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diff --git a/40846-0.txt b/40846-0.txt index 424510c..fb3f6ca 100644 --- a/40846-0.txt +++ b/40846-0.txt @@ -1,25 +1,4 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Voltaire, by John Morley - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: Voltaire - -Author: John Morley - -Release Date: September 23, 2012 [EBook #40846] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VOLTAIRE *** - - - +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 40846 *** Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Turgut Dincer and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net @@ -9498,360 +9477,4 @@ _Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, _Edinburgh_. 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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: Voltaire - -Author: John Morley - -Release Date: September 23, 2012 [EBook #40846] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VOLTAIRE *** - - - - -Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Turgut Dincer and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - - - - - -</pre> - - - -<h1>VOLTAIRE</h1> - -<h4>BY</h4> - -<h3>JOHN MORLEY</h3> - -<h4>LONDON<br /> -MACMILLAN AND CO.<br /> -1886</h4> - -<h5><i>Printed by</i> R. & R. CLARK, <i>Edinburgh</i>.</h5> - -<h3>NOTE.</h3> - -<p><span class="smcap">The</span> edition to which the references are made in the following pages is -that published by Baudouin in 1826, in seventy-five volumes. This -edition is to be distinguished from that known as the first Baudouin -edition, published 1824-34, in ninety-seven volumes. The extent of the -difference between them, which is entirely in favour of the more -voluminous form, may be seen in M. Quérard’s <i>Bibliographie -Voltairienne</i> (p. 107). The large number of complete and elaborate -editions of Voltaire’s works, which were undertaken and executed in the -years between the overthrow of the Empire and the overthrow of the -Monarchy in 1830, is one of the most striking facts in the history of -books.</p> - -<p> 1872.</p> - -<hr /> - -<h2>CONTENTS.</h2> - -<table width="100%" summary="contents" border="0"> -<tr> -<td class="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER I.</td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="center2" colspan="2">PRELIMINARY.</td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="right" colspan="2">PAGE</td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Importance of Voltaire’s name</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Catholicism, Calvinism, and the Renaissance</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Voltairism the Renaissance of the eighteenth century</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_4">4</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">His power the result of his sincerity, penetration, and -courage</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_6">6</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Different tempers proper for different eras</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_11">11</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Voltaire’s freedom from intellectual cowardice</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_12">12</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">And from worldly indifference to truth and justice</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_13">13</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Reason and humanity only a single word to him</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_15">15</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">His position towards the purely literary life</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_17">17</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Enervating regrets that the movement had not a less violent leader</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_19">19</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">The share of chance in providing leaders</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_20">20</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Combination of favourable circumstances in Voltaire’s -case</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_22">22</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Occasion and necessity of the movement</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_24">24</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Age of Lewis XIV. entirely loyal to its own ideas</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_25">25</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Subsequent discredit of these ideas</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_26">26</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">vii</a></span>Preparation for abandonment of the old system by -Descartes and Bayle</td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_29">29</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Voltaire continues the work, not wholly to the disadvantage -of the old system</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_31">31</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">No ascetic element in the Voltairean revolt</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_33">33</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Why primarily an intellectual movement</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_34">34</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">The hostile memory of Christians for it</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_37">37</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Comte’s estimate of it</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_37">37</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">The estimate of culture</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_40">40</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Some pleas on the other side</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_40">40</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER II.</td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="center2" colspan="2">ENGLISH INFLUENCES.</td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Significance of the journey to England</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_44">44</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">His birth and youthful history</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_45">45</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Ninon de l’Enclos, Chaulieu, and the Regency</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_46">46</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Manner of life from 1716</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_49">49</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Affront from the Chevalier de Rohan</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_53">53</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Leaves France</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_54">54</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left">Had previously been no more than a vague <i>esprit fort</i></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_56">56</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Le Pour et le Contre</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_57">57</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Freethinking a reality in England</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_58">58</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Condorcet’s account of the effect of England upon Voltaire</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_59">59</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Social and political consequence of men of letters</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_59">59</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Evil effect of this in France</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_60">60</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Freedom of speech</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_61">61</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Newton’s discoveries</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_65">65</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Their true influence on Voltaire</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_67">67</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Locke</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_67">67</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Profound effect of Lockian common-sense on Voltaire</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_70">70</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Contrast between social condition of England and France</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_73">73</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">viii</a></span>Voltaire’s imperfect appreciation of the value and working -of a popular government</td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_76">76</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Confounds two distinct conceptions of civil liberty</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_79">79</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">A confusion shared by most of his countrymen</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_79">79</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">The Church of England</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_82">82</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">The Quakers</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_84">84</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Voltaire’s diligence in study of English literature</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_86">86</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">And in mastering one side of the deistical controversy</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_88">88</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Through the influence of the deists on Voltaire, the genius of Protestantism entered France</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_91">91</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Limited consistency of Voltaire’s philosophy</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_93">93</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">English deism contrasted with that of Leibnitz and with the atheism of D’Holbach</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_95">95</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER III.</td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="center2" colspan="2">LITERATURE.</td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Most just way of criticising character</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_98">98</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Some traits in Voltaire</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_99">99</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Acquaintance with the Marquise du Châtelet</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_101">101</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Her character</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_103">103</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Voltaire’s placableness</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_105">105</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">His money transactions</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_107">107</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">The life at Cirey</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_111">111</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">His attempts in physical science</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_116">116</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Literature his true calling</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_117">117</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Qualities of his style</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_119">119</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Significance of literature as a profession</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_125">125</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Voltaire’s dramatic art</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_126">126</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Not deliberately art with a purpose</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_126">126</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">His plays a prolongation of the tradition of the great age of Lewis XIV.</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_129">129</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">ix</a></span>His criticism on Hamlet</td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_132">132</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Merits of the French classic drama</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_134">134</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Voltaire compared with Corneille and Racine</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_136">136</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">His ideas of dramatic renovation</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_140">140</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">His Roman subjects</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_141">141</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">His enlargement of dramatic themes</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_143">143</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Failure in comedy</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_144">144</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Arising from want of deep humour</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_145">145</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">The Pucelle: offends two modern sentiments</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_147">147</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Its true significance</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_148">148</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Peculiarity of the licence of the eighteenth century</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_149">149</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Sophisms by which it was defended</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_149">149</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Contempt for the middle ages</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_152">152</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">The Henriade</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_153">153</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER IV.</td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="center2" colspan="2">BERLIN.</td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Death of Madame du Châtelet</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_158">158</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Voltaire and the court</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_158">158</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">He goes to Berlin</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_161">161</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Character of literary activity in Prussia</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_161">161</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">The two movements of which Voltaire and the king were chiefs</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_162">162</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Character of Frederick the Great</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_166">166</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Breaking up of the European state-system in 1740</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_171">171</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">The first shock in 1733</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_172">172</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Frederick raises international relations into the region of -real matter</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_174">174</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">The situation defined</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_175">175</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Two conceptions of progress</p></td> -<td class="right"> 177</td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">x</a></span>From which of them the result of the Seven Years’ War -is seen to be truly progressive</td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_180">180</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">The Jesuits</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_181">181</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Their repulse after the humiliation of Austria</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_182">182</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Frederick’s probable unconsciousness of the ultimate bearings -of his policy</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_184">184</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">His type of monarchy</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_186">186</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">He sprang doubly from the critical school</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_188">188</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Other statesmen affected by this school</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_188">188</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Injustice of stamping Voltaire’s influence as merely destructive</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_191">191</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Frederick the Great and France</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_193">193</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Voltaire’s life at Berlin</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_194">194</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Maupertuis</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_196">196</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Collision between him and Voltaire</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_198">198</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">The Diatribe of Doctor Akakia</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_199">199</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Voltaire’s departure from Berlin</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_201">201</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">The Frankfort episode</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_202">202</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Unfortunate revelations in the Hirschel affair</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_206">206</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Relations between Frederick and Voltaire henceforth</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_207">207</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Voltaire fears to return to Paris</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_210">210</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Geneva</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_211">211</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">The critical school not specially insensible to the picturesque</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_212">212</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Voltaire buys Ferney (1758)</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_215">215</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER V.</td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="center2" colspan="2">RELIGION.</td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="center2" colspan="2">(1) <i>Conditions of the Voltairean attack</i>.</td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Two elements underlying Voltaire’s enmity to Christianity</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_216">216</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left">Failure of Catholicism as a social force</td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_217">217</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">xi</a></span><p class="indent">Utility of Protestantism in softening the transition</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_218">218</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Compared with repression of free debate in France</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_219">219</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Voltaire did not assail modern theosophies</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_221">221</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">The good inextricably bound up with the bad in the old system</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_224">224</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Jesuits and Jansenists</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_225">225</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Voltaire declared the latter to be the worst foes</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_227">227</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Morellet’s Manual for Inquisitors</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_228">228</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">A reflex of the criminal jurisprudence of the time</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_229">229</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Cases of Rochette, Calas, and Sirven</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_229">229</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Of La Barre</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_230">230</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Fervour of Voltaire’s indignation</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_232">232</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Protests against cynical acquiescence</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_233">233</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Disappointment of the philosophers, and their courage</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_235">235</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">The reactionary fanaticism a proof of the truth of Voltaire’s -allegations</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_237">237</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Necessity of transforming spiritual basis of thought</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_238">238</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Voltaire’s abstention from the temporal sphere</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_239">239</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">His chief defect as leader of the attack</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_241">241</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Crippling his historic imagination</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_243">243</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">The just historic calm impossible, until Voltaire had -pressed a previous question</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_245">245</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="center2" colspan="2">(2) <i>His method</i>.</td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">His instruments purely literary and dialectical</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_248">248</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Leaves metaphysics of religion, and fastens on alleged -records</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_250">250</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">The other side fell back on the least worthy parts of their -system</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_251">251</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Hence the narrow and literal character of Voltaire’s -objections</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_252">252</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">His attack essentially the attack of the English deists</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_255">255</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">xii</a></span>Rationalistic questions in scriptural and ecclesiastical -records</td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_257">257</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">In doctrine</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_258">258</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Argument from comparison with other myths</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_259">259</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">His neglect of primitive religions</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_260">260</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">His conviction that monotheism is the first religious form</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_261">261</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Difficulties which he thus passed over</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_264">264</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Hume’s view</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_266">266</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Voltaire did not assail the general ideas of Christianity</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_267">267</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Such as the idea of evil inherent in matter</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_270">270</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">And the idea of a deity as then conceived</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_271">271</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Hence the acerbity of the debate</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_273">273</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">And the want of permanence in Voltaire’s writings compared -with Bossuet or Pascal</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_274">274</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">His criticism on Dante</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_275">275</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="center2" colspan="2">(3) <i>His approximation to a solution</i>.</td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Voltairean deism</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_276">276</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Never accepted by the mass of men</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_278">278</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Nor is it likely to be accepted by them</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_279">279</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Voltaire’s imperfect adherence to the deistical idea</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_280">280</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Reasons for this</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_282">282</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Does not accept belief in the immortality of the soul</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_286">286</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Asserts less than Rousseau, and denies less than Diderot</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_287">287</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">A popular movement begun by Bayle’s Dictionary</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_288">288</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Compromising method of Rousseau</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_290">290</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Voltaire’s view of an atheistical society</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_291">291</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">His belief in the social sufficiency of an analytic spirit</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_292">292</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Synthesis necessary, but more than one is possible</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_293">293</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="center" colspan="2"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii">xiii</a></span>CHAPTER VI.</td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="center2" colspan="2">HISTORY.</td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Extraordinary activity in historical composition in the -eighteenth century</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_295">295</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Explanation of it</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_296">296</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Circumstances under which Voltaire thought about the philosophy of history</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_297">297</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">The three historical styles</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_299">299</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Voltaire’s histories of two kinds</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_301">301</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Rousseau’s disregard for history</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_302">302</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Voltaire’s acute sense</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_303">303</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">His diligence in seeking authentic materials</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_305">305</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Throws persons and personal interests into the second place</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_307">307</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Changed view of the true subject matter of history</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_308">308</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">War always an object of Voltaire’s antipathy</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_311">311</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">His distrust of diplomacy</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_315">315</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Bossuet’s Discourse on Universal History</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_316">316</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Introduction to the Essay on Manners</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_318">318</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Irrational disparagement of the Jews</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_319">319</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Panegyric on the Emperor Julian</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_320">320</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">False view of the history of the church</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_322">322</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Avoids the error of expressing barbarous activity in terms of civilisation</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_323">323</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Real merit of Voltaire’s panorama</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_325">325</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">He was not alive to the necessity of scientifically studying -the conditions of the social union</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_326">326</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER VII.</td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="center2" colspan="2">FERNEY.</td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">His life at Ferney</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_329">329</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Madame Denis</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_329">329</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xiv" id="Page_xiv">xiv</a></span>His vast correspondence</td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_333">333</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Consulted by Vauvenargues, Chastellux, Turgot, and others</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_334">334</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Complaisance of his letters</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_336">336</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Sophistical defence of the practice of denying authorship</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_339">339</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Voltaire’s just alarm for his own safety</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_340">340</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">His Easter communion of 1768</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_341">341</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Further proceedings with the Bishop of Annecy</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_342">342</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Voltaire made temporal father of the Capucins of Gex</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_344">344</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Voltaire’s influence on Rousseau</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_345">345</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Difference between their respective schools</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_347">347</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Their rivalry represents the social dead-lock of the time</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_348">348</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Voltaire the more far-sighted of the two</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_350">350</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Two signal effects of Rousseau’s teaching</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_352">352</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Diderot and the Encyclopædia</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_354">354</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Voltaire’s constant efforts to secure redress for the victims -of wrong</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_357">357</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Calas, Sirven, La Barre</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_357">357</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Count Lally</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_358">358</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Admiral Byng</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_359">359</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">His interest in the pretended liberation of Greece</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_360">360</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">In the partition of Poland</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_361">361</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">In the accession of Turgot to power</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_362">362</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Visit to Paris and death</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_363">363</a></td> -</tr> -</table> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xv" id="Page_xv">xv</a></span></p> - -<p>τὰ μὲν γὰρ σωφρόνων ἤθη σφόδρα μὲν εὐλαβῆ καὶ δίκαια καὶ σωτήρια, -δριμύτητος δὲ καί τινος ἰταμότητος ὀξείας καὶ πρακτικῆς ἐνδεῖται.... τὰ -δ’ ἀνδρεῖά γε αὖ πρὸς μὲν τὸ δίκαιον καὶ εὐλαβὲς ἐκείνων ἐπιδεέστερα, -τὸ δ’ ἐν ταῖς πράξεσι διαφερόντως ἴσχει. πάντα δὲ καλῶς γίγνεσθαι τὰ περὶ -τὰς πόλεις, τούτοιν μὴ παραγενομένοιν ἀμφοῖν, ἀδύνατον.—<i>Politicus</i>, 311 <span class="smcap lower">A</span>. -</p> -<p> -πότερον τοὺς ἀνδρείους θαῤῥαλέους λέγεις, ἢ ἄλλο τι; -Καὶ ἴτας γε, ἔφη, ἐφ’ ἃ οἱ πολλοὶ φοβοῦντας ἰέvαι.—<i>Protagoras</i>, 349 <span class="smcap lower">E</span>.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">1</a></span></p> - -<h2>CHAPTER I.</h2> - -<h5>PRELIMINARY.</h5> - -<p><span class="smcap">When</span> the right sense of historical proportion is more fully developed in -men’s minds, the name of Voltaire will stand out like the names of the -great decisive movements in the European advance, like the Revival of -Learning, or the Reformation. The existence, character, and career of -this extraordinary person constituted in themselves a new and prodigious -era. The peculiarities of his individual genius changed the mind and -spiritual conformation of France, and in a less degree of the whole of -the West, with as far-spreading and invincible an effect as if the work -had been wholly done, as it was actually aided, by the sweep of -deep-lying collective forces. A new type of belief, and of its shadow, -disbelief, was stamped by the impression of his character and work into -the intelligence and feeling of his own and the following times. We may -think of Voltairism in France somewhat as we think of Catholicism or the -Renaissance or Calvinism. It was one of the cardinal liberations<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">2</a></span> of the -growing race, one of the emphatic manifestations of some portion of the -minds of men, which an immediately foregoing system and creed had either -ignored or outraged.</p> - -<p>Christianity originally and generically at once awoke and satisfied a -spiritual craving for a higher, purer, less torn and fragmentary being, -than is permitted to sons of men on the troubled and corrupt earth. It -disclosed to them a gracious, benevolent, and all-powerful being, who -would one day redress all wrongs and recompense all pain, and who asked -no more from them meanwhile than that they should prove their love of -him whom they had not seen, by love of their brothers whom they had -seen. Its great glory was to have raised the moral dignity and -self-respect of the many to a level which had hitherto been reached only -by a few. Calvin, again, like some stern and austere step-son of the -Christian God, jealous of the divine benignity and abused -open-handedness of his father’s house, with word of merciless power set -free all those souls that were more anxious to look the tremendous facts -of necessity and evil and punishment full in the face, than to reconcile -them with any theory of the infinite mercy and loving-kindness of a -supreme creator. Men who had been enervated or helplessly perplexed by a -creed that had sunk into ignoble optimism and self-indulgence, became -conscious of new fibre in their moral structure, when they realised life -as a long wrestling with unseen and invincible forces of grace, -election, and fore-destiny,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">3</a></span> the agencies of a being whose ways and -dealings, whose contradictory attributes of unjust justice and loving -vindictiveness, it was not for man, who is a worm and the son of a worm, -to reconcile with the puny logic of human words, or the shallow -consistency of human ideas. Catholicism was a movement of mysticism, and -so in darker regions was the Calvinism which in so many important -societies displaced it. Each did much to raise the measure of worth and -purify the spiritual self-respect of mankind, and each also discouraged -and depressed the liberal play of intelligence, the cheerful energizing -of reason, the bright and many-sided workings of fancy and imagination. -Human nature, happily for us, ever presses against this system or that, -and forces ways of escape for itself into freedom and light. The -scientific reason urgently seeks instruments and a voice; the creative -imagination unconsciously takes form to itself in manifold ways, of all -of which the emotions can give good account to the understanding. Hence -the glorious suffusion of light which the ardent desire of men brought -over the face of Europe in the latter half of the fifteenth century. -Before Luther and Calvin in their separate ways brought into splendid -prominence their new ideas of moral order, more than two generations of -men had almost ceased to care whether there be any moral order or not, -and had plunged with the delight of enchantment among ideas of grace and -beauty, whose forms were old on the earth, but which were full of -seemingly inexhaustible<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">4</a></span> novelty and freshness to men, who had once -begun to receive and to understand all the ever-living gifts of Grecian -art and architecture and letters. If the Reformation, the great revival -of northern Europe, was the enfranchisement of the individual from -bondage to a collective religious tradition that had lost its virtue, -the Renaissance, the earlier revival of southern Europe, was the -admission to participate in the noblest collective tradition of free -intellect which the achievements of the race could then hand down.</p> - -<p>Voltairism may stand for the name of the Renaissance of the eighteenth -century, for that name takes in all the serious haltings and -shortcomings of this strange movement, as well as all its terrible fire, -swiftness, sincerity, and strength. The rays from Voltaire’s burning and -far-shining spirit no sooner struck upon the genius of the time, seated -dark and dead like the black stone of Memnon’s statue, than the clang of -the breaking chord was heard through Europe, and men awoke in new day -and more spacious air. The sentimentalist has proclaimed him a mere -mocker. To the critic of the schools, ever ready with compendious label, -he is the revolutionary destructive. To each alike of the countless -orthodox sects his name is the symbol for the prevailing of the gates of -hell. Erudition figures him as shallow and a trifler; culture condemns -him for pushing his hatred of spiritual falsehood much too seriously; -Christian charity feels constrained to unmask a demon from the depths of -the pit. The plain men of the earth, who are apt to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">5</a></span> measure the merits -of a philosopher by the strength of his sympathy with existing sources -of comfort, would generally approve the saying of Dr. Johnson, that he -would sooner sign a sentence for Rousseau’s transportation than that of -any felon who had gone from the Old Bailey these many years, and that -the difference between him and Voltaire was so slight, that ‘it would be -difficult to settle the proportion of iniquity between them.’ Those of -all schools and professions who have the temperament which mistakes -strong expression for strong judgment, and violent phrase for grounded -conviction, have been stimulated by antipathy against Voltaire to a -degree that in any of them with latent turns for humour must now and -then have even stirred a kind of reacting sympathy. The rank vocabulary -of malice and hate, that noisome fringe of the history of opinion, has -received many of its most fulminant terms from critics of Voltaire, -along with some from Voltaire himself, who unwisely did not always -refuse to follow an adversary’s bad example.</p> - -<p>Yet Voltaire was the very eye of eighteenth-century 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 fourscore volumes which he -wrote are the monument, as they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">6</a></span> were in some sort 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. His works as much as those of any man -that ever lived and thought are truly his own. It is not given, we all -know, even to the most original and daring of leaders to be without -precursors, and Voltaire’s march was prepared for him before he was -born, as it is for all mortals. Yet he impressed on all he said, on good -words and bad alike, a marked autochthonic quality, as of the -self-raised spontaneous products of some miraculous soil, from which -prodigies and portents spring. Many of his ideas were in the air, and -did not belong to him peculiarly; but so strangely rapid and perfect was -his assimilation of them, so vigorous and minutely penetrative was the -quality of his understanding, so firm and independent his initiative, -that even these were instantly stamped with the express image of his -personality. In a word, Voltaire’s work from first to last was alert -with unquenchable life. Some of it, much of it, has ceased to be alive -for us now in all that belongs to its deeper significance, yet we -recognise that none of it was ever the dreary still-birth of a mind of -hearsays. There is no mechanical transmission of untested bits of -current coin. In the realm of mere letters, Voltaire is one of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">7</a></span> the -little band of great monarchs, and in style he remains of the supreme -potentates. But literary variety and perfection, however admirable, like -all purely literary qualities, are a fragile and secondary good which -the world is very willing to let die, where it has not been truly -begotten and engendered of living forces.</p> - -<p>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. -Fontenelle was both brilliant and far-sighted, but he was cold, and one -of those who love ease and a safe hearth, and carefully shun the din, -turmoil, and danger, of the great battle. 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.</p> - -<p>This is the temper which, when the times are auspicious, and the -fortunes of the fight do not hurry the combatant to dungeon or stake, -raises him into a force instead of leaving him the empty shadow of a -literary name. There is something in our nature which leads men to -listen coolly to the most eager hints and pregnant innuendoes of -scepticism, on the lips of teachers who still in their own persons keep<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">8</a></span> -adroitly away from the fiery darts of the officially orthodox. The same -something, perhaps a moral relish for veritable proofs of honesty, -perhaps a quality of animal temperament, drives men to grasp even a -crudity with fervour, when they see it wielded like a battle-axe against -spiritual oppression. A man is always so much more than his words, as we -feel every day of our lives; what he says has its momentum indefinitely -multiplied, or reduced to nullity, by the impression that the hearer for -good reasons or bad happens to have formed of the spirit and moral size -of the speaker. There are things enough to be said of Voltaire’s moral -size, and no attempt is made in these pages to dissemble in how much he -was condemnable. It is at least certain that he hated tyranny, that he -refused to lay up his hatred privily in his heart, and insisted on -giving his abhorrence a voice, and tempering for his just rage a fine -sword, very fatal to those who laid burdens too hard to be borne upon -the conscience and life of men. Voltaire’s contemporaries felt this. -They were stirred to the quick by the sight and sound and thorough -directness of those ringing blows. The strange and sinister method of -assault upon religion which we of a later day watch with wondering eyes, -and which consists in wearing the shield and device of a faith, and -industriously shouting the cry of a church, the more effectually to -reduce the faith to a vague futility, and its outward ordering to a -piece of ingeniously reticulated pretence; this method of attack might -make even the champions<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">9</a></span> of prevailing beliefs long for the shrewd -thrusts, the flashing scorn, the relentless fire, the downright -grapples, with which the hated Voltaire pushed on his work of ‘crushing -the Infamous.’ If he was bitter, he was still direct. If he was often a -mocker in form, he was always serious in meaning and laborious in -matter. If he was unflinching against theology, he always paid religion -respect enough to treat it as the most important of all subjects. The -contest was real, and not our present pantomimic stage-play, in which -muffled phantoms of debate are made to gesticulate inexpressible things -in portentously significant silence. The battle was demoralized by its -virulence. True; but is this worse than to have it demoralized by -cowardice of heart and understanding, when each controversial -man-at-arms is eager to have it thought that he wears the colours of the -other side, when the theologian would fain pass for rationalist, and the -free-thinker for a person with his own orthodoxies if you only knew -them, and when philosophic candour and intelligence are supposed to have -hit their final climax in the doctrine that everything is both true and -false at the same time?</p> - -<p>A man like Montaigne, as has been said, could slumber tranquilly on the -pillow of doubt, content to live his life, leaving many questions open. -Such men’s meditations, when composed in the genial literary form proper -to them, are naturally the delight of people with whom the world goes -fairly well materially, who have sensibility enough to be aware<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">10</a></span> that -there are unseen lands of knowledge and truth beyond the present, and -destinies beyond their own; but whose sensibility is not intense and -ardent enough to make wholly unendurable to them unscrutinizing -acquiescence in half-thoughts and faint guesses, and pale unshapen -embryos of social sympathy. There are conjunctures when this mingling of -apprehension and ease, of aspiration and content, of timorous adventure -and reflective indolence, is the natural mood of even high natures. The -great tides of circumstance swell so tardily, that whole generations -that might have produced their share of skilful and intrepid mariners, -wait in vain for the full flood on which the race is borne to new -shores.</p> - -<p>Nor assuredly is it well for men that every age should mark either a -revolution, or the slow inward agitation that prepares the revolution, -or that doubters and destroyers should divide between them all -admiration and gratitude and sympathy. The violent activity of a century -of great change may end in a victory, but it is always a sacrifice. The -victory may more than recompense its cost. The sacrifice may repay -itself a thousand-fold. It does not always repay itself, as the too -neglected list of good causes lost, and noble effort wasted, so -abundantly shows. Nor in any case is sacrifice ever an end. Faith and -order and steady strong movement are the conditions which everything -wise is directed to perfect and consolidate. But for this process of -perfection we need first the meditative, doubting, critical type, and -next,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">11</a></span> the dogmatic destroyer. ‘In counsel it is good to see dangers,’ -Bacon said; ‘and in execution not to see them, except they be very -great,’ There are, as history instructs us, eras of counsel and eras of -execution; the hour when those do best who walk most warily, feeling -with patience and sagacity and painstaking for the new ways, and then -the hour of march and stout-hearted engagement.</p> - -<p>Voltaire, if he adroitly or sagely preserved his buckler, felt that the -day was come to throw away the scabbard; that it was time to trust -firmly to the free understanding of men for guidance in the voyage after -truth, and to the instincts of uncorrupted benevolence in men for the -upholding of social justice. His was one of the robust and incisive -constitutions, to which doubt figures as a sickness, and where -intellectual apprehension is an impossibility. The old-fashioned -nomenclature puts him down among sceptics, because those who had the -official right to affix these labels could think of no more contemptuous -name, and could not suppose the most audacious soul capable of advancing -even under the leadership of Satan himself beyond a stray doubt or so. -He had perhaps as little of the sceptic in his constitution as Bossuet -or Butler, and was much less capable of becoming one than De Maistre or -Paley. This was a prime secret of his power, for the mere critic and -propounder of unanswered doubts never leads more than a handful of men -after him. Voltaire boldly put the great question, and he boldly -answered it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">12</a></span> He asked whether the sacred records were historically -true, the Christian doctrine divinely inspired and spiritually -exhaustive, and the Christian church a holy and beneficent organization. -He answered these questions for himself and for others beyond -possibility of misconception. The records were saturated with fable and -absurdity, the doctrine imperfect at its best, and a dark and tyrannical -superstition at its worst, and the church was the arch-curse and infamy. -Say what we will of these answers, they were free from any taint of -scepticism. Our lofty new idea of rational freedom as freedom from -conviction, and of emancipation of understanding as emancipation from -the duty of settling whether important propositions are true or false, -had not dawned on Voltaire.</p> - -<p>He had just as little part or lot in the complaisant spirit of the man -of the world, who from the depths of his mediocrity and ease presumes to -promulgate the law of progress, and as dictator to fix its speed. Who -does not know this temper of the man of the world, that worst enemy of -the world? His inexhaustible patience of abuses that only torment -others; his apologetic word for beliefs that may perhaps not be so -precisely true as one might wish, and institutions that are not -altogether so useful as some might think possible; his cordiality -towards progress and improvement in a general way, and his coldness or -antipathy to each progressive proposal in particular; his pygmy hope -that life will one day become somewhat better, punily shivering by the -side of his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">13</a></span> gigantic conviction that it might well be infinitely worse. -To Voltaire, far different from this, an irrational prejudice was not -the object of a polite coldness, but a real evil to be combated and -overthrown at every hazard. Cruelty was not to him as a disagreeable -dream of the imagination, from thought of which he could save himself by -arousing to sense of his own comfort, but a vivid flame burning into his -thoughts and destroying peace. Wrong-doing and injustice were not simple -words on his lips; they went as knives to the heart; he suffered with -the victim, and consumed with an active rage against the oppressor.</p> - -<p>Nor was the coarse cruelty of the inquisitor or the politician, who -wrought iniquity by aid of the arm of flesh, the only kind of injury to -the world which stirred his passion. 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 usage. The system which threw obstacles into the way of -publishing an exposition of Newton’s discoveries and ideas was as -mischievous and hateful to him, as the darker bigotry which broke Calas -on the wheel because he was a Protestant. To check the energetic -discovery and wide propagation of scientific truth, he rightly held to -be at least as destructive in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">14</a></span> long run to the common weal, as the -unjust extermination of human life; for it is the possession of ever -more and more truth that makes life ever better worth having and better -worth preserving. And must we not admit that he was right, and that no -age nor school of men nor individual has ever been mortally afraid, as -every good man is afraid, of inflicting any wrong on his fellow, and has -not also been afraid of extinguishing a single ray from the great sun of -knowledge?</p> - -<p>It is well enough to say that in unscientific ages, like the twelfth -century for instance, the burner of books and the tormentor of those who -wrote them, did not feel either that he was doing an injustice to man or -a mischief to truth. It is hard to deny that St. Bernard was a good man, -nor is it needful that we should deny it; for good motives, owing to our -great blindness and slow enlightenment, have made grievous havoc in the -world. But the conception of justice towards heretics did not exist, any -more than it existed in the mind of a low type of white man towards a -black man, or than the conception of pity exists in the mind of a -sportsman towards his prey. These were ages of social cruelty, as they -were ages of intellectual repression. The debt of each to his neighbour -was as little felt, as the debt of all to the common faculties and -intelligence. Men owed nothing to man, but everything to the gods. All -the social feeling and intellectual effort and human energizing which -had made the high idea of God possible and real, seemed to have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">15</a></span> -expended themselves in a creation which instantly swallowed them up and -obliterated their recollection. The intelligence which by its active -straining upwards to the light had opened the way for the one God, -became itself forthwith identified with the chief of the devils. He who -used his reason was the child of this demon. Where it is a duty to -worship the sun, it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of -heat. The times when such was the universal idea of the rights of the -understanding, were also the times when human life was cheapest, and the -tiny bowl of a man’s happiness was spilt upon the ground with least -compunction.</p> - -<p>The companionship between these two ideas of disrespect for the rights -of man, and disrespect for reason or the highest distinction of man, has -been an inseparable companionship. The converse is unhappily only true -with a modification, for there have been too many men with an honourable -respect for a demonstration and a proper hospitality towards a -probability, who look on the rights of man, without disrespect indeed, -but also without fervour. To Voltaire reason and humanity were but a -single word, and love of truth and passion for justice but one emotion. -None of the famous men who have fought that they themselves might think -freely and speak truly, have ever seen more clearly that the fundamental -aim of the contest was that others might live happily. Who has not been -touched by that admirable word of his, of the three years in which he -laboured without remission<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">16</a></span> for justice to the widow and descendants of -Calas: ‘<i>During that time not a smile escaped me without my reproaching -myself for it, as for a crime</i>.’ Or by his sincere avowal that of all -the words of enthusiasm and admiration which were so prodigally bestowed -upon him on the occasion of his last famous visit to Paris in 1778, none -went to his heart like that of a woman of the people, who in reply to -one asking the name of him whom the crowd followed, gave answer, ‘<i>Do -you not know that he is the preserver of the Calas?</i>’</p> - -<p>The same kind of feeling, though manifested in ways of much less -unequivocal nobleness, was at the bottom of his many efforts to make -himself of consequence in important political business. We know how many -contemptuous sarcasms have been inspired by his anxiety at various times -to perform diplomatic feats of intervention between the French -government and Frederick the Second. In 1742, after his visit to the -Prussian king at Aix-la-Chapelle, he is supposed to have hinted to -Cardinal Fleury that to have written epic and drama does not disqualify -a man for serving his king and country on the busy fields of affairs. -The following year, after Fleury’s death, when French fortunes in the -war of the Austrian succession were near their lowest, Voltaire’s own -idea that he might be useful from his intimacy with Frederick, seems to -have been shared by Amelot, the secretary of state, and at all events he -aspired to do some sort of active, if radically futile, diplomatic work. -In later times when the tide had turned, and Frederick’s star was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">17</a></span> -clouded over with disaster, we again find Voltaire the eager -intermediary with Choiseul, pleasantly comparing himself to the mouse of -the fable, busily striving to free the lion from the meshes of the -hunter’s net.</p> - -<p>The man of letters, usually unable to conceive loftier services to -mankind or more attractive aims to persons of capacity than the -composition of books, has treated these pretensions of Voltaire with a -supercilious kind of censure, which teaches us nothing about Voltaire, -while it implies a particularly shallow idea alike of the position of -the mere literary life in the scale of things, and of the conditions -under which the best literary work is done. 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 of his to come into -the closest contact with the practical affairs of the world. He who has -never left the life of a recluse, drawing an income from the funds and -living in a remote garden, constructing past, present, and future, out -of his own consciousness, is not qualified either to lead mankind -safely, or to think on the course of human affairs correctly. Every page -of Voltaire has the bracing air of the life of the world in it, and the -instinct which led him to seek<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">18</a></span> the society of the conspicuous actors on -the great scene was essentially a right one. The book-writer takes good -advantage of his opportunity to assure men expressly or by implication -that he is their true king, and that the sacred bard is a mightier man -than his hero. Voltaire knew better. Though himself perhaps the most -puissant man of letters that ever lived, he rated literature as it ought -to be rated below action, not because written speech is less of a force, -but because the speculation and criticism of the literature that -substantially influences the world, make far less demand than the actual -conduct of great affairs on qualities which are not rare in detail, but -are amazingly rare in combination,—on temper, foresight, solidity, -daring,—on strength, in a word, strength of intelligence and strength -of character. Gibbon rightly amended his phrase, when he described -Boethius not as stooping, but rather as rising, from his life of placid -meditation to an active share in the imperial business. That he held -this sound opinion is quite as plausible an explanation of Voltaire’s -anxiety to know persons of station and importance, as the current theory -that he was of sycophantic nature. Why, he asks, are the ancient -historians so full of light? ‘It is because the writer had to do with -public business; it is because he could be magistrate, priest, soldier; -and because if he could not rise to the highest functions of the state, -he had at least to make himself worthy of them. I admit,’ he concludes, -‘that we must not expect such an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">19</a></span> advantage with us, for our own -constitution happens to be against it;’ but he was deeply sensible what -an advantage it was that they thus lost.<a name="FNanchor_1" id="FNanchor_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">1</a></p> - -<p>In short, on all sides, whatever men do and think was real and alive to -Voltaire. Whatever had the quality of interesting any imaginable -temperament, had the quality of interesting him. There was no subject -which any set of men have ever cared about, which, if he once had -mention of it, Voltaire did not care about likewise. And it was just -because he was so thoroughly alive himself, that he filled the whole era -with life. The more closely one studies the various movements of that -time, the more clear it becomes that, if he was not the original centre -and first fountain of them all, at any rate he made many channels ready -and gave the sign. He was the initial principle of fermentation -throughout that vast commotion. We may deplore, if we think fit, as -Erasmus deplored in the case of Luther, that the great change was not -allowed to work itself out slowly, calmly, and without violence and -disruption. These graceful regrets are powerless, and on the whole they -are very enervating. Let us make our account with the actual, rather -than seek excuses for self-indulgence in pensive preference of something -that might have been. Practically in these great circles of affairs, -what only might have been is as though it could not be; and to know this -may well suffice for us. It is not in human power to choose the kind of -men who rise from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">20</a></span> -time to time to the supreme control of momentous changes. The force -which decides this immensely important matter is as though it were -chance. We cannot decisively pronounce any circumstance whatever an -accident, yet history abounds with circumstances which in our present -ignorance of the causes of things are as if they were accidents. -In this respect history is neither better nor worse than the latest -explanation of the origin and order of the world of organised matter. -Here too we are landed in the final resort at what is neither more nor -less than an accident. Natural selection, or the survival of the fittest -in the universal struggle for existence, is now held by the most -competent inquirers to be the principal method to which we owe the -extinction, preservation, and distribution of organic forms on the -earth. But the appearance both of the forms that conquer and of those -that perish still remains a secret, and to science an accident and a -secret are virtually and provisionally the same thing. In a word, there -is an unknown element at the bottom of the varieties of creation, -whether we agree to call that element a volition of a supernatural -being, or an undiscovered set of facts in embryology. So in history the -Roman or Italo-Hellenic empire, rising when it did, was the salvation of -the West, and yet the appearance at the moment when anarchy threatened -rapidly to dissolve the Roman state, of a man with the power of -conceiving the best design for the new structure, seems to partake as -much of the nature of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">21</a></span> chance, as the non-appearance of men with similar -vision and power in equally momentous crises, earlier and later. The -rise of a great constructive chief like Charlemagne in the eighth -century can hardly be enough to persuade us that the occasion invariably -brings the leader whom its conditions require, when we remember that as -concerns their demands the conditions of the end of the eighth century -were not radically different from those of the beginning of the sixth, -yet that in the earlier epoch there arose no successor to continue the -work of Theodoric. We have only to examine the origin and fundamental -circumstances of the types of civilisation which rule western -communities and guide their advance, to discern in those original -circumstances a something inscrutable, a certain element of what is as -though it were fortuitous. No science can as yet tell us how such a -variation from previously existing creatures as man had its origin; nor, -any more than this, can history explain the law by which the most -striking variations in intellectual and spiritual quality within the -human order have had their origin. The appearance of the one as of the -other is a fact which cannot be further resolved. It is hard to think in -imagination of the globe as unpeopled by man, or peopled, as it may at -some remote day come to be, by beings of capacity superior enough to -extinguish man. It is hard also to think of the scene which western -Europe and all the vast space which the light of western Europe -irradiates, might have offered at this -<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">22</a></span> -moment, if nature or the -unknown forces had not produced a Luther, a Calvin, or a Voltaire.</p> - -<p>It was one of the happy chances of circumstance that there arose in -France on the death of Lewis XIV. a man with all Voltaire’s peculiar -gifts of intelligence, who added to them an incessant activity in their -use, and who besides this enjoyed such length of days as to make his -intellectual powers effective to the very fullest extent possible. This -combination of physical and mental conditions so amazingly favourable to -the spread of the Voltairean ideas, was a circumstance independent of -the state of the surrounding atmosphere, and was what in the phraseology -of præscientific times might well have been called providential. If -Voltaire had seen all that he saw, and yet been indolent; or if he had -been as clear-sighted and as active as he was, and yet had only lived -fifty years, instead of eighty-four, Voltairism would never have struck -root.<a name="FNanchor_2" id="FNanchor_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">2</a> As it was, with his genius, his industry, his longevity, and -the conditions of the time being what they were, that far-spreading -movement of destruction was inevitable.</p> - -<p>Once more, we cannot choose. Those whom temperament or culture has made -the partisans of calm order, cannot attune progress to the stately and -harmonious march which would best please them, and which they are -perhaps right in thinking would lead with most security to the goal.</p> - -<p>Such a liberation of the human mind as Voltairism <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">23</a></span>can only be effected -by the movement of many spirits, and they are only the few who are moved -by moderate, reflective, and scientific trains of argument. The many -need an extreme type. They are struck by what is flashing and colossal, -for they follow imagination and sympathy, and not the exactly -disciplined intelligence. They know their own wants, and have dumb -feeling of their own better aspirations. Their thoughts move in the -obscurity of things quick but unborn, and by instinct they push upwards -in whatever direction the darkness seems breaking. They are not critics -nor analysts, but when the time is ripening they never fail to know the -word of freedom and of truth, with whatever imperfections it may chance -to be spoken. No prophet all false has ever yet caught the ear of a -series of generations. No prophet all false has succeeded in separating -a nation into two clear divisions. Voltaire has in effect for a century -so divided the most emancipated of western nations. This is beyond the -power of the mere mocker, who perishes like the flash of lightning; he -does not abide as a centre of solar heat.</p> - -<p>There are more kinds of Voltaireans than one, but no one who has marched -ever so short a way out of the great camp of old ideas is directly or -indirectly out of the debt and out of the hand of the first liberator, -however little willing he may be to recognise one or the other. -Attention has been called by every writer on Voltaire to the immense -number of the editions of his works, a number probably <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">24</a></span>unparalleled in -the case of any author within the same limits of time. Besides being one -of the most voluminous book-writers, he is one of the cheapest. We can -buy one of Voltaire’s books for a few halfpence, and the keepers of the -cheap stalls in the cheap quarters of London and Paris will tell you -that this is not from lack of demand, but the contrary. So clearly does -that light burn for many even now, which scientifically speaking ought -to be extinct, and for many indeed is long ago extinct and superseded. -The reasons for this vitality are that Voltaire was himself thoroughly -alive when he did his work, and that the movement which that work began -is still unexhausted.</p> - -<p>How shall we attempt to characterise this movement? The historian of the -Christian church usually opens his narrative with an account of the -depravation of human nature and the corruption of society which preceded -the new religion. The Reformation in like manner is only to be -understood after we have perceived the enormous mass of superstition, -injustice, and wilful ignorance, by which the theological idea had -become so incrusted as to be wholly incompetent to guide society, -because it was equally repugnant to the intellectual perceptions and the -moral sense, the knowledge and the feelings, of the best and most -active-minded persons of the time. The same sort of consideration -explains and vindicates the enormous power of Voltaire. France had -outgrown the system that had brought her through the middle ages. The -further development of her national life was fatally<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">25</a></span> hindered by the -tight bonds of an old order, which clung with the hardy tenacity of a -thriving parasite, diverting from the roots all their sustenance, eating -into the tissue, and feeding on the juices of the living tree. The -picture has often been painted, and we need not try to paint it once -more in detail here. The whole power and ordering of the nation were -with the sworn and chartered foes of light, who had every interest that -a desire to cling to authority and wealth can give, in keeping the -understanding subject.</p> - -<p>And, what was more important, there had been no sign made in the nation -itself of a consciousness of the immense realms of knowledge that lay -immediately in front of it, and still less of any desire or intention to -win lasting possession of them. That intellectual curiosity which was so -soon to produce such amazing fruits was as yet unstirred. An era of -extraordinary activity had just come to a close, and the creative and -artistic genius of France had risen to the highest mark it attained -until the opening of our own century. The grand age of Lewis XIV. had -been an age of magnificent literature and unsurpassed eloquence. But, in -spite of the potent seed which Descartes had sown, it had been the age -of authority, protection, and patronage. Consequently all those subjects -for which there was no patronage, that is to say the subjects which -could add nothing to the splendour and dignity of the church and the -pageantry of the court, were virtually repressed. This ought not to -blind us to the real loftiness and magnanimity<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">26</a></span> of the best or earlier -part of the age of Lewis XIV. It has been said that the best title of -Lewis XIV. to the recollection of posterity is the protection he -extended to Molière; and one reason why this was so meritorious is that -Molière’s work had a markedly critical character, in reference both to -the devout and to the courtier. The fact of this, undoubtedly the most -durable work of that time, containing critical quality, is not of -importance in reference to the generally fixed or positive aspect of the -age. For Molière is only critical by accident. There is nothing -organically negative about him, and his plays are the pure dramatic -presentation of a peculiar civilisation. He is no more a destructive -agency because he drew hypocrites and coxcombs, than Bossuet was -destructive or critical because he inveighed against sin and the excess -of human vainglory. The epoch was one of entire loyalty to itself and -its ideas. Voltaire himself perceived and admired these traits to the -full. The greatest of all overthrowers, he always understood that it is -towards such ages as these, the too short ages of conviction and -self-sufficience, that our endeavour works. We fight that others may -enjoy; and many generations struggle and debate, that one generation may -hold something for proven.</p> - -<p>The glories of the age of Lewis XIV. were the climax of a set of ideas -that instantly afterwards lost alike their grace, their usefulness, and -the firmness of their hold on the intelligence of men. A dignified and -venerable hierarchy, an august and powerful<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">27</a></span> monarch, a court of gay and -luxurious nobles, all lost their grace, because the eyes of men were -suddenly caught and appalled by the awful phantom, which was yet so -real, of a perishing nation. Turn from Bossuet’s orations to -Boisguillebert’s <i>Détail de la France</i>; from the pulpit rhetorician’s -courtly reminders that even majesty must die, to Vauban’s pity for the -misery of the common people;<a name="FNanchor_3" id="FNanchor_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">3</a> from Corneille and Racine to La -Bruyère’s picture of ‘certain wild animals, male and female, scattered -over the fields, black, livid, all burnt by the sun, bound to the earth -that they dig and work with unconquerable pertinacity; they have a sort -of articulate voice, and when they rise on their feet, they show a human -face, and, in fact, are men.’ The contrast had existed for generations. -The material misery caused by the wars of the great Lewis deepened the -dark side, and the lustre of genius consecrated to the glorification of -traditional authority and the order of the hour heightened the -brightness of the bright side, until the old contrast was suddenly seen -by a few startled eyes, and the new and deepest problem, destined to -strain our civilisation to a degree that not many have even now -conceived, came slowly into pale outline.</p> - -<p>There is no reason to think that Voltaire ever saw this gaunt and -tremendous spectacle. Rousseau was its first voice. Since him the -reorganisation of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">28</a></span>relations of men has never faded from the sight -either of statesmen or philosophers, with vision keen enough to admit to -their eyes even what they dreaded and execrated in their hearts. -Voltaire’s task was different and preparatory. It was to make popular -the genius and authority of reason. The foundations of the social fabric -were in such a condition that the touch of reason was fatal to the whole -structure, which instantly began to crumble. Authority and use oppose a -steadfast and invincible resistance to reason, so long as the -institutions which they protect are of fair practicable service to a -society. But after the death of Lewis XIV., not only the grace and pomp, -but also the social utility of spiritual and political absolutism passed -obviously away. Spiritual absolutism was unable to maintain even a -decent semblance of unity and theological order. Political absolutism by -its material costliness, its augmenting tendency to repress the -application of individual energy and thought to public concerns, and its -pursuit of a policy in Europe which was futile and essentially -meaningless as to its ends, and disastrous and incapable in its choice -of means, was rapidly exhausting the resources of national well-being -and viciously severing the very tap-root of national life. To bring -reason into an atmosphere so charged, was, as the old figure goes, to -admit air to the chamber of the mummy. And reason was exactly what -Voltaire brought; too narrow, if we will, too contentious, too derisive, -too unmitigatedly reasonable, but still reason.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">29</a></span> And who shall measure -the consequence of this difference in the history of two great nations; -that in France absolutism in church and state fell before the sinewy -genius of stark reason, while in England it fell before a respect for -social convenience, protesting against monopolies, benevolences, -ship-money? That in France speculation had penetrated over the whole -field of social inquiry, before a single step had been taken towards -application, while in England social principles were applied, before -they received any kind of speculative vindication? That in France the -first effective enemy of the principles of despotism was Voltaire, poet, -philosopher, historian, critic; in England, a band of homely squires?</p> - -<p>Traditional authority, it is true, had been partially and fatally -undermined in France before the time of Voltaire, by one of the most -daring of thinkers, and one of the most acute and sceptical of scholars, -as well as by writers so acutely careless as Montaigne, and apologists -so dangerously rational as Pascal, who gave a rank and consistency to -doubt even in showing that its seas were black and shoreless. -Descartes’s Discourse on Method had been published in 1637, and Bayle’s -Thoughts on the Comet, first of the series of critical onslaughts on -prejudice and authority in matters of belief, had been published in -1682. The metaphysician and the critic had each pressed forward on the -path of examination, and had each insisted on finding grounds for -belief, or else showing the absence of such grounds with a fatal -distinctness that made<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">30</a></span> belief impossible. Descartes was constructive, -and was bent on reconciling the acceptance of a certain set of ideas as -to the relations between man and the universe, and as to the mode and -composition of the universe, with the logical reason. Bayle, whose -antecedents and environment were Protestant, was careless to replace, -but careful to have evidence for whatever was allowed to remain. No -parallel nor hint of equality is here intended between the rare genius -of Descartes and the relatively lower quality of Bayle. The one, however -high a place we may give to the regeneration of thought effected by -Bacon in England, or to that wrought by the brilliant group of physical -experimentalists in Italy, still marks a new epoch in the development of -the human mind, for he had decisively separated knowledge from theology, -and systematically constituted science. The other has a place only in -the history of criticism. But, although in widely different ways, and -with vast difference in intellectual stature, they both had touched the -prevailing notions of French society with a fatal breath.</p> - -<p>The blast that finally dispersed and destroyed them came not from -Descartes and Bayle, but directly from Voltaire and indirectly from -England. In the seventeenth century the surrounding conditions were not -ripe. Social needs had not begun to press. The organs of authority were -still too vigorous, and performed their functions with something more -than the mechanical half-heartedness of the next century.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">31</a></span> Long -familiarity with sceptical ideas as enemies must go before their -reception as friends and deliverers. They have perhaps never gained an -effective hold in any community, until they have found allies in the -hostile camp of official orthodoxy, and so long as that orthodoxy was -able to afford them a vigorous social resistance. Voltaire’s universal -talents made one of the most powerful instruments for conveying these -bold and inquisitive notions among many sorts and conditions of men, -including both the multitude of common readers and playgoers in the -towns, and the narrower multitude of nobles and sovereigns. More than -this, the brilliance and variety of his gifts attracted, stimulated, and -directed the majority of the men of letters of his time, and imparted to -them a measure of his own singular skill in conveying the principles of -rationalistic thought.</p> - -<p>The effect of all this was to turn a vast number of personages who were -officially inimical to free criticism, to be at heart abettors and -fellow-conspirators in the great plot. That fact, combined with the -independent causes of the incompetency of the holders of authority to -deal with the crying social necessities of the time, left the walls of -the citadel undermined and undefended, and a few of the sacred birds -that were still found faithful cackled to no purpose. It has often been -said that in the early times of Christianity its influence gave all that -was truest and brightest in colour to the compositions of those who were -least or not at all affected by its dogma. It is more certain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">32</a></span> that -Voltaire by the extraordinary force of his personality gave a peculiar -tone and life even to those who adhered most staunchly to the ancient -ordering. The champions of authority were driven to defend their cause -by the unusual weapons of rationality; and if Voltaire had never -written, authority would never, for instance, have found such a soldier -on her side as that most able and eminent of reactionaries, Joseph de -Maistre. In reply to the favourite assertion of the apologists of -Catholicism, that whatever good side its assailants may present is the -product of the very teaching which they repudiate, one can only say that -there would be at least as much justice in maintaining that the marked -improvement which took place in the character and aims of the priesthood -between the Regency and the Revolution,<a name="FNanchor_4" id="FNanchor_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">4</a> was an obligation -unconsciously incurred to those just and liberal ideas which Voltaire -had helped so powerfully to spread. De Maistre compares Reason putting -away Revelation to a child who should beat its nurse. The same figure -would serve just as well to describe the thanklessness of Belief to the -Disbelief which has purged and exalted it. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">33</a></span></p> - -<p>One of the most striking features of the revolution wrought by Voltaire -is that it was the one great revolt in history which contained no -element of asceticism, and achieved all its victories without resort to -an instrument so potent, inflexible, and easy, but so gravely dangerous. -Such revolts are always reactions against surrounding corruption and -darkness. They are the energetic protests of the purer capacities and -aspirations of human nature; and as is the inevitable consequence of -vehement action of this sort, they seem for a while to insist on nothing -less than the extirpation of those antagonistic parts which are seen to -have brought life into such debasement. With this stern anger and -resolve in their hearts, men have no mind to refine, explain, or -moderate, and they are forced by one of the strangest instincts of our -constitution into some system of mortification, which may seem to clear -the soul of the taint of surrounding grossness. In such exalted mood, -there is no refuge but in withdrawal from the common life into recesses -of private conscience, and in severest purification of all desires. -There are not many types of good men even in the least ascetic or least -reactionary epochs, to whom this mood, and its passion for simplicity, -self-applied rigour, minute discipline, firm regulation, and veritable -continence of life, do not now and again recur, in the midst of days -that march normally on a more spacious and expansive theory.</p> - -<p>There was, however, no tinge of ascetic principle in Voltairism. Pascal -had remarked that relaxed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">34</a></span> opinions are naturally so pleasing to men, -that it is wonderful they should ever be displeasing. To which Voltaire -had thus retorted: ‘On the contrary, does not experience prove that -influence over men’s minds is only gained by offering them the -difficult, nay the impossible, to perform or believe? Offer only things -that are reasonable, and all the world will answer, We knew as much as -that. But enjoin things that are hard, impracticable; paint the deity as -ever armed with the thunder; make blood run before the altars; and you -will win the multitude’s ear, and everybody will say of you, He must be -right, or he would not so boldly proclaim things so marvellous.’<a name="FNanchor_5" id="FNanchor_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5" class="fnanchor">5</a> -Voltaire’s ascendency sprung from no appeal to those parts of human -nature in which ascetic practice has its foundation. On the contrary, -full exercise and play for every part was the key of all his teaching, -direct and indirect. He had not Greek serenity and composure of spirit, -but he had Greek exultation in every known form of intellectual -activity, and this audacious curiosity he made general.</p> - -<p>Let us remember that Voltairism was primarily and directly altogether an -intellectual movement, for this reason, that it was primarily and -directly a reaction against the subordination of the intellectual to the -moral side of men, carried to an excess that was at length fraught with -fatal mischief. Are our opinions true, provably answering to the facts -of the case, consistent with one another; is our intelligence<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">35</a></span> radiant -with genuine light and knowledge; and are we bent more than all else on -testing and improving and diffusing this knowledge and the instruments -for acquiring it? The system to which this was the powerful -counter-formula, even in its least dark shapes, always reserved a large -class of most important facts from the searching glare of that scrutiny -which Voltairism taught men to direct upon every proposition that was -presented to them.</p> - -<p>For many centuries truth had been conceived as of the nature of a Real -Universal, of which men had full possession by the revelation of a -supreme divinity. All truth was organically one; and the relations of -men to something supernatural, their relations to one another, the -relations of outward matter, were all comprehended in a single -synthesis, within which, and subject to which, all intellectual movement -proceeded. An advancing spirit of inquiry dissolved this synthesis; and -the philosophers, as distinguished from the steadfast and single -students of science, ceasing to take it for granted as an indisputable -starting-point that truth was an assured possession, went off on two -different lines. Men of one cast of mind fell into doubt whether truth -was a reality after all, and the discovery of it accessible to mankind. -Thinkers of a different cast accepted this doctrine of the impotence of -the human understanding to discover knowledge and prove truth, but they -proceeded to the retrograde inference that therefore the ancient -tradition of knowledge actually contains that approved<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">36</a></span> truth, which had -just been pronounced unattainable. This oblique mode of regaining a -position of which they had been by their own act dispossessed, was -impossible for so keen and direct a spirit as Voltaire’s. However filled -his mind may have been with the false notions of the Tribe, of the -Market, and above all of the Cave, at all events it was more free than -most, certainly than most of those subalterns of the schools, from the -Idols of the Theatre, and from either kind of that twofold excess, ‘one -sort of which too hastily constitutes sciences positive and hierarchic, -while the other presents scepticism and the pursuit of a vague inquiry -that has no limit.’<a name="FNanchor_6" id="FNanchor_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6" class="fnanchor">6</a></p> - -<p>The consequence of this peculiarity, call it a destructive and blind -narrowness, or call it a wise and justly-measured openness of mind, as -we may choose, has been that Voltaire has been condemned with unsparing -severity by three of the most influential schools of modern opinion. -Every one who has a system to defend is the enemy of the famous man who -destroyed the reigning system of his day, with engines that seem to -point with uncomfortable directness against all other systems. Every one -who thinks that we have turned over the last leaf of the book of -knowledge, whatever the inscription that he may find written upon it, -naturally detests the whole spirit and impulse of one who felt all his -life that he and his generation were the first band of men who had -shaken off their chains, and ascended to the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">37</a></span>light of the sun and the -contemplation of some portion of an inexhaustible universe of realities. -Hence, the partisans of the Christian religion, in any of its forms, -have dealt unrelenting contempt and hatred to the foe who did more than -any one else to reduce their churches, once so majestically triumphant, -to their present level, where they are forced under various guises and -with much obsolete pretension to plead for the tolerance of rational -men, on the comparatively modest ground of social fitness. Their -hostility, we may agree, is not very astonishing, when we reflect on the -provocation.