it, considering not his reputation, but what he +could do to crush the infamous. An enemy said of him: “He is the first +man in the world at writing down what other people have thought.” Mr. +Morley justly considers this high and sufficient praise.</p> +<p class="pnext">The life of a writer was defined by Pope as “a warfare upon earth.” +Never was this truer than in the case of Voltaire, who himself said: +“<em class="italics">La vie à'un homme de lettres est un combat perpétuel et on meurt +les armes à la main.</em>” He was ever in the midst of the fight, and +usually alone and surrounded by enemies. And his unfailing resources +not merely kept them at bay, but compelled their surrender of an immense +territory. His was a life of creation and contest. In the war against +despotism and Christianity he achieved a new kingship of public opinion, +and proved that the pen was indeed mightier than the sword.</p> +<p class="pnext">Heine said: “We should forgive our enemies—but not until they are +hung.” Voltaire forgave his when he had gibbeted them in his writings. +People who find it difficult to understand his bitterness against +“L'Infàme” should remember the revolting cruelty of which religious +bigotry was still capable in his day. The Revocation of the Edict +of Nantes, the prolonged horrors of the Thirty Years’ War, and the +Massacre of St. Bartholomew vibrated still. Condorcet wrote: “The +blood of many millions of men, massacred in the name of God, still +steams up to heaven around us. The earth on which we tread is everywhere +covered with the bones of the victims of barbarous intolerance.” His +rhetoric expressed the feeling of a generation who knew by experience +the evils of religious bigotry and fanaticism.</p> +<p class="pnext">It is as a champion of Freethought that Voltaire deserves chiefly to be +remembered. In that capacity I can only find words of praise. Complaints +of his flippancy, his <em class="italics">persiflage</em>, his ridicule, his scurrility, his +etc., came, and still come, from the enemy, and show that his blows told +and tell. If he did not crush the infamous he at least crippled it. No +doubt, under different circumstances,</p> +<p class="pnext">Voltaire would have fought differently. But he would never have thought +of treating atrocities without indignation, or absurdities without +ridicule. Gravity is a part of the game of imposture, and there is +nothing the hypocrites and humbugs resent so much as having their solemn +pretensions laughed at. .</p> +<p class="pnext">He knew the subtle power of ridicule. It was the most effective weapon, +not only for the time and the nation in which he wrote, but for our time +also. His blows were all dealt with grace and agility; his pills were +sugar-coated. Grimm well said of him: “He makes arrows of every kind +of wood, brilliant and rapid in their flight, but with a keen, unerring +point. Under his sparkling pen, erudition ceases to be ponderous and +becomes full of life. If he cannot sweep the grand chords of the +lyre, he can j strike on golden medals his favorite maxims, and is j +irreproachable in the lighter order of poetry.” But, I contend, there +was a fundamental earnestness in his character; he was the apostle of +plain every-day common sense and good feeling.</p> +<p class="pnext">Voltaire is judged by the character which distinguishes him from other +writers, his light touch and superficial raillery. Because he is <em class="italics">par +excellence</em> a <em class="italics">persifleur</em>, he is set down as merely a <em class="italics">persifleur</em>. +Never was there a greater mistake. It is forgotten that he did not write +witty tales and squibs only; that he made France acquainted with the +philosophy of Locke and the science of Newton; that he wrote the <em class="italics">Age of +Louis XIV.</em>, the <em class="italics">History of the Parliament of Paris</em>, and the <em class="italics">Essay +on Manners</em> (which revived the historic method), and that he wrote more +than twenty tragedies which transformed the French theatre. Voltaire was +no mere mocker: his <em class="italics">manner</em> was that of a <em class="italics">persifleur</em>, but his matter +was as solid as that of any theologian.</p> +<p class="pnext">M. Louis de Brouckere, of the University of Brussels, justly claims +for Voltaire a double share in the formation of modern culture and the +development of modern science. He contributed to it directly by his +personal works, and indirectly by antagonising the forces retarding +knowledge and creating an intellectual environment eminently favorable +to the formation of synthetic knowledge, and a new public opinion common +to the intellectual <em class="italics">élite</em> of Europe.</p> +<p class="pnext">Voltaire knew how to marshal against reigning prejudices and errors all +the resources of vast learning and an incomparable wit; but no one more +clearly than he saw that the doctrines he destroyed must be replaced by +others, that humanity cannot get along without a body of common beliefs; +and he contributed more than any one else to the elaboration of the +new intellectual code by uniting and harmonising the efforts of special +<em class="italics">savants</em> and isolated thinkers, by giving them a clear consciousness +that what they aimed at was the same thing and common to them all.</p> +<p class="pnext">He never slackened his efforts to appease the quarrels which broke out +in the camp of the philosophers, to group all his <em class="italics">spiritual brothers</em> +in one compact bundle, capable of joint action, to unite them in a laic +<em class="italics">church</em> which could be utilised to oppose existing churches. The words +I here italicise were underlined by him; they are found on every page +of his correspondence, and he loses no opportunity to reiterate them and +explain their meaning precisely.</p> +<p class="pnext">If the publication of the <em class="italics">Encyclopœdia</em> was the work of Diderot, the +union of the group of men who rendered that publication possible was, in +great measure, the work of Voltaire. If Condorcet wrote just before his +death his immortal <em class="italics">Sketch</em>, Voltaire took a preponderating part in the +creation of the intellectual atmosphere in which Condorcet lived and +could develop his genius.</p> +<p class="pnext">Voltaire was assuredly not so coarse as Luther, nor even as his +contemporary Warburton. He carried lighter guns than Luther, but was +more alert and equally persistent. His war against superstition and +intolerance was life-long. Luther smote powerful blows at the church +with a bludgeon; Voltaire made delicate passes with a rapier. Catholics +often declaim against the coarseness of the monk-trained Protestant +champion. They also protest against the trickery of the Jesuit-trained +Freethinker. It is sufficient to say Luther could not have done his work +had he not been coarse. Nor could Voltaire have done his had he not been +a tricksy spirit. Judged by his work, he was one of the best of men, +because he did most good to his fellows, and because in his heart was +the most burning love of truth, of justice and toleration. In the words +of Lecky, he did “more to destroy the greatest of human curses than +any other of the sons of men.” His numerous volumes are the fruit and +exposition of a spirit of encyclopaedic curiosity. He assimilated all +the thought and learning of his time, and brought to bear on it a wit +and common sense that was all his own.</p> +<p class="pnext">Voltaire is never so passionately in earnest as when he speaks against +cruelty and oppression. Every sentence quivers with humanity. He +denounces war as no “moralist for hire” in a pulpit has ever done, as +a scourge of the poor, the weak, and the helpless, to whom he is ever +tender. Whenever he sees tyranny or injustice, he attacks it. He wrote +against torture when its employment was an established principle of law. +He denounced duelling when that form of murder was the chief feature +of the code of honor. He waged warfare upon war when, it was considered +man’s highest glory.</p> +<p class="pnext">His attacks on the judicial iniquity of torture—so often callously +employed on those supposed instruments of Satan, heretics and +witches—were incessant, and it was owing to his influence that the +practice was abolished in France by Turgot, his friend, as it had been +in Prussia by Frederick, and in Russia by Catherine, his disciples. +He advocated the abolition of mutilation, and all forms of cruelty in +punishment. He satirised the folly of punishing murder and robbery by +the same capital penalty, and thus making assassination the interest of +the thief; the barbarity of confiscating the property of children for +the crime of the father; and the intricacies and consequent injustice +of legal methods. He sought to abolish the sale of offices, to equalise +taxation, and to restrict the power of priests to prescribe degrading +penances and excessive abstinences. He wrote with fervor against the +remnants of serfdom, and defended the rights of the serfs in the Jura +against their monastic oppressors. Mr. Lecky says: “His keen and +luminous intellect judged with admirable precision most of the popular +delusions of his time. He exposed with great force the common error +which confounds all wealth with the precious metals. He wrote against +sumptuary laws. He refuted Rousseau’s doctrine of the evil of all +luxury.