</p> - -<p>Many of those, however, who have least hope of any future revival of the -ancient creed, and who least regret its fall, are even less hostile to -the Jesuits than they are to Voltaire. Comte, for example, who -elaborated a doctrine with a corresponding system of life deduced from -it, and the central principle of whose method of social action and -movement is to destroy by replacing, has adjudged an emphatically -secondary place to Voltaire’s claims on our good-will.<a name="FNanchor_7" id="FNanchor_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7" class="fnanchor">7</a> Nor <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">38</a></span>ought -this seriously to surprise us, when we consider that Voltaire trusted to -the individual to replace for himself, by the motion of his own -faculties, the old collective tradition of action and belief; and that -he showed himself too keenly alive to the curses of that empire of -prejudice, authority, social fixity, which he devoted his life to -overthrowing, to lend any help to the restoration of a similar reign -with changed watchwords. He is perhaps the one great Frenchman who has -known how to abide in patient contentment with an all but purely -critical reserve, leaving reconstruction, its form, its modes, its -epoch, for the fulness of time and maturity of effort to disclose. It -has been the fatal quality of the genius of his countrymen, from -Descartes down to Comte, to decline to rest on an uncompleted -interpretation of experience, and to insist on a hasty supplement of -unconcluded analysis by what is virtually an à priori synthesis. -Voltaire deserves no special praise for this abstention from a -<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">39</a></span>premature reconstruction; for it probably was not so much the result of -deliberate persuasion that we must wait on the time, as of an inability -to conceive of need for a cultus and a firm ordering of our knowledge, -as prime demands of human nature and essential conditions of stable -progress. Whatever value we may set on this sage reserve, the fact that -Voltaire had no scheme for replacing the scheme which he destroyed, -accounts very amply for the disparagement of him by those who think -almost any fabric of common and ordered belief better for men, than the -seeming chaos of intricate and multitudinous growths which now -overspread the field of European opinion. And does it not involve us in -a defective conception of the way in which human progress accomplishes -itself, to place in our calendar of benefactors, supposing us to compose -a calendar, only those who have built up truth, to the exclusion of -those who have with pain and labour helped to demolish impudent error? -Has Jericho always fallen without the blasts from the seven trumpets? It -is sufficiently demonstrated from history that false opinions vanish -spontaneously, without a direct blow struck; that a system of belief, -corroborated in the breasts of the multitude by all the authority of a -long tradition, sanctified to the powerful few by dignity or emolument, -entrenched with a strength that seems inexpugnable among the ordinances -and institutions and unwritten uses of a great community, will -straightway succumb from inherent want of life and courage?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">40</a></span></p> - -<p>There is a third kind of opinion, that is as little merciful in its own -way as either of the two others, and this is the scientific or cultured -opinion. Objections from this region express themselves in many forms, -some of them calm and suggestive, others a little empty and a little -brutal. They all seem to come to something of this kind: that Voltaire’s -assault on religion, being conducted without any smallest spark of the -religious spirit, was therefore necessarily unjust to the object of his -attack, and did the further mischief of engendering in all on whom his -influence was poured out a bitterness and moral temerity which is the -worst blight that can fall upon the character either of a man or a -generation: that while truth is relative and conditional, and while -belief is only to be understood by those who have calmly done justice to -the history of its origin and growth, Voltaire carelessly, -unphilosophically, and maliciously, handled what had once possessed a -relative truth, as if it had always been absolutely false, and what had -sprung from the views and aspirations of the best men, as if it had had -its root in the base artifices of the worst: that what ought to have -gone on, and would have gone on, as a process of soft autumnal -dissolution, was converted by the infection of Voltaire into a stained -scene of passion and battle: that assuming to possess and to furnish men -with a broad criticism of life, he left out of life its deepest, -holiest, and most exalting elements, as well as narrowed and depraved -criticism, from its right rank as the high art of stating<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">41</a></span> and collating -ideas, down to an acrid trick of debate, a thing of proofs, arguments, -and rancorous polemic.</p> - -<p>It is certain that there is much truth in this particular strain of -objection to Voltaire’s power and his use of it, or else it would not -have found mouthpieces, as it has done, among some of the finest spirits -of the modern time. But it is the natural tendency of the hour rather to -exaggerate what weight there really is in such criticism, which, though -claiming to be the criticism of temperance and moderation and -relativity, does not as a matter of fact escape the fatal law of excess -and absoluteness even in its very moderation and relativity. In -estimating an innovator’s method, all depends on the time and the enemy; -and it may sometimes happen that the time is so out of joint and the -enemy so strong, so unscrupulous, so imminently pernicious, as to leave -no alternative between finally succumbing, and waging a war of -deliverance for which coming generations have to bear the burdens in -feuds and bitterness; between abridging somewhat of the richness and -fulness of life, and allowing it all to be gradually choked up by dust -and enwrapped in night. For let us not forget that what Catholicism was -accomplishing in France in the first half of the eighteenth century, was -really not anything less momentous than the slow strangling of French -civilisation. Though Voltaire’s spirit may be little edifying to us, who -after all partake of the freedom which he did so much to win, yet it is -only just to remember what was the spirit of his foe, and that in so -pestilent a presence a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">42</a></span> man of direct vision may well be eager to use -such weapons as he finds to his hand. Let the scientific spirit move -people to speak as it lists about Voltaire’s want of respect for things -held sacred, for the good deeds of holy men, for the sentiment and faith -of thousands of the most worthy among his fellows. Still there are times -when it may be very questionable whether, in the region of belief, one -with power and with fervid honesty ought to spare the abominable city of -the plain, just because it happens to shelter five righteous. There are -times when the inhumanity of a system stands out so red and foul, when -the burden of its iniquity weighs so heavy, and the contagion of its -hypocrisy is so laden with mortal plague, that no awe of dilettante -condemnation nor minute scruple as to the historic or the relative can -stay the hand of the man whose direct sight and moral energy have -pierced the veil of use, and revealed the shrine of the infamous thing. -The most noble of the holy men said long ago that ‘the servant of the -Lord must not strive, but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, -in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves.’ The history of -the churches is in one of its most conspicuous aspects the history of a -prolonged outrage upon these words by arrogant and blasphemous persons, -pretending to draw a sacred spirit from the very saint who uttered them. -We may well deplore that Voltaire’s attack, and every other attack of -the same sort, did not take the fair shape prescribed by the apostle to -the servant of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">43</a></span> Lord, of gentleness, patience, and the instruction -of a sweet and firm example. But the partisans of the creed in whose -name more human blood has been violently shed than in any other cause -whatever, these, I say, can hardly find much ground of serious reproach -in a few score epigrams. Voltaire had no calm breadth of wisdom. It may -be so. There are moments which need not this calm breadth of wisdom, but -a two-edged sword, and when the deliverers of mankind are they who ‘come -to send fire on the earth.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">44</a></span></p> - -<h2>CHAPTER II.</h2> - -<h5>ENGLISH INFLUENCES.</h5> - -<p>Voltairism may be said to have begun from the flight of its founder from -Paris to London. This, to borrow a name from the most memorable instance -of outward change marking inward revolution, was the decisive hegira, -from which the philosophy of destruction in a formal shape may be held -seriously to date. Voltaire landed in England in the middle of May, -1726. He was in the thirty-third year of his age, that earlier -climacteric, when the men with vision first feel conscious of a past, -and reflectively mark its shadow. It is then that they either press -forward eagerly with new impulse in the way of their high calling, -knowing the limitations of circumstance and hour, or else fainting draw -back their hand from the plough, and ignobly leave to another or to none -the accomplishment of the work. The narrowness of the cribbed deck that -we are doomed to tread, amid the vast space of an eternal sea with fair -shores dimly seen and never neared, oppresses the soul with a burden -that sorely tries its strength, when the fixed limits first define -themselves before it. Those are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">45</a></span> the strongest who do not tremble -beneath this gray ghostly light, but make it the precursor of an -industrious day.</p> - -<p>The past on which Voltaire had to look back was full of turmoil, -contention, impatience, and restless production. François Marie Arouet -was born in 1694, so feeble in constitution that, as in the case of -Fontenelle, whose hundred years surpassed even Voltaire’s lengthy span, -his life was long despaired of. His father was a notary of good repute -for integrity and skill, and was entrusted with the management of their -affairs by several of the highest families in France. His mother is -supposed to have had some of the intellectual alertness which penetrated -the character of her son, but she died when he was seven years old, and -he remained alone with his father until 1704, when he was sent to -school. His instructors at the College Louis-le-Grand were the Jesuits, -whose wise devotion to intellectual education in the broadest sense that -was then possible, is a partial set-off against their mischievous -influence on morals and politics. The hardihood of the young Arouet’s -temper broke out even from the first, and we need not inquire minutely -what were the precise subjects of education of a child, whom his tutor -took an early opportunity of pointing out as the future coryphaeus of -deism in France. He used to say in after life that he had learnt nothing -worth learning. A lad who could launch infidel epigrams at ‘his -Jansenist of a brother,’ and declaim a poem in which so important a hero -as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">46</a></span> Moses figures as an impostor,<a name="FNanchor_8" id="FNanchor_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8" class="fnanchor">8</a> was of that originality of mental -turn on whose freedom the inevitably mechanical instruction of the -school cannot be expected to make any deep or decisive impression. The -young of this independent humour begin their education where those of -less energetic nerve hardly leave off, with character ready made.</p> - -<p>Between a youth of bold, vivacious, imaginative disposition, and a -father of the temperament proper to a notary with many responsibilities, -there could be no sympathy, and the two were not long in coming to open -quarrel without terms. The son was taken out by his godfather, the abbé -Châteauneuf, into that gay world which presently became the infamous -world of the regency, where extraordinary sprightliness and facility in -verse gained him welcome and patronage. We need waste no words on the -corruption and intellectual trifling of the society into which Voltaire -was thus launched. For shallowness and levity, concealed by literary -artifice and play of frivolous wit which only makes the scene more -dreary or detestable, it has never been surpassed. There was brightness -in it, compared with the heavy brutality and things obscene of the court -of Lewis XV., but after all we seem to see over the brightness a sort of -foul glare, like the iridescence of putrefaction. Ninon de l’Enclos, a -friend of his mother’s, was perhaps the one free and honest soul with -whom the young Arouet had to do. Now extremely old, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">47</a></span>she still preserved -both her wit and her fine probity of intellect. She had always kept her -heart free of cant, from the time when she had ridiculed, as the -Jansenists of love, the pedantical women and platonic gallants of the -Hôtel Rambouillet, down to her rejection of Madame de Maintenon’s offer -of an invitation to the court, on condition of her joining the band of -the devout. The veteran Aspasia, now over eighty, was struck by the -brilliance and dazzling promise of the young versifier, and left him a -legacy for the purchase of books.</p> - -<p>The rest of the society into which Voltaire was taken was saturated with -a spirit of reaction against the austere bigotry of the court, and bad -and miserable as such austerity is, the rebellion against it is always -worse and more miserable still. The licence seems not to have been of -the most joyous sort, as indeed licence protesting and defiant is not -apt to be. The abbé Chaulieu, a versifier of sprightly fancy, grace, and -natural ease, was the dissolute Anacreon of the people of quality who -during the best part of the reign of Lewis XIV. had failed to sympathise -with its nobility and stateliness, and during the worst part revolted -against its gloom. Voltaire at twenty was his intimate and his professed -disciple.<a name="FNanchor_9" id="FNanchor_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9" class="fnanchor">9</a> To this intimacy we may perhaps trace that remarkable -continuity of tradition between Voltaire and the grand age, which -distinguishes him from the school of famous men who were called -Voltaireans, and of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">48</a></span>whom the special mark was that they had absolutely -broken with the whole past of French history and literature. Princes, -dukes, and marquises were of Chaulieu’s band. The despair and fury of -the elder Arouet at such companions and such follies reproduce once more -a very old story in the records of youthful genius. Genius and fine -friends reconcile no prudent notary to a son’s hatred for law and the -desk. Orgies with the Duke of Sully, and rhyming bouts with Chaulieu, -have sunk into small size for us, who know that they were but the -mischievous and unbecoming prologue of a life of incessant and generous -labour, but we may well believe that such enormities bulked big in the -vision of the father, as portents of degradation and ruin. We have a -glimpse of the son’s temper towards the profession to which his father -had tried so hard to bind him, in the ironical definition, thrown out -long afterwards, of an <i>avocat</i> as a man who, not having money enough to -buy one of those brilliant offices on which the universe has its eyes -fixed, studies for three years the laws of Theodosius and Justinian so -as to know the custom of Paris, and who at length having got -matriculated has the right of pleading for money, if he has a loud -voice.<a name="FNanchor_10" id="FNanchor_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10" class="fnanchor">10</a> The young Arouet did actually himself get matriculated and -acquire this right, but his voice proved so loud that his pleadings were -destined to fill wider courts than those of Paris.</p> - -<p>Arouet the elder persuaded Châteauneuf’s brother, who was a diplomatist, -to take into his company the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">49</a></span>law-student who had made verse instead of -studying the laws of Theodosius. So the youth went to the Hague. Here he -straightway fell into new misadventure by conceiving an undying passion, -that lasted several weeks, for a young countrywoman whom he found in -Holland. Stolen interviews, letters, tears, and the other accustomed -circumstances of a juvenile passion on which the gods frown, were all -discovered. The ambassador sent the refractory boy back to his father, -with full details and documents, with results on the relations of the -pair that need not be described.</p> - -<p>In the autumn of 1715 Lewis XIV. died, and the Regent D’Orleans reigned -in his stead. There presently appeared some pungent lines, entitled <i>Les -j’ai vu</i>, in which the writer recounted a number of evil things which he -had seen in the state—a thousand prisons crowded with brave citizens -and faithful subjects, the people groaning under rigorous bondage, the -magistrates harassing every town with ruinous taxes and unrighteous -edicts; <i>j’ai vu, c’est dire tout, le Jésuite adoré</i>. The last line ran -that all these ills the writer had seen, yet was but twenty years -old.<a name="FNanchor_11" id="FNanchor_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11" class="fnanchor">11</a> Voltaire was twenty-two, but the authorities knew him for a -verse-writer of biting turn, so they treated the discrepancy of age as a -piece of mere prosopopœia, and laid him up in the Bastille (1716). As a -matter of fact, he had no hand in the offence. Even amid these sombre -shades, where he was kept for nearly a year, his spirit was blithe and -its fire unquenchable. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">50</a></span></p> - -<p>The custom of Paris and the Codes were as little handled as ever; and he -divided his time between the study of the two great epics of Greece and -Rome, and the preparation of what he designed to be the great epic of -France. He also gave the finishing strokes to his tragedy of Œdipe, -which was represented in the course of the following year with definite -success, and was the opening of a brilliant dramatic career, that -perhaps to a mortal of more ordinary mould might alone have sufficed for -the glory of a life.</p> - -<p>The next six years he divided between a lively society, mostly of the -great, the assiduous composition of new plays, and the completion of the -Henriade. His fibre was gradually strengthening. By the end of this -period, the recklessness of the boyish disciple of Chaulieu had wholly -spent itself; and although Voltaire’s manner of life was assuredly not -regular nor decorously ordered, now nor for many years to come, if -measured by the rigid standard on which an improved society properly -insists, yet it was always a life of vigorous industry and clear -purposes. For a brief time his passion for the Maréchale de Villars -broke the tenacity of his diligence, and he always looked back on this -interruption of his work with the kind of remorse that might afflict a -saint for a grave spiritual backsliding. He was often at the country -seats of Sully, Villars, and elsewhere, throwing off thousands of -trifling verses, arranging theatricals, enlivening festivals, and always -corresponding <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">51</a></span>indefatigably; for now and throughout his life his good -sense and good will, his business-like quality and his liking for his -friends, both united to raise him above the idle pretences and -self-indulgence of those who neglect the chief instrument of social -intercourse and friendly continuity. He preferred the country to the -town. ‘I was born,’ he says to one, ‘to be a faun or creature of the -woods; I am not made to live in a town.’ To another, ‘I fancy myself in -hell, when I am in the accursed city of Paris.’<a name="FNanchor_12" id="FNanchor_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12" class="fnanchor">12</a> The only -recommendation of the accursed city was that a solitude was attainable -in it, as in other crowded spots, which enabled him to work better there -than in the small and exacting throng of country-houses. ‘I fear -Fontainebleau, Villars, and Sully, both for my health and for Henry IV; -I should do no work, I should over-eat, and I should lose in pleasures -and in complaisance to others an amount of precious time that I ought to -be using for a necessary and creditable task.’<a name="FNanchor_13" id="FNanchor_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13" class="fnanchor">13</a></p> - -<p>Yet there was even at this period much of that marvellous hurrying to -and fro in France and out of it, which continued to mark the longer -portion of Voltaire’s life, and fills it with such a busy air of turmoil -and confusion, explaining many things, when we think of the stability of -life and permanence of outward place of the next bright spirit that -shone upon Europe. Goethe never saw London, Paris, nor Vienna, and made -no journey save the famous visit to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">52</a></span>Italy, and the march at Valmy. -Voltaire moved hither and thither over the face of Europe like the wind, -and it is not until he has passed through half of his life that we can -begin to think of his home. Every association that belongs to his name -recalls tumult and haste and shrill contention with men and -circumstance. We have, however, to remember that these constant -movements were the price which Voltaire paid for the vigour and freedom -of his speech, in days when the party of superstition possessed the ear -of the temporal power, and resorted without sparing to the most violent -means of obliterating every hardy word and crushing every independent -writer. The greater number of Voltaire’s ceaseless changes of place were -flights from injustice, and the recollection of this may well soothe the -disturbance of spirit of the most fastidious zealot for calm and orderly -living. They were for the most part retreats before packs of wolves.</p> - -<p>In 1722 the elder Arouet died, to the last relentlessly set against a -son, not any less stubborn than himself, and unfortunately a great deal -more poetical. About the same time the name of Arouet falls away, and -the poet is known henceforth by that ever famous symbol for so much, -Voltaire; a name for which various explanations, none of them -satisfactory, have been offered, the latest and perhaps the least -improbable resolving it into a fanciful anagram.<a name="FNanchor_14" id="FNanchor_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14" class="fnanchor">14</a></p> - -<p>Industrious as he was, and eager as he was for <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">53</a></span>rural delights and -laborious solitude, Voltaire was still pre-eminently social. His letters -disclose in him, who really possessed all arts, the art of one who knew -how to be graciously respectful to the social superiors who took him for -a companion, without forgetting what was due to his own respect for -himself. We are all princes or poets, he exclaimed jubilantly on the -occasion of one of those nights and suppers of the gods. Such -gay-hearted freedom was not always well taken, and in time Voltaire’s -eyes were opened to the terms on which he really stood. ‘<i>Who is the -young man who talks so loud?’</i> called out some Chevalier Rohan, at one -of these sprightly gatherings at the house of the Duke of Sully.<a name="FNanchor_15" id="FNanchor_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15" class="fnanchor">15</a> -‘<i>My lord</i>,’ the young man replied promptly, ‘<i>he is one who does not -carry about a great name, but wins respect for the name he has.’</i> A few -days afterwards the high-spirited patrician magnanimously took an -opportunity of having a caning inflicted by the hands of his lackeys on -the poet who had thrown away this lesson upon him. Voltaire, who had at -all events that substitute for true physical courage which springs up in -an intensely irritable and susceptive temperament, forthwith applied -himself to practise with the small-sword. He did his best to sting his -enemy to fight, but the chevalier either feared the swordsman, or else -despised an antagonist of the middle class; and by the influence of the -Rohan family the poet once more found himself<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">54</a></span> in the Bastille, then the -house of correction at the disposal and for the use of the nobles, the -court, and the clergy. Here for six months Voltaire, then only -representing a very humble and unknown quantity in men’s minds, chafed -and fretted. The pacific Fleury, as is the wont of the pacific when in -power, cared less to punish the wrong-doer than to avoid disturbance, -knowing that disturbance was most effectually avoided by not meddling -with the person most able to resent. The multitude, however, when the -day of reckoning came, remembered all these things, and the first act of -their passion was to raze to the ground the fortress into which nearly -every distinguished champion of the freedom of human intelligence among -them had at one time or another been tyrannically thrown.</p> - -<p>On his release Voltaire was ordered to leave Paris. A clandestine visit -to the city showed him that there was no hope of redress from authority, -which was in the hands of men whose pride of rank prevented them from so -much as even perceiving, much more from repairing, such grievance as a -mere bourgeois could have: as if, to borrow Condorcet’s bitter phrase, a -descendant of the conquering Franks, like De Rohan, could have lost the -ancient right of life and death over a descendant of the Gauls.<a name="FNanchor_16" id="FNanchor_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16" class="fnanchor">16</a> And -this was no ironic taunt; for while Voltaire was in the Bastille, that -astounding book of the Count of Boulainvilliers was in the press, in -which it was shown that the feudal <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">55</a></span>system is the master-work of the -human mind, and that the advance of the royal authority and the increase -of the liberties of the people were equally unjust usurpations of the -rights of the conquering Franks.<a name="FNanchor_17" id="FNanchor_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17" class="fnanchor">17</a></p> - -<p>Voltaire was no patient victim of the practice which corresponded to -this trim historic theory. In a tumult of just indignation he quitted -France, and sought refuge with that stout and free people, who had by -the execution of one king, the deposition of another, and the definite -subjugation of the hierarchy, won a full liberty of thought and speech -and person. A modern historian has drawn up a list of the men of mark -who made the same invigorating pilgrimage. ‘During the two generations -which elapsed between the death of Lewis XIV. and the outbreak of the -Revolution, there was hardly a Frenchman of eminence who did not either -visit England or learn English; while many of them did both.’<a name="FNanchor_18" id="FNanchor_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18" class="fnanchor">18</a> Among -those who actually came to England and mixed in its society besides -Voltaire, were Buffon, Brissot, Helvétius, Gournay, Jussieu, Lafayette, -Montesquieu, Maupertuis, Morellet, Mirabeau, Roland and Madame Roland, -Rousseau. We who live after Wordsworth, Shelley, Byron, Scott, have -begun to forget the brilliant group of the Queen Anne men. They belong -to a self-complacent time, and we to a time of doubt and unsatisfied -aspiration, and the two spirits are unsympathetic. Yet they were -assuredly a band, from Newton and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">56</a></span>Locke down to Pope, of whom, taking -them for all the qualities which they united, in science, correct -judgment, love of letters, and taste, England has as good reason to be -proud as of any set of contemporary writers in her history.</p> - -<p>Up to this moment Voltaire had been a poet, and his mind had not moved -beyond the region of poetic creation. He had beaten every one once and -for all on the ground of light and graceful lyric verse, ‘a kind of -poetry,’ says a French critic whose word in such a matter we can hardly -refuse to take, ‘in which Voltaire is at once with us the only master -and the only writer supportable, for he is the only one whom we can -read.’<a name="FNanchor_19" id="FNanchor_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19" class="fnanchor">19</a> He had produced three tragedies. His epic was completed, -though undergoing ceaseless labour of the file. Two lines in his first -play had served to mark him for no friend to the hierophants:</p> - -<div class="poem"> -<div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Nos prêtres ne sont point ce qu’un vain peuple pense;</span> -<span class="i0">Notre crédulité fait toute leur science.<a name="FNanchor_20" id="FNanchor_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20" class="fnanchor">20</a></span> -</div></div> - -<p>And the words of Araspe in the same play had breathed the full spirit of -the future liberator:</p> - -<div class="poem"> -<div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Ne nous fions qu’à nous; voyons tout par nos yeux:</span> -<span class="i0">Ce sont là nos trépieds, nos oracles, nos dieux.<a name="FNanchor_21" id="FNanchor_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21" class="fnanchor">21</a></span> -</div></div> - -<p>Such expressions, however, were no more than the vague and casual word -of the <i>esprit fort</i>, the friend of Chaulieu, and the rhymer of a -dissolute circle, where religion only became tinged with doubt, because -<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">57</a></span>conduct had already become penetrated with licence. More important than -such stray words was the Epistle to Uranie (1722), that truly masculine -and terse protest against the popular creed, its mean and fatuous and -contradictory idea of an omnipotent God, who gave us guilty hearts so as -to have the right of punishing us, and planted in us a love of pleasure -so as to torment us the more effectually by appalling ills that an -eternal miracle prevents from ever ending; who drowned the fathers in -the deluge and then died for the children; who exacts an account of -their ignorance from a hundred peoples whom he has himself plunged -helplessly into this ignorance:</p> - -<div class="poem"> -<div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Je ne reconnais point à cette indigne image</span> -<span class="i4">Le dieu que je dois adorer;</span> -<span class="i4">Je croirais le déshonorer</span> -<span class="i0">Par une telle insulte et par un tel hommage.<a name="FNanchor_22" id="FNanchor_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22" class="fnanchor">22</a></span> -</div></div> - -<p>Though called The For and Against, the poet hardly tries to maintain any -proportion between the two sides of the argument. The verses were -addressed to a lady in a state of uncertainty as to belief, of whom -there were probably more among Voltaire’s friends of quality than he can -have cared to cure or convert. Scepticism was at this time not much more -than an interesting fashion.</p> - -<p>The dilettante believer is indeed not a strong spirit, but the weakest, -and the facts of life were by this time far too serious for Voltaire, -for that truth <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">58</a></span>to have missed his keen-seeing eye. It is not hard to -suppose that impatient weariness of the poor life that was lived around -him, had as large a share as resentment of an injustice, in driving him -to a land where men did not merely mouth idle words of making reason -their oracle, their tripod, their god, but where they had actually -systematised the rejection of Christianity, and had thrown themselves -with grave faith on the disciplined intelligence and its lessons. -Voltaire left a country where freedom of thinking was only an empty -watchword, the name for a dissipated fashion. It was considered -free-thinking if a man allowed himself to regard the existence of the -Five Propositions in Jansenius’s book as a thing indifferent to the -happiness of the human race.<a name="FNanchor_23" id="FNanchor_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23" class="fnanchor">23</a> He found in England that it was a -far-spreading reality, moulding not only the theological ideas, but the -literature, manners, politics, and philosophy, of a great society. -Voltaire left France a poet, he returned to it a sage. Before his -flight, though we do not know to what extent he may have read such -history as was then accessible, he had been actively productive only in -the sphere of the imaginative faculties, and in criticism of the form -and regulation proper to be imposed upon them. When he returned, while -his poetic power had ripened, he had tasted of the fruit of the tree of -scientific reason, and, what was not any less important, he had become -alive to the central truth of the social destination of all art and all -knowledge. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">59</a></span></p> - -<p>In a word, he was transformed from the penman into the captain and -man-at-arms. ‘The example of England,’ says Condorcet, ‘showed him that -truth is not made to remain a secret in the hands of a few philosophers, -and a limited number of men of the world, instructed, or rather -indoctrinated, by the philosophers; smiling with them at the errors of -which the people are the victims, but at the same time making themselves -the champions of these very errors, when their rank or position gives -them a real or chimerical interest in them, and quite ready to permit -the proscription, or even persecution, of their teachers, if they -venture to say what in secret they themselves actually think. From the -moment of his return, Voltaire felt himself called to destroy the -prejudices of every kind, of which his country was the slave.’<a name="FNanchor_24" id="FNanchor_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24" class="fnanchor">24</a></p> - -<p>It is not difficult to perceive the sorts of fact which would most -strike the exile’s attention, though it would be rash to suppose that -things struck him in exact proportion to their real weight and the depth -of their importance, or that he detected the connection subsisting among -them at their roots. Perhaps the first circumstance to press its -unfamiliarity upon him was the social and political consequence of the -men of letters in England, and the recognition given to the power of the -pen. The patronage of men of genius in the reign of Anne and part of the -reign of the first George had been profuse and splendid. The <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">60</a></span>poet who -had been thrown into prison for resenting a whipping from a nobleman’s -lackeys, found himself in a land where Newton and Locke were rewarded -with lucrative posts in the administration of the country, where Prior -and Gay acted in important embassies, and where Addison was a Secretary -of State. The author of Œdipe and the Henriade had to hang ignobly -about in the crowd at Versailles at the marriage of Lewis XV. to gain a -paltry pittance from the queen’s privy purse,<a name="FNanchor_25" id="FNanchor_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25" class="fnanchor">25</a> while in England -Hughes and Rowe and Ambrose Philips and Congreve were all enjoying amply -endowed sinecures. The familiar intercourse between the ministers and -the brilliant literary group of that age has been often painted. At the -time of Voltaire’s exile it had just come to an end with the accession -to supreme power of Walpole, who neither knew anything nor cared -anything about the literature of his own time. But the usage was still -new, and the men who had profited and given profit by it were alive, and -were the central figures in the circles among which Voltaire was -introduced by Bolingbroke. Newton died in 1727, and Voltaire saw his -death mourned as a public calamity, and surrounded with a pomp and -circumstance in the eye of the country that could not have been -surpassed if he had been, not a geometer, but a king who was the -benefactor of his people.<a name="FNanchor_26" id="FNanchor_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26" class="fnanchor">26</a> The author of Gulliver’s <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">61</a></span>Travels was -still a dignitary in the state church, and there was still a large -association of outward power and dignity with literary merit.</p> - -<p>In so far as we consider literature to be one of the purely decorative -arts, there can be no harm in this patronage of its most successful, -that is its most pleasing, professors by the political minister; but the -more closely literature approaches to being an organ of serious things, -a truly spiritual power, the more danger there is likely to be in making -it a path to temporal station or emolument. The practical instinct, -which on some of its sides seems like a miraculously implanted -substitute for scientific intelligence in English politics, has led us -almost too far in preserving this important separation of the new church -from the functions and rewards of the state. The misfortunes of France -since the Revolution have been due to no one circumstance so markedly as -to the predominance which the man of letters has acquired in that -country; and this fatal predominance was first founded, though assuredly -not of set design, by Voltaire.</p> - -<p>Not less amazing than the high honour paid to intellectual eminence was -the refugee from the city of the Bastille likely to find the freedom -with which public events and public personages were handled by any one -who could pay a printer. The licence of this time in press and theatre -has only been once or twice equalled since, and it has never been -surpassed. From Bolingbroke and Swift down to the author of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">62</a></span> The Golden -Rump,<a name="FNanchor_27" id="FNanchor_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27" class="fnanchor">27</a> every writer who chose to consider himself in opposition -treated the minister with a violence and ferocity, which neither -irritated nor daunted that sage head, but which would in France have -crowded the lowest dungeons of the Bastille with victims of Fleury’s -anger and fright. Such license was as natural in a country that had -within ninety years gone through a violent civil war, a revolutionary -change of government and line, and a half-suppressed dispute of -succession, as it would have been astonishing in France, where the -continuity of outward order had never been more than superficially -ruffled, even in the most turbulent times of the factious wars of the -League and the Fronde. No new idea of the relations between ruler and -subject had ever penetrated into France, as it had done so deeply in the -neighbouring country. No serious popular issues had been so much as -stated. As Voltaire wrote, in the detestable times of Charles IX. and -Henry III. it was only a question whether the people should be the slave -of the Guises, while as for the last war, it deserved only hisses and -contempt; for what was De Retz but a rebel without a purpose and a -stirrer of sedition without a name, and what was the parliament but a -body which knew neither what it meant nor what it did not mean?<a name="FNanchor_28" id="FNanchor_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28" class="fnanchor">28</a> The -apologies of Jesuit writers for the assassination of tyrants deserve an -important place in the history of the doctrine of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">63</a></span>divine right; but -they were theoretical essays in casuistry for the initiated few, and -certainly conveyed no general principles of popular right to the many.</p> - -<p>Protestantism, on the other hand, loosened the conception of authority -and of the respect proper for authority, to a degree which has never -been realised in the most anarchic movements in France, whose anarchy -has ever sprung less from a disrespect for authority as such, than from -a passionate and uncompromising resolve in this or that group that the -authority shall be in one set of hands and not another. Voltairism has -proved itself as little capable as Catholicism of inspiring any piece -that may match with Milton’s Areopagitica, the noblest defence that was -ever made of the noblest of causes. We know not whether Voltaire ever -thought much as to the history and foundation of that freedom of speech, -which even in its abuse struck him as so wonderful a circumstance in a -country that still preserved a stable and orderly society. He was -probably content to admire the phenomenon of a liberty so marvellous, -without searching very far for its antecedents. The mere spectacle of -such free, vigorous, many-sided, and truly social and public activity of -intellect as was visible in England at this time, was in itself enough -to fix the gaze of one who was so intensely conscious of his own energy -of intellect, and so bitterly rebellious against the system which -fastened a gag between his lips.</p> - -<p>If we would realise the impression of this scene of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">64</a></span> free speech on -Voltaire’s ardent spirit, we need only remember that, when in time he -returned to his own country, he had to wait long and use many arts and -suffer harassing persecution, before he could publish what he had to say -on Newton and Locke, and in other less important respects had to -suppress much of what he had most at heart to say. ‘One must disguise at -Paris,’ he wrote long after his return, ‘what I could not say too -strongly at London;’ and he vaunts his hardihood in upholding Newton -against René Descartes, while he confesses that an unfortunate but -necessary circumspection forced him to try to make Locke obscure.<a name="FNanchor_29" id="FNanchor_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29" class="fnanchor">29</a> -Judge the light which would come into such a mind as his, when he first -saw the discussion and propagation of truth freed from these vile and -demoralising affronts. The very conception of truth was a new one, as a -goddess not to be shielded behind the shades of hierophantic mystery, -but rather to be sought in the free tumult and joyous strife of many -voices, there vindicating her own majesty and marking her own children.</p> - -<p>Penetrating deeper, Voltaire found not only a new idea of truth as a -something rude, robust, and self-sufficient, but also what was to him a -new order of truths, the triumphs of slow-footed induction and the -positive reason. France was the hotbed of systems of the physical -universe. The provisional and suspensive attitude was intolerable to her -impetuous genius, and the gaps which scientific investigation <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">65</a></span>was -unable to fill, were straightway hidden behind an artificial screen of -metaphysical phantasies. The Aristotelian system died harder in France -than anywhere else, for so late as 1693, while Oxford and Cambridge and -London were actually embracing the Newtonian principles, even the -Cartesian system was forbidden to be taught by decrees of the Sorbonne -and of the Council of the King.<a name="FNanchor_30" id="FNanchor_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30" class="fnanchor">30</a> When the Cartesian physics once got -a foothold, they kept it as firmly as the system which they had found so -much difficulty in displacing. It is easy to believe that Voltaire’s -positive intelligence would hold aloof by a certain instinct from -physical explanations which were unverified and incapable of being -verified, and which were imbrangled with theology and metaphysics.</p> - -<p>We can readily conceive, again, the sensation of freshness and delight -with which a mind so essentially real, and so fundamentally serious, -paradoxical as this may sound in connection with the name of the -greatest mocker that has ever lived, would exchange the poetised -astronomy of Fontenelle, excellently constituted as Fontenelle was in a -great many ways, for the sure and scientific discoveries of a Newton. -Voltaire, in whatever subject, never failed to see through rhetoric, and -for rhetoric as the substitute for clear reasoning he always had an -aversion as deep as it was wholesome. Nobody ever loved grace and form -in style more sincerely than Voltaire, but he has shown in a great many -ways that nobody ever <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">66</a></span>valued grace and form more truly at their worth, -compared with correctness of argument and precision and solidity of -conclusion. Descartes, Fontenelle had said, ‘essaying a bold flight, -insisted on placing himself at the source of all, on making himself -master of the first principles of things by a certain number of clear -and fundamental ideas, having thus only to descend to the phenomena of -nature as necessary consequences; Newton, more timid or more modest, -began his advance by resting on phenomena in order to ascend to the -unknown principles, resolved to admit them, however the combination of -the results might present them. The one starts from what he understands -clearly to discover the cause of what he sees: the other starts from -what he sees, to discover its cause, whether clear or obscure.’ Caution -and reserve and sound method had achieved a generalisation more vast and -amazing than the boldest flight, or most resolute reasoning downwards -from a clearly held conception to phenomena, could possibly have -achieved. This splendid and unrivalled discovery was probably expounded -to Voltaire by Dr. Samuel Clarke, with whom he tells us that he had -several conferences in 1726,<a name="FNanchor_31" id="FNanchor_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31" class="fnanchor">31</a> and who was one of the ablest of the -Newtonians. He had no doubt learnt the theory of vortices from the -Jesuits, and clear exposition was the only thing needed to convert him -to the new theory, which shines by its own light, and must, in an -unbiassed intelligence with the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">67</a></span>humblest scientific quality, have -extinguished every artificial explanation. One of the truest signs of -the soundness of Voltaire’s intellectual activity was that his glad -reception of the Newtonian doctrine of attraction did not blind him to -the signal service and splendid genius of Descartes. That loud-shouting -yet feeble-footed enthusiasm, which can only make sure of itself by -disparaging the object of a counter-enthusiasm, had no place in an -intellect so emphatically sincere and self-penetrative. He prefaces his -account of the system of attraction by a hearty and loyal appreciation -of the propounder of the system of vortices.<a name="FNanchor_32" id="FNanchor_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32" class="fnanchor">32</a></p> - -<p>The acquisition of the special theory of attraction was in itself less -important for Voltaire, than the irresistible impulse which it would -give to the innate rationality or positivity of his own mind. It fitted -him to encounter with proper freedom not only vortices, but that -tremendous apparatus of monads, sufficient reason, and pre-established -harmony, with which Leibnitz then overawed European philosophy. ‘O -Metaphysics!’ he cried, ‘we have, then, got as far as they had in the -time of the earliest Druids!’<a name="FNanchor_33" id="FNanchor_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33" class="fnanchor">33</a></p> - -<p>Locke’s essay impelled him further in the same path of patient and -cautious interrogation of experience; for the same method which -established gravitation presided over the birth of the experiential -psychology. Newton instead of elaborating a system of vortices, or -another, out of his own consciousness, industriously <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">68</a></span>and patiently -waited on the phenomena. Locke, too, instead of inventing a romance of -the soul, to use Voltaire’s phrase, sagaciously set himself to watch the -phenomena of thought, and ‘reduced metaphysics to being the experimental -physics of the soul.’<a name="FNanchor_34" id="FNanchor_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34" class="fnanchor">34</a> Malebranche, then the reigning philosopher in -France, ‘astonished the reason of those whom he delighted by his style. -People trusted him in what they did not understand, because he began by -being right in what they did understand; he seduced people by being -delightful, as Descartes seduced them by being daring, while Locke was -nothing more than sage.’<a name="FNanchor_35" id="FNanchor_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35" class="fnanchor">35</a> ‘After all,’ Voltaire once wrote, ‘we must -admit that anybody who has read Locke, or rather who is his own Locke, -must find the Platos mere fine talkers, and nothing more. In point of -philosophy, a chapter of Locke or Clarke is, compared with the babble of -antiquity, what Newton’s optics are compared with those of -Descartes.’<a name="FNanchor_36" id="FNanchor_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36" class="fnanchor">36</a> It is curious to observe that De Maistre, who thought -more meanly of Plato than Voltaire did, and hardly less meanly than he -thought of Voltaire himself, cried out that in the study of philosophy -contempt for Locke is the beginning of knowledge.<a name="FNanchor_37" id="FNanchor_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37" class="fnanchor">37</a> Voltaire, on the -other hand, is enchanted to hear that his niece reads the great English -philosopher, like a good father who sheds tears of joy that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">69</a></span>his -children are turning out well.<a name="FNanchor_38" id="FNanchor_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38" class="fnanchor">38</a> Augustus published an edict <i>de -coercendo intra fines imperio</i>, and like him, Locke has fixed the empire -of knowledge in order to strengthen it.<a name="FNanchor_39" id="FNanchor_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39" class="fnanchor">39</a> Locke, he says elsewhere, -traced the development of the human reason, as a good anatomist explains -the machinery of the human body: instead of defining all at once what we -do not understand, he examines by degrees what we want to understand: he -sometimes has the courage to speak positively, but sometimes also he has -the courage to doubt.<a name="FNanchor_40" id="FNanchor_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40" class="fnanchor">40</a> This is a perfectly appreciative account. -Locke perceived the hopelessness of defining things as they are in -themselves, and the necessity before all else of understanding the reach -of the human intelligence; the impossibility of attaining knowledge -absolute and transcendent; and the limitations of our thinking and -knowing faculties within the bounds of an experience that must always be -relative. The doubt which Voltaire praised in Locke had nothing to do -with that shivering mood which receives overmuch poetic praise in our -day, as the honest doubt that has more faith than half your creeds. -There was no question of the sentimental juvenilities of children crying -for light. It was by no means religious doubt, but philosophic; and it -affected only the possibilities1139 of ontological knowledge, leaving -the grounds of faith on the one hand, and practical conduct on the -other, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">70</a></span>exactly where they were. His intense feeling for actualities -would draw Voltaire irresistibly to the writer who, in his judgment, -closed the gates of the dreamland of metaphysics, and banished the -vaulting ambition of a priori certainties, which led nowhere and assured -nothing. Voltaire’s keen practical instinct may well have revealed to -him that men were most likely to attribute to the great social problem -of the improvement of mankind its right supremacy, when they had ceased -to concentrate intellectual effort on the insoluble; and Locke went a -long way towards showing how insoluble those questions were, on which, -as it chanced, the most strenuous efforts of the intellect of Europe -since the decline of theology had been concentrated.</p> - -<p>That he should have acquired more scientific views either upon the -origin of ideas, or the question whether the soul always thinks, or upon -the reason why an apple falls to the ground, or why the planets remain -in their orbits, was on the whole very much less important for Voltaire, -than a profound and very vital sentiment which was raised to supreme -prominence in his mind, by the spectacle of these vast continents of -knowledge newly discovered by the adventurous yet sure explorers of -English thought. This sentiment was a noble faith, none the less firm -because it was so passionate, in the ability of the relative and -practical understanding to reach truth; a deep-rooted reverence for it, -as a majestic power bearing munificent and unnumbered gifts to mankind.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">71</a></span> -Hence the vivacity of the annotations which about this time (1728) -Voltaire affixed to Pascal’s famous Thoughts, and which were regarded at -that time as the audacious carpings of a shallow poet against a profound -philosopher. They were in truth the protest of a lively common sense -against a strained, morbid, and often sophistical, misrepresentation of -human nature and human circumstance. Voltaire shot a penetrative ray -through the clouds of doubt, out of which Pascal had made an apology for -mysticism. Even if there were no direct allusions to Locke, as there -are, we should know from whom the writer had learnt the art of insisting -on the relativity of propositions, reducing them to definable terms,<a name="FNanchor_41" id="FNanchor_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41" class="fnanchor">41</a> -and being very careful against those slippery unobserved transitions -from metaphor to reality, and from a term used in its common sense to -the same term in a transcendental sense, by which Pascal brought the -seeming contradictions of life, and its supposed pettiness, into a light -as oppressively glaring as it was artificial. ‘These pretended -oppositions that you call contradictions are necessary ingredients in -the composition of man, who is, like the rest of nature, what he is -bound to be.’<a name="FNanchor_42" id="FNanchor_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42" class="fnanchor">42</a> And where is the wise man who would be full of despair -because he cannot find out the exact constitution of his thought, -because he only knows a few attributes of matter, because God has not -disclosed to him all his secrets? He might as well despair because he -has not got four feet <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">72</a></span>and two wings.<a name="FNanchor_43" id="FNanchor_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43" class="fnanchor">43</a> This sage strain was the -restoration to men of their self-respect, the revival of that -intelligence which Pascal had so humiliated and thrust under foot. It -was what he had seen in England of the positive feats which reason had -achieved, that filled Voltaire with exultation in its power, and -confidence in the prospects of the race which possessed such an -instrument. ‘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.’<a name="FNanchor_44" id="FNanchor_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44" class="fnanchor">44</a></p> - -<p>From this there flowed that other vehement current in his soul, of -energetic hatred toward the black clouds of prejudice, of mean -self-love, of sinister preference of class or order, of indolence, -obstinacy, wanton fancy, and all the other unhappy leanings of human -nature, and vexed and fatal conjunctures of circumstance, which -interpose between humanity and the beneficent sunbeams of its own -intelligence, that central light of the universe. Hence, again, by a -sufficiently visible chain of thought, his marked disesteem for -far-sounding names of brutal conquerors, and his cold regard for those -outward and material circumstances in the state of nations, which strike -the sense, but do not touch the inward reason. ‘Not long ago,’ he writes -once, ‘a distinguished company were discussing the trite and frivolous -question, who was the greatest man, Caesar, Alexander, Tamerlane, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">73</a></span>or -Cromwell. Somebody answered that it was undoubtedly Isaac Newton. This -person was right; for if true greatness consists in having received from -heaven a powerful understanding and in using it to enlighten oneself and -all others, then such an one as Newton, who is hardly to be met with -once in ten centuries, is in truth the great man.... It is to him who -masters our minds by the force of truth, not to those who enslave men by -violence; it is to him who understands the universe, not to those who -disfigure it, that we owe our reverence.’<a name="FNanchor_45" id="FNanchor_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45" class="fnanchor">45</a> This may seem trite to us, -as the question which suggested it seemed to Voltaire, but we need only -reflect, first, how new this was, even as an idea, in the France which -Voltaire had quitted, and, second, how in spite of the nominal -acceptance of the idea, in the England of our own time there is, with an -immense majority not only of the general vulgar but of the special -vulgar who presume to teach in press and pulpit, no name of slight at -once so disdainful and so sure of transfixing as the name of thinker.</p> - -<p>The discovery of the New World did not fire the imagination and stir the -thought of Europe more intensely, than the vision of these new worlds of -knowledge kindled the ardour of the receptive spirit which had just come -into contact with them. But besides the speculative aspects of what he -saw in England, Voltaire was deeply penetrated by the social differences -between a country that had been <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">74</a></span>effectively, if only partially, -transformed from feudalism, and his own, where feudalism had only been -transformed into a system more repressive than itself, and more unfit to -conduct a nation to the free and industrious developments of new -civilisation. It is a remarkable thing that though Voltaire’s habitual -companions or patrons had belonged to the privileged class, he had been -sufficiently struck by the evils incident to the privileged system to -notice the absence of such evils in England, and to make a clear -attempt, though an insufficient one, to understand the secret of the -English immunity from them. One of the worst curses of France was the -taille or capitation-tax, and the way in which it was levied and -assessed. In England, Voltaire noticed, the peasant has not his feet -bruised in wooden shoes, he eats white bread, is decently clad, is not -terrified to increase the number of his stock, or to roof his dwelling -with tiles, lest his tax should be raised next year. Again, he placed -his finger on one of the circumstances that did most to spoil the growth -of a compact and well-knit society in France, when he pointed to the -large number of farmers in England with five or six hundred pounds -sterling a year, who do not think it beneath them to cultivate the earth -which has made them rich, and on which they live in active freedom.<a name="FNanchor_46" id="FNanchor_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46" class="fnanchor">46</a> -The profoundest modern investigator of the conditions of French society -in the eighteenth century has indicated the eagerness of every man who -got a little <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">75</a></span>capital to quit the country and buy a place in a town, as -doing more harm to the progress of the agriculture and commerce of -France than even the taille itself and the trade corporations.<a name="FNanchor_47" id="FNanchor_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47" class="fnanchor">47</a></p> - -<p>Voltaire perceived the astonishing fact that in this country a man -because he is a noble or a priest was not exempt from paying certain -taxes, and that the Commons who regulated the taxes, though second to -the Lords in rank, were above them in legislative influence.<a name="FNanchor_48" id="FNanchor_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48" class="fnanchor">48</a> His -acute sight also revealed to him the importance of the mixture of ranks -and classes in common pursuits, and he records with admiration instances -of the younger sons of peers of the realm following trade. ‘Whoever -arrives in Paris from the depths of a remote province with money to -spend and a name in <i>ac</i> or <i>ille</i>, can talk about a man like me, a man -of my quality,’<a name="FNanchor_49" id="FNanchor_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49" class="fnanchor">49</a> and hold a merchant in sovereign contempt. The -merchant again so constantly hears his business spoken of with disdain -that he is fool enough to blush for it; yet I am not sure which is the -more useful to a state, a thickly-bepowdered lord who knows exactly what -time the king rises and what time he goes to bed, and gives himself -mighty airs of greatness while he plays the part of a slave in a -minister’s ante-room; or the merchant who enriches his country, gives -orders <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">76</a></span>from his counting-house at Surat or Cairo, and contributes to -the happiness of the globe.<a name="FNanchor_50" id="FNanchor_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50" class="fnanchor">50</a> It is easy to conceive the fury which -these contrasts drawn from English observation would excite among the -personages in France who happened to get the worst side in them, and -there was assuredly nothing surprising in the decree of the Parliament -of Paris (1734), which condemned the Letters on the English to be -publicly burnt, as scandalous and contrary alike to good manners and the -respect due to principalities and powers.</p> - -<p>The English reader of the Letters is naturally struck by the absence of -any adequate account of our political liberties and free constitutional -forms. There is a good chapter on Bacon, one on inoculation, and several -on the Quakers, but on the civil constitution hardly a word of large -appreciativeness. Not only this, but there is no sign that Voltaire -either set any due or special value on the popular forms of the -Hanoverian time, or clearly understood that the liberty, which was so -amazing and so precious to him in the region of speculative and literary -activity, was the direct fruit of that general spirit of freedom, which -is naturally engendered in a people accustomed to take an active part in -the conduct of its own affairs. Liberty in spirituals was adorable to -him, but for liberty in temporals he never seems to have had more than a -very distant and verbal kind of respect; just because, with all his -unmatched keenness of sight, he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">77</a></span>failed to discover that the English -sturdiness in the matter of civil rights was the very root and cause, -not only of that material prosperity which struck him so much, and of -the slightness and movableness of the line which divided the aristocracy -from the commercial classes, but also of the fact that a Newton and a -Locke were inwardly emboldened to give free play to their intelligence -without fear of being punished for their conclusions, and of the only -less important fact that whatever conclusions speculative genius might -establish would be given to the world without interposition from any -court or university or official tribunal. Voltaire undoubtedly admired -the English for their parliament, because the material and superficial -advantages that delighted him were evidently due to the system, which -happened to be parliamentary. What we miss is any consciousness that -these advantages would not have been what they were, if they had been -conferred by an absolute sovereign; any recognition that political -activity throughout a nation works in a thousand indirect but most -potent ways, and is not more to be prized for this, than for its direct -and most palpable consequences. In one place, indeed, he mentions that -the honour paid to men of letters is due to the form of government, but -his language betrays a wholly inadequate and incorrect notion of the -true operation of the form of government. ‘There are in London,’ he -says, ‘about eight hundred people with the right of speaking in public, -and maintaining the interests of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">78</a></span> nation. Some five or six thousand -pretend to the same honour in their turn. All the rest set themselves up -to judge these, and everybody can print what he thinks. So all the -nation is bound to instruct itself. All talk is about the governments of -Athens and Rome, and it becomes necessary to read the authors who have -discussed them. That naturally leads to love of polite learning.’<a name="FNanchor_51" id="FNanchor_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51" class="fnanchor">51</a> -This is to confound a very trivial accident of popular governments with -their essence. If culture thrives under them—a very doubtful -position—it is not because voters wish to understand the historical -allusions of candidates, but because the general stir and life of public -activity tends to commove the whole system. Political freedom does not -produce men of genius, but its atmosphere is more favourable than any -other to their making the best of their genius in the service of -mankind.</p> - -<p>Voltaire, in this as in too much besides, was content with a keen and -rapid glance at the surface. The reader may remember his story of -meeting a boatman one day on the Thames, who seeing that he was a -Frenchman, with a too characteristic kind of courtesy, took the -opportunity of bawling out, with the added emphasis of a round oath, -that he would rather be a boatman on the Thames than an archbishop in -France. The next day Voltaire saw his man in prison with irons on and -praying an alms from the passers-by, and so asked him whether he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">79</a></span>still -thought as scurvily of an archbishop in France. ‘Ah, sir,’ cried the -man, ‘what an abominable government! I have been carried off by force to -go and serve in one of the king’s ships in Norway. They take me from my -wife and my children, and lay me up in prison with irons on my legs -until the time for going on board, for fear I should run away.’ A -countryman of Voltaire’s confessed that he felt a splenetic joy that a -people who were constantly taunting the French with their servitude, -were in sooth just as much slaves themselves; but for my own part, says -Voltaire, I felt a humaner sentiment, I was afflicted at there being no -liberty on the earth.<a name="FNanchor_52" id="FNanchor_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_52" class="fnanchor">52</a></p> - -<p>This is well enough as a comment on the abomination of impressment; yet -we feel that there is behind it, and not here only but generally in -Voltaire, a sort of confusion between two very distinct conceptions, -that both in his day and ever since have been equally designated by the -common name of civil liberty. The first of these ideas is a mere -privative, undoubtedly of sovereign importance, but still a privative, -and implies absence, more or less complete, of arbitrary control from -without, of interference with individual action by authority, of any -pretension on the part of any organised body to hinder any member of the -society from doing or abstaining from doing what may seem right in his -own eyes, provided he pays a corresponding respect to the freedom of his -fellows. Freedom in this sense Voltaire fully understood, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">80</a></span>valued as -profoundly as it deserves to be valued. Political liberty, however, has -not only a meaning of abstention, but a meaning of participation. If in -one sense it is a sheer negative, and a doctrine of rights, in another -sense it is thoroughly positive, and a gospel of duties. The liberty -which has really made England what it so delighted and stimulated and -inflamed Voltaire to find her, has been quite as much of the second kind -as of the first; that liberty which consists in a national habit of -independent and watchful interest in the transaction of the national -affairs by the persons most concerned in them; in a general -consciousness of the duty of having some opinion on the business of the -state; in a recognition on the part of the government that the balance -of this opinion is necessary as a sanction to any policy, to which the -effective force of the state is applied. It is true that this public -participation in public concerns has sometimes been very dark and blind, -as it has often been in the highest degree enlightened, but for good or -for evil it has been the root of the matter.</p> - -<p>The great Frenchmen, who have been most characteristically French, while -valuing all and envying many of the best products of our liberty, may be -said generally to have failed entirely to detect that the salt of -English character, in days when it had more robustness than we can see -just now, sprung from the double circumstance of every man being at -liberty to have, and being inclined to take the trouble to have, an -opinion about the method and doings of his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">81</a></span> government; and of so many -men being called upon in high capacity or low, in an important function -or an obscure one, to take an independent and free share in controlling -or initiating the doings of their government. Take Montesquieu, for -example. He came to England just when Voltaire quitted it, and studied -carefully those political facts which his countryman had so neglected. -Yet he saw no deeper into the spirit of our institutions than to fix on -the constitutional balance of powers as the great secret of our freedom -and order. And Montesquieu, in spite of this, was wiser than most of his -contemporaries, for he at least saw the worth of constitutional freedom, -if he failed to see other ingredients of still more importance. French -statesmen and publicists have been systematically blind to the great -truth that there is no royal road to national well-being, and that -nations will deliberately put away happiness from themselves, unless -such happiness comes to them in a given way. The Physiocrats, who were -with all their shortcomings the most nearly scientific social thinkers -France possessed, could rise to no higher conception of a national life -than the supreme authority of a wise and benevolent monarch, giving good -gifts to his subjects. Turgot, with all the breadth and sagacity of his -genius, when five-and-forty years after our present date he came into -power, austerely clung to the same disastrous idea of passing reasoned -laws, in the shape of the beneficial edicts of an absolute power. -Voltaire, in the same way, never rose above the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">82</a></span> simple political -conception of an eastern tale, a good-tempered despot with a sage -vizier. In politics, then, he failed to carry away from England the very -essence and principle of our institutions, with which it was so much -more important that his countrymen should be familiarised than that they -should follow inoculation.</p> - -<p>It may at first sight be astonishing to find that, while Voltaire was -impressed only in a vague and general way with the free variety of -theological opinion which Protestantism had secured for England, the -sect which made a sort of mark on his mind was that which conceived the -idea that Christianity has after all something to do with the type and -example of Christ. We know how laughable and monstrous the Quaker scheme -has appeared to people who have been steeped from their youth upwards in -elaborate systems of abstruse metaphysical dogma, mystic ceremonies, -hierarchic ordering, and profuse condemnation of rival creeds. -Voltaire’s imagination was struck by a sect who professed to regard the -religion of Christ as a simple and austere discipline of life, who -repudiated ritual, and held war for the worst of anti-christian -practices. The forms and doctrines of the established church of the -country he would be likely to take merely for so much of the common form -of the national institutions. He would simply regard it as the English -way of narrowing the mind and consolidating the social order. Gibbon’s -famous sentence was not yet written, which described all religions as -equally true in the eyes of the people,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">83</a></span> equally false in the eyes of -the philosopher, and equally useful in the eyes of the magistrate. But -the idea was the idea of the century, and Voltaire would justly look -upon the Anglican profession as a temporarily useful and statesmanlike -settlement. He praised its clergy for the superior regularity of their -manners. ‘That indefinable being, who is neither ecclesiastic nor -secular, in a word, who is called <i>abbé</i>, is an unknown species in -England; the clergy here are all prigs, and nearly all pedants. When -they learn that in France young men notorious for their debauchery, and -raised to preferment by the intrigues of women, pursue their amours -publicly, amuse themselves by the composition of gallant verses, give -everyday prolonged and luxurious suppers, and rise from them to implore -the enlightenment of the holy spirit, boldly calling themselves the -successors of the apostles—why, then our English thank God that they -are Protestants.’<a name="FNanchor_53" id="FNanchor_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53" class="fnanchor">53</a></p> - -<p>If, however, in face of a young and lively French graduate, bawling -theology in the schools in the morning and in the evening singing tender -songs with the ladies, an Anglican divine is a very Cato, this Cato is a -downright gallant before a Scotch presbyterian, who assumes a grave step -and a sour mien, preaches from the nose, and gives the name of harlot of -Babylon to all churches in which some of the ecclesiastics are so -fortunate as to receive an income of fifty thousand livres a year. -However, each man takes whatever road to heaven he pleases. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">84</a></span>If there -were one religion in England, they would have to fear its despotism; if -there were only two, they would cut one another’s throats; but there are -thirty; so they live peaceably and happily together.<a name="FNanchor_54" id="FNanchor_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_54" class="fnanchor">54</a></p> - -<p>In the Quakers Voltaire saw something quite different from the purely -political pretensions and internecine quarrels of doctrine of the -ordinary worldly sects. It is impossible to say how much of the -kindliness with which he speaks of them is due to real admiration of -their simple, dignified, and pacific life, and how much to a mischievous -desire to make their praise a handle for the dispraise of overweening -competitors. On the whole there is a sincerity and heartiness of -interest in his long account of this sect, which persuades one that he -was moved by a genuine sympathy with a religion that could enjoin the -humane and peaceful and spiritual precepts of Christ, while putting away -baptism, ceremonial communion, and hierophantic orders. The nobility of -the social theories of the Society of Friends would naturally stir -Voltaire even more deeply than their abstention from practices that were -in his eyes degrading superstitions. He felt that the repugnance to -lower the majesty of their deity, by taking his name upon their lips as -solemn ratification of their words, had the effect of elevating the -dignity of man, by making his bare word fully credible without this -solemn ratification. Their refusal to comply with the deferential usages -of social intercourse, though nominally based <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">85</a></span>on the sinfulness of -signs of homage to any mere mortal, insinuated a consciousness of -equality and self-respect in that mere mortal who was careful to make no -bows and to keep his hat on in every presence. Above all, Voltaire, who -was nowhere more veritably modern or better entitled to our veneration -than by reason of his steadfast hatred of war, revered a sect so far -removed from the brutality of the military régime as to hold peace for a -first principle of the Christian faith and religious practice. The -reason why we do not go to war, his Quaker says, is not that we are -afraid of death, but because we are not wolves, nor tigers, nor dogs, -but Christian men. ‘Our God, who has bidden us love our enemies and -suffer evil without complaint, assuredly has no mind that we should -cross the sea to go and cut the throats of our brothers, because -murderers in red clothes and hats two feet high enlist citizens, making -a noise with two little sticks on an ass’s skin tightly stretched. And -when, after victories won, all London blazes with illuminations, the sky -is aflame with rockets, and the air resounds with the din of bells, -organs, cannon, we mourn in silence over the slaughter that causes all -the public joy.’<a name="FNanchor_55" id="FNanchor_55"></a><a href="#Footnote_55" class="fnanchor">55</a></p> - -<p>Voltaire, let us add, was no dilettante traveller constructing views and -deducing theories of national life out of his own uninstructed -consciousness. No German could have worked more diligently at the facts, -and we may say here, once for all, that if it is <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">86</a></span>often necessary to -condemn him for superficiality, this lack of depth seldom at any time -proceeds from want of painstaking. His unrivalled brilliance of -expression blinds us to the extreme and conscientious industry that -provided matter. The most illustrious exile that our free land has -received from France in our own times, and assuredly far more of a giant -in the order of imagination than Voltaire, never had intellectual -curiosity enough to learn the language of the country that had given him -twenty years of shelter. Voltaire, in the few months of his exile here -acquired such an astonishing mastery over English as to be able to read -and relish an esoteric book like Hudibras, and to compass the enormously -difficult feat of rendering portions of it into good French verse.<a name="FNanchor_56" id="FNanchor_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_56" class="fnanchor">56</a> He -composed an essay on epic poetry in the English tongue, and he wrote one -act of Brutus in English.</p> - -<p>He read Shakespeare, and made an elaborate study of his method. He -declares that Milton does as much honour to England as the great Newton, -and he took especial pains not only to master and appreciate the secret -of Milton’s poetic power, but even to ascertain the minutest -circumstances of his life.<a name="FNanchor_57" id="FNanchor_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_57" class="fnanchor">57</a> He studied Dryden, ‘an author who would -have a glory without blemish, if he had only written the tenth part of -his works.’<a name="FNanchor_58" id="FNanchor_58"></a><a href="#Footnote_58" class="fnanchor">58</a> He found Addison the first <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">87</a></span>Englishman who had written a -reasonable tragedy, and Addison’s character of Cato one of the finest -creations of any stage.<a name="FNanchor_59" id="FNanchor_59"></a><a href="#Footnote_59" class="fnanchor">59</a> Wycherley, Vanbrugh, and Congreve he -esteemed more highly than most of their countrymen do now. An act of a -play of Lillo’s was the base of the fourth act of Mahomet. Rochester, -Waller, Prior, and Pope, he read carefully and admired as heartily as -they deserved. Long after he had left England behind, he places Pope and -Addison on a level for variety of genius with Machiavel and Leibnitz and -Fontenelle;<a name="FNanchor_60" id="FNanchor_60"></a><a href="#Footnote_60" class="fnanchor">60</a> and Pope he evidently for a long while kept habitually -by his elbow. Swift he placed before Rabelais, calling him Rabelais in -his senses, and, as usual, giving good reasons for his preference; for -Swift, he says justly, has not the gaiety of Rabelais, but he has all -the finesse, the sense, the variety, the fine taste, in which the priest -of Meudon was wanting.<a name="FNanchor_61" id="FNanchor_61"></a><a href="#Footnote_61" class="fnanchor">61</a> In philosophy, besides Locke, there is -evidence that he read something of Hobbes, and something of Berkeley, -and something of Cudworth.<a name="FNanchor_62" id="FNanchor_62"></a><a href="#Footnote_62" class="fnanchor">62</a> Always, however, ‘harassed, wearied, -ashamed of having sought so many truths and found so many chimeras, I -returned to Locke; like a prodigal son returning to his father, I threw -myself into the arms of that modest man, who never pretends to know what -he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">88</a></span>does not know, who in truth has no enormous possessions, but whose -substance is well assured.’<a name="FNanchor_63" id="FNanchor_63"></a><a href="#Footnote_63" class="fnanchor">63</a></p> - -<p>Nor did Voltaire limit himself to the study of science, philosophy, and -poetry. He plunged into the field of theology, and mastered that famous -deistical controversy, of which the seed had been sown in the first half -of the seventeenth century by Lord Herbert of Cherbury, the -correspondent of Descartes and the earliest of the English metaphysical -thinkers.<a name="FNanchor_64" id="FNanchor_64"></a><a href="#Footnote_64" class="fnanchor">64</a> Lord Herbert’s object was to disengage from revelation -both our conceptions of the one supreme power, and the sanctions of good -and bad conduct. Toland, whom we know also that Voltaire read, aimed at -disengaging Christianity from mystery, and discrediting the canon of the -New Testament. In 1724 Collins published his Discourse on the Grounds -and Reasons of the Christian Religion, of which we are told that few -books ever made a greater noise than this did at its first publication. -The press teemed with vindications, replies, and rejoinders to Collins’s -arguments during the whole of Voltaire’s residence in England.<a name="FNanchor_65" id="FNanchor_65"></a><a href="#Footnote_65" class="fnanchor">65</a> His -position was one which no modern freethinker would dream of making a -central point of attack, and which hardly any modern apologist would -take the pains to reply to. He maintained that Jesus Christ and the -apostles trusted to the prophecies of the Old Testament for their -credentials, and then he showed, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">89</a></span>or tried to show, in various ways, -that these prophecies would not bear the weight which was thus laid upon -them. We may be sure that Voltaire’s alert curiosity would interest him -profoundly in the lively polemical ferment which this notable contention -of Collins’s stirred up.</p> - -<p>Woolston’s discourses, written to prove that the miracles of the New -Testament are as mythical and allegorical as the prophecies of the old, -appeared at the same time, and had an enormous sale. Voltaire was much -struck by this writer’s coarse and hardy way of dealing with the -miraculous legends, and the article on Miracles in the Philosophical -Dictionary shows how carefully he had read Woolston’s book.<a name="FNanchor_66" id="FNanchor_66"></a><a href="#Footnote_66" class="fnanchor">66</a> We find -references to Shaftesbury and Chubb in Voltaire’s letters and elsewhere, -though they are not the references of an admirer,<a name="FNanchor_67" id="FNanchor_67"></a><a href="#Footnote_67" class="fnanchor">67</a> and Bolingbroke -was one of the most influential and intimate of his friends. It is not -too much to say that Bolingbroke was the direct progenitor of Voltaire’s -opinions in religion, and that nearly every one of the positive articles -in Voltaire’s rather moderately sized creed was held and inculcated by -that brilliant and disordered genius. He did not always accept -Bolingbroke’s optimism, but even as late in the century as 1767 Voltaire -thought it worth while to borrow his name for a volume of compendious -attack on the popular religion.<a name="FNanchor_68" id="FNanchor_68"></a><a href="#Footnote_68" class="fnanchor">68</a> <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">90</a></span>Bolingbroke’s tone was peculiarly -light and peculiarly well-bred. His infidelity was strictly infidelity -for the upper classes;<a name="FNanchor_69" id="FNanchor_69"></a><a href="#Footnote_69" class="fnanchor">69</a> ingenious, full of literature, and elegantly -supercilious. He made no pretence to theological criticism in any sense -that can be gravely admitted, but looked at the claims of revelation -with the eye of a polished man of the world, and met its arguments with -those general considerations of airy probability which go so far with -men who insist on having plausible opinions on all subjects, while they -will not take pains to work to the bottom of any.</p> - -<p>Villemain’s observation that there is not one of Voltaire’s writings -that does not bear the mark of his sojourn in England, is specially true -of what he wrote against theology. It was the English onslaught which -sowed in him the seed of the idea, and eventually supplied him with the -argumentative instruments, of a systematic and reasoned attack upon that -mass of doctrinal superstition and social abuse, which it had hitherto -been the fashion for even the strongest spirits in his own country to do -no more than touch with a cool sneer or a flippant insinuation, directed -to the private ear of a sympathiser. Who, born within the last forty -years, cried Burke, has read one word of Collins, and Toland, and Chubb, -and Morgan, and that whole race who called themselves Freethinkers? Who -now reads Bolingbroke? Who ever read him through?<a name="FNanchor_70" id="FNanchor_70"></a><a href="#Footnote_70" class="fnanchor">70</a> This was very -well, but hundreds of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">91</a></span>thousands of persons born within those last forty -years had read Voltaire, and Voltaire had drawn from the armoury of -these dead and unread Freethinkers the weapons which he made sharp with -the mockery of his own spirit. He stood on the platform which they had -constructed, to stretch forth his hand against the shrine and the image -before which so many credulous generations had bowed down. It was in -this most transformed shape among others that at length, late and -changed, but directly of descent, the free and protesting genius of the -Reformation made its decisive entry into France.</p> - -<p>It is easy to cite proofs of the repudiation by Protestant bodies of the -Protestant principle, to multiply instances of the narrow rigidity of -their dogma, and the intolerance of their discipline. This method -supplies an excellent answer as against Protestants who tax Catholics -with the crime of persecution, or the crime of opposing intellectual -independence. It cannot, however, touch the fact that Protestantism was -indirectly the means of creating and dispersing an atmosphere of -rationalism, in which there speedily sprang up philosophical, -theological, and political influences, all of them entirely antagonistic -to the old order of thought and institution. The whole intellectual -temperature underwent a permanent change, that was silently mortal to -the most flourishing tenets of all sorts. It is futile to ask for a -precise logical chain of relations between the beginning of a movement -and its end; and there is no more direct and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">92</a></span> logical connection between -the right of private judgment and an experiential doctrine of -psychology, than there is between experiential psychology and deism. -Nobody now thinks that the effect is homogeneous with its cause, or that -there is any objective resemblance between a blade of wheat and the -moisture and warmth which fill and expand it. All we can see is that the -proclamation of the rights of free judgment would tend to substitute -reason for authority, and evidence for tradition, as the arbiters of -opinion; and that the political expression of this change in the civil -wars of the middle of the seventeenth century would naturally deepen the -influence of the new principle, and produce the Lockian rationalism of -the end of that century, which almost instantaneously extended from the -region of metaphysics into the region of theology.</p> - -<p>The historian of every kind of opinion, and the student of the great -chiefs of intellectual movements, habitually do violence to actual -circumstances, by imparting too systematic a connection to the various -parts of belief, and by assuming an unreal degree of conscious logical -continuity among the notions of individual thinkers. Critics fill in the -frame with a completeness and exactitude that had no counterpart in the -man’s own judgments, and they identify him with a multitude of -deductions from his premisses, which may be fairly drawn, but which -never at all entered into his mind, and formed no part of his character. -The philosophy of the majority of men<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">93</a></span> is nothing more shaped and -incorporate than a little group of potential and partially incoherent -tendencies. To stiffen these into a system of definite formulas is the -most deceptive, as it is the most common, of critical processes. A few -persons, with an exceptional turn for philosophy, consciously embody -their metaphysical principles with a certain detail in all the rest of -their thinking. With most people, however, even people of superior -capacity, the relation between their ground-system, such as a critic -might supply them with, and their manifestations of intellectual -activity, is of an extremely indirect and general kind.</p> - -<p>Hence the untrustworthiness of those critical schemata, so attractive -for their compact order, which first make Voltaire a Lockian -sensationalist, and then trace his deism to his sensationalism. We have -already seen that he was a deist before he came to England, just as Lord -Herbert of Cherbury was a deist, who wrote before Locke was born. It was -not the metaphysical revolution of Locke which led to deism, but the -sort of way in which he thought about metaphysics, a way which was -immediately applied to theology by other people, whether assailants or -defenders of the current opinions. Locke’s was ‘common-sense thinking,’ -and the fashion spread. The air was thick with common-sense objections -to Christianity, as it was with common-sense ideas as to the way in -which we come to have ideas. There was no temperament to which such an -atmosphere could be so congenial as Voltaire’s, of whom we cannot too<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">94</a></span> -often repeat, considering the vulgar reputation he has for violence and -excess, that he was in thought the very genius of good sense, whether or -no we fully admit M. Cousin’s qualification of it as superficial good -sense. It has been said that he always speaks of Descartes, Leibnitz, -and Spinoza, like a man to whom nature has refused the metaphysical -sense.<a name="FNanchor_71" id="FNanchor_71"></a><a href="#Footnote_71" class="fnanchor">71</a> At any rate he could never agree with them, and he never -tried to find truth by the roads which they had made. It is true, -however, that he shows no sign of special fitness for metaphysics, any -more than he did for physical science. The metaphysics of Locke lay -undeveloped in his mind, just as the theory of evolution lies in so many -minds at the present time. There is a faint informal reference of other -theories to this central and half-seen standard. When metaphysical -subjects came before him, he felt that he had this for a sheet-anchor, -and he did not greatly care to keep proving it again and again by -continued criticism or examination. The upshot of his acquaintance with -Locke was a systematic adherence to common-sense modes of thinking; and -he always betrayed the faults and shortcomings to which such modes -inevitably lead, when they are brought, to the exclusion of -complementary ideas, to the practical subjects that comprehend more than -prudence, self-interest, and sobriety. The subject that does beyond any -other comprehend <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">95</a></span>more than these elements is religion, and the -substantial vices of Voltaire’s objections to religion first arose from -his familiarity with the English form of deism, and his instinctive -feeling for its method.</p> - -<p>The deism of Leibnitz was a positive belief, and made the existence of a -supreme power an actual and living object of conviction. The mark of -this belief has remained on German speculation throughout its course, -down to our own day. English deism, on the contrary, was only a -particular way of repudiating Christianity. There was as little of God -in it as could well be. Its theory was that God had given each man the -light of reason in his own breast; that by this reason every scheme of -belief must be tried, and accepted or rejected; and that the Christian -scheme being so tried was in various ways found wanting. The formula of -some book of the eighteenth century, that God created nature and nature -created the world, must be allowed to have reduced theistic conception -to something like the shadow of smoke. The English eighteenth-century -formula was, theistically, nearly as void. The Being who set the reason -of each individual on a kind of judicial bench within the forum of his -own conscience, and left him and it together to settle belief and -conduct between them, was a tolerably remote and unreal sort of -personage. His spiritual force, according to such a doctrine, became -very much as if it had no existence.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">96</a></span></p> - -<p>It was not to be expected that a sovereign dwelling in such amazingly -remote lands as this would continue long with undisputed authority, when -all the negative forces of the time had reached their full momentum. In -England the reaction against this strange absentee government of the -universe took the form which might have been anticipated from the deep -hold that Protestantism had won, and the spirituality which had been -engendered by Protestant reference to the relations between the -individual conscience and the mystic operations of faith. Deism became a -reality with a God in it in the great Evangelical revival, terrible and -inevitable, which has so deeply coloured religious feeling and warped -intellectual growth in England ever since. In France, thought took a -very different and much simpler turn. Or perhaps it would be more -correct to say that it took no turn at all, but carried the godless -deism of the English school to its fair conclusion, and dismissed a -deity who only reigned and did not govern. The whole movement had a -single origin. There is not one of the arguments of the French -philosophers in the eighteenth century, says a very competent authority, -which cannot be found in the English school of the beginning of the -century.<a name="FNanchor_72" id="FNanchor_72"></a><a href="#Footnote_72" class="fnanchor">72</a> Voltaire, who carried the English way of thinking about the -supernatural power into <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">97</a></span></p> - -<p>France, lived to see a band of trenchant and energetic disciples develop -principles which he had planted, into a system of dogmatic atheism. The -time came when he was spoken of contemptuously as retrograde and -superstitious: ‘<i>Voltaire est bigot, il est déiste</i>.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">98</a></span>’</p> - -<h2>CHAPTER III.</h2> - -<h5>LITERATURE.</h5> - -<p>On the whole, the critic’s task is perhaps less to classify a type of -character as good or bad, as worthy of so much praise or so much -censure, than to mark the material out of which a man has his life to -make, and the kind of use and form to which he puts his material. To -begin with, the bald division of men into sheep and goats is in one -sense so easy as not to be worth performing, and in another sense it is -so hard as only to be possible for some being with supernatural insight. -And even were the qualities employed in the task of a rarer kind than -they are, the utility of the performance is always extremely slight, -compared with that other kind of criticism which dwells less on the -final balance of good or evil, than on the first innate conditions of -temperament, the fixed limitations of opportunity, and the complex -interplay of the two with that character, which is first their creature -and then their master. It is less the concern of criticism to pronounce -its man absolutely rich or absolutely poor, than to count up his talents -and the usury of his own which he added to them. Assuredly there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">99</a></span> ought -to be little condonation of the foibles, and none at all of the moral -obliquities, of the dead, because this would mean the demoralisation of -the living. But it is seriously to overrate the power of bald words and -written opinion, to suppose that a critic’s censure of conduct which a -thousand other agents, from the child’s hornbook up to the obvious and -pressing dictates of social convenience, are daily and hourly -prescribing, can be other than a work of supererogation, which fixes the -mind on platitudes, instead of leading it on in search of special and -distinctive traits.</p> - -<p>It would be easy to pour overflowing vials of condemnation on many sides -of Voltaire’s character and career. No man possessed of so much good -sense ever fell so constantly into the kinds of error against which good -sense particularly warns men. There is no more wearisome or pitiful leaf -in the biographies of the great, than the tale of Voltaire’s quarrels -with ignoble creatures; with a wrecked soul, like J. B. Rousseau (whom -the reader will not confound with Jean Jacques); with a thievish -bookseller, like Jore; with a calumnious journalist, like Desfontaines; -with a rapacious knave like Hirschel; and all the other tormentors in -the Voltairean history, whose names recall vulgar, dishonest, and -indignant pertinacity on the one side, and wasteful, undignified fury on -the other. That lesson in the art of life which concerns a man’s -dealings with those who have shown patent moral inferiority, was never -mastered by Voltaire.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">100</a></span> Instead of the silence, composure, and austere -oblivion, which it is of the essence of strength to oppose to unworthy -natures, he habitually confronted the dusty creeping things that beset -his march, as if they stood valiant and erect; and the more unworthy -they were, the more vehement and strenuous and shrill was his contention -with them. The ignominy of such strife is clear. One thing only may -perhaps be said. His intense susceptibility to vulgar calumny flowed -from the same quality in his nature which made unbearable to him the -presence of superstition and injustice, those mightier calumnies on -humanity. The irritated protests against the small foes of his person -were as the dregs of potent wine, and were the lower part of that -passionate sensibility which made him the assailant of the giant -oppressors of the human mind. This reflection does not make any less -tedious to us the damnable iteration of petty quarrel and fretting -complaint which fills such a space in his correspondence and in his -biographies, nor does it lessen our regret at the havoc which this fatal -defect of his qualities made with his contentedness. We think of his -consolation to a person as susceptible as himself: ‘There have always -been Frérons in literature; but they say there must be caterpillars for -nightingales to eat, that they may sing the better:’ and we wish that -our nightingale had devoured its portion with something less of tumult. -But it may do something to prevent us from giving a prominence, that is -both unfair and extremely misleading, to mere<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">101</a></span> shadow, as if that had -been the whole substance. Alas, why after all should men, from Moses -downwards, be so cheerfully ready to contemplate the hinder parts of -their divinities?</p> - -<p>The period of twenty years between Voltaire’s departure from England and -his departure for Berlin, although often pronounced the happiest time of -his life, is very thickly set with these humiliating incidents. To us, -however, they are dead, because though vivid enough to Voltaire—and it -is strange how constantly it happens that the minor circumstance of life -is more real and ever-present to a man than his essential and abiding -work in it—they were but transitory and accidental. Just as it does -little good to the understanding to spend much time over tenth-rate -literature, so it is little edifying to the character to rake among the -private obscurities of even first-rate men, and it is surely a good rule -to keep ourselves as much as we can in contact with what is great.</p> - -<p>The chief personal fact of this time was the connection which Voltaire -formed with the Marquise du Châtelet, and which lasted from 1733 to -1749. She was to him that important and peculiar influence which, in one -shape or another, some woman seems to have been to nearly every foremost -man. In Voltaire’s case this influence was not the rich and tender -inspiration with which women have so many a time sweetened the lives and -glorified the thought of illustrious workers, nor was he bound to her -by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">102</a></span> those bonds of passion which have often the effect of exalting the -strength and widening the range of the whole of the nature that is -susceptive of passion. Their inner relations hardly depended on anything -more extraordinary or more delicate than the sentiment of a masculine -friendship. Voltaire found in the divine Emily a strong and active head, -a keen and generous admiration for his own genius, and an eagerness to -surround him with the external conditions most favourable to that steady -industry which was always a thing so near his own heart. They are two -great men, one of whom wears petticoats, said Voltaire of her and of -Frederick. It is impossible to tell what share vanity had in the -beginning of a connection, which probably owed its long continuance more -to use and habit than to any deep-rooted sentiment. Vanity was one of -the most strongly marked of Voltaire’s traits, and to this side of him -relations with a woman of quality who adored his genius were no doubt -extremely gratifying. Yet one ought to do him the justice to say that -his vanity was only skin-deep. It had nothing in common with the greedy -egotism which reduces the whole broad universe to a mere microcosm of -pygmy self. The vanity which discloses a real flaw in character is a -loud and tyrannical claim for acknowledgment of literary supremacy, and -with it the mean vices of envy, jealousy, and detraction are usually in -company. Voltaire’s vanity was something very different from this -truculent kind of self-assertion. It had a source<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">103</a></span> in his intensely -sympathetic quality, and was a gay and eager asking of assurance from -others that his work gave them pleasure. Let us be very careful to -remember that it never stood in the way of self-knowledge,—the great -test of the difference between the vanity that is harmless, and the -vanity that is fatuous and destructive.</p> - -<p>It has been rather the fashion to laugh at the Marquise du Châtelet, for -no better reasons perhaps than that she, being a woman, studied Newton, -and had relations called tender with a man so little associated in -common opinion with tenderness as Voltaire. The first reason is -disgraceful, and the second is perhaps childish. Everything goes to show -that Madame du Châtelet possessed a hardy originality of character, of -which society is so little likely to have an excess that we can hardly -ever be thankful enough for it. There is probably nothing which would -lead to so rapid and marked an improvement in the world, as a large -increase of the number of women in it with the will and the capacity to -master Newton as thoroughly as she did. And her long and sedulous -affection for a man of genius of Voltaire’s exceptional quality, -entitles her to the not too common praise of recognising and revering -intellectual greatness as it deserves. Her friendship for him was not -the semi-servile and feebly intelligent solicitude which superior men -have too often the wretched weakness to seek in their female companions, -but an imperial sympathy. She was unamiable, it is true, and possessed -neither the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">104</a></span> delicacy which a more fastidious age requires in a woman, -nor the sense of honour which we now demand in a man. These defects, -however, were not genuinely personal, but lay in the manners of the -time. It was not so with all her faults. To the weak and dependent she -was overbearing, harsh, mean, and even cruel. A fatuous caprice would -often destroy the domestic peace and pleasure of a week. But nothing was -suffered to impede the labour of a day. The industry of the house was -incessant.</p> - -<p>It is said, and it was said first by one who lived with them for some -time, and has left a graphic account of the interior of Cirey, that she -made Voltaire’s life a little hard to him.<a name="FNanchor_73" id="FNanchor_73"></a><a href="#Footnote_73" class="fnanchor">73</a> There were many -occasional storms and short sullen fits even in these high regions of -science and the finer tastes. Yet such stormful scenes, with great -actors as with small, are perhaps more painful in description than they -were in reality; and Voltaire was less discomposed by the lively -impetuosity of a companion like Madame du Châtelet, than he would have -been by the orderly calm of a more precise and perfectly well-regulated -person. A man follows the conditions of his temperament, and Voltaire’s -unresting animation and fire might make him feel a certain joy of life -and freedom in the occasional contentiousness of a slightly shrewish -temper. We cannot think of him as ever <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">105</a></span>shrinking, ever craving for -repose, as some men do as for a very necessity of existence. The health -of your friend, wrote Madame du Châtelet to D’Argental in 1739, is in so -deplorable a state that the only hope I have left of restoring it is in -the turmoil of a journey<a name="FNanchor_74" id="FNanchor_74"></a><a href="#Footnote_74" class="fnanchor">74</a>. A tolerably frequent agitation was a -condition of even such health as he had, to one of Voltaire’s nervous -and feverish habit.</p> - -<p>Let it be said that his restlessness never took a form which involved a -sacrifice of the happiness of other people. It was never tyrannical and -exigent. There are many, too many, instances of his angry impatience -with persons against whom he thought he had cause of offence. There is -not a single instance in which any shadow of implacableness lurked for -an enemy who had repented or fallen into misfortune; and if his -resentment was constantly aflame against the ignoble, it instantly -expired and changed into warm-hearted pity, when the ignoble became -either penitent or miserable. There are many tales of the readiness with -which his anger was appeased. Any one will suffice as a type. On some -occasion when Voltaire was harassed by a storm of libels, and happened -to be on good terms with the police, a distributor of the libels was -arrested. The father, an old man of eighty, hastened to Voltaire to pray -for pardon. All Voltaire’s fury instantly vanished at the first appeal; -he wept with the old man, embraced him, consoled him, and straightway -ran to procure <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">106</a></span>the liberation of the offender<a name="FNanchor_75" id="FNanchor_75"></a><a href="#Footnote_75" class="fnanchor">75</a>. An eye-witness -related to Grimm how he happened to be present at Ferney when Voltaire -received Rousseau’s Lettres de la Montagne, and read the apostrophe -relating to himself. His face seemed to take fire, his eyes sparkled -with fury, his whole frame trembled, and he cried in terrible -tones—‘The miscreant! the monster! I must have him cudgelled—yes, I -will have him cudgelled in his mountains at the knees of his nurse.’ -‘Pray, calm yourself,’ said the bystander, ‘for I know that Rousseau -means to pay you a visit, and will very shortly be at Ferney.’ ‘Ah, only -let him come,’ replied Voltaire. ‘But how will you receive him?’ -‘Receive him ... I will give him supper, put him in my own bed, and say, -There is a good supper; this is the best bed in the house; do me the -pleasure to accept one and the other, and to make yourself happy -here<a name="FNanchor_76" id="FNanchor_76"></a><a href="#Footnote_76" class="fnanchor">76</a>.’ One does not understand the terrible man, without remembering -always how much of the hot generosity of the child he kept in his nature -to the last. When the very Jesuits were suppressed with circumstances of -extreme harshness, he pitied even them, and took one of their number -permanently into his household<a name="FNanchor_77" id="FNanchor_77"></a><a href="#Footnote_77" class="fnanchor">77</a>.</p> - -<p>The most important part of a man’s private conduct after that which -concerns his relations with <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">107</a></span>women and his family, is generally that -which concerns his way of dealing with money, because money in its -acquisition and its dispersion is the outward and visible sign of the -absence or of the presence of so many inward and spiritual graces. As -has often been said, it is the measure of some of the most important of -a man’s virtues, his honesty, his industry, his generosity, his -self-denial, and most of the other elements in keeping the difficult -balance between his care for himself and his care for other people. -Voltaire perceived very early in life that to be needy was to be -dependent; that the rich and poor are as hammer and anvil; that the -chronicles of genius demonstrate that it is not by genius that men -either make a fortune or live happy lives. He made up his mind from the -beginning that the author of the French epic would not share the poverty -and straitened lives of Tasso and Milton, and that he for his part would -at any rate be hammer and not anvil.<a name="FNanchor_78" id="FNanchor_78"></a><a href="#Footnote_78" class="fnanchor">78</a> I was so wearied, he wrote in -1752, of the humiliations that dishonour letters, that to stay my -disgust I resolved to make what scoundrels call a great fortune.<a name="FNanchor_79" id="FNanchor_79"></a><a href="#Footnote_79" class="fnanchor">79</a> He -used to give his books away to the printers. He had a small fortune from -his father; he is said to have made two thousand pounds by the English -subscriptions to the Henriade; and he did not hide his talent in the -ground, but resorted skilfully to all sorts of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">108</a></span>speculations in stocks, -army contracts, and other authorised means of converting one livre into -two while you sleep. He lent large sums of money, presumably at handsome -interest, to the Duke of Richelieu and others, and though the interest -may have been handsome, the trouble of procuring it was often -desperate.<a name="FNanchor_80" id="FNanchor_80"></a><a href="#Footnote_80" class="fnanchor">80</a> Yet after much experience Voltaire came to the conclusion -that though he had sometimes lost money by bankers, by the devout, by -the people of the Old Testament, who would have had many scruples about -a larded capon, who would rather die than not be idle on the sabbath, -and not be thieving on the Sunday, yet he had lost nothing by the great -except his time.<a name="FNanchor_81" id="FNanchor_81"></a><a href="#Footnote_81" class="fnanchor">81</a></p> - -<p>It is easy to point a sneer at a high priest of humanity jobbing in the -funds. Only let us remember that Voltaire never made any pretence of -being a high priest of humanity; that his transactions were -substantially very like those of any banker or merchant of to-day; and -that for a man who was preaching new opinions it was extremely prudent -to place himself out of the necessity of pleasing booksellers or the pit -of the theatre on the one hand, and on the other to supply himself with -ready means of frequent flight from the ceaseless persecutions of -authority. Envious scribes in his lifetime taunted him with avarice, and -the evil association still clings to his memory now that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">109</a></span>he is dead. -One can only say that good and high-minded men, who never shrank from -withstanding him when in fault, men like Condorcet for example, heard -such talk with disdain, and set it down to the disgraceful readiness of -men to credit anything that relieves them from having to admire<a name="FNanchor_82" id="FNanchor_82"></a><a href="#Footnote_82" class="fnanchor">82</a>. The -people who dislike prudence in matters of money in those whose -distinction is intellectual or spiritual, resemble a sentimental lover -who should lose his illusions at sight of his mistress eating a hearty -meal. Is their lot, then, cast in the ethereal fluid of the interstellar -spaces?</p> - -<p>At all events Voltaire had two important gifts which do not commonly -belong to the avaricious; he was a generous helper alike of those who -had, and those who had not, a claim upon him, and he knew how to bear -serious losses with unbroken composure. Michel, the receiver-general, -became bankrupt, and Voltaire lost a considerable sum of money in -consequence. His fluency of invective and complaint, which was simply -boundless when any obscure scribbler earned a guinea by a calumny upon -him, went no farther on the occasion of this very substantial injury -than a single splenetic phrase, and a harmless quatrain:</p> - -<div class="poem2"> -<div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Michel au nom de l’Eternel,</span> -<span class="i0">Mit jadis le diable en déroute;</span> -<span class="i0">Mais, après cette banqueroute,</span> -<span class="i0">Que le diable emporte Michel!</span> -</div></div> - -<p>It has been fairly asked whether a genuine miser <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">110</a></span>would content himself -with a stanza upon the man who had robbed him.<a name="FNanchor_83" id="FNanchor_83"></a><a href="#Footnote_83" class="fnanchor">83</a> His correspondence -with the Duchess of Saxe-Gotha shows him declining to accept the -thousand louis, which she had sent as a fee for the composition of the -Annales de l’Empire.</p> - -<p>Much has been made of the bargaining which he carried on with Frederick, -as to the terms on which he would consent to go to Berlin. But then the -Prussian king was not one with whom it was wise to be too nice in such -affairs. He was the thriftiest of men, and as a king is a person who -lives on other people’s money, such thrift was in his case the most -princely of virtues. Haggling is not graceful, but it need not imply -avarice in either of the parties to it. The truth is that there was in -Voltaire a curious admixture of splendid generosity with virulent -tenacity about half-pence. The famous quarrel with the President de -Brosses about the fourteen cords of firewood is a worse affair. -Voltaire, who leased Tourney from him, insisted that De Brosses had made -him a present of the fourteen cords. De Brosses, no doubt truly, -declared that he had only ordered the wood to be delivered on Voltaire’s -account. On this despicable matter a long correspondence was carried on, -in which Voltaire is seen at his very worst; insolent, undignified, -low-minded, and untruthful.<a name="FNanchor_84" id="FNanchor_84"></a><a href="#Footnote_84" class="fnanchor">84</a> The case happily stands alone in his -biography. As a rule, he is a steady <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">111</a></span>practitioner of the Aristotelian -μεγαλοπρέπεια, or virtue of magnificent expenditure.</p> - -<p>The truly important feature of the life which Voltaire led at Cirey was -its unremitting diligence. Like a Homeric goddess, the divine Emily -poured a cloud round her hero. There is a sort of moral climate in a -household, an impalpable, unseizable, indefinable set of influences, -which predispose the inmates to industry and self-control, or else relax -fibre and slacken purpose. At Cirey there was an almost monastic rule. -Madame Grafigny says that though Voltaire felt himself bound by -politeness to pay her a visit from time to time in her apartment, he -usually avoided sitting down, apologetically protesting how frightful a -thing is the quantity of time people waste in talking, and that waste of -time is the most fatal kind of extravagance of which one can be -guilty<a name="FNanchor_85" id="FNanchor_85"></a><a href="#Footnote_85" class="fnanchor">85</a>. He seems to have usually passed the whole day at his desk, -or in making physical experiments in his chamber. The only occasion on -which people met was at the supper at nine in the evening. Until then -the privacy of the chamber alike of the hostess, who was analysing -Leibnitz or translating Newton, and of the unofficial host, who was -compiling material for the Siècle de Louis XIV., or polishing and -repolishing Mahomet, or investigating the circumstances of the -propagation of fire, was sacredly inviolable.</p> - -<p>The rigour of the rule did not forbid theatrical performances, when any -company, even a company <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">112</a></span>of marionettes, came into the neighbourhood of -the desolate Champagne château. Sometimes after supper Voltaire would -exhibit a magic lantern, with explanatory comments after the showman’s -manner, in which he would convulse his friends at the expense of his -enemies.<a name="FNanchor_86" id="FNanchor_86"></a><a href="#Footnote_86" class="fnanchor">86</a> But after the evening’s amusement was over, the Marquise -would retire to work in her chamber until the morning, and, when morning -came, a couple of hours’ sleep was the only division between the tasks -of the night and the tasks of the day. Two splenetic women have left us -a couple of spiteful pictures of Madame du Châtelet, but neither of her -detractors could rise to any higher conception of intellectual effort -than the fine turn of phrase, the ingenious image, the keen thrust of -cruel satire, with which the polished idle of that day whiled away -dreary and worthless years. The translator of Newton’s Principia was not -of this company, and she was wholly indifferent to the raillery, -sarcasm, and hate of women whom she justly held her inferiors. It is -much the fashion to admire the women of this time, because they contrive -to hide behind a veil of witty words the coldness and hollowness of -lives which had neither the sweetness of the old industrious domesticity -of women, nor the noble largeness of some of those in whom the -Revolution kindled a pure fire of patriotism in after days. Madame du -Châtelet, with all her faults, was a far loftier character than the -malicious gossips who laughed at her. ‘Everything<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">113</a></span> that occupies society -was within her power, <i>except slander</i>. She was never heard to hold up -anybody to laughter. When she was informed that certain people were bent -on not doing her justice, she would reply that she wished to ignore it.’ -This was surely better than a talent for barbing epigrams, and she led a -worthier life at Cirey than in that Paris which Voltaire described so -bitterly.</p> - -<div class="poem"> -<div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Là, tous les soirs, la troupe vagabonde,</span> -<span class="i0">D’un peuple oisif, appelé le beau monde,</span> -<span class="i0">Va promener de réduit en réduit</span> -<span class="i0">L’inquiétude et l’ennui qui la suit.</span> -<span class="i0">Là sont en foule antiques mijaurées,</span> -<span class="i0">Jeunes oisons et bégueules titrées,</span> -<span class="i0">Disant des riens d’un ton de perroquet,</span> -<span class="i0">Lorgnant des sots, et trichant au piquet.</span> -<span class="i0">Blondins y sont, beaucoup plus femmes qu’elles,</span> -<span class="i0">Profondément remplis de bagatelles,</span> -<span class="i0">D’un air hautain, d’une bruyante voix,</span> -<span class="i0">Chantant, dansant, minaudant à la fois.</span> -<span class="i0">Si par hasard quelque personne honnête,</span> -<span class="i0">D’un sens plus droit et d’un goût plus heureux,</span> -<span class="i0">Des bons écrits ayant meublé sa tête,</span> -<span class="i0">Leur fait l’affront de penser à leurs yeux;</span> -<span class="i0">Tout aussitôt leur brillante cohue,</span> -<span class="i0">D’etonnement et de colère émue,</span> -<span class="i0">Bruyant essaim de frélons envieux,</span> -<span class="i0">Pique et poursuit cette abeille charmante<a name="FNanchor_87" id="FNanchor_87"></a><a href="#Footnote_87" class="fnanchor">87</a>.</span> -</div></div> - -<p>It was not the fault of Madame du Châtelet that the life of Cirey was -not the undisturbed type of Voltaire’s existence during the fifteen -years of their <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">114</a></span>companionship. Many pages might be filled with a mere -list of the movements from place to place to which Voltaire resorted, -partly from reasonable fear of the grip of a jealous and watchful -government, partly from eagerness to bring the hand of the government -upon his enemies, and most of all from the uncontrollable restlessness -of his own nature. Amsterdam, the Hague, Brussels, Berlin, the little -court of Luneville, and the great world of Paris, too frequently -withdrew him from the solitary castle at Cirey, though he never failed -to declare on his return, and with perfect sincerity, that he was never -so happy anywhere else. If it was true that the Marquise made her poet’s -life a little hard to him, it is impossible to read her correspondence -without perceiving that he, too, though for no lack of sensibility and -good feeling, often made life extremely hard for her. Besides their -moral difference, there was a marked discrepancy in intellectual -temperament, which did not fail to lead to outward manifestations. -Voltaire was sometimes a little weary of Newton and exact science, while -the Marquise was naturally of the rather narrow turn for arid truths -which too often distinguishes clever women inadequately disciplined by -contact with affairs. She and Voltaire both competed for a prize offered -by the Academy for essays on the propagation of fire (1737). Neither of -them was successful, for the famous Euler was a competitor. The second -and third prizes were given to two obscurer persons, because their -essays were Cartesian, that is to say, they were scientifically<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">115</a></span> -orthodox. The two philosophers of Cirey also took part, and on different -sides, in the obstinate physico-mathematical controversy which Leibnitz -had first raised towards the close of the seventeenth century, as to the -measure of moving forces<a name="FNanchor_88" id="FNanchor_88"></a><a href="#Footnote_88" class="fnanchor">88</a>. The Marquise, under circumstances of -equivocal glory and with much angry buzzing, with which one has now no -concern<a name="FNanchor_89" id="FNanchor_89"></a><a href="#Footnote_89" class="fnanchor">89</a>, published her analysis of Leibnitz in 1740, and sided with -him against Newton and Descartes. In the notice which Voltaire wrote of -his friend’s book he gave a marvellously simple and intelligible account -of the issue of the special controversy of <i>vis viva</i><a name="FNanchor_90" id="FNanchor_90"></a><a href="#Footnote_90" class="fnanchor">90</a>, but he -remained Newtonian, and in 1741 presented a paper to the Academy of -Sciences, disputing the Leibnitzian view<a name="FNanchor_91" id="FNanchor_91"></a><a href="#Footnote_91" class="fnanchor">91</a>.</p> - -<p>Voltaire was not merely one of those ‘paper philosophers,’ whose -intrusion into the fields of physical science its professional followers -are justly wont to resent. He was an active experimenter, and more than -one letter remains, containing instructions to his agent in Paris to -forward him retorts, air-pumps, and other instruments, with the wise -hint in one place, a hint by no means of a miser, ‘In the matter of -buying things, my friend, you should always prefer the good and sound -even if a little dear, to what is only middling but cheaper<a name="FNanchor_92" id="FNanchor_92"></a><a href="#Footnote_92" class="fnanchor">92</a>.’ His -correspondence <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">116</a></span>for some years proves the diligence and sincerity of his -interest in science. Yet it is tolerably clear that the man who did so -much to familiarise France with the most illustrious of physicists, was -himself devoid of true scientific aptitude. After long and persevering -labour in this region, Voltaire consulted Clairaut on the progress he -had made. The latter, with a loyal frankness which Voltaire knew how to -appreciate, answered that even with the most stubborn labour he was not -likely to attain to anything beyond mediocrity in science, and that he -would be only throwing away time which he owed to poetry and -philosophy.<a name="FNanchor_93" id="FNanchor_93"></a><a href="#Footnote_93" class="fnanchor">93</a> The advice was taken; for, as we have already said, -Voltaire’s self-love was never fatuous, and the independent search of -physical truth was given up. There is plainly no reason to regret the -pains which Voltaire took in this kind of inquiry, not because the study -of the sciences extends the range of poetic study and enriches verse -with fresh images, but because the number of sorts of knowledge in which -a man feels at home and is intelligently cognisant of their scope and -issues, even if he be wholly incompetent to assist in the progress of -discovery, increases that intellectual confidence and self-respect of -understanding, which so fortifies and stimulates him in his own special -order of work. We cannot precisely contend that this encyclopædic -quality is an indispensable condition of such self-respect in every kind -of temper. It certainly was so with Voltaire. ‘After all, my dear -friend,’ <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">117</a></span>he wrote to Cideville, ‘it is right to give every possible -form to our soul. It is a flame that God has intrusted to us, we are -bound to feed it with all that we find most precious. We should -introduce into our existence all imaginable modes, and open every door -of the soul to all sorts of knowledge and all sorts of feelings. So long -as it does not all go in pell-mell there is plenty of room for -everything.<a name="FNanchor_94" id="FNanchor_94"></a><a href="#Footnote_94" class="fnanchor">94</a></p> - -<p>To us, who can be wise after the event, it is clear that if ever man was -called not to science, nor to poetry, nor to theology, nor to -metaphysics, but to literature, the art, so hard to define, of showing -the ideas of all subjects in the double light of the practical and the -spiritual reason, that man was Voltaire. He has himself dwelt on the -vagueness of this much-abused term, without contributing anything more -satisfactory towards a better account of it than a crude hint that -literature, not being a special art, may be considered a kind of larger -grammar of knowledge.<a name="FNanchor_95" id="FNanchor_95"></a><a href="#Footnote_95" class="fnanchor">95</a> Although, however, it is true that literature -is not a particular art, it is not the less true that there is a mental -constitution particularly fitted for its successful practice. Literature -is essentially an art of form, as distinguished from those exercises of -intellectual energy which bring new stores of matter to the stock of -acquired knowledge, and give new forces to emotion and original and -definite articulation to passion. It is a misleading classification to -call the work of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">118</a></span>Shakespeare and Molière, Shelley and Hugo, literary, -just as it would be an equally inaccurate, though more glaring piece of -classification, to count the work of Newton or Locke literature. To take -another case from Voltaire, it would not be enough to describe Bayle’s -Dictionary as a literary compilation; it would not even be enough to -describe it as a work of immense learning, because the distinguishing -and superior mark of this book is a profound dialectic. It forms men of -letters and is above them.<a name="FNanchor_96" id="FNanchor_96"></a><a href="#Footnote_96" class="fnanchor">96</a></p> - -<p>What is it then that literature brings to us, that earns its title to -high place, though far from a highest place, among the great humanizing -arts? Is it not that this is the master organon for giving men the two -precious qualities of breadth of interest and balance of judgment; -multiplicity of sympathies and steadiness of sight? Unhappily, -literature has too often been identified with the smirks and -affectations of mere elegant dispersiveness, with the hollow niceties of -the virtuoso, a thing of madrigals. It is not in any sense of this sort -that we can think of Voltaire as specially the born minister of -literature. What we mean is that while he had not the loftier endowments -of the highest poetic conception, subtle speculative penetration, or -triumphant scientific power, he possessed a superb combination of wide -and sincere curiosity, an intelligence of vigorous and exact -receptivity, a native inclination to candour and justice, and a -pre-eminent mastery over a wide range in the art <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">119</a></span>of expression. -Literature being concerned to impose form, to diffuse the light by which -common men are able to see the great host of ideas and facts that do not -shine in the brightness of their own atmosphere, it is clear what -striking gifts Voltaire had in this way. He had a great deal of -knowledge, and he was ever on the alert both to increase and broaden his -stock, and, what was still better, to impart of it to everybody else. He -did not think it beneath him to write on Hemistichs for the -Encyclopaedia. ’Tis not a very brilliant task, he said, but perhaps the -article will be useful to men of letters and amateurs; ‘one should -disdain nothing, and I will do the word Comma, if you choose.’<a name="FNanchor_97" id="FNanchor_97"></a><a href="#Footnote_97" class="fnanchor">97</a> He -was very catholic in taste, being able to love Racine without ignoring -the lofty stature of Shakespeare. And he was free from the weakness -which so often attends on catholicity, when it is not supported by true -strength and independence of understanding; he did not shut his eyes to -the shortcomings of the great. While loving Moliere, he was aware of the -incompleteness of his dramatic construction, as well as of the egregious -farce to which that famous writer too often descends.<a name="FNanchor_98" id="FNanchor_98"></a><a href="#Footnote_98" class="fnanchor">98</a> His respect -for the sublimity and pathos of Corneille did not hinder him from noting -both his violence and his frigid argumentation.<a name="FNanchor_99" id="FNanchor_99"></a><a href="#Footnote_99" class="fnanchor">99</a> Does the reader -remember that admirable saying of his to Vauvenargues; ‘<i>It is the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">120</a></span>part -of a man like you to have preferences, hut no exclusions</i>?’<a name="FNanchor_100" id="FNanchor_100"></a><a href="#Footnote_100" class="fnanchor">100</a> To this -fine principle Voltaire was usually thoroughly true, as every great -mind, if only endowed with adequate culture, must necessarily be.</p> - -<div class="poem2"> -<div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Nul auteur avec lui n’a tort,</span> -<span class="i0">Quand il a trouvé l’art de plaire;</span> -<span class="i0">Il le critique sans colere,</span> -<span class="i0">Il l’applaudit avec transport.<a name="FNanchor_101" id="FNanchor_101"></a><a href="#Footnote_101" class="fnanchor">101</a></span> -</div></div> - -<p>Thirdly, that circumfusion of bright light which is the highest aim of -speech, was easy to Voltaire, in whatever order of subject he happened -to treat. His style is like a translucent stream of purest mountain -water, moving with swift and animated flow under flashing sunbeams. -‘Voltaire,’ said an enemy, ‘is the very first man in the world at -writing down what other people have thought,’ What was meant for a -spiteful censure, was in fact a truly honourable distinction.</p> - -<p>The secret is incommunicable. No spectrum analysis can decompose for us -that enchanting ray. It is rather, after all, the piercing metallic -light of electricity than a glowing beam of the sun. We can detect some -of the external qualities of this striking style. We seize its dazzling -simplicity, its almost primitive closeness to the letter, its sharpness -and precision, above all, its admirable brevity. We see that no writer -ever used so few words to produce <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">121</a></span>such pregnant effects.<a name="FNanchor_102" id="FNanchor_102"></a><a href="#Footnote_102" class="fnanchor">102</a> Those -whom brevity only makes thin and slight, may look with despair on pages -where the nimbleness of the sentence is in proportion to the firmness of -the thought. We find no bastard attempts to reproduce in words deep and -complex effects, which can only be adequately presented in colour or in -the combinations of musical sound. Nobody has ever known better the true -limitations of the material in which he worked, or the scope and -possibilities of his art. Voltaire’s alexandrines, his witty stories, -his mock-heroic, his exposition of Newton, his histories, his dialectic, -all bear the same mark, the same natural, precise, and condensed mode of -expression, the same absolutely faultless knowledge of what is proper -and permitted in every given kind of written work. At first there seems -something paradoxical in dwelling on the brevity of an author whose -works are to be counted by scores of volumes. But this is no real -objection. A writer may be insufferably prolix in the limits of a single -volume, and Voltaire was quite right in saying that there are four times -too many words in the one volume of D’Holbach’s System of Nature. He -maintains too that Rabelais might advantageously be reduced to -one-eighth, and Bayle to a quarter, and there is hardly a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">122</a></span>book that is -not curtailed in the perfecting hands of the divine muses.<a name="FNanchor_103" id="FNanchor_103"></a><a href="#Footnote_103" class="fnanchor">103</a> So -conversely an author may not waste a word in a hundred volumes. Style is -independent of quantity, and the world suffers so grievously from the -mass of books that have been written, not because they are many, but -because such vast proportion of their pages say nothing while they -purport to say so much.</p> - -<p>No study, however, of this outward ease and swift compendiousness of -speech will teach us the secret that was beneath it in Voltaire, an eye -and a hand that never erred in hitting the exact mark of appropriateness -in every order of prose and verse. Perhaps no such vision for the -befitting in expression has ever existed. He is the most trenchant -writer in the world, yet there is not a sentence of strained emphasis or -overwrought antithesis; he is the wittiest, yet there is not a line of -bad buffoonery. And this intense sense of the appropriate was by nature -and cultivation become so entirely a fixed condition of Voltaire’s mind -that it shows spontaneous and without an effort in his work. Nobody is -more free from the ostentatious correctness of the literary precisian, -and nobody preserves so much purity and so much dignity of language with -so little formality of demeanour. It is interesting to notice the -absence from his writings of that intensely elaborated kind of -simplicity in which some of the best authors of a later time express the -final outcome of many thoughts. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">123</a></span></p> - -<p>The strain that society has undergone since Voltaire’s day has taught -men to qualify their propositions. It has forced them to follow truth -slowly along paths steep and devious. New notes have been struck in -human feeling, and all thought has now been touched by complexities that -were then unseen. Hence, as all good writers aim at simplicity and -directness, we have seen the growth of a new style, in which the rays of -many side-lights are concentrated in some single phrase. That Voltaire -does not use these focalising words and turns of composition only means -that to him thought was less complex than it is to a more subjective -generation. Though the literature which possesses Milton and Burke need -not fear comparison with the graver masters of French speech, we have no -one to place exactly by the side of Voltaire. But, then, no more has -France. There are many pages of Swift which are more like one side of -Voltaire than anything else that we have, and Voltaire probably drew the -idea of his famous stories from the creator of Gulliver, just as Swift -got the idea of the Tale of a Tub from Fontenelle’s History of Mero and -Enegu (that is, of Rome and Geneva). Swift has correctness, invention, -irony, and a trick of being effectively literal and serious in absurd -situations, just as Voltaire has; but then Swift is often truculent and -often brutally gross, both in thought and in phrase. Voltaire is never -either brutal or truculent. Even amid the licence of the Pucelle and of -his romances, he never forgets what is due to the French<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">124</a></span> tongue. What -always charmed him in Racine and Boileau, he tells us, was that they -said what they intended to say, and that their thoughts have never cost -anything to the harmony or the purity of the language<a name="FNanchor_104" id="FNanchor_104"></a><a href="#Footnote_104" class="fnanchor">104</a>. Voltaire -ranged over far wider ground than the two poets ever attempted to do, -and trod in many slippery places, yet he is entitled to the same praise -as that which he gave to them.</p> - -<p>Unhappily, one of the many evil effects which have alloyed the -revolution that Voltaire did so much to set in motion, has been both in -his country and ours that purity and harmony of language, in spite of -the examples of the great masters who have lived since, have on the -whole declined. In both countries familiarity and slang have actually -asserted a place in literature on some pretence that they are real; an -assumed vulgarity tries to pass for native homeliness, and, as though a -giant were more impressive for having a humped back, some men of true -genius seem only to make sure of fame by straining themselves into -grotesques. In a word, the reaction against a spurious dignity of style -has carried men too far, because the reaction against the dignified -elements in the old order went too far. Style, after all, as one has -always to remember, can never be anything but the reflex of ideas and -habits of mind, and when respect for one’s own personal dignity as a -ruling and unique element in character gave way to sentimental love of -the human race, often real, and often a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">125</a></span>pretence, old self-respecting -modes of expression went out of fashion. And all this has been defended -by a sort of argument that might just as appropriately have been used by -Diogenes, vindicating the filthiness of his tub against a doctrine of -clean linen.</p> - -<p>To follow letters, it is important to observe, meant then, or at least -after Voltaire’s influence rose to its height, it meant distinctly to -enter the ranks of the Opposition. In our own time the profession of -letters is placed with other polite avocations, and those who follow it -for the most part accept the traditional social ideas of the time, just -as clergymen, lawyers, and physicians accept them. The modern man of -letters corresponds to the ancient sophist, whose office it was to -confirm, adorn, and propagate the current prejudice. To be a man of -letters in France in the middle of the eighteenth century was to be the -official enemy of the current prejudices and their sophistical defenders -in the church and the parliaments. Parents heard of a son’s design to go -to Paris and write books, or to mix with those who wrote books, with the -same dismay with which a respectable Athenian heard of a son following -Socrates. The hyper-hellenistic collegian need not accuse us of -instituting a general parallel between Socrates and Voltaire. The only -point on which we are insisting is that each was the leader of the -assault against the sophists of his day, though their tactics and -implements of war were sufficiently unlike. To the later assailant the -conditions of the time made the pen the most effective<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">126</a></span> instrument. The -clergy had the pulpit and the confessional, and their enemies had the -press.</p> - -<p>It was during the period of his connection with Madame du Châtelet, that -is in the active literary years between his return from England and his -removal to Berlin, that Voltaire’s dramatic talent was most -productive.<a name="FNanchor_105" id="FNanchor_105"></a><a href="#Footnote_105" class="fnanchor">105</a> He is usually considered to hold the same place -relatively to Corneille and Racine that Euripides held relatively to -Æschylus and Sophocles. It is not easy to see what is the exact point of -analogy on which the critics agree, beyond the corresponding place in -the order of chronological succession, and such parallels are not really -very full of instruction. If we are to draw any parallel at all, it must -be between the Greek and Racine. The differences between Euripides and -his predecessors are not those between Voltaire and his predecessors. -There may be one common peculiarity. Each made the drama an instrument -for the expression not merely of passion, but of speculative and -philosophical matter, and this in each case of a sceptical kind in -reference to the accepted traditions of the time. But apart from the -vast superiority of the Greek in depth and passion and dramatic -invention, in Voltaire this philosophising is very much more indirect, -insinuatory, and furtive, than in the marked sententiousness of -<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">127</a></span>Euripides. There are critics, indeed, who insist that all Voltaire’s -poetic work is a series of pamphlets in disguise, and that he ought to -be classified, in that jargon which makes an uncouth compound pass -muster for a new critical nicety, as a tendency-poet.<a name="FNanchor_106" id="FNanchor_106"></a><a href="#Footnote_106" class="fnanchor">106</a></p> - -<p>To accept this would simply be to leave out of account the very best of -Voltaire’s plays, including Mérope, Sémiramis, Tancrède, in which the -most ingenious of men and critics would be at a loss to find any -tendency of the pamphleteering kind. Voltaire’s ever-present sense of -congruity prevented him from putting the harangue of the pulpit or the -discourse of the academic doctor upon the tragic stage. If the clergy -found in ‘Mahomet,’ for instance, a covert attack on their own religion, -it was much more because the poet was suspected of unbelief, than -because the poem contained infidel doctrine. Indeed, nothing shows so -clearly as the strange affright at this and some other pieces of -Voltaire’s, that the purport and effect of poetry must depend nearly as -much upon the mind of the audience as upon the lines themselves. His -plays may be said to have led to scepticism, only because there was -sceptical predisposition in the mind which his public brought to them; -and under other circumstances, if for instance it had been produced in -the time of Lewis XIV., the exposure of Mahomet would have been counted -a glorification of the rival creed. Indeed, Pope Benedict XIV. did by -and by <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">128</a></span>accept Voltaire’s dedication of the play, whether in good faith -or no we cannot tell, on the express ground that it was an indirect -homage to Christianity. Men with a sense of artistic propriety far -inferior to Voltaire’s, are yet fully alive to the monstrosity of -disguising a pamphleteer’s polemic in the form of a pretended drama.</p> - -<p>In choice of subject Voltaire, we may believe, was secretly guided by -his wish to relax the oppressive hold of religious prejudice. Religion, -we cannot too fully realise, was the absorbing burden of the time. There -was no sort of knowledge, from geometry onwards, on which it did not -weigh. Whatever work Voltaire set himself to, he was confronted in it by -the Infamous. Thus in accordance with the narrow theory of his time, he -held Mahomet to be a deliberate and conscious impostor, and in -presenting the founder of one great religion in this odious shape, he -was doubtless suggesting that the same account might be true of the -founder of another. But the suggestion was entirely outside of the play -itself, and we who have fully settled these questions for ourselves, may -read ‘Mahomet’ without suspecting the shade of a reference from Mecca to -Jerusalem, though hardly without contemning the feebleness of view which -could see nothing but sensuality, ambition, and crime, in the career of -the fierce eastern reformer. The sentiments of exalted deism which are -put into the mouth of the noble Zopire were perhaps meant to teach -people that the greatest devotion of character may go with the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">129</a></span> most -unflinching rejection of a pretended revelation from the gods. This -again is a gloss from without, and by no means involves Voltaire in the -offence of art with a moral purpose.</p> - -<p>Zaïre was the first play in which French characters appeared upon the -tragic stage. The heroine, the daughter of Lusignan, has been brought -up, unconscious of her descent, in the Mahometan faith and usage. -Consider the philosophy of these lines which are given to her:</p> - -<div class="poem"> -<div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">La coutume, la loi plia mes premiers ans</span> -<span class="i0">A la religion des heureux musulmans.</span> -<span class="i0">Je le vois trop; les soins qu’on prend de notre enfance</span> -<span class="i0">Ferment nos sentimens, nos mœurs, notre croyance.</span> -<span class="i0">J’eusse êtè près du Gange esclave des faux dieux,</span> -<span class="i0">Chrétienne dans Paris, musulmane en ces lieux.</span> -<span class="i0">L’instruction fait tout; et la main de nos pères</span> -<span class="i0">Grave en nos faibles cœurs ces premiers caractères,</span> -<span class="i0">Que l’exemple et le temps nous viennent retracer,</span> -<span class="i0">Et que peut-être en nous Dieu seul peut effacer.<a name="FNanchor_107" id="FNanchor_107"></a><a href="#Footnote_107" class="fnanchor">107</a></span> -</div></div> - -<p>This of course implied the doctrine of Pope’s Universal Prayer, and -contains an idea that was always the favourite weapon for smiting the -over-confident votaries of a single supernatural revelation. Locke had -asked whether ‘the current opinions and licensed guides of every country -are sufficient evidence and security to every man to venture his great -concernments on? Or, can these be the certain and infallible oracle and -standards of truth which teach one thing in Christendom, and another in -Turkey? Or <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">130</a></span>shall a poor countryman be eternally happy for having the -chance to be born in Italy? Or a day-labourer be unavoidably lost -because he had the ill-luck to be born in England?<a name="FNanchor_108" id="FNanchor_108"></a><a href="#Footnote_108" class="fnanchor">108</a> This was exactly -the kind of reasoning to which Zaïre’s lines pointed; and Voltaire was -never weary of arguing that the divine lay outside of the multitudinous -variety of creeds that were never more than local accidents. Neither, -however, in Zaïre nor anywhere else is the law of perfect dramatic -fitness violated for the sake of a lesson in heterodoxy. With Voltaire -tragedy is, as all art ought to be, a manner of disinterested -presentation. This is not the noblest energy of the human intelligence, -but it is truly art, and Voltaire did not forget it. It would be -entirely unprofitable to enter into any comparison of the relative -merits of Voltaire’s tragedies, and those either of the modern romantic -school in his own country, or of the master dramatists of our own. Every -form of composition must be judged in its own order, and the order in -which Voltaire chose to work was the French classic, with its appointed -conditions and fixed laws, its three unities, its stately alexandrines, -and all the other essentials of that special dramatic form. Here is one -of the many points at which we feel that Voltaire is trying to prolong -in literature, if not in thought, the impressive tradition of the grand -age. At the same moment, strangely enough, he was giving that stir to -the opinion of his time, which was the prime agent in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">131</a></span>definitely -breaking the hold of that tradition. It is no infidelity to the glorious -and incomparable genius of Shakespeare, nor does it involve any -blindness to the fine creation, fresh fancy, and noble thought and -imagery of our less superb men, yet to admit that there is in these -limits of construction a concentration and regularity, and in these too -contemned alexandrines a just and swelling cadence, that confer a high -degree of pleasure of the highest kind, and that demand intellectual -quality only less rare than that other priceless and unattainable -quality of having the lips touched with divine fire. It is said, -however, that such quality does not produce acting plays, but only -dramatic poems: this is really laughable if we remember first, that the -finest actors in the world have been trained in the recitation of these -alexandrines, and second, that as large and as delighted an audience -used until within some twenty years ago to crowd to a tragedy of -Corneille or Racine, seen repeatedly before, as to a bran-new -vaudeville, never to be seen again.</p> - -<p>‘We insist,’ said Voltaire, ‘that the rhyme shall cost nothing to the -ideas; that it shall neither be trivial nor too far-fetched; we exact -rigorously in a verse the same purity, the same precision, as in prose. -We do not permit the smallest licence; we require an author to carry -without a break all chains, and yet that he should appear ever -free.’<a name="FNanchor_109" id="FNanchor_109"></a><a href="#Footnote_109" class="fnanchor">109</a> He admitted that sometimes they failed in reaching the -<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">132</a></span>tragic, through excessive fear of passing its limits. He does justice, -if something less than English justice, to the singular merits of our -stage in the way of action.<a name="FNanchor_110" id="FNanchor_110"></a><a href="#Footnote_110" class="fnanchor">110</a> Shakespeare, he says, ‘had a genius -full of force and fertility, of all that is natural and all that is -sublime.’ It is even the merit of Shakespeare—‘those grand and terrible -pieces that abound in his most monstrous farces’—that has been the -undoing of the English stage.<a name="FNanchor_111" id="FNanchor_111"></a><a href="#Footnote_111" class="fnanchor">111</a></p> - -<p>Even the famous criticism on Hamlet has been a good deal misrepresented. -Voltaire is vindicating the employment of the machinery of ghosts, and -he dwells on the fitness and fine dramatic effect of the ghost in -Shakespeare’s play. ‘I am very far,’ he goes on to say, ‘from justifying -the tragedy of Hamlet in everything: it is a rude and barbarous -piece.... Hamlet goes mad in the second act, and his mistress goes mad -in the third; the prince slays the father of his mistress, pretending to -kill a rat, and the heroine throws herself into the river. They dig her -grave on the stage; the gravediggers jest in a way worthy of them, with -skulls in their hands; Hamlet answers their odious grossnesses by -extravagances no less disgusting. Meanwhile one of the characters -conquers Poland. Hamlet, his mother, and his stepfather drink together -on the stage; they sing at table, they wrangle, they fight, they kill; -one might suppose such a work to be the fruit of the imagination of a -drunken <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">133</a></span>savage. But in the midst of all these rude irregularities, -which to this day make the English theatre so absurd and so barbarous, -there are to be found in Hamlet by a yet greater incongruity sublime -strokes worthy of the loftiest geniuses. It seems as if nature had taken -a delight in collecting within the brain of Shakespeare all that we can -imagine of what is greatest and most powerful, with all that rudeness -without wit can contain of what is lowest and most detestable.’<a name="FNanchor_112" id="FNanchor_112"></a><a href="#Footnote_112" class="fnanchor">112</a></p> - -<p>If one were to retort upon this that anybody with a true sense of poetry -would sacrifice all the plays that Voltaire ever wrote, his -eight-and-twenty tragedies, and half-score of comedies, for the -soliloquy in Hamlet, or King Henry at Towton Fight, or ‘Roses, their -sharp spines being gone,’ there would be truth in such a retort, but it -would be that brutal truth, which is always very near being the most -subtle kind of lie. Nature wrought a miracle for us by producing -Shakespeare, as she did afterwards in an extremely different way for -France by producing Voltaire. Miracles, however, have necessarily a very -demoralising effect. A prodigy of loaves and fishes, by slackening the -motives to honest industry, must in the end multiply paupers. The -prodigy of such amazing results from such glorious carelessness as -Shakespeare’s, has plunged hundreds of men of talent into a carelessness -most inglorious, and made our acting stage a mock. It is quite true -<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">134</a></span>that the academic rule is better fitted for mediocrity than for genius; -but we may perhaps trust genius to make a way for itself. It is -mediocrity that needs laws and prescriptions for its most effective -fertilisation, and the enormous majority even of those who can do good -work are still mediocre. We have preferred the methods of lawless -genius, and are left with rampant lawlessness and no genius. The very -essence of the old French tragedy was painstaking, and painstaking has -had its unfailing and exceeding great reward. When people whose taste -has been trained in the traditions of romantic and naturalistic art, or -even not trained at all except in indolence and presumption, yawn over -the French alexandrines, let them remember that Goethe at any rate -thought it worth while to translate Mahomet and Tancrède.</p> - -<p>An eminent German writer on Voltaire has recently declared the secret of -the French classic dramaturgy to be that the drama was a diversion of -the court. ‘The personages have to speak not as befits their true -feelings, their character, and the situation, but as is seemly in the -presence of a king and a court; not truth, nature, and beauty, but -etiquette, is the highest law of the dramatic art.’<a name="FNanchor_113" id="FNanchor_113"></a><a href="#Footnote_113" class="fnanchor">113</a> This may -partially explain how it was that a return to some features of the -classic form, its dignity, elevation, and severity, came to take place -in France, but no explanation can <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">135</a></span>be at all satisfactory which reduces -so distinct and genuine a manner of dramatic expression to a mere -outside accident. Corneille, Racine, Voltaire, treated their tragic -subjects as they did, with rigorous concentration of action, stately -consistency of motive, and in a solemn and balanced measure, because -these conditions answered to intellectual qualities of their own, an -affinity in themselves for elegance, clearness, elevation, and a certain -purified and weighty wisdom. It is true that they do not unseal those -deep-hidden fountains of thought and feeling and music, which flow so -freely at the waving of Shakespeare’s wand. We are not swiftly carried -from a scene of clowns up to some sublime pinnacle of the seventh -heaven, whence we see the dark abysses that lie about the path of human -action, as well as all its sweet and shadowed places. Only let us not -unjustly suppose that we are deciding the merits of the old French -dramaturgy, its severe structure and stately measure, by answering the -question, which no English nor German writer can ever seriously put, as -to the relative depth and vision in poetic things of Shakespeare and -Voltaire. Nor can we be expected to be deeply moved by a form of art -that is so unfamiliar to us. It is not a question whether we ought to be -so deeply moved. The too susceptible Marmontel describes how on the -occasion of a visit to Ferney, Voltaire took him into his study and -placed a manuscript into his hands. It was Tancrède, which was just -finished. Marmontel eagerly read it, and he tells us how he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">136</a></span> returned to -the author, his face all bathed in tears. ‘Your tears,’ said Voltaire, -‘tell me all that it most concerns me to know.’<a name="FNanchor_114" id="FNanchor_114"></a><a href="#Footnote_114" class="fnanchor">114</a> The most -supercilious critic may find this very Tancrède worth reading, when he -remembers that Gibbon thought it splendid and interesting,<a name="FNanchor_115" id="FNanchor_115"></a><a href="#Footnote_115" class="fnanchor">115</a> and that -Goethe found it worth translating. One could hardly be convicted now of -want of sensibility, if all Voltaire’s tragedy together failed to bathe -one’s face in tears, but this is a very bad reason for denying that it -has other merits than pathos.</p> - -<p>We cannot, indeed, compare the author of Zaïre and Tancrède with the -great author of Cinna and Polyeucte, any more than in another kind we -can compare Gray with Milton. Voltaire is the very genius of -correctness, elegance, and grace, and if the reader would know what this -correctness means, he will find a most wholesome exercise in reading -Voltiare’s notes on some of the most celebrated of Corneille’s -plays.<a name="FNanchor_116" id="FNanchor_116"></a><a href="#Footnote_116" class="fnanchor">116</a> But in masculine energy and in poetic weightiness, as well -as in organ-like richness of music, Voltaire must be surely pronounced -inferior to his superb predecessor. There is a certain thinness -pervading the whole of his work for the stage, the conception of -character, the dramatic structure, and the measure alike. Undoubtedly we -may frequently come upon weighty and noble lines, of fine music and -<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">137</a></span>lofty sense. But there is on the whole what strikes one as a fatal -excess of facility, and a fatal defect of poetic saliency. The fluent -ease of the verse destroys the impression of strength. ‘Your friend,’ -wrote Madame du Châtelet once of her friend, ‘has had a slight bout of -illness, and you know that when he is ill, he can do nothing but write -verses.’<a name="FNanchor_117" id="FNanchor_117"></a><a href="#Footnote_117" class="fnanchor">117</a> We do not know whether the Marquise meant alexandrines, or -those graceful verses of society of which Voltaire was so incomparable a -master. It is certain that he wrote Zaïre in three weeks and Olympic in -six days, though with respect to the latter we may well agree with the -friend who told the author that he should not have rested on the seventh -day. However that may be, there is a quality about his tragic verse -which to one fresh from the sonorous majesty and dignified beauty of -Polyeucte, or even the fine gravity of Tartufe, vibrates too lightly in -the ear. Least of all may we compare him to Racine, whose two great -tragedies of Iphigénie and Athalie Voltaire himself declared to mark the -nearest approach ever made to dramatic perfection.<a name="FNanchor_118" id="FNanchor_118"></a><a href="#Footnote_118" class="fnanchor">118</a> There is none of -the mixed austerity and tenderness, height and sweetness, grace and -firmness, that blend together with such invisible art and unique -contrivance in the poet whose verses taught Fénelon and Massillon how to -make music in their prose. To this Voltaire could only have access from -without, for he lacked the famous master’s internal depth, seriousness, -and veneration <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">138</a></span>of soul. We know how little this approach from without -can avail, and how vainly a man follows the harmonious grace of a style, -when he lacks the impalpable graces of spirit that made the style live. -It is only when grave thoughts and benignant aspirations and purifying -images move with even habit through the mind, that a man masters the -noblest expression. De Maistre, to whom Voltaire’s name was the symbol -for all that is accursed, admitted the nobleness of his work in tragedy, -but he instantly took back the grudged praise by saying that even here -he only resembles his two great rivals as a clever hypocrite resembles a -saint.<a name="FNanchor_119" id="FNanchor_119"></a><a href="#Footnote_119" class="fnanchor">119</a> Malignantly expressed, there is in this some truth.</p> - -<p>It was one of the elements in the plan of dramatic reform that sprang up -in Voltaire’s mind during his residence in England, that the subjects of -tragedy should be more masculine, and that love should cease to be an -obligatory ingredient. “It is nearly always the same piece, the same -knot, formed by jealousy and a breach, and untied by a marriage; it is a -perpetual coquetry, a simple comedy in which princes are actors, and in -which occasionally blood is spilt for form’s sake.”<a name="FNanchor_120" id="FNanchor_120"></a><a href="#Footnote_120" class="fnanchor">120</a> This he counted -a mistake, for, as he justly said, the heart is but lightly touched by a -lover’s woes, while it is profoundly softened by the anguish of a mother -just about to lose her son. Thus in Mérope we have maternal sentiment -made the spring of what is probably the best of Voltaire’s tragedies, -<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">139</a></span>abounding in a just vehemence, compact, full of feeling at once exalted -and natural, and moving with a sustained energy that is not a too common -mark of his work. It was the same conviction of the propriety of making -tragedy a means of expressing other emotions than that which is so apt -to degenerate into an insipidity, which dictated the composition and -novel treatment of the Roman subjects, Brutus and La Mort de César. Here -the French drama first became in some degree truly political. His -predecessors when they handled a historic theme did so, not from the -historic or social point of view, but as the illustration, or rather the -suggestion, of some central human passion. In the Cinna of Corneille the -political bearings, the moral of benevolent despotism which Bonaparte -found in it, were purely incidental, and were distinctly subordinate to -the portrayal of character and the movement of feeling. In Brutus the -whole action lies in the region of great public affairs, and of the -passions which these affairs stir in noble characters, without any -admixture of purely private tenderness. In La Mort de César we are -equally in the heroics of public action. Rome Sauvée, of which the -subject is the conspiracy of Catiline, and the hero the most eloquent of -consuls or men—a part that Voltaire was very fond of filling in private -representations, and with distinguished success—is extremely loose and -spasmodic in structure, and the speeches sound strained even when put -into Cicero’s mouth. But here also private insipidities are banished,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">140</a></span> -though perhaps it is only in favour of public insipidities. It is -impossible to tell what share, if any, these plays had in spreading that -curious feeling about Roman freedom and its most renowned defenders, -which is so striking a feature in some of the great episodes of the -Revolution. We cannot suspect Voltaire of any design to stir political -feeling. He was now essentially aristocratic and courtly in his -predilection, without the smallest active wish for an approach to -political revolution, if indeed the conception of a change of that kind -ever presented itself to him. He was indefatigable in admiring and -praising English freedom, but, as has already been said, it was not the -laudation of a lover of popular government, but the envy of a man of -letters whose life was tormented by censors of the press and the -lieutenant of police. Perhaps the only approach to a public purpose in -this fancy for his Roman subjects was a lurking idea of arousing in the -nobles, for whom we must remember that his dramatic work was above all -designed, not a passion for freedom from the authority of monarchic -government, but a passion of a more general kind for energetic -patriotism. Voltaire’s letters abound with expressions of the writer’s -belief that he was the witness of an epoch of decay in his own country. -He had in truth far too keen and practical and trained an eye not to see -how public spirit, political sagacity, national ambition, and even -valour had declined in the great orders of France since the age of the -Grand Monarch, and how much his country had fallen back in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">141</a></span> race of -civilisation and power. We should be guilty of a very transparent -exaggeration of the facts, if any attempt were made to paint Voltaire in -the attitude and colours of one transcendentally aspiring to regenerate -his countrymen. But there is no difficulty in believing that a man who -had lived in England, and knew so much of Prussia, should have seen the -fatal enervation which had come upon France, and that with Voltaire’s -feeling for the stage, he should have dreamt, by means of a more austere -subject and more masculine treatment, of reviving the love of wisdom and -glory and devotion in connection with country. In a word, the lesson of -La Mort de César or of Brutus was not a specific admonition to slay -tyrants, or to execute stern judgments on sons, but a general example of -self-sacrificing patriotism and devoted public honour.</p> - -<p>It is often said that Voltaire’s Romans are mere creatures of parade and -declamation, like the figures of David’s paintings,<a name="FNanchor_121" id="FNanchor_121"></a><a href="#Footnote_121" class="fnanchor">121</a> and it is very -likely that the theatre infected the French people with that mischievous -idea of the Romans, as a nation of declaimers about freedom and the -death of tyrants. The true Roman was no doubt very much more like one of -our narrow, hard, and able Scotchmen in India, than the lofty talkers -who delighted the parterre of Paris or Versailles. Unluckily for truth -of historical conception, Cicero was, after Virgil, the most potent of -Roman memories, and a man of words became with <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">142</a></span>modern writers the -favourite type of a people of action. All this, however, is beside the -question. Voltaire would have laughed at the idea of any obligation to -present either Romans or other personages on the stage with realistic -fidelity. The tragic drama with him was the highest of the imaginative -and idealistic arts. If he had sought a parallel to it in the plastic -arts he would have found one, not in painting, which by reason of the -greater flexibility of its material demands a more exact verisimilitude, -but in sculpture. Considered as statuesque figures endowed with speech, -Brutus, Caesar, and the rest are noble and impressive. We may protest as -vigorously as we know how against any assimilation of the great art of -action with the great art of repose. But we can only criticise the -individual productions of a given theory, provided we for the moment -accept the conditions which the theory lays down. All art rests upon -convention, and if we choose to repudiate any particular set of -conventions, we have no more right to criticise the works of those who -submit to them than one would have to criticise sculpture, because -marble or bronze is not like flesh and blood. Within the conditions of -the French classic drama Voltaire’s Romans are high and stately figures.</p> - -<p>Voltaire’s innovations extended beyond the introduction of more -masculine treatment. Before his time romantic subjects had been regarded -with disfavour, and Corneille’s Bajazet was considered a bold -experiment. Racine was more strictly classic, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">143</a></span> dramatists went on -handling the same ancient fables, ‘Thebes, or Pelops’ line, or the tale -of ‘Troy divine,’ just as the Greeks had done, or just as the painters -in the Catholic times had never wearied of painting the two eternal -figures of human mother and divine child. Voltaire treated the classic -subjects as others treated them, and if Œdipe misses the depth, -delicate reserve and fateful gloom of the Greeks, Mérope at any rate -breathes a fine and tragic spirit. But his restless mind pressed forward -into subjects which Racine would have shuddered at, and every quarter of -the universe became in turn a portion of the Voltairean stage. -L’Orphelin de la Chine introduces us to China and Genghis-Khan, Mahomet -to Arabia and its prophet, Tancrede to Sicily; in Zulime we are among -Moors, in Alzire with Peruvians. This revolutionary enlargement of -subject was significant of a general and very important enlargement of -interest which marked the time, and led presently to those contrasts -between the condition of France and the imaginary felicity and nobleness -of wilder countries, which did so much to breed an irresistible longing -for change. Voltaire’s high-minded Scythians, generous Peruvians, and -the rest, prepared the way along with other influences for that curious -cosmopolitanism, that striking eagerness to believe in the equal -virtuousness and devotion inherent in human nature, independently of the -religious or social form accidentally imposed upon them, which found its -ultimate outcome, first in an ardent passion for social equality, and a -depreciation of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">144</a></span> special sanctity of the current religion, and next -in the ill-fated emancipating and proselytising aims of the Revolution, -and in orators of the human race.</p> - -<p>It has usually been thought surprising that Voltaire, consummate wit as -he was, should have been so markedly unsuccessful in comedy. Certainly -no one with so right a sense of the value of time as Voltaire himself -had, will in our day waste many hours over his productions in this -order. There are a dozen of them more or less, and we can only hope that -they were the most rapid of his writings. Lines of extraordinary -vivacity are not wanting, and at their best they offer a certain -bustling sprightliness that might have been diverting in actual -representation. But the keynote seems to be struck in farce, rather than -in comedy; the intrigue, if not quite as slight as in Molière, is too -forced; and the characters are nearly all excessively mediocre in -conception. In one of the comedies, Le Dépositaire, the poet presented -the aged patroness of his youth, but the necessity of respecting current -ideas of the becoming prevented him from making a great character out of -even so striking a figure as Ninon de l’Enclos. La Prude is a version of -Wycherly’s Plaindealer, and is in respect of force, animation, and the -genuine spirit of comedy, very inferior to its admirable original. -L’Indiscret is a sparkling and unconsidered trifle, L’Ecossaise is only -a stinging attack on Fréron, and L’Enfant Prodigue, though greater pains -were taken with it, has none of the glow of dramatic feeling. The -liveliest of all is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">145</a></span> La Femme qui a Raison, a short comedy of situation, -which for one reading is entertaining in the closet, and must be -excellent on the stage. It is very slight, however, and as usual verges -on farce.</p> - -<p>This inferiority of Voltaire’s ought not to astonish any one who has -reflected how much concentrated feeling and what profundity of vision go -to the production of great comedy, and how in the mind of the dramatist, -as in the movement of human life, comedy lies close to portentous -tragedy. The author of the Bourgeois Gentilhomme and L’Avare was also -the creator of the Misanthrope, that inscrutable piece, where, without -plot, fable, or intrigue, we see a section of the polished life of the -time, men and women paying visits, making and receiving compliments, -discoursing upon affairs with easy lightness, flitting backwards and -forwards with a thousand petty hurries, and among these one strange, -rough, hoarse, half-sombre figure, moving solitarily with a chilling -reality in the midst of frolicking shadows. Voltaire entered too eagerly -into the interests of the world, was by temperament too exclusively -sympathetic and receptive and social, to place himself even in -imagination thus outside of the common circle. Without capacity for -this, there is no comedy of the first order. Without serious -consciousness of contrasts, no humour that endures. Shakespeare, -Molière, and even Aristophanes, each of them unsurpassed writers of mere -farce, were each of them, though with vast difference of degree, master -of a tragic breadth of vision. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">146</a></span>Voltaire had moods of petulant spleen, -but who feels that he ever saw, much less brooded over, the dark -cavernous regions of human nature? Without this we may have brilliant -pleasantry of surprise, inimitable caricature, excellent comedy of -society, but of the veritable comedy of human character and life, -nothing.</p> - -<p>In dazzling and irresistible caricature Voltaire has no equal. There is -no deep humour, as in Don Quixote, or Tristram Shandy, which Voltaire -did not care for,<a name="FNanchor_122" id="FNanchor_122"></a><a href="#Footnote_122" class="fnanchor">122</a> or Richter’s Siebenkäs, which he would not have -cared for any more than De Stael did. He was too purely intellectual, -too argumentative, too geometrical, and cared too much for illustrating -a principle. But in Candide, Zadig, L’Ingénu, wit is as high as mere wit -can go. They are better than Hudibras, because the motive is broader and -more intellectual. Rapidity of play, infallible accuracy of stroke, -perfect copiousness, and above all a fresh and unflagging spontaneity, -combine with a surprising invention, to give these stories a singular -quality, of which we most effectively observe the real brilliance, by -comparing them with the too numerous imitations that their success has -unhappily invited since.</p> - -<p>It is impossible to omit from the most cursory study of Voltaire’s work, -that too famous poem which was his favourite amusement during some of -the best years of his life, which was the delight of all who could by -any means get the high favour of sight or hearing of so much as a canto -of it, and which is now always <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">147</a></span>spoken of, when it happens to be spoken -of at all, with extreme abhorrence.<a name="FNanchor_123" id="FNanchor_123"></a><a href="#Footnote_123" class="fnanchor">123</a> The Pucelle offends two modern -sentiments, the love of modesty, and the love of the heroic personages -of history. The moral sense and the historic sense have both been -sharpened in some respects since Voltaire, and a poem which not only -abounds in immodesty, and centres the whole action in an indecency of -conception, but also fastens this gross chaplet round the memory of a -great deliverer of the poet’s own country, seems to offer a double -outrage to an age when relish for licentious verse has gone out of -fashion, and reverence for the heroic dead has come in. Still the fact -that the greatest man of his time should have written one of the most -unseemly poems that exist in any tongue, is worth trying to understand. -Voltaire, let us remember, had no special turn, like Gibbon or Bayle, -least of all like the unclean Swift, for extracting a malodorous -diversion out of grossness or sensuality. His writings betray no -irresistible passion for flying to an indelicacy, nor any of the vapid -lasciviousness of some more modern French writers. The Pucelle is at -least the wit of a rational man, and not the prying beastliness of a -satyr. It is wit worse than poorly employed, but it is purity itself -compared with some of the nameless abominations with which Diderot -besmirched his imagination. The Persian Letters contain what we should -now account passages of extreme <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">148</a></span>licentiousness, yet Montesquieu was -assuredly no libertine. Voltaire’s life again was never indecent or -immoderate from the point of view of the manners of the time. A man of -grave character and untarnished life, like Condorcet, did not scruple to -defend a poem, in which it is hard for us to see anything but a most -indecorous burlesque of a most heroic subject. He insists that books -which divert the imagination without heating or seducing it, which by -gay and pleasurable images fill up those moments of exhaustion that are -useless alike for labour and meditation, have the effect of inclining -men to gentleness and indulgence. “It was not such books as the Pucelle -that Gérard or Clément used to read, or that the satellites of Cromwell -carried at the saddle-bow.”<a name="FNanchor_124" id="FNanchor_124"></a><a href="#Footnote_124" class="fnanchor">124</a></p> - -<p>The fact is that in amusing himself by the Pucelle, Voltaire was only -giving literary expression to a kind of view which had already in the -society of the time found for itself a thoroughly practical expression. -The people among whom he lived had systematised that freedom from law or -restraint in the relations of the sexes, of which his poem is so vivid a -representation. The Duke of Richelieu was the irresistible Lovelace of -his time, and it was deemed an honour, an honour to which Madame du -Châtelet among so many others has a title, to have yielded to his -fascination. A long and profoundly unedifying chronicle might be drawn -up of the memorable gallantries of that time, and for our purpose it -might fitly close <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">149</a></span>with the amour with Saint Lambert that led to Madame -du Châtelet’s death. Of course, these countless gallantries in the most -licentious persons of the day, such as Richelieu or Saxe, were neither -more nor less than an outbreak of sheer dissoluteness, such as took -place among English people of quality in the time of the Restoration. -The idle and luxurious, whose imagination is uncontrolled by the -discipline of labour and purpose, and to whom the indulgence of their -own inclinations is the first and single law of life, are always ready -to profit by any relaxation of restraint, which the moral conditions of -the moment may permit.</p> - -<p>The peculiarity of the licence of France in the middle of the eighteenth -century is, that it was looked upon with complacency by the great -intellectual leaders of opinion. It took its place in the progressive -formula. What austerity was to other forward movements, licence was to -this. It is not difficult to perceive how so extraordinary a -circumstance came to pass. Chastity was the supreme virtue in the eyes -of the church, the mystic key to Christian holiness. Continence was one -of the most sacred of the pretensions by which the organised preachers -of superstition claimed the reverence of men and women. It was -identified, therefore, in a particular manner with that Infamous, -against which the main assault of the time was directed. So men -contended, more or less expressly, first, that continence was no -commanding chief among virtues, then that it was a very superficial and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">150</a></span> -easily practised virtue, finally that it was no virtue at all, but if -sometimes a convenience, generally an impediment to free human -happiness. These disastrous sophisms show the peril of having morality -made an appendage of a set of theological mysteries, because the -mysteries are sure in time to be dragged into the open air of reason, -and moral truth crumbles away with the false dogmas with which it had -got mixed.</p> - -<p>‘If,’ says Condorcet, ‘we may treat as useful the design to make -superstition ridiculous in the eyes of men given to pleasures, and -destined, by the very want of self-control which makes pleasures -attractive to them, to become one day the unfortunate victims or the -mischievous instruments of that vile tyrant of humanity; if the -affectation of austerity in manners, if the excessive value attached to -purity, only serves the hypocrites who by putting on the easy mask of -chastity can dispense with all virtues, and cover with a sacred veil the -vices most pernicious to society, hardness of heart and intolerance; if -by accustoming men to treat as so many crimes faults from which -honourable and conscientious persons are not exempt, we extend over the -purest souls the power of that dangerous caste, which to rule and -disturb the earth, has constituted itself exclusively the interpreter of -heavenly justice;—then we shall see in the author of the Pucelle no -more than a foe to hypocrisy and superstition.’