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Voltaire’s work went deeper than political reform. He dealt with +ideas, not institutions. In a little treatise called the <em class="italics">Voyage of +Reason</em>, which he wrote as late as 1774, he enumerates with exultation +the triumphs of reforms which he himself had witnessed. He had +previously written, in 1764: “Everything I see scatters the seeds of a +revolution which will indubitably arrive, and which I shall not have the +happiness to witness.” Buckle notes that “the further he advanced +in years, the more pungent were his sarcasms against ministers, the more +violent were his invectives against despotism”; and it was said of him +in the early days of the Revolution, when it was sanguine but not yet +sanguinary, “He did not see what has been done, but he did all that we +see.”</p> +<p class="pnext">He teaches no mystery, but the open secret of Secularism—<em class="italics">il faut +cultiver nôtre jardin</em> (we must cultivate our garden). “Life,” he said, +“is thickly sown with thorns. I know no other remedy than to pass +rapidly over them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes the greater is +their power to harm us.” Economy, he declared, is the source of +liberality, and this maxim he reduced to practice. He ridiculed all +pretences; those of the physician as well as of the metaphysician. “What +have you undertaken?” he said, smiling, to a young man, who answered +that he was studying medicine. “Why, to convey drugs of which you know +little into a body of which you know less!” “Regimen,” said he, “is +better than physic. Everyone should be his own physician. Eat with +moderation what you know by experience agrees with your constitution. +Nothing is good for the body but what we can digest. What medicine can +procure digestion? Exercise. What recruit strength? Sleep. What +alleviate incurable evils? Patience.”</p> +<p class="pnext">The tone of Voltaire is not fervid or heroic, like, for instance, that +of Carlyle; but he worked, as Carlyle did not, for a great cause. He +felt for suffering outside himself. Without mysticism or fanaticism, +aiming at no remote or impracticable ideal, he ever insisted on +meeting the problems of life with practical good sense, toleration, and +humanity. He sought always for clear ideas, tangible results, and as Mr. +Lecky says, “labored steadily within the limits of his ideals and of +his sympathies, to make the world wiser, happier, and better place than +he found it.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Voltaire wrote: “My motto is, ‘Straight to the fact,’” and this +was a characteristic which equally marked him and Frederick. He had a +horror of phrases. “Your fine phrases,” said one to him. “My fine +phrases! Learn that I never made one in my life.” His style is indeed +marked by restraint and simplicity of diction. He wrote to D’Alembert: +“You will never succeed in delivering men from error by means of +metaphysics. You must prove the truth by facts.” As an instance of his +apt mingling of fact with reason and ridicule, take his treatment of +the doctrine of the Resurrection in the <em class="italics">Philosophical Dictionary</em>. +“A Breton soldier goes to Canada. He finds by chance he falls short +of food. He is forced to eat an Iroquois he has killed over-night. This +Iroquois had nourished himself on Jesuits during two or three months, a +great part of his body has become Jesuit. So there is the body of this +soldier composed of Iroquois, Jesuit, and whatever he had eaten before. +How will each resume precisely what belonged to him?”</p> +<p class="pnext">Magnify his failings as you may, you cannot obliterate his one +transcendent merit, his humanity ever responsive to every claim of +suffering or wrong. He stood for the rights of conscience, for the +dignity of human reason, for the gospel of Freethought.</p> +<p class="pnext">Voltaire may not be placed with the great inspiring teachers of mankind. +But it must be acknowledged that, as Mr. George Saintsbury, no mean +critic, says: “In literary craftsmanship, at once versatile and +accomplished, he has no superior and scarcely a rival.”</p> +<p class="pnext">He declared that he loved the whole of the nine Muses, and that the +doors of the soul should be open to all sciences and all sentiments. He +employed every species of composition—poetry, prose, tragedy, comedy, +history, dialogue, epistle, essay or epigram—as it suited his purpose, +and he excelled in all. Argument or raillery came alike. He made reason +amusing, and none like him could ridicule the ridiculous. His charm as +a writer has been the occasion of the obloquy attached to his name by +bigots. They can never forgive that he forced people to smile at their +superstition.</p> +<p class="pnext">Much, of course, of Voltaire’s multitudinous work was directed to +immediate ends, and but for his grace of style would be of little +present interest. But after all winnowings by the ever-swaying fan of +time much is left of enduring value. The name of Voltaire will ever be +a mighty one in literature: a glorious example of what a man may achieve +who is strong in his love of humanity.</p> +</div> +<div class="level-2 section" id="tributes-to-voltaire"> +<h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title"><a class="toc-backref" href="#id12">TRIBUTES TO VOLTAIRE</a></h2> +<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 3.00em">A</span><span class="dropspan">s</span> a contrast to the views of Dr. Johnson and De Maistre, which +for generations represented the current opinion of Protestants and +Catholics, I bring together a few independent testimonies. As time goes +on his admirers increase in volume, while his detractors now are mainly +those who have an interest in or secret sympathy with the abuses he +destroyed. And first, I will give the testimony of Goldsmith who had met +him. It was written while Voltaire was alive, but when a false report +of his death had been received in England. “Should you look for the +character of Voltaire among the journalists and illiterate writers of +the age, you will find him there characterised as a monster, with a head +turned to wisdom, and a heart inclining to vice—the powers of his mind +and the baseness of his principles forming a detestable contrast. But +seek for his character among writers like himself, and you will find +him very differently described. You perceive him, in their accounts, +possessed of good nature, humanity, greatness of soul, fortitude, and +almost every virtue: in this description those who might be supposed +best acquainted with his character are unanimous. The royal Prussian, +D’Argens, Diderot, D’Alembert, and Fontenelle conspire in drawing +the picture, in describing the friend of man, and the patron of every +rising genius.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Lord Byron’s lines on Voltaire and Gibbon (<em class="italics">Childe Harold</em>, iii., +105-107) are well known. He says:</p> +<pre class="literal-block"> +They were gigantic minds, and their steep aim +Was, Titan-like, on daring doubts to pile +Thoughts which should call down thunder, and the flame +Of Heaven again assail’d, if Heaven the while +On man and man’s research could deign do more than smile. + +The one was fire and fickleness, a child +Most mutable in wishes, but in mind +A wit as various,—gay, grave, sage, or wild,— +Historian, bard, philosopher, combined; +He multiplied himself among mankind, +The Proteus of their talents: +But his own +Breathed most in ridicule,—which, as the wind, +Blew where it listed, laying all things prone,— +Now to o’erthrow a fool, and now to shake a throne. + +The other, deep and slow, exhausting thought, +And having wisdom with each studious year, +In meditation dwelt, with learning wrought, +And shaped his weapon with an edge severe, +Sapping a solemn creed with solemn sneer; +The lord of iron,—that master-spell, +Which stung his foes to wrath, which grew from fear, +And doom’d him to the zealot’s ready Hell, +Which answers to all doubts so eloquently well. +</pre> +<p class="pfirst">Warton, the learned critic and author of a <em class="italics">History of Poetry</em> +(Dissertation I.) remarked: “Voltaire, a writer of much deeper +research than is imagined, and the first who has displayed the +literature and customs of the dark ages with any degree of penetration +and comprehension.” Robertson, the historian, similarly observed that, +had Voltaire only given his authorities, “many of his readers who only +consider him as an entertaining and lively writer would have found that +he is a learned and well informed historian.