<a name="FNanchor_125" id="FNanchor_125"></a><a href="#Footnote_125" class="fnanchor">125</a> <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">151</a></span></p> - -<p>It helps us to realise the infinite vileness of a system, like that of -the Church in the last century, which could engender in men of essential -nobleness of character like Condorcet, an antipathy so violent as to -shut the eyes of their understanding to the radical sophistry of such -pleading as this. Let one reflection out of many, serve to crush the -whole of it. The key to effective life is unity of life, and unity of -life means as much as anything else the unity of our human relations. -Our identity does by no means consist in a historic continuity of -tissues, but in an organic moral coherency of relation. It is this, -which alone, if we consider the passing shortness of our days, makes -life a whole, instead of a parcel of thrums bound together by an -accident. Is not every incentive and every concession to vagrant -appetite a force that enwraps a man in gratification of self, and severs -him from duty to others, and so a force of dissolution and dispersion? -It might be necessary to pull down the Church, but the worst church that -has ever prostituted the name and the idea of religion cannot be so -disastrous to society, as a gospel that systematically relaxes -self-control as being an unmeaning curtailment of happiness. The -apologists for the Pucelle exhibit the doctrine of individualism in one -of its worst issues. ‘Your proof that this is really the best of all -possible worlds is excellent,’ says Candide for his famous last word, -‘but we must cultivate our garden.’ The same principle of exclusive -self-regard, applied to the gratification of sense, passed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">152</a></span> for a -satisfactory defence of libertinage. In the first form it destroys a -state, in the second it destroys the family.</p> - -<p>It is easier to account for Voltaire’s contempt for the mediæval -superstition about purity, than his want of respect for a deliverer of -France. The explanation lies in the conviction which had such power in -Voltaire’s own mind and with which he impregnated to such a degree the -minds of others, that the action of illiterate and unpolished times can -have no life in it. His view of progress was a progress of art and -knowledge, and heroic action which was dumb, or which was not expressed -in terms of intellect, was to the eighteenth century, and to Voltaire at -least as much as to any other of its leaders, mere barbaric energy. In -the order of taste, for instance, he can find only words of cool and -limited praise for Homer, while for the polish and elegance of Virgil -his admiration is supreme. The first was the bard of a rude time, while -round the second cluster all the associations of a refined and lettered -age. A self-devotion that was only articulate in the jargon of mystery -and hallucination, and that was surrounded with rude and irrational -circumstance, with ignorance, brutality, visions, miracle, was encircled -by no halo in the eyes of a poet who found no nobleness where he did not -find a definite intelligence, and who rested all his hopes and interests -on the long distance set by time and civilisation between ourselves and -such conditions and associations as belong to the name of Joan of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">153</a></span> Arc. -The foremost men of the eighteenth century despised Joan of Arc, -whenever they had occasion to think of her, for the same reason which -made them despise Gothic architecture. ‘When,’ says Voltaire in one -place, ‘the arts began to revive, they revived as Goths and Vandals; -what unhappily remains to us of the architecture and sculpture of these -times is a fantastic compound of rudeness and filigree.’<a name="FNanchor_126" id="FNanchor_126"></a><a href="#Footnote_126" class="fnanchor">126</a> Just so, -even Turgot, while protesting how dear to every sensible heart were the -Gothic buildings destined to the use of the poor and the orphan, -complained of the outrage done by their rude architecture to the -delicacy of our sight.<a name="FNanchor_127" id="FNanchor_127"></a><a href="#Footnote_127" class="fnanchor">127</a> Characters like Joan of Arc ranked in the -same rude and fantastic order, and respect for them meant that respect -for the middle age which was treason to the new time. Men despised her, -just as they despised the majesty and beauty of the great church at -Rheims where she brought her work to a climax, or the lofty grace and -symmetry of the church of St. Ouen, within sight of which her life came -to its terrible end.</p> - -<p>Henry the Fourth was a hero with Voltaire, for no better reason than -that he was the first great tolerant, the earliest historic indifferent. -The Henriade is only important because it helped to popularise the type -of its hero’s character, and so to promote the rapidly-growing tendency -in public opinion towards a still wider version of the policy of the -Edict of Nantes. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">154</a></span>The reign of Lewis XIV. had thrown all previous -monarchs into obscurity, and the French king who showed a warmer and -more generous interest in the happiness of his subjects than any they -ever had, was forgotten, until Voltaire brought him into fame. It was -just, however, because Henry’s exploits were so glorious, and at the -same time so near in point of time, that he made an indifferent hero for -an epic poem. ‘He should never choose for an epic poem history,’ said -Hume very truly, ‘the truth of which is well known; for no fiction can -come up to the interest of the actual story and incidents of the -singular life of Henry IV.’<a name="FNanchor_128" id="FNanchor_128"></a><a href="#Footnote_128" class="fnanchor">128</a> These general considerations, however, -as to the propriety of the subject are hardly worth entering upon. How -could any true epic come out of that age, or find fountains in that -critical, realistic, and polemical soul? To fuse a long narrative of -heroic adventure in animated, picturesque, above all, in sincere verse, -is an achievement reserved for men with a steadier glow, a firmer, -simpler, more exuberant and more natural poetic feeling, than was -possible in that time of mean shifts, purposeless public action, and -pitiful sacrifice of private self-respect. Virgil was stirred by the -greatness of the newly-united empire, Tasso by the heroic march of -Christendom against pagan oppressors, Milton by the noble ardour of our -war for public rights. What long and glowing inspiration was possible to -a would-be courtier, thrust into the Bastille for wanting to fight a -noble who <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">155</a></span>had had him caned by lackeys? Besides, an epic, of all forms -of poetic composition, most demands concentrated depth, and Voltaire was -too widely curious and vivacious on the intellectual side to be capable -of this emotional concentration.</p> - -<p>But it is superfluous to give reasons why Voltaire’s epic should not be -a great poem. The Henriade itself is there, the most indisputable of -arguments. Of poems whose names are known out of literary histories and -academic catalogues, it is perhaps the least worth reading in any -language by any one but a professional student of letters. It is less -worth reading than Lucan’s Pharsalia, because it is more deliberately -artificial and gratuitously unspontaneous. Paradise Regained, which it -is too ready a fashion among us to pronounce dull, still contains at -least three pieces of superb and unsurpassed description, never fails in -grave majestic verse, and is at the worst free from all the dreary -apparatus of phantom and impersonation and mystic vision, which have -never jarred so profoundly with sense of poetic fitness, as when -associated with so political and matter-of-fact a hero as Henry the -Fourth. The reader has no illusion in such transactions as Saint Lewis -taking Henry into heaven and hell, Sleep hearing from her secret caves, -the Winds at sight of him falling into Silence, and Dreams, children of -Hope, flying to cover the hero with olive and laurel. How can we -overcome our repugnance to that strange admixture of real and unreal -matter which presents us with a highly-coloured<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">156</a></span> picture of the Temple of -Love, where in the forecourt sits Joy, with Mystery, Desire, -Complaisance, on the soft turf by her side, while in the inner sanctuary -haunt Jealousy, Suspicion, Malice, Fury; while the next canto describes</p> - -<div class="poem"> -<div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">L’église toujours une et partout étendue,</span> -<span class="i0">Libre, mais sous un chef, adorant en tout lieu,</span> -<span class="i0">Dans le bonheur des saints, la grandeur de son Dieu.</span> -<span class="i0">Le Christ, de nos péches victime renaissante,</span> -<span class="i0">De ses élus chéris nourriture vivante,</span> -<span class="i0">Descend sur les autels à ses yeux éperdus,</span> -<span class="i0">Et lui découvre un Dieu sous un pain qui n’est plus.<a name="FNanchor_129" id="FNanchor_129"></a><a href="#Footnote_129" class="fnanchor">129</a></span> -</div></div> - -<p>Voltaire congratulated himself in his preface that he had come -sufficiently near theological exactitude, and to this qualification, -which is so new for poetry, the critic may add elegance and flow; but -neither elegance nor theological exactitude reconciles us to an epic -that has neither a stroke of sublimity nor a touch of pathos, that -presents no grandeur in character, and no hurrying force and movement in -action. Frederick the Great used to speak of Voltaire as the French -Virgil, but then Frederick’s father had never permitted him to learn -Latin, and if he ever read Virgil at all, it must have been in some of -the jingling French translations. Even so, with the episodes of Dido and -of Nisus and Euryalus in our minds, we may wonder how so monstrous a -parallel could have occurred even to Frederick, who was no critic, -between two poets who have hardly a quality in common. If <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">157</a></span>the reader -wishes to realise how nearly insipid even Voltaire’s genius could become -when working in unsuitable forms, he may turn from any canto of the -Henriade to any page of Lucretius or the Paradise Lost. A French critic -quotes the famous reviewer’s sentence, concluding an analysis of some -epic, to the effect that on the whole, when all is summed up, the given -epic was ‘one of the best that had appeared in the course of the current -year;’ and insists that Voltaire’s piece will not at any rate perish in -the oblivion of poetic annuals like these. If not, the only reason lies -in that unfortunate tenderness for the bad work of famous men, which -makes of so much reading time worse than wasted. ‘The unwise,’ said -Candide, ‘value every word in an author of repute.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">158</a></span>’</p> - -<h2>CHAPTER IV.</h2> - -<h5>BERLIN.</h5> - -<p>The Marquise du Châtelet died under circumstances that were tragical -enough to herself, but which disgust the grave, while they give a -grotesque amusement to those who look with cynical eye upon what they -choose to treat as the great human comedy. In 1749 the friendship of -sixteen years thus came to its end, and Voltaire was left without the -tie that, in spite of too frequent breaking away from it, had brought -him much happiness and good help so far on the road. He was now free, -disastrously free as the event proved, to accept the invitations with -which he had so long been pressed to take up his residence with the king -who may dispute with him the claim to be held the most extraordinary man -of that century.</p> - -<p>Neither credit nor peace followed Voltaire in his own land. Lewis XV., -perhaps the most worthless of all the creatures that monarchy has ever -corrupted, always disliked him. The whole influence of the court and the -official world had been uniformly exerted against him. Many years went -by before he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">159</a></span> could even win a seat in the academy, a distinction, it -may be added, to which Diderot, hardly second to Voltaire in originality -and power, never attained to the end of his days. Madame de Pompadour, -the protectress of Quesnay, was Voltaire’s first friend at court. He -said of her long afterwards that in the bottom of her heart she belonged -to the philosophers, and did as much as she could to protect them.<a name="FNanchor_130" id="FNanchor_130"></a><a href="#Footnote_130" class="fnanchor">130</a> -She had known him in her obscurer and more reputable days, and she -charged him with the composition of a court-piece (1745), to celebrate -the marriage of the dauphin. The task was satisfactorily performed, and -honours which had been refused to the author of Zaïre, Alzire, and the -Henriade, were at once given to the writer of the Princess of Navarre, -which Voltaire himself ranked as a mere farce of the fair. He was made -gentleman of the chamber and historiographer of France. He disarmed the -devout by the Pope’s acceptance of Mahomet, and by a letter which he -wrote to Father Latour, head of his former school, protesting his -affection for religion and his esteem for the Jesuits. Condorcet most -righteously pronounces that, in spite of the art with which he handles -his expressions in this letter, it would undoubtedly have been far -better to give up the academy than to write it.<a name="FNanchor_131" id="FNanchor_131"></a><a href="#Footnote_131" class="fnanchor">131</a> It answered its -purpose, and Voltaire was admitted of the forty (May 1746). This -distinction, however, was far from securing for him the tranquillity -which he had hoped from it, and worse libels <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">160</a></span>tormented him than before. -The court sun ceased to shine. Madame de Pompadour gave to Crébillon a -preference which Voltaire resented with more agitation than any -preference of Madame Pompadour’s ought to have stirred in the breast of -a strong man.</p> - -<p>We cannot, however, too constantly remember not to ask from Voltaire the -heroic. He was far too sympathetic, too generously eager to please, too -susceptible to opinion. Of that stern and cold stuff which supports a -man in firm march and straight course, giving him the ample content of -self-respect, he probably had less than any one of equal prominence has -ever had. Instead of writing his tragedy as well as he knew how, and -then leaving it to its destiny, he wrote it as well as he knew how, and -then went in disguise to the café of the critics to find out what his -inferiors had to say about his work. Instead of composing his -court-piece, and taking such reward as offered, or disdaining such -ignoble tasks—and nobody knew better than he how ignoble they were—he -sought to catch some crumb of praise by fawningly asking of the vilest -of men, <i>Trajan est-il content?</i> Make what allowance we will for -difference of time and circumstance, such an attitude to such a man, -whether in Seneca towards Nero, or Voltaire towards Lewis XV., is a -baseness that we ought never to pardon and never to extenuate. Whether -or no there be in the human breast that natural religion of goodness and -virtue which was the sheet-anchor of Voltaire’s faith, there is at least -a something in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">161</a></span> hearts of good men which sets a fast gulf between -them and those who are to the very depths of their souls irredeemably -saturated with corruption.</p> - -<p>We may permit ourselves to hope that it was the consciousness of the -humiliation of such relations as these, rather than the fact that they -did not answer their own paltry purpose, that made Voltaire resolve a -second time to shake the dust of his own country from off his feet In -July 1750 he reached Potsdam, and was installed with sumptuous honour in -the court of Frederick the Great, twenty-four years since he had -installed himself with Mr. Falkener, the English merchant at Wandsworth. -Diderot was busy with the first volume of the Encyclopædia, and Rousseau -had just abandoned his second child in the hospital for foundlings. If -the visit to London did everything for Voltaire, the visit to Berlin did -nothing. There was no Prussia, as there was an England. To travel from -the dominion of George II. to the dominion of his famous nephew, was to -go from the full light of the eighteenth century back to the dimness of -the fifteenth. An academy of sciences, by the influence of -Sophie-Charlotte, and under the guidance of Leibnitz, had been founded -at Berlin at the beginning of the eighteenth century; but Frederick -William had an angry contempt for every kind of activity except drill -and the preaching of orthodox theology, and during his reign the academy -languished in obscurity.<a name="FNanchor_132" id="FNanchor_132"></a><a href="#Footnote_132" class="fnanchor">132</a> <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">162</a></span></p> - -<p>The accession of Frederick II. was the signal for its reconstitution, -and the revival of its activity under the direction of Maupertuis. To -the sciences of experiment and observation, which had been its original -objects, was added a department of speculative philosophy. The court was -materialist, sceptical, Voltairean, all at the same time; but the -academy as a body was theologically orthodox, and it was wholly and -purely metaphysical in its philosophy. We may partly understand the -distance at which Berlin was then behind Paris, when we read -D’Alembert’s just remonstrances with Frederick against giving as -subjects for prize-essays such metaphysical problems as ‘The search for -a primary and permanent force, at once substance and cause.’<a name="FNanchor_133" id="FNanchor_133"></a><a href="#Footnote_133" class="fnanchor">133</a></p> - -<p>Whatever activity existed outside of the court and the academy was -divided between the dialectic of Protestant scholasticism, and Wolf’s -exposition and development of Leibnitz. In literature proper there arose -with the accession of Frederick a small group of essentially secondary -critics, of whom Sulzer was the best, without the vivid and radiant -force of either Voltaire or Diderot, and without the deep inspiration -and invention of those who were to follow them, and to place Germany -finally on a level with England and France. Lessing, the founder of the -modern German literature, was at this time a youth of twenty-two, and by -a striking turn of chance was employed by Voltaire in putting into -German his pleadings in the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">163</a></span>infamous Hirschel case. It was not then -worth while for a stranger to learn the language in which Lessing had -not yet written, and Voltaire, who was a master of English and Italian, -never knew more German than was needed to curse a postilion.<a name="FNanchor_134" id="FNanchor_134"></a><a href="#Footnote_134" class="fnanchor">134</a> -Leibnitz wrote everything of importance in Latin or French, the Berlin -academy conducted its transactions first in Latin, next and for many -years to come in French, and one of its earliest presidents, a man of -special competence,<a name="FNanchor_135" id="FNanchor_135"></a><a href="#Footnote_135" class="fnanchor">135</a> pronounced German to be a noble but frightfully -barbarised tongue. The famous Wolf had done his best to make the tongue -of his country literate, but even his influence was unequal to the task.</p> - -<p>Society was in its foundations not removed from the mediæval. The -soldiers with whom Frederick won Zorndorf and Leuthen, like the Russians -and Austrians whom he defeated on those bloody days, were not more nor -less than serfs. Instead of philosophers like Newton and Locke, he had -to find the pride and safety of his country in swift rushing troopers -like Winterfield and Ziethen. A daring cavalry-charge in season was for -the moment more to Prussia than any theory why it is that an apple -falls, and a new method of drill much more urgent than a new origin for -ideas. She was concerned not with the speculative problem of the causes -why the earth keeps its place in the planetary system, but with the -practical problem how Prussia was to make her place in the system of -Europe. Prussia was then far more <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">164</a></span>behind France in all thought and all -arts, save the soldier’s, than England was in front of France.</p> - -<p>Voltaire had nothing to learn at Berlin, and may we not add, as the king -was a rooted Voltairean long before this, he had nothing to teach there? -The sternest barrack in Europe was not a field in which the apostle of -free and refined intelligence could sow seed with good hope of harvest. -Voltaire at this time, we have to recollect, was in the public mind only -a poet, and perhaps was regarded, if not altogether by Frederick, -certainly by those who surrounded him, as much in the same order of -being with Frederick’s flute, fitted by miracle with a greater number of -stops. ‘I don’t give you any news of literature,’ D’Alembert wrote from -Potsdam in 1763, ‘for I don’t know any, and you know how barren -literature is in this country, where no one except the king concerns -himself with it.’<a name="FNanchor_136" id="FNanchor_136"></a><a href="#Footnote_136" class="fnanchor">136</a> There is no particular disgrace to Berlin or its -king in this. Their task was very definite, and it was only a pleasant -error of Frederick’s rather fantastic youth to suppose that this task -lay in the direction of polite letters. The singer of the Henriade was -naturally of different quality and turn of mind from a hero who had at -least as hard an enterprise in his hand as that of Henry IV. Voltaire -and Frederick were the two leaders of the two chief movements then going -on, in the great work of the transformation of the old Europe into the -new. But the movements were in different matter, demanded vastly -different <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">165</a></span>methods, and, as is so often the case, the scope of each was -hardly visible to the pursuer of the other. Voltaire’s work was to -quicken the activity and proclaim the freedom of human intelligence, and -to destroy the supremacy of an old spiritual order. Frederick’s work was -to shake down the old political order. The sum of their efforts was the -definite commencement of that revolution in the thought and the -political conformation of the West, of which the momentous local -revolution in France must, if we take a sufficiently wide survey before -and after, be counted a secondary phase. The conditions of the order -which was established after the confusion of the fall of the Roman power -before the inroads of the barbarians, and which constituted the Europe -of the early and middle ages, are now tolerably well understood, and the -historic continuity or identity of that order is typified in two -institutions, which by the middle of the eighteenth century had reached -very different stages of decay, and possessed very different powers of -resisting attack. One was the German Empire, and the other was the Holy -Catholic Church. Frederick dealt a definite blow to the first, and -Voltaire did the same to the second.</p> - -<p>Those who read history and biography with a sturdy and childish -pre-conception that the critical achievements in the long course of the -world’s progress must of necessity have fallen to the lot of the salt of -the earth, will find it hard to associate the beginning of the great -overt side of modern movement with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">166</a></span> the two men who versified and -wrangled together for some two and a half years in the middle of the -eighteenth century at Berlin. It is hard to think of the old state, with -all its memories of simple enthusiasm and wild valour and rude -aspiration after some better order, finally disappearing into the chaos -for which it was more than ripe, under the impulse of an arch cynic. And -it is hard, too, to think that the civilising religion which was founded -by a Jew, and first seized by Jews, noblest and holiest of their race, -got its first and severest blow from one who was not above using a Jew -to cheat Christians out of their money. But the fact remains of the vast -work which this amazing pair had to do, and did.</p> - -<p>The character of the founder of the greatness of Prussia, if indeed we -may call founder one rather than another member of that active, clear, -and far-sighted line, can have no attraction for those who require as an -indispensable condition of fealty that their hero shall have either -purity, or sensibility, or generosity, or high honour, or manly respect -for human nature. Frederick’s rapidity and firmness of will, his -administrative capacity, his military talent, were marvellous and -admirable enough; but on the moral side of character, in his relations -to men and women, in his feeling for the unseen, in his ideas of truth -and beauty, he belonged to a type which is not altogether uncommon. In -his youth he had much of a sort of shallow sensibility, which more -sympathetic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">167</a></span> usage might possibly have established and to some small -extent even deepened, but which the curiously rough treatment that his -pacific tastes and frivolous predilections provoked his father to -inflict, turned in time into the most bitter and profound kind of -cynicism that the world knows. No cynic is so hard and insensible as the -man who has once had sensibility, perhaps because the consciousness that -he was in earlier days open to more generous impressions persuades him -that the fault of any change in his own view of things must needs lie in -the world’s villainy, which he has now happily for himself had time to -find out. Sensibility of a true sort, springing from natural fountains -of simple and unselfish feeling, can neither be corrupted nor dried up. -But at its best, Frederick’s sensibility was of the literary and -aesthetic kind, rather than the humane and social. It concerned taste -and expression, and had little root in the recognition as at first-hand -of those facts of experience, of beauty and tenderness and cruelty and -endurance, which are the natural objects that permanently quicken a -sensitive nature. In a word, Frederick’s was the conventional -sensibility of the French literature of the time; a harmless thing -enough in the poor souls that only poured themselves out in bad romance -and worse verse, but terrible when it helped to fill with contempt for -mankind an absolute monarch, with the most perfect military machine in -Europe at his command. Frederick is constantly spoken of as a man -typical of his century. In truth he was throughout<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">168</a></span> his life in -ostentatious opposition to his century on its most remarkable side. -There has never been any epoch whose foremost men had such faith and -hope in the virtues of humanity. There has never been any prominent man -who despised humanity so bitterly and unaffectedly as Frederick despised -it.</p> - -<p>We know what to think of a man who writes a touching and pathetic letter -condoling with a friend on the loss of his wife, and on the same day -makes an epigram on the dead woman<a name="FNanchor_137" id="FNanchor_137"></a><a href="#Footnote_137" class="fnanchor">137</a>; who never found so much -pleasure in a friendly act as when he could make it the means of hurting -the recipient; whose practical pleasantries were always spiteful and -sneering and cruel. As we read of his tricks on D’Argens or Pöllnitz, we -feel how right Voltaire was in borrowing a nickname for him from a -mischievous brute whom he kept in his garden. He presented D’Argens with -a house; when D’Argens went to take possession he found the walls -adorned with pictures of all the most indecent and humiliating episodes -of his own life. This was a type of Frederick’s delicacy towards some of -those whom he honoured with his friendship. It is true that, except -Voltaire and Maupertuis, most of the French philosophers whom Frederick -seduced into coming to live at Berlin were not too good for the -corporal’s horse-play of which they were the victims. But then we know, -further, what to think of a man whose self-respect fails to proscribe -gross and unworthy companions. He is either a lover of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">169</a></span>parasites, which -Frederick certainly was not, or else the most execrable cynic, the cynic -who delights in any folly or depravity that assures him how right he is -in despising ‘that damned race.’</p> - -<p>Frederick need not have summoned the least worthy French freethinkers, -men like D’Argens and La Mettrie and De Prades, in their own way as -little attractive in life and in doctrine as any monk or Geneva -preacher, to warrant him in thinking meanly of mankind. If any one wants -to know what manner of spirit this great temporal deliverer of Europe -was of, he may find what he seeks in the single episode of the -negotiations at Klein-Schnellendorf in 1741. There, although he had made -and was still bound by a solemn treaty of alliance with France, he -entered into secret engagements with the Hungarian Queen, to be veiled -by adroitly pretended hostilities. Even if, as an illustrious apologist -of the Prussian King is reduced to plead, this is in a certain fashion -defensible, on the ground that France and Austria were both playing with -cogged dice, and therefore the other dicer of the party was in -self-defence driven to show himself their superior in these excellent -artifices, there still seems a gratuitous infamy in hinting to the -Austrian general, as Frederick did, how he might assault with advantage -the French enemy, Frederick’s own ally at the moment.<a name="FNanchor_138" id="FNanchor_138"></a><a href="#Footnote_138" class="fnanchor">138</a> This was the -author of the plea for political morality, called the Anti-Machiavel, -whose publication Voltaire had superintended<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">170</a></span> the year before, and, for -that matter, had done his best to prevent. Still, as Frederick so -graciously said of his new guest and old friend: ‘He has all the tricks -of a monkey; but I shall make no sign, for I need him in my study of -French style. One may learn good things from a scoundrel: I want to know -his French; what is his morality to me?’ And so a royal statesman may -have the manners of the coarsest corporal, and the morality of the -grossest cynic, and still have both the eye to discern, and the hand to -control, the forces of a great forward movement.</p> - -<p>Frederick had the signal honour of accepting his position, and taking up -with an almost perfect fortitude the burden which it laid upon him. ‘We -are not masters of our own lot,’ he wrote to Voltaire, immediately after -his accession to the throne; ‘the whirlwind of circumstances carries us -away, and we must suffer ourselves to be carried away.’<a name="FNanchor_139" id="FNanchor_139"></a><a href="#Footnote_139" class="fnanchor">139</a> And what he -said in this hour of exaltation he did not deny nearly twenty years -later, when his fortunes seemed absolutely desperate. ‘If I had been -born a private person,’ he wrote to him in 1759, ‘I would give up -everything for love of peace; but a man is bound to take on the spirit -of his position.’<a name="FNanchor_140" id="FNanchor_140"></a><a href="#Footnote_140" class="fnanchor">140</a> ‘Philosophy teaches us to do our duty, to serve -our country faithfully at the price of our blood and our case, to -sacrifice for it our whole existence.’<a name="FNanchor_141" id="FNanchor_141"></a><a href="#Footnote_141" class="fnanchor">141</a> Men are also <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">171</a></span>called upon by -their country to abstain from sacrificing their existence, and if -Frederick’s sense of duty to his subjects had been as perfect as it was -exceptionally near being so, he would not have carried a phial of poison -round his neck.<a name="FNanchor_142" id="FNanchor_142"></a><a href="#Footnote_142" class="fnanchor">142</a> Still on the whole he devoted himself to his career -with a temper that was as entirely calculated for the overthrow of a -tottering system, as Voltaire’s own. It is difficult to tell whether -Frederick’s steady attention to letters and men of letters, and his -praiseworthy endeavours to make Berlin a true academic centre, were due -to a real and disinterested love of knowledge, and a sense of its worth -to the spirit of man, or still more to weak literary vanity, and a -futile idea of universal fame so far as his own productions went, and a -purely utilitarian purpose so far as his patronage of the national -academy was concerned. One thing is certain, that the philosophy which -he learnt from French masters, which Voltaire brought in his proper -person to Berlin, and to which Frederick to the end of his days was -always adding illustrative commentaries, never made any impression on -Germany. The teaching of Leibnitz and Wolf stood like a fortified wall -in the face of the French invasion, and whatever effective share French -speculation had upon Germany, was through the influence of Descartes -upon Leibnitz.</p> - -<p>The dissolution of the outer framework of the European state-system, for -which Frederick’s seizure <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">172</a></span>of Silesia was the first clear signal, -followed as it was by the indispensable suppression of the mischievous -independence, so called, of barbaric and feudal Poland, where bishops -and nobles held a people in the most oppressive bondage, can only -concern us here slightly, because it was for the time only indirectly -connected with the characteristic work of Voltaire’s life. But, though -indirect, the connection may be seen at our distance of time to have -been marked and unmistakable. The old order and principles of Europe -were to receive a new impress, and the decaying system of the middle age -to be replaced by a polity of revolution, which should finally change -the relations of nations, the types of European government, and the -ideas of spiritual control.</p> - -<p>In 1733 the war of the Polish succession between Austria and Russia on -the one hand, and France and Spain on the other, had given the first -great shock to the house of Austria, which was compelled to renounce the -pretensions and territory of the Empire in Italy, or nearly all of them, -in favour of the Spanish Bourbons, as well as to surrender Lorraine to -Stanislas, with reversion to the crown of France. We may notice in -passing that it was at Stanislas’ court of Lunéville that Voltaire and -the Marquise du Châtelet passed their last days together. The wars of -the Polish succession were remarkable for another circumstance. They -were the first occasion of the decisive interference of Russia in -Western affairs, an only less important disturbance of Europe than the -first great interference<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">173</a></span> of Prussia a few years later. The falling to -pieces of the old Europe was as inevitable as, more than twelve -centuries before, had been the dissolution of that yet older Europe -whose heart had been not Vienna but Rome. Russia and Prussia were not -the only novel elements. There was a third from over the sea, the -American colonies of France and England.</p> - -<p>Roman Europe had been a vast imperial state, with slavery for a base. -Then, after the feudal organisation had run its course, there was a long -and chaotic transition of dynastic and territorial wars, frightfully -wasteful of humanity and worse than unfruitful to progress. In vain do -historians, intent on vindicating the foregone conclusions of the -optimism which a distorted notion about final causes demands or -engenders in them, try to show these hateful contests as parts of a -harmonious scheme of things, in which many diverse forces move in a -mysterious way to a common and happy end. As if any good use, for -instance, were served by the transfer, for one of the chief results of -the war of the Polish succession, of the Italian provinces of the Empire -of the Spanish Bourbons. As if any good or permanent use were served by -the wars which ended in the Peace of Utrecht, when victorious England -conceded, and with much wisdom conceded, the precise point which she had -for so many years been disputing. From the Peace of Westphalia to the -beginning of the Seven Years’ War, it is not too much to say that there -was a century of purely artificial strife on the continent of Europe, -of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">174</a></span> wars as factious, as merely personal, as unmeaning, as the civil war -of the Fronde was all of these things. In speaking roundly of this -period, we leave out of account the first Silesian War, because the -issue between Prussia and Austria was not decisively fought out until -the final death-struggle from 1756 to 1763. It was the entry of -Frederick the Great upon the scene, that instantly raised international -relations into the region of real matter and changed a strife of -dynasties, houses, persons, into a vital competition between old forces -and principles and new. The aimless and bloody commotions which had -raged over Europe, and ground men’s lives to dust in the red mill of -battle, came for a time to an end, and their place was taken by a -tremendous conflict, on whose issue hung not merely the triumph of a -dynasty, but the question of the type to which future civilisation was -to conform.</p> - -<p>In the preliminary war which followed immediately upon the death of -Charles VI. in 1740, and which had its beginning in Frederick’s invasion -of Silesia, circumstances partially marched in the usual tradition, with -France and Austria playing opposite sides in an accustomed game. Before -the opening of the Seven Years’ War the cardinal change of policy and -alliances had taken place. We are not concerned with the court intrigues -that brought the change about, with the intricate manœuvres of the -Jesuits, or the wounded vanity of Bernis, whose verses Frederick laughed -at, or the pique of Pompadour, whom Frederick declined<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">175</a></span> to count an -acquaintance. When conflicting forces of tidal magnitude are at work, as -they were in the middle of the last century, the play of mere personal -aims and ambitions is necessarily of secondary importance; because we -may always count upon there being at least one great power that clearly -discerns its own vital interest, and is sure therefore to press with -steady energy in its own special direction. That power was Austria. One -force of this kind is enough to secure a universal adjustment of all the -others in their natural places.</p> - -<p>The situation was apparently very complex. There were in the middle of -the century two great pairs of opposed interests, the interests of -France and England on the ocean and in America, and the interests of -Austria and Prussia in Central Europe. The contest was in each of the -two cases much more than a superficial affair of dynasties or division -of territory, to meet the requirements of the metaphysical diplomacy of -the balance of power. It was a re-opening in far vaster proportions of -those profound issues of new religion and old which had only been dammed -up, and not permanently settled, by the great Peace of Westphalia in -1648. In vaster proportions, not merely because the new struggle between -the Catholic and Protestant powers extended into the new world, but -because the forces contained in these two creeds had been widened and -developed, and a multitude of indirect consequences, entirely apart from -theology and church discipline, depended upon the triumph of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">176</a></span> Great -Britain and Prussia. The Governments of France and Austria represented -the feudal and military idea, not in the strength of that idea while it -was still alive, but in the narrow and oppressive form of its decay. No -social growth was possible under its shadow, for one of its essential -conditions was discouragement, active and passive, of commercial -industry, the main pathway then open to an advancing people. Again, both -France and Austria represented the old type of monarchy, as -distinguished alike from the aristocratic oligarchy of England, and the -new type of monarchy which Prussia introduced into Europe, frugal, -encouraging industry, active in supervision, indefatigable in improving -the laws. Let us not omit above all things the splendid religious -toleration, of which Prussia set so extraordinarily early an example to -Europe. The Protestants whom episcopal tyranny drove from Salzburg found -warm hospitality among their northern brethren. While the professors of -the reformed faith were denied civil status in France, and subjected to -persecution of a mediæval bloodiness, one Christian was counted exactly -as another in Prussia. While England was revelling in the infliction of -atrocious penal laws on her Catholic citizens, Prussia extended even to -the abhorred Jesuit the shelter which was denied him in Spain and at -Rome. The transfer of territory from Austria to Prussia meant the -extension of toleration in that territory. Silesia, for instance, no -sooner became Prussian, than the University of Breslau, whose advantages -had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">177</a></span> hitherto been rigidly confined to Catholics, was at once -compulsorily opened to Protestants and Catholics alike. In criticising -Frederick’s despotism let us recognise how much enlightenment, how much -of what is truly modern, was to be found in the manner in which this -despotic power was exercised, long before the same enlightened -principles were accepted in other countries.</p> - -<p>We cannot understand the issues of the Seven Years’ War, nor indeed of -the eighteenth century on any of its more important sides, without -tolerably distinct ideas about the ages before and behind it, about the -sixteenth century and the twentieth; without ideas as to the conditions -of the break-up of the Catholic and the feudal organisation, and, next, -as to the attitude proper to be assumed, and the methods to be followed, -in dealing with the more or less anarchic circumstances in which their -break-up and its sequels leave us. There are two ways of regarding these -questions. You may say, as Comte says, that the ultimate type of -society, perfected on a basis of positive knowledge, will in the -essential features of its constitution correspond to the ancient or -mediæval constitution which it replaces; because that gave the fullest -possible satisfaction to those elements of human nature which are -deepest and permanent, and to those social needs which must always press -upon us; that anything which either seriously retards the dissolution of -the old, or draws men aside from the road which leads on to the same -organisation transformed, must therefore be an impediment in the way of -the new<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">178</a></span> society, and a peril to civilisation. Hence, they say, the -mischievousness of Protestantism, Voltairism, and all the minor -manifestations of the critical spirit, because they inspire their -followers with a contempt, as mistaken towards the past as it is -pernicious to the future, for those fundamental principles of social -stability and individual happiness, to which alone we have to look for -the establishment of a better order; because they give to the unguided -individual judgment the force and authority that can only come with -safety from organisation and tradition, that is from a certain definite -form of shaping and expressing the common judgment; and because, -moreover, they tend directly and indirectly to detach effort from social -aims and the promotion of the common weal, to the attainment of mean and -unwholesome individual ambitions. From this point of view, we should -have to regard the acquisition of colonies, for instance, which was one -of the chief objects of Lord Chatham’s policy, as the mischievous -transfer, in the interests of commercial cupidity, of an activity, -hopefulness, and power, that ought to have been devoted to the solution -of the growing social difficulties of Europe; and that ought to have -been bent from a profoundly mean egotism, in the nation and the traders -whose interest was the key of the policy, into a generous feeling for -the public order.</p> - -<p>There is, however, another and a very different way of looking at all -this. You cannot be sure, it is said, that the method of social advance -is to be a return upon the old framework and the old lines; to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">179</a></span> be sure -of this implies an impatient confidence that social forms have all been -exhausted, or else an unsupported assumption that the present transitory -form is so full of danger to the stability of civilisation, as to make -the acceptance of almost any firm order better than the prolonged -endurance of a social state which, on that theory, ought hardly to be -accounted much better than the social state of Bedouin Arabs. Is it not -far better and safer to refrain from committing ourselves to a given -type of social reconstruction, and to work forward patiently upon the -only principle that can be received with entire assurance; namely, that -faithful cultivation of the intelligence, and open-minded investigation -of all that the intelligence may present to us, is the only certain -method of not missing the surest and quickest road to the manifold -improvements of which the fundamental qualities of human nature, as well -as the relations of man in society, are susceptible? There is no good -ground for supposing that this steadfast regard to the fruitfulness and -variety of the individual intelligence tends specially to lead to the -concentration of energy upon individual aims. For what lesson does free -intelligence teach us more constantly or more impressively than that man -standing alone is impotent, that every unsocial act or sentiment tends -to overthrow that collectivity of effort to which we owe all, and, most -important of all, that this collectivity is most effectively secured by -the just culture of the impulses and affections? No degree nor kind of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">180</a></span> -organisation could lead us further than this, and ought it not to be the -prime object and chief hope of those who think about society, that this -truth shall stand rooted in every one’s own reason? If it does not so -stand, you have no security for your spiritual organisation, and if it -does, then you have no necessity. It is to the spread of this -conviction, by the ever-pressing consciousness of urgent social -circumstances, that we must look to suffuse industrial and egotistic -energy with a truly moral and social sentiment.</p> - -<p>This is the point of view from which we may justly regard the violent -change that was the result of the Seven Years’ War, as a truly -progressive step. We cannot be as reasonably sure that the old -conditions of men’s relations in society are in whatever new shape -destined to return, as we are sure that it was a good thing to prevent a -feudal and jesuitical government like Austria from retaining a purely -obstructive power in Europe, and a jesuitical government like France -from establishing the same obstructive kind of power in America. The -advantages of the final acquisition of America by Protestantism, and the -decisive consolidation of Prussia, were not without alloy. History does -not present us with these clean balances. It is not at all difficult to -see the injurious elements in this victory of the northern powers, and -nobody would be less willing than the present writer to accept either -the Prussian polity of Frederick, or the commercial polity of England -and her western colonies, as offering final types of wholesome social -states<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">181</a></span> But the alternative was the triumph of a far worse polity than -either, the polity of the Society of Jesus.</p> - -<p>Even those who claim our respect for the Jesuits as having in the -beginning of their course served the very useful purpose of honestly -administering that spiritual power which had fallen from the hands of -the Popes, who had mischievously entered the ranks and followed the -methods of temporal princes, do not deny that within a couple of -generations they became a dangerous obstacle to the continuity of -European progress. Indeed, it is clear that they grew into the very -worst element that has ever appeared in the whole course of European -history, because their influence rested on a systematic compromise with -moral corruption. They had barely seized the spiritual power in the -Catholic countries when it was perceived that as an engine of moral -control their supposed power was no power at all; and that the only -condition on which they could retain the honour and the political -authority which were needful to them was that they should connive at -moral depravity. They had the education of the country in their hands, -and from the confessor’s closet they pulled the wires which moved -courts. There was no counter-force, for the mass of the people was dumb, -ignorant, and fettered. Say what we will of the need for a spiritual -power, the influence of the Jesuits by the middle of the eighteenth -century was cutting off the very root of civilisation. This was the -veritably Infamous. And this was the influence which the alliance of -England and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">182</a></span> Prussia, a thing accidental enough to all appearance, -successfully and decisively checked, because the triumph of the two -northern powers was naturally the means of discrediting the Jesuit -intrigues in the court of Versailles and elsewhere, and stripping them -of those associations of political and material success, which had -hitherto stood to them in the stead of true spiritual credit.</p> - -<p>The peace of 1763 had important territorial consequences. By the treaty -of Paris between France, England, and Spain, Great Britain was assured -of her possessions on the other side of the Atlantic. By the treaty of -Hubertsburg between Austria, Prussia, and Saxony, Prussia was assured of -her position as an independent power in Europe. These things were much. -But the decisive repulse of the great Jesuit organisation was yet more. -It was the most important side of the same facts. The immediate -occasions of this repulse varied in different countries, and had their -origin in different sets of superficial circumstance, but the debility -of the courts of Austria and France was the only condition on which such -occasions could be seized. The very next year, after the treaties of -Paris and Hubertsburg, the Society of Jesus was suppressed in France, -and its property confiscated. Three years later it was expelled from -Spain. Within ten years from the peace of 1763 it was abolished by the -virtuous Clement XIV. In Canada, where the order had been extremely -powerful,<a name="FNanchor_143" id="FNanchor_143"></a><a href="#Footnote_143" class="fnanchor">143</a> their authority vanished, and with it the probability of -establishing <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">183</a></span>in the northern half of the new world those ideas of -political absolutism and theological casuistry which were undoing the -old. Whatever the accidents which hurried the catastrophe, there were -two general causes which really produced it, the revolution in ideas, -and the revolution in the seat of material power. If this be a true -description of the crisis, we can see sufficiently plainly to what an -extent Voltaire and Frederick, while they appeared to themselves to be -fellow-workers only in the culture of the muses, were in fact -unconsciously co-operating in a far mightier task. When the war was -drawing to an end, and Frederick was likely to escape from the -calamities which had so nearly overwhelmed him and his kingdom in -irretrievable ruin, we find Voltaire writing to D’Alembert thus: ‘As for -Luc’ (the nickname borrowed for the king of Prussia from an ape with a -trick of biting), ‘though I ought to be full of resentment against him, -yet I confess to you that in my quality of thinking creature and -Frenchman, I am heartily content that a certain most devout house has -not swallowed Germany up, and that the Jesuits don’t confess at Berlin. -Superstition is monstrously powerful towards the Danube.’ To which his -correspondent replied that he quite agreed that the triumph of Frederick -was a blessing for France and for philosophy. ‘These Austrians are -insolent capucins, whom I would fain see annihilated with the -superstition they protect.’<a name="FNanchor_144" id="FNanchor_144"></a><a href="#Footnote_144" class="fnanchor">144</a> Here was precisely the issue. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">184</a></span></p> - -<p>It would be a great mistake to suppose that Frederick consciously and -formally recognised the ultimate ends of his policy. Such deliberate -marking out of the final destination of their work, imputed to rulers, -churchmen, poets, is mostly a figment invented by philosophers. -Frederick thought nothing at all about the conformation of the European -societies in the twentieth century. It was enough for him to make a -strong and independent Prussia, without any far-reaching vision, or -indeed without any vision at all, of the effect which a strong and -independent Prussia would finally have upon the readjustment of ideas -and social forces in western civilisation. We are led to a false notion -of history, and of all the conditions of political action and the -development of nations, by attributing to statesmen deep and -far-reaching sight of consequences, which only completed knowledge and -some ingenuity enable those who live after to fit into a harmonious -scheme. ‘Fate, for whose wisdom I entertain all imaginable reverence, -often finds in chance, by which it works, an instrument not over -manageable.’<a name="FNanchor_145" id="FNanchor_145"></a><a href="#Footnote_145" class="fnanchor">145</a> And the great ruler, knowing this, is content to -abstain from playing fate’s part, feeling his way slowly to the next -step. His compass is only true for a very short distance, and his chart -has marks for no long course. To make Prussia strong was the aim of -Frederick’s life. Hence, although the real destiny of his policy was to -destroy the house of Austria, he did not scruple in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">185</a></span>1741 to offer to -assist Maria Theresa with his best help against all the other invaders -of the famous Pragmatic Sanction, which they had solemnly sworn to -uphold. Afterwards, and before the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War, he -sought the alliance of France, but happily for Europe, not until after -Kaunitz and Maria Theresa had already secured that blind and misguided -power, thus driving him into an alliance with Great Britain. And so -chance did the work of fate after all.</p> - -<p>It may be said that such a view of the operation of the great forces of -the world is destructive of all especial respect and gratitude towards -the eminent men, of whom chance and fate have made mere instruments. -What becomes of hero-worship, if your hero after all only half knew -whither he sought to go, and if those achievements which have done such -powerful service were not consciously directed towards the serviceable -end? We can only answer that it is not the office of history to purvey -heroes, nor always to join appreciation of a set of complex effects with -veneration for this or that performer. For this veneration, if it is to -be an intelligent mood, implies insight into the inmost privacy of aim -and motive, and this insight, in the case of those whom circumstance -raises on a towering pedestal, we can hardly ever count with assurance -on finding faithful and authentic. History is perhaps not less -interesting for not being distorted into a new hagiographa.</p> - -<p>It is equally unwarranted to put into <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">186</a></span>Frederick’s mind conscious ideas -as to the type of monarchy proper for Europe in the epoch of passage -from old systems. Once more, he thought of his own country, and his own -country only, in all those wise measures of internal government which -have been so unjustly and so childishly thrust by historians into the -second place behind his exploits as a soldier, as if the civil activity -of the period between 1763, when peace was made, and 1786, when he died, -was not fully as remarkable in itself, and fully as momentous in its -results, as the military activity of the period between 1763 and 1740. -There is in men of the highest governing capacity, like Richelieu, or -Cromwell, or Frederick, an instinct for good order and regular -administration. They insist upon it for its own sake, independently of -its effects either on the happiness of subjects, or on the fundamental -policy and march of things. If Frederick had acceded to the supreme -power in a highly civilised country, he would have been equally bent on -imposing his own will and forcing the administration into the exact -grooves prescribed by himself, and the result would have been as -pestilent there as it was beneficial in a backward and semi-barbarous -country such as Prussia was in his time. This good internal ordering was -no more than a part of the same simple design which shaped his external -policy. He had to make a nation, and its material independence in the -face of Austria and Russia was not more a part of this process than -giving it the great elements of internal well-being, equal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">187</a></span> laws, just -administration, financial thrift, and stimulus and encouragement to -industry. Such an achievement as the restoration of the germs of order -and prosperity, which Frederick so rapidly brought about after the -appalling ruin that seven years of disastrous war had effected, is -unmatched in the history of human government. Well might he pride -himself, as we know that he did, on replacing this social chaos by -order, more than on Eossbach or Leuthen. Above all, he never forgot the -truth which every statesman ought to have burning in letters of fire -before his eyes; <i>I am the procurator of the poor</i>.</p> - -<p>It commits us to no general theory of government to recognise the merits -of Frederick’s internal administration. They constitute a special case, -to be judged by its own conditions. We may safely go so far as to say -that in whatever degree the social state of a nation calls for active -government, whether, as the people of the American Union boast of -themselves, they need no government, or whether, as is the case in Great -Britain, the wretched lives of the poor beneath the combined cupidity -and heartless want of thought of the rich cry aloud for justice, in this -degree it is good that the statesmen called to govern should be in that -capacity of Frederick’s type, conceding all freedom to thought, but -energetic in the use of power as trustees for the whole nation against -special classes. To meet completely the demands of their office they -should have, what Frederick neither had nor could under the -circumstances of his advent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">188</a></span> and the time be expected to have, a firm -conviction that the highest ultimate end of all kingship is to enable -nations to dispense with that organ of national life, and to fit them -for a spontaneous initiative and free control in the conduct of their -own affairs.</p> - -<p>Let us be careful to remember that, if Frederick was a great ruler in -the positive sense, he sprang from the critical school. The traditions -of his house were strictly Protestant, his tutors were Calvinistic -refugees, and his personal predilections had from his earliest youth -been enthusiastically Voltairean. May we not count it one of the claims -of the critical philosophy to a place among the leading progressive -influences in western history, that it tended to produce statesmen of -this positive type? I do not know of any period of corresponding length -that can produce such a group of active, wise, and truly positive -statesmen as existed in Europe between 1760 and 1780. Besides Frederick, -we have Turgot in France, Pombal in Portugal, Charles III and D’Aranda -in Spain. If Charles III was faithful to the old creed, the three -greatest, at any rate, of these extraordinary men drew inspiration from -the centre of the critical school. D’Aranda had mixed much with the -Voltairean circle while in Paris. Pombal, in spite of the taint of some -cruelty, in so many respects one of the most powerful and resolute -ministers that has ever held office in Europe, had been for some time in -England, and was a warm admirer of Voltaire, whose works he caused to be -translated into Portuguese. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">189</a></span> famous school of Italian publicists, -whose speculations bore such admirable fruit in the humane legislation -of Leopold of Tuscany, and had so large a share in that code with which -the name of the ever hateful Bonaparte has become fraudulently -associated, these excellent thinkers found their oracles in that -critical philosophy, of which we are so unjustly bidden to think only in -connection with shallow and reckless destruction. The application of -reason to the amelioration of the social condition was the device of the -great rulers of this time, and the father and inspirer of this device -was that Voltaire who is habitually presented to us a mere mocker.</p> - -<p>Psychologues like Sulzer might declare that the scourge of right -thinking was to be found in ‘those philosophers who, more used to -sallies of wit than to deep reasoning, assume that they have overthrown -by a single smart trope truths only to be known by combining a multitude -of observations, so delicate and difficult that we cannot grasp them -without the aid of the firmest attention.’<a name="FNanchor_146" id="FNanchor_146"></a><a href="#Footnote_146" class="fnanchor">146</a> How many of these -so-called truths were anything but sophistical propositions, the -products of intellectual ingenuity run riot, without the smallest -bearing either on positive science or social well-being? And is it not -rather an abuse of men’s willingness to take the profundity of -metaphysics on trust, that any one who has formulated a metaphysical -proposition, with due technicality of sounding words, has a claim to -arrest the serious <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">190</a></span>attention of every busy passer-by, and to throw on -this innocent and laudable person the burden of disproof? If Duns Scotus -or St. Thomas Aquinas had risen from the dead, Voltaire would very -properly have declined a bout of school dialectic with those famous -shades, because he was living in the century of the Encyclopædia, when -the exploration of things and the improvement of institutions had taken -the place of subtle manipulation of unverified words, important as that -process had once been in the intellectual development of Europe. He was -equally wise in declining to throw more than a trope or sprightly sally -in the direction of people who dealt only in the multiplication of -metaphysical abracadabras. It was his task to fix the eyes of men upon -action. In the sight of Lutheran or Wolfian conjurors with words this -was egregious shallowness. Strangely enough they thought it the climax -of philosophic profundity to reconcile their natural spiritualism with -the supernatural spiritualism of the scriptures, and rationalistic -theism with the historic theism of revelation.<a name="FNanchor_147" id="FNanchor_147"></a><a href="#Footnote_147" class="fnanchor">147</a> Voltaire repudiated -the supernatural and pseudo-historic half of this hybrid combination, -and in doing so he showed a far profounder logic than the cloudiest and -most sonorous of his theologico-metaphysical critics. We may call him -negative and destructive on this account if we please, yet surely the -abnegation of barren and inconsistent speculation, and of fruitless -effort to seize a vain abstract universality, was a very <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">191</a></span>meritorious -trait in a man who did not stop here, but by every means, by poetry, by -history, by biography, and by the manifestation of all his vivid -personal interests, drew every one who was within the sphere of his -attraction to the consideration of social action as the first fact for -the firm attention of the leaders of mankind.</p> - -<p>It may be said that even from this side Voltaire was destructive only, -and undoubtedly, owing to the circumstances of the time, the destructive -side seemed to predominate in his social influence. To say this, -however, is not to bring an end to the matter. The truth is that no -negative thinking can stop at the negative point. To teach men to hate -superstition and injustice is a sure, if an indirect, way of teaching -them to seek after their opposites. Voltaire could only shake -obscurantist institutions by appealing to man’s love of light, and the -love of light, once stirred, leads far. He appealed to reason, and it -was reason in Frederick and the others, which had quickened and -strengthened the love of good order, that produced the striking -reforming spirit which moved through the eighteenth century, until the -reaction against French revolutionary violence arrested its progress. It -is one of the most difficult questions in all history to determine -whether the change from the old order to the new has been damaged or -advanced by that most memorable arrest of the work of social renovation -in the hands of sovereign and traditional governments, administered by -wise statesmen with due <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">192</a></span>regard to traditional spirit; and how far the -passionate efforts of those classes, whose only tradition is a tradition -of squalor and despair, have driven the possessors of superior material -power back into obstructive trepidation. The question is more than -difficult, it is in our generation insoluble, because the movement is -wholly incomplete. But whether the French outbreak from 1789 to 1794 may -prove to have been the starting-point of a new society, or only to have -been a detrimental interruption and parent of interruptions to stable -movement forwards, we have in either case to admit that there was a most -vigorous attempt made in all the chief countries in Europe, between the -middle of the century and the fall of the French monarchy, to improve -government and to perfect administration; that Frederick of Prussia was -the author of the most permanently successful of these endeavours; and -that Frederick learnt to break loose from dark usage, to prefer equity -of administration, to abandon religious superstition, and to insist on -tolerance, from the only effective moral and intellectual masters he -ever had, first the French Calvinists, and then the French critical -school, with Voltaire for chief. It is true, as we shall presently see, -that an important change in the spirit of French writers was marked by -the Encyclopædia, which was so much besides being critical. But then -this famous work only commenced in the year when Voltaire reached -Berlin, and Frederick’s character had received its final shape long -before that time.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">193</a></span></p> - -<p>With the exception of Voltaire, D’Alembert was the only really eminent -Frenchman whose work ever struck Frederick, and we are even conscious, -in comparing his letters to these two eminent men, of a certain -seriousness and deferential respect towards the later friend, which -never marked his relations with Voltaire after the early days of -youthful enthusiasm. Frederick’s admiration for France, indeed, has been -somewhat overstated by French writers, and by those of our own country -who have taken their word for granted. ‘Your nation,’ Frederick once -wrote to Voltaire, ‘is the most inconsequent in all Europe. It abounds -in bright intelligence, but has no consistency in its ideas. This is how -it appears through all its history. There is really an indelible -character imprinted on it. The only exception in a long succession of -reigns is to be found in a few years of Lewis XIV. The reign of Henry -IV. was neither tranquil enough nor long enough for us to take that into -account. During the administration of Richelieu we observe some -consistency of design and some nerve in execution; but in truth they are -uncommonly short epochs of wisdom in so long a chronicle of madnesses. -Again, France has been able to produce men like Descartes or -Malebranche, but no Leibnitz, no Lockes, no Newtons. On the other hand, -for taste, you surpass all other nations, and I will surely range myself -under your standards in all that regards delicacy of discernment and the -judicious and scrupulous choice between real beauties and those<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">194</a></span> which -are only apparent. That is a great point in polite letters, but it is -not everything.’<a name="FNanchor_148" id="FNanchor_148"></a><a href="#Footnote_148" class="fnanchor">148</a> Frederick, however, could never endure the least -hint that he was not a perfect Frenchman in the order of polite letters. -The article on Prussia in the Encyclopædia was full of the most -flattering eulogies of his work as a soldier and an administrator, and -even contained handsome praise for his writings; but Diderot, the author -of this part of the article, delicately suggested that a year or two in -the Faubourg St. Honoré would perhaps have dispersed the few grains of -Berlin sand which hindered the perfect purity of note of that admirable -flute. Frederick, who had hitherto been an ardent reader of the -Encyclopædia, never opened another volume.</p> - -<p>We can understand Voltaire’s character without wading through the slough -of mean scandals which sprung up like gross fungi during his stay at -Berlin. Who need remember that Frederick spoke of his illustrious guest -as an orange of which, when one has squeezed the juice, one throws away -the skin? Or how Voltaire retorted by speaking of his illustrious host, -whose royal verses he had to correct, as a man sending his dirty linen -to him to wash? or, still worse, as a compound of Julius Caesar and the -abbé Cotin? Nor need we examine into stories, suspicious products of -Berlin malice, how Frederick stopped his guest’s supply of sugar and -chocolate, and how Voltaire put <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">195</a></span>his host’s candle-ends into his pocket. -It is enough to know that the king and the poet gradually lost their -illusions, and forgot that life was both too short and too valuable to -waste in vain efforts of making believe that an illusion is other than -it is. Voltaire took a childish delight in his gold key and his star, -and in supping as an intimate with a king who had won five battles. His -life was at once free and occupied, the two conditions of happy -existence. He worked diligently at his Siècle de Louis XIV., and -diverted himself with operas, comedies, and great entertainments among -affable queens, charming princesses, and handsome maids of honour. Yet -he could not forget the saying, which had been so faithfully carried to -him, of the orange-skin. He declared that he was like the man who fell -from the top of a high tower, and finding himself softly supported in -the air, cried out, <i>Good, if it only lasts.</i><a name="FNanchor_149" id="FNanchor_149"></a><a href="#Footnote_149" class="fnanchor">149</a> Or he was like a -husband striving hard to persuade himself of the fidelity of a suspected -wife. He had fits of violent nostalgia. ‘I am writing to you by the side -of a stove, with drooping head and heavy heart, looking on to the River -Spree, because the Spree falls into the Elbe, the Elbe into the sea, and -the sea receives the Seine, and our Paris house is near the River Seine, -and I say, Why am I in this palace, in this cabinet looking into this -Spree, and not in our own chimney-corner?... How my happiness is -poisoned, how short is life! What wretchedness to seek <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">196</a></span>happiness far -from you; and what remorse, if one finds it away from you.’<a name="FNanchor_150" id="FNanchor_150"></a><a href="#Footnote_150" class="fnanchor">150</a> This -was to Madame Denis, his niece; but a Christmas in the Berlin barrack -made even a plain coquette in Paris attractive and homely. We may -imagine with what tender regrets he would look back upon the old days at -Cirey.</p> - -<p>Even in respect of the very mischief from which he had fled, the -detraction and caballing of the envious, he was hardly any better off at -Berlin than he had been at Paris. D’Argental, one of the wisest of his -friends, had forewarned him of this, and that he had fled from enemies -whom at any rate he never saw, only to find other enemies with whom he -had to live day after day. This was exactly what came to pass. Voltaire -often compared the system of life at Berlin and Potsdam to that of a -convent, half military, half literary. The vices of conventual life came -with its other features, and among them jealousy, envy, and malice. The -tale-bearer, that constant parasite of such societies, had exquisite -opportunities, and for a susceptible creature like Voltaire, the result -was wholly fatal. The nights and suppers of the gods became, in his own -phrase, suppers of Damocles. Alexander the Great was transformed into -the tyrant Dionysius. The famous Diatribe of Doctor Akakia, in the -autumn of 1752, brought matters to a climax, because its publication was -supposed to show marked defiance of the king’s wishes.</p> - -<p>Maupertuis had been one of the earliest and most <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">197</a></span>strenuous Newtonians -in France, and had at his own personal risk helped to corroborate the -truth of the new system. In 1735 the zeal for experimental science, -which was so remarkable a trait in this century of many-sided -intellectual activity, induced the academy of sciences to despatch an -expedition to take the actual measure of a degree of meridian below the -equator, and the curious and indefatigable De la Condamine, one of the -most ardent men of that ardent time, with two other inquirers went to -Peru. In 1736 Maupertuis and Clairaut under the same auspices started -for the north pole, where, after undergoing the severest hardships, they -succeeded in measuring their degree, and verifying by observation -Newton’s demonstration of the oblate figure of the earth, a verification -that was further completed by La Caille’s voyage to the Cape of Good -Hope in 1750.<a name="FNanchor_151" id="FNanchor_151"></a><a href="#Footnote_151" class="fnanchor">151</a> Maupertuis commemorated his share in this excellent -work by having a portrait of himself executed, in which the palm of a -hand gently flattens the north pole. He was extremely courageous and -extremely vain. His costume was eccentric and affected, his temper more -jealous and arbitrary than comports with the magnanimity of -philosophers, and his manner more gloomily solemn than the conditions of -human life can ever justify. With all his absurdities, he was a man of -real abilities, and of a solidity of character beyond that of any of his -countrymen at Frederick’s court. I would rather live with him, -<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">198</a></span>Frederick wrote to the princess Wilhelmina, than with Voltaire; ‘his -character is surer,’ which in itself was saying little. But then, the -moment he came into collision with Voltaire, his absurdities became the -most important thing about him, because it was precisely these which -Voltaire was sure to drag into unsparing prominence. In old days they -had been good friends, and a letter still remains, mournfully testifying -to the shallowness of men’s sight into the roots of their relations with -others, for it closes by bidding Maupertuis be sure that Voltaire will -love him all the days of his life.<a name="FNanchor_152" id="FNanchor_152"></a><a href="#Footnote_152" class="fnanchor">152</a> The causes of their collision -were obvious enough. As Frederick said, Of two Frenchmen in the same -court, one must perish. Maupertuis, from the heights of the exact -sciences, probably despised Voltaire as a scribbler, while Voltaire, -with a heart flowing over with gay vivacity, assuredly counted -Maupertuis arbitrary, ridiculously solemn, and something of an impostor. -The compliances of society, he said of the president of the Berlin -academy, are not problems that he is fond of solving. Maupertuis acted -to König, in the matter of an academic or discoverer’s quarrel, in a way -that struck Voltaire, and all men since, as tyrannical, unjust, and -childish, all in one. He unhappily wrote a book which gave Voltaire such -an excuse for punishing the author’s injustice to Konig, as even -Voltaire’s spleen could hardly have hoped for, and the result was the -wittiest and most pitiless of all the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">199</a></span>purely personal satires in the -world. The temptation was certainly irresistible.</p> - -<p>Maupertuis, as has been said, was courageous and venturesome, and this -venturesomeness being uncorrected by the severe discipline of a large -body of accurate positive knowledge, such as Clairaut and Lagrange -possessed, led him into some worse than equivocal speculation. He was in -the depths of the metaphysical stage, and developed physical theories -out of abstract terms. Of some of these theories the worst that could be -said was they were wholly unproved. He advanced the hypothesis, for -instance, that all the animal species sprang from some first creature, -prototype of all creatures since. Others of his theories were right in -idea, but wrong in form, and without even an attempt at verification. -The famous principle of the minimum of action, for example, in spite of -the truth at the bottom of it, was valueless and confused, until -Lagrange connected it with fundamental dynamic principles, generalised -it, and cleared the unsupported metaphysical notions out of it.<a name="FNanchor_153" id="FNanchor_153"></a><a href="#Footnote_153" class="fnanchor">153</a> All -this, however, was wise and Newtonic compared with the ideas promulgated -in the Philosophic Letters, on which the wicked Akakia so swiftly -pounced. Here were notions which it needed more audacity to broach, than -to face the frosts and snows of Lapland; strange theories that in a -certain state of exaltation of the soul one may foresee the future; that -if the expiration of vital force could only be <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">200</a></span>prevented, the body -might be kept alive for hundreds of years; that by careful dissection of -the brains of giants, Patagonian and other, we should ascertain -something of the composition of the mind; that a Latin town if it were -established, and this was not an original idea, would be an excellent -means of teaching the Latin language. Voltaire knew exactly what kind of -malicious gravity and feigned respect would surround this amazing -performance and its author with inextinguishable laughter, and his -thousand turns and tropes cut deep into Maupertuis like sharpened -swords.</p> - -<p>Voltaire was not by scientific training competent to criticise -Maupertuis. This is true; but then Voltaire had what in such cases -dispensed with special competence, a preternatural gift of detecting an -impostor, and we must add that here as in every other case his anger was -set aflame not by intellectual vapidity, but by what he counted gross -wrong. Maupertuis had acted with despotic injustice towards König, and -Voltaire resolved to punish him. This is perhaps the only side of that -world-famous and truly wretched fray which it is worth our while to -remember, besides its illustration of the general moral that active -interest in public affairs is the only sure safeguard against the -inhuman egotism, otherwise so nearly inevitable and in any wise so -revolting, of men of letters and men of science.</p> - -<p>Frederick took the side of the president of his academy, and had Doctor -Akakia publicly burnt<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">201</a></span> within earshot of its author’s quarters.<a name="FNanchor_154" id="FNanchor_154"></a><a href="#Footnote_154" class="fnanchor">154</a> -Voltaire had long been preparing for the end by depositing his funds in -the hands of the Duke of Würtemberg, and by other steps, which had come -to the king’s ears, and had by no means smoothed matters. He sees now -that the orange has been squeezed, and that it is his business to think -of saving the skin. He drew up for his own instruction, he said, a -pocket-dictionary of terms in use with kings: <i>My friend</i> means <i>my -slave; my dear friend</i> means that <i>you are more than indifferent to me;</i> -understand by <i>I will make you happy, I mil endure you, as long as I -have need of you; sup with me to-night</i> means <i>I will make fun of you -to-night.</i><a name="FNanchor_155" id="FNanchor_155"></a><a href="#Footnote_155" class="fnanchor">155</a> Voltaire, though he had been, and always was, the most -graceful of courtiers, kept to his point, and loudly gave Frederick to -understand that in literary disputes he recognised no kings. An act of -tyranny had been committed towards König, who was his friend, and -nothing would induce him to admit either that it was anything else, or -that it was other than just to have held up the tyrant to the laughter -of Europe.</p> - -<p>Frederick was profoundly irritated, and the terms in which he writes of -his French Virgil as an ape who ought to be flogged for his tricks, a -man worse than many who have been broken on the wheel, a creature <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">202</a></span>who -may deserve a statue for his poetry but who certainly deserves chains -for his conduct, seem to imply a quite special mortification and -resentment. He had no doubt a deep and haughty contempt for all these -angers of celestial minds. The cabals of men of letters, he wrote to -Voltaire, seemed to him the lowest depth of degradation.<a name="FNanchor_156" id="FNanchor_156"></a><a href="#Footnote_156" class="fnanchor">156</a> And he -would fain have flung a handful of dust on the furious creatures. After -three months of vain effort to achieve the impossible, Voltaire being -only moderately compliant, the king in March 1753 gave him leave to -depart, though with a sort of nominal understanding for politeness’ sake -that there was to be a speedy return.</p> - -<p>Voltaire, however, was not a man in whose breast the flame of resentment -ever flickered away in politeness, until his adversary had humbled -himself. Though no one ever so systematically convinced himself each day -for thirty years that he was on the very point of death, no one was less -careful to measure the things that were worth doing from the point of -view of a conventional <i>memento mori</i>. Nobody spoke about dying so much, -nor thought about it so little. The first use he made of his liberty was -to shoot yet another bolt at Maupertuis from Leipzig, more piercing than -any that had gone before. Frederick now in his turn abandoned the forms -of politeness, and the renowned episode of Frankfort took place. -Voltaire, on reaching Frankfort, was required by the Prussian resident -in the free city to surrender his court <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">203</a></span>decorations, and, more -important than these, a certain volume of royal verse containing the -Palladium, a poem of indecencies which were probably worse than those of -the Pucelle, because an indecent German is usually worse than an -indecent Frenchman. The poems, however, were what was far worse than -indecent in Frederick’s eyes; they were impolitic, for they contained -bitter sarcasm on sovereigns whom he might be glad to have, and one of -whom he did actually have, on his side in the day of approaching storm. -Various delays and unlucky mishaps occurred, and Voltaire underwent a -kind of imprisonment for some five weeks (May 31 to July 7, 1753), under -extremely mortifying and humiliating circumstances. There was on the one -part an honest, punctual, methodic, rather dull Prussian subordinate, -anxious above all other things in the world, not excepting respect for -genius and respect for law, to obey the injunctions of his master from -Berlin. On the other part Voltaire, whom we know; excitable as a demon, -burning with fury against enemies who were out of his reach now that he -had spent all his ammunition of satire upon them, only half -understanding what was said to him in a strange tongue, mad with fear -lest Frederick meant to detain him after all. It would need the singer -of the battle of the frogs and mice to do justice to this five-weeks’ -tragi-comedy. A bookseller with whom he had had feuds years before, -injudiciously came either to pay his respects, or to demand some trivial -arears of money; the furious poet and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">204</a></span>philosopher rushed up to his -visitor and inflicted a stinging box on the ear, while Collini, his -Italian secretary, hastily offered this intrepid consolation to Van -Duren, ‘Sir, you have received a box on the ear from one of the greatest -men in the world.’ A clerk came to settle this affair or that, and -Voltaire rushed towards him with click of pistol, the friendly Collini -again interfering to better purpose by striking up the hand that had -written Mérope and was on the point of despatching a clerk. We need not -go into the minute circumstances of the Frankfort outrage. Freytag, the -subordinate, clearly overstrained his instructions, and his excess of -zeal in detaining and harassing Voltaire can only be laid indirectly to -Frederick’s charge. But Frederick is responsible, as every principal is, -who launches an agent in a lawless and tyrannic course. The German -Varnhagen has undoubtedly shown that Voltaire’s account, witty and -diverting as it is, is not free from many misrepresentations, and some -tolerably deliberate lies. French writers have as undoubtedly shown that -the detention of a French citizen by a Prussian agent in a free town of -the Empire was a distinct and outrageous illegality.<a name="FNanchor_157" id="FNanchor_157"></a><a href="#Footnote_157" class="fnanchor">157</a> We, who are -fortunately not committed by the exigencies of patriotism to close our -eyes to either half of the facts, may with facile impartiality admit -both halves. Voltaire, though fundamentally a man of exceptional truth, -was by no means incapable of an untruth when <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">205</a></span>his imagination was hot, -and Frederick was by no means incapable of an outrage upon law, when law -stood between him and his purpose. Frederick’s subordinates had no right -to detain Voltaire at all, and they had no right to allow themselves to -be provoked by his impatience into the infliction of even small outrages -upon him and his obnoxious niece. On the other hand, if Voltaire had -been a sort of Benjamin Franklin, if he had possessed a well-regulated -mind, a cool and gentle temper, a nice sense of the expedient, then the -most grotesque scene of a life in which there was too much of grotesque, -would not have been acted as it was, to the supreme delight of those -miserable souls who love to contemplate the follies of the wise.</p> - -<p>Any reader who takes the trouble to read the documents affecting this -preposterous brawl at Frankfort between a thoroughly subordinate German -and the most insubordinate Frenchman that ever lived,—this adventure, -as its victim called it, of Cimbrians and Sicambrians,—will be rather -struck by the extreme care with which Frederick impresses on the persons -concerned the propriety of having Voltaire’s written and signed word for -such parts of the transaction as needed official commemoration. In one -place he expressly insists that a given memorandum should be written by -Voltaire’s own hand from top to bottom. This precaution, which seems so -strange in a king who had won five battles, dealing with the author of a -score of tragedies, an epic, and many other fine things, sprang in truth -from no desire to cast a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">206</a></span> wanton slight on Voltaire’s honour, but from -the painful knowledge that the author of the fine things was not above -tampering with papers and denying patent superscriptions. Voltaire’s -visit had not been of long duration, before the unfortunate lawsuit with -Abraham Hirschel occurred. Of this transaction we need only say this -much, that Voltaire employed the Jew in some illegal jobbing in Saxon -securities; that he gave him bills on a Paris banker, holding diamonds -from the Jew as pledge of honest Christian dealing; that his suspicions -were aroused, that he protested his bills, then agreed to buy the -jewels, then quarrelled over the price, and finally plunged into a suit, -of which the issues were practically two, whether Hirschel had any -rights on one of the Paris bills, and whether the jewels were fairly -charged. Voltaire got his bill back, and the jewels were to be duly -valued; but the proceedings disclosed two facts of considerable -seriousness for all who should have dealings with him: first, that he -had interpolated matter to his own advantage in a document already -signed by his adversary, thus making the Jew to have signed what he had -signed not; and second, that when very hard pushed he would not swerve -from a false oath, any more than his great enemy the apostle Peter had -done.<a name="FNanchor_158" id="FNanchor_158"></a><a href="#Footnote_158" class="fnanchor">158</a> Frederick had remembered all this, just as every negotiator -who had to deal with Frederick remembered that the great <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">207</a></span>king was not -above such infamies as Klein-Schnellendorf, nor such meanness as -filching away with his foot a letter that had slipped unseen from an -ambassador’s pocket.<a name="FNanchor_159" id="FNanchor_159"></a><a href="#Footnote_159" class="fnanchor">159</a></p> - -<p>And so there was an end, if not of correspondence, yet of that -friendship, which after all had always belonged rather to the spoken -order than to the deep unspeakable. There was now cynical, hoarse-voiced -contempt on the one side, and fierce, reverberating, shrill fury on the -other. The spectacle and the sound are distressing to those who crave -dignity and admission of the serious in the relations of men with one -another, as well as some sense of the myriad indefinable relations which -encompass us unawares, giving colour and perspective to our more -definable bonds. One would rather that even in their estrangement there -had been some grace and firmness and self-control, and that at least the -long-cherished illusion had faded away worthily, as when one bids -farewell to a friend whom a perverse will carries from us over unknown -seas until a far day, and we know not if we shall see his face any more. -It jars on us that the moon which has climbed into the night and moved -like sound of music over heath and woodland, should finally set in a -gray swamp amid the harsh croaking of amphibians. But the intimacy -between Frederick and Voltaire had perhaps been always most like the -theatre moon.