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Lord Holland wrote, in his account of the <em class="italics">Life and Writings of Lope de +Vega</em>: “Till Voltaire appeared there was no nation more ignorant of +its neighbors’ literature than the French. He first exposed and then +corrected this neglect in his countrymen. There is no writer to whom the +authors of other nations, especially of England, are so indebted for the +extension of their fame in France, and, through France, in Europe. There +is no critic who has employed more time, wit, ingenuity, and diligence +in promoting the literary intercourse between country and country, and +in celebrating in one language the triumphs of another. His enemies +would fain persuade us that such exuberance of wit implies a want of +information; but they only succeed in showing that a want of wit by no +means implies an exuberance of information.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Goethe said: “Voltaire will ever be regarded as the greatest name in +literature in modern times, and perhaps even in all ages, as the most +astonishing creation of nature, in which she united, in one frail human +organisation, all the varieties of talent, all the glories of genius, +all the potencies of thought. If you wish depth, genius, imagination, +taste, reason, sensibility, philosophy, elevation, originality, nature, +intellect, fancy, rectitude, facility, flexibility, precision, art, +abundance, variety, fertility, warmth, magic, charm, grace, force, +an eagle sweep of vision, vast understanding, instruction rich, tone +excellent, urbanity, suavity, delicacy, correctness, purity, cleanness, +eloquence, harmony, brilliancy, rapidity, gaiety, pathos, sublimity and +universality—perfection indeed—behold Voltaire.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Lord Brougham, in his <em class="italics">Lives of Men of Letters and Science who +flourished in the time of George III</em>., devotes a considerable section +to Voltaire. After censuring “the manner in which he devoted himself +to crying down the sacred things of his country,” he continues: +“But, though it would be exceedingly wrong to pass over this great and +prevailing fault without severe reprobation, it would be equally unjust, +nay, ungrateful, ever to forget the immense obligations under which +Voltaire has laid mankind by his writings, the pleasure derived from his +fancy and his wit, the amusement which his singular and original humor +bestows, even the copious instruction with which his historical works +are pregnant, and the vast improvement in the manner of writing history +which we owe to him. Yet, great as these services are—among the +greatest that can be rendered by a man of letters—they are really of +far inferior value to the benefits which have resulted from his long and +arduous struggle against oppression, especially against tyranny in +the worst form which it can assume, the persecution of opinion, the +infraction of the sacred right to exercise the reason upon all subjects, +unfettered by prejudice, uncontrolled by authority, whether of great +names or of temporal power.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Macaulay, in his <em class="italics">Essay on Frederick the Great</em>, observes: “In truth, +of all the intellectual weapons which have ever been wielded by man, the +most terrible was the mockery of Voltaire. Bigots and tyrants, who had +never been moved by the wailing and cursing of millions, turned pale at +his name.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Carlyle, in his depreciatory essay, acknowledged: “Perhaps there is +no writer, not a mere compiler, but writing from his own invention or +elaboration, who has left so many volumes behind him; and if to the +merely arithmetical we add a critical estimate, the singularity is still +greater; for these volumes are not written without an appearance of due +care and preparation; perhaps there is not one altogether feeble and +confused treatise, nay, one feeble and confused sentence to be found in +them.” And at the end he admits: “He gave the death-stab to modern +Superstition! <em class="italics">That</em> horrid incubus, which dwelt in darkness, shunning +the light, is passing away; with all its racks and poison chalices, and +foul sleeping-draughts, is passing away without return. It was a most +weighty service.”</p> +<p class="pnext">One of the strangest of tributes to Voltaire is that from Ruskin, the +disciple of Carlyle. In his <em class="italics">Fors Clavigera</em> (vol. viii., p. 76) he +says: “There are few stronger adversaries to St. George than Voltaire. +But my scholars are welcome to read as much of Voltaire as they like. +His voice is mighty among the ages.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Dr. D. F. Strauss wrote: “Voltaire’s historical significance has +been illustrated by the observation of Goethe that, as in families whose +existence has been of long duration, Nature sometimes at length produces +an individual who sums up in himself the collective qualities of all his +ancestors, so it happens also with nations, whose collective merits (and +demerits) sometimes appear epitomised in one individual person. Thus in +Louis XIV. stood forth the highest figure of a French monarch. Thus, in +Voltaire, the highest conceivable and congenial representative of French +authorship. We may extend the observation farther, if, instead of the +French nation only, we take into view the whole European generation on +which Voltaire’s influence was exercised. From this point of view +we may call Voltaire emphatically the representative writer of the +eighteenth century, as Goethe called him, in the highest sense, the +representative writer of France.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Victor Hugo, in the magnificent oration which he pronounced on the +centenary of Voltaire’s death, said: “Voltaire waged the splendid +kind of warfare, the war of one alone against all—that is to say, the +grand warfare; the war of thought against matter; the war of reason +against prejudice; the war of the just against the unjust; the war of +the oppressed against the oppressor; the war of goodness; the war of +kindness. He had the tenderness of a woman and the wrath of a hero. He +was a great mind and an immense heart. He conquered the old code and +the old dogma. He conquered the feudal lord, the Gothic judge, the Roman +priest. He raised the populace to the dignity of people. He taught, +pacified, and civilised. He fought for Sirven and Montbailly, as for +Calas and La Barre. He accepted all the menaces, all the persecutions, +calumny, and exile. He was indefatigable and immovable. He conquered +violence by a smile, despotism by sarcasm, infallibility by irony, +obstinacy by perseverance, ignorance by truth.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Buckle, in his <em class="italics">History of Civilisation</em> (vol. ii., p. 304) says: “It +would be impossible to relate all the original remarks of Voltaire, +which, when he made them, were attacked as dangerous paradoxes, and are +now valued as sober truths. He was the first historian who recommended +universal freedom of trade; and although he expresses himself with great +caution, still, the mere announcement of the idea is a popular history +forms an epoch in the progress of the French mind. He is the originator +of that important distinction between the increase of population and the +increase of food, to which political economy has been greatly indebted, +a principle adopted several years later by Townsend, and then used by +Malthus as the basis of his celebrated work. He has, moreover, the merit +of being the first who dispelled the childish admiration with which the +Middle Ages had been hitherto regarded. In his works the Middle Ages +are for the first time represented as what they really were—a period +of ignorance, ferocity, and licentiousness; a period when injuries were +unredressed, crime unpunished, and superstition unrebuked.” Again +(page 308): “No one reasoned more closely than Voltaire when reasoning +suited his purpose. But he had to deal with men impervious to argument; +men whose inordinate reverence for antiquity had only left them two +ideas, namely, that everything old is right, and that everything new is +wrong. To argue against these opinions would be idle indeed; the only +other resource was to make them ridiculous, and weaken their influence +by holding up their authors to contempt. This was one of the tasks +Voltaire set himself to perform; and he did it well. He therefore used +ridicule, not as the test of truth, but as the scourge of folly. And +with such effect was the punishment administered that not only did the +pedants and theologians of his own time wince under the lash, but even +their successors feel their ears tingle when they read his biting words; +and they revenge themselves by reviling the memory of the great writer +whose works are as a thorn in their side, and whose very name they hold +in undisguised abhorrence.