</p> - -<p>We may know what strange admixture of distrust, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">208</a></span>contempt, and -tormenting reminiscence, mingled with the admiration of these two men -for one another’s genius, from the bitterness which occasionally springs -up in the midst of their most graceful and amiable letters of a later -date. For instance, this is Voltaire to Frederick; ‘You have already -done me ill enough; you put me wrong for ever with the king of France; -you made me lose my offices and pensions; you used me shamefully at -Frankfort, me and an innocent woman who was dragged through the mud and -thrown into gaol; and now, while honouring me with letters, you mar the -sweetness of this consolation by bitter reproaches.... The greatest harm -that your works have done, is in the excuse they have given to the -enemies of philosophy throughout Europe to say, “These philosophers -cannot live in peace, and they cannot live together. Here is a king who -does not believe in Jesus Christ; he invites to his court a man who does -not believe in Jesus Christ, and he uses him ill; there is no humanity -in these pretended philosophers, and God punishes them by means of one -another.” ... Your admirable and solid wisdom is spoiled by the -unfortunate pleasure you have always had in seeing the humiliation of -other men, and in saying and writing stinging things to them; a pleasure -most unworthy of you, and all the more so as you are raised above them -by your rank and by your unique talents.’<a name="FNanchor_160" id="FNanchor_160"></a><a href="#Footnote_160" class="fnanchor">160</a> To which the king answers -that he is fully aware how many faults he has, and what great faults -<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">209</a></span>they are, that he does not treat himself very gently, and that in -dealing with himself he pardons nothing. As for Voltaire’s conduct, it -would not have been endured by any other philosopher. ‘If you had not -had to do with a man madly enamoured of your fine genius, you would not -have got off so well with anybody else. Consider all that as done with, -and never let me hear again of that wearisome niece, who has not so much -merit as her uncle, with which to cover her defects. People talk of the -servant of Molière, but nobody will ever speak of the niece of -Voltaire.’</p> - -<p>The poet had talked, after his usual manner, of being old and worn out, -and tottering on the brink of the grave. ‘Why, you are only sixty-two,’ -said Frederick, ‘and your soul is full of that fire which animates and -sustains the body. You will bury me and half the present generation. You -will have the delight of making a spiteful couplet on my tomb.’<a name="FNanchor_161" id="FNanchor_161"></a><a href="#Footnote_161" class="fnanchor">161</a> -Voltaire did not make a couplet, but he wrote a prose lampoon on the -king’s private life, which is one of the bitterest libels that malice -ever prompted, and from which the greater part of Europe has been -content to borrow its idea of the character of Frederick.<a name="FNanchor_162" id="FNanchor_162"></a><a href="#Footnote_162" class="fnanchor">162</a> This was -vengeance enough even for Voltaire. We may add that while Voltaire -constantly declared that he could never forget the outrages which the -king of Prussia had inflicted on him, neither did he forget to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">210</a></span>draw his -pension from the king of Prussia even in times when Frederick was most -urgently pressed.<a name="FNanchor_163" id="FNanchor_163"></a><a href="#Footnote_163" class="fnanchor">163</a> It may be said that he was ready to return -favours; ‘If things go on as they are going now,’ he wrote with sportive -malice, ‘I reckon on having to allow a pension to the king of -Prussia.’<a name="FNanchor_164" id="FNanchor_164"></a><a href="#Footnote_164" class="fnanchor">164</a></p> - -<p>It was not surprising that Voltaire did not return to Paris. His -correspondence during his residence at Berlin attests in every page of -it how bitterly he resented the cabals of ignoble men of letters, and -the insolence of ignoble men of authority. ‘If I had been in Paris this -Lent,’ he wrote in 1752, ‘I should have been hissed in town, and made -sport of at court, and the Siècle de Louis XIV. would have been -denounced, as smacking of heresy, as audacious, and full of ill -significance. I should have had to go to defend myself in the anteroom -of the lieutenant of police. The officers would say, as they saw me -pass, <i>There is a man who belongs to us</i>.... No, my friend, <i>qui bene -latuit, bene vixit</i>.’<a name="FNanchor_165" id="FNanchor_165"></a><a href="#Footnote_165" class="fnanchor">165</a> With most just anger, he contrasted German -liberality with the tyrannical suspicion of his own government. The -emperor, he says, made no difficulty in permitting the publication of a -book in which Leopold was called a coward. Holland gave free circulation -to statements that the Dutch are ingrates and that their trade is -perishing. He was allowed to print under the eyes of the king of Prussia -that the Great Elector abased himself <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">211</a></span>uselessly before Lewis XIV., and -resisted him as uselessly. It was only in France where permission was -refused for an eulogy of Lewis XIV. and of France, and that, because he -had been neither base enough nor foolish enough to disfigure his eulogy -either by shameful silences or cowardly misrepresentations.<a name="FNanchor_166" id="FNanchor_166"></a><a href="#Footnote_166" class="fnanchor">166</a> The -imprisonment, nine years before this, of Lenglet Dufresnoy, an old man -of seventy, for no worse offence than publishing a supplement to De -Thou’s history, had made a deep impression on Voltaire.<a name="FNanchor_167" id="FNanchor_167"></a><a href="#Footnote_167" class="fnanchor">167</a> He would -have been something lower than human if he had forgotten the treatment -which he had himself received at the hands of the most feeble and -incompetent government that ever was endured by a civilised people.</p> - -<p>So he found his way to Geneva, then and until 1798 an independent -republic or municipality. There (1755) he made himself two hermitages, -one for summer, called the Délices, a short distance from the spot where -the Arve falls into the Rhone, and the other near Lausanne (Monrion) for -winter. Here, he says, I see from my bed this glorious lake, which -bathes a hundred gardens at the foot of my terrace; which forms on right -and left a stream of a dozen leagues, and a calm sea in front of my -windows; and which waters the fields of Savoy, crowned with the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">212</a></span>Alps in -the distance.<a name="FNanchor_168" id="FNanchor_168"></a><a href="#Footnote_168" class="fnanchor">168</a> You write to me, replied D’Alembert, from your bed, -whence you command ten leagues of the lake, and I answer you from my -hole, whence I command a patch of sky three ells long.<a name="FNanchor_169" id="FNanchor_169"></a><a href="#Footnote_169" class="fnanchor">169</a> To poor -D’Alembert the name of the famous lake was fraught with evil -associations, for he had just published his too veracious article on -Geneva in the Encyclopædia, in which he paid the clergy of that city the -unwelcome compliment, that they were the most logical of all -Protestants, for they were Socinians; and he was now suffering the -penalty of men who stir up angry hives.</p> - -<p>The enjoyment which Voltaire had then and for twenty years to come in -his noble landscape, and which he so often commemorates in his letters, -is a proof that may be added to others, of the injustice of the common -idea that the Voltairean school of the eighteenth century were specially -insensible to the picturesque. Morellet, for instance, records his -delight and wonder at the Alps and the descent into Italy, in terms -quite as warm, if much less profuse, as those of the most impressible -modern tourist.<a name="FNanchor_170" id="FNanchor_170"></a><a href="#Footnote_170" class="fnanchor">170</a> Diderot had a strong spontaneous feeling for -nature, as he shows not only in his truly remarkable criticisms on the -paintings of twenty years, but also in his most private correspondence, -where he demonstrates in terms too plain, simple, and homely, to be -suspected <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">213</a></span>of insincerity, the meditative delight with which the -solitary contemplation of fine landscape inspired him. He has no -peculiar felicity in describing natural features in words, or in -reproducing the inner harmonies with which the soft lines of distant -hills, or the richness of deep embosoming woodlands, or the swift -procession of clouds driven by fierce or cheerful winds, compose and -strengthen the sympathising spirit. But he was as susceptible to them as -men of more sonorous word.<a name="FNanchor_171" id="FNanchor_171"></a><a href="#Footnote_171" class="fnanchor">171</a> And Voltaire finds the liveliest -pleasure in the natural sights and objects around him, though they never -quickened in him those brooding moods of egotistic introspection and -deep questioning contemplation in which Jean Jacques, Bernardin de St. -Pierre, and Sénancour, found a sort of refuge from their own desperate -impotency of will and of material activity. Voltaire never felt this -impotency. As the very apostle of action, how should he have felt it? It -pleased him in the first few months of his settlement in new scenes, and -at other times, to borrow some of Frederick’s talk about the bestial -folly of the human race, and the absurdity of troubling oneself about -it; but what was a sincere cynicism in the king, was in Voltaire only a -bit of cant, the passing affectation of an hour. The dramatist whose -imagination had produced so long a series of dramas of situation, the -historian who had been attracted by such labours as those of Charles -XII. of Sweden and Peter the Great <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">214</a></span>of Russia, as well as by the -achievements of the illustrious men who adorned the age of Lewis XIV., -proved himself of far too objective and positive a temperament to be -capable of that self-conscious despair of action, that paralysing lack -of confidence in will, which drove men of other humour and other -experience forlorn into the hermit’s caves of a new Thebaid. Voltaire’s -ostentatious enjoyment of his landscape and his garden was only the -expansion of a seafarer, who after a stormful voyage finds himself in a -fair haven. His lines to Liberty<a name="FNanchor_172" id="FNanchor_172"></a><a href="#Footnote_172" class="fnanchor">172</a> give us the keynote to his mood at -this time. He did not suppose that he had got all, but he knew that he -had got somewhat.</p> - -<div class="poem"> -<div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Je ne vante point d’avoir en cet asile</span> -<span class="i4">Rencontré le parfait bonheur:</span> -<span class="i0">Il n’est point retiré dans le fond d’un bocage;</span> -<span class="i4">Il est encore moins chez les rois;</span> -<span class="i4">Il n’est pas même chez le sage;</span> -<span class="i0">De cette courte vie il n’est point le partage;</span> -<span class="i0">Il y faut renoncer; mais on peut quelquefois</span> -<span class="i4">Embrasser au moins son image.</span> -</div></div> - -<p>‘Tis a fine thing, is tranquillity,’ he wrote; ‘yes, but ennui is of its -acquaintance and belongs to the family. To repulse this ugly relation, I -have set up a theatre.’<a name="FNanchor_173" id="FNanchor_173"></a><a href="#Footnote_173" class="fnanchor">173</a> Besides the theatre, guests were frequent -and multitudinous. He speaks of sometimes having a crowd of fifty -persons at table.<a name="FNanchor_174" id="FNanchor_174"></a><a href="#Footnote_174" class="fnanchor">174</a> Besides Les Délices and Lausanne, he purchased -from the President de <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">215</a></span>Brosses a life-interest in Tourney, and in the -same year(1758) he bought the lordship of Ferney, close by. He was thus -a citizen of Geneva, of Berne, and of France, ‘for philosophers ought to -have two or three holes underground against the hounds who chase them.’ -If the dogs of France should hunt him, he could take shelter in Geneva. -If the dogs of Geneva began to bay, he could run into France. By and by -this consideration of safety grew less absorbing, and all was abandoned -except Ferney; a name that will always remain associated with those -vigorous and terrible assaults upon the Infamous, which first definitely -opened when Voltaire became the lord of this little domain.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">216</a></span></p> - -<h2>CHAPTER V.</h2> - -<h5>RELIGION.</h5> - -<h5>I</h5> - -<p>In examining the Voltairean attack upon religion we have to remember -that it was in the first instance prompted, and throughout its course -stimulated and embittered, by antipathy to the external organisation of -the religion. It was not merely disbelief in a creed, but exasperation -against a church. Two distinct elements lay at the bottom of Voltaire’s -enmity to the peculiar form of monotheism which he found supreme around -him. One of them was the intellectual element of repugnance to a system -of belief that rested on miracles and mysteries irreconcilable with -reason, and was so intimately associated with some of the most odious -types of character and most atrocious actions in the Old Testament, -which undoubtedly contains so many of both. The other was the moral -element of anger against the expounders of this system, their -intolerance of light and hatred of knowledge, their fierce yet -profoundly contemptible struggles with one another, the scandals of -their casuistry, their besotted cruelty. Of these two elements, the -second<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">217</a></span> was, no doubt, if not the earlier in time, at least the stronger -in intensity. It was because he perceived the fruit to be so deadly, -that Voltaire laid the axe to the root of the tree. It is easy to say -that these poisonous Jesuitries and black Jansenisms were no fruit of -the tree, but the produce of a mere graft, which could have been lopped -off without touching the sacred trunk. Voltaire thought otherwise, and -whether he was right or wrong, it is only just to him to keep constantly -before us the egregious failure of Catholicism in his day as a social -force. This is a fact as to which there can be no dispute among persons -with knowledge enough and mental freedom enough to be competent to have -an opinion, and Voltairism can only be fairly weighed if we regard it as -being in the first instance no outbreak of reckless speculative -intelligence, but a righteous social protest against a system socially -pestilent. It was the revival of the worst parts of this system in the -cruelty and obscurantism which broke out after the middle of the -century, that converted Voltaire into an active assailant of belief. But -for that he would pretty certainly have remained tranquilly in the phase -of deism of which some of his early verses are the expression. -Philosophy is truly, as Callicles says in the Gorgias, a most charming -accomplishment for a man to follow at the right age, but to carry -philosophy too far is the undoing of humanity.</p> - -<p>Voltaire no doubt deliberately set himself to overthrow the Catholic -theology, as well as the ecclesi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">218</a></span> astical system which was bound up with -it, and he did so for the very sufficient reason that it has always been -impossible for men to become indulgent in act, while they remained -fanatical in belief. They will not cease to be persecutors, he said, -until they have ceased to be absurd.<a name="FNanchor_175" id="FNanchor_175"></a><a href="#Footnote_175" class="fnanchor">175</a> The object was to secure -tolerance, and tolerance could only be expected as the product of -indifference, and indifference could be spread most surely by throwing -the fullest light of reason and common sense on the mystical foundations -of revealed religion. To stop short at the inculcation of charity and -indulgence was to surrender the cause; for how should the mere homilies -of a secular moralist soften those whom the direct injunctions of a -deity and his inspired apostles, their own acknowledged masters, failed -to make charitable? It was essential that the superstitions in which -intolerance had its root should be proved detestable and ridiculous. -When men had learnt to laugh at superstition, then they would perceive -how abominable is the oppressive fanaticism which is its champion.</p> - -<p>It is hardly possible to deny the service which Protestantism rendered -in preventing the revolution from Catholicism to scientific modes of -thought from being that violent, abrupt, and irreconcilable breach, -which we now observe in France and Italy, when we remember that the -cause of toleration was systematically defended in England by men who as -systematically defended the cause of Christianity. The <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">219</a></span>Liberty of -Prophesying, in which the expediency of tolerance was based on the -difficulty of being sure that we are right, was written by one of the -most devout and orthodox divines; while the famous Letters on Toleration -(1689), in which the truly remarkable step is taken of confining the -functions of civil government to men’s civil interests and the things of -this world, were the work of the same Locke who vindicated the -Reasonableness of Christianity.<a name="FNanchor_176" id="FNanchor_176"></a><a href="#Footnote_176" class="fnanchor">176</a> The English Deists pressed home in -a very effectual way the deduction of universal freedom of speech from -the first maxims of Protestantism, and their inference was practically -admitted.<a name="FNanchor_177" id="FNanchor_177"></a><a href="#Footnote_177" class="fnanchor">177</a> Hence there was no inseparable association between -adherence to the old religious ideas and the prohibition of free speech -in spirituals, and on the other hand there was no obligation on the part -of those who claimed free speech to attack a church which did not refuse -their claim.</p> - -<p>In France the strictly repressive policy of the church in the eighteenth -century, sometimes bloody and cruel as in the persecution of the -Protestants, sometimes minutely vexatious as in the persecution of the -men of letters, but always stubborn and lynx-eyed,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">220</a></span> had the natural -effect of making it a point of honour with most of those who valued -liberty to hurl themselves upon the religious system, of which rigorous -intolerance was so prominent a characteristic. The Protestant dilution -of the theological spirit seems thus to be in the long run a more -effective preparation for decisive abandonment of it, than its virulent -dissolution in the biting acids of Voltairism, because within limits the -slower these great transformations are in accomplishing themselves, the -better it is for many of the most precious and most tender parts of -human character. Our present contention is that the attitude of the -religionists left no alternative. It is best that creeds, like men who -have done the work of the day, should die the slow deaths of nature, yet -it is counted lawful to raise an armed hand upon the brigand who seeks -the life of another.</p> - -<p>Voltaire to the end of his course contended that the church only was to -blame for the storm which overtook her teaching in the later years, when -his own courageous attack had inspired a host of others, less brilliant -but not any less embittered, to throw themselves on the reeling enemy. -The cause of the inundation of Europe by the literature of negativism -and repudiation was to be sought first of all in the fierce theological -disputes which revolted the best of the laity. Of this violent revulsion -of feeling Voltaire himself was the great organ. He furnished its -justification, and nourished its fire, and invested it with a splendid -lustre. Even when with the timidity of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">221</a></span>extreme age he seemed to -deprecate the growing ferocity of the attack, he still taunted the -clerical party with their own folly in allowing a mean and egotistic -virulence to override every consideration of true wisdom and policy. -‘Now,’ he wrote in 1768, ‘a revolution has been accomplished in the -human mind, that nothing again can ever arrest. They would have -prevented this revolution, if they had been sage and moderate. The -quarrels of Jansenists and Molinists have done more harm to the -Christian religion than could have been done by four emperors like -Julian one after another.’<a name="FNanchor_178" id="FNanchor_178"></a><a href="#Footnote_178" class="fnanchor">178</a></p> - -<p>It cannot be too often repeated that the Christianity which Voltaire -assailed was not that of the Sermon on the Mount, for there was not a -man then alive more keenly sensible than he was of the generous humanity -which is there enjoined with a force that so strangely touches the -heart, nor one who was on the whole, in spite of constitutional -infirmities and words which were far worse than his deeds, more ardent -and persevering in its practice. Still less was he the enemy of a form -of Christian profession which now fascinates many fine and subtle minds, -and which starting from the assumption that there are certain inborn -cravings in the human heart, constant, profound, and inextinguishable, -discerns in the long religious tradition an adequate proof that the -mystic faith in the incarnation, and in the spiritual facts which pour -like rays from that awful centre, are the highest satisfaction which a -divine will has as yet <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">222</a></span>been pleased to establish for all these -yearnings of the race of men. This graceful development of belief, -emancipated from dogma and reducing so many substantial bodies to pale -shades, so many articles once held as solid realities to the strange -tenuity of dreams, was not the Christianity of Voltaire’s time, any more -than it was that of the Holy Office. There was nothing resembling the -present popularity of a treatment which gives generals so immense a -preponderance over particulars—somewhat to the neglect of the old -saying about the snare that lies hidden in generals, many persons being -tolerably indifferent about the <i>dolus</i> so long as they can make sure of -the <i>latet</i>. He attacked a definite theology, not a theosophy. We may, -indeed, imagine the kind of questions which he would have asked of one -pressing such a doctrine on his acceptance; how he would have sought the -grounds for calling aspirations universal, which the numerical majority -of the human race appear to have been without, and the grounds for -making subjective yearnings the test and the measure of the truth of -definite objective records; how he would have prayed to be instructed of -these cravings, whether they spring up spontaneously, or are the -products of spiritual self-indulgence, and also of the precise manner in -which they come to be satisfied and soothed by the momentary appearance -of a humane figure far off upon the earth; how he would have paused to -consider the intelligibility of so overwhelming a wonder as the -incarnation having been wrought, for the benefit<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">223</a></span> of so infinitesimally -small a fragment of mankind. We can imagine this and much else, but -Voltaire would never have stirred a finger to attack a mysticism which -is not aggressive, and can hardly be other than negatively hurtful.</p> - -<p>If any one had maintained against Voltaire that the aspirations after a -future life, the longing for some token that the deity watches over his -creatures and is moved by a tender solicitude for them, and the other -spiritual desires alleged to be instinctive in men, constitute as -trustworthy and firm a guide to truth as the logical reason, we may be -sure that he would have forgiven what he must have considered an -enervating abnegation of intelligence, for the sake of the humane, if -not very actively improving, course of life to which this kind of -pietism is wont to lead. He might possibly have entertained a little -contempt for them, but it would have been quiet contempt and unspoken. -There is no case of Voltaire mocking at any set of men who lived good -lives. He did not mock the English Quakers. He doubtless attacked many -of the beliefs which good men hold sacred, but if good men take up their -abode under the same roof which shelters the children of darkness and -wrong, it is not the fault of Voltaire if they are hit by the smooth -stones shot from his sling against their unworthy comrades. The object -of his assault was that amalgam of metaphysical subtleties, degrading -legends, false miracles, and narrow depraving conceptions of divine -government which made the starting-point and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">224</a></span> vantage-ground of those -ecclesiastical oppressors, whom he habitually and justly designated the -enemies of the human race. The evil and the good, the old purity and the -superadded corruptions, were all so inextricably bound up in the -Catholicism of the eighteenth century, that it was impossible to a deal -a blow to the one without risk of harm to the other. The method was -desperate, but then the enemy was a true Chimæra, a monster sodden in -black corruption, with whom in the breast of a humane man there could be -no terms.</p> - -<p>The popes during the Voltairean period were above the average in virtue -and intelligence, but their power was entirely overshadowed by that -wonderful order which had assumed all effective spiritual supremacy for -something like two centuries. Nor was this order the only retrogressive -influence. The eighteenth century was the century not only of the Sacré -Cœur, but of the miracles of the dead abbé Pâris, transactions in which -Jansenist emulated Jesuit in dragging men and women into the deepest -slough of superstition. A Roman augur fresh from the inspection of the -sacrificial entrails would have had a right to despise the priests who -invented an object for the adoration of men in the diseased and hideous -visions of Mary Alacoque. The man who sells rain to savages may almost -be held to add to the self-respect of the race, if you contrast him with -the convulsionnaires and the fanatics who were transported by their -revolting performances.<a name="FNanchor_179" id="FNanchor_179"></a><a href="#Footnote_179" class="fnanchor">179</a> <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">225</a></span></p> - -<p>France is the country where reactions are most rapid and most violent. -Nowhere else can the reformer count so surely on seeing the completion -of his reform followed so instantly by the triumph of its adversaries. -The expulsion of the Jesuits, under circumstances of marked and -uncompromising harshness, was not consummated, before the tide of -religious bigotry flowed in from the opposite shore, and swelled to a -portentous height. The exultation of the philosophers at the coming fall -of their old foes, was instantly checked by the yet worse things which -befell them and their principles at the hands of new enemies. The reign -of the Jansenists was speedily pronounced more hateful than the reign of -the Jesuits. Various accommodations were possible with heaven, so long -as the Jesuits had credit, but the Jansenists were pitiless.<a name="FNanchor_180" id="FNanchor_180"></a><a href="#Footnote_180" class="fnanchor">180</a></p> - -<p>The parliament or supreme judicial tribunal of Paris<a name="FNanchor_181" id="FNanchor_181"></a><a href="#Footnote_181" class="fnanchor">181</a> was Jansenist, -mainly out of political hatred of the Jesuits, partly from a hostility, -very easily explained, to every manifestation of ultramontane feeling -and influence, partly from a professional jealousy of the clergy, but -partly also because the austere predestinarian dogma, and the -metaphysical theology which brought it into supreme prominence, seem -often to have had an unexplained affinity for serious minds trained in -legal ideas and their <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">226</a></span>application. The Jesuits had systematically -abstained as far as was possible from purely speculative theology. -Suarez is pronounced one of the greatest writers in speculative ethics -and jurisprudence; but in the technical metaphysics of theology the -Jesuits with all their literary industry did not greatly care to -exercise themselves. Their task was social and practical, and as -confessors, directors, preachers, and instructors, they had naturally -paid less attention to abstract thought than to the arts of eloquence, -address, and pliancy. Then, too, in doctrine they had uniformily clung -to the softer, more amiable, more worldly, less repulsive, -interpretation of the eternally embarrassing claims of grace, election, -free-will. The Augustinian, Calvinistic, or Jansenist view of the -impotence of will and the saving importance of grace is the answer of -souls eager to feel immediate individual contact with a Supreme Being. -The Jesuits and their power represented extremely different sentiments, -fundamentally religious, but still fundamentally social also, the desire -of men for sympathetic and considerate guidance in conduct, and their -craving for such a unity of the external ordering of the faith as should -leave them undistracted to live their lives. The former concentrated -feelings upon the relations of men directly and immediately with a -Supreme Being; the latter upon their relations with this Being only -mediately, through their relations with one another, and with the church -to which a measure of divinity had been attributed. Hence the decline of -the Jesuits<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">227</a></span> assumed the form of a depravation of morals, while the -Jansenists held more and more tightly to a narrow and bigoted -correctness of belief. The parliament was willing to resist a Molinist -archbishop and his satellites, when they refused burial to all who -should die without having received a certificate of conformity to the -famous bull Unigenitus, which proscribed Jansenist opinion.<a name="FNanchor_182" id="FNanchor_182"></a><a href="#Footnote_182" class="fnanchor">182</a> But -none the less for this was it bent on suppressing the common enemy, who -despised the bull and the Five propositions, Molina and Jansenius, -archbishop Beaumont and Quesnel, all equally. Voltaire’s natural -sagacity made him alive to the fact, which perhaps remains as true now -as then, that the professional and middle classes are a worse enemy of -liberal opinion and are more intolerant than the remnants of the old -aristocratic orders. He says to D’Alembert, ‘You are right in declaring -yourself the enemy of the great and their flatterers; still, the great -protect one upon occasion, they despise the Infamous, and they will not -persecute philosophers; but as for your pedants of Paris, who have -bought their office, as for those insolent bourgeois, half fanatics, -half imbecile, they can do nothing but mischief.’<a name="FNanchor_183" id="FNanchor_183"></a><a href="#Footnote_183" class="fnanchor">183</a> He had not learnt -to look away from both classes, professional and aristocratic alike, to -that third estate where the voice of the reformer has always found the -first response. Still what he said was true as against the lawyers, -whose vision perhaps never extends <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">228</a></span>beyond the improvement of that mere -surface of order with which their profession is concerned. The -Parliament of Paris was the eager ally of the bigots of the court in -1757, in fulminating deadly edicts against the Encyclopaedia and all -concerned in its production or circulation. In 1762, the year of the -publication of Emile and the Contrat Social, not all the influence of -Rousseau’s powerful protectors could prevent the launching of a decree -of arrest against him. Bloodier measures were not wanting.</p> - -<p>In 1762 Morellet had published under the title of a Manual for -Inquisitors a selection of the most cruel and revolting portions of the -procedure of the Holy Office, drawn from the Directorium Inquisitorium -of Eymeric, a grand inquisitor of the fourteenth century. The -cold-blooded cruelties of the regulations, which were thus brought into -the light of the eighteenth century, created the most profound sensation -among the rapidly increasing adherents of tolerance and humanity. -Voltaire was intensely stirred by this resuscitation of horrors that he -mistook for dead. It made the same impression upon him, he said, as the -bleeding body of Caesar made upon the men of Rome.<a name="FNanchor_184" id="FNanchor_184"></a><a href="#Footnote_184" class="fnanchor">184</a> But he soon -found that it was an error to impute a special cruelty to the spiritual -power. Malesherbes, in giving Morellet the requisite permission to print -his Manual, had amazed his friend by telling him, that though he might -suppose he was giving to the world a collection of extraordinary facts -and unheard<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">229</a></span> of processes, yet in truth the jurisprudence of Eymeric and -his inquisition was as nearly as possible identical with the criminal -jurisprudence of France at that very moment.<a name="FNanchor_185" id="FNanchor_185"></a><a href="#Footnote_185" class="fnanchor">185</a> This was very soon to -be proved.</p> - -<p>The bigots, infuriated by the blows which were destroying the Jesuits, -hunted out against heretical enemies some forgotten portions of this -terrible jurisprudence. A protestant pastor, Rochette, was hung for -exercising his functions in Languedoc. The Catholics on the occasion of -the arrest of Rochette were summoned by sound of tocsin, and three young -Protestants, who were brothers, fearing massacre in the midst of the -agitation, took up their arms: for this offence they were convicted of -rebellion, and had their heads struck off.<a name="FNanchor_186" id="FNanchor_186"></a><a href="#Footnote_186" class="fnanchor">186</a> It became painfully -clear how great a mistake it was to suppose the clergy touched with some -special curse of cruelty. Then, as usually, for good or for evil, they -were on about the same moral level with an immense number of laymen, and -were not much more than the incarnation of the average darkness of the -hour. If Eymeric’s procedure only copied the ordinary criminal -jurisprudence, the bigotry of the ecclesiastics was accurately reflected -in the bigotry of the secular tribunals. The Protestant Calas was broken -on the wheel (1762), because his son had been found dead, and some one -chose to say that the father had killed him, to prevent him from turning -Catholic. There was not the smallest fragment <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">230</a></span>of evidence, direct or -indirect, for a single link in the chain of circumstances on which the -unfortunate man’s guilt depended; while there were many facts which made -the theory of his guilt the most improbable that could have been brought -forward. The widow and the children of Calas were put to the torture, -and eventually fled to Geneva to take refuge with Voltaire. During the -same year the same tribunal, the parliament of Toulouse, did its best to -repeat this atrocity in the case of Sirven. Sirven was a Protestant, and -his daughter had been with perfect legality snatched away from him, and -shut up in a convent, there to be better instructed in the faith. She -ran away, and was found at the bottom of a well. Sirven was accused of -murdering his daughter, and he only escaped the wheel by prompt flight. -His wife perished of misery amid the snows of the Cevennes, and he -joined the wretched family of Calas at Geneva, where the same generous -man furnished shelter and protection.</p> - -<p>In the north of France the fire of intolerance burnt at least as hotly -as in the south. At Abbeville a crucifix was found to have been -mutilated in the night. Two lads of eighteen, to one of whom Frederick -gave shelter in Prussia, were accused under cover of the sacrilege, and -La Barre was condemned by the tribunal of Amiens, at the instance of the -bishop, to have tongue and right hand cut off, and then be burnt alive; -a sentence that was presently commuted by the Parliament of Paris to -decapitation (1766). There was no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">231</a></span> proof whatever that either of the two -youths was in any way concerned in the outrage. The bishop of the -diocese had issued monitory proclamations, and conducted a solemn -procession to the insulted crucifix. The imagination of the town was -kindled, and the sacrilege became the universal talk of a people growing -more and more excited. Rumour ran that a new sect was being formed, -which was for breaking all the crucifixes, which threw the host on the -ground and cut it with knives. There were women who declared that they -had seen these things. All the horrible stories were revived which had -been believed against the Jews in the middle ages. A citizen took -advantage of this fierce agitation to gratify a private grudge against a -relative of La Barre. He set inquiries on foot among the lowest persons -for proof that the youth had been concerned in the original crime. By -one means or another he got together material enough to support an -indictment. Proceedings once begun, a crowd of informers rose up. It was -deposed that La Barre and D’Etallonde had passed within thirty yards of -the sacred procession without removing their hats, that La Barre had -spoken irreverently of the Virgin Mary, that he had been heard to sing -unseemly songs and recite ribald litanies. This testimony, given with a -vagueness that ought to have proved it legally valueless, was the fruit -of the episcopal monitory, which as at Toulouse in the case of Calas, -virtually incited the dregs of the people to bring accusations against -their superiors, and menaced a man with the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">232</a></span> pains of hell if he should -refuse to put his neighbour in peril of his life. The tribunal, as -excited as the witnesses and the rest of the public, relied on a royal -ordinance of 1682, directed against sacrilege and superstition and -designed to put down sorcery. In the sentence inflicting so bloody a -punishment, the offence was described as consisting in singing -abominable songs against the Virgin Mary.<a name="FNanchor_187" id="FNanchor_187"></a><a href="#Footnote_187" class="fnanchor">187</a> To exact such a penalty -for such a delinquency was to make human life a mere plaything for the -ignorant passion of the populace and the intellectual confusion of the -tribunals. These atrocities kindled in Voltaire a blaze of anger and -pity, that remains among the things of which humanity has most reason to -be proud. Everybody who has read much of the French writing of the -middle of the eighteenth century, is conscious from time to time of a -sound of mocking and sardonic laughter in it. This laugh of the -eighteenth century has been too often misunderstood as the expression of -a cynical hardness of heart, proving the hollowness of the humanitarian -pretensions in the midst of which it is heard. It was in truth something -very different; it was the form in which men sought a little relief from -the monotony of the abominations which oppressed them, and from whose -taint they had such difficulty to escape. This refrain, that after all a -man can do nothing better than laugh, apparently so shallow and inhuman, -in reality so penetrated with <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">233</a></span>melancholy, we may count most certainly -on finding at the close of the narration of some more than usually -iniquitous or imbecile exploit of those in authority. It was when the -thought of the political and social and intellectual degradation of -their country became too vivid to be endured, that men like Voltaire and -D’Alembert would abruptly turn away from it, and in the bitterness of -their impotence cry that there was nothing for it but to take the world -and all that befalls therein in merriment. It was the grimacing of a man -who jests when he is perishing of hunger, or is shrinking under knife or -cautery. Thus D’Alembert having given Voltaire an account of the -execution of the unfortunate La Barre, in words that show how intensely -his own narrative was afflicting him, suddenly concludes by saying that -he will add no more on this auto-da-fé, so honourable to the French -nation, for it made him ill-humoured, and he meant only to mock at -whatever might happen.<a name="FNanchor_188" id="FNanchor_188"></a><a href="#Footnote_188" class="fnanchor">188</a> But Voltaire could not rest thus. The -thought of so hateful a crime, perpetrated by a tribunal of justice, -clothed him in the shirt of Nessus. All aflame, he wrote to D’Alembert -with noble impetuosity:</p> - -<p>“This is no longer a time for jesting: witty things do not go well with -massacres. What? These Busirises in wigs destroy in the midst of -horrible tortures children of sixteen! And that in face of the verdict -of ten upright and humane judges! And the victim suffers it! People talk -about it for a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">234</a></span>moment, and the next they are hastening to the comic -opera; and barbarity, become the more insolent for our silence, will -to-morrow cut throats juridically at pleasure. Here Calas broken on the -wheel, there Sirven condemned to be hung, further off a gag thrust into -the mouth of a lieutenant-general, a fortnight after that five youths -condemned to the flames for extravagances that deserved nothing worse -than Saint Lazare. Is this the country of philosophy and pleasure? It is -the country rather of the Saint Bartholomew massacre. Why, the -Inquisition would not have ventured to do what these Jansenist judges -have done.”<a name="FNanchor_189" id="FNanchor_189"></a><a href="#Footnote_189" class="fnanchor">189</a> When he had received D’Alembert’s letter, ending as we -have seen, his remonstrance waxed vehement: ‘What, you would be content -to laugh? We ought rather to resolve to seek vengeance, or at any rate -to leave a coimtry where day after day such horrors are committed.... -No, once more, I cannot bear that you should finish your letter by -saying, I mean to laugh. Ah, my friend, is it a time for laughing? -Did men laugh when they saw Phalaris’s bull being made red-hot?’<a name="FNanchor_190" id="FNanchor_190"></a><a href="#Footnote_190" class="fnanchor">190</a></p> - -<p>This revival in the tribunals of Paris and the provincial towns alike, -of the ignorant fanaticism and the unscientific jurisprudence of the -most unenlightened times, was the more bitter and insupportable from the -new light which shone around such horrors. Beccaria’s treatise on -Offences and Penalties had just been translated into French by Morellet, -and furnished <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">235</a></span>a strange commentary upon the atrocities of Toulouse and -Abbeville. It seemed, men said, as if at every striking vindication of -the rights of humanity the genius of cruelty broke its chains, and, to -prove the futility of all such vindications, inspired new acts of -barbarism and violence.<a name="FNanchor_191" id="FNanchor_191"></a><a href="#Footnote_191" class="fnanchor">191</a> The philosophic group had yielded to a -premature exultation, and in their inexperience supposed that they who -planted the tree should see the gathering-in of the fruit. The reign of -reason was believed to be close at hand, and this belief made the -visible recrudescence of fanatical unreason signally insupportable. It -is a high honour to Voltaire and his disciples that the trial did not -prove too strong for their faith, and that when they saw how far too -sanguine they had been, they were more astonished than they were -discouraged, and their energy redoubled with the demands made upon it. -The meaner partisans of an orthodoxy which can only make wholly sure of -itself by injustice to adversaries, have always loved to paint the -Voltairean school in the character 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 -<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">236</a></span>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.<a name="FNanchor_192" id="FNanchor_192"></a><a href="#Footnote_192" class="fnanchor">192</a> -At the very last Voltaire seems to have seen something of the vast space -which every ray of light has to traverse before it reaches the eye of -the common understanding. ‘I now perceive,’ he wrote the year before his -death, ‘that we must still wait three or four hundred years. One day it -cannot but be that good men 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 from time to time -they will make an auto-da-fé’<a name="FNanchor_193" id="FNanchor_193"></a><a href="#Footnote_193" class="fnanchor">193</a> To speak thus was to recognise the -true character of the revolution, and the many elements which go to the -transformation of an old society. To speak thus, too, was to mark the -true character of the sincere lover of human progress, the soul of -steadfast patience and strong hope, mingled with many a pang for the -far-off and slow-coming good.</p> - -<p>It was a natural thing to identify the Jesuits with the strongest part -of the old society, because their organisation was both the strongest -and most striking of its external supports. Their suppression, though -not to be dispensed with except on the condition of an ultimate -overthrow of morality and an extinction of intellectual light, had one -effect which the statesmen of the time could hardly be expected to see, -and which has not been enough considered. Just as the papacy by the -fourteenth century had become more <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">237</a></span>and more exclusively a temporal -power, so the Jesuits by the middle of the eighteenth had become more -and more a commercial power. They were a powerful trading corporation, -and it was as merchants, rather than as casuists and directors of -conscience, that they finally came into collision with secular authority -in France, Portugal, and Spain. Now since the revival of the order it -has been exclusively engaged in the contest for spiritual supremacy, and -for as much of temporal power as has seemed essential to its security. -This, however, is only one of the evils which counterbalance the -advantages of every progressive measure; for, alas, when the statesman -believes most confidently that he has advanced by a league, a very few -years show him or others that his league was after all no more than an -ell or two.</p> - -<p>The reactionary outburst of fanaticism for which the humiliation of the -Jesuits was a signal, only showed how well founded the Voltairean -allegations as to the depraving effects of the existing system of -religion had really been. It was the verification of all that Voltaire -ever said against the system, and demonstrated both the virulence and -the tenacity of the influences which Catholicism in the days of its -degradation had exerted over the character of the nation. It was most -illogical to expect a people who had been bred in the Catholic tradition -suddenly to welcome its enemies. If Catholicism had trained men up to -the temper which seeks the light and loves it, how should it have -deserved animosity? Nearly all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">238</a></span> lovers of improvement are apt in the -heat of a generous enthusiasm to forget that if all the world were ready -to embrace their cause, their improvement could hardly be needed. It is -one of the hardest conditions of things that the more numerous and -resolute the enemies of reform, then the more unmistakably urgent the -necessity for it. It was just because the cruelty, persecution, and -darkness, in the last ten years of the reign of Lewis XV. were things -possible, that the onslaught upon Catholicism was justifiable and -praiseworthy. They showed the depth and strength of the forces of the -old society, and they foreshadowed the violence which marked its -dissolution. If people had remembered in 1789 how few years separated -them from the wide-spread fanaticism which darkened the last days of -Voltaire, they might have calculated better how few years separated them -from the Napoleonic Concordat.</p> - -<p>No permanent transformation of a society, we may be sure, can ever take -place until a transformation has been accomplished in the spiritual -basis of thought. Voltaire may have distinctly seen this and formulated -it to himself, or not; in any case, he steered his own course exactly as -he would have done if he had seen it. As M. Guizot expresses it, the -separation between the spiritual and temporal orders was never real in -Europe except in the eighteenth century, when for the first time the -spiritual order developed itself entirely apart from the temporal -order.<a name="FNanchor_194" id="FNanchor_194"></a><a href="#Footnote_194" class="fnanchor">194</a> Thus <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">239</a></span>Voltaire acquiesced without murmur or reproach in the -conditions of political absolutism, and the disgrace and ruin which the -nullity of the government brought upon his country in the Seven Years’ -War, keenly as he felt it, yet provoked no thought of temporal changes. -His correspondence in that fatal time is marked by a startling apathy -about public events, and even Rossbach seems not to move him to seek its -causes. If we compare his joyful enthusiasm at the accession of Turgot -to power in 1774, we can have no doubt that this strange numbness of -feeling was only the silence of a wise man despairing of saying or -seeing anything useful, and not the criminal folly of a bad citizen to -whom the welfare of his country is not dear. The disasters of France -were as serious to him as to any one else, as may be plainly seen under -the assumed philosophy with which his vivacious spirit loved to veil -real feeling; but the impossibility of doing anything, even of taking a -part in the process with which we English are so familiar as the forming -of public opinion, drove him for consolation to the field where he was -certain of doing efficient work.<a name="FNanchor_195" id="FNanchor_195"></a><a href="#Footnote_195" class="fnanchor">195</a> Writing in 1761, a year of -crushing national loss, he says to one of the oldest and most intimate -of his correspondents: ‘There is nothing to laugh at in all this. I am -struck to the heart. Our only resource is in the promptest and most -humiliating peace. I always fancy, when some overwhelming disaster -arrives, that the French will be serious for six weeks. I have not yet -been <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">240</a></span>able to disabuse myself of this notion.’<a name="FNanchor_196" id="FNanchor_196"></a><a href="#Footnote_196" class="fnanchor">196</a> Voltaire was -penetrated by the spirit of action, and he perceived and regretted that -the organisation of France did not permit of the effective action of -private individuals in the field of politics.<a name="FNanchor_197" id="FNanchor_197"></a><a href="#Footnote_197" class="fnanchor">197</a> There are lines in -the Henriade extolling the freedom of England,<a name="FNanchor_198" id="FNanchor_198"></a><a href="#Footnote_198" class="fnanchor">198</a> and he sometimes -indulges in the commonplaces of a literary republicanism; but turning to -the portion of his works which his editors have classified as political, -we scarcely find much beyond the documents, and they are important and -interesting enough, still not truly political, that relate to the -various affairs of Calas, La Barre, and others, in which he exposed the -atrocities of the tribunals. So far as they come into the region of -politics at all, it is only to assail the overt and direct injustice -done to society by the institutions, privileges, and pretensions of the -church. He constantly attacks in a great variety of forms the material -mischief inflicted on society by the vast numbers of monks, mendicant or -other; their unproductive lives, the burden of their maintenance -weighing upon more industrious subjects, the restriction of population -occasioned by their celibacy. The direct refusal of the clergy in 1750 -to consent to pay their share of the taxes like other citizens, though -owning as much as a fifth of all the property in the realm, moved him to -insist in a vigorous pamphlet that the distinction in a kingdom between -spiritual and temporal powers is a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">241</a></span>relic of barbarism; that it is -monstrous to permit a body of men to say, Let those pay who work, we -ought not to pay because we are idle; that superstition inevitably tends -to make bad citizens, and therefore princes ought to protect philosophy -which destroys superstition.<a name="FNanchor_199" id="FNanchor_199"></a><a href="#Footnote_199" class="fnanchor">199</a></p> - -<p>Voltaire’s task, however, was never directly political, but spiritual, -to shake the foundations of that religious system which professed to be -founded on the revelation of Christ. Was he not right? If we find -ourselves walking amid a generation of cruel and 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>It is necessary to admit from the point of view of impartial criticism, -that Voltaire had one defect of character, of extreme importance in a -leader of this memorable and direct attack. With all his enthusiasm for -things noble and lofty, generous and compassionate, he missed the -peculiar emotion of holiness, the soul and life alike of the words of -Christ and Saint Paul, that indefinable secret of the long hold of -mystic superstition over so many high natures, otherwise <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">242</a></span>entirely -prepared for the brightness of the rational day. From this impalpable -essence which magically surrounds us with the mysterious and subtle -atmosphere of the unseen, changing distances and proportions, adding new -faculties of sight and purpose, extinguishing the flames of disorderly -passion in a flood of truly divine aspiration, we have to confess that -the virtue went out in the presence of Voltaire. To admire Voltaire, -cried a man who detested him, is the sign of a corrupt heart, and if -anybody is drawn to his works, then be very sure that God does not love -such an one.<a name="FNanchor_200" id="FNanchor_200"></a><a href="#Footnote_200" class="fnanchor">200</a> The truth of which that is so vehement a paraphrase -amounts to this, that Voltaire has said no word, nor even shown an -indirect appreciation of any word said by another, which stirs or -expands the emotional susceptibility, indefinite exultation, and -far-swelling inner harmony, which De Maistre and others have known as -the love of God, and for which a better name, as covering most varieties -of form and manifestation, is holiness, deepest of all the words that -defy definition. Through the affronts which his reason received from -certain pretensions both in the writers and in some of those whose -actions they commemorated, this sublime trait in the Bible, in both -portions of it, was unhappily lost to Voltaire. He had no ear for the -finer vibrations of the spiritual voice. This had no concern in the fact -that he hated and despised, and was eager that others should hate and -despise, the religious forms that ruled France in his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">243</a></span>day. The -Christianity which he assailed was as little touched as Voltairism -itself with that spirit of holiness which poured itself round the lives -and words of the two founders, the great master and the great apostle. -The more deeply imbued a man was with this spirit, the more ardently -would he crave the demolition of that Infamous in belief and in -practice, which poisoned the stream of holiness in its springs, and shed -pestilence along its banks, and choked its issues in barrenness and -corruption.</p> - -<p>The point where the failure of this quality in Voltaire was especially a -source of weakness to his attack, is to be found in the crippling of his -historic imagination, and the inability which this inflicted upon him of -conceiving the true meaning and lowest roots of the Catholic legend. The -middle age between himself and the polytheism of the Empire was a -parched desert to him and to all his school, just as to the Protestant -the interval between the apostles and Luther is a long night of unclean -things. He saw only a besotted people led in chains by a crafty -priesthood; he heard only the unending repetition of records that were -fictitious, and dogmas that drew a curtain of darkness over the -understanding. Men spoke to him of the mild beams of Christian charity, -and where they pointed he saw only the yellow glare of the stake; they -talked of the gentle solace of Christian faith, and he heard only the -shrieks of the thousands and tens of thousands whom faithful Christian -persecutors had racked, strangled, gibbeted,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">244</a></span> burnt, broken on the -wheel. Through the steam of innocent blood which Christians for the -honour of their belief had spilt in every quarter of the known world, -the blood of Jews, Moors, Indians, and all the vast holocausts of -heretical sects and people in eastern and western Europe, he saw only -dismal tracts of intellectual darkness, and heard only the humming of -the doctors, as they served forth to congregations of poor men hungering -for spiritual sustenance the draff of theological superstition.</p> - -<p>This vehement and blinding antipathy arose partly from the intense force -with which the existing aspect of Catholicism recalled all that was -worst, and shut out all that was best in its former history. One cannot -fairly expect the man who is in the grip of a decrepit tyrant, to do -absolutely full justice to the seemly deeds and gracious promises of his -tormentor’s youth. But partly also this blindness arose from the fact -that Voltaire measured the achievements of Catholicism by the magnitude -of its pretensions. He took its supernatural claims seriously, and his -intelligence was exasperated beyond control by the amazing disproportion -and incongruity between these claims and the most conspicuous of the -actual results. Those who have parted company with a religion, as -Voltaire had parted company with Christianity, can only be counted upon -to award the well-earned praise to its better part, after they have -planted themselves stably on the assumption that the given religion is a -human and natural force like another.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">245</a></span></p> - -<p>The just historic calm on which our modern prides himself, is only -possible in proportion to the mature completeness with which he takes -for granted, and believes that those to whom he speaks will take for -granted, the absence of supernatural intervention in the processes of -religious action and development. He is absolutely undisturbed by the -thought of that claim, which was omnipotent until Voltaire came to do -deadly battle with it, of Christianity to be a crowning miracle of -divine favour, which should raise men to be only a little lower than the -angels, and should be the instrument for pouring out upon them an -ever-flowing stream of special and extraordinary grace. It is not until -the idea has dropped out of our minds of the great fathers of the church -as saints, that we are free to perceive what services they rendered as -statesmen, and it is only when men have ceased to dispute whether -Christianity was a revelation, that they have eyes to see what services -it has rendered as a system. But in Voltaire’s time, if Catholicism was -justified historically, it was believed dogmatically, and therefore was -to be attacked dogmatically also. The surrender of the written legend -has never hindered its champions from taking ground which implied some -esoteric revelation, that proves to be some special interpretation of -the written legend. So long as the thinker is busy disproving the -position that a man who happens to live on a certain part of the globe -is a being of such singular and exceptional consequence in the universe -as to be held worthy by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">246</a></span> supreme heavenly powers of receiving a -miraculous message and the promise of this and that unspeakable -privilege in indescribable worlds to come, so long he is not likely to -weigh very fairly the effects of the belief in such power, messages, and -privileges, on the education and advancement of this world. The modern -historic justice which is done to Catholicism is due to the -establishment of a series of convictions that civilisation is a -structure which man by his own right arm has raised for himself, that it -has been exposed to many an era of storm and stress, and to manifold -influences which have been perpetually destroying portions of the great -edifice, adding fresh parts, modifying the old, by an interminable -succession of changes, resounding and volcanic, or still and -imperceptible; that the danger of destruction was never so terrible as -in the days of the dissolution of the old Roman society; that in this -prolonged crisis the Christian church emerged, first by its organisation -and the ability of some of its chiefs, and next by the attraction of -legends that harmonised with the needs of a dark, confused, and -terror-stricken time; that the many barbarous and absurd articles of -belief incorporated in the Christian profession by the sophists of the -East, received from time to time humane modification in the hands of the -wiser churchmen of the West, whose practical judgment was perpetually -softening down the crude, savage, unilluminated doctrines which had -naturally sprung up in the dismal age when the Catholic system acquired -substance and shape.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">247</a></span> A just recognition of all these things is only -easy to one whose expectations from humanity are moderate, who perceives -how tardy and difficult is the accomplishment of each smallest step in -the long process, and how helpful are even the simplest beliefs of rude -times in transforming men from vagrant animals into beings with a -consciousness of fixed common relations towards some object of common -worship, and so planting the first germs of social consolidation and -growth.</p> - -<p>Voltaire was, from the circumstances in which he was placed, too busy -proving the purely human origin of Catholicism to have a mind free to -examine how much, if we suppose it to be of purely human origin, it has -done for those who accepted it. Perhaps we ought rather to praise than -blame him for abstaining from planting himself at the historic point of -view, before settling the previous question whether the historic point -of view is permitted in considering the religious movements of Europe. -Until Voltaire and others had divested the current religion of its -supernatural pretensions, it was impossible for any thinker, who -declines to try to take the second step before he has already taken the -first, to survey the operations of such a religion as a merely secular -force. This surely is a field of thought where no serious inquirer could -content himself with a mere working hypothesis. If the supernatural -claims of Catholicism are well founded, then the historic method of -treating it is either a frivolous diversion or else a grave and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">248</a></span> -mischievous heresy. The issue being of this moment, everybody who -studies the philosophy of history with effect must have made up his mind -in one way or the other. Voltaire had made up his mind very definitely, -and the conclusion to which, for adequate or inadequate reasons, he came -in this matter was one of the most influential agencies in preparing -men’s minds for the construction and general reception of a sounder -historical philosophy than was within his own reach. That he did not see -the deduction from his work is a limitation of vision that he shares -with most of the men to whom it has fallen to overthrow old sytems, and -clear the ground on which the next generation has raised new.</p> - -<h5><br />II.</h5> - -<p>Having said thus much on the general causes and conditions of Voltaire’s -attack, we may next briefly examine his method. A brief examination -suffices, because, like all his contemporaries, he was so very -imperfectly acquainted with the principles of scientific criticism, and -because his weapons, though sharp and deadly enough for their purpose, -are now likely to become more and more thoroughly antiquated. In -criticism he was, as has often been remarked, the direct descendant of -Bayle. That is, his instruments were purely literary and dialectical. He -examined the various sacred narratives as if he had been reviewing a -contemporary historian. He delights in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">249</a></span> the minute cavils of literary -pyrrhonism, and rejoices in the artifice of imposing the significance of -the letter, where his adversaries strove for interpretation of the -spirit. As if, for instance, anything could be more childish than to -attack baptism by asking whether Christianity consists in throwing water -on the head, with a little salt in it.<a name="FNanchor_201" id="FNanchor_201"></a><a href="#Footnote_201" class="fnanchor">201</a> He is perfectly content with -the exposure of a fallacy in words, without seeking to expose the root -fallacy of idea. Nothing short of the blindest partisanship can pretend -to find in this a proper or adequate method. The utmost that can be -said, and no just historian ought to forget to say it, is that it was -not more improper nor inadequate than the orthodox method of defence. -Bayle’s commentary on the words, ‘Compel them to come in,’ would not -satisfy the modern requirements of scriptural exegesis, but it was quite -good enough to confound those who contended that the text was a direct -warrant and injunction from heaven for the bitterest persecution on -earth. But the unfair parry of unfair thrust, extenuate it as we may, -count it inevitable as we may, even reckoning up such advantages from it -as we can, and in the present case they were enormous, can never be any -pattern or masterpiece of retort; and it is folly to allow admiration -for the social merit of Voltaire’s end to blind us to the logical -demerit of his means. It is deliberately to throw away the advantage of -our distance from the contest, and to sell for a momentary -self-indulgence in the spirit of party <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">250</a></span>the birthright of a free and -equitable historic vision. Let men not fail to do justice to the gains -of humanity won by the emancipation of the eighteenth century; but we -shall be worse off than if they had never been transmitted, if they are -allowed to bind us to approve of every detail of the many movements by -which the final triumph was obtained.</p> - -<p>The key to his method of attack is given us in a sentence in one of his -letters to D’Alembert. ‘It is never by means of metaphysics,’ he says, -‘that you will succeed in delivering men from error; you must prove the -truth by facts.’<a name="FNanchor_202" id="FNanchor_202"></a><a href="#Footnote_202" class="fnanchor">202</a> In other words, the sublime abstract reasoning of -a Spinoza will do far less to dispel the narrow ideas, unfounded -beliefs, and false restrictive conceptions which cripple the human -intelligence so long as it is in bondage to a theological system, than a -direct disproval of the alleged facts on which the system professes to -rest. It is only by dealing immediately with these that you can make the -repulse of error a real question, substantially interesting to ordinary -men. Always remembering that Voltaire’s intelligence was practical -rather than speculative, and, besides this, that from the time when he -commenced his attack in earnest the object which he had at heart was the -overthrow of a crushing practical institution, we may agree that in such -a humour and with such a purpose the most effective way of harassing so -active and pestilent a foe was to carry the war into the enemy’s -quarters, and to use those <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">251</a></span>kinds of arguments which the greatest number -of men would be likely to find cogent. We may complain that Voltaire -never rises from the ground into the region of the higher facts of -religion; and this is quite true. It would have been controversially -futile if he had done so. There was no audience in those times for the -discussion of the higher facts; and the reason of this was that the -spiritual instructors and champions themselves thrust into the front -place legends, miracles, and the whole of the peculiarly vulgar part of -the theological apparatus, which it would have been as absurd to -controvert metaphysically, as it would be to try to elevate a Gold-coast -negro from his fetish worship by the transcendental parts of Plato.</p> - -<p>It nearly always happens that the defenders of a decaying system, when -they find themselves surrounded by the wholly uncongenial atmosphere of -rationalistic method, fall back, not on the noblest, but on the -ignoblest parts of their system. Distressed by the light, they shrink -hurriedly into darkest recesses of the familiar caves, partly because -they have a sense of especial security in a region that they know so -well, and partly because they have misgivings lest the surrender of -articles or practices in which they only half believe, should by too -stringent process of logical compulsion lead to the destruction of -others in which they believe with all their hearts. Such tactics may or -may not be politic, but we can at least be quite certain that they tend<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">252</a></span> -neither to elevation of religion, nor discovery of truth, nor profit and -sincerity of discussion. If a set of doctrines be attacked from many -quarters in an unworthy manner, and taken at their worst instead of at -their best, we may be quite sure that this is as much due to the -defenders as to the assailants. It was not Voltaire’s fault that the -controversy turned on issues which a more modern opponent would not care -to dispute. He is constantly flippant and trivial, and constantly -manifests gross irreverence, but it was the writers whom he was -combating, writers like Sanchez or the stercorists, who had opened -frivolous and unbecoming questions that could hardly be exposed with -gravity. He was making war on an institution, and it was not his concern -to fight on ground which his adversary had never thought, and was too -blind and demoralised to be able to think, of taking up. It was not his -fault that the upholders of the creed he attacked, made a stand upon the -letter of sacred documents, upon prophecy and miracle and special -intervention, upon the virtues of relics and the liquefaction of the -blood of Saint Januarius. The same wise man who forbade us to answer a -fool according to his folly, also enjoined upon us to answer a fool -according to his folly, and the moral commentator agrees that each -prescription is as sage as its contradictory.</p> - -<p>If truth means anything, it was worth while to put to rout the -distortions of truth with which the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">253</a></span> church lowered the understanding of -its votaries. If truth means anything, then it was worth while to reply -to the allegation that the history of the Christian church is a long -witness of the goodness of heaven and the ever-present guidance of its -heavenly founder, by a record of the actual facts; of the simplicity, -equality, absence of multiplied rites, orders, and dogmas, among the -primitive members of the congregation, and of the radical differences -between the use of apostolic times and of times since; of the incurable -want of authority for all those tales of demons being cast out, pious -inscriptions in letters of gold found graven on the hearts of martyrs, -and the rest, which grow rare in proportion as we draw nearer to the -times when the evidence for them would have been preserved; of the -infamous character of many Christian heroes, from Constantine downwards, -and of the promptitude with which the Christians, as soon as ever they -had power, dyed their hands in the blood of their persecutors; of the -stupefying circumstances that after a revelation was made to the human -race by no less a prodigy than the incarnation of supreme power in a -mortal body, and the miraculous maintenance of this event and its -significance in the tradition, doctrine, discipline of the Catholic -church, yet the whole of Asia, the whole of Africa, all the possessions -of the English and Dutch in America, all the uncivilised Indian tribes, -all the southern lands, amounting to one-fifth part of the globe still -remain in the clutches of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">254</a></span> demon, to verify that holy saying of many -being called but few chosen.<a name="FNanchor_203" id="FNanchor_203"></a><a href="#Footnote_203" class="fnanchor">203</a></p> - -<p>It may be said that this kind of argument really proves nothing at all -about the supernatural origin or character of the Christian revelation, -for which you must seek the responses not of ecclesiastical history but -of the human heart. And that may be a fair thing to say, but then this -contention of the new revelation being only a message to the heart has -only been heard since Voltaire thrust aside the very different -contention of his day. Those various beliefs were universally accepted -about the progress of the church, which were true in no sense whatever, -literal or spiritual, mystical or historical. People accepted traditions -and records, sacred and profane, as literal, accurate, categorical -declarations and descriptions of a long series of things done and -suffered. Moreover, the modern argument in favour of the supernatural -origin of the Christian religion, drawn from its suitableness to our -needs and its divine response to our aspirations, must be admitted by -every candid person resorting to it to be of exactly equal force in the -mouth of a Mahometan or a fire-worshipper or an astrolater. If you apply -a subjective test of this kind, it must be as good for the sincere and -satisfied votaries of one creed, as it is for those of any other. The -needs and aspirations of the Mahometan would not be satisfied by -fetishism or polytheism, nor those of the developed polytheist by -<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">255</a></span>totem-worship. It would be ridiculous for so small a minority of the -race as the professors of Christianity to assume that their aspirations -are the absolute measure of those of humanity in every stage. The -argument can never carry us beyond the relativity of religious truth.</p> - -<p>Now the French apologist a hundred years ago dealt in the most absolute -possible matter. Christianity to him meant a set of very concrete ideas -of all sorts; any one who accepted them in the concrete and literal form -prescribed by the church would share infinite bliss, and any one who -rejected them, whether deliberately or from never having been so happy -as to hear of them, would be infinitely tormented. If this theory be -right, then Voltaire must naturally be abhorred by all persons who hold -it, as a perverse and mischievous hinderer of light. If it be wrong, and -we must observe that from its terms this is not one of the marvellously -multiplying beliefs of which we hear that they may be half wrong and -half right, then Voltaire may take rank with other useful expellers of -popular error. Everybody must admit how imperfect is all such treatment -of popular error; how little rich, how little comprehensive, how little -full. Yet the surgeon who has couched his patient’s cataract has surely -done a service, even if he do not straightway carry him to enjoy the -restored faculty on some high summit of far and noble prospect.</p> - -<p>Voltaire’s attack was essentially the attack of the English deists, as -indeed he is always willing enough<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">256</a></span> to admit, pursued with far less -gravity and honest search for truth, but, it is hardly necessary to say, -with far more adroitness, rapidity, and grace of manner than any of -them, even than Bolingbroke. As we have seen, he insisted on throwing -himself upon the facts in the records that are least easily reconciled -with a general sense of probability and evidence, as gradually developed -in men by experience. He placed the various incidents of the Bible, the -interpretation of them by the church, the statement of doctrine, the -characters of prominent actors, in the full light of common experience -and of the maxims which experience has made second nature. ‘I always -speak humanly,’ he says mockingly, ‘I always put myself in the place of -a man who, having never heard tell either of Jews or Christians, should -read these books for the first time, and not being illuminated by grace, -should be so unhappy as to trust unaided reason in the matter, until he -should be enlightened from on high.’<a name="FNanchor_204" id="FNanchor_204"></a><a href="#Footnote_204" class="fnanchor">204</a></p> - -<p>It is superfluous to detail the treatment to which he subjected such -mysteries of the faith as the inheritance of the curse of sin by all -following generations from the first fall of man; the appearance from -time to time, among an obscure oriental tribe, of prophets who foretold -the coming of a divine deliverer, who should wash away that fatal stain -by sacrificial expiation; the choice of this specially cruel, -treacherous, stubborn, and rebellious tribe, to be the favoured <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">257</a></span>people -of a deity of spotless mercy and truth; the advent of the deliverer in -circumstances of extraordinary meanness and obscurity among a generation -that greeted his pretensions with incredulity, and finally caused him to -be put to death with ignominy, in spite of his appeal to the prophets -and to the many signs and wonders which he wrought among them; the -rising of this deliverer from the dead; the ascription to him in the -course of the next three or four centuries of claims which he never made -in person, and of propositions which he never advanced while he walked -on the earth, yet which must now be accepted by every one who would -after death escape a pitiless torment without end; the truly miraculous -preservation amid a fiery swarm of heresies, intricate, minute, subtle, -barely intelligible, but very soul-destroying, of that little fragile -thread of pure belief which can alone guide each spirit in the divinely -appointed path. Exposed to the light, which they were never meant to -endure, of ordinary principles of evidence founded on ordinary -experience, the immortal legends, the prophecies, the miracles, the -mysteries, on which the spiritual faith of Europe had hung for so many -generations, seemed to shrivel up in unlovely dissolution. The -authenticity of the texts on which the salvation of man depends, the -contradictions and inconsistencies of the documents, the incompatibility -between many acts and motives expressly approved by the holiest persons, -and the justice and mercy which are supposed to sit enthroned on high in -the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">258</a></span> bosoms, the forced constructions of prophecies and their -stultifying futility of fulfilment, the extraordinary frivolousness of -some of the occasions on which the divine power of thaumaturgy was -deliberately and solemnly exerted,—these were among the points at which -the messenger of Satan at Ferney was permitted sorely to buffet the -church. What is the date of the Apostles’ Creed? What of the so-called -Athanasian Creed? How were the seven sacraments instituted one after -another? What was the difference between the synaxis and the mass? And -so forth through many hundreds of pages.</p> - -<p>Along with rationalistic questions in scriptural and ecclesiastical -history, are many more as to doctrine, and the assumption on which a -doctrine rests; questions as to the trinity, as to redemption by the -shedding of innocent blood, as to the daily miracle of -transubstantiation, as to the resurrection of the body, as to the -existence of an entity called soul independently of that matter which, -apart from miracle, seems an inseparable condition of its manifestation. -His arguments on all these subjects contain a strange mixture of shallow -mockery and just objection. The questions which he suggests for the -doctors as to the resurrection of the body may serve for an example. -Among them are these:</p> - -<p>‘A Breton soldier goes to Canada. It happens by a not uncommon chance -that he falls short of food; he is forced to eat a piece of an Iroquois -whom he has killed over night. The Iroquois had fed on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">259</a></span> Jesuits for two -or three months, a great part of his body had thus become Jesuit. So -there is the body of the soldier with Iroquois, Jesuit, and whatever he -had eaten before, entering into it. How then will each resume exactly -what belongs to him?’ ‘In order to come to life again, to be the same -person you were, you must have a lively and present recollection; it is -memory that makes your identity. Having lost memory, how are you to be -the same man?’ Again, ‘considering that only certain material elements -are proper for the composition of the human body, where is earth enough -to be found to remake all the bodies needed for so many hundreds of -generations? And supposing that by a prodigious miracle the whole human -race could be resuscitated in the Valley of Jehoshaphat, where are all -the spirits meanwhile?’<a name="FNanchor_205" id="FNanchor_205"></a><a href="#Footnote_205" class="fnanchor">205</a></p> - -<p>Another very favourite mode of approaching the beliefs, incidents, and -personages of Jewish and Christian history was to show that they had -counterparts in some pagan fables or systems, in the books of Chinese -philosophers or Brahminical sages. The inference from this identity or -correspondence between some Judaical practices and myths, and the -practices and myths of Arabians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Hindoos, was -that they were in all cases equally the artificial creations of -impostors preying on the credu-lity of men, ‘the first prophet or -diviner having been the first rogue who met the first fool.’ It is -curious <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">260</a></span>to observe how the modern argument from constantly extending -discoveries in comparative mythology tends to the demolition of the -special pretensions of Judaical myths of all sorts, by the very opposite -inference to that on which the Voltairean school rested. Voltaire urged -that as these myths resembled one another in this and that important -feature, therefore they were all equally spurious, false, and absurd. -The modern, on the contrary, would hold them all equally genuine, -equally free from the taint of imposture in priest or people, and -equally faithful representations of the mental states which produced and -accepted them. The weakening of the particular sanctity and objective -reality of any one form of these common primitive ways of thinking about -the action of non-human agents would be just as strong, whether we take -the new or the old view of the generation of myths, but the difference -of the effect of the two views upon the justice and fertility of -historic spirit is immeasurable.</p> - -<p>There is no sign, however, that Voltaire was ever seriously conscious of -the importance of a right consideration of the mental conditions of -primitive peoples. This study had been commenced in his own time by De -Brosses, the inventor of the term fetishism, and pronounced by competent -modern authorities to have been a powerful and original thinker upon the -facts of the infancy of civilisation.<a name="FNanchor_206" id="FNanchor_206"></a><a href="#Footnote_206" class="fnanchor">206</a> Yet Voltaire treated the -speculations of this industrious inquirer with the same ignorant -contempt and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">261</a></span>scorn that the theological enemies of geology were once -accustomed to bestow on men who chipped bits of rock and cherished -fossils.<a name="FNanchor_207" id="FNanchor_207"></a><a href="#Footnote_207" class="fnanchor">207</a> Oddly enough, Voltaire’s carelessness and want of thought -on these matters left him with that very theory of the nature of the -development of cultivation, on which the theological school insists to -this day as against the scientific ethnologists. The question is whether -the earliest men were savages, or partially civilised; in other words, -whether civilisation has consisted in a certain uniform progression from -a state a little above the brutes, or whether the savage is not a being -who has degenerated from a partial degree of civilisation. The -progression theory was no doubt in a general way a characteristic -doctrine of the men of the eighteenth century, for which De Maistre, an -ardent and most ingenious advocate of the degeneration theory, reviled -them with his usual heartiness. Yet his eagerness to depress revelation -by exalting natural theology led Voltaire to the essentially theological -position that the earliest men had a clear and lofty idea of a Supreme -Being, and a ready appreciation of justice and charity in their -relations with one another, until the vile ambition of priestly and -prophetic impostors succeeded in setting upon their necks the yoke of -systems which corrupted the heart and conscience, and sophisticated a -pure and simple faith. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">262</a></span></p> - -<p>He did not hold that men were conscious of the one God as they were -conscious of light, or that they had perceptions of such a being, as -they had perceptions of the ground they tilled. The idea was derived by -process of natural logic from the contemplation of astonishing natural -effects, of harvest and dearth, of fair days and tempests, of -benefactions and scourges. They saw all these things, and felt the work -of a master.<a name="FNanchor_208" id="FNanchor_208"></a><a href="#Footnote_208" class="fnanchor">208</a> Just as in each community there were men who by the -force of their reason found out that triangles with the same base and of -the same height are equal, and others who in sowing and reaping and -tending their flocks perceived that the sun and moon returned pretty -nearly to the point from which they had started, and that they never -travelled beyond a certain limit to north or south, so there was a third -man who considered that men, animals, stars could not have made -themselves, and who saw that therefore a Supreme Being must exist; while -a fourth, struck by the wrongs that men inflicted on one another, -concluded that if there exists a being who made the stars, the earth, -and men, such a being must confer favour on the virtuous, and -punishments on the wicked. This idea, Voltaire declares, is so natural -and so good that it was most readily embraced.<a name="FNanchor_209" id="FNanchor_209"></a><a href="#Footnote_209" class="fnanchor">209</a> The various forms of -revelations were only so many corruptions of that simple, serviceable, -and self-proving monotheism, and so were the conceptions of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">263</a></span>polytheism. -He had no notion that monotheism is a later development of the -theological spirit than polytheism. Unable to deny that the Greeks and -Romans, about whom he knew so little and talked so much, had plurality -of gods, he drew a distinction between one Supreme Being and all the -rest, and contended that you may search all their records in vain for a -single fact or a single word to counterbalance the many passages and -monuments which attest their belief of the sovereignty of the one deity -and his superiority over all the rest.<a name="FNanchor_210" id="FNanchor_210"></a><a href="#Footnote_210" class="fnanchor">210</a> We do not know whether this -was a fortuitous kind of growth in his own mind, or whether it was a -scrap of recollection from the painstaking pages in which Cudworth had -worked at the establishment of that explanation of polytheism. Voltaire -too often writes on these weighty subjects, as if trusting to a memory -that snatched effectively at plausible theories, while losing much of -their evidence and all their deeper bearings.</p> - -<p>It would be not a little extraordinary, if we did not constantly -remember that Voltaire’s strength did not lie in speculation or -systematic thought, that he saw none of the objections to this account -of things, and that he was content with so limited an observation of the -facts. If De Brosses had magnanimously suffered himself to be cheated in -the transaction of the fourteen cords of wood, Voltaire would perhaps -have read his book candidly, and if he had read it otherwise than with a -foregone resolution to despise it, he would <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">264</a></span>have come upon a number of -circumstances entirely fatal to his smooth theory that many gods are -always subordinate to the one, because he would have had to consider -those states of the human mind in which there are no spiritual gods at -all, but in which every object whatever is invested with volition and -power. In one place he shows something like a recognition of the true -nature of the process. ‘I have always been persuaded,’ he says in a -letter to Mairan, ‘that the phenomena of the heavens have been in the -main the source of the old fables. Thunder was heard on the inaccessible -summit of a mountain; therefore there must be gods dwelling on the -mountain, and launching the thunder. The sun seems to speed from east to -west, therefore he has fine coursers. The rain does not touch the head -of one who sees a rainbow, so the rainbow is a token that there will -never again be a deluge.’<a name="FNanchor_211" id="FNanchor_211"></a><a href="#Footnote_211" class="fnanchor">211</a> But then Voltaire was no systematic -thinker, and thus there was no security that any given right idea which -came into his mind would either remain present to him, or would be -followed up and placed along with other ideas in a scientific order. -Apart from this, however, it is extraordinary that Voltaire’s extreme -acuteness did not suggest to him the question, how it was that the -artless and clear belief in one God became more and more obscured by the -growing multitude of other gods, just in proportion as the primitive -tribes became more civilised in all the arts of life. If the nomad -progenitors of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">265</a></span>Greeks had only one god, how was it that, as -knowledge, social feeling, love of beauty, and all the other ennobling -parts of man became more fully developed, the power of superstition -waxed greater, and temples and images were multiplied!</p> - -<p>Again, the theologist might, consistently with his deliberate principle -of resort to the miraculous, contend that this first conception of a -single supreme power, in the fact of the existence of which he is -entirely at one with Voltaire, was directly implanted by a supernatural -force. But Voltaire, debarred from such an explanation as this, was -driven silently to assume and imply the truly incredible position that -the rudest savages, being what we know them, urgently occupied in the -struggle for means of subsistence, leading lives purely animal, -possessed of no vocabulary for any abstract idea, should yet by one leap -of natural logic have risen to one of the very highest pinnacles of -speculation, and both felt and expressed the idea of cause in the most -general and comprehensive of all its forms. Surely this assumption, -measured by any of those standards of experience or probability to which -he professed to appeal, was as much of a miracle as those which he so -decisively repudiated.