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Mr. Lecky, in his <em class="italics">History of Rationalism in Europe</em> (vol. ii., p. +66) says: “Voltaire was at all times the unflinching opponent of +persecution. No matter how powerful was the persecutor, no matter how +insignificant was the victim, the same scathing eloquence was launched +against the crime, and the indignation of Europe was soon concentrated +upon the oppressor. The fearful storm of sarcasm and invective that +avenged the murder of Calas, the magnificent dream in the <em class="italics">Philosophical +Dictionary</em> reviewing the history of persecution from the slaughtered +Canaanites to the latest victim who had perished at the stake, the +indelible stigma branded upon the persecutors of every age and of every +creed, all attested the intense and passionate earnestness with which +Voltaire addressed himself to his task. On other subjects a jest or +a caprice could often turn him aside. When attacking intolerance he +employed, indeed, every weapon; but he employed them all with the +concentrated energy of a profound conviction. His success was equal to +his zeal; the spirit of intolerance sank blasted beneath his genius. +Wherever his influence passed, the arm of the inquisitor was palsied, +the chain of the captive riven, the prison door flung open. Beneath his +withering irony, persecution appeared not only criminal but loathsome, +and since his time it has ever shrunk from observation and masked its +features under other names. He died, leaving a reputation that is indeed +far from spotless, but having done more to destroy the greatest of human +curses than any other of the sons of men.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Mr. Lecky, in his <em class="italics">History of England in the Eighteenth Century</em> (v., +312), observes: “No previous writer can compare with him in the +wideness and justness of his conceptions of history, and even now no +historian can read without profit his essays on the subject. No one +before had so strongly urged that history should not be treated as a +collection of pictures or anecdotes relating to courts or battles, +but should be made a record and explanation of the true development +of nations, of the causes of their growth and decay, of their +characteristic virtues and vices, of the changes that pass over their +laws, customs, opinions, social and economical conditions, and over the +relative importance and well-being of their different classes... (p. +315). Untiring industry, an extraordinary variety of interests and +aptitudes, a judgment at once sound, moderate, and independent, a rare +power of seizing in every subject the essential argument or facts, +a disposition to take no old opinions on trust and to leave no new +opinions unexamined, combined in him with the most extraordinary +literary talent. Never, perhaps, was there an intellect at once so +luminous, versatile, and flexible, which produced so much, which could +deal with such a vast range of difficult subjects without being ever +obscure, tangled, or dull.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Colonel Hamley wrote: “But after the winnowings of generations, a wide +and deep repute still remains to him; nor will any diminution which it +may have suffered be without compensation, for, with the fading of old +prejudices, and with better knowledge, his name will be regarded with +increased liking and respect. Yet it must not be supposed that he is +here held up as a pattern man. He was, indeed, an infinitely better one +than the religious bigots of that time. He believed, with far better +effect on his practice than they could boast, in a Supreme Ruler. He was +the untiring and eloquent advocate at the bar of the universe of the +rights of humanity.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Mr. Swinburne has well expressed this characteristic. “Voltaire’s +great work,” he says, “was to have done more than any other man +on record to make the instinct of cruelty not only detestable, but +ludicrous; and so to accomplish what the holiest and the wisest of +saints and philosophers had failed to achieve: to attack the most +hideous and pernicious of human vices with a more effective weapon +than preaching and denunciation: to make tyrants and torturers look not +merely horrible and hateful, but pitiful and ridiculous.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Edgar Quinet, in his lectures on the Church, says: “I watch for forty +years the reign of one man who is himself the spiritual direction, +not of his country, but of his age. From the corner of his chamber he +governs the realm of mind. Everyday intellects are regulated by his; one +word written by his hand traverses Europe. Princes love and kings fear +him. Nations repeat the words that fall from his pen. Who exercises this +incredible power which has nowhere been seen since the Middle Ages? Is +he another Gregory VII? Is he a Pope? No—Voltaire.”</p> +<p class="pnext">And Lamartine, in similar strain, remarks: “If we judge of men by what +they have <em class="italics">done</em>, then Voltaire is incontestibly the greatest writer of +modern Europe. No one has caused, through the powerful influence of his +genius alone and the perseverance of his will, so great a commotion +in the minds of men. His pen aroused a sleeping world, and shook a +far mightier empire than that of Charlemagne, the European empire of a +theocracy. His genius was not <em class="italics">force</em>, but <em class="italics">light</em>. Heaven had destined +him not to destroy, but to illuminate; and wherever he trod, light +followed him, for Reason—which is light—had destined him to be, first +her poet, then her apostle, and lastly her idol.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Mr. Alexander A. Knox, writing in the <em class="italics">Nineteenth Century</em> (October +1882), says: “That the man’s aspirations were in the main noble +and honorable to humanity, I am sure. I am equally so that few men have +exercised so great an influence upon their fellow creatures.... The +wonderful old man! When he was past eighty years of age he set to +work, like another Jeremy Bentham, to abolish the admission of hearsay +evidence into French legal proceedings. But his great work was that by +his wit and irony he broke down the <em class="italics">principle of authority</em> which had +been so foully abused in France. Would the most strictly religious man +wish to see religion as it was in France in the eighteenth century? +Would the greatest stickler for authority wish to find a country +governed as France was governed in the days of Voltaire?”</p> +<p class="pnext">Du Bois-Reymond, the eminent German scientist, remarks: “Voltaire +is so little to us at present because the things he fought for, +‘toleration, spiritual freedom, human dignity, justice,' have become, +as it were, the air we breathe, and do not think of except when we are +deprived of it.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Col. R. G. Ingersoll, in his fine <em class="italics">Oration on Voltaire</em>, observes: +“Voltaire was perfectly equipped for his work. A perfect master of +the French language, knowing all its moods, tenses, and declinations—in +fact and in feeling playing upon it as skilfully as Paganini on his +violin, finding expression for every thought and fancy, writing on the +most serious subjects with the gaiety of a harlequin, plucking jests +from the mouth of death, graceful as the waving of willows, dealing in +double meanings that covered the asp with flowers and flattery, master +of satire and compliment, mingling them often in the same line, always +interested himself, therefore interesting others, handling thoughts, +questions, subjects as a juggler does balls, keeping them in the +air with perfect ease, dressing old words in new meanings, charming, +grotesque, pathetic, mingling mirth with tears, wit and wisdom, and +sometimes wickedness, logic and laughter. With a woman’s instinct, +knowing the sensitive nerves—just where to touch—hating arrogance of +place, the stupidity, of the solemn, snatching masks from priest and +king, knowing the springs of action and ambition’s ends, perfectly +familiar with the great world, the intimate of kings and their +favorites, sympathising with the oppressed and imprisoned, with the +unfortunate and poor, hating tyranny, despising superstition, and loving +liberty with all his heart. Such was Voltaire, writing <em class="italics">Œdipus</em> at +seventeen, <em class="italics">Irène</em> at eighty-three, and crowding between these two +tragedies the accomplishment of a thousand lives.”</p> +<p class="pnext">The Right Hon. John Morley testifies: “Voltaire was the very eye +of modern illumination. It was he who conveyed to his generation in a +multitude of forms the consciousness at once of the power and the rights +of human intelligence. Another might well have said of him what he +magnanimously said of his famous contemporary, Montesquieu, that +humanity had lost its title-deeds, and he had recovered them. The +four-score volumes which he wrote are the monument, as they were the +instrument, of a new renascence. They are the fruit and representation +of a spirit of encyclopaedic curiosity and productiveness. Hardly a page +of all these countless leaves is common form. Hardly a sentence is there +which did not come forth alive from Voltaire’s own mind, or which was +said because some one else had said it before. Voltaire was a stupendous +power, not only because his expression was incomparably lucid, or even +because his sight was exquisitely keen and clear, but because he saw +many new things, after which the spirits of others were unconsciously +groping and dumbly yearning. Nor was this all. Voltaire was ever in +the front and centre of the fight. His life was not a mere chapter in +a history of literature. He never counted truth a treasure to be +discreetly hidden in a napkin. He made it a perpetual war cry, and +emblazoned it on a banner that was many a time rent, but was never out +of the field.” We may fitly conclude with Browning’s incisive lines +in <em class="italics">The Two Poets of Croisie</em>:—</p> +<blockquote> +<div> +<div class="line-block outermost"> +<div class="line"><cite class="italics">“Ay, sharpest, shrewdest steel that ever stabbed</cite></div> +</div> +<div class="line-block outermost"> +<div class="line"><cite class="italics">To death Imposture through the armour joints.”</cite></div> +</div> +</div> +</blockquote> +</div> +<div class="level-2 section" id="selections-from-voltaires-works"> +<h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title"><a class="toc-backref" href="#id13">SELECTIONS FROM VOLTAIRE’S WORKS</a></h2> +</div> +<div class="level-2 section" id="history"> +<h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title"><a class="toc-backref" href="#id14">History</a></h2> +<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 3.00em">T</span><span class="dropspan">he</span> world is old, but history is of yesterday.—<em class="italics">Mélanges Historiques</em>.</p> +<p class="pnext">If you would put to profit the present time, one must not spend his life +in propagating ancient fables.—<em class="italics">Ibid</em>.</p> +<p class="pnext">A mature man who has serious business does not repeat the tales of his +nurse.—<em class="italics">Ibid</em>.</p> +<p class="pnext">Search through all nations and you will not find one whose history does +not begin with stories worthy of the Four Sons of Aymon and of Robert +the Devil.—<em class="italics">Politique et Legislation.</em></p> +<p class="pnext">Ancient histories are enigmas proposed by antiquity to posterity, which +understands them not—<em class="italics">Dict. Phil.</em> (Art. “Histoire”).</p> +<p class="pnext">A real fact is of more value than a hundred antitheses.—<em class="italics">Melanges +Historiques</em>.</p> +<p class="pnext">I have a droll idea. It is that only people who have written tragedies +can throw interest into our dry and barbarous history. There is +necessary in a history, as in a drama, exposition, knotty plot, and +<em class="italics">dénouement</em>, with agreeable episode.—<em class="italics">Corr. gén.</em> 1740.</p> +<p class="pnext">They have made but the history of the kings, not that of the nation. +It seems that during fourteen hundred years there were only kings, +ministers, and generals among the Gauls. But our morals, our laws, our +customs, our intelligence—are these then nothing?—<em class="italics">Corr</em>., 1740.</p> +<p class="pnext">Is fraud sanctified by being antiquated?—<em class="italics">Sottisier</em>.</p> +<p class="pnext">I have ever esteemed it charlatanry to paint, other than by facts, +public men with whom we have had no connection.—<em class="italics">Corr. gen.</em>, 1752.</p> +<p class="pnext">If one surveys the history of the world, one finds weaknesses punished, +but great crimes fortunate, and the world is a vast scene of brigandages +abandoned to fortune.—<em class="italics">Essai sur les Mœurs</em>, c. 191.</p> +<p class="pnext">Since the ancient Romans, I have known no nation enriched by +victories.—<em class="italics">Contant d' Orville</em>, i. 337.</p> +<p class="pnext">To buy peace from an enemy is to furnish him with the sinews of +war.—<em class="italics">Ibid</em>, p. 334.</p> +<p class="pnext">The grand art of surprising, killing, and robbing is a heroism of the +highest antiquity.—<em class="italics">Dial</em>. 24.</p> +<p class="pnext">Murderers are punished, unless they kill in grand company to the sound +of trumpets; that is the rule.—<em class="italics">Dict. Phil</em>. (Art. “Droit”).</p> +<p class="pnext">We formerly made war in order to eat; but in the long run, all the +admirable institutions degenerate.—<em class="italics">Dial.</em> 24.</p> +<p class="pnext">It suffices often that a mad Minister of State shall have bitten another +Minister for the rabies to be communicated in a few months to five +hundred thousand men.—<em class="italics">Ibid</em>.</p> +<p class="pnext">In this world there (are) only offensive wars; defensive ones are only +resistance to armed robbers.—<em class="italics">Ibid.</em></p> +<p class="pnext">Twenty volumes in folio never yet made a revolution. It is the portable +little shilling books that are to be feared. If the Gospel cost +twelve hundred sesterces, the Christian religion would never have been +established.—<em class="italics">Correspondence with D1 Alembert</em>, 1765.</p> +</div> +<div class="level-2 section" id="wars"> +<h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title"><a class="toc-backref" href="#id15">Wars</a></h2> +<p class="pfirst">C.: What, you do not admit there are just wars?</p> +<p class="pnext">A.: I have never known any of the kind; to me it appears contradictory +and impossible.</p> +<p class="pnext">C.: What! when the Pope Alexander VI. and his infamous son Borgia +pillaged the Roman States, strangled and poisoned the lords of the land, +while according them indulgences: was it not permissible to arm against +these monsters?</p> +<p class="pnext">A.: Do you not see that it was these monsters who made war? Those +who defended themselves from aggression but sustained it. There are +constantly only offensive wars in this world; the defensive is nothing +but resistance to armed robbers.</p> +<p class="pnext">C.: You mock us. Two princes dispute an heritage, their right is +litigious, their reasons equally plausible; it is necessary then that +war should decide, and this war is just on both sides.</p> +<p class="pnext">A.: It is you who mock. It is physically impossible that both are right, +and it is absurd and barbarous that the people should perish because one +of these two princes has reasoned badly. Let them fight together in +a closed field if they wish, but that an entire people should be +sacrificed to their interests, there is the horror.—<em class="italics">l' A.B.C.</em></p> +</div> +<div class="level-2 section" id="politics"> +<h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title"><a class="toc-backref" href="#id16">Politics</a></h2> +<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 3.00em">T</span><span class="dropspan">hey</span> have discovered in their fine politics the art of causing those to +die of hunger who, by cultivating the earth, give the means of life to +others.—<em class="italics">Sottisier.</em></p> +<p class="pnext">Society has been too long like a game of cards, where the rogues cheat +the dupes, while sensible people dare not warn the losers that they are +deceived.—<em class="italics">Questions sur les Miracles</em>.</p> +<p class="pnext">They have only inculcated belief in absurdities to men in order to +subdue them.—<em class="italics">Ibid.</em></p> +<p class="pnext">The most tolerable of all governments is doubtless the republican, +since that approaches the nearest towards natural equality.—<em class="italics">Idées +Républicaines.</em></p> +<p class="pnext">A Republican is ever more attached to his country than a subject to his, +for the same reason that one loves better his own possessions than those +of a master.—<em class="italics">Pensées sur le Gouvernement.</em></p> +<p class="pnext">Give too much power to anybody and be sure they will abuse it. Were +the monks of La Trappe spread throughout the world, let them confess +princesses, educate youth, preach and write, and in about ten years they +would be similar to the Jesuits, and it would be necessary to repress +them.—<em class="italics">Mél. Balance Egale</em>.</p> +<p class="pnext">What are politics beyond the art of lying a propos?—<em class="italics">Contant +D'Orville</em>.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Reasons of State” is a phrase invented to serve as excuse for +tyrants.—<em class="italics">Commentaire sur le traité des Délits.</em></p> +<p class="pnext">The best government is that where there are the fewest useless +men.—Dial. 4.</p> +<p class="pnext">Man is born free. The best government is that which most preserves to +each mortal this gift of nature.—<em class="italics">Histoire de Russie</em>.</p> +<p class="pnext">To be free, to have only equals, is the true life, the natural life of +man; all other is an unworthy artifice, a poor comedy, where one plays +the rôle of master, the other of slave, this one a parasite, and that +other a pander.—<em class="italics">Dial. 24.</em></p> +<p class="pnext">Why is liberty so rare? Because it is the best possession.