</p> - -<p>In one of his letters Voltaire declared that Locke was the only -reasonable metaphysician that he knew, and that next to him he placed -Hume.<a name="FNanchor_212" id="FNanchor_212"></a><a href="#Footnote_212" class="fnanchor">212</a> Did he ever read, we may wonder, that masterly essay on the -<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">266</a></span>Natural History of Religion, where Hume not only combats with his usual -vigour and effectiveness the idea of the belief in one omniscient, -omnipotent, and omnipresent spirit being the primary religion of men, -and shows that polytheism precedes monotheism, but also traces the -origin of all religion to its rudiment, in that ‘universal tendency -among mankind to conceive all beings like themselves, and to transfer to -every object those qualities with which they are familiarly acquainted, -and of which they are intimately conscious?’<a name="FNanchor_213" id="FNanchor_213"></a><a href="#Footnote_213" class="fnanchor">213</a> The greater the -knowledge we acquire of the spiritual rudiments of primitive people, the -more certainly is it established that the idea of theism as the earliest -and most elementary belief, which Voltaire had picked up from -Bolingbroke and Pope, is untenable, and that Hume has been more and more -fully warranted in saying that the only point of theology on which the -consent of mankind is nearly universal is that ‘there is an invisible, -intelligent power in the world, but whether this power be supreme or -subordinate, whether confined to one being or distributed among several, -what attributes, qualities, connections, or principles of action, ought -to be ascribed to these beings, concerning all these points there is the -widest difference in the popular systems of theology.’<a name="FNanchor_214" id="FNanchor_214"></a><a href="#Footnote_214" class="fnanchor">214</a> This might -be placing natural theology very low, but Hume at any rate placed it -where he did and described it as he did, because he had knowledge enough -of the condition of various nations in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">267</a></span>various parts of their history, -and was sufficiently penetrated with a cautious and scientific spirit, -to abstain from the unsupported and purely metaphysical conjectures of -men like Voltaire and Rousseau. Well might the keen-eyed De Maistre -describe him from the Catholic point of view as the most dangerous and -the guiltiest of all those pestilent writers,—the one who employed most -talent with most coolness to do most mischief.<a name="FNanchor_215" id="FNanchor_215"></a><a href="#Footnote_215" class="fnanchor">215</a></p> - -<p>If Voltaire had studied Hume, moreover, he might have learnt how futile -and inappropriate it is in the long run to examine a religion otherwise -than in its most fundamental and comprehensive general ideas, and how -narrow and superficial would every philosophic appreciation ultimately -find what he called refutation by facts. For his own immediate purpose, -which was to cover the church and its creed with ridicule, the method of -collecting all the ludicrous, immoral, and inconsistent circumstances in -the Scriptures and their current interpretation, was, as we have already -said, a weapon potent enough. Voltaire, however, not only did not use, -he never understood nor perceived, the fact that a religion rests for -its final base on a certain small number of ideas, or that it is only by -touching these, by loosening the firmness of their hold, by revealing -their want of coherency and consistency with other accepted ideas, that -we can expect to shake the superstructure. For example, if only the -official exponents of religion had not been <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">268</a></span>so firmly bent on making -the feeblest of all their ramparts into their very citadel, it would -have been a very small thing to urge the truly singular quality of such -miracles as those of the water made wine at Cana, of the cursing of the -barren fig-tree, of the unfortunate swine who rushed violently down a -steep place and were choked. These were legends that from the right -point of view of religion were not worth defending, any more than from -the right point of view of truth they were worth attacking. The details -of the use of a supernaturally conferred power may best be let alone, -until the probability of the existence and bestowal of such power has -been discussed and decided. The important issue and matter of vital -concern turned upon the general idea of the miraculous; yet this was -what Voltaire, perhaps from an instinctive consciousness of the little -capacity he possessed for genuine speculation, postponed to the really -secondary purpose of disparaging particular cases of miraculous -performance.</p> - -<p>We are now touching what, before Hume, was the central defect of the -eighteenth-century attack, judged philosophically rather than -practically. The movement was a reaction against a certain set of ideas -which had been incorporated in the Christian system, as that system was -elaborated by the oriental sophisters. Yet the exact conflict between -the old ideas and the new was never conceived, much less was it -expressed, in clear comprehensive formulas. Consequently the most -general terms for the debate were neither sought<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">269</a></span> nor found, and hence -the oppressive narrowness, the stifling want of free air, throughout the -controversy. The truth or falsehood which it is good for us to discover -in connection with a religion resides not in detail, but in the largest -general ideas of the subject. These draw all else along with them. Let -us take an illustration from a characteristic of the anti-christian -attack which has already been mentioned. The Voltairean school, as we -have before observed,<a name="FNanchor_216" id="FNanchor_216"></a><a href="#Footnote_216" class="fnanchor">216</a> habitually derided the sacred importance -attached by the church in all ages, from Saint Paul downwards, to the -practice of continence. But there is no sign, so far as the present -writer’s knowledge goes, that they ever were near perceiving the origin -of that superstition lying deep down for so many centuries in the human -mind. The sanctity of continence was only one product of the old -far-spreading conviction of all the evil and unholiness essentially -inherent in matter. This conviction, which has itself a history and -genesis well worth tracing, probably accounts for more of the peculiar -manifestations contained in Christianity than any one principle of -belief besides. From this metaphysical idea sprang the whole theory of -asceticism; it had much to do indirectly with the first establishment of -the doctrine of the divinity of Christ; it entered into the triumph of -indispensable grace.<a name="FNanchor_217" id="FNanchor_217"></a><a href="#Footnote_217" class="fnanchor">217</a> The speculative origin of practices and -sentiments which the heads of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">270</a></span>the western church valued, modified, and -sagaciously used for ecclesiastical or political reasons, ought never to -be lost sight of, because their duration has depended on the -circumstance of the original speculative idea remaining deeply sunk, -though not often put into articulate form, in the minds of the faithful, -and of all others whom these practices and sentiments have influenced. -One key to the central movement of the eighteenth century is the -dispersion of this association of evil and corruption from matter. There -was energetic and triumphant progress in the discovery of the laws of -matter, in their most stupendous, overwhelming, and majestic order. -There was a steady tendency to resolve mental manifestations into -functions of matter. There was a general inclination to forget those -depressing facts connected with the decay and dissolution of matter, -which, in the dismal times when the church was founded, had been thrust -into a prominence so humiliating to human dignity. The general movement -was carried too far by extreme spirits, but on the whole it was a -salutary and much-needed protest against the limitation of knowledge -within airy cloudlands where no true knowledge was to be reached, and of -emotion within transcendental aspirations where the deep reality of -human relations faded into dim distance.</p> - -<p>It is only when controversy is conducted with reference to ground ideas -of this kind, that the parties to it can be sure of being on the same -plane, and, if they are not on the same plane, one of the least -<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">271</a></span>mischiefs is that their arguments fly over one another’s heads. -Voltaire failed, partly from want of historic knowledge, partly from -insufficient depth of nature, to see what these ground ideas were, -against which he was fighting. Thus, to take another instance, he failed -to see that the belief in the exertion of supernatural power, even on -occasions which struck him as so frivolous, and in a manner undoubtedly -incompatible with justice, was merely an incidental result of a -profoundly rooted idea of the closeness, constancy, and mixed holiness -and majesty, of the relations between man and an awful being other than -man, endowed with powers denied to us, and animated by motives -inscrutable to us. He chose, if we are not wrong in using a term that -may imply much conscious deliberation, to identify his own conception of -deity with the conception of deity in the first four centuries of the -Christian era, simply because the object of each was called by a common -name. He found that the actions attributed to the Supreme Being whom the -church revered, were unworthy of a personage endowed with the qualities -which he ascribed to a supreme power, in his own version of that -culminating conception. He was thus never on the same plane of thought -or argument, but he never was near finding this out. The God whom he -conceived was incapable, from the very nature attributed to him by his -worshippers, of the various transactions, lofty and mean, sublime and -puerile, described in the documents on which Catholicism<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">272</a></span> relied, and -the tradition by which it corroborated and interpreted them. The ground -idea of the belief in the miraculous was an extremely anthropomorphic -notion of a divinity, possessed of complete power, but using it in -obedience to motives which finite understandings cannot pretend to -fathom or measure. Such a notion was the natural growth of the human -mind, amid such a set of circumstances as attended the development and -establishment of Christianity. Men sat in darkness, forlorn and without -hope, and it is not hard for us to imagine the exultation with which -some greater spirit would produce, and all others would embrace, the -idea of this misery and darkness being no more than an outer accident, -the mysterious and incomprehensible dispensation of a divine being, ever -alive to the destinies of men, but holding them in the hollow of an -unseen hand, and guiding them in ways that are not as our ways; ever -remote from corporeal vision, but operating at a multitude of points on -the spirit of each man through grace, and finally, by a consummating -miracle repeated daily some thousands of times, severing this spirit -from the probation of flesh, and prolonging its existence independently -of the body through all eternity in modes of being, none the less real -for being impossible to conceive. To Voltaire this was unspeakable -foolishness. The prodigies of grace, of the resurrection of the body, of -the incarnation of divinity, were inconsistent with the qualities which -he imputed to the creator of the universe, and hence he contented<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">273</a></span> -himself with mocking at them; the real state of the case was simply that -a number of influences had drawn men aside from that conception of the -creator, with which such prodigies were not inconsistent, but were on -the contrary logically and inseparably associated.</p> - -<p>This failure to rise to the highest ideas involved in the great debate -explains, along with much besides, two striking facts connected with it. -It explains the intense acerbity of the conflict, and the flaming depth -of the chasm which divided and divides the two camps in France. For the -best natures are most violently irritated and outraged by mocking and -satiric attack upon the minor details, the accidents, the outside of the -objects of faith, when they would have been affected in a very different -way by a contrast between the loftiest parts of their own belief and the -loftiest parts of some other belief. Many persons who would listen to a -grave attack on the consistency, reasonableness, and elevation of the -currently ascribed attributes of the godhead, with something of the -respect due to the profound solemnity of the subject, would turn with -deaf and implacable resentment upon one who should make merry over the -swine of Gadara.</p> - -<p>The same circumstance, secondly, explains the absence of permanent -quality about all that Voltaire wrote upon religion. For instance, men -who sympathise with him in his aims, and even for their sake forgive him -his method, who have long ago<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">274</a></span> struck the tents under which they once -found shelter in the lands of belief, to whom Catholicism has become as -extinct a thing as Mahometanism, even they will turn with better chance -of edification to the great masters and teachers of the old faith, than -to the fiery precursor of the new. And why, if not for the reason that -while he dealt mainly with the lower religious ideas, or with the higher -ideas in their lowest forms, they put these into the second place, and -move with an inspiring exultation amid the loftiest and most general -conceptions that fine imagination and a soaring reason could discover -among the spiritual treasures of their religion. They turned to the -diviner mind, and exercised themselves with the weightiest and most -universal circumstances of the destiny of mankind. This is what makes -their thought and eloquence of perpetual worth, because the -circumstances with which they deal are perpetually present, and the -elements of life and character to which they appeal perpetually -operative. The awful law of death, the impenetrable secret of the first -cause, the fierce play of passion and universal distribution of pain, -the momentariness of guilt and eternity of remorse, the anguish of -bereavement that chokes and rends, the hopeless inner desolation which -is the unbroken lot of myriads of the forlorn of the earth,—these -ghostly things ever laying siege to the soul were known to a Bossuet or -a Pascal, and resolved by a series of ideas about the unknowable power -and the government of the world, which are no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">275</a></span> longer the mighty weapons -of exorcism they once were, but they are at any rate of due magnitude -and proportion, sublime, solemn, never unworthy. We touch the hands of -those who have walked with the most high, and they tell us many moving -wonders; we look on faces that have shone in rays from the heaven of -noble thoughts; we hear solemn and melodious words from men who received -answers from oracles that to us are very mute, but the memory of whose -power is still upon us. Hence the work of these glowing mortals lives -even for those to whom their faith is dead, while the words that -Voltaire wrote on religion are lifeless as the Infamous which they so -meritoriously slew. As we have said, he never knew the deeper things of -Catholicism. This is what he wrote about the immortal Dante: ‘Everybody -with a spark of good sense ought to blush at that monstrous assemblage -in hell of Dante and Virgil, of Saint Peter and Madonna Beatrice. There -are to be found among us, in the eighteenth century, people who force -themselves to admire feats of imagination as stupidly extravagant and as -barbarous as this; they have the brutality to oppose them to the -masterpieces of genius, wisdom, and eloquence, that we have in our -language. <i>O tempora, O judicium!</i>’<a name="FNanchor_218" id="FNanchor_218"></a><a href="#Footnote_218" class="fnanchor">218</a> To which prodigy of criticism -we can only exclaim with the echo, <i>O tempora, O judicium!</i> <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">276</a></span></p> - -<h5><br />III.</h5> - -<p>Let us see shortly what was Voltaire’s own solution of those facts of -life with which religion has to deal. The Catholic solution we know, and -can definitely analyse and describe; but the vagueness of Voltairean -deism defies any attempt at detailed examination. We can perceive a -supernatural existence, endowed with indefinable attributes, which are -fixed subjectively in the individual consciousness of each believer, and -which therefore can never be set forth in a scheme of general -acceptance. The Voltairean deist—and such persons exist in ample -numbers to this day—hardly ever takes the trouble to reconcile with one -another the various attributes which he imputes at various times to some -great master power of the universe. There is scarcely one of these -attributes to which, when it comes to be definitely described, he does -not encounter affronting contradiction in the real occurrences that -arise from time to time to search and try all our theories, deistical, -or other. The phenomena of moral and physical evil on the earth, and the -arrival of disasters which make no discrimination between their victims, -are constantly dealing sore blows to the conceptions which the deist -loves to erect in moments of optimistic expansion, of the clemency, -justice, and illimitable power of a being who governs the universe, and -is a something outside and independent of it. These<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">277</a></span> optimist -conceptions, vague, unverified, free of definite relations with any -moral or social system, and furnishing no principle of active human -association as the Catholic idea of deity had done, constitute the -favourite religion or religiosity of those classes in all modern -countries, which have found the Voltairean kind of objection to the -Christian revelation insuperable, and which are so fortunate as to enjoy -a full measure of material prosperity. To these classes the black side -of life is strange and a matter of hearsay; and hence the awkwardness of -reconciling their complacent theory with the horror of facts is never -forced upon them. In their own happiness they love to superadd the -luxury of thankfulness to the bounty of a being to whom they owe all, -and to swell the tide of their own emotions by meditation on his -infinite and unspeakable perfections. Proof they require none, beyond -the loveliness and variety of external nature, the innocence and delight -of all young creatures, the order of the seasons bearing us their -copious fruit, the vivid intelligence and serviceable power of man, who -is the divinely appointed recipient of all these multitudinous favours. -Hence in proportion as this sort of deism stirs the soul of a man, the -more closely are his inmost thoughts reserved for contemplation of the -relations between the Supreme Being and his own individuality. It is a -creed which is specially adapted for, and has been generally seized by, -those with whom the world has gone very well, owing to their own<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">278</a></span> -laudable exertion, and who are inclined to believe that the existing -ordering of society is fundamentally the best possible. It is the -superlative decoration of optimism.</p> - -<p>The mass of men, those who dwell in dens and whose lives are bitter, -have never, in spite even of Rousseau’s teaching, accepted deism. An -opportunity for trying the experiment had occurred in the fourth -century, and the lesson should not be forgotten. Deism had been the -prevailing opinion in religion, but, as the most instructive of all the -historians of the dissolution of the Empire observes, it was generally -felt that deism did not supply the void occasioned by the absence of the -multitude of sympathetic divinities of the pagan system. Its influence -was cold and inanimate.<a name="FNanchor_219" id="FNanchor_219"></a><a href="#Footnote_219" class="fnanchor">219</a> The common people are wont to crave a -revelation, or else they find atheism a rather better synthesis than any -other. They either cling to the miraculously transmitted message with -its hopes of recompense, and its daily communication of the divine voice -in prayer or sacrament, or else they make a world which moves through -space as a black monstrous ship with no steersman. The bare deistic -idea, of a being endowed at once with sovereign power and sovereign -clemency, with might that cannot be resisted and justice that cannot be -impugned, who loves man with infinite tenderness, yet sends him no word -of comfort and gives him no way <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">279</a></span>of deliverance, is too hard a thing for -those who have to endure the hardships of the brutes, but yet preserve -the intelligence of men.</p> - -<div class="poem"> -<div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Comment concevoir un Dieu, la bonté même,</span> -<span class="i0">Qui prodigua ses biens a ses enfans qu’il aime,</span> -<span class="i0">Et qui versa sur eux les maux a pleines mains?</span> -<span class="i0">Quel œil peut penetrer dans ses profonds desseins?</span> -<span class="i0">De l’etre tout parfait le mal ne pouvait naitre!</span> -<span class="i0">Il ne vient point d’autrui puisque Dieu seul est maitre:</span> -<span class="i0">Il existe pourtant. O tristes verittés!</span> -<span class="i0">O melange etonnant de contraritéttés!</span> -<span class="i0">Un Dieu vint consoler notre race affligée;</span> -<span class="i0">Il visita la terre et ne l’a point changée!</span> -<span class="i0">Un sophiste arrogant nous dit qu’il ne l’a pu;</span> -<span class="i0">Il le pouvait, dit l’autre, et ne l’a point voulu;</span> -<span class="i0">Il le voudra, sans doute; et tandis qu’on raisonne,</span> -<span class="i0">Des foudres souterraines engloutissent Lisbonne,</span> -<span class="i0">Et de trente cites dispersent les débris,</span> -<span class="i0">Des bords sanglans du Tage à la mer de Cadix.<a name="FNanchor_220" id="FNanchor_220"></a><a href="#Footnote_220" class="fnanchor">220</a></span> -</div></div> - -<p>A bald deism has undoubtedly been the creed of some of the purest and -most generous men that have ever trod the earth, but none the less on -that account is it in its essence a doctrine of self-complacent -individualism from which society has little to hope, and with which -there is little chance of the bulk of society ever sympathising. In -truth, one can scarcely call it a creed. It is mainly a name for a -particular mood of fine spiritual exaltation; the expression of a state -of indefinite aspiration and supreme feeling for lofty things. Are you -going to convert the new barbarians of our western world with this fair -word of emptiness?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">280</a></span> -Will you sweeten the lives of suffering men, and -take its heaviness from that droning piteous chronicle of wrong and -cruelty and despair, which everlastingly saddens the compassionating ear -like moaning of a midnight sea; will you animate the stout of heart with -new fire, and the firm of hand with fresh joy of battle, by the thought -of a being without intelligible attributes, a mere abstract creation of -metaphysic, whose mercy is not as our mercy, nor his justice as our -justice, nor his fatherhood as the fatherhood of men? It was not by a -cold, a cheerless, a radically depraving conception such as this, that -the church became the refuge of humanity in the dark times of old, but -by the representation, to men sitting in bondage and confusion, of -godlike natures moving among them under figure of the most eternally -touching of human relations, a tender mother ever interceding for them, -and an elder brother laying down his life that their burdens might be -loosened. -</p> - -<p>We have spoken of Voltairean deism, and the expression is a convenient -one to distinguish from the various forms of mystic theology, which -gloomily disclaim any pretence to be rational, the halting-place of -spirits too deeply penetrated with the rationalistic objections of -Voltaire to accept revelation, and either too timorous or too confident -to acquiesce in a neutral solution. It is unjust, however, to attribute -to Voltaire himself a perfect adherence to the deistical idea. For the -first half of his life there is no doubt<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">281</a></span> that it floated in his mind, -as in so many others, in a random manner, as the true explanation of the -world. His introduction to the teaching of Newton would give a firmer -shape to such a belief. He has indeed told us that it was so. He -mentions that in the course of several interviews he had with Doctor -Samuel Clarke in 1726, this philosopher never pronounced the name of God -without a curious air of awe and self-collection, and he commemorates -the impression which the sight of this habit, and reflection upon its -significance, made upon him<a name="FNanchor_221" id="FNanchor_221"></a><a href="#Footnote_221" class="fnanchor">221</a>. Still it was not a very active or -vital element of belief with him even then, but rather of the nature of -the sublimest of poetic figures.</p> - -<p> -<span class="i0">Oui, dans le sein de Dieu, loin de ce corps mortel,</span><br /> -<span class="i0">L’esprit semble écouter la voix l’Eternel<a name="FNanchor_222" id="FNanchor_222"></a><a href="#Footnote_222" class="fnanchor">222</a>.</span><br /> -</p> - -<p>Clearly this kind of expression means very little, and has no source in -the deeper seats of the writer’s feeling. A considerable number of -Voltaire’s deistical ejaculations, and on these occasions he threw into -them a measure of real unction, may be fairly traced to the -extraordinary polemical utility of an idea of spotless purity, entire -justice, inexhaustible mercy, as an engine of battle against men who in -the sacred name of this idea were the great practitioners of intolerance -and wrong.</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">282</a></span></p> - -<div class="poem2"> -<div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Ignorer ton être suprême,</span> -<span class="i0">Grand Dieu! c’est un moindre blasphème,</span> -<span class="i0">Et moins digne de ton courroux</span> -<span class="i0">Que de te croire impitoyable,</span> -<span class="i0">De nos malheurs insatiable,</span> -<span class="i0">Jaloux, injuste comme nous.</span> -<span class="i0">Lorsqu’un dévot atrabilaire</span> -<span class="i0">Nourri de superstition,</span> -<span class="i0">A par cette affreuse chimère,</span> -<span class="i0">Corrompu sa religion,</span> -<span class="i0">Le voilà stupide et farouche:</span> -<span class="i0">Le fiel découle de sa bouche,</span> -<span class="i0">Le fanatisme arme son bras:</span> -<span class="i0">Et dans sa piété profonde</span> -<span class="i0">Sa rage immolerait le monde</span> -<span class="i0">A son Dieu, qu’il ne connaît pas.<a name="FNanchor_223" id="FNanchor_223"></a><a href="#Footnote_223" class="fnanchor">223</a></span> -</div></div> - -<p>To have a conception of perfect goodness was a manifest convenience in -confronting men who were to be proved masters of badness. But when the -pressure of circumstance forced Voltaire to seek in earnest for an -explanation of the world, which he had formerly been content to take in -an easy way upon trust, then the deism, which had been barely more than -nominal at best, was transformed into a very different and far sincerer -mood. It would obviously be a gross blunder from a logical point to -confound optimism with deism, but it is clear that what shook Voltaire’s -conviction of the existence of a deity was the awakening in him of a -keener sense of the calamities that afflict the race of man. Personal -misfortunes perhaps had their share. It was after the loss of Madame du -Châtelet, and after the rude dispersion of his illusions as to -<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">283</a></span>Frederick, when he barely knew whither to turn for shelter or a home, -that the optimism which he had learnt in England began to lose its hold -upon him. We must do him the justice to add that he was yet more -sensible of disasters which affected others. The horrid tide of war -which devastated Europe and America, the yet more hateful tide of -persecution for opinion which swept over France, and the cruel -maladministration of justice which disgraced her tribunals, stirred all -that was best in him to the very depths. The only non-dramatic poem of -his which has strength, sincerity, and profundity of meaning enough -firmly to arrest the reader’s attention, and stimulate both thought and -feeling, is that fine and powerful piece which he wrote on the occasion -of the great earthquake of Lisbon.<a name="FNanchor_224" id="FNanchor_224"></a><a href="#Footnote_224" class="fnanchor">224</a> Here he threw into energetic and -passionately argumentative verse the same protest against the theory -that whatever is is best, which he afterwards urged in a very different -form in the ‘refined insolence’ of Candide.<a name="FNanchor_225" id="FNanchor_225"></a><a href="#Footnote_225" class="fnanchor">225</a> He approaches more -nearly than a quarter of a century before he would have thought -possible, to the deep gloom of the Pascal against whose terrible -pictures he had then so warmly protested. He sees mankind imprisoned in -a circle of appalling doom, from which there is no way of escape. Unlike -Pascal, he can find no solution, and he denounces that mockery of a -solution which <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">284</a></span>cries that all is well in accents stifled with -lamentation. He protests against the delusion of forcing the course of -the world’s destiny into a moral formula, that shall contain the terms -of justice and mercy in their human sense.</p> - -<div class="poem"> -<div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Aux cris demi-formés de leurs voix expirantes,</span> -<span class="i0">Au spectacle effrayant de leurs cendres fumantes,</span> -<span class="i0">Direz-vous: C’est l’effet des éternelles lois,</span> -<span class="i0">Qui d’un Dieu libre et bon nécessitent le choix?</span> -<span class="i0">Direz-vous, en voyant cet amas de victimes:</span> -<span class="i0">Dieu s’est vengé, leur mort est le prix de leurs crimes?</span> -<span class="i0">Quelle crime, quelle faute ont commis ces enfans</span> -<span class="i0">Sur le sein maternel écrasés et sanglans?</span> -<span class="i0">Lisbonne, qui n’est plus, eut-elle plus de vices</span> -<span class="i0">Que Londres, que Paris, plongés dans les délices?</span> -<span class="i0">Lisbonne est abîmée, et l’on danse á Paris.</span> -</div></div> - -<p>He equally refuses, though not in terms, to comfort himself by the -reflection that, in default of a better, the current ragged theory of -the providential government of the universe, because it may be possible, -must be true. He can find no answer, and confesses his belief that no -answer is to be found by human effort. Whatever side we take, we can -only shudder; there is nothing that we know, nothing that we have not to -fear. Nature is mute, and we interrogate her in vain; the book of -destiny is closed to our eyes.</p> - -<div class="poem"> -<div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">L’homme, étranger à soi, de l’homme est ignoré.</span> -<span class="i0">Que suis-je? où suis-je? où vais-je? et d’où suis-je tiré?</span> -<span class="i0">Atomes tourmentés sur cet amas de boue,</span> -<span class="i0">Que la mort engloutit, et dont le sort se joue,</span> -<span class="i0">Mais atomes pensans, atomes dont les yeux,</span> -<span class="i0">Guidés par la pensée, ont mesuré les cieux,</span> -<span class="i0"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">285</a></span>Au sein de l’infini nous élaçons notre être,</span> -<span class="i0">Sans pouvoir un moment nous voir et nous connaître.</span> -<span class="i0 padt05"><span class="gesperrt">*****</span></span> -<span class="i0">Le passé n’est pour nous qu’un triste souvenir;</span> -<span class="i0">Le présent est affreux, s’il n’est point d’avenir,</span> -<span class="i0">Si la nuit du tombeau détruit l’être qui pense.</span> -</div> -</div> - -<p>He abandons Plato and rejects Epicurus. Bayle knows more than they, as, -with the balance in his hand, he teaches men to doubt; wise enough, -great enough, to be without a system.</p> - -<p>In a note he adds to this glorification of Bayle, whom he styles the -advocate-general of the philosophers—the thinker in whose pages all -opinions are set forth, all the reasons which shake them and all which -uphold are equally investigated, while he abstains from giving any -conclusions.<a name="FNanchor_226" id="FNanchor_226"></a><a href="#Footnote_226" class="fnanchor">226</a> Elsewhere he explains that when he describes reason as -having made immense progress in Germany, he does not refer to those who -openly embrace the system of Spinoza; but the good folk who have no -fixed principles on the nature of things, who do not know what is, but -know very well what is not, these are my true philosophers.<a name="FNanchor_227" id="FNanchor_227"></a><a href="#Footnote_227" class="fnanchor">227</a></p> - -<p>It would not be difficult to find a score of passages in which the -writer assumes or declares certainty on this high matter to be -attainable, and to be entirely in one direction. His opinions -undoubtedly shifted with the veering of his moods, but on the whole -these axioms of suspense mark the central point to which they constantly -tended to return, and at which they rested longest. That dark word, Shut -thine eyes and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">286</a></span>thou shalt see, opened no road for him. The saying that -the Most High may be easily known, provided one does not press for -definition, offered no treasure of spiritual acquisition to the man who -never let go, even if he did not always accurately appreciate, Locke’s -injunction to us to be careful to define our terms. We cannot label -Voltaire either spiritualist or materialist. The success with which he -evades these two appellations is one of the best available tests of a -man’s capacity for approaching the great problems with that care and -positive judgment, which are quite as proper to them as to practical -affairs or to physical science.</p> - -<p>Thus with reference to the other great open question, he habitually -insisted that the immortality of the soul can never possibly be -demonstrated, and that this is why it has been revealed to us by -religion,<a name="FNanchor_228" id="FNanchor_228"></a><a href="#Footnote_228" class="fnanchor">228</a> which is perhaps Voltaire’s way of saying that it is no -near concern of his. Sometimes he argued from considerations of general -probability. The brutes feel and think up to a certain point, and men -have only the advantage over them of a greater combination of ideas; the -more or less makes no difference in kind. ‘Well, nobody thinks of giving -an immortal soul to a flea; why should you give one any the more to an -elephant, or a monkey, or my Champagne valet, or a village steward who -has a trifle more instinct than my valet?’<a name="FNanchor_229" id="FNanchor_229"></a><a href="#Footnote_229" class="fnanchor">229</a> Again, he retorted -significantly on those <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">287</a></span>who contended with a vehemence of prejudice -known in some places even to this day, that belief in the immortality of -the soul is an indispensable condition of probity; as if the first Jews -accepted that dogma, and as if there were no honest men among them, and -no instruction in virtue.<a name="FNanchor_230" id="FNanchor_230"></a><a href="#Footnote_230" class="fnanchor">230</a></p> - -<hr style='width: 45%;' /> - -<p>In fine, then, we search Voltaire in vain for a positive creed, which -logic may hold in coherent bonds, or social philosophy accept as a -religious force. The old word about his faith must be pronounced true. -It remains a creed of negation. But still, be it always understood, -negation of darkness. And this inevitably leads in the direction of the -day. It was an indispensable step in the process of transition. Men, it -is constantly being said since the violent breaking-up of French -society, will never consent to live on no better base than articles of -denial and formulas of suspense, for are not the deepest parts of human -character moved by strong yearning for relationship with the unknowable? -It may be so, and if it be, the Voltairean movement was the great -instrument in leading, not merely a scanty group of speculative -intellects, but vast bodies, large nations, of common folk to perceive, -or dimly to conjecture, that this object of adoration which their eyes -strain after <i>is</i> unknowable, and that there is no attainable external -correlative of their deep desire. Voltaire never went so far in the -direction of assertion as Rousseau, and he never went so far in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">288</a></span>the -direction of denial as Holbach. And, whatever we may say generally of -the horror of the world for the spirit that denies, all that was best -and most truly progressive in French society during the eighteenth -century, Turgot and Condorcet no less than Beaumarchais, showed itself -content to follow him in this middle path. His appreciation of religion -was wanting in a hundred vital things, just as some may say that -Luther’s was, but it contained the one idea which the deepest spirit of -the time prompted men to desire, the decisive repudiation of the -religious notions of the past. We must call this negative, no doubt, but -no word should frighten us away from seeing how much positive aspiration -lay underneath. When men are in the mood of France a century and a -quarter since, when all that an old civilisation has bestowed on them of -what is best and strongest, rises up against all that the same -civilisation has bequeathed to them of what is pestilent and dangerous, -they are never nice critics. They do not decline a reinvigorating -article of faith, because it is not a system, nor do they measure a -deliverer by syllogism. The smallest chink may shine like light of the -sun to prisoners long held in black and cavernous recesses.</p> - -<p>When Bayle’s Dictionary came out, we read, so great was the avidity to -have sight of it, that long before the doors of the Mazarin library were -open, a little crowd assembled in the early morning of each day, and -there was as great a struggle for the first access to the precious book, -as for the front row<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">289</a></span> at the performance of a piece for which there is a -rage.<a name="FNanchor_231" id="FNanchor_231"></a><a href="#Footnote_231" class="fnanchor">231</a> This was the beginning of an immense impulse of curiosity, -eager to fill the vacuum occasioned by the slow subsidence of the old -religion, which had once covered not only faith, but science, history, -dialectic, and philosophy, all in a single synthesis. It was this -impulse which Voltaire both represented and accelerated. In these -periods of agitation, men forgive all to one who represents without -compromise or diminution their own dominant passions. Vehemence of -character counts for more than completeness of doctrine, and they crave -a battle-cry, not a dissertation. They need to have their own sentiment -aggressively presented, and their own defects of boldness or courage at -once rebuked and supplemented by a leader whose purpose can never be -mistaken, and whose words are never nipped by the frost of intellectual -misgiving. All through the century there was slowly growing up an inner -France, full of angry disgust against the past. Its germ was the crowd -eager to read Bayle. Its outcome was the night of the Fourth of August -1789, when the civil order of society was overthrown between a sunset -and a dawn. Voltaire, as we have seen, studiously abstained from any -public word upon things political, but it was he who in the long -interval between these two events held men by a watchword to which the -political decay of the country gave such meaning, that of hatred to the -old. And there was no such steadfast symbol of the old as <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">290</a></span>the church, -to him and his school a lurid beacon on a monster-haunted shore.</p> - -<p>Voltaire’s selection of the church as the object of his attacks marks an -important difference between him and the other great revolutionary -precursor. Rousseau’s Savoyard Vicar was perfectly willing to accept the -cultus of Christianity, even when he had ceased to accept its dogma. He -regarded all particular religions as so many salutary institutions, all -good so long as they were the organs for a due service of God. He -actually celebrated mass with more veneration after the acquisition of -his new principles, than he had been accustomed to do when he supposed -that the mass was an occasion of personal divine presence. This kind of -teaching was clearly to perpetuate and transfix for ever the form of -religion which each country, or any given set of men in it, might -possess. It was to stereotype belief, as it is stereotyped among the -millions in the East. Whence was reform to come, whence any ray of new -light, whence a principle of growth and activity for the intelligence of -men? How on these terms is truth to win the battle at a single point? -This was the beginning of a fatal substitution of bland emotional -complacency for robust cultivation of the reason, and firm reverence for -its lessons as the highest that we can learn. Voltaire no doubt did in -practice many a time come to terms with his adversary while he was yet -on the way with him; but, disagreeable as these temporisings are to us -who live in an easier day, they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">291</a></span> never deceived any one, nor could they -ever be mistaken for the establishment of intellectual treason as a -principle, or of philosophic indifference as a climax. As has been said, -though he writes in the midst of the old régime, in the face of the -Bastille, and with the fetters of the enemy in some sort actually upon -him, he still finds a thousand means of reaching you.<a name="FNanchor_232" id="FNanchor_232"></a><a href="#Footnote_232" class="fnanchor">232</a> He is always -the representative of reason, and never of sentimentalism. He was not -above superficial compromises in matters of conduct, and these it is -hard or impossible to condone; but at any rate he is free from the -deeper and more penetrating reproach of erecting hypocrisy into a -deliberate doctrine.</p> - -<p>We do not know how far he ever seriously approached the question, so -much debated since the overthrow of the old order in France, whether a -society can exist without a religion? He says in one place that to -believe God and spirits corporeal is an old metaphysical error, but -absolutely not to believe in any god would be an error incompatible with -wise government. But even this much was said for the sake of introducing -a taunt against the orthodox, who by a strange contradiction had risen -up with fury against Bayle for believing it possible that a society of -atheists could hold together, while they insisted with just as much -violence that the empire of China was established on a basis of -atheism.<a name="FNanchor_233" id="FNanchor_233"></a><a href="#Footnote_233" class="fnanchor">233</a> His natural <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">292</a></span>sagacity would most likely have shown him -that this is one of the sterile problems, with which the obstructive -defender of things as they are tries to draw the soldier of improvement -away from his strongest posts. Whether a society can exist without -religion or not, at least its existence as a structure for whose -duration we can be anxious, must depend on the number of men in it who -deal honestly with their own understandings. And, further, is no man to -be counted to have a religion who, like Voltaire, left great questions -open, and put them aside, as all questions, that must from the -limitations of human faculty eternally remain open, well deserve to be -put aside? Must we ever call an unknown God by one name? Are there so -few tasks for one on earth, that he must strain all his soul to fix the -regimen of high heaven?</p> - -<p>Voltaire, there is every reason to think, did in an informal kind of way -suppose in the bottom of his heart that there is nothing in human nature -to hinder a very advanced society from holding perfectly well together, -with all its opinions in a constant state of analysis. Whatever we may -think of it, this dream of what is possible, if the activity of human -intelligence were only sufficiently stimulated and the conditions of -social union were once so adjusted as to give it fair play, -unquestionably lies at the root of the revolutionary ideas with all -those who were first stirred by Voltaire rather than by Rousseau. -Condorcet, for instance, manifestly depends with the firmest confidence -upon that possibility being realised.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">293</a></span> It is the idea of every literary -revolutionist, as distinguished from the social or economic -revolutionist, in France at the present day. The knowledge that this was -the case, added to the sound conviction that men can never live by -analysis alone, gave its fire to De Maistre’s powerful attack, and its -immense force to Burke’s plea for what he called prejudice. But the -indispensable synthesis need never be immovably fixed, nor can it soon -again be one and single for our civilisation; for progress consists in -gradual modifications of it, as increase of knowledge and unforeseen -changes in the current of human affairs disclose imperfections in it, -and wherever progress is a law the stages of men’s advance are unequal. -Above all, it is monstrous to suppose that because a man does not accept -your synthesis, he is therefore a being without a positive creed or a -coherent body of belief capable of guiding and inspiring conduct.</p> - -<p>There are new solutions for him, if the old are fallen dumb. If he no -longer believes death to be a stroke from the sword of God’s justice, -but the leaden footfall of an inflexible law of matter, the humility of -his awe is deepened, and the tenderness of his pity made holier, that -creatures who can love so much should have their days so shut round with -a wall of darkness. The purifying anguish of remorse will be stronger, -not weaker, when he has trained himself to look upon every wrong in -thought, every duty omitted from act, each infringement of the inner -spiritual law which humanity is constantly perfecting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">294</a></span> for its own -guidance and advantage, less as a breach of the decrees of an unseen -tribunal, than as an ungrateful infection, weakening and corrupting the -future of his brothers. And he will be less effectually raised from -inmost prostration of soul by a doubtful subjective reconciliation, so -meanly comfortable to his own individuality, than by hearing full in the -ear the sound of the cry of humanity craving sleepless succour from her -children. That swelling consciousness of height and freedom with which -the old legends of an omnipotent divine majesty fill the breast, may -still remain; for how shall the universe ever cease to be a sovereign -wonder of overwhelming power and superhuman fixedness of law? And a man -will be already in no mean paradise, if at the hour of sunset a good -hope can fall upon him like harmonies of music, that the earth shall -still be fair, and the happiness of every feeling creature still receive -a constant augmentation, and each good cause yet find worthy defenders, -when the memory of his own poor name and personality has long been -blotted out of the brief recollection of men for ever.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">295</a></span></p> - -<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2> - -<h5>HISTORY</h5> - -<p>The activity of the foremost men of the eighteenth century in the -composition of history is too remarkable a circumstance, not to deserve -some attempt at explanation. There were historians in previous ages, but -in the eighteenth century there was both in France, and afterwards in -England, a special and extraordinary development in this direction. -Partially no doubt this was due to the general movement of curiosity, -the wide spread desire for all kinds of knowledge, which was in the air. -Men were emancipating themselves from the trammels of an authority which -had not widened the limits of inquiry in the same proportion as human -faculties had strengthened, and, amid the universal expansion of -intelligent interest and the eager scrutiny of all the objects of -knowledge which the new dawn was baring to sight, it was not possible -that the order of political and social facts in former epochs should be -neglected. This, however, does not sufficiently explain why such a man -as Hume betook himself to the composition of history, or why Gibbon -found himself best able to attack Christianity by tracing some of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">296</a></span> -most important parts of its annals, or why Voltaire, who lived so -entirely and intensely in the present, should have thought it worth -while to give so much labour to presentation of the past. It is a -striking fact, which must be something more than an accident, that the -best secular histories which remain from this period, one of them the -most striking monument in historical literature, were written by the -most marked assailants of reigning superstition.</p> - -<p>Was it not, indeed, to be expected that as the dark clouds of an -absorbing consciousness of the supernatural cleared away, men of -understanding would be more and more drawn towards study of human -action, and that the advance of society under purely natural and -positive conditions would immediately seize a foremost place among the -objects of experiential inquiry? It is too constantly maintained by -persons with something of a vested interest in darkness, that those who -do not worship the gods are indifferent to the happiness of men. Yet the -history of intellectual progress would seem to show that it was not -until the commencement of a rapid decline in the acceptance of terrorist -and jealous deities and incomprehensible dogmas, that serious attention -was given to some of the subjects in which a sound knowledge is among -the most indispensable conditions of the advancing welfare of men. For -instance, as soon as the hold of ancient versions of the supernatural -was loosened over the stronger spirits, by the middle of the century -there instantly took place an astonishing development<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">297</a></span> of activity in -the physical sciences. The interest of historic and economic studies was -at least as pressing. Becoming aware that men had made their own world, -thinkers found the consideration of the process by which this world is -made, and the order of society established and developed, forced upon -them with an entirely new significance. The dry bones of the ancient -valley of annalists and chroniclers were made to live, and the great -work of the reconstruction of the past was begun, with an alertness and -perseverance that has not been surpassed even in an age of far purer and -juster historical intelligence. It was quite reasonable that the -conviction of each act in the universe, from the crash of an empire to -the fall of a sparrow to the ground, being due to an arbitrary and -inscrutable decree, should prevent the rise of history from the level of -annals into the region of philosophy. The decay of this theory of the -government of the universe was as reasonably the cause of a new mode of -looking at the long records of the race, and we find ourselves moving in -a day of historical masterpieces.</p> - -<p>Voltaire has told us the circumstances under which he was led to -approach the philosophy of history. Madame du Châtelet, whose mind would -fain have reached every kind of knowledge, but who was especially apt -for metaphysics and geometry, had conceived an aversion for history. -‘What does it matter to me,’ she would ask, ‘a Frenchwoman living on my -estate, to know that Egil succeeded Haquin<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">298</a></span> in Sweden, and that Ottoman -was the son of Ortogrul? I have read with pleasure the history of the -Greeks and the Romans; they offered me certain great pictures which -attracted me. But I have never yet been able to finish any long history -of our modern nations. I can see scarcely anything in them but -confusion; a host of minute events without connection or sequence, a -thousand battles which settled nothing. I renounced a study which -overwhelms the mind without illuminating it.’ To this frank statement of -the case, to which so many thousands of persons in all epochs would so -heartily subscribe, Voltaire replied by pointing out that perhaps the -study of history would be no waste of time, if by cutting away all the -details of wars, as tedious as they are untrustworthy, all the frivolous -negotiations which have been nothing but pieces of purposeless cheating, -all the minute incidents which stifle great events, and by retaining -those which paint manners, you made of this chaos a general and -well-arranged picture; in short, if you tried to disengage from the -concourse of events the history of the human mind.<a name="FNanchor_234" id="FNanchor_234"></a><a href="#Footnote_234" class="fnanchor">234</a> Not all the -faults of execution ought to blind us to the merit of this notion of the -true way of studying history, or to the admirable clearness of vision -with which Voltaire, not only in this but in all his other historical -pieces, adhered to his own two leading principles; first, that laws, -arts, manners, are the chief matter and concern of history; and second, -that ‘details which lead to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">299</a></span>nothing are in history what baggage is to -an army, <i>impedimenta</i>, for we must look at things in large, for the -very reason that the human mind is small and sinks under the weight of -minutiæ.’ Minutiæ ought to be collected by annalists, or in some kind -of dictionaries where one might find them at need.<a name="FNanchor_235" id="FNanchor_235"></a><a href="#Footnote_235" class="fnanchor">235</a> In this last -point Voltaire, as might be expected, was more just than Bolingbroke, -who had said somewhat petulantly that ‘he had rather take the Darius -whom Alexander conquered for the son of Hystaspes, and make as many -anachronisms as a Jewish chronologer, than sacrifice half his life to -collect all the learned lumber that fills the head of an -antiquary.’<a name="FNanchor_236" id="FNanchor_236"></a><a href="#Footnote_236" class="fnanchor">236</a> The antiquary’s is a vocation like another, and the -highest kind of history can only flourish on condition that the humbler -ancillary kind flourishes also, and that there are patient and -scrupulous men to mark the difference between Darius Codomannus and -Darius the son of Hystaspes.</p> - -<p>We may say that three kinds of men write history: the gazetteer or -annalist, the statesman, and the philosopher. The annalist’s business is -to investigate and record events, and his highest merits are clearness, -accuracy, and simplicity. The political historian seeks the superficial -and immediate causes of great transactions, and he serves us by mixed -penetration and soundness of judgment. The historical philosopher is -concerned only with groups of events, the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">300</a></span>changes and movements that -transform communities, and with the trains of conditions that lead to -such movements. The majority of historians, from the illustrious Bacon -down to the compiler of a manual, illustrate the first kind. Thucydides -and Tacitus, among the ancients, a Machiavelli or a Finlay, among -moderns, may illustrate the second kind. As Voltaire was sometimes -gazetteer and sometimes statesman, so Montesquieu took the statesman’s -point of view in his reflections on the decline of Rome, and that of the -philosopher in the Spirit of Laws. It is the statesman or man of the -world, who, after recounting Caesar’s failure on one occasion to comply -with the etiquette of the senate, proceeds to make the following -reflection, that ‘we never offend men more, than when we shock their -ceremonies and usages: seek to oppress them, and that is sometimes a -proof of the importance you attach to them; but shock their customs, and -that is always a mark of contempt.’<a name="FNanchor_237" id="FNanchor_237"></a><a href="#Footnote_237" class="fnanchor">237</a> It is the philosopher, feeling -for the causes of things and their order, who being led to inquire into -the spirit or meaning of Laws, understands such an inquiry to involve a -comparative investigation of the relations between laws and physical -climate, the quality of ground, situation and extent of territory, the -mode of life of the people, agricultural, hunting, or pastoral; between -laws and the freedom of the constitution, the religion, wealth, trade, -moral ideas, and manners, of the inhabitants; above all, historically, -between <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">301</a></span>laws and their origin and the order of things on which they -were first founded.</p> - -<p>In a similar way we may divide Voltaire’s historical pieces into two -main classes. Indeed, if we count the Annals of the Empire, which he -wrote to please the Duchess of Saxe-Gotha, he may rank also under the -third remaining head among the annalistic historians. This, however, is -too unsatisfactory a piece of work for us to care either to classify or -to remember it. The subject was not of his own selection, he knew -comparatively little about it, his materials were extremely scanty and -imperfect, and he composed it at a time when his whole mind was -violently perturbed by his recent quarrel with Frederick, and torn by -anxiety where he should find a home in rest and freedom. It was the only -work he ever wrote, for which he perhaps had no heart, and the least -observant reader will notice how vast a difference this made in the -temper of its composition. Indeed, Voltaire was not born to be a simple -chronicler. The realistic and practical leanings of his intellect -naturally gave him a distaste for the collection of mere uninterpreted -and unapplied facts. His clear comprehensiveness, the product of a -vigorous imagination with strong sense, as naturally impelled him to -group circumstances, and to introduce the widest possible generality -among them. He has one of the peculiar gifts of the historian, as -distinguished from the gazetteer, of throwing rapid glances over a wide -field on the suggestion of a minor fact as he passes by it, and of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">302</a></span> -converting what to others would be the mere unconsidered trifles of -narrative into something possessed of its due measure of vitality and -significance. He fills his pages with reflections that are usually not -brought from very far depths, but which are almost always lively, just, -and in real matter. Perhaps this is not an unmixed good, for it is not -unconnected with an extraordinary evenness and light facility of style, -which tends to draw the reader somewhat too rapidly and too smoothly -over ground that had been rugged enough to the actual travellers. It -tends therefore tacitly to plant a false impression about the tardiness, -difficulty, peril, and infinitely varied possibilities of the social -movements which are history’s object and material. Perhaps a reader has -a better idea of the true manner in which events march, from Comines or -Clarendon, than from all the elegance and manifold graces of Voltaire, -and we sometimes feel inclined to repeat De Maistre’s angry demand for -that grave and unhasting dignity which is the life of history.</p> - -<p>We have already noticed one of the differences between Voltaire and -Rousseau, which arose from the predominance of sentiment over reason in -the latter. In the present connection another fact well worth noticing -is that Rousseau was entirely wanting in either taste or serious regard -for history. The past seems to have been to him a kind of blurred -tablet, confused and indecipherable, interposed between the vision of -men and the only thought or knowledge<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">303</a></span> which it is good for them to -possess. Voltaire’s reading of this tablet was inadequate enough, in -many respects it was even a grave distortion of the truth; but with that -sound sense in which Rousseau was so absolutely deficient, he felt how -irrational it was, in the first place, to shut our eyes deliberately to -the course and meaning of all the foregone action of the race, and, in -the second, to leave unattacked and unturned the strong position which -the traditional parables of the past and their undisturbed -interpretation conferred upon the champions of orthodoxy and absolutism. -Rousseau, being a sentimentalist, appears to have discerned nothing of -this. His ideas all involved a breach with the past, as Voltaire’s did, -but Voltaire deserves credit for perceiving that, to make this -effective, you must at least find out as well as you can what the past -was.</p> - -<p>For his four works in the class of political history he had the best -attainable authorities and material, and no one was ever more diligent -in putting them to the best possible use.<a name="FNanchor_238" id="FNanchor_238"></a><a href="#Footnote_238" class="fnanchor">238</a> His acute sense, -strengthened by contact with the world and its most active personages, -made him what we may almost call prematurely scientific in his demand -for adequate evidence and proof. It is rather striking, for example, to -find him <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">304</a></span>anticipating more recent objections to the trustworthiness of -Tacitus, pointing out the extraordinary improbabilities in his account -of Tiberius, Nero, and the others. There is all the difference, he says, -between a faithful historian equally free from adulation and hatred, and -‘a malicious wit who poisons everything through the medium of a concise -and energetic style.’ Are we to believe, he asks elsewhere, on the story -of a man who lived long after Tiberius, that this emperor, nearly eighty -years old, who had up to that time been decent almost to austerity, yet -passed all his time in debaucheries hitherto unknown, and so monstrous -as to need new names for them?<a name="FNanchor_239" id="FNanchor_239"></a><a href="#Footnote_239" class="fnanchor">239</a> And in the same way he questions the -alleged atrocities of Nero and Caligula, as well as the motives imputed -to Domitian by Tacitus for the frequency with which he sent to inquire -after the health of Agricola. These historic doubts sprang from none of -the political judgment or feeling which propounds them in more modern -times, but purely from scientific incredulity. ‘History,’ he once wrote, -‘is after all nothing but a parcel of tricks that we play the -dead.’<a name="FNanchor_240" id="FNanchor_240"></a><a href="#Footnote_240" class="fnanchor">240</a> He did not hold this slightly splenetic theory, in which -assuredly there is a painful truth, to absolve him from the duty of -doing what he could to belie it, and to make history as correct and as -faithfully representative of actual occurrences, as careful inquiry -<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">305</a></span>from those most likely to know the characters of the most prominent -actors could make it. In the composition of the Siècle de Louis XV., he -had of course the advantage of knowing all these leaders of the public -activity personally and at first hand, while if he had not that -advantage to the same extent in the Siècle de Louis XIV., he at least -mixed on intimate terms with many who had been intimate with the court -of the great monarch. For the history of Russia he was amply provided -with documents and authentic narratives from the Russian court, at whose -solicitation he undertook a work which was the first full introduction -of that hitherto barbarous and unknown country to the literature of -civilised Europe. His letters to Schouvalof, the imperial chamberlain, -attest the unremitting industry with which he sought for every kind of -information that might be useful to him. ‘The enlightened spirit which -now reigns among the principal nations of Europe, requires that we -should go to the bottom, where in former times a historian barely -thought it worth while to skim the surface. People wish to know how a -nation grew together; what was its population before the epoch of which -you treat; the difference in the number of the regular army then and in -former times; the nature and growth of its commerce; what arts have -sprung up within the country, and what have been introduced from -elsewhere and been perfected there; what used to be the ordinary average -revenue of the state, and what it is now; the birth and extension of -its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">306</a></span> navy; the proportion in numbers between its nobles and its -ecclesiastics and monks, and between the latter and the cultivators of -the soil, etc.’<a name="FNanchor_241" id="FNanchor_241"></a><a href="#Footnote_241" class="fnanchor">241</a> Even importunities of this kind continued over a -space of some years, and the copious responses which they brought, never -consoled Voltaire for not having made the journey to the Russian capital -in his proper person. ‘I should have learnt more from you in a few hours -of conversation,’ he wrote to Schouvalof, ‘than all the compilers in the -world will ever teach me.’<a name="FNanchor_242" id="FNanchor_242"></a><a href="#Footnote_242" class="fnanchor">242</a> In writing the History of Charles XII. -of Sweden, one of the most delightful of his books, the art of which is -none the less because it is so little ostentatious and striking and -seems so easy, he had procured a large quantity of material from -Fabrice, who knew the Swedish king during his detention at Bender and -subsequently, and met Voltaire in London. This material was supplemented -in later years by information picked up at Lunéville from the ex-Polish -king Stanislas, who was indebted to Charles for his sovereignty, that -true δῶρον ἄδωρον. ‘As for the portraits of men,’ Voltaire -declared, ‘they are nearly all the creations of fancy; ‘tis a monstrous -piece of charlatanry to pretend to paint a personage with whom you have -never lived.’<a name="FNanchor_243" id="FNanchor_243"></a><a href="#Footnote_243" class="fnanchor">243</a> Napoleon, in the memorable campaign of 1812, coming -to various places which Voltaire had occasion to describe in his History -of Charles XII., found his account weak and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">307</a></span>inaccurate, and threw it -aside in favour of Adlerfeldt. This was to be expected from the very -merit of the book; for how should a picture, painted in large for the -general instruction of the world, satisfy the minute requirements of -strategical topography? It was precisely Voltaire’s object to separate -history from geography, statistics, anecdote, biography, tactics, and to -invest it with an independent character and quality apart from all -these.</p> - -<p>It is another of the distinctions of his new method of writing history -that, with the exception of the book on Charles XII., he throws persons -and personal interests into a second place, as being no more than -instruments or convenient names for critical turning-points in the large -movements of peoples. In the narration of the rise of Russia to a place -among civilised nations, the character of Peter the Great inevitably -comes into marked prominence, because when a population lies on the -stagnant level of barbarism, the first man who summons them to undertake -the task of national elevation constitutes an element of paramount -importance in their annals. In proportion, however, as they rise to the -fulfilment of this surpassing work, the importance of the heroic -individual diminishes; as the national self-consciousness and collective -powers become greater, the figure of the individual shows less.</p> - -<p>Voltaire was always conscious, though not so clearly as writers are now, -of the great historical principle that besides the prominent men of a -generation there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">308</a></span> is a something at work underneath, a moving current on -whose flood they are borne. He never fixed this current by any of the -names which now fall so glibly from our lips,—tendency of the times, -tenor of public opinion, spirit of the age, and the like, by which we -give a collective name to groups of sentiments and forces, all making in -what seems to be a single direction. But although unnamed, this singular -and invisible concurrence of circumstance was yet a reality to him. The -age was something besides its heroes, and something besides its noisiest -and most resounding occurrences. His divisions of the great epochs of -humanity are undoubtedly open to much criticism, because the principles -on which he drew the dividing lines have lost their force in new -generations. It was to be expected that they would do so; and his four -great epochs<a name="FNanchor_244" id="FNanchor_244"></a><a href="#Footnote_244" class="fnanchor">244</a> were not likely to remain the four great epochs of a -posterity, which has partially learnt the lesson that he had not learnt -at all, that perfection in the fine arts is not the highest mark of an -age in which humanity may glory. Nevertheless, we are bound to recognise -that a new way of regarding human action, as well as a new way of -composing history, was being introduced by a writer whose first -paragraph declared that he proposed to himself a greater object than an -account of the life of Lewis XIV.; that he designed to paint for the -instruction of posterity, not the actions of a single man, but the -spirit of men; and that while all periods must be <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">309</a></span>alike to one who only -desires to fill his memory with facts, discrimination among them cannot -be dispensed with for one who thinks.</p> - -<p>Hence also the propriety of discrimination among the various kinds of -fact which are at the historian’s disposal, and in this order Voltaire’s -whole soul revolted against the reigning practice and prescription. ‘I -would rather have details,’ he wrote to one of his intimates so early in -his career as 1735, {about Racine and Despréaux, Molière, Bossuet, -Descartes, than I would about the battle of Steinkirk. There is nothing -left but the names of men who led battalions and squadrons. There is no -return to the human race from a hundred engagements; but the great men I -have spoken of prepared pure and everlasting pleasures for mortals still -unborn. A canal-sluice, a picture by Poussin, a fine tragedy, a truth -established, are all of them things a thousand times more precious than -the whole mass of annals of the court, and than all the narratives of -campaigns.’<a name="FNanchor_245" id="FNanchor_245"></a><a href="#Footnote_245" class="fnanchor">245</a> From this and from a multitude of other passages, as -well as from his actual compositions, we perceive that the activity of a -court and the manœuvres of an army were no longer in Voltaire’s eyes the -fit substance of history. One reason for this might be his lively sense -of the impossibility of knowing the character and motives of people with -whom one has not lived, or the real cause of even the most momentous -intrigues and negotiations in which one has not taken a personal share. -A still <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">310</a></span></p> - -<p>deeper reason would be his most rational conviction that these matters -are only of moment to us for their larger results and unmistakable -outcome, and from the profoundly true and important principle that the -progress of intellectual enlightenment, material prosperity, and moral -elevation is not only a feature in the history of a nation, but does -itself constitute that history, while all records of other transactions -in the course of its annals, achievements in diplomacy, feats of arms, -revolutions in policy, have no true historic value, except for the light -they shed upon this economic, intellectual, and moral progress, and are -not worth studying except in that light. We may see the immediate -effects of Voltaire’s influence most markedly of all in Gibbon, but in a -less important shape in the general account of the middle ages which -Robertson contributed to his History of Charles V. (1769), and which -remained for many years the most instructive piece that our literature -possessed upon the character and spirit of the feudal system and other -features of the middle ages. Adam Ferguson’s Essay on the History of -Civil Society (1767) bears traces of the same influence. In both of -these cases much also must be added for the kindred authority of -Montesquieu. One has some hesitation in adding Hume to the list in the -present connection, because his history, the composition of which -extended from 1752 to 1763, ought perhaps to be counted rather the -direct and independent outcome of the French philosophic spirit, than of -the French historic spirit<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">311</a></span> which itself proceeded from the philosophy; -and because, moreover, Hume, as a historian, has some of Voltaire’s most -serious defects, without that breadth and size which constituted his -greatest merit, though it is needless to point out how many merits Hume -had of his own. It is worth remarking that in some pages which he wrote -on Hume’s History,<a name="FNanchor_246" id="FNanchor_246"></a><a href="#Footnote_246" class="fnanchor">246</a> Voltaire gave it a joyful welcome, as might be -expected, and particularly to those parts which we now esteem most -lightly, such as the contemptuous account of Cromwell.</p> - -<p>To return, however, to the point from which we have digressed. One very -direct consequence of the historical principle we have described, and of -the way in which it was illustrated in the histories of Lewis XIV. and -Lewis XV., and most of all in the Essay on Manners, was the degradation -of war from the highest to the lowest place among the objects of the -historian’s regard. War began for the first time to be systematically -considered and treated as a mere instrument and means, and not as one of -the most serious of social ends. We can never honour Voltaire too long -nor too deeply for the vehemence and sincerity of his abhorrence of the -military spirit. Nowhere do we feel more distinctly that he marked the -end of the mediæval temper, than in his noble protests against the glory -of bloodshed. The great orators of the church to the very last donned -the robes of their most sumptuous rhetoric, when they were called to -<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">312</a></span>consecrate the virtues of the victorious soldier. The pages of the Old -Testament supplied them with a hundred baleful heroes to whom they might -liken their warrior, and a hundred cruel and bloody tropes with which -they might decorate the funeral oration. So long as the atrocities of -the Hebrew chiefs and people, their treacheries and slaughters, were -held sacred and celebrated with unction, it was not likely that the -voice of the peacemaker could make itself heard.</p> - -<p>Voltaire not only held up these demoralising records to the odium they -deserve; he directly taxed the clergy with their failure to discharge -the very highest part of their duty. Of the five or six thousand sermons -of Massillon, he asked, are there a couple where you could pick out a -word or two against the scourge and crime of war? Bourdaloue preached -against impurity, but what sermon did he ever direct against the murder, -rapine, brigandage, and universal rage, which desolate the world? -‘Miserable physicians of souls, you declaim for five quarters of an hour -against the mere pricks of a pin, and say no word on the curse which -tears us into a thousand pieces! Philosophers and moralists, burn your -books: so long as the caprice of a handful of men will cause the -massacring in all loyalty of thousands of our brothers, the part of the -human race which is devoted to heroism will contain all that is most -frightful in human nature. What concern to me are humanity, benevolence, -modesty, temperance, gentleness, wisdom, piety, so long as half an ounce -of lead shatters my body, and I die at twenty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">313</a></span> in torments unspeakable, -surrounded by five or six thousand dead or dying, while my eyes, opening -for the last time, see the town I was born in delivered to fire and -sword, and the last sounds that reach my ears are the shrieks of women -and children expiring in the ruins—and the whole for the pretended -interests of a man that we do not know?’<a name="FNanchor_247" id="FNanchor_247"></a><a href="#Footnote_247" class="fnanchor">247</a> His rebuke to Montesquieu -is still more distinctively modern. The author of the Esprit des Lois -had said that among societies it sometimes happens that natural defence -possibly involves the necessity of attack, when a nation perceives that -a longer peace would place another nation in a position to destroy -it.<a name="FNanchor_248" id="FNanchor_248"></a><a href="#Footnote_248" class="fnanchor">248</a> ‘If ever there was a war evidently unjust,’ Voltaire replies, -‘it is that which you propose; it is to go and kill your neighbour for -fear your neighbour should be in a condition to attack you; that is to -say, you must run the risk of ruining your country, in the hope of -ruining without reason some other country.... If your neighbour grows -too powerful during a time of peace, what hinders you from growing -powerful like him? If he has made alliances, make alliances on your -side. If, having less religion, he has all the more manufacturers and -soldiers for it, imitate him in so sage an economy. If he drills his -sailors better, drill yours too: all that is perfectly just. But to -expose your people to the most horrible misery, in the idea, which is so -often chimerical, of crushing your dear brother, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">314</a></span>the most serene -bordering prince—! ‘twas never for a president of a pacific order to -give you such a piece of counsel.’<a name="FNanchor_249" id="FNanchor_249"></a><a href="#Footnote_249" class="fnanchor">249</a> The book in which this sound -view of justice and expediency in the dealings of nations with one -another was pressed upon the attention of France, was published in 1764, -five years before the birth of the man who turned the tide back, and -made the international policy of France a synonym both for iniquity and -folly. On the 15th of August 1769 Voltaire concluded his letter to -D’Alembert with his usual vivacity: ‘Adieu; my compliments to the devil, -for it is he who governs the world.’<a name="FNanchor_250" id="FNanchor_250"></a><a href="#Footnote_250" class="fnanchor">250</a> If he had known that, while he -was writing, Napoleon Bonaparte had come into the world, and could at -the same time have foreseen the new-comer’s destiny, he might have said -the same thing more seriously. Voltaire never played the sentimentalist. -He knew that there are complexities of affairs which only the sword can -cut. But he was the first influential writer—for the abbé Saint-Pierre, -so undeservedly laughed at for his dreams of perpetual peace, had no -influence to speak of—who deliberately placed war among retrograde -agencies, and deliberately dwelt upon peaceful industry as the true life -of nations.<a name="FNanchor_251" id="FNanchor_251"></a><a href="#Footnote_251" class="fnanchor">251</a></p> - -<p>Diplomacy and its complex subterranean processes, which have occupied so -extremely disproportionate a space in written history, and which are in -acted <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">315</a></span>history responsible for so much evil, were in the same way -informally relegated to the region of inhuman occupations. Its methods -were the tortuous and depressing methods of the same past, which had -made the many the playthings and unhappy instruments of the few, and had -never interrupted the triumphant manœuvres of craft and subtlety by a -whisper for the claims of humanity and justice. Voltaire scarcely ever -speaks of negotiations between contending powers without a shrewd -thrust, half contemptuous and half angry. The plain where some -negotiations took place in the struggles among the descendants of -Charles the Great is still called the Field of Lies; a name, he says, -that might well be common to most spots where men have negotiated.<a name="FNanchor_252" id="FNanchor_252"></a><a href="#Footnote_252" class="fnanchor">252</a> -And this represents his general tone in speaking of a branch of activity -which may interest the professional diplomatist in all its details, but -which, as he thought, can only concern the historical student in its -results. Here Voltaire represented a marked tendency, which waxes -stronger as societies grow more penetrated with popular forces, to -divest diplomacy of a professional quality, and to throw the adjustment -of the relations between nations as entirely as possible into the hands -of plain men of firm and upright character, and full knowledge of the -special matters at issue.</p> - -<p>It is, however, when we come to the ground idea of the Essay on -Manners,<a name="FNanchor_253" id="FNanchor_253"></a><a href="#Footnote_253" class="fnanchor">253</a> that we feel the full breath <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">316</a></span>of the modern spirit, and -perceive that at length we are nearing the wide expanse of the sea. -There we emerge absolutely from the narrow conception of universal -history, with which Bossuet had familiarised men’s minds in the -Discourse on Universal History. This famous piece, which has had at -least as much praise as it merits, if we are to consider reason as well -as eloquence, was fundamentally and in substance no more than a bit of -theological commonplace splendidly decorated. Bossuet indeed spoke of -‘the concatenation of human affairs,’ but only in the same sentence with -‘the sequence of the counsels of God.’ The gorgeous rhetorician of the -church was not likely to rise philosophically into the larger air of -universal history, properly so called. His eloquent discourse is a -vindication of divine foresight, by means of an intensely narrow survey -of such sets of facts as might be thought not inconsistent with the -deity’s fixed purpose to make one final and decisive revelation to men. -No one who looks upon the vast assemblage of stupendous human -circumstances, from the first origin of man upon the earth, as merely -the ordained antecedent of what, seen from the long procession of all -the ages, figures in so diminutive a consummation as the Catholic -church, is likely to obtain a very effective hold of that broad sequence -and many-linked chain of events, to which Bossuet gave a right name, -<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">317</a></span>but whose real meaning he never was even near seizing. His merit is -that he did in a small and rhetorical way, what Montesquieu and Voltaire -afterwards did in a truly comprehensive and philosophical way; he -pressed forward general ideas in connection with the recorded movements -of the chief races of mankind. For a teacher of history to leave the -bare chronicler’s road so far as to declare, for example, the general -principle, inadequate and overstated as it is, that ‘religion and civil -government are the two points on which human things revolve,’ even this -was a clear step in advance—and to dismiss the long series of emperors -from Augustus to Alexander Severus in two or three pages was to show a -rare sense of large historic proportion. Again, Bossuet’s expressions of -‘the concatenation of the universe,’ of the interdependence of the parts -of so vast a whole, of there coming no great change without having its -causes in foregoing centuries, and of the true object of history being -to observe in connection with each epoch those secret dispositions of -events which prepared the way for great changes, as well as the -momentous conjunctures which more immediately brought them to pass—all -these phrases seem to point to a true and philosophic survey. But they -end in themselves, and lead nowhither. The chain is an arbitrary and -one-sided collection of facts. The writer does not cautiously follow and -feel after the successive links, but forges and chooses and arranges -them after a pattern of his own, which was fixed independently of them.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">318</a></span> -A scientific term or two is not enough to disguise the purely -theological essence of the treatise.</p> - -<p>Bossuet’s Discourse is moreover constructed wholly on the theory that a -special revelation was delivered to the Jews, and in tracing their -course we have fast hold of the chain by which it has pleased heaven to -communicate to earth all the truths we possess as to the highest things. -Such a conception stifles a modern reader. The first pages of the Essay -on Manners, sometimes placed separately as the Philosophy of History, -prove that we have escaped from the cave. The chosen people fell into -rank with other peoples, that equally supposed themselves to be chosen -by their own peculiar gods. They lose the towering pre-eminence in -virtue and light and divine favour with which their own records and -Bossuet’s interpretation had so splendidly invested them. We find that -their pretensions were not unique, but universal among nations in such a -stage; that their virtues were not singular, though some of their vices -seem so. In a word, if some of Voltaire’s details are crude and -rudimentary, at least he has the merit of showing to his unaccustomed -readers what vast epochs of time, what uncounted multitudes of men, what -varied movements of the human spirit, surround the little speck of -Judaism.</p> - -<p>The bulk of the Essay was composed in 1740, but it is probable that this -preliminary examination of other oriental nations, their practices, -institutions, and religious ideas, was suggested by <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">319</a></span>Montesquieu’s -memorable book, which appeared in 1748, some years before the -publication of the Essay on Manners. It is in point of execution much -less satisfactory than what follows, for Voltaire’s knowledge of Greek -and Hebrew was inadequate, and he fell into various errors which his -adversaries happily possessed scholarship enough to expose. In the -modern provinces of the book, which constitute the important part of it, -he was much more entirely at home in his subject. Here his familiarity -with detail, considering the vast quantity of his other employments, is -extremely surprising, and perhaps in no other book of equal generality -have there been discovered so few serious inaccuracies, though none have -encountered more hostile critics.</p> - -<p>Prejudice, alas, spares truth and light no more when it narrows the -vision of a free-thinker, than when it distorts the faculty of the -devout. Being a reaction against Bossuet’s unreasonable exaltation of -the Jews and their history, Voltaire’s conception of the place due to -them partook of the inevitable fault of all reactions, and left out of -sight considerations which it is eminently unscientific not to remember. -‘You never find,’ he says, ‘a generous action in the annals of the -Hebrews; they knew neither hospitality nor liberality nor clemency. -Their sovereign bliss is to practise usury with foreigners, and this -spirit of usury is so rooted in their hearts, that it is the continual -object of the figures they employ in the eloquence which is peculiar to -them. Their glory is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">320</a></span> to deliver to fire and slaughter the small -villages of which they may be able to take possession. They assassinate -their masters when they are slaves, and they never know how to pardon -when they are victorious; they are the enemies of the human race.’<a name="FNanchor_254" id="FNanchor_254"></a><a href="#Footnote_254" class="fnanchor">254</a> -This is as great an exaggeration on one side, as Bossuet’s exaltation of -them and their deeds was on the other side. We ought to admit what -abominable traits the character and history of this race unfortunately -present, without forgetting how much is owing to them for preserving in -its sublimest shape, and investing with the most deeply impressive -images and associations, that idea of monotheism which, if destined to -be superseded by other ideas more commensurate with the limits of human -intelligence, must still be counted the germ of much that is purest and -loftiest and most inspiring among the ideals of western civilisation.</p> - -<p>The same kind of extreme prejudice which drove Voltaire into maintaining -of the Jews, not that they were a people whom we should do very ill -either to imitate or admire, but nothing less than that they were the -enemies of the human race, found vent in such assertions as that if any -one could have restored the Empire to its strength, or at all events -retarded its fall, that man was the Emperor Julian.<a name="FNanchor_255" id="FNanchor_255"></a><a href="#Footnote_255" class="fnanchor">255</a> A historian may -justly contend, if he thinks that the evidence warrants him, that Julian -belongs to the type of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">321</a></span>virtuous reactionists, just as we may say it of -Wesley or the chiefs of the Tractarians. But to make such an assertion -as that the repression of Christianity after the middle of the fourth -century, even supposing it to have been possible of achievement, could -have given back to the rapidly declining empire a strength of which all -the roots were lifeless, was to falsify history for the sake of exalting -the name of an apostate. A Roman aristocrat, blind to the real operation -and comparative value of the forces at work, might be pardoned for -holding Christianity guilty of the general dissolution around him; but -it was a strange phantasy for a philosopher of the eighteenth century to -suppose that the Christian system, in the shape which it had assumed by -Julian’s time, did not offer principles of firmer association, than the -mere rites of a paganism which was spontaneously decaying with a -rapidity that increased day by day.<a name="FNanchor_256" id="FNanchor_256"></a><a href="#Footnote_256" class="fnanchor">256</a> There is no stronger -illustration of the twist which polemical fury may give to the most -acute intelligence, than this belief of Voltaire’s, that an organisation -which had attracted to itself every able and statesmanlike intellect of -the time, could do less for the regeneration of the Empire than the -initiated disciple of Platonist theurgy.</p> - -<p>His account of the history of the church is composed in the same vein, -and we may see where Gibbon, who was a reader of Voltaire, drew the -<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">322</a></span>inspiration of the solemn sneer with which he sapped solemn creed.