—<em class="italics">Dict. +Phil</em>. (“Venise”).</p> +<p class="pnext">Those who say that all men are equal, say truth if they mean that men +have an equal right to liberty, to the property of their own goods, and +the protection of the laws. They are much deceived if they think that +men should be equal in their employments, since they are not so by their +faculties.—<em class="italics">Essai sur les Mœurs</em>, i.</p> +<p class="pnext">Despotism is the punishment of the bad conduct of men. If a community is +mastered by one man or by several, it is plainly because it has not +the courage and ability necessary for self-government.—<em class="italics">Idées +Republic-aines</em>, 1765.</p> +<p class="pnext">I do not give myself up to my fellow-citizens without reserve. I do not +give them the power to kill or to rob me by plurality of votes. I submit +to help them, and to be aided, to do justice, and to receive it. No +other agreement.—<em class="italics">Notes on Rousseau's “Social Contract”</em></p> +</div> +<div class="level-2 section" id="the-population-question"> +<h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title"><a class="toc-backref" href="#id17">The Population Question</a></h2> +<p class="pfirst"><em class="italics">The Man of Forty Crowns</em>: I have heard much talk of population. Were we +to take it into our heads to beget double the number of children we now +do; were our country doubly peopled, so that we had forty millions of +inhabitants instead of twenty, what would happen?</p> +<p class="pnext"><em class="italics">The Geometrician</em>: Each would have, instead of forty, but twenty crowns +to live upon; or the land would have to produce the double of what it +now does; or there would be the double of the nation’s industry, or of +gain from foreign countries; or one half of the nation sent to America; +or the one half of the nation should eat the other.—<em class="italics">The Man of Forty +Crowns.</em></p> +</div> +<div class="level-2 section" id="natures-way"> +<h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title"><a class="toc-backref" href="#id18">Nature’s Way</a></h2> +<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 3.00em">N</span><span class="dropspan">ature</span> cares very little for individuals. There are other insects which +do not live above one day, but of which the species is perpetual. Nature +resembles those great princes who reckon as nothing the loss of four +hundred thousand men, so they but accomplish their august designs.— +<em class="italics">The Man of Forty Crowns.</em></p> +</div> +<div class="level-2 section" id="prayer"> +<h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title"><a class="toc-backref" href="#id19">Prayer</a></h2> +<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 3.00em">W</span><span class="dropspan">hen</span> the man of forty crowns saw himself the father of a son, he began +to think himself a man of some weight in the state; he hoped to furnish, +at least, ten subjects to the king, who should all prove useful. He made +the best baskets in the world, and his wife was an excellent sempstress. +She was born in the neighborhood of a rich abbey of a hundred thousand +livres a year. Her husband asked me, one day, why those gentlemen, who +were so few in number, had swallowed so many of the forty crown lots? +“Are they more useful to their country than I am?”—“No, dear +neighbor.”—“Do they, like me, contribute at least to the population +of it?”—“No, not to appearance, at least.”—“Do they cultivate +the land? Do they defend the state when it is attacked?”—“No, they +pray to God for us.”—“Well, then, I will pray to God for them, and +let us go snacks.”—<em class="italics">The Man of Forty Crowns.</em></p> +</div> +<div class="level-2 section" id="doubt-and-speculation"> +<h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title"><a class="toc-backref" href="#id20">Doubt and Speculation</a></h2> +<p class="pfirst"><em class="italics">The Man of Forty Crowns</em>: I have sometimes a great mind to laugh at all +I have been told.</p> +<p class="pnext"><em class="italics">The Geometrician</em>: And a very good mind it is. I advise you to doubt of +everything, except that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two +right ones, and that triangles which have the same bases and height are +equal to one another; or like propositions, as, for example, that two +and two make four.</p> +<p class="pnext"><em class="italics">The Man of Forty Crowns</em>: Yes; I hold it very wise to doubt; but I am +curious since I have made my fortune and have leisure. I could wish, +when my will moves my arm or my leg, to discover the spring, for surely +there is one, by which my will moves them. I wonder sometimes why I can +lift or lower my eyes, yet cannot move my ears. I think—and I wish I +could know a little how—I mean,—there, to have my thought palpable to +me, to touch it, as it were. That would surely be very curious. I want +to find out whether I think from myself, or whether it is God that gives +me my ideas; whether my soul came into my body at six weeks, or at one +day old; how it lodged itself in my brain; whether I think much when in +a profound sleep, or in a lethargy. I torture my brains to know how one +body impels another. My sensations are no less a wonder to me; I find +something divine in them, and especially in pleasure. I have striven +sometimes to imagine a new sense, but could never arrive at it. +Geometricians know all these things; kindly be so good as to teach me.</p> +<p class="pnext"><em class="italics">The Geometrician</em>: Alas! We are as ignorant as you. Apply to the +Sorbonne.</p> +</div> +<div class="level-2 section" id="dr-pangloss-and-the-dervish"> +<h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title"><a class="toc-backref" href="#id21">Dr. Pangloss and the Dervish</a></h2> +<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 3.00em">I</span><span class="dropspan">n</span> the neighborhood lived a very famous dervish, who was deemed the best +philosopher in Turkey; him they went to consult. Pangloss was spokesman +and addressed him thus:—</p> +<p class="pnext">“Master, we come to beg you to tell us why so strange an animal as man +has been formed?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“Why do you trouble your head about it?” said the dervish; “is it +any business of yours?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“But, reverend father,” said Candide, “there is a horrible amount +of evil on the earth.”</p> +<p class="pnext">“What signifies it,” says the dervish, “whether there is evil or +good? When His Highness sends a ship to Egypt does he trouble whether +the rats aboard are comfortable or not?”</p> +<p class="pnext">“What is to be done, then?” says Pangloss.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Be silent,” answers the dervish.</p> +<p class="pnext">“I flattered myself,” replied Pangloss, “to have reasoned a little +with you on causes and effects, the best of possible worlds, the origin +of evil, the nature of the soul, and on pre-established harmony.”</p> +<p class="pnext">At these words the dervish shut the door in their faces.—<em class="italics">Candide</em>.</p> +</div> +<div class="level-2 section" id="motives-for-conduct"> +<h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title"><a class="toc-backref" href="#id22">Motives for Conduct</a></h2> +<p class="pfirst"><em class="italics">Countess</em>: Apropos, I have forgotten to ask your opinion upon a matter +which I read yesterday in a story by these good Mohammedans, which much +struck me. Hassan, son of Ali, being bathing, one of his slaves threw +over him by accident some boiling water. His servants wished to impale +the culprit. Hassan, instead, gave him twenty pieces of gold. “There +is,” said he, “a degree of glory in Paradise for those who repay +services, a greater one for those who forgive evil, and a still greater +one for those who recompense involuntary evil.” What think you of his +action and his speech?</p> +<p class="pnext"><em class="italics">The Count</em>: I recognise there my good Moslems of the first ages.</p> +<p class="pnext"><em class="italics">Abbé</em>: And I, my good Christians.</p> +<p class="pnext"><em class="italics">M. Fréret</em>: And I am sorry that the scalded Hassan, son of Ali, should +have given twenty pieces of gold in order to have glory in Paradise. I +do not like interested fine actions. I should have wished that Hassan +had been sufficiently virtuous and humane to have consoled the despair +of the slave without even dreaming of being placed in the third rank in +Paradise.—<em class="italics">Le Diner du Comte de Boulainvilliers</em>.</p> +</div> +<div class="level-2 section" id="self-love"> +<h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title"><a class="toc-backref" href="#id23">Self-Love</a></h2> +<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 3.00em">S</span><span class="dropspan">elf</span>-love and all its off-shoots are as necessary to man as the blood +which flows in his veins. Those who would take away his passions because +they are dangerous resemble those who would deplete a man of all his +blood lest he should fall into apoplexy.