<a name="FNanchor_257" id="FNanchor_257"></a><a href="#Footnote_257" class="fnanchor">257</a> -‘So many frauds, so many errors, so many disgusting absurdities,’ says -Voltaire, ‘with which we have been inundated for seventeen hundred -years, have been unable to do any harm to our religion. It is -unquestionably divine, since seventeen centuries of imposture and -imbecility have not destroyed it.’<a name="FNanchor_258" id="FNanchor_258"></a><a href="#Footnote_258" class="fnanchor">258</a> Voltaire thought as ill as -possible of the century to which he belonged; we cannot therefore charge -him with the inconsistency which marks some of his most prominent -disciples, who while they accepted such an account of the vileness of -the church as he had given them, did not scruple to believe that, as if -by miracle, seventeen centuries of steady depravation were <i>per saltum</i> -to be followed by an eighteenth and other centuries of boundless virtue -and enlightenment. Still it is wonderful that he should have been able -to appreciate the admirable character of the best sovereign of the -thirteenth century, Lewis IX.,<a name="FNanchor_259" id="FNanchor_259"></a><a href="#Footnote_259" class="fnanchor">259</a> and to describe his motives and his -achievements so generously, and yet should never have thought of the -education and surrounding spiritual conditions by which such a character -had been formed. If the power of Catholicism for evil was so great and -decisive, it would have been reasonable to suppose that it had some -share also in moulding to good those who came forth from it the very -flower of humanity. But <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">323</a></span>Voltaire did not know how much a man is the -product of a system operating on, and with, the individual -predisposition, or he would not have chidden St. Lewis for remaining on -the level of the prejudice of his time, instead of changing the spirit -of his age.<a name="FNanchor_260" id="FNanchor_260"></a><a href="#Footnote_260" class="fnanchor">260</a> How should St. Lewis have risen from the prejudice of -his age, when it was exactly that prejudice which had formed him, and of -which he represented the worthy side?</p> - -<p>Even without this inconsistency, the fundamental error is bad enough. We -get very wearied of the persistent identification of the church -throughout the dark ages with fraud and imposture and sinister -self-seeking, when we have once learnt, what is undoubtedly the most -important principle in the study of those times, that it was the -churchmen who kept the flickering light of civilisation alive, amid the -raging storms of uncontrolled passion and violence. The truth is that -Voltaire never realised civilisation as an organism, which if not -surrounded with the proper conditions of life will perish, and which -will prosper and wax stronger exactly in proportion as it is nourished. -That the light was more than once very near sinking in the west under -the waves of barbarism, as it has actually sunk in the eastern portions -of the Empire, seems to have been an all-important fact which he either -never saw, or which, if he saw it, never impressed him as assuredly it -ought to have done.</p> - -<p>This is the more curious as he was able to perceive, in a way in which -it were much to be wished <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">324</a></span>that more recent historians might show an -equal discernment, that we ought to use the terms of civilisation, with -all their complex and accumulated associations, in an extremely modified -sense in speaking of the centuries between the fifth and the thirteenth, -just as it is the gravest mistake to suppose that, because you can -express the results of the various contests of those times in terms of -philosophy, therefore the actors in any one of them were both conscious -of its most general bearings, and were animated by large and -philosophical inclinations. For example, after he has told us how -William the Conqueror sent to the Pope Harold’s battle-standard and a -small portion of the small treasure that an English king might possess -in those times, he proceeds to reduce the transaction to what he -conceived to be its true proportions, in the following manner: ‘Thus,’ -he says, ‘a barbarian, the son of a harlot, the murderer of a legitimate -king, shares the plunder of this king with another barbarian; for if you -take away the names of duke of Normandy, king of England, and pope, all -is reduced to the action of a Norman brigand and a Lombard receiver of -plunder.<a name="FNanchor_261" id="FNanchor_261"></a><a href="#Footnote_261" class="fnanchor">261</a> This being the case, the secular possessors of power being -so rude, petty, and barbarous, their contests being ‘those of bears and -wolves,’ their rapacity and violence being tempered by few of those -ideas of justice which form the bonds of society in its more advanced -stages, it ought to have struck even the most ardent enemy of -ecclesiastical <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">325</a></span>pretensions as a thing in the highest degree -unphilosophical, to pour all the ill epithets of usurpation upon the -virtuous efforts of the great churchmen, who were least touched by the -spirit of violence, to take away as much power as they could from -barbarous princes and nobles, who were most impregnated with that and -all other dark spirits. The smaller the difference between the least -moral and the most moral orders in a community, the more desirable it is -that the order with even a small advantage should acquire as much power -as possible; for the reason that so near an approach to equality in -morals is most likely to occur when the average is low, and when -therefore the need to prevent it from falling any lower is most urgent. -Granting that the ecclesiastics were only slightly the superiors of the -barbarous laymen, this is all the better ground for rejoicing that they -succeeded in converting their ascendancy of moral idea into an -ascendancy of political fact.</p> - -<p>In short, Voltaire’s great panorama, magnificent as it is and most -royally planned, is not drawn in lines and with colour that explain the -story or lay bare the principles of its progress. The plan is imposed -from without, just as in Bossuet’s case, not carefully sought from -within the facts themselves. What is meant then by the assertion that -Voltaire’s Essay is one of the foundations of modern history? If he -gives no explanation of the course of history, none to himself probably, -and none to us assuredly, what is his merit? This, that he has fully -placed before us the history<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">326</a></span> which is to be explained; that he has -presented the long external succession of facts in their true magnitude -and in a definite connection; that he did not write a history of France, -or of the papacy, or of the Mahometan power, or of the crusades, but -that he saw the advantage, as we see the unavoidable necessity, of -comprehending in a single idea and surveying in a single work the -various activities, the rise and fall of power, the transference from -one to another of political predominance, the contributions to the art -of living, among the societies which were once united in a single -empire. The history of each of these societies, England, France, Spain, -Italy, the Byzantine Empire, is followed in relation to the history of -Europe, which is indeed composed of these co-ordinate parts. The -movement of communities since the dissolution of the Roman Empire is -exhibited in a collective form, and that it should be exhibited and -accepted in this form was obviously a preliminary step to an organic -treatment of the multiplied laws of social physics.</p> - -<p>‘There are some events,’ he wrote in a note to his best poem, ‘which -have effects, and others which have none. It is with the chain of events -as it is with a genealogical tree, where we perceive branches that -become extinct at the first generation, and others that continue the -race. Many events remain without any filiation. It is thus that in every -machine there are effects necessary to the movement, while others are -indifferent, following the operation of the first, and leading to -nothing. The wheels of a vehicle serve to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">327</a></span> make it go; but whether they -raise a little more or a little less dust, the journey is accomplished -equally. Such is the general order of the world, that the links of the -chain are not deranged by a little more or a little less of -irregularity.’<a name="FNanchor_262" id="FNanchor_262"></a><a href="#Footnote_262" class="fnanchor">262</a> The figures in this passage serve adequately to -describe his own treatment. We see in the Essay the lines of the -genealogical tree, but we do not learn the laws of the transmission of -qualities from one stock to another; we see the links of the chain, but -not the conditions which fastened each to the other; conditions, indeed, -only to be grasped through a scientific study of human nature which -Voltaire had never made; and finally we see the towering car drawn -slowly along a devious road by sweat and strain of millions, but we know -not why it went by this road rather than another. In a word, the inner -machinery of societies and of their movement remains as far from our -sight as it ever was. The study of those economic and material forces -which have so profound an influence upon social transformations, was in -its infancy, and the Economists, who really saw that there are definite -laws regulating the play of these forces, unfortunately mixed up with -their speculations a number of chimerical fancies, which Voltaire was -too acute to accept, but not patient enough to sift.<a name="FNanchor_263" id="FNanchor_263"></a><a href="#Footnote_263" class="fnanchor">263</a> In this -respect he is as <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">328</a></span>defective as Gibbon, in whose book, so justly famous -for its splendid breadth of conception and industrious elaboration of -detail, we have much of that meagre philosophy which consisted in the -exposure of falsehood, but little of the true science which shows us the -numerous organs of society in connection with their actual play and -function. Neither Gibbon nor Voltaire made any contribution, nor seems -to have been aware of the importance of contributing, to that study of -the fundamental conditions of the social union, which Aristotle -commenced, and which both Bodin in the sixteenth century and Montesquieu -in the eighteenth had so meritoriously continued.<a name="FNanchor_264" id="FNanchor_264"></a><a href="#Footnote_264" class="fnanchor">264</a> Nevertheless, it -was much to lead men to study the history of modern Europe as a whole, -and we may say of Voltaire in connection with history what he said of -Corneille in connection with tragedy—‘It is so great a merit to have -opened the career, and inventors are so much above other men, that -posterity pardons their greatest faults.’<a name="FNanchor_265" id="FNanchor_265"></a><a href="#Footnote_265" class="fnanchor">265</a></p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">329</a></span></p> - -<h2>CHAPTER VII.</h2> - -<h5>FERNEY.</h5> - -<p>Voltaire, as we have seen, took possession of Ferney in 1758, and he -lived here almost without a break for something like twenty years. His -estate was a feudal seigniory in the district of Gex, on the very -frontier of Switzerland, but in France, though enjoying immunity from -French taxation. He built a new manor-house, and in his capacity of lord -of the manor replaced the dilapidated little church of the estate by a -new one, very small, very plain, and about which, notwithstanding its -famous inscription of which he so often boasted,—<i>Deo erexit -Voltaire</i>,—much more noise has been made, than so simple and natural a -proceeding at all calls for.<a name="FNanchor_266" id="FNanchor_266"></a><a href="#Footnote_266" class="fnanchor">266</a> Madame Denis kept house for him, and -according to the Paris gossips of the time, on an extravagant scale, -which often produced ruptures between the two. Guests were incessant -<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">330</a></span>and the hospitality ungrudging.<a name="FNanchor_267" id="FNanchor_267"></a><a href="#Footnote_267" class="fnanchor">267</a> He complained during the Seven -Years’ War of the embarrassment of being a Frenchman, when he had to -entertain daily at dinner Russians, English, and Germans.<a name="FNanchor_268" id="FNanchor_268"></a><a href="#Footnote_268" class="fnanchor">268</a> He -protests that he is weary of being hotel-keeper in general for all -Europe, and so weary was he at one time of this noisy and costly post, -that the establishment was partially suspended for upwards of a year. -One of the most generous of Voltaire’s many generous acts was his -reception into his house of a child who had no other claim on him than -that of being the great-grand-daughter of the uncle of Corneille. A -soldier ought to succour the niece of his general, he said. He took the -liveliest interest in the little maid’s education, though she appears to -have been a sulky pupil, and eventually he married her with due dower to -one Dupuits. The bustle and expense of his establishment became greater -than ever, and in the spring of 1768 Paris was as much electrified by -news of a revolution at Ferney, as she has been since by some -revolutions in her own streets. Madame Denis and the two Dupuits had -suddenly made their way to Paris, and for a year and a half Voltaire was -left in peace, part of which he employed sensibly in having his house -cleaned from cellar to garret,—a bit of news <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">331</a></span>which is handed down to -our times, since, according to Grimm, the domestic arrangements of the -manor-house at Ferney interested at that moment more or less every court -in Europe.<a name="FNanchor_269" id="FNanchor_269"></a><a href="#Footnote_269" class="fnanchor">269</a> In the autumn of 1769 Madame Denis returned, and with -her the old stir and extravagance were resumed, for Voltaire was one of -the best-humoured of men to his family and friends, and could deny his -niece nothing. We have more than one description of this too immortal -niece. They are all equally unflattering. Her homeliness of appearance -amounted to the ugliness that is bitter. She was destitute of wit, and -had a vulgar soul. Born to be the insipid gossip of a bourgeois circle, -says one charitable writer, but having by chance the first man in the -nation for an uncle, she learnt to chatter about literature and the -theatre, as a parrot learns.<a name="FNanchor_270" id="FNanchor_270"></a><a href="#Footnote_270" class="fnanchor">270</a> She wrote a comedy; but the players, -out of respect for Voltaire, declined to act in it. She wrote a tragedy; -but the one favour, which the repeated entreaties of years could never -wring from Voltaire, was that he would read it. She had histrionic as -well as dramatic ambition, and here worked a miracle, for her -representation of Mérope once drew floods of tears from some English -ladies.<a name="FNanchor_271" id="FNanchor_271"></a><a href="#Footnote_271" class="fnanchor">271</a> Her affectation of intellect had not cooled the reality of -simple sensation, and if she loved art, she was said not to despise -gallantry. At any rate, though she was only sixteen years <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">332</a></span>younger than -her uncle,<a name="FNanchor_272" id="FNanchor_272"></a><a href="#Footnote_272" class="fnanchor">272</a> she needed continual festivities and crowds of guests.</p> - -<p>Ferney was rather a difficult spot for a woman with a passion for the -hum of cities. For five months in the year, says Voltaire, my deserts -are, on the admission of Russians, worse than Siberia itself; we see -thirty leagues of mountain, snow, and precipices: it is Naples in -summer, Lapland in winter.<a name="FNanchor_273" id="FNanchor_273"></a><a href="#Footnote_273" class="fnanchor">273</a> One year he marks with word of -bitterness snow falling thick in the middle of May. Four feet of snow in -the courtyard constituted a normal winter state. He commemorates with -enthusiasm how one day, through these four feet of snow, he saw porters -bringing him a hamper of Champagne from a friend; for the more generous -sort of Burgundy with which he ordinarily recruited himself had fallen -short, and he had been reduced to the humble vintage of Beaujolais.</p> - -<p>Yet in the midst of a thousand discomforts and hardships we never hear -him wishing to be back in Paris. It remained to him the accursed city, -as it had been before his journey to England. He always thought with -horror of its cabal, intrigue, frivolity, and sovereign indifference to -the ruin of the kingdom and the shedding of innocent blood. There can be -no doubt that this wise exile prolonged his days. He was constantly -complaining of illness, and he passed <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">333</a></span>months at a time in bed, which -may in truth have been the best possible preservative of life for one of -his temperament. Yet in spite of this avoidance of society, this passion -for his study, the man of ordinary capacity, with no more than an -ordinary working day, may marvel how amid so many distractions the -master of the house contrived to write so many scores of pieces, large -and small, and so many hundreds of letters, grave and gay. Of these -letters nearly seven thousand are already in print, and M. Beuchot, most -carefully informed of all Voltaire’s editors, thinks there are likely to -be quite as many more still in undiscovered existence. Ferney was the -centre of the most universal and varied correspondence that any one man -has ever carried on. Frederick the Great was not the only crowned head -with whom Voltaire interchanged royal communication. Catharine II. of -Russia, of Anhalt-Zerbst by birth, was the helpful patroness of Diderot -and D’Alembert, and was always eager to hear some word from the -patriarch of their encyclopædic church, only praying him not to think -her too importunate. Christian VII. of Denmark apologises for not being -able at a stroke to remove all the obstacles that lie in the way of the -civil liberty of his subjects. Gustavus III. of Sweden is elated by the -thought that Voltaire sometimes casts a glance on what is going on in -the North, and protests that this is their greatest encouragement to do -as well as they can in all ways.<a name="FNanchor_274" id="FNanchor_274"></a><a href="#Footnote_274" class="fnanchor">274</a> Joseph II. would fain have <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">334</a></span>called -at Ferney while travelling incognito through France, but fear of his -mother’s displeasure held him back, the high and devout nature of Maria -Theresa always finding Voltaire’s mockery of sacred things deeply -repugnant, as we may easily believe.</p> - -<p>Beside sovereigns who wrote to him as to an equal, every young aspirant -to literary distinction, however unknown and obscure, sought a criticism -from Ferney. Twenty years before he settled down here, Voltaire had been -consulted by Vauvenargues, and had replied with words of painstaking and -generous counsel. It was always the same with him. No young author ever -solicited advice in vain, and he was never sparing either of trouble or -praise. The Marquis of Chastellux sent him a copy of his Félicité -Publique, and was raised to the seventh heaven by a letter of thanks, in -which Voltaire tells him: ‘I covered the margin of my copy with notes, -as I always do when a book charms and instructs me; I even took the -liberty of not always sharing the author’s opinion. I am very old and -very feeble, but such reading makes me young again.’ And the letter -contains a large number of points where he thinks the author in -error.<a name="FNanchor_275" id="FNanchor_275"></a><a href="#Footnote_275" class="fnanchor">275</a></p> - -<p>Besides kings and the writers of books, plain men also besought his -dictum on high matters. ‘A burgomaster of Middleburg,’ he informs Madame -du Deffand, ‘whom I do not know, wrote to me a little <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">335</a></span>while since, to -ask me in confidence whether there is a God or not; whether, in case -there be one, he takes any heed of us; whether matter is eternal; -whether it can think; whether the soul is immortal; and begging me to -answer by return of post.’<a name="FNanchor_276" id="FNanchor_276"></a><a href="#Footnote_276" class="fnanchor">276</a></p> - -<p>One may suspect that a little colouring is added here by the master -hand, but the substantial facts are probable enough. He corresponded -with cardinals, marshals of France, and bishops, and he corresponded -with Helvétius and with Diderot, who, greatly to the indignation of the -business-like patriarch, had a bad habit of leaving letters to answer -themselves.<a name="FNanchor_277" id="FNanchor_277"></a><a href="#Footnote_277" class="fnanchor">277</a></p> - -<p>If two cavalry officers fell to disputing over the mess-table as to the -propriety of using some bit of old French, it was to Ferney that the -reference was instantly made.<a name="FNanchor_278" id="FNanchor_278"></a><a href="#Footnote_278" class="fnanchor">278</a></p> - -<p>We get an idea of the kind of imperial authority which attached to -Voltaire’s judgment, from the eagerness with which Turgot sought, -without revealing his name, an opinion from Ferney as to the worth of a -translation with which he lightened the heavy burden of his intendance -at Limoges, a translation of the Eclogues and Fourth Æneid into French -metric verse. ‘They say,’ wrote Turgot, ‘that he is so busy with his -Encyclopaedia as neither to speak nor to write to any one.’ If Turgot -could have seen Voltaire’s correspondence for 1770, he would have found -out how far this rumour was from the truth,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">336</a></span> and in fact he did get an -answer to his own letter; but it can hardly have been very much more -satisfactory than silence would have been, for Voltaire, while profuse -in praise of the fidelity and spirit of the translation, unfortunately -did not detect that it was meant for anything more ambitious than simple -prose with enthusiasm in it.<a name="FNanchor_279" id="FNanchor_279"></a><a href="#Footnote_279" class="fnanchor">279</a> As Turgot especially valued in the -patriarch his ’superb ear,’ the blow was as sharp as it well could be. -He was little concerned or surprised on learning the fallacious -reasoning of the poet in political economy. ‘Reasoning,’ he adds, ‘has -never been Voltaire’s strong point.’<a name="FNanchor_280" id="FNanchor_280"></a><a href="#Footnote_280" class="fnanchor">280</a> And that was true in matters -of abstract science, but he was an unrivalled populariser of the results -of other people’s reasoning, from Newton’s Principia down to Middleton’s -Free Enquiry, and this popularisation was what the conditions of the -time caused to be most ardently demanded. The proof of the demand we may -see in the extraordinary respect and curiosity, or dislike and alarm, -with which Voltaire for the twenty crowning years of his life was -regarded throughout the whole of civilised Europe.</p> - -<p>It is impossible to read the multitudinous volumes of Voltaire’s -correspondence, and they are being added to every two or three years, -with entire satisfaction. They are wittier than any other letters in the -world. For lightness, swiftness, grace, spontaneity, you can find no -second to them, at however long an interval. But they abound in many -things which are disagreeable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">337</a></span> in the letters of an old man who had -so true an interest in the spread of virtue, knowledge, and the other -conditions of human dignity. These, however, may be passed over as the -innocent and unconscious unseemliness of a very gay nature living in a -very free age. It is less easy to banish the unpleasant impressions with -which we find him playing the equivocal part of being all things to all -men. One would have been pleased to have a little more stiffness, a -little less pliancy of phrase. We would not go through the world -insisting on grim Puritanic earnestness at every moment of a man’s life, -but Voltaire’s lively complaisance with all sorts of unworthy people is -something worse than unedifying. One can hardly help sympathising with -D’Alembert’s remonstrance. ‘You have rather spoilt the people who -persecute us. ’Tis true you have had greater need than anybody else to -keep them quiet, and that you have been obliged to offer a candle to -Lucifer to save yourself from Beelzebub, but Lucifer has only grown the -prouder, without Beelzebub growing the less malignant.’<a name="FNanchor_281" id="FNanchor_281"></a><a href="#Footnote_281" class="fnanchor">281</a> The truth -probably is that Voltaire did not always take—much thought of Lucifer -or Beelzebub. For one thing, he was, as we have said more than once, -intensely sympathetic by temperament, and in writing to a friend, or -even an acquaintance only, he was for the moment animated by a lively -good will and anxiety to be in harmony with his correspondent. There was -nothing false in these purring pleasantries, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">338</a></span>with which he amused all -correspondents alike. They came as naturally from his mobile and genial -constitution, as an equality of prosaic moroseness comes from persons of -fundamentally different constitutions. For another thing, the old -fashion of his youth never dropped away from him, and the elaborate -courteousness and friendly ardour of manner, which he had learnt among -the aristocratic friends of the days of the Regency and afterwards at -Paris and Versailles, did not desert him in the solitudes of the Jura. -He was to the last a man of quality, as well as a crusher of the -Infamous, and to the last he kept up the tone of one who had been a -gentleman of the chamber to one king, and court-chamberlain to another. -Voltaire’s temperament and earliest surroundings fully explain what was -a more public, as well as more serious, falling away from the rigorous -integrity which men are now accustomed to demand from the leaders of -unpopular causes. His sins in this order are nearly as numerous as his -public acts. Rousseau, perhaps we may say without breach of charity, as -much from vanity as principle, prefixed his name to all that he wrote, -and he paid the penalty in a life of wandering and persecution. Voltaire -in his later days as invariably sheltered himself behind the anonymous, -and not only disclaimed works of which it was notorious that he was the -author, but insisted that his friends should impute them to this or that -dead name. Nobody was deceived. While he got unwelcome credit for a -multitude of pieces that were not his own, assuredly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">339</a></span> nothing really his -ever failed to be set down to its true author. We can only say that this -was the evil practice of the time, and that Voltaire was here little -worse than Turgot and many another man of general virtuousness, to whom -the ferocity of authority would not even allow freedom enough to plead -for tolerance, much less to utter uncertified opinion. ‘Time,’ said -D’Alembert, apologising for some whiff of orthodoxy which Voltaire -scented in one or two articles in the Encyclopaedia, ‘will make people -distinguish what we thought from what we said.’<a name="FNanchor_282" id="FNanchor_282"></a><a href="#Footnote_282" class="fnanchor">282</a> Condorcet, as we -know, deliberately defended these deceptions, which did not deceive, -while they did protect. He contended that if you rob a man of his -natural right of publishing his opinions, then you lose your own right -to hear the truth from the man’s lips.<a name="FNanchor_283" id="FNanchor_283"></a><a href="#Footnote_283" class="fnanchor">283</a> Undoubtedly all laws admit -that duress introduces new conditions into the determination of what is -right and wrong in action, or at least that it mitigates pains and -penalties, and the position of every claimant for free speech was in -those days emphatically a position of duress. The choice lay between -disavowal on the one hand, and on the other abstention from proclaiming -truths by which only society could gain the freedom it so much needed; -between strict anonymity and leaving the darkness unbroken. And we must -remember that disingenuous tricks to conceal authorship were not -assuredly so unpardonable, when resorted to as protectives <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">340</a></span>against -imprisonment, confiscation, and possible peril of life, as they are now -among ourselves, when they serve no more defensible purpose than -sheltering men who have not the courage of their opinions, against one -or two paltry social deprivations. The monstrous proceedings against La -Barre, and the ease with which in this and numerous other cases the -jurisprudence of the tribunals lent itself to the cruelty of fanatics, -no doubt excited in Voltaire a very genuine alarm for his own safety, -and probably with good reason. We know that he could not venture to -visit Italy, in consequence of his just fear lest the Inquisition should -throw their redoubtable foe into prison, and the parliaments of Toulouse -and Abbeville had perpetrated juridical murders as iniquitous as any of -the proceedings of the Holy Office. And though it is easy and right for -the young, who live in a time when you are not imprisoned or hung or -decapitated for holding unpopular opinions, to call out for manliness to -the uttermost in these things, one must make allowance for an occasional -fit of timorousness in a man of eighty, whom nature had never cut out -for a martyr. Yet, more than once, these fits committed Voltaire to acts -which were as great a scandal to the devout as to the atheists. That he -should rebuild the ruinous little chapel of his estate was not much more -remarked, than it would be for a Protestant landlord to subscribe to -repair the Catholic church on an Irish property containing only Catholic -tenants. The gorgeous ceremony with which in his quality of lord he -commemorated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">341</a></span> its opening, made everybody laugh, not excepting the chief -performer, for he actually took the opportunity of lifting up his voice -in the new temple and preaching a sermon against theft. The bishop of -Annecy in Savoy, his diocesan, was furious at this mockery, and urged -the minister at Paris to banish Voltaire from France. In order to avert -the blow, Voltaire tried to make a nominal peace with the church by -confessing, and participating in the solemnity of an Easter communion -(1768). The bishop wrote him a long letter of unctuous impertinences, to -which Voltaire replied by asking very tartly why the discharge of so -ordinary a duty called for this insolent congratulation. The -philosophers of Paris were bitterly scandalised, and some of them wrote -to the patriarch of the sect to remonstrate. Even D’Alembert, his own -familiar friend, could not refrain from protest.<a name="FNanchor_284" id="FNanchor_284"></a><a href="#Footnote_284" class="fnanchor">284</a> Voltaire could -give no better reasons for his strange lapse than we may hear given -every day in our own country, by men who practise hypocritical -compliances for the sake of a little ignoble ease, and thus perpetuate -the yoke. He owed an example to his parish, as if the example of -feigning a belief which he repudiates could be a good example for one to -set in any parish. It was very well to shirk these observances in Paris, -because there in the tide of business one finds an excuse or is not -missed, but in the country no such excuse offers itself. One must stand -well with the curé, be he knave or dunce. One must respect the two -hundred and fifty <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">342</a></span>timorous consciences around one. And so forth, down -that well-worn list of pleas by which men make anxiety about the -consciences of others a substantial reason for treachery to their own. -Voltaire, besides all these, honestly added the one true reason, that he -did not mean to be burnt alive, and that the only way of making sure -against such a fate was to close the lips of spies and informers.<a name="FNanchor_285" id="FNanchor_285"></a><a href="#Footnote_285" class="fnanchor">285</a> -The bishop knew perfectly well that the squire, who had made his Easter -communion in so remarkable a manner in 1768, was the author of the -Philosophical Dictionary, of which a bran-new edition, amended and -revised, made its appearance in 1769; and he appears to have forbidden -the priest of Ferney to confess or administer the eucharist to the chief -of the flock. Voltaire was at once seized with a fever, and summoned the -priest to administer ghostly comfort. The priest pleaded the horrible -rumours of the world as to the damnable books of which the sick man was -alleged to be the author. Voltaire replied by warning him very -peremptorily that in refusing to administer the viaticum he was -infringing the law, and the consequence was that he did duly receive the -viaticum, after which he signed a solemn act in the presence of a -notary, declaring that he pardons his various calumniators; that ‘if any -indiscretion prejudicial to the religion of the State should have -escaped him,’ he seeks forgiveness from God and the State; and finally -he forgave the bishop of Annecy, who had calumniated him to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">343</a></span> the king, -and whose malicious designs had come to nought. The priest and notary -afterwards falsified this amazing declaration so as to appease the -bishop, and came to Voltaire praying him not to betray them. ‘I prove to -them,’ he says, ‘that they will be damned, I give them something to -drink, and they go away delighted.’<a name="FNanchor_286" id="FNanchor_286"></a><a href="#Footnote_286" class="fnanchor">286</a> A younger philosopher of his -school remarks with his accustomed gravity on this most singular -transaction, that the satisfaction of forcing his priest to administer -by fear of the secular judges, and of insulting the bishop of Annecy in -a juridical manner, cannot excuse such a proceeding in the eyes of the -free and firm man, who weighs calmly the claims of truth and the -requirements of prudence, when laws contrary to natural justice render -truth dangerous and prudence indispensable.<a name="FNanchor_287" id="FNanchor_287"></a><a href="#Footnote_287" class="fnanchor">287</a> To which reflection we -may perhaps add another, suggested by the cruel experience of the church -in France within five and twenty years from Voltaire’s impious -communion, that if any order, secular or spiritual, constrains its -adversaries under penalties to the commission of base acts, then if the -chances of time should ever transfer the power to the other side, that -order has only itself to blame for whatever wrong may mark the -retaliation. There is no more dangerous policy in affairs of state than -to strip your opponent of self-respect, and this the descendants of the -persecutors found out to their extreme cost, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">344</a></span>when in 1793 they had to -deal with the descendants of the persecuted.</p> - -<p>One other curious piece of sportiveness in his dealings with the church -deserves to be noticed. In the year 1770 the post of temporal father of -the order of Capucins for the district of Gex became vacant. Voltaire -applied for it, and the general at Rome, perhaps listening to a word -from Ganganelli, or else from the Duchess of Choiseul, sent to Ferney -the letters patent conferring upon its patriarch this strange dignity, -and also affiliating him to the order. What were Voltaire’s motives in -so odd a transaction, it is not very hard to divine. Probably, he -thought even this humble office would be some protection against -persecution. Then it gave him an opportunity of harassing his enemy, the -bishop of Annecy. Thirdly, it amused that whimsical element of farce and -mischief which was always so irrepressible in him, from the early days -when he is said to have nearly damned his own play by appearing on the -stage as the high-priest’s train-bearer, and burlesquing that august -person’s solemn gait. Voltaire filled his letters with infinite -pleasantries about the new Capucin, and seemed as much pleased at the -idea of wearing the cord of Saint Francis, as he had been with the gold -key of a Prussian chamberlain.<a name="FNanchor_288" id="FNanchor_288"></a><a href="#Footnote_288" class="fnanchor">288</a> One of his first enjoyments was to -write letters to his episcopal foe, signed with a cross and his name: ‘✠ -<i>Voltaire, Capucin indigne.</i>’<a name="FNanchor_289" id="FNanchor_289"></a><a href="#Footnote_289" class="fnanchor">289</a> A <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">345</a></span>story is told by Grimm of a visitor -arriving at Ferney, and being greeted by the patriarch with the news -that he would find his host a changed man. ‘One grows a bigot in one’s -old age; I have a habit of having some pious work read to me when I sit -down at table.’ And in fact, some one began to read a sermon of -Massillon, Voltaire throwing in exclamations on the beauty, eloquence, -imagination of the preacher. Suddenly after three or four pages, he -called out ‘Off with Massillon!’ and launched forth during the rest of -the meal with his usual verve and fanciful extravagance of -imagination.<a name="FNanchor_290" id="FNanchor_290"></a><a href="#Footnote_290" class="fnanchor">290</a> It is profoundly unedifying, but not the less -characteristic.</p> - -<p>Voltaire, there can be little doubt, never designed a social revolution, -being in this the representative of the method of Hobbes. His single -object was to reinstate the understanding in its full rights, to -emancipate thought, to extend knowledge, to erect the standard of -critical common sense. He either could not see, or else, as one -sometimes thinks, he closes his eyes and refuses for his part to see, -that it was impossible to revolutionise the spiritual basis of belief -without touching the social forms, which were inseparably connected with -the old basis by the strong bonds of time and a thousand fibres of -ancient association and common interest. Rousseau began where Voltaire -left off. He informs us that in the days when his character was forming, -nothing which Voltaire wrote escaped, him, and that the Philosophical -Letters, that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">346</a></span>is the Letters on the English, though assuredly not the -writer’s best work, were what first attracted him to study, and -implanted a taste which never afterwards became extinct. The -correspondence between Voltaire and the prince of Prussia, afterwards -the great Frederick, inspired Rousseau with a passionate desire to learn -how to compose with elegance, and to imitate the colouring of so fine an -author.<a name="FNanchor_291" id="FNanchor_291"></a><a href="#Footnote_291" class="fnanchor">291</a> Thus Voltaire, who was eighteen years his elder, gave this -extraordinary genius his first productive impulse. But a sensibility of -temperament, to which perhaps there is no parallel in the list of -prominent men, impelled Rousseau to think, or rather to feel, about the -concrete wrongs and miseries of men and women, and not the abstract -rights of their intelligence. Hence the two great revolutionary schools, -the school which appealed to sentiment, and the school which appealed to -intelligence. The Voltarian principles of the strictest political -moderation and of literary common sense, negative, merely emancipatory, -found their political outcome, as French historians early pointed out, -in the Constituent Assembly, which was the creation of the upper and -middle class, while the spirit of Rousseau, ardent, generous, passionate -for the relief of the suffering, overwhelmed by the crowding forms of -manhood chronically degraded and womanhood systematically polluted, came -to life and power in the Convention and the sections of the Commune of -Paris which overawed the Convention. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">347</a></span></p> - -<p>‘It will not do,’ wrote D’Alembert to Voltaire as early as 1762, ‘to -speak too loudly against Jean Jacques or his book, for he is rather a -king in the Halles.’<a name="FNanchor_292" id="FNanchor_292"></a><a href="#Footnote_292" class="fnanchor">292</a> This must have been a new word in the ears of -the old man, who had grown up in the habit of thinking of public opinion -as the opinion, not of markets where the common people bought and sold, -but of the galleries of Versailles. Except for its theology, the age of -Lewis XIV. always remained the great age to Voltaire, the age of pomp -and literary glory, and it was too difficult a feat to cling on one side -to the Grand Monarch, and to stretch out a hand on the other to the -Social Contract. It was too difficult for the man who had been embraced -by Ninon de l’Enclos, who was the correspondent of the greatest -sovereigns in Europe, and the intimate of some of the greatest nobles in -France, to feel much sympathy with writings that made their author king -of the Halles. Frederick offered Rousseau shelter, and so did Voltaire; -but each of them disliked his work as warmly as the other. They did not -understand one who, if he wrote with an eloquence that touched all -hearts, repulsed friends and provoked enemies like a madman or a savage. -The very language of Rousseau was to Voltaire as an unknown tongue, for -it was the language of reason clothing the births of passionate -sensation. Emile only wearied him, though there were perhaps fifty pages -of it which he would have had bound in morocco.<a name="FNanchor_293" id="FNanchor_293"></a><a href="#Footnote_293" class="fnanchor">293</a> It is a stale -<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">348</a></span>romance, he cries, while the Social Contract is only remarkable for -some insults rudely thrown at kings by a citizen of Geneva, and for four -insipid pages against the Christian religion, which are simply -plagiarised from Bayle’s centos.<a name="FNanchor_294" id="FNanchor_294"></a><a href="#Footnote_294" class="fnanchor">294</a> The author is a monster of -ingratitude and insolence, the arch-scoundrel and chief of charlatans, -the lineal descendant of the dog of Diogenes the cynic, and other evil -things not readily to be named in a polite age. Partly no doubt this -extreme irritation was due to the insults with which Jean Jacques had -repulsed his offers of shelter and assistance, had repudiated Voltaire’s -attempts to defend him, and had held up Voltaire himself as a proper -object for the persecutions of Geneva. But there was a still deeper root -of discrepancy, which we have already pointed out. Rousseau’s -exaggerated tone was an offence to Voltaire’s more just and reasonable -spirit, and the feigned austerity of a man whose life and manners he -knew, assumed in his eyes a disagreeable shade of hypocrisy.<a name="FNanchor_295" id="FNanchor_295"></a><a href="#Footnote_295" class="fnanchor">295</a> -Besides these things, he was clearly apprehensive of the storms which -Rousseau’s extraordinary hardihood had the very natural effect of -raising in the circles of authority, though it is true that the most -acute observers of the time thought that they noticed a very perceptible -increase of Voltaire’s own hardihood, as a consequence of the example -which the other set him.</p> - -<p>The rivalry between the schools of Rousseau and Voltaire represents the -dead-lock to which social <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">349</a></span>thought had come; a dead-lock of which the -catastrophe of the Revolution was both expression and result. At the -time of Voltaire’s death there was not a single institution in France -with force enough to be worth a month’s purchase. The monarchy was -decrepit; the aristocracy was as feeble and impotent as it was arrogant; -the bourgeoisie was not without aspiration, but it lacked courage and it -possessed no tradition; and the church was demoralised, first by the -direct attack of Voltaire and the not less powerful indirect attack of -the Encyclopædia, and second by the memory of its own cruelty and -selfishness in the generation just closing. But Voltaire’s theory, so -far as he ever put it into its most general form, was that the temporal -order was safe and firm, and that it would endure until criticism had -transformed thought and prepared the way for a régime of enlightenment -and humanity. Rousseau, on the contrary, directed all the engines of -passion against the whole temporal fabric, and was so little careful of -freedom of thought, so little confident in the plenary efficacy of -rational persuasion, as to insist upon the extermination of atheists by -law. The position of each was at once irrefragable and impossible. It -was impossible to effect a stable reconstitution of the social order -until men had been accustomed to use their minds freely, and had -gradually thrown off the demoralising burden of superstition. But then -the existing social order had become intolerable, and its forces were -practically extinct, and consequently such<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">350</a></span> an attack as Rousseau’s was -inevitable, and was at the same time and for the same reasons -irresistible. To overthrow the power of the church only was to do -nothing in a society perishing from material decay and political -emasculation. Yet to regenerate such a society without the aid of moral -and spiritual forces, with whose activity the existence of a dominant -ecclesiastical power was absolutely incompatible, was one of the wildest -feats that ever passionate sophist attempted.</p> - -<p>If, however, it must be admitted that each of these two famous -destroyers was attempting an equally desperate task, it is the -contention of these pages that Voltaire was the more right and -far-sighted of the two in his perception of the conditions of the -problem. We have now for various adequate reasons acquired the habit of -looking upon the church and speaking of it, as an organisation outside -of society, or at least as a separate organisation and independent -integer within it. The truth is that in a Catholic country like France -before the Revolution, the church more than the secular order actually -was the society, as it had been, though to a far wider degree, -throughout Europe in the days of Hildebrand and Innocent. That is to -say, it furnished the strongest of the ideas, sentiments, hopes, and -associations which bound men together in a single community. The -monarchy, the nobles, the old historic French tradition, the various -bodies and processes of law, were swept away by the Revolution, -virtually never to return, in spite of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">351</a></span> transient appearances to the -contrary. The church was swept away also, but only for a year or two; -and so little effectual was the Revolution, which was in fact Rousseau’s -Revolution, in permanently modifying its position, that those Frenchmen -at the present day who most soberly judge the future of their country -and look deepest into its state, clearly perceive that the battle to be -fought in the order of ideas is a battle between the new moral and -social ideas of the workmen, and the old moral and social ideas which -Catholicism has implanted in the breasts of the peasants, and on which -the middle class privately and unconsciously lean for the support of -their own consciences, though they may have put away Catholic dogma. We -may see here, once more, the help which Protestantism gave to the -dissolution of the old society, by the increased room it gave, apart -from the specific influence of a more democratic dogma, for that gradual -intellectual expansion throughout a community, which for those who have -faith in the reasoning faculty is the one sure secret of social advance. -The subjection of the spiritual power to the temporal, which has -commonly followed the establishment of the Protestant communion, has -very likely retarded the final disappearance of many ideas which foster -anti-social tendencies; but the subjection of the spiritual power in -such a set of circumstances has the effect of softening shocks. -Protestantism in the sixteenth century, if it could have been accepted -in France, would have been a more edifying dissolvent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">352</a></span> than Voltairism -was in the eighteenth; but it is certain that the loosening of -theological ideas and the organisation connected with them and upholding -them, was the first process towards making truly social ideas possible, -and their future realisation a thing which good men might hope for. -Napoleon, the great organ of political reaction, knew what he was about -in paying writers for years to denigrate the memory of Voltaire, whose -very name he abhorred.<a name="FNanchor_296" id="FNanchor_296"></a><a href="#Footnote_296" class="fnanchor">296</a></p> - -<p>In saying, however, that Rousseau’s attack was inevitable, we have -perhaps said that it was indispensable; for where a society is not able -to resist an assault upon its fundamental conditions, we may be -tolerably sure that the time has arrived when either these conditions -must be dispersed, or else the society must fall into rapid dissolution. -We may refute Rousseau’s sophisms as often and as conclusively as we -please, and may dwell as forcibly as we know how upon the untold -penalties which France has paid, and is still doomed to pay, for -whatever benefits he may have bestowed on her. But, after all this, the -benefits remain, and they may be briefly set down as two in number. In -the first place he spoke words that can never be unspoken, and kindled a -hope that can never be extinguished; he first inflamed men with a -righteous conviction that the evils of the existing order of things -reduced civilisation to a nullity for the great majority of mankind, and -that it cannot for ever be tolerable that the mass should wear away -<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">353</a></span>their lives in unbroken toil without hope or aim, in order that the few -may live selfish and vacuous days. Rousseau presented this sentiment in -a shape which made it the ‘negation of society;’ but it was much to -induce thinkers to ask themselves, and the bondsmen of society to ask -their masters, whether the last word of social philosophy had been -uttered, and the last experiment in the relations of men to one another -decisively tried and irrevocably accepted. Second, by his fervid -eloquence and the burning conviction which he kindled in the breasts of -great numbers of men, he inspired energy enough in France to awaken her -from the torpor as of death which was stealing so rapidly over her. -Nobody was more keenly aware of the presence of this breath of decay in -the air than Voltaire was. It had seized such hold of the vital parts of -the old order, that, but for the fiery spirit and unquenchable ardour of -the men who read Rousseau as men of old had read the gospel, but for the -spirit and ardour which animated the Convention, and made it alike in -the tasks of peace and the tasks of war one of the most effective and -formidable assemblies that the world has ever beheld, we do not see what -there was to stop France from sinking lower and lower into impotence, -until at last the powers who vainly threatened the republic with -partition, might in the course of time actually have consummated the -threat against the monarchy. This may seem impossible to us who live -after the Revolution and after Napoleon; but we must remember the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">354</a></span> -designs of partitioning Prussia in the middle of the century, the -accomplishment of a partition of the Italian possessions of the house of -Austria in 1735, and the partition of Poland; and why was France to be -eternal, any more than the Byzantine empire, or the power of the house -of Austria, or the power of Spain, had been eternal? It was the fire -kindled by Rousseau’s passion that saved her; for even of the -Constituent, which was Voltairean, the very soul was Mirabeau, who was -Rousseauite.</p> - -<p>It will be seen that in one sense Rousseau was a far more original -personage than his first chief and inspirer. He contributed new ideas, -of extremely equivocal and perilous character, but still new, to the -multitudinous discussions which were throwing all the social elements -into confusion. These ideas might indeed have been found substantially -in the writings of previous thinkers like Montaigne and Locke; but -Rousseau’s passion invested them with a quality which was virtually to -constitute them a fresh and original force. Voltaire contributed -initiative and a temperament, which made his propagation of ideas that -were not new, as important a fact in social if not in intellectual -history, as if he had been possessed of superlative gifts in -speculation. This has also to be remembered when we think of comparing -him with Diderot, who, while his equal in industry, was greatly his -superior both in fresh simplicity of imagination, and in grasp and -breadth of positive knowledge. Whoever will take the trouble to turn<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">355</a></span> -over some of the thirty-five volumes of the Encyclopædia, may easily see -how that gigantic undertaking (1751-1765), in which Voltaire always took -the most ardent and practical interest,<a name="FNanchor_297" id="FNanchor_297"></a><a href="#Footnote_297" class="fnanchor">297</a> assisted the movement that -Voltaire had commenced. It seemed to gather up into a single great -reservoir all that men knew, and this fact of mere mechanical -collocation was a sort of substitute for a philosophic synthesis. As -Comte says, it furnished a provisional rallying-point for efforts the -most divergent, without requiring the sacrifice of any points of -essential independence, in such a way as to secure for a body of -incoherent speculation an external look of system.<a name="FNanchor_298" id="FNanchor_298"></a><a href="#Footnote_298" class="fnanchor">298</a> This enterprise, -the history of which is a microcosm of the whole battle between the two -sides in France, enabled the various opponents of theological -absolutism, the Voltaireans, Rousseauites, atheists, and all other sorts -and conditions of protesting men, to confront the church and its -doctrine with a similar semblance of organic unity and completeness. The -Encyclopædia was not simply negative and critical. It was an unexampled -manual of information, and was the means of spreading over the country -some knowledge of that active scientific culture, which was producing -such abundant and astonishing discoveries. The two streams of dissolvent -influences, negative criticism on <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">356</a></span>the one hand, and positive knowledge -and scientific method on the other, were led into a single channel of -multiplied volume and force. There was no real nor logical connection -between the two elements, and while one of them has daily grown less -serviceable, the other has daily grown more absorbingly powerful, so as -now to be itself the effective indirect substitute for that direct -negative criticism, with which the Encyclopædic design had once thrown -it into alliance.</p> - -<p>Diderot, the third chief of the attack, does even fuller justice than -Rousseau to Voltaire’s share in stimulating thought and opening the mind -of France; and in spite of the extravagance of its first clause, there -is a glimpse of true discrimination in the characteristic -sentence—‘Were I to call him the greatest man nature has produced, I -might find people to agree with me; but if I say that she has never yet -produced, and is never likely to produce again, a man so extraordinary, -only his enemies will contradict me.’<a name="FNanchor_299" id="FNanchor_299"></a><a href="#Footnote_299" class="fnanchor">299</a> This panegyric was specially -disinterested, because Voltaire’s last years had been not least -remarkable for his bitter antipathy to the dogmatic atheism and dogmatic -materialism of that school, with which Diderot was most intimate -personally, and with whose doctrines, if he did not at all times seem -entirely to share them, he had at any rate a warmer sympathy than with -any other system of that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">357</a></span>negative epoch, when every chief thinker was -so vague positively, so weak constructively, and only the subalterns, -like D’Holbach and Helvétius, presumed to push on to conclusions.</p> - -<p>The story of Voltaire’s many long-sustained and unflagging endeavours to -procure whatever redress might be possible for the victims of legal -injustice, has been very often told, and mere commemoration of these -justly renowned achievements may suffice here. ‘The worst of the worthy -sort of people,’ he once said, ‘is that they are such cowards. A man -groans over wrong, he shuts his lips, he takes his supper, he -forgets.’<a name="FNanchor_300" id="FNanchor_300"></a><a href="#Footnote_300" class="fnanchor">300</a> Voltaire was not of that temper. He was not only an -extremely humane man; extraordinary vividness of imagination, lack of -which is at the root of so much cruelty, and unparalleled sympathetic -quality, thinness of which explains so much appalling indifference, -animated him to a perseverance in protecting the helpless, which -entitles him to a place by the side of Howard and the noblest -philanthropists. There were three years in which the chief business of -his life was to procure the rehabilitation of the name of the -unfortunate Calas, and the payment of a money recompense to his family. -He agitated the whole world with indignation and pity by means of -narratives, pleas, short statements and long statements, passionate -appeals and argumentative appeals. Powerful ministers, fine ladies, -lawyers, men of letters, were all constrained<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">358</a></span> -by his importunate solicitations to lend an ear to the cause of reason -and tolerance, and to lift up an arm in its vindication. The same -tremendous enginery was again brought into play in the case of Sirven. -In the case of La Barre and his comrade D’Etallonde, his tenacity was -still more amazing and heroic. For twelve years he persevered in the -attempt to have the memory of La Barre rehabilitated. One of the -judicial authorities concerned in that atrocious exploit, struck with -horror at the thought of being held up to the execration of Europe by -that terrible avenger, conveyed some menace to Voltaire of what might -befall him. Voltaire replied to him by a Chinese anecdote. ‘I forbid -you,’ said a tyrannical emperor to the chief of the tribunal of history, -‘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.’<a name="FNanchor_301" id="FNanchor_301"></a><a href="#Footnote_301" class="fnanchor">301</a> There was a something inexorable as -doom about Voltaire’s unrelenting perseverance in getting wrong -definitely stamped and transfixed. If he did not succeed in obtaining -justice for the memory of La Barre, and in procuring for D’Etallonde -free pardon, at least he never abandoned the endeavour, and he was just -as ardent and unwearied in the twelfth year, as he had been while his -indignation was freshly kindled. He was more successful in the case of -Lally. Count Lally had failed to save India from the English, had been -taken prisoner, and had then in a magnanimous way <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">359</a></span>asked his captors to -allow him to go to Paris to clear himself from various charges, which -the too numerous enemies he had made were spreading against his -character and administration. The French people, infuriated at the loss -of their possessions in India and Canada, were crying for a victim, and -Lally, after a process tainted with every kind of illegality, was -condemned to death by the parliament of Paris (1766) on the vague charge -of abuse of authority, exactions, and vexations.<a name="FNanchor_302" id="FNanchor_302"></a><a href="#Footnote_302" class="fnanchor">302</a> The murdered man’s -son, known in the days of the Revolution as Lally Tollendal, was joined -by Voltaire in the honourable 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>The death of Lally is the parallel in French history to the execution of -Byng in the history of England, and, oddly enough, Voltaire was very -actively occupied in trying to avert that crime of our government, as -well as the crimes of his own. He had known Byng when he was in -England.<a name="FNanchor_303" id="FNanchor_303"></a><a href="#Footnote_303" class="fnanchor">303</a> Some one told him that a letter from Richelieu, who had -been Byng’s opponent at Minorca, would be useful, and Voltaire instantly -urged the Duke to allow him to forward a letter he had, stating -Richelieu’s conviction of his defeated enemy’s bravery and good -judgment. Voltaire insists that this letter turned four votes on the -<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">360</a></span>court-martial.<a name="FNanchor_304" id="FNanchor_304"></a><a href="#Footnote_304" class="fnanchor">304</a> He informs a correspondent, moreover, of the fact -that Byng had instructed his executor to express his deep obligation -both to Voltaire and Richelieu.<a name="FNanchor_305" id="FNanchor_305"></a><a href="#Footnote_305" class="fnanchor">305</a> Humanity is erroneously counted -among commonplace virtues. If it deserved such a place, there would be -less urgent need than, alas, there is, for its daily exercise among us. -In its pale shape of kindly sentiment and bland pity it is common -enough, and is always the portion of the cultivated. But humanity armed, -aggressive, and alert, never slumbering and never wearying, moving like -ancient hero over the land to slay monsters, is the rarest of virtues, -and Voltaire is one of its master-types.</p> - -<p>His interest in public transactions in his latest years was keener than -ever. That fruit of Polish anarchy, the war between Russia and Turkey -which broke out in 1768, excited his imagination to a pitch of great -heat, and the despatch in the spring of 1770 of a squadron from -Cronstadt, for the so-called liberation of Greece, made him weep for -joy. He implored Frederick not to leave to Catherine alone the burden of -so glorious a task. Superstition had had seven crusades; was it not a -noble thing to undertake one crusade to drive the barbarous Turks from -the land of Socrates and Plato, Sophocles and Euripides? Frederick -replied very sensibly that Dantzic was more to him than the Piræus, and -that he is a little indifferent about the modern Greeks, who, if ever -the arts <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">361</a></span>should revive among them, would be jealous to find that a Gaul -by his Henriade had surpassed their Homer; that this same Gaul had -beaten Sophocles, equalled Thucydides, and left far behind him Plato, -Aristotle, and the whole school of the Porch;<a name="FNanchor_306" id="FNanchor_306"></a><a href="#Footnote_306" class="fnanchor">306</a>—which was, perhaps, -not quite so sensibly said.</p> - -<p>The successes of Russia against Turkey in 1770 roused the anxiety of -Austria and Prussia, and the solution of what we know as the Eastern -question was indefinitely postponed by the device of partitioning Poland -(Aug. 5, 1772), the alternative to the acquisition of the whole of that -country by Russia, the least civilised of the three powers. Of this -memorable transaction Voltaire heartily approved, and he gave thanks -that he had lived to see ‘such glorious events.’<a name="FNanchor_307" id="FNanchor_307"></a><a href="#Footnote_307" class="fnanchor">307</a> He insisted, -decidedly against the king’s will, that Frederick had devised the -scheme, for he found it full of genius, and to all seeming he discerned -none of the execration which the event he had just witnessed was -destined to raise in his own country in years to come. His friendship -with two of the chief actors may have biassed his judgment; but Voltaire -seldom allowed, indeed by the conditions of his temperament he was -unable to allow, personal considerations of this kind to obscure his -penetrating sight. He may well have thought the partition of Poland -desirable, for the reasons which a statesman of to-day may find -adequate: the country’s hopeless political anarchy, its crushing -material misery, the oppressive power of the church, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">362</a></span>the inevitable and -standing peril to Europe of the existence of such a centre of -conflagration. It is worth remarking that Rousseau was much more keenly -alive to the gravity of the event, that he protested against what had -been done, and that his influence has been one of the main causes of the -illogical sympathy of democratic Europe for one of the most pestilent of -aristocratic governments.</p> - -<p>The accession of Turgot to power in 1774 stirred an ardent sympathy in -Voltaire. Like the rest of the school, he looked upon this as the advent -of the political messiah,<a name="FNanchor_308" id="FNanchor_308"></a><a href="#Footnote_308" class="fnanchor">308</a> and he shared the extreme hopes of that -great and virtuous man’s most sanguine lieutenants. He declared that a -new heaven and a new earth had opened to him.<a name="FNanchor_309" id="FNanchor_309"></a><a href="#Footnote_309" class="fnanchor">309</a> His sallies against -the economists were forgotten, and he now entered into the famous -controversy of the free trade in grain with all his usual fire. His -fervour went too far for the sage minister, who prayed him to be -somewhat less eager in alarming uninformed prejudice. Still he insisted -on hoping all things.</p> - -<div class="poem2"> -<div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Contemple la brillante aurore</span> -<span class="i0">Qui t’annonce enfin les beaux jours.</span> -<span class="i0">Un nouveau monde est près d’éclore;</span> -<span class="i0">Até disparaît pour toujours.</span> -<span class="i0">Vois l’auguste philosophie,</span> -<span class="i0">Chez toi si long temps poursuivie,</span> -<span class="i0">Dicter ses triomphantes lois.</span> -<span class="i0 padt05"><span class="gesperrt">*****</span></span> -<span class="i0"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">363</a></span>Je lui dis: ‘Ange tutélaire,</span> -<span class="i0">Quels dieux répandent ces bienfaits?’</span> -<span class="i0">‘C’est un seul homme.’<a name="FNanchor_310" id="FNanchor_310"></a><a href="#Footnote_310" class="fnanchor">310</a></span> -</div></div> - -<p>When it proved that one man alone, ‘qui ne chercha le vrai, que pour -faire le bien,’<a name="FNanchor_311" id="FNanchor_311"></a><a href="#Footnote_311" class="fnanchor">311</a> was no match for the mountain torrent of ignorance, -prejudice, selfishness, and usage, and Turgot fell from power (May -1776), Voltaire sunk into a despair for his country, from which he never -arose. ‘I am as one dashed to the ground. Never can we console ourselves -for having seen the golden age dawn and perish. My eyes see only death -in front of me, now that M. Turgot is gone. It has fallen like a -thunderbolt on my brain and my heart alike. The rest of my days can -never be other than pure bitterness.’<a name="FNanchor_312" id="FNanchor_312"></a><a href="#Footnote_312" class="fnanchor">312</a></p> - -<p>The visit to Paris was perhaps a falsification of this prophecy for a -moment. In 1778, yielding either to the solicitations of his niece, or -to a momentary desire to enjoy the triumph of his renown at its centre, -he returned to the great city which he had not seen for nearly thirty -years. His reception has been described over and over again. It is one -of the historic events of the century. No great captain returning from a -prolonged campaign of difficulty and hazard crowned by the most glorious -victory, ever received a more splendid and far-resounding greeting. It -was the last great commotion in Paris under the old régime. The <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">364</a></span>next -great commotion which the historian has to chronicle is the -ever-memorable fourteenth day of July, eleven years later, when the -Bastille fell, and a new order began for France, and new questions began -for all Europe.</p> - -<p>The agitation of so much loud triumph and incessant acclamation proved -more violent than Voltaire’s feeble health could resist, and he died, -probably from an over-dose of laudanum, on the thirtieth of May 1778. -His last writing was a line of rejoicing to the young Lally, that their -efforts had been successful in procuring justice for the memory of one -who had been put to death unjustly. How far Voltaire realised the -nearness of vast changes we cannot tell. There is at least one -remarkable prophecy of his, in the well-known letter to -Chauvelin:—‘Everything that I see appears the throwing broadcast of the -seed of a revolution, which must inevitably come one day, but which I -shall not have the pleasure of witnessing. The French always come late -to things, but they do come at last. Light extends so from neighbour to -neighbour, that there will be a splendid outburst on the first occasion, -and then there will be a rare commotion. The young are very happy; they -will see fine things.’<a name="FNanchor_313" id="FNanchor_313"></a><a href="#Footnote_313" class="fnanchor">313</a> A less sanguine tone marks the close of the -apologue in which Reason and Truth, her daughter, take a triumphant -journey in France and elsewhere, about the time of the accession of -Turgot. ‘Ah, well,’ says Reason, ‘let us enjoy these glorious <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">365</a></span>days; let -us rest here, if they last; and if storms come on, let us go back to our -well.’<a name="FNanchor_314" id="FNanchor_314"></a><a href="#Footnote_314" class="fnanchor">314</a> Whether this meant much or little none can know. It would be -shallow to believe that such men as Voltaire, with faculty quickened and -outlook widened in the high air to which their fame raises them, really -discerned no more than we, who have only their uttered words for -authority, can perceive that they discerned. Great position often -invests men with a second sight whose visions they lock up in silence, -content with the work of the day.</p> - -<h2>FOOTNOTES:</h2> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1" id="Footnote_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1"><span class="label">1</span></a> <i>Œuvres,</i> xxxv. p. 214.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2" id="Footnote_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2"><span class="label">2</span></a> See Comte’s <i>Philosophic Positive</i>, v. 520.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3" id="Footnote_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3"><span class="label">3</span></a> Vauban and Boisguillebert are both to be found in <i>Les -Economistes Financiers du XVIIIième Siècle</i>, published by Guillaumin, -1851.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4" id="Footnote_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4"><span class="label">4</span></a> ‘Je ne sais si, à tout prendre, et malgré les vices -éclatants de quelques uns de ses membres, il y eut jamais dans le monde -un clergé plus remarquable que le clergé catholique de France au moment -où la Révolution l’a surpris, plus éclairé, plus national, moins -retranché dans les seules vertus privées, mieux pourvu de vertus -publiques et en meme temps de plus de foi: la persécution l’a bien -montré’—De Tocqueville, <i>Ancien Régime</i>, liv. ii. c. 11.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5" id="Footnote_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5"><span class="label">5</span></a> Rem. sur les Pensées de M. Pascal. <i>Œuvres</i>, xliii. p. -68.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6" id="Footnote_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6"><span class="label">6</span></a> <i>Novum Organum</i>, § 67.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7" id="Footnote_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7"><span class="label">7</span></a> Some fault has been found with this passage by one or two -private critics, as being not entirely just to the eminent thinker to -whom it refers, and to whom my own obligations, direct and indirect, are -so numerous, notwithstanding my final inability to follow him in his -ideas of social reconstruction, that the idea of adding to the sum of -misrepresentation of which Comte and his doctrines have been the -victims, is particularly disagreeable to me. Here, therefore, is one -passage in which Comte seems to speak rather more warmly of Voltaire -than the words in the text imply: ‘Toutefois, l’indispensable nécessité -mentale et sociale d’une telle élaboration provisoire laissera toujours, -dans l’ensemble de l’histoire humaine, une place importante à ses -principaux coopérateurs, et surtout à leur type le plus éminent, auquel -la postérité la plus lointaine assurera une position vraiment unique; -parceque jamais un pareil office n’avait pu jusqu’alors échoir, et -pourra désormais encore moins appartenir à un esprit de cette nature, -chez lequel la plus admirable combinaison qui ait existé jusqu’ici entre -les diverses qualités secondaires de l’intelligence présentait si -souvent la séduisante apparence de la force et du génie’ (<i>Phil. Pos.</i> -v. 518). Against this we have to place the highly significant fact that -Voltaire only appears in the calendar as a dramatic poet, as well as the -whole tenour and spirit of Comte’s teaching, namely, as he puts it in -one place, that ‘<i>une pure critique ne peut jamais mériter beaucoup -d’estime’ </i>(<i>Politique Positive</i>, iii. 547).</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8" id="Footnote_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8"><span class="label">8</span></a> J. B. Rousseau’s <i>Moïsade.</i></p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9" id="Footnote_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9"><span class="label">9</span></a> <i>Œuvres,</i> lxii. p. 45.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10" id="Footnote_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10"><span class="label">10</span></a> Dictionnaire Philosophique,<i>s.v. Œuvres</i>, lii. p. 378.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11" id="Footnote_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11"><span class="label">11</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, i. 513.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12" id="Footnote_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12"><span class="label">12</span></a> <i>Œuvres,</i> lxii. pp. 86 and 89.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13" id="Footnote_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13"><span class="label">13</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> lxii. p. 107.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14" id="Footnote_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14"><span class="label">14</span></a> A.R.O.V.E.T., <i>L(e). I(eune).</i></p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15" id="Footnote_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15"><span class="label">15</span></a> Chevalier appears to have been a title given by courtesy -to the cadets of certain great families.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16" id="Footnote_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16"><span class="label">16</span></a> <i>Œuvres,</i> iv. 18.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17" id="Footnote_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17"><span class="label">17</span></a> <i>Histoire de l’ancien Gouvernement de la France</i>(1727).</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18" id="Footnote_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18"><span class="label">18</span></a> Buckle’s <i>Hist. of Civilisation</i>, i. 657-664.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19" id="Footnote_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19"><span class="label">19</span></a> Sainte-Beuve, <i>Causeries</i>, v. 111.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20" id="Footnote_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20"><span class="label">20</span></a> <i>Œdipe</i>, iv. sc. 1.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21" id="Footnote_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21"><span class="label">21</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> ii. v.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22" id="Footnote_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22"><span class="label">22</span></a> Le Pour et le Contre, ou Epître à Uranie. <i>Œuvres</i>, xv. -pp. 399, 403.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23" id="Footnote_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23"><span class="label">23</span></a> Condorcet, <i>Vie de Voltaire. Œuvres</i>, iv. 20.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24" id="Footnote_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24"><span class="label">24</span></a> Condorcet, <i>Vie de Voltaire. Œuvres,</i> iv. 20.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25" id="Footnote_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25"><span class="label">25</span></a> Correspondence, 1725. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxii. pp. 140-49.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26" id="Footnote_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26"><span class="label">26</span></a> Lettres sur les Anglais, xv. <i>Œuvres</i>, xxxv. p. 114. Cf. -also Letter xxiv. (pp. 197-202).</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27" id="Footnote_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27"><span class="label">27</span></a> Lord Stanhope’s <i>Hist. of England</i>, ii. 231 (ed. 1858).</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28" id="Footnote_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28"><span class="label">28</span></a> Lettres sur les Anglais, ix. <i>Œuvres</i>, xxxv. p. 73.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29" id="Footnote_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29"><span class="label">29</span></a> Correspondence, 1732. <i>Œuvres,</i> lxii. p. 253.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_30" id="Footnote_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30"><span class="label">30</span></a> Martin’s <i>Hist. de France</i>, vol. xiv. 265-67.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_31" id="Footnote_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31"><span class="label">31</span></a> Philosophie de Newton, Pt. i. c. i. <i>Œuvres</i>, xli. p. 46.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_32" id="Footnote_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32"><span class="label">32</span></a> Lettres sur les Anglais, xv. <i>Œuvres</i>, xxxv. pp. 115-20.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_33" id="Footnote_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33"><span class="label">33</span></a> Philos. de Newton, Pt. i. c. ix. <i>(Œuvres</i>, xli. p. 108.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_34" id="Footnote_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34"><span class="label">34</span></a> D’Alembert.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_35" id="Footnote_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35"><span class="label">35</span></a> Dictionnaire Philosophique, s.v. Locke. <i>Œuvres</i>, lvi. p. -447.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_36" id="Footnote_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36"><span class="label">36</span></a> Corr. 1736. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxiii. p. 29.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_37" id="Footnote_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37"><span class="label">37</span></a> <i>Soirées de St. Petersbourg, 6ième Fentretien</i>, i. 403.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_38" id="Footnote_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38"><span class="label">38</span></a> Corr. 1737; lxiii. p. 154.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_39" id="Footnote_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39"><span class="label">39</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> p. 248. Cf. also lxii. p. 276.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_40" id="Footnote_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40"><span class="label">40</span></a> Lettres sur les Anglais, xiv. <i>Œuvres</i>, xxxv. pp. 102-5.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_41" id="Footnote_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41"><span class="label">41</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, vol. xliii. p. 77.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_42" id="Footnote_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42"><span class="label">42</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> p. 20.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_43" id="Footnote_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43"><span class="label">43</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, vol. xliii. p. 26.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_44" id="Footnote_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44"><span class="label">44</span></a> Corr. 1737. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxiii. p. 248.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_45" id="Footnote_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45"><span class="label">45</span></a> Lettres sur les Anglais, xiii. <i>Œuvres</i>, xxxv. p. 95.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_46" id="Footnote_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46"><span class="label">46</span></a> Lettres, etc. x. <i>Œuvres</i>, xxxv. p. 81.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_47" id="Footnote_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47"><span class="label">47</span></a> De Tocqueville’s <i>Ancien Régime</i>, liv. ii. c. 9, p. 137 -(ed. 1866).</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_48" id="Footnote_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48"><span class="label">48</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, xxxv. p. 80.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_49" id="Footnote_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49"><span class="label">49</span></a> The reader of <i>Zadig</i> will remember the ‘<i>homme comme -moi</i>,’ and his ill luck at Babylon. <i>Œuvres</i>, lix. pp. 153-59.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_50" id="Footnote_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50"><span class="label">50</span></a> Lettres sur les Anglais, xi. <i>Œuvres</i>, xxxv. p. 85.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_51" id="Footnote_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51"><span class="label">51</span></a> Lett. Ang. xxi.; xxxv. pp. 172, etc.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_52" id="Footnote_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52"><span class="label">52</span></a> Lettres sur les Anglais, i.; xxxv. p. 31.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_53" id="Footnote_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_53"><span class="label">53</span></a> Lett. Ang. vi.; xxxv. p. 62.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_54" id="Footnote_54"></a><a href="#FNanchor_54"><span class="label">54</span></a> Lett. Ang. vii. pp. 62-65.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_55" id="Footnote_55"></a><a href="#FNanchor_55"><span class="label">55</span></a> Lett. Ang. ii.; xxxv. p. 42.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_56" id="Footnote_56"></a><a href="#FNanchor_56"><span class="label">56</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, xxxv. p. 185.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_57" id="Footnote_57"></a><a href="#FNanchor_57"><span class="label">57</span></a> Ess. sur la Poésie Epique. <i>Œuvres</i>, xiii. p. 445, and -pp. 513-26.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_58" id="Footnote_58"></a><a href="#FNanchor_58"><span class="label">58</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, xxxv. p. 155.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_59" id="Footnote_59"></a><a href="#FNanchor_59"><span class="label">59</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, xxxv. p. 159.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_60" id="Footnote_60"></a><a href="#FNanchor_60"><span class="label">60</span></a> Corr. 1736. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxiii. p. 4. <i>Ib.</i> 60.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_61" id="Footnote_61"></a><a href="#FNanchor_61"><span class="label">61</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, xxxv. pp. 189, 190.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_62" id="Footnote_62"></a><a href="#FNanchor_62"><span class="label">62</span></a> For Berkeley, see Corr. 1736 (<i>Œuv</i>. lxiii. pp. 130, 164, -etc.), and for the other two, see Le Philosophe Ignorant <i>Œuvres</i>, -xliv. p. 69 and p. 47).</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_63" id="Footnote_63"></a><a href="#FNanchor_63"><span class="label">63</span></a> <i>Œuv.</i> xliv. p. 47.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_64" id="Footnote_64"></a><a href="#FNanchor_64"><span class="label">64</span></a> The <i>De Veritate</i> was published in 1624.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_65" id="Footnote_65"></a><a href="#FNanchor_65"><span class="label">65</span></a> See the list from 1725 to 1728 in Leland’s <i>View of the -Deistical Writers</i>, i. 132-144.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_66" id="Footnote_66"></a><a href="#FNanchor_66"><span class="label">66</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, lvii. pp. 107-114.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_67" id="Footnote_67"></a><a href="#FNanchor_67"><span class="label">67</span></a> Corr. 1736-37. <i>Œuv.</i> lxiii. p. 60, p. 86, and p. 112.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_68" id="Footnote_68"></a><a href="#FNanchor_68"><span class="label">68</span></a> Examen Important de Milord Bolingbrocke. <i>Œuv.</i> xliv. p. -89.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_69" id="Footnote_69"></a><a href="#FNanchor_69"><span class="label">69</span></a> See Lechler’s <i>Geschichte des Englischen Deismus</i>, p. -396.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_70" id="Footnote_70"></a><a href="#FNanchor_70"><span class="label">70</span></a> <i>Reflections. Works</i>, i. 419 (ed. 1842).</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_71" id="Footnote_71"></a><a href="#FNanchor_71"><span class="label">71</span></a> <i>Encyclopédic Nouvelle</i> de Jean Reynaud et Pierre Leroux, -s.v. Voltaire, p. 736. De Maistre audaciously denies that Voltaire ever -did more than dip into Locke. <i>Soirées</i>, vi.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_72" id="Footnote_72"></a><a href="#FNanchor_72"><span class="label">72</span></a> Villemain’s <i>Cours de Lit. Française</i>, i. p. 111. See also -De Maistre, <i>Soirées de St. Petersbourg</i>, vi. p. 424. On the other hand, -see Lanfrey’s <i>L’Eglise et les Philosophes du 18ième Siècle</i>, pp. 99, -108, etc.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_73" id="Footnote_73"></a><a href="#FNanchor_73"><span class="label">73</span></a> Madame de Grafigny. Cf. Desnoiresterres, <i>Voltaire au -Château de Cirey</i>, p. 246, etc.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_74" id="Footnote_74"></a><a href="#FNanchor_74"><span class="label">74</span></a> Desnoiresterres, p. 257.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_75" id="Footnote_75"></a><a href="#FNanchor_75"><span class="label">75</span></a> Condorcet, <i>Vie de Voltaire</i>, p. 61. A graceful and -dignified letter in this kind is that to Formey, May 12, 1752. <i>Œuv.</i> -lxv. p. 64.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_76" id="Footnote_76"></a><a href="#FNanchor_76"><span class="label">76</span></a> Grimm, <i>Correspondance Littéraire</i>, v. p. 5.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_77" id="Footnote_77"></a><a href="#FNanchor_77"><span class="label">77</span></a> <i>Œuv.</i> lxv. p. 395.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_78" id="Footnote_78"></a><a href="#FNanchor_78"><span class="label">78</span></a> Correspondence. Also, Essai sur la Poésie Epique, c. vi. -<i>Œuvres</i>, xiii. p. 481.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_79" id="Footnote_79"></a><a href="#FNanchor_79"><span class="label">79</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, lxv. p. 91.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_80" id="Footnote_80"></a><a href="#FNanchor_80"><span class="label">80</span></a> Corr. with the Abbé Moussinot, 1737, and afterwards. -<i>Œuvres</i>, lxiii. pp. 122, 160, 176, etc.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_81" id="Footnote_81"></a><a href="#FNanchor_81"><span class="label">81</span></a> Corr. 1752. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxv. p. 115.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_82" id="Footnote_82"></a><a href="#FNanchor_82"><span class="label">82</span></a> <i>Vie de Voltaire</i>, p. 37.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_83" id="Footnote_83"></a><a href="#FNanchor_83"><span class="label">83</span></a> Desnoiresterres, p. 323.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_84" id="Footnote_84"></a><a href="#FNanchor_84"><span class="label">84</span></a> Foisset’s <i>Correspond. de Voltaire avec De Brosses, etc.</i>, -published in 1836.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_85" id="Footnote_85"></a><a href="#FNanchor_85"><span class="label">85</span></a> Quoted in Desnoiresterres, p. 239.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_86" id="Footnote_86"></a><a href="#FNanchor_86"><span class="label">86</span></a> Desnoiresterres, p. 242.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_87" id="Footnote_87"></a><a href="#FNanchor_87"><span class="label">87</span></a> Epître à Mdme. la Marquise du Châtelet, sur la Calomnie. -<i>Œuvres</i>, xvii. p. 85.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_88" id="Footnote_88"></a><a href="#FNanchor_88"><span class="label">88</span></a> See Whewell’s <i>Hist. Induc. Sci</i>. bk. vi. c. v.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_89" id="Footnote_89"></a><a href="#FNanchor_89"><span class="label">89</span></a> Desnoiresterres, pp. 313-21.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_90" id="Footnote_90"></a><a href="#FNanchor_90"><span class="label">90</span></a> Exposition du Livre des Institutions Physiques. <i>Œuvres </i>, -xlii. pp. 196-206.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_91" id="Footnote_91"></a><a href="#FNanchor_91"><span class="label">91</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, xlii. p. 207, etc.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_92" id="Footnote_92"></a><a href="#FNanchor_92"><span class="label">92</span></a> Corr. 1737. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxiii. p. 182.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_93" id="Footnote_93"></a><a href="#FNanchor_93"><span class="label">93</span></a> Condorcet, <i>Vie de Voltaire</i>, p. 43.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_94" id="Footnote_94"></a><a href="#FNanchor_94"><span class="label">94</span></a> Corr. 1737. <i>Œuvres</i>, lvi. p. 428.