—<em class="italics">Traité de Metaphysique.</em></p> +</div> +<div class="level-2 section" id="go-from-your-village"> +<h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title"><a class="toc-backref" href="#id24">Go From Your Village</a></h2> +<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 3.00em">A</span><span class="dropspan"> stupid</span> said: “I must think like my <em class="italics">bonze</em> (priest), for all my +village agrees with him.” Go from your village, poor man, and you will +find ten thousand others who have each their <em class="italics">bonze</em>, and who all think +differently.</p> +</div> +<div class="level-2 section" id="religious-prejudices"> +<h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title"><a class="toc-backref" href="#id25">Religious Prejudices</a></h2> +<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 3.00em">I</span><span class="dropspan">f</span> your nurse has told you that Ceres presides over corn, or that Vishnu +or Sakyamuni became men several times, or that Odin awaits you in +his hall towards Jutland, or that Mohammed or some other travelled to +Heaven; if, moreover, your preceptor deepens in your brain what the +nurse, has engraved, you will hold it all your life. Should your +judgment rise against these prejudices, your neighbors, above all your +female neighbors, will cry out at the impiety and frighten you. Your +dervish, fearing the diminution of his revenue, may accuse you before +the Cadi, and this Cadi impale you if he can, since he desires to rule +over fools, believing fools obey better than others; and this will +endure till your neighbors, and the dervish, and the Cadi begin to +understand that folly is good for nothing and that persecution is +abominable.—<em class="italics">Dictionnaire Philosophique</em>.</p> +</div> +<div class="level-2 section" id="sacred-history"> +<h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title"><a class="toc-backref" href="#id26">Sacred History</a></h2> +<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 3.00em">I</span><span class="dropspan"> abandon</span> to the declaimer Bossuet the politics of the Kings of Judah +and Samaria, who only understood assassination, beginning with their +King David (who took to the trade of brigand to make himself king, and +assassinated Uriah when he was his master); and to wise Solomon, who +began by assassinating Adonijah, his own brother, at the foot of the +altar. I am tired of the absurd pedantry which consecrates the history +of such a people to the instruction of children.—<em class="italics">l'A.B.C.</em></p> +</div> +<div class="level-2 section" id="dupe-and-rogue"> +<h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title"><a class="toc-backref" href="#id27">Dupe And Rogue</a></h2> +<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 3.00em">A</span><span class="dropspan">re</span> there theologians of good faith? Yes, as there have been men who +believed themselves sorcerers.—<em class="italics">Le Diner du Comte de Boulainvilliers.</em></p> +<p class="pnext">Enthusiasm begins, roguery ends. It is with religion as with gambling. +One begins by being dupe, one ends by being rogue.—<em class="italics">Le Diner du Comte +de Boulainvilliers.</em></p> +<p class="pnext">Every country has its bonzes. But I recognise that there are as many of +them deceived as deceivers. The majority are those blinded by enthusiasm +in their youth, and who never recover sight; there are others who +have preserved one eye, and see all squintingly. These are the stupid +charlatans.—<em class="italics">Entre deux Chinois.</em></p> +</div> +<div class="level-2 section" id="delenda-est-carthago"> +<h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title"><a class="toc-backref" href="#id28">“Delenda Est Carthago”</a></h2> +<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 3.00em">T</span><span class="dropspan">heology</span> must absolutely be destroyed, just as judicial +astrology, magic, the divining rod, and the Star Chamber have been +destroyed.—<em class="italics">l’A.B.C.</em></p> +</div> +<div class="level-2 section" id="jesus-and-mohammed"> +<h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title"><a class="toc-backref" href="#id29">Jesus and Mohammed</a></h2> +<p class="pfirst"><em class="italics">L'Abbé</em>: How could Christianity have established itself so high if it +had nothing but fanaticism and fraud at its base?</p> +<p class="pnext"><em class="italics">Le Comte</em>: And how did Mohammedanism establish itself. Mohammed +at least could write and fight, and Jesus knew neither writing nor +self-defence. Mohammed had the courage of Alexander, with the mind of +Numa; and your Jesus, sweat, blood, and water. Mohammedanism has never +changed, while you have changed your religion twenty times. There is +more difference between it, as it is to-day, from what it was in +the first ages, than there is between your customs and those of King +Dagobert.—<em class="italics">Le Diner du Comte de Boulainvilliers.</em></p> +</div> +<div class="level-2 section" id="how-faiths-spread"> +<h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title"><a class="toc-backref" href="#id30">How Faiths Spread</a></h2> +<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 3.00em">B</span><span class="dropspan">ut</span> how do you think, then, that my religion became established? Like +all the rest. A man of strong imagination made himself followed by some +persons of weak imagination. The flock increased; fanaticism commences, +fraud achieves. A powerful man comes; he sees a crowd, ready bridled and +with a bit in its teeth; he mounts and leads it.—<em class="italics">Dial, et entr. ph., +Dialogue 19.</em></p> +</div> +<div class="level-2 section" id="superstition"> +<h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title"><a class="toc-backref" href="#id31">Superstition</a></h2> +<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 3.00em">T</span><span class="dropspan">he</span> superstitious man is to the knave what the slave is to the tyrant; +nay, further, the superstitious man is governed by the fanatic, and +becomes one.—<em class="italics">Dict. Phil. (Art. “Superstition”)</em>.</p> +</div> +<div class="level-2 section" id="the-bible"> +<h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title"><a class="toc-backref" href="#id32">The Bible</a></h2> +<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 3.00em">I</span><span class="dropspan">f</span> there are many difficulties we cannot solve, mysteries we cannot +comprehend, adventures which we cannot credit, prodigies which display +the credulity of the human mind, and contradictions which it is +impossible to reconcile, it is in order to exercise our faith and +to-humiliate our reason.—<em class="italics">Dict. Phil.</em> (Art. “Contradictions”).</p> +</div> +<div class="level-2 section" id="transubstantiation"> +<h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title"><a class="toc-backref" href="#id33">Transubstantiation</a></h2> +<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 3.00em">J</span><span class="dropspan">ulius</span> II. makes and eats God; but with armor on his back and helmet on +his head he wades in blood and carnage. Leo X. holds God in his body, +his mistresses in his arms, and the money extorted by the sale of +indulgences in his coffers, and those of his sister.—<em class="italics">Dict. Phil.</em> (Art. +“Eucharist”).</p> +</div> +<div class="level-2 section" id="dreams-and-ghosts"> +<h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title"><a class="toc-backref" href="#id34">Dreams and Ghosts</a></h2> +<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 3.00em">H</span><span class="dropspan">ave</span> you not found, like me, that they are the origin of the opinion so +generally diffused throughout antiquity touching spectres and manes? A +man deeply afflicted at the death of his wife, or his son, sees them in +his sleep; they have the same characteristics; he speaks to them, they +reply; they have certainly appeared to him. Other men have had similar +dreams. It is impossible, then, to doubt that the dead return; but it is +certain at the same time that these dead—whether buried or reduced to +ashes, or lost at sea—could not reappear in their bodies. It is, +then, their soul that has been seen. This soul must be extended, light, +impalpable, since in speaking with it we cannot embrace it. <em class="italics">Effugit +imago per levibus vetitis</em> (Virgil). It is moulded, designed upon the +body which it habited, since it perfectly resembles it. It is given the +name of shade or manes, and from all this a confused idea remains in the +head, which perpetuates itself all the better because nobody understands +it.—<em class="italics">Dict. Phil.</em> (Art. “Somnambulists and Dreams” ).</p> +</div> +<div class="level-2 section" id="mortifying-the-flesh"> +<h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title"><a class="toc-backref" href="#id35">Mortifying the Flesh</a></h2> +<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 3.00em">H</span><span class="dropspan">ad</span> vanity never any share in the public mortifications which attended +the eyes of the multitude? “I scourge myself, but ’tis to expiate +your faults; I go stark naked, but ’tis to reproach the luxury of your +garments; I feed on herbs and snails to correct your vice of gluttony; +I put an iron ring on my body to make you blush at your lewdness. +Reverence me as a man cherished by the gods, who can draw down their +favors on you. When accustomed to reverence, it will not be hard to obey +me; I become your master in the name of the gods; and if you transgress +my will in the least particular, I will have you impaled to appease the +wrath of heaven.” If the first fakirs did not use these words, they +probably had them engraven at the bottom of their hearts.—<em class="italics">Dict. Phil.</em> +(Art. “Austerities”).</p> +</div> +<div class="level-2 section" id="heaven"> +<h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title"><a class="toc-backref" href="#id36">Heaven</a></h2> +<p class="pfirst"><em class="italics">Kon.</em>: What is meant by “the heaven and the earth: mount up to +heaven, be worthy of heaven”?</p> +<p class="pnext"><em class="italics">Cu Su.</em>: ’Tis but stupidity, there is no heaven; each planet is +surrounded by its atmosphere, and rolls in space around its sun. Each +sun is the centre of several planets which travel continually around it. +There is no up nor down, ascension nor descent. You perceive that if the +inhabitants of the moon said that some one ascended to the earth, that +one must render himself worthy of earth, he would talk nonsense. We do +so likewise when we say we must be worthy of heaven; it is as if we said +we must be worthy of air, worthy of the constellation of the Dragon, +worthy of space.—<em class="italics">Catéchisme chinois.</em></p> +</div> +<div class="level-2 section" id="magic"> +<h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title"><a class="toc-backref" href="#id37">Magic</a></h2> +<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 3.00em">A</span><span class="dropspan">ll</span> the fathers of the Church, without exception, believed in the power +of magic. The Church always condemned magic, but she always believed +it; she excommunicated sorcerers, not as deluded madmen, but as men +who really had intercourse with devils.—<em class="italics">Dict. Phil.</em> (Art. +“Superstition”).</p> +</div> +<div class="level-2 section" id="detached-thoughts"> +<h2 class="level-2 pfirst section-title title"><a class="toc-backref" href="#id38">DETACHED THOUGHTS</a></h2> +<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 3.00em">T</span><span class="dropspan">here</span> are vices which it is better to ignore than to punish.</p> +<p class="pnext">One should not pronounce a word in public which an honest woman cannot +repeat.</p> +<p class="pnext">I know no great men but those who have rendered great services to +humanity.</p> +<p class="pnext">Honor has ever achieved greater things than interest.</p> +<p class="pnext">Occupation and work are the only resources against misfortune.</p> +<p class="pnext">My maxim is to fulfil all my duties to-day, because I am not sure of +living to-morrow.</p> +<p class="pnext">Most men die before having lived.</p> +<p class="pnext">It is necessary to combat nature and fortune till the last moment, and +to never despair till one is dead.</p> +<p class="pnext">Work without disputing; it is the only way to render life supportable.</p> +<p class="pnext">Passions are the winds that swell the sails of the ship. It is true, +they sometimes sink her, but without them she could not sail at all. The +bile makes us sick and choleric; but without the bile we could not +live. Everything in this world is dangerous, and yet everything in it is +necessary.</p> +<p class="pnext">We should introduce into our existence all imaginable modes, and open +every door of the minds to all kinds of knowledge, and all sorts of +feelings. So long as it does not all go in pell-mell, there is room +enough for all.</p> +<p class="pnext">It is the part of a man like you [Vauvenargues] to have preferences, but +no exclusions.</p> +<p class="pnext">The unwise value every word in an author of repute.</p> +<p class="pnext">Opinion governs the world, and philosophers in the long run govern +opinion.</p> +<p class="pnext">We enjoin mankind to conquer their passions. Make the experiment of only +depriving a man, in the habit of taking it, of his pinch of snuff.</p> +<p class="pnext">Do we not nearly all resemble the aged General of ninety years, who, +seeing some young fellows larking with the girls, said to them angrily: +“Gentlemen, is that the example which I give you?”</p> +<p class="pnext">Passions are diseases. To cure a man of a criminal intention, we should +give him not counsel, but a dose of physic.</p> +<p class="pnext">Women are like windmills, fixed while they revolve.</p> +<p class="pnext">I fear lest marriage may not rather be one of the seven deadly sins than +one of the seven sacraments.</p> +<p class="pnext">Divorce is probably of about the same date as marriage.</p> +<p class="pnext">I believe, however, that marriage is several weeks the elder.</p> +<p class="pnext">War is an epitome of all wickedness.</p> +<p class="pnext">The race of preachers inveigh against little vices, and pass over great +ones in silence. They never sermonise against war.</p> +<p class="pnext">What strange rage possesses some people to insist on our all being +miserable? They are like a quack, who would fain have us believe we are +ill, in order to sell us his pills. Keep thy drugs, my friend, and leave +me my health.</p> +<p class="pnext">Can one change their character? Yes, if one changes their body.</p> +<p class="pnext">Men are fools, but ecclesiastics are their leaders.</p> +<p class="pnext">I do not believe even eye-witnesses when they tell me things opposed to +common sense.</p> +<p class="pnext">The fanatics begin with humility and kindness, and have all ended with +pride and carnage.</p> +<p class="pnext">The Pope is an idol, whose hands are tied and whose feet are kissed.</p> +<p class="pnext">What an immense book might be composed on all the things once believed, +of which it is necessary to doubt.</p> +<p class="pnext">That which can be explained in many ways does not merit being explained +in any.</p> +<p class="pnext">Theology is in religion what poison is among food.</p> +<p class="pnext">Theology has only served to upset brains, and sometimes States.</p> +<p class="pnext">That which is an eternal subject of dispute is an eternal inutility.</p> +<p class="pnext">To pray is to flatter oneself that one will change entire nature with +words.</p> +<p class="pnext">Names of sects; names of error. Truth has no sect.</p> +<p class="pnext">No man is called an Euclidian.</p> +<p class="pnext">Henry IV., after his victories, his abjuration, and his coronation, +caused a cross to be erected in Rome, with the following inscription: +<em class="italics">In hoc signa vincis</em>. The wood of the cross was the carriage of a +cannon.</p> +<p class="pnext">A revolution has been accomplished in the human mind which nothing again +can ever arrest.</p> +<p class="pnext">It is never by metaphysics that you will succeed in delivering men from +error; you must prove the truth by facts.</p> +<p class="pnext">If fortune brings to pass one of a hundred events predicted by roguery, +all the others are forgotten, and that one remains as a pledge of the +favor of God, and as the proof of a prodigy.</p> +<p class="pnext">Every one is born with a nose and five fingers, and no one is born with +a knowledge of God. This may be deplorable or not, but it is certainly +the human condition.</p> +<p class="pnext">If God made us in his own image, we have well returned him the +compliment.</p> +<p class="pnext">Nature preserves the species, and cares but very little for individuals.</p> +<p class="pnext">To fast, to pray, a priest’s virtue; to succor, virtue of a citizen.</p> +<p class="pnext">When Bellerophon, mounted on Pegasus, wished to ascend to heaven to +discover the secrets of the gods, a fly stung Pegasus, and he was +thrown.</p> +<p class="pnext">“Why do you receive so many fools in your order?” was said to a +Jesuit. “We need saints.”</p> +<p class="pnext">Rousseau [J. B.] having shown his antagonist [Voltaire] his <em class="italics">Ode to +Posterity</em>, the latter said: “My friend, here is a letter which will +never reach its address.”</p> +<p class="pnext">If a tulip could speak, and said, “My vegetation and I are two +distinct beings, evidently joined together,” would you not mock at the +tulip?</p> +<p class="pnext">Why all these pleasantries on religion? They are never made on morality.</p> +<p class="pnext">A fanatic of good faith, always a dangerous kind of man.</p> +<p class="pnext">The consolation of life is to say out what one thinks.</p> +<hr class="docutils" /> +<!-- -*- encoding: utf-8 -*- --> +<div class="backmatter"> +</div> +<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 39124 ***</div> +</body> +</html> |