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_95" id="Footnote_95"></a><a href="#FNanchor_95"><span class="label">95</span></a> Dict. Phil. s.v. <i>Œuvres</i>, lvi. p. 428.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_96" id="Footnote_96"></a><a href="#FNanchor_96"><span class="label">96</span></a> Dict. Phil. s.v. <i>Œuvres,</i> lvi. p. 430.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_97" id="Footnote_97"></a><a href="#FNanchor_97"><span class="label">97</span></a> Corr. 1758. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxxv. p. 50.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_98" id="Footnote_98"></a><a href="#FNanchor_98"><span class="label">98</span></a> Temple du Goût. <i>Œuvres</i>, xv. p. 99.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_99" id="Footnote_99"></a><a href="#FNanchor_99"><span class="label">99</span></a> Corr. 1743. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxiv. p. 119.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_100" id="Footnote_100"></a><a href="#FNanchor_100"><span class="label">100</span></a> <i>Œuvres de Vauvenargues</i>, ii. 252.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_101" id="Footnote_101"></a><a href="#FNanchor_101"><span class="label">101</span></a> <i>Temple du Goût. Œuvres</i>, xv. p. 100.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_102" id="Footnote_102"></a><a href="#FNanchor_102"><span class="label">102</span></a> In some readings given before popular audiences in Paris -in 1850, it was found that Voltaire was only partially effective. ‘Trop -d’artifice,’ says Ste. Beuve, ‘trop d’art nuit auprès des esprits neufs; -trop de simplicité nuit aussi; ils ne s’en étonnent pas, et ils ont -jusqu’à un certain point besoin d’être étonnés.’ (<i>Causeries</i>, i. 289.)</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_103" id="Footnote_103"></a><a href="#FNanchor_103"><span class="label">103</span></a> Temple du Goût. <i>Œuvres</i>; xv. p. 95.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_104" id="Footnote_104"></a><a href="#FNanchor_104"><span class="label">104</span></a> Corr. 1732. <i>Œuvres,</i> Ixii. p. 218.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_105" id="Footnote_105"></a><a href="#FNanchor_105"><span class="label">105</span></a> The dates of the most famous of his tragedies are these: -<i>Œdipe</i>, 1718; <i>Brutus</i>, 1730; <i>Zaïre</i>, 1732; <i>Mort de César</i>, 1735; -<i>Alzire</i>, 1736; <i>Mahomet</i>, 1741; <i>Mérope</i>, 1743; <i>Sémiramis</i>, 1748; -<i>Tancrède</i>, 1760.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_106" id="Footnote_106"></a><a href="#FNanchor_106"><span class="label">106</span></a> Hettnerr, for instance: <i>Literaturgeschichte des 18ten -Jahrhunderts,</i> ii. 227.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_107" id="Footnote_107"></a><a href="#FNanchor_107"><span class="label">107</span></a> <i>Zaïire</i>, act i. sc. 1</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_108" id="Footnote_108"></a><a href="#FNanchor_108"><span class="label">108</span></a> <i>Essay on Hum. Und</i>. iv. 19, § 3.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_109" id="Footnote_109"></a><a href="#FNanchor_109"><span class="label">109</span></a> Discours sur la Tragédie, à Milord Bolingbrocke. -<i>Œuvres</i>, ii. p. 337. See also the preface to Œdipe. <i>Ib.</i> p. 73.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_110" id="Footnote_110"></a><a href="#FNanchor_110"><span class="label">110</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, ii. p. 339.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_111" id="Footnote_111"></a><a href="#FNanchor_111"><span class="label">111</span></a> Lett. sur les Anglais, xix. <i>Œuvres</i>, xxxv. p. 151.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_112" id="Footnote_112"></a><a href="#FNanchor_112"><span class="label">112</span></a> Introduction to Semiramis. <i>Œuvres</i>, v. p. 194. See also -Du Théâtre Anglais (1761). <i>Ib.</i> x. p. 88. Lettre à l’Acad. Franç. -(1778), iv. p. 186.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_113" id="Footnote_113"></a><a href="#FNanchor_113"><span class="label">113</span></a> <i>Voltaire: sechs Vorträge</i>. Von D. F. Strauss; p. 74. -The same idea is found in a speech of Wilhelm Meister, bk. iii. ch. 8.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_114" id="Footnote_114"></a><a href="#FNanchor_114"><span class="label">114</span></a> <i>Mém. de Marmontel</i>, liv. vii. ii. 245. For Diderot’s -criticism, see his <i>Mémoires et Œuvr. Inédites</i>, i. 234 (1830). For -D’Alembert’s, cf. Voltaire’s <i>Œuv.</i> lxxv. p. 118.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_115" id="Footnote_115"></a><a href="#FNanchor_115"><span class="label">115</span></a> <i>Decline and Fall</i>, c. 52, note 83.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_116" id="Footnote_116"></a><a href="#FNanchor_116"><span class="label">116</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, vols. x. and xi.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_117" id="Footnote_117"></a><a href="#FNanchor_117"><span class="label">117</span></a> Desnoiresterres, p. 342.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_118" id="Footnote_118"></a><a href="#FNanchor_118"><span class="label">118</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, ix. p. 382.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_119" id="Footnote_119"></a><a href="#FNanchor_119"><span class="label">119</span></a> <i>Soirées</i>, 4ième entretien.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_120" id="Footnote_120"></a><a href="#FNanchor_120"><span class="label">120</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, v. p. 189.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_121" id="Footnote_121"></a><a href="#FNanchor_121"><span class="label">121</span></a> Strauss, p. 79.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_122" id="Footnote_122"></a><a href="#FNanchor_122"><span class="label">122</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, xviii. p. 250.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_123" id="Footnote_123"></a><a href="#FNanchor_123"><span class="label">123</span></a> Commenced soon after 1730; published surreptitiously in -1755; published by Voltaire himself in 1762.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_124" id="Footnote_124"></a><a href="#FNanchor_124"><span class="label">124</span></a> <i>Vie de Voltaire</i>, p. 89.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_125" id="Footnote_125"></a><a href="#FNanchor_125"><span class="label">125</span></a> <i>Vie de Voltaire</i>, p. 88. On the same subject of -chastity, of Condorcet’s Works, vi. p. 264, and pp. 523-26; also a -passage in his correspondence, i. p. 221.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_126" id="Footnote_126"></a><a href="#FNanchor_126"><span class="label">126</span></a> Essai sur la Poésie Epique. <i>Œuvres</i>, xiii. p. 474</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_127" id="Footnote_127"></a><a href="#FNanchor_127"><span class="label">127</span></a> <i> Œuvres</i>, ii. p. 591.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_128" id="Footnote_128"></a><a href="#FNanchor_128"><span class="label">128</span></a> Burton’s <i>Life of David Hume</i>, ii. 440.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_129" id="Footnote_129"></a><a href="#FNanchor_129"><span class="label">129</span></a> Henriade, x. 485-491.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_130" id="Footnote_130"></a><a href="#FNanchor_130"><span class="label">130</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, lxxv. p.266.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_131" id="Footnote_131"></a><a href="#FNanchor_131"><span class="label">131</span></a> <i>Vie de Voltaire</i> p.60.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_132" id="Footnote_132"></a><a href="#FNanchor_132"><span class="label">132</span></a> See the late C. Bartholmess’s <i>Histoire Philosophique de -l’Académie de Prusse</i>, bk. ii.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_133" id="Footnote_133"></a><a href="#FNanchor_133"><span class="label">133</span></a> <i>Histoire Philosophique de l’Academie de Prusse</i>, bk. i. -230.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_134" id="Footnote_134"></a><a href="#FNanchor_134"><span class="label">134</span></a> Corr. 1750. <i>Œuvres,</i> 1xiv. p. 447.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_135" id="Footnote_135"></a><a href="#FNanchor_135"><span class="label">135</span></a> Jablonski.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_136" id="Footnote_136"></a><a href="#FNanchor_136"><span class="label">136</span></a> <i>Œuvres,</i> lxxv. p. 224.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_137" id="Footnote_137"></a><a href="#FNanchor_137"><span class="label">137</span></a> Corr. 1750. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxiv. p. 443.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_138" id="Footnote_138"></a><a href="#FNanchor_138"><span class="label">138</span></a> Carlyle’s <i>History of Frederick</i>, bk. xiii. ch. 5.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_139" id="Footnote_139"></a><a href="#FNanchor_139"><span class="label">139</span></a> <i>Œuvres de Voltaire</i>, lxxiii. p. 456.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_140" id="Footnote_140"></a><a href="#FNanchor_140"><span class="label">140</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> p. 813.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_141" id="Footnote_141"></a><a href="#FNanchor_141"><span class="label">141</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> p. 807.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_142" id="Footnote_142"></a><a href="#FNanchor_142"><span class="label">142</span></a> For Voltaire’s admirably expressed remonstrance, see -Corr. Oct. 1757. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxiii. p. 768.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_143" id="Footnote_143"></a><a href="#FNanchor_143"><span class="label">143</span></a> Martin’s <i>Hist, de France</i>, xv. p. 468.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_144" id="Footnote_144"></a><a href="#FNanchor_144"><span class="label">144</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, lxxv. p. 207 and p. 210.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_145" id="Footnote_145"></a><a href="#FNanchor_145"><span class="label">145</span></a> Goethe.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_146" id="Footnote_146"></a><a href="#FNanchor_146"><span class="label">146</span></a> Bartholmess, ii. 111.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_147" id="Footnote_147"></a><a href="#FNanchor_147"><span class="label">147</span></a> See Bartholmess, i. 168.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_148" id="Footnote_148"></a><a href="#FNanchor_148"><span class="label">148</span></a> <i>Œuvres de Voltaire</i>, lxxiii. p. 836.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_149" id="Footnote_149"></a><a href="#FNanchor_149"><span class="label">149</span></a> Corr. 1751. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxiv. p. 524.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_150" id="Footnote_150"></a><a href="#FNanchor_150"><span class="label">150</span></a> Corr. 1751. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxiv. p. 453.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_151" id="Footnote_151"></a><a href="#FNanchor_151"><span class="label">151</span></a> See Whewell’s <i>Hist. Ind, Sci</i>. bk. VII. ch. 4, § 7.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_152" id="Footnote_152"></a><a href="#FNanchor_152"><span class="label">152</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, lxiv. p. 53.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_153" id="Footnote_153"></a><a href="#FNanchor_153"><span class="label">153</span></a> See Comte’s <i>Phil. Pos</i>. i. 525-529.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_154" id="Footnote_154"></a><a href="#FNanchor_154"><span class="label">154</span></a> It may be worth mentioning that there actually existed in -the sixteenth century a French physician, who changed his real name of -Sans-Malice into Akakia, and left descendants so called. See M. Jal’s -<i>Dictionnaire Critique de Biographie et d’Histoire, </i> p. 19 (1869).</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_155" id="Footnote_155"></a><a href="#FNanchor_155"><span class="label">155</span></a> Corr. 1752. <i>Œuvres,</i> lxv. p. 138.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_156" id="Footnote_156"></a><a href="#FNanchor_156"><span class="label">156</span></a> Desnoiresterres, 394.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_157" id="Footnote_157"></a><a href="#FNanchor_157"><span class="label">157</span></a> Desnoiresterres, <i>Voltaire et Fréderic</i>, cc. 9 and 10. -Carlyle’s <i>Frederick</i>, bk. xvi. ch. 12.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_158" id="Footnote_158"></a><a href="#FNanchor_158"><span class="label">158</span></a> See Desnoiresterres, <i>Voltaire et Frédéric</i>, pp. 124-153, -including a facsimile of the fraudulently altered agreement. Also -Carlyle’s <i>Frederick</i>, bk. xvi. ch. 7.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_159" id="Footnote_159"></a><a href="#FNanchor_159"><span class="label">159</span></a> Carlyle’s <i>Frederick</i>, bk. xiii. ch. 5.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_160" id="Footnote_160"></a><a href="#FNanchor_160"><span class="label">160</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, lxxiii. p. 830 (1760).</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_161" id="Footnote_161"></a><a href="#FNanchor_161"><span class="label">161</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, lxxiii. pp. 835-837.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_162" id="Footnote_162"></a><a href="#FNanchor_162"><span class="label">162</span></a> Printed in vol. i. of the Baudouin edition, as <i>Mémoires -pour servir à la vie de M. Voltaire</i>, p. 212.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_163" id="Footnote_163"></a><a href="#FNanchor_163"><span class="label">163</span></a> Corr. 1758. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxxv. p. 80.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_164" id="Footnote_164"></a><a href="#FNanchor_164"><span class="label">164</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> p. 31.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_165" id="Footnote_165"></a><a href="#FNanchor_165"><span class="label">165</span></a> Corr. lxv. p. 23. Cf. also p. 83.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_166" id="Footnote_166"></a><a href="#FNanchor_166"><span class="label">166</span></a> Corr. lxv. p. 15.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_167" id="Footnote_167"></a><a href="#FNanchor_167"><span class="label">167</span></a> Corr. 1743. <i>Œuv.</i> lviii. p. 131. A very long and careful -list of the oppressions practised on writers in this reign is given in -Mr. Buckle’s <i>Hist. of Civilisation</i>, i. 675-681.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_168" id="Footnote_168"></a><a href="#FNanchor_168"><span class="label">168</span></a> Foisset’s <i>Corres. de Voltaire avec de Brasses</i>, etc., p. -318. Also Corr. 1757. <i>Œuvres,</i> Ixvi. pp. I-50 passim.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_169" id="Footnote_169"></a><a href="#FNanchor_169"><span class="label">169</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, Ixxv. p. 61.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_170" id="Footnote_170"></a><a href="#FNanchor_170"><span class="label">170</span></a> <i>Mémoires</i>, i. ch. in. p. 55.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_171" id="Footnote_171"></a><a href="#FNanchor_171"><span class="label">171</span></a> See for instance a letter to Mdlle. de Voland: <i>Mémoires, -Correspondance, et Ouv. inédites</i>, i. 99.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_172" id="Footnote_172"></a><a href="#FNanchor_172"><span class="label">172</span></a> 1 L’Auteur arrivant à sa terre. <i>Œuv.</i> xvii. 194.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_173" id="Footnote_173"></a><a href="#FNanchor_173"><span class="label">173</span></a> 2 Corr. 1757. <i>Œuv.</i> lxvi. p. 38.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_174" id="Footnote_174"></a><a href="#FNanchor_174"><span class="label">174</span></a> 3 <i>Ib.</i> p. 32.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_175" id="Footnote_175"></a><a href="#FNanchor_175"><span class="label">175</span></a> Corr. <i>Œuv.</i> lxxv. p. 249.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_176" id="Footnote_176"></a><a href="#FNanchor_176"><span class="label">176</span></a> 1 It was to the last-named book, one may suppose, that -Voltaire referred, when he asked how it was that Locke, after having so -profoundly traced the development of the human understanding, could so -degrade his own understanding in another work. (Diet Phil. s.v. Platon. -<i>(Œuv.</i> lvii. p. 369.)</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_177" id="Footnote_177"></a><a href="#FNanchor_177"><span class="label">177</span></a> 2 See Collins’s Apology for Free Debate and Liberty of -Writing, prefixed to the <i>Grounds and Reasons of Christianity</i>.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_178" id="Footnote_178"></a><a href="#FNanchor_178"><span class="label">178</span></a> Corr. 1768. <i>Œuv.</i> lxx. p. 140.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_179" id="Footnote_179"></a><a href="#FNanchor_179"><span class="label">179</span></a> The reader will find an account of them in M. Lanfrey’s -<i>L’Eglise et les Philosophes du 18ième Siècle</i>, pp. 131-135.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_180" id="Footnote_180"></a><a href="#FNanchor_180"><span class="label">180</span></a> Corr. <i>(Euv.</i> lxvi. p. 100.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_181" id="Footnote_181"></a><a href="#FNanchor_181"><span class="label">181</span></a> For the composition of this body see Voltaire’s Histoire -du Parlement de Paris. <i>Œuv.</i> xxxiv. Or in Martin s <i>Hist, de France,</i> -iv. 295; xii. 280; and xii. 53.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_182" id="Footnote_182"></a><a href="#FNanchor_182"><span class="label">182</span></a> Sikcle de Louis xv. c. 36. <i>Œuvres,</i> xxix. p. 3.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_183" id="Footnote_183"></a><a href="#FNanchor_183"><span class="label">183</span></a> Corr. <i>Œuv.</i> lxxv. p. 145.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_184" id="Footnote_184"></a><a href="#FNanchor_184"><span class="label">184</span></a> Corr. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxvii. p. 166.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_185" id="Footnote_185"></a><a href="#FNanchor_185"><span class="label">185</span></a> Mém. de Morellet, ch. iii. p. 62.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_186" id="Footnote_186"></a><a href="#FNanchor_186"><span class="label">186</span></a> Martin’s <i>Hist. de France</i>, xvi. p. 139.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_187" id="Footnote_187"></a><a href="#FNanchor_187"><span class="label">187</span></a> Relation de la Mort du Chevalier de la Barre, 1766; Le -Cri du Sang Innocent, 1775, <i>Œuv.</i> xxxix. p. 99.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_188" id="Footnote_188"></a><a href="#FNanchor_188"><span class="label">188</span></a> Corr. July 16, 1766. <i>Œuv.</i> Ixxv. p. 357.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_189" id="Footnote_189"></a><a href="#FNanchor_189"><span class="label">189</span></a> Corr. <i>Œuv.</i> Ixxv. p. 359.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_190" id="Footnote_190"></a><a href="#FNanchor_190"><span class="label">190</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> p. 361.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_191" id="Footnote_191"></a><a href="#FNanchor_191"><span class="label">191</span></a> Grimm, <i>Corr. Lit</i>. v. p. 133.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_192" id="Footnote_192"></a><a href="#FNanchor_192"><span class="label">192</span></a> Corr. 1774. <i>Œm.</i> lxxv. p. 627.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_193" id="Footnote_193"></a><a href="#FNanchor_193"><span class="label">193</span></a> <i>11</i>. p. 696.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_194" id="Footnote_194"></a><a href="#FNanchor_194"><span class="label">194</span></a> <i>Hist. de la Civilisation en Europe</i>, 14ième leçon, p. -405. Cf. also De Tocqueville’s <i>Ancien Régime</i>, liv. iii. ch. I.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_195" id="Footnote_195"></a><a href="#FNanchor_195"><span class="label">195</span></a> Corr. 1757-58. <i>Œuv.</i> lxvi. pp. 92, 102, 112, 185, etc.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_196" id="Footnote_196"></a><a href="#FNanchor_196"><span class="label">196</span></a> 1 Corr. <i>Œuv.</i> lxvii. p. 174; also lxxv. p. 170.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_197" id="Footnote_197"></a><a href="#FNanchor_197"><span class="label">197</span></a> 2 See ante, p. 19.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_198" id="Footnote_198"></a><a href="#FNanchor_198"><span class="label">198</span></a> 3 Chant i. v. 306.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_199" id="Footnote_199"></a><a href="#FNanchor_199"><span class="label">199</span></a> La Voix du Sage et du Peuple (1750). <i>Œuv.</i> xxxviii. p. -53.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_200" id="Footnote_200"></a><a href="#FNanchor_200"><span class="label">200</span></a> De Maistre, <i>Soirtées de St. Pétersbourg</i>, 4ième.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_201" id="Footnote_201"></a><a href="#FNanchor_201"><span class="label">201</span></a> <i>Œuvres,</i> xxxv. p. 37.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_202" id="Footnote_202"></a><a href="#FNanchor_202"><span class="label">202</span></a> Corr. 1773. <i>Œuvres,</i> lxxv. p. 614.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_203" id="Footnote_203"></a><a href="#FNanchor_203"><span class="label">203</span></a> Cf. Dict. Phil. s.v. Eglise. <i>Œuv.</i> pp. 221-248.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_204" id="Footnote_204"></a><a href="#FNanchor_204"><span class="label">204</span></a> Dieu et les Hommes, c. xiv. <i>Œuvres,</i> xlv. p. 318.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_205" id="Footnote_205"></a><a href="#FNanchor_205"><span class="label">205</span></a> Dict. Phil. s.v. Resurrection. <i>Œuvres</i>, lviii. p. 67.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_206" id="Footnote_206"></a><a href="#FNanchor_206"><span class="label">206</span></a> See, for instance, Tylor’s <i>Primitive Culture</i>, i. 32, -ii. 131, etc.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_207" id="Footnote_207"></a><a href="#FNanchor_207"><span class="label">207</span></a> Corr. 1770. <i>Œuvres,</i> lxxv. pp. 522, 526, etc. This -active spite prevented the accession of De Brosses to a seat in the -academy.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_208" id="Footnote_208"></a><a href="#FNanchor_208"><span class="label">208</span></a> Diet. Phil. s. v. Dieu. <i>Œuvres</i>, liv. p. 20.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_209" id="Footnote_209"></a><a href="#FNanchor_209"><span class="label">209</span></a> Dieu et les Hommes, c. iii. <i>Œuvres</i>, xlv. p. 270.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_210" id="Footnote_210"></a><a href="#FNanchor_210"><span class="label">210</span></a> Dict. Phil. s. v. Polythéisme. <i>Œuvres,</i> lvii. p. 391.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_211" id="Footnote_211"></a><a href="#FNanchor_211"><span class="label">211</span></a> Corr. 1761. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxvii. p. 186.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_212" id="Footnote_212"></a><a href="#FNanchor_212"><span class="label">212</span></a> Corr. 1758. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxvi. p. 200.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_213" id="Footnote_213"></a><a href="#FNanchor_213"><span class="label">213</span></a> <i>Nat. Hist. of Religion</i>, sect. iii.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_214" id="Footnote_214"></a><a href="#FNanchor_214"><span class="label">214</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> sect. iv.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_215" id="Footnote_215"></a><a href="#FNanchor_215"><span class="label">215</span></a> <i>Soirées de St. Pétersbourg,</i> vi. p. 403.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_216" id="Footnote_216"></a><a href="#FNanchor_216"><span class="label">216</span></a> Ante, ch. iii.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_217" id="Footnote_217"></a><a href="#FNanchor_217"><span class="label">217</span></a> See Milman’s <i>Hist. of Latin Christianity</i>, bk. ii. chap. -ii. and iii.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_218" id="Footnote_218"></a><a href="#FNanchor_218"><span class="label">218</span></a> Corr. 1761. <i> Œuvres,</i> lxvii. p. 74.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_219" id="Footnote_219"></a><a href="#FNanchor_219"><span class="label">219</span></a> Finlay’s <i>Greece under the Romans</i> (B.C. 146-A.D. 716), -pp. 146, 147.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_220" id="Footnote_220"></a><a href="#FNanchor_220"><span class="label">220</span></a> Poëme sur le Desastre de Lisbonne. <i>Œuvres,</i> xv. p. 53.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_221" id="Footnote_221"></a><a href="#FNanchor_221"><span class="label">221</span></a> Phil. de Newton. <i> Œuv</i>. xli. p. 46. See also the whole -chapter.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_222" id="Footnote_222"></a><a href="#FNanchor_222"><span class="label">222</span></a> A Mdme. du Châtelet sur la Philosophic de Newton (1738). -<i>Œuv.</i> xvii. p. 113.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_223" id="Footnote_223"></a><a href="#FNanchor_223"><span class="label">223</span></a> Ode sur le Fanatisme. <i>Œuvres</i>, xvi. p. 331.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_224" id="Footnote_224"></a><a href="#FNanchor_224"><span class="label">224</span></a> <i>Œuvres,</i> xv. pp. 39-62.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_225" id="Footnote_225"></a><a href="#FNanchor_225"><span class="label">225</span></a> Aristotle’s definition of εὐτραπελία, or wit, as -ὕβρις πεπαιδευμένη marks one of Voltaire’s chief talents with -entire accuracy.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_226" id="Footnote_226"></a><a href="#FNanchor_226"><span class="label">226</span></a> <i> Œuvres</i>, xv. p. 58.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_227" id="Footnote_227"></a><a href="#FNanchor_227"><span class="label">227</span></a> Corr. 1765. <i> Œuvres</i>, lxxv. p. 311.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_228" id="Footnote_228"></a><a href="#FNanchor_228"><span class="label">228</span></a> Lettres Ang. xiv. <i>Œuvres</i>, xxxv. p. 108.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_229" id="Footnote_229"></a><a href="#FNanchor_229"><span class="label">229</span></a> Corr. 1736. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxiii. p. 31.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_230" id="Footnote_230"></a><a href="#FNanchor_230"><span class="label">230</span></a> Dict. Phil. s. v. Locke. <i>Œvres</i>, lvi. p. 338.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_231" id="Footnote_231"></a><a href="#FNanchor_231"><span class="label">231</span></a> Holberg, quoted in Sainte-Beuve’s <i>Nouveaux Lundis</i>, ix. -26.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_232" id="Footnote_232"></a><a href="#FNanchor_232"><span class="label">232</span></a> Quinet’s <i>La Révolution</i>, i. 168.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_233" id="Footnote_233"></a><a href="#FNanchor_233"><span class="label">233</span></a> Essai sur les Mœurs, c. ii. <i>Œuvres</i>, xx. p. 344. See -also c. clxxxii. <i>Œuv.</i> xxiv. p. 162.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_234" id="Footnote_234"></a><a href="#FNanchor_234"><span class="label">234</span></a> Essai sur les Mœurs, pp. 1, 2.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_235" id="Footnote_235"></a><a href="#FNanchor_235"><span class="label">235</span></a> Essai sur les Mœurs, p. 9.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_236" id="Footnote_236"></a><a href="#FNanchor_236"><span class="label">236</span></a> <i>On the Study of History</i>, Letter i. ad finem.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_237" id="Footnote_237"></a><a href="#FNanchor_237"><span class="label">237</span></a> <i>Grandeur et Décadence des Romains</i>, c. xi.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_238" id="Footnote_238"></a><a href="#FNanchor_238"><span class="label">238</span></a> The dates of the publication of Voltaire’s historical -works are these:—<i>Charles XII</i>., 1731; <i>Siécle de Louis XIV</i>., 1752 (a -portion of it in 1739); <i>Annales de l’Empire</i>, 1753-54; <i>Essai sur les -Mœurs</i>, 1757 (surreptitiously in 1754); <i>Histoire de Russie</i>, Pt. I. in -1759, Pt. II. in 1763; <i>Precis du Siecle de Louis XV</i>., 1768; <i>Histoire -du Parlement de Paris</i>, 1769.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_239" id="Footnote_239"></a><a href="#FNanchor_239"><span class="label">239</span></a> Le Pyrrhonisme de l’Histoire, cc. xii. xiii. <i>Œuvres</i>, -xxxvi, p. 346; also p. 428.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_240" id="Footnote_240"></a><a href="#FNanchor_240"><span class="label">240</span></a> Corr. <i>Œuvres</i>, Ixvi. p. 17.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_241" id="Footnote_241"></a><a href="#FNanchor_241"><span class="label">241</span></a> Corr. 1757. <i>Œuvres,</i> Ixvi. p. 61.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_242" id="Footnote_242"></a><a href="#FNanchor_242"><span class="label">242</span></a> Corr. 1761. <i>Œuv.</i> lxvii. p. 228.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_243" id="Footnote_243"></a><a href="#FNanchor_243"><span class="label">243</span></a> <i>Œuvres,</i> xx. p. 10</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_244" id="Footnote_244"></a><a href="#FNanchor_244"><span class="label">244</span></a> Siècle de Louis XIV., c. i. <i>Œuvres</i>, xxv. p. 283.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_245" id="Footnote_245"></a><a href="#FNanchor_245"><span class="label">245</span></a> Corr. 1735. <i>Œuvres</i>, Ixii. pp. 455, 456.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_246" id="Footnote_246"></a><a href="#FNanchor_246"><span class="label">246</span></a> <i>Œuvres,</i> xxxvi. pp. 428-434 (1768).</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_247" id="Footnote_247"></a><a href="#FNanchor_247"><span class="label">247</span></a> Diet. Phil. s.v. Guerre. <i>Œuvres</i>, lv. pp. 488, 489.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_248" id="Footnote_248"></a><a href="#FNanchor_248"><span class="label">248</span></a> <i>Esprit des Lois</i>, x. ii.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_249" id="Footnote_249"></a><a href="#FNanchor_249"><span class="label">249</span></a> <i>Œuvres,</i> lv. p. 490.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_250" id="Footnote_250"></a><a href="#FNanchor_250"><span class="label">250</span></a> Corr. <i>Œuvres,</i> lxxv. p. 460.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_251" id="Footnote_251"></a><a href="#FNanchor_251"><span class="label">251</span></a> See a letter of the king of Prussia in Voltaire’s -<i>Works</i>, lxxiv. p. 144, etc.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_252" id="Footnote_252"></a><a href="#FNanchor_252"><span class="label">252</span></a> C. xxiii. <i>Œuvres,</i> xxi. p. 9.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_253" id="Footnote_253"></a><a href="#FNanchor_253"><span class="label">253</span></a> <i>Mœurs</i>, like ἤθη is untranslatable by any -single English word. The full title is <i>Essai sur les Mœurs et l’Esprit -des Nations, et sur les principaux faits de l’Histoire depuís -Charlemagne jusqu’ à Louis XIII</i>.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_254" id="Footnote_254"></a><a href="#FNanchor_254"><span class="label">254</span></a> C. vi. <i>Œuvres</i>, xx. p. 396.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_255" id="Footnote_255"></a><a href="#FNanchor_255"><span class="label">255</span></a> C. xi. <i>Œuvres</i>, xx. p. 455.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_256" id="Footnote_256"></a><a href="#FNanchor_256"><span class="label">256</span></a> See on this interesting subject Finlay’s <i>Greece under -the Romans</i> (B.C. 146-A.D. 716), pp. 156, 157.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_257" id="Footnote_257"></a><a href="#FNanchor_257"><span class="label">257</span></a> <i>Childe Harold</i>, iii. 106 and 107.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_258" id="Footnote_258"></a><a href="#FNanchor_258"><span class="label">258</span></a> C. ix. <i>Œuvres</i>, xx. p. 445.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_259" id="Footnote_259"></a><a href="#FNanchor_259"><span class="label">259</span></a> C. lviii. <i>Œuvres</i>, xxi. pp. 328-341.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_260" id="Footnote_260"></a><a href="#FNanchor_260"><span class="label">260</span></a> Quelques petites Hardiesses, etc. <i>Œuvres</i>, xxxvi. p. -445.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_261" id="Footnote_261"></a><a href="#FNanchor_261"><span class="label">261</span></a> C. xlii. <i>Œuvres</i>, xxi. p. 143.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_262" id="Footnote_262"></a><a href="#FNanchor_262"><span class="label">262</span></a> Notes sur le Désastre de Lisbonne. <i>Œuvres</i>, xv. p. 57.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_263" id="Footnote_263"></a><a href="#FNanchor_263"><span class="label">263</span></a> He ridiculed some of these in one of his most humane and -otherwise excellent pieces, L’Homme aux Quarante Ecus (1767). <i>Œuv.</i> -lix. p. 395.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_264" id="Footnote_264"></a><a href="#FNanchor_264"><span class="label">264</span></a> <i>The Republic</i>, 1577. <i>Esprit des Lois</i>, 1748.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_265" id="Footnote_265"></a><a href="#FNanchor_265"><span class="label">265</span></a> <i>Œuv.</i> lxvii. p. 94.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_266" id="Footnote_266"></a><a href="#FNanchor_266"><span class="label">266</span></a> A drawing of Voltaire’s château at Ferney is given in -Blancheton’s <i>Vues Pittoresques des Châteaux de France</i> (Paris, 1826), -Part II. The château is still standing, and the prospect from the -terrace repays a visit, apart from the interest of association. The -church is now a receptacle for wine-casks.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_267" id="Footnote_267"></a><a href="#FNanchor_267"><span class="label">267</span></a> The reader who is curious as to the most indifferent -details, will find what he seeks in a singular monument of painstaking -spleen, entitled <i>Ménage et Finances de Voltaire</i>, by M. Nicolardot -(Paris, 1854).</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_268" id="Footnote_268"></a><a href="#FNanchor_268"><span class="label">268</span></a> Corr. 1761. <i>Œuv.</i> lxvii. p. 190.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_269" id="Footnote_269"></a><a href="#FNanchor_269"><span class="label">269</span></a> <i>Corr. Lit.</i> vi. p. 272; v. p. 385.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_270" id="Footnote_270"></a><a href="#FNanchor_270"><span class="label">270</span></a> Grimm, <i>Corr. Lit.</i> v. p. 393.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_271" id="Footnote_271"></a><a href="#FNanchor_271"><span class="label">271</span></a> Corr. 1761. <i>Œuv.</i> lxxv. p. 158.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_272" id="Footnote_272"></a><a href="#FNanchor_272"><span class="label">272</span></a> Born 1710; lost her first husband 1744; married one -Vivier in 1779; died 1790.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_273" id="Footnote_273"></a><a href="#FNanchor_273"><span class="label">273</span></a> Corr. 1770. <i>Œuv.</i> lxx. p. 175.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_274" id="Footnote_274"></a><a href="#FNanchor_274"><span class="label">274</span></a> Corr. 1771-72. <i>Œuv.</i> lxxiv. pp. 733 and 737.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_275" id="Footnote_275"></a><a href="#FNanchor_275"><span class="label">275</span></a> Corr. 1772. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxxi. p. 496. The marked copy is -still in existence, along with the rest of Voltaire’s books, at St. -Petersburg; see Lavergne’s <i>Economistes du 18ième Siècle</i>, p. 285.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_276" id="Footnote_276"></a><a href="#FNanchor_276"><span class="label">276</span></a> Corr. 1761. <i>CEuvres</i>, Ixvii. p. 166.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_277" id="Footnote_277"></a><a href="#FNanchor_277"><span class="label">277</span></a> <i>(Euvres,</i> Ixxv. pp. 64, 69, etc.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_278" id="Footnote_278"></a><a href="#FNanchor_278"><span class="label">278</span></a> Corr. 1770. <i>(Euvres,</i> Ixxi, p. 18.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_279" id="Footnote_279"></a><a href="#FNanchor_279"><span class="label">279</span></a> <i>Œuvres de Turgot</i>, ii. pp. 814-825.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_280" id="Footnote_280"></a><a href="#FNanchor_280"><span class="label">280</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> p. 824.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_281" id="Footnote_281"></a><a href="#FNanchor_281"><span class="label">281</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, lxxv. p. 331.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_282" id="Footnote_282"></a><a href="#FNanchor_282"><span class="label">282</span></a> <i>Œuvres,</i> lxxv. p. 33.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_283" id="Footnote_283"></a><a href="#FNanchor_283"><span class="label">283</span></a> <i>Œuvres de Condorcet</i>, iv. pp. 33, 34, and vi. pp. -187-189.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_284" id="Footnote_284"></a><a href="#FNanchor_284"><span class="label">284</span></a> Corr. 1768. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxxv. p. 426.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_285" id="Footnote_285"></a><a href="#FNanchor_285"><span class="label">285</span></a> Corr. 1768. <i>(Euvres,</i> Ixx. pp. 198-199.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_286" id="Footnote_286"></a><a href="#FNanchor_286"><span class="label">286</span></a> Corr. 1769. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxx. pp. 434, 435; lxxv. p. 452. -Grimm’s <i>Corr. Lit.</i> vi. p. 231.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_287" id="Footnote_287"></a><a href="#FNanchor_287"><span class="label">287</span></a> Condorcet, <i>Vie de Voltaire</i>, p. 126.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_288" id="Footnote_288"></a><a href="#FNanchor_288"><span class="label">288</span></a> Corr. <i>Œuvres,</i> Ixxi. pp. 25, 27, 30, etc.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_289" id="Footnote_289"></a><a href="#FNanchor_289"><span class="label">289</span></a> Grimm, <i>Corr. Lit</i>. vi. p. 358.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_290" id="Footnote_290"></a><a href="#FNanchor_290"><span class="label">290</span></a> Grimm, <i>Corr. Lit</i>. vi. p. 358.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_291" id="Footnote_291"></a><a href="#FNanchor_291"><span class="label">291</span></a> <i>Confessions</i>, pt. i. liv. v. Date of 1736.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_292" id="Footnote_292"></a><a href="#FNanchor_292"><span class="label">292</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, lxxv. p. 182.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_293" id="Footnote_293"></a><a href="#FNanchor_293"><span class="label">293</span></a> Corr. 1762. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxxv. p. 188.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_294" id="Footnote_294"></a><a href="#FNanchor_294"><span class="label">294</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, lxvii. p. 432.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_295" id="Footnote_295"></a><a href="#FNanchor_295"><span class="label">295</span></a> Condorcet, p. 170.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_296" id="Footnote_296"></a><a href="#FNanchor_296"><span class="label">296</span></a> Lamartine’s <i>Girondins</i>, iv. v.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_297" id="Footnote_297"></a><a href="#FNanchor_297"><span class="label">297</span></a> See his correspondence with D’Alembert (<i>Œuvres</i>, lxxv.) -until 1760, the date of D’Alembert’s separation from Diderot and the -Encyclopædia.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_298" id="Footnote_298"></a><a href="#FNanchor_298"><span class="label">298</span></a> <i>Phil. Pos.</i> v. 520.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_299" id="Footnote_299"></a><a href="#FNanchor_299"><span class="label">299</span></a> <i>Essais sur les règnes de Claude et Néron</i>, vol. vi. pp. -256, 290, and 191 (Ed. 1819).</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_300" id="Footnote_300"></a><a href="#FNanchor_300"><span class="label">300</span></a> Corr. 1766. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxxv. p. 364.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_301" id="Footnote_301"></a><a href="#FNanchor_301"><span class="label">301</span></a> Condorcet, p. 124.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_302" id="Footnote_302"></a><a href="#FNanchor_302"><span class="label">302</span></a> Martin’s <i>Hist. de France</i>, xv. pp. 569-572.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_303" id="Footnote_303"></a><a href="#FNanchor_303"><span class="label">303</span></a> Corr. 1757. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxvi. p. 51.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_304" id="Footnote_304"></a><a href="#FNanchor_304"><span class="label">304</span></a> Corr. 1756. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxv. p. 568; lxvi. pp. 1, 19, 20, -40.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_305" id="Footnote_305"></a><a href="#FNanchor_305"><span class="label">305</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, lxvi. p. 51.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_306" id="Footnote_306"></a><a href="#FNanchor_306"><span class="label">306</span></a> Corr. 1772. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxxiv. p. 36.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_307" id="Footnote_307"></a><a href="#FNanchor_307"><span class="label">307</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> p. 93, etc.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_308" id="Footnote_308"></a><a href="#FNanchor_308"><span class="label">308</span></a> See Morellet, i. pp. 147, 159, etc.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_309" id="Footnote_309"></a><a href="#FNanchor_309"><span class="label">309</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, lxxv. p. 641.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_310" id="Footnote_310"></a><a href="#FNanchor_310"><span class="label">310</span></a> Ode sur le Passé et le Présent (1775). <i>Œuvres</i>, xvi. p. -415.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_311" id="Footnote_311"></a><a href="#FNanchor_311"><span class="label">311</span></a> Eptîre à un Homme (1776). <i>Œuvres</i>, xvii. p. 327.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_312" id="Footnote_312"></a><a href="#FNanchor_312"><span class="label">312</span></a> Corr. 1776. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxxii. pp. 403, 409, 412, etc.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_313" id="Footnote_313"></a><a href="#FNanchor_313"><span class="label">313</span></a> April 2, 1764. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxviii. p. 220.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_314" id="Footnote_314"></a><a href="#FNanchor_314"><span class="label">314</span></a> Eloge historique de la Raison (<i>or</i> Voyage de la Raison). -<i>Œuvres</i>, lx. p. 478.</p></div> - -<p>THE END.</p> - -<p><i>Printed by</i> R. & R. 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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: Voltaire - -Author: John Morley - -Release Date: September 23, 2012 [EBook #40846] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VOLTAIRE *** - - - - -Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Turgut Dincer and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - - - - - - - - -VOLTAIRE - -BY JOHN MORLEY - -LONDON MACMILLAN AND CO. 1886 - -_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, _Edinburgh_. - - - - -NOTE. - - -The edition to which the references are made in the following pages is -that published by Baudouin in 1826, in seventy-five volumes. This -edition is to be distinguished from that known as the first Baudouin -edition, published 1824-34, in ninety-seven volumes. The extent of the -difference between them, which is entirely in favour of the more -voluminous form, may be seen in M. Quérard’s _Bibliographie -Voltairienne_ (p. 107). The large number of complete and elaborate -editions of Voltaire’s works, which were undertaken and executed in the -years between the overthrow of the Empire and the overthrow of the -Monarchy in 1830, is one of the most striking facts in the history of -books. - -1872. - - - - -CONTENTS. - - - CHAPTER I. - - PRELIMINARY. - - PAGE - - Importance of Voltaire’s name 1 - - Catholicism, Calvinism, and the Renaissance 1 - - Voltairism the Renaissance of the eighteenth century 4 - - His power the result of his sincerity, penetration, and - courage 6 - - Different tempers proper for different eras 11 - - Voltaire’s freedom from intellectual cowardice 12 - - And from worldly indifference to truth and justice 13 - - Reason and humanity only a single word to him 15 - - His position towards the purely literary life 17 - - Enervating regrets that the movement had not a less - violent leader 19 - - The share of chance in providing leaders 20 - - Combination of favourable circumstances in Voltaire’s - case 22 - - Occasion and necessity of the movement 24 - - Age of Lewis XIV. entirely loyal to its own ideas 25 - - Subsequent discredit of these ideas 26 - - Preparation for abandonment of the old system by - Descartes and Bayle 29 - - Voltaire continues the work, not wholly to the disadvantage - of the old system 31 - - No ascetic element in the Voltairean revolt 33 - - Why primarily an intellectual movement 34 - - The hostile memory of Christians for it 37 - - Comte’s estimate of it 37 - - The estimate of culture 40 - - Some pleas on the other side 40 - - - CHAPTER II. - - ENGLISH INFLUENCES. - - Significance of the journey to England 44 - - His birth and youthful history 45 - - Ninon de l’Enclos, Chaulieu, and the Regency 46 - - Manner of life from 1716 49 - - Affront from the Chevalier de Rohan 53 - - Leaves France 54 - - Had previously been no more than a vague _esprit fort_ 56 - - Le Pour et le Contre 57 - - Freethinking a reality in England 58 - - Condorcet’s account of the effect of England upon Voltaire 59 - - Social and political consequence of men of letters 59 - - Evil effect of this in France 60 - - Freedom of speech 61 - - Newton’s discoveries 65 - - Their true influence on Voltaire 67 - - Locke 67 - - Profound effect of Lockian common-sense on Voltaire 70 - - Contrast between social condition of England and France 73 - - Voltaire’s imperfect appreciation of the value and working - of a popular government 76 - - Confounds two distinct conceptions of civil liberty 79 - - A confusion shared by most of his countrymen 79 - - The Church of England 82 - - The Quakers 84 - - Voltaire’s diligence in study of English literature 86 - - And in mastering one side of the deistical controversy 88 - - Through the influence of the deists on Voltaire, the genius - of Protestantism entered France 91 - - Limited consistency of Voltaire’s philosophy 93 - - English deism contrasted with that of Leibnitz and with - the atheism of D’Holbach 95 - - - CHAPTER III. - - LITERATURE. - - Most just way of criticising character 98 - - Some traits in Voltaire 99 - - Acquaintance with the Marquise du Châtelet 101 - - Her character 103 - - Voltaire’s placableness 105 - - His money transactions 107 - - The life at Cirey 111 - - His attempts in physical science 116 - - Literature his true calling 117 - - Qualities of his style 119 - - Significance of literature as a profession 125 - - Voltaire’s dramatic art 126 - - Not deliberately art with a purpose 126 - - His plays a prolongation of the tradition of the great age - of Lewis XIV. 129 - - His criticism on Hamlet 132 - - Merits of the French classic drama 134 - - Voltaire compared with Corneille and Racine 136 - - His ideas of dramatic renovation 140 - - His Roman subjects 141 - - His enlargement of dramatic themes 143 - - Failure in comedy 144 - - Arising from want of deep humour 145 - - The Pucelle: offends two modern sentiments 147 - - Its true significance 148 - - Peculiarity of the licence of the eighteenth century 149 - - Sophisms by which it was defended 149 - - Contempt for the middle ages 152 - - The Henriade 153 - - - CHAPTER IV. - - BERLIN. - - Death of Madame du Châtelet 158 - - Voltaire and the court 158 - - He goes to Berlin 161 - - Character of literary activity in Prussia 161 - - The two movements of which Voltaire and the king were - chiefs 162 - - Character of Frederick the Great 166 - - Breaking up of the European state-system in 1740 171 - - The first shock in 1733 172 - - Frederick raises international relations into the region of - real matter 174 - - The situation defined 175 - - Two conceptions of progress 177 - - From which of them the result of the Seven Years’ War - is seen to be truly progressive 180 - - The Jesuits 181 - - Their repulse after the humiliation of Austria 182 - - Frederick’s probable unconsciousness of the ultimate bearings - of his policy 184 - - His type of monarchy 186 - - He sprang doubly from the critical school 188 - - Other statesmen affected by this school 188 - - Injustice of stamping Voltaire’s influence as merely - destructive 191 - - Frederick the Great and France 193 - - Voltaire’s life at Berlin 194 - - Maupertuis 196 - - Collision between him and Voltaire 198 - - The Diatribe of Doctor Akakia 199 - - Voltaire’s departure from Berlin 201 - - The Frankfort episode 202 - - Unfortunate revelations in the Hirschel affair 206 - - Relations between Frederick and Voltaire henceforth 207 - - Voltaire fears to return to Paris 210 - - Geneva 211 - - The critical school not specially insensible to the picturesque 212 - - Voltaire buys Ferney (1758) 215 - - - CHAPTER V. - - RELIGION. - - (1) _Conditions of the Voltairean attack_. - - Two elements underlying Voltaire’s enmity to Christianity 216 - - Failure of Catholicism as a social force 217 - - Utility of Protestantism in softening the transition 218 - - Compared with repression of free debate in France 219 - - Voltaire did not assail modern theosophies 221 - - The good inextricably bound up with the bad in the old - system 224 - - Jesuits and Jansenists 225 - - Voltaire declared the latter to be the worst foes 227 - - Morellet’s Manual for Inquisitors 228 - - A reflex of the criminal jurisprudence of the time 229 - - Cases of Rochette, Calas, and Sirven 229 - - Of La Barre 230 - - Fervour of Voltaire’s indignation 232 - - Protests against cynical acquiescence 233 - - Disappointment of the philosophers, and their courage 235 - - The reactionary fanaticism a proof of the truth of Voltaire’s - allegations 237 - - Necessity of transforming spiritual basis of thought 238 - - Voltaire’s abstention from the temporal sphere 239 - - His chief defect as leader of the attack 241 - - Crippling his historic imagination 243 - - The just historic calm impossible, until Voltaire had - pressed a previous question 245 - - - (2) _His method_. - - His instruments purely literary and dialectical 248 - - Leaves metaphysics of religion, and fastens on alleged - records 250 - - The other side fell back on the least worthy parts of their - system 251 - - Hence the narrow and literal character of Voltaire’s - objections 252 - - His attack essentially the attack of the English deists 255 - - Rationalistic questions in scriptural and ecclesiastical - records 257 - - In doctrine 258 - - Argument from comparison with other myths 259 - - His neglect of primitive religions 260 - - His conviction that monotheism is the first religious - form 261 - - Difficulties which he thus passed over 264 - - Hume’s view 266 - - Voltaire did not assail the general ideas of Christianity 267 - - Such as the idea of evil inherent in matter 270 - - And the idea of a deity as then conceived 271 - - Hence the acerbity of the debate 273 - - And the want of permanence in Voltaire’s writings compared - with Bossuet or Pascal 274 - - His criticism on Dante 275 - - - (3) _His approximation to a solution_. - - Voltairean deism 276 - - Never accepted by the mass of men 278 - - Nor is it likely to be accepted by them 279 - - Voltaire’s imperfect adherence to the deistical idea 280 - - Reasons for this 282 - - Does not accept belief in the immortality of the soul 286 - - Asserts less than Rousseau, and denies less than - Diderot 287 - - A popular movement begun by Bayle’s Dictionary 288 - - Compromising method of Rousseau 290 - - Voltaire’s view of an atheistical society 291 - - His belief in the social sufficiency of an analytic spirit 292 - - Synthesis necessary, but more than one is possible 293 - - - CHAPTER VI. - - HISTORY. - - Extraordinary activity in historical composition in the - eighteenth century 295 - - Explanation of it 296 - - Circumstances under which Voltaire thought about the - philosophy of history 297 - - The three historical styles 299 - - Voltaire’s histories of two kinds 301 - - Rousseau’s disregard for history 302 - - Voltaire’s acute sense 303 - - His diligence in seeking authentic materials 305 - - Throws persons and personal interests into the second place 307 - - Changed view of the true subject matter of history 308 - - War always an object of Voltaire’s antipathy 311 - - His distrust of diplomacy 315 - - Bossuet’s Discourse on Universal History 316 - - Introduction to the Essay on Manners 318 - - Irrational disparagement of the Jews 319 - - Panegyric on the Emperor Julian 320 - - False view of the history of the church 322 - - Avoids the error of expressing barbarous activity in terms - of civilisation 323 - - Real merit of Voltaire’s panorama 325 - - He was not alive to the necessity of scientifically studying - the conditions of the social union 326 - - - CHAPTER VII. - - FERNEY. - - His life at Ferney 329 - - Madame Denis 329 - - His vast correspondence 333 - - Consulted by Vauvenargues, Chastellux, Turgot, and - others 334 - - Complaisance of his letters 336 - - Sophistical defence of the practice of denying authorship 339 - - Voltaire’s just alarm for his own safety 340 - - His Easter communion of 1768 341 - - Further proceedings with the Bishop of Annecy 342 - - Voltaire made temporal father of the Capucins of Gex 344 - - Voltaire’s influence on Rousseau 345 - - Difference between their respective schools 347 - - Their rivalry represents the social dead-lock of the time 348 - - Voltaire the more far-sighted of the two 350 - - Two signal effects of Rousseau’s teaching 352 - - Diderot and the Encyclopædia 354 - - Voltaire’s constant efforts to secure redress for the victims - of wrong 357 - - Calas, Sirven, La Barre 357 - - Count Lally 358 - - Admiral Byng 359 - - His interest in the pretended liberation of Greece 360 - - In the partition of Poland 361 - - In the accession of Turgot to power 362 - - Visit to Paris and death 363 - - -τὰ μὲν γὰρ σωφρόνων ἤθη σφόδρα μὲν εὐλαβῆ καὶ δίκαια καὶ σωτήρια, -δριμύτητος δὲ καί τινος ἰταμότητος ὀξείας καὶ πρακτικῆς ἐνδεῖται.... τὰ -δ’ ἀνδρεῖά γε αὖ πρὸς μὲν τὸ δίκαιον καὶ εὐλαβὲς ἐκείνων ἐπιδεέστερα, -τὸ δ’ ἐν ταῖς πράξεσι διαφερόντως ἴσχει. πάντα δὲ καλῶς γίγνεσθαι τὰ περὶ -τὰς πόλεις, τούτοιν μὴ παραγενομένοιν ἀμφοῖν, ἀδύνατον.—_Politicus_, 311 A. - -πότερον τοὺς ἀνδρείους θαῤῥαλέους λέγεις, ἢ ἄλλο τι; -Καὶ ἴτας γε, ἔφη, ἐφ’ ἃ οἱ πολλοὶ φοβοῦντας ἰέvαι.—_Protagoras_, 349 E. - - - - -CHAPTER I. - -PRELIMINARY. - - -When the right sense of historical proportion is more fully developed in -men’s minds, the name of Voltaire will stand out like the names of the -great decisive movements in the European advance, like the Revival of -Learning, or the Reformation. The existence, character, and career of -this extraordinary person constituted in themselves a new and prodigious -era. The peculiarities of his individual genius changed the mind and -spiritual conformation of France, and in a less degree of the whole of -the West, with as far-spreading and invincible an effect as if the work -had been wholly done, as it was actually aided, by the sweep of -deep-lying collective forces. A new type of belief, and of its shadow, -disbelief, was stamped by the impression of his character and work into -the intelligence and feeling of his own and the following times. We may -think of Voltairism in France somewhat as we think of Catholicism or the -Renaissance or Calvinism. It was one of the cardinal liberations of the -growing race, one of the emphatic manifestations of some portion of the -minds of men, which an immediately foregoing system and creed had either -ignored or outraged. - -Christianity originally and generically at once awoke and satisfied a -spiritual craving for a higher, purer, less torn and fragmentary being, -than is permitted to sons of men on the troubled and corrupt earth. It -disclosed to them a gracious, benevolent, and all-powerful being, who -would one day redress all wrongs and recompense all pain, and who asked -no more from them meanwhile than that they should prove their love of -him whom they had not seen, by love of their brothers whom they had -seen. Its great glory was to have raised the moral dignity and -self-respect of the many to a level which had hitherto been reached only -by a few. Calvin, again, like some stern and austere step-son of the -Christian God, jealous of the divine benignity and abused -open-handedness of his father’s house, with word of merciless power set -free all those souls that were more anxious to look the tremendous facts -of necessity and evil and punishment full in the face, than to reconcile -them with any theory of the infinite mercy and loving-kindness of a -supreme creator. Men who had been enervated or helplessly perplexed by a -creed that had sunk into ignoble optimism and self-indulgence, became -conscious of new fibre in their moral structure, when they realised life -as a long wrestling with unseen and invincible forces of grace, -election, and fore-destiny, the agencies of a being whose ways and -dealings, whose contradictory attributes of unjust justice and loving -vindictiveness, it was not for man, who is a worm and the son of a worm, -to reconcile with the puny logic of human words, or the shallow -consistency of human ideas. Catholicism was a movement of mysticism, and -so in darker regions was the Calvinism which in so many important -societies displaced it. Each did much to raise the measure of worth and -purify the spiritual self-respect of mankind, and each also discouraged -and depressed the liberal play of intelligence, the cheerful energizing -of reason, the bright and many-sided workings of fancy and imagination. -Human nature, happily for us, ever presses against this system or that, -and forces ways of escape for itself into freedom and light. The -scientific reason urgently seeks instruments and a voice; the creative -imagination unconsciously takes form to itself in manifold ways, of all -of which the emotions can give good account to the understanding. Hence -the glorious suffusion of light which the ardent desire of men brought -over the face of Europe in the latter half of the fifteenth century. -Before Luther and Calvin in their separate ways brought into splendid -prominence their new ideas of moral order, more than two generations of -men had almost ceased to care whether there be any moral order or not, -and had plunged with the delight of enchantment among ideas of grace and -beauty, whose forms were old on the earth, but which were full of -seemingly inexhaustible novelty and freshness to men, who had once -begun to receive and to understand all the ever-living gifts of Grecian -art and architecture and letters. If the Reformation, the great revival -of northern Europe, was the enfranchisement of the individual from -bondage to a collective religious tradition that had lost its virtue, -the Renaissance, the earlier revival of southern Europe, was the -admission to participate in the noblest collective tradition of free -intellect which the achievements of the race could then hand down. - -Voltairism may stand for the name of the Renaissance of the eighteenth -century, for that name takes in all the serious haltings and -shortcomings of this strange movement, as well as all its terrible fire, -swiftness, sincerity, and strength. The rays from Voltaire’s burning and -far-shining spirit no sooner struck upon the genius of the time, seated -dark and dead like the black stone of Memnon’s statue, than the clang of -the breaking chord was heard through Europe, and men awoke in new day -and more spacious air. The sentimentalist has proclaimed him a mere -mocker. To the critic of the schools, ever ready with compendious label, -he is the revolutionary destructive. To each alike of the countless -orthodox sects his name is the symbol for the prevailing of the gates of -hell. Erudition figures him as shallow and a trifler; culture condemns -him for pushing his hatred of spiritual falsehood much too seriously; -Christian charity feels constrained to unmask a demon from the depths of -the pit. The plain men of the earth, who are apt to measure the merits -of a philosopher by the strength of his sympathy with existing sources -of comfort, would generally approve the saying of Dr. Johnson, that he -would sooner sign a sentence for Rousseau’s transportation than that of -any felon who had gone from the Old Bailey these many years, and that -the difference between him and Voltaire was so slight, that ‘it would be -difficult to settle the proportion of iniquity between them.’ Those of -all schools and professions who have the temperament which mistakes -strong expression for strong judgment, and violent phrase for grounded -conviction, have been stimulated by antipathy against Voltaire to a -degree that in any of them with latent turns for humour must now and -then have even stirred a kind of reacting sympathy. The rank vocabulary -of malice and hate, that noisome fringe of the history of opinion, has -received many of its most fulminant terms from critics of Voltaire, -along with some from Voltaire himself, who unwisely did not always -refuse to follow an adversary’s bad example. - -Yet Voltaire was the very eye of eighteenth-century 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 fourscore volumes which he -wrote are the monument, as they were in some sort the instrument, of a -new renascence. They are the fruit and representation of a spirit of -encyclopædic 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. His works as much as those of any man -that ever lived and thought are truly his own. It is not given, we all -know, even to the most original and daring of leaders to be without -precursors, and Voltaire’s march was prepared for him before he was -born, as it is for all mortals. Yet he impressed on all he said, on good -words and bad alike, a marked autochthonic quality, as of the -self-raised spontaneous products of some miraculous soil, from which -prodigies and portents spring. Many of his ideas were in the air, and -did not belong to him peculiarly; but so strangely rapid and perfect was -his assimilation of them, so vigorous and minutely penetrative was the -quality of his understanding, so firm and independent his initiative, -that even these were instantly stamped with the express image of his -personality. In a word, Voltaire’s work from first to last was alert -with unquenchable life. Some of it, much of it, has ceased to be alive -for us now in all that belongs to its deeper significance, yet we -recognise that none of it was ever the dreary still-birth of a mind of -hearsays. There is no mechanical transmission of untested bits of -current coin. In the realm of mere letters, Voltaire is one of the -little band of great monarchs, and in style he remains of the supreme -potentates. But literary variety and perfection, however admirable, like -all purely literary qualities, are a fragile and secondary good which -the world is very willing to let die, where it has not been truly -begotten and engendered of living forces. - -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. -Fontenelle was both brilliant and far-sighted, but he was cold, and one -of those who love ease and a safe hearth, and carefully shun the din, -turmoil, and danger, of the great battle. 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. - -This is the temper which, when the times are auspicious, and the -fortunes of the fight do not hurry the combatant to dungeon or stake, -raises him into a force instead of leaving him the empty shadow of a -literary name. There is something in our nature which leads men to -listen coolly to the most eager hints and pregnant innuendoes of -scepticism, on the lips of teachers who still in their own persons keep -adroitly away from the fiery darts of the officially orthodox. The same -something, perhaps a moral relish for veritable proofs of honesty, -perhaps a quality of animal temperament, drives men to grasp even a -crudity with fervour, when they see it wielded like a battle-axe against -spiritual oppression. A man is always so much more than his words, as we -feel every day of our lives; what he says has its momentum indefinitely -multiplied, or reduced to nullity, by the impression that the hearer for -good reasons or bad happens to have formed of the spirit and moral size -of the speaker. There are things enough to be said of Voltaire’s moral -size, and no attempt is made in these pages to dissemble in how much he -was condemnable. It is at least certain that he hated tyranny, that he -refused to lay up his hatred privily in his heart, and insisted on -giving his abhorrence a voice, and tempering for his just rage a fine -sword, very fatal to those who laid burdens too hard to be borne upon -the conscience and life of men. Voltaire’s contemporaries felt this. -They were stirred to the quick by the sight and sound and thorough -directness of those ringing blows. The strange and sinister method of -assault upon religion which we of a later day watch with wondering eyes, -and which consists in wearing the shield and device of a faith, and -industriously shouting the cry of a church, the more effectually to -reduce the faith to a vague futility, and its outward ordering to a -piece of ingeniously reticulated pretence; this method of attack might -make even the champions of prevailing beliefs long for the shrewd -thrusts, the flashing scorn, the relentless fire, the downright -grapples, with which the hated Voltaire pushed on his work of ‘crushing -the Infamous.’ If he was bitter, he was still direct. If he was often a -mocker in form, he was always serious in meaning and laborious in -matter. If he was unflinching against theology, he always paid religion -respect enough to treat it as the most important of all subjects. The -contest was real, and not our present pantomimic stage-play, in which -muffled phantoms of debate are made to gesticulate inexpressible things -in portentously significant silence. The battle was demoralized by its -virulence. True; but is this worse than to have it demoralized by -cowardice of heart and understanding, when each controversial -man-at-arms is eager to have it thought that he wears the colours of the -other side, when the theologian would fain pass for rationalist, and the -free-thinker for a person with his own orthodoxies if you only knew -them, and when philosophic candour and intelligence are supposed to have -hit their final climax in the doctrine that everything is both true and -false at the same time? - -A man like Montaigne, as has been said, could slumber tranquilly on the -pillow of doubt, content to live his life, leaving many questions open. -Such men’s meditations, when composed in the genial literary form proper -to them, are naturally the delight of people with whom the world goes -fairly well materially, who have sensibility enough to be aware that -there are unseen lands of knowledge and truth beyond the present, and -destinies beyond their own; but whose sensibility is not intense and -ardent enough to make wholly unendurable to them unscrutinizing -acquiescence in half-thoughts and faint guesses, and pale unshapen -embryos of social sympathy. There are conjunctures when this mingling of -apprehension and ease, of aspiration and content, of timorous adventure -and reflective indolence, is the natural mood of even high natures. The -great tides of circumstance swell so tardily, that whole generations -that might have produced their share of skilful and intrepid mariners, -wait in vain for the full flood on which the race is borne to new -shores. - -Nor assuredly is it well for men that every age should mark either a -revolution, or the slow inward agitation that prepares the revolution, -or that doubters and destroyers should divide between them all -admiration and gratitude and sympathy. The violent activity of a century -of great change may end in a victory, but it is always a sacrifice. The -victory may more than recompense its cost. The sacrifice may repay -itself a thousand-fold. It does not always repay itself, as the too -neglected list of good causes lost, and noble effort wasted, so -abundantly shows. Nor in any case is sacrifice ever an end. Faith and -order and steady strong movement are the conditions which everything -wise is directed to perfect and consolidate. But for this process of -perfection we need first the meditative, doubting, critical type, and -next, the dogmatic destroyer. ‘In counsel it is good to see dangers,’ -Bacon said; ‘and in execution not to see them, except they be very -great,’ There are, as history instructs us, eras of counsel and eras of -execution; the hour when those do best who walk most warily, feeling -with patience and sagacity and painstaking for the new ways, and then -the hour of march and stout-hearted engagement. - -Voltaire, if he adroitly or sagely preserved his buckler, felt that the -day was come to throw away the scabbard; that it was time to trust -firmly to the free understanding of men for guidance in the voyage after -truth, and to the instincts of uncorrupted benevolence in men for the -upholding of social justice. His was one of the robust and incisive -constitutions, to which doubt figures as a sickness, and where -intellectual apprehension is an impossibility. The old-fashioned -nomenclature puts him down among sceptics, because those who had the -official right to affix these labels could think of no more contemptuous -name, and could not suppose the most audacious soul capable of advancing -even under the leadership of Satan himself beyond a stray doubt or so. -He had perhaps as little of the sceptic in his constitution as Bossuet -or Butler, and was much less capable of becoming one than De Maistre or -Paley. This was a prime secret of his power, for the mere critic and -propounder of unanswered doubts never leads more than a handful of men -after him. Voltaire boldly put the great question, and he boldly -answered it. He asked whether the sacred records were historically -true, the Christian doctrine divinely inspired and spiritually -exhaustive, and the Christian church a holy and beneficent organization. -He answered these questions for himself and for others beyond -possibility of misconception. The records were saturated with fable and -absurdity, the doctrine imperfect at its best, and a dark and tyrannical -superstition at its worst, and the church was the arch-curse and infamy. -Say what we will of these answers, they were free from any taint of -scepticism. Our lofty new idea of rational freedom as freedom from -conviction, and of emancipation of understanding as emancipation from -the duty of settling whether important propositions are true or false, -had not dawned on Voltaire. - -He had just as little part or lot in the complaisant spirit of the man -of the world, who from the depths of his mediocrity and ease presumes to -promulgate the law of progress, and as dictator to fix its speed. Who -does not know this temper of the man of the world, that worst enemy of -the world? His inexhaustible patience of abuses that only torment -others; his apologetic word for beliefs that may perhaps not be so -precisely true as one might wish, and institutions that are not -altogether so useful as some might think possible; his cordiality -towards progress and improvement in a general way, and his coldness or -antipathy to each progressive proposal in particular; his pygmy hope -that life will one day become somewhat better, punily shivering by the -side of his gigantic conviction that it might well be infinitely worse. -To Voltaire, far different from this, an irrational prejudice was not -the object of a polite coldness, but a real evil to be combated and -overthrown at every hazard. Cruelty was not to him as a disagreeable -dream of the imagination, from thought of which he could save himself by -arousing to sense of his own comfort, but a vivid flame burning into his -thoughts and destroying peace. Wrong-doing and injustice were not simple -words on his lips; they went as knives to the heart; he suffered with -the victim, and consumed with an active rage against the oppressor. - -Nor was the coarse cruelty of the inquisitor or the politician, who -wrought iniquity by aid of the arm of flesh, the only kind of injury to -the world which stirred his passion. 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 usage. The system which threw obstacles into the way of -publishing an exposition of Newton’s discoveries and ideas was as -mischievous and hateful to him, as the darker bigotry which broke Calas -on the wheel because he was a Protestant. To check the energetic -discovery and wide propagation of scientific truth, he rightly held to -be at least as destructive in the long run to the common weal, as the -unjust extermination of human life; for it is the possession of ever -more and more truth that makes life ever better worth having and better -worth preserving. And must we not admit that he was right, and that no -age nor school of men nor individual has ever been mortally afraid, as -every good man is afraid, of inflicting any wrong on his fellow, and has -not also been afraid of extinguishing a single ray from the great sun of -knowledge? - -It is well enough to say that in unscientific ages, like the twelfth -century for instance, the burner of books and the tormentor of those who -wrote them, did not feel either that he was doing an injustice to man or -a mischief to truth. It is hard to deny that St. Bernard was a good man, -nor is it needful that we should deny it; for good motives, owing to our -great blindness and slow enlightenment, have made grievous havoc in the -world. But the conception of justice towards heretics did not exist, any -more than it existed in the mind of a low type of white man towards a -black man, or than the conception of pity exists in the mind of a -sportsman towards his prey. These were ages of social cruelty, as they -were ages of intellectual repression. The debt of each to his neighbour -was as little felt, as the debt of all to the common faculties and -intelligence. Men owed nothing to man, but everything to the gods. All -the social feeling and intellectual effort and human energizing which -had made the high idea of God possible and real, seemed to have -expended themselves in a creation which instantly swallowed them up and -obliterated their recollection. The intelligence which by its active -straining upwards to the light had opened the way for the one God, -became itself forthwith identified with the chief of the devils. He who -used his reason was the child of this demon. Where it is a duty to -worship the sun, it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of -heat. The times when such was the universal idea of the rights of the -understanding, were also the times when human life was cheapest, and the -tiny bowl of a man’s happiness was spilt upon the ground with least -compunction. - -The companionship between these two ideas of disrespect for the rights -of man, and disrespect for reason or the highest distinction of man, has -been an inseparable companionship. The converse is unhappily only true -with a modification, for there have been too many men with an honourable -respect for a demonstration and a proper hospitality towards a -probability, who look on the rights of man, without disrespect indeed, -but also without fervour. To Voltaire reason and humanity were but a -single word, and love of truth and passion for justice but one emotion. -None of the famous men who have fought that they themselves might think -freely and speak truly, have ever seen more clearly that the fundamental -aim of the contest was that others might live happily. Who has not been -touched by that admirable word of his, of the three years in which he -laboured without remission for justice to the widow and descendants of -Calas: ‘_During that time not a smile escaped me without my reproaching -myself for it, as for a crime_.’ Or by his sincere avowal that of all -the words of enthusiasm and admiration which were so prodigally bestowed -upon him on the occasion of his last famous visit to Paris in 1778, none -went to his heart like that of a woman of the people, who in reply to -one asking the name of him whom the crowd followed, gave answer, ‘_Do -you not know that he is the preserver of the Calas?_’ - -The same kind of feeling, though manifested in ways of much less -unequivocal nobleness, was at the bottom of his many efforts to make -himself of consequence in important political business. We know how many -contemptuous sarcasms have been inspired by his anxiety at various times -to perform diplomatic feats of intervention between the French -government and Frederick the Second. In 1742, after his visit to the -Prussian king at Aix-la-Chapelle, he is supposed to have hinted to -Cardinal Fleury that to have written epic and drama does not disqualify -a man for serving his king and country on the busy fields of affairs. -The following year, after Fleury’s death, when French fortunes in the -war of the Austrian succession were near their lowest, Voltaire’s own -idea that he might be useful from his intimacy with Frederick, seems to -have been shared by Amelot, the secretary of state, and at all events he -aspired to do some sort of active, if radically futile, diplomatic work. -In later times when the tide had turned, and Frederick’s star was -clouded over with disaster, we again find Voltaire the eager -intermediary with Choiseul, pleasantly comparing himself to the mouse of -the fable, busily striving to free the lion from the meshes of the -hunter’s net. - -The man of letters, usually unable to conceive loftier services to -mankind or more attractive aims to persons of capacity than the -composition of books, has treated these pretensions of Voltaire with a -supercilious kind of censure, which teaches us nothing about Voltaire, -while it implies a particularly shallow idea alike of the position of -the mere literary life in the scale of things, and of the conditions -under which the best literary work is done. 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 of his to come into -the closest contact with the practical affairs of the world. He who has -never left the life of a recluse, drawing an income from the funds and -living in a remote garden, constructing past, present, and future, out -of his own consciousness, is not qualified either to lead mankind -safely, or to think on the course of human affairs correctly. Every page -of Voltaire has the bracing air of the life of the world in it, and the -instinct which led him to seek the society of the conspicuous actors on -the great scene was essentially a right one. The book-writer takes good -advantage of his opportunity to assure men expressly or by implication -that he is their true king, and that the sacred bard is a mightier man -than his hero. Voltaire knew better. Though himself perhaps the most -puissant man of letters that ever lived, he rated literature as it ought -to be rated below action, not because written speech is less of a force, -but because the speculation and criticism of the literature that -substantially influences the world, make far less demand than the actual -conduct of great affairs on qualities which are not rare in detail, but -are amazingly rare in combination,—on temper, foresight, solidity, -daring,—on strength, in a word, strength of intelligence and strength of -character. Gibbon rightly amended his phrase, when he described Boethius -not as stooping, but rather as rising, from his life of placid -meditation to an active share in the imperial business. That he held -this sound opinion is quite as plausible an explanation of Voltaire’s -anxiety to know persons of station and importance, as the current theory -that he was of sycophantic nature. Why, he asks, are the ancient -historians so full of light? ‘It is because the writer had to do with -public business; it is because he could be magistrate, priest, soldier; -and because if he could not rise to the highest functions of the state, -he had at least to make himself worthy of them. I admit,’ he concludes, -‘that we must not expect such an advantage with us, for our own -constitution happens to be against it;’ but he was deeply sensible what -an advantage it was that they thus lost.[1] - -In short, on all sides, whatever men do and think was real and alive to -Voltaire. Whatever had the quality of interesting any imaginable -temperament, had the quality of interesting him. There was no subject -which any set of men have ever cared about, which, if he once had -mention of it, Voltaire did not care about likewise. And it was just -because he was so thoroughly alive himself, that he filled the whole era -with life. The more closely one studies the various movements of that -time, the more clear it becomes that, if he was not the original centre -and first fountain of them all, at any rate he made many channels ready -and gave the sign. He was the initial principle of fermentation -throughout that vast commotion. We may deplore, if we think fit, as -Erasmus deplored in the case of Luther, that the great change was not -allowed to work itself out slowly, calmly, and without violence and -disruption. These graceful regrets are powerless, and on the whole they -are very enervating. Let us make our account with the actual, rather -than seek excuses for self-indulgence in pensive preference of something -that might have been. Practically in these great circles of affairs, -what only might have been is as though it could not be; and to know this -may well suffice for us. It is not in human power to choose the kind of -men who rise from time to time to the supreme control of momentous -changes. The force which decides this immensely important matter is as -though it were chance. We cannot decisively pronounce any circumstance -whatever an accident, yet history abounds with circumstances which in -our present ignorance of the causes of things are as if they were -accidents. - -In this respect history is neither better nor worse than the latest -explanation of the origin and order of the world of organised matter. -Here too we are landed in the final resort at what is neither more nor -less than an accident. Natural selection, or the survival of the fittest -in the universal struggle for existence, is now held by the most -competent inquirers to be the principal method to which we owe the -extinction, preservation, and distribution of organic forms on the -earth. But the appearance both of the forms that conquer and of those -that perish still remains a secret, and to science an accident and a -secret are virtually and provisionally the same thing. In a word, there -is an unknown element at the bottom of the varieties of creation, -whether we agree to call that element a volition of a supernatural -being, or an undiscovered set of facts in embryology. So in history the -Roman or Italo-Hellenic empire, rising when it did, was the salvation of -the West, and yet the appearance at the moment when anarchy threatened -rapidly to dissolve the Roman state, of a man with the power of -conceiving the best design for the new structure, seems to partake as -much of the nature of chance, as the non-appearance of men with similar -vision and power in equally momentous crises, earlier and later. The -rise of a great constructive chief like Charlemagne in the eighth -century can hardly be enough to persuade us that the occasion invariably -brings the leader whom its conditions require, when we remember that as -concerns their demands the conditions of the end of the eighth century -were not radically different from those of the beginning of the sixth, -yet that in the earlier epoch there arose no successor to continue the -work of Theodoric. We have only to examine the origin and fundamental -circumstances of the types of civilisation which rule western -communities and guide their advance, to discern in those original -circumstances a something inscrutable, a certain element of what is as -though it were fortuitous. No science can as yet tell us how such a -variation from previously existing creatures as man had its origin; nor, -any more than this, can history explain the law by which the most -striking variations in intellectual and spiritual quality within the -human order have had their origin. The appearance of the one as of the -other is a fact which cannot be further resolved. It is hard to think in -imagination of the globe as unpeopled by man, or peopled, as it may at -some remote day come to be, by beings of capacity superior enough to -extinguish man. It is hard also to think of the scene which western -Europe and all the vast space which the light of western Europe -irradiates, might have offered at this moment, if nature or the unknown -forces had not produced a Luther, a Calvin, or a Voltaire. - -It was one of the happy chances of circumstance that there arose in -France on the death of Lewis XIV. a man with all Voltaire’s peculiar -gifts of intelligence, who added to them an incessant activity in their -use, and who besides this enjoyed such length of days as to make his -intellectual powers effective to the very fullest extent possible. This -combination of physical and mental conditions so amazingly favourable to -the spread of the Voltairean ideas, was a circumstance independent of -the state of the surrounding atmosphere, and was what in the phraseology -of præscientific times might well have been called providential. If -Voltaire had seen all that he saw, and yet been indolent; or if he had -been as clear-sighted and as active as he was, and yet had only lived -fifty years, instead of eighty-four, Voltairism would never have struck -root.[2] As it was, with his genius, his industry, his longevity, and -the conditions of the time being what they were, that far-spreading -movement of destruction was inevitable. - -Once more, we cannot choose. Those whom temperament or culture has made -the partisans of calm order, cannot attune progress to the stately and -harmonious march which would best please them, and which they are -perhaps right in thinking would lead with most security to the goal. - -Such a liberation of the human mind as Voltairism can only be effected -by the movement of many spirits, and they are only the few who are moved -by moderate, reflective, and scientific trains of argument. The many -need an extreme type. They are struck by what is flashing and colossal, -for they follow imagination and sympathy, and not the exactly -disciplined intelligence. They know their own wants, and have dumb -feeling of their own better aspirations. Their thoughts move in the -obscurity of things quick but unborn, and by instinct they push upwards -in whatever direction the darkness seems breaking. They are not critics -nor analysts, but when the time is ripening they never fail to know the -word of freedom and of truth, with whatever imperfections it may chance -to be spoken. No prophet all false has ever yet caught the ear of a -series of generations. No prophet all false has succeeded in separating -a nation into two clear divisions. Voltaire has in effect for a century -so divided the most emancipated of western nations. This is beyond the -power of the mere mocker, who perishes like the flash of lightning; he -does not abide as a centre of solar heat. - -There are more kinds of Voltaireans than one, but no one who has marched -ever so short a way out of the great camp of old ideas is directly or -indirectly out of the debt and out of the hand of the first liberator, -however little willing he may be to recognise one or the other. -Attention has been called by every writer on Voltaire to the immense -number of the editions of his works, a number probably unparalleled in -the case of any author within the same limits of time. Besides being one -of the most voluminous book-writers, he is one of the cheapest. We can -buy one of Voltaire’s books for a few half-pence, and the keepers of the -cheap stalls in the cheap quarters of London and Paris will tell you -that this is not from lack of demand, but the contrary. So clearly does -that light burn for many even now, which scientifically speaking ought -to be extinct, and for many indeed is long ago extinct and superseded. -The reasons for this vitality are that Voltaire was himself thoroughly -alive when he did his work, and that the movement which that work began -is still unexhausted. - -How shall we attempt to characterise this movement? The historian of the -Christian church usually opens his narrative with an account of the -depravation of human nature and the corruption of society which preceded -the new religion. The Reformation in like manner is only to be -understood after we have perceived the enormous mass of superstition, -injustice, and wilful ignorance, by which the theological idea had -become so incrusted as to be wholly incompetent to guide society, -because it was equally repugnant to the intellectual perceptions and the -moral sense, the knowledge and the feelings, of the best and most -active-minded persons of the time. The same sort of consideration -explains and vindicates the enormous power of Voltaire. France had -outgrown the system that had brought her through the middle ages. The -further development of her national life was fatally hindered by the -tight bonds of an old order, which clung with the hardy tenacity of a -thriving parasite, diverting from the roots all their sustenance, eating -into the tissue, and feeding on the juices of the living tree. The -picture has often been painted, and we need not try to paint it once -more in detail here. The whole power and ordering of the nation were -with the sworn and chartered foes of light, who had every interest that -a desire to cling to authority and wealth can give, in keeping the -understanding subject. - -And, what was more important, there had been no sign made in the nation -itself of a consciousness of the immense realms of knowledge that lay -immediately in front of it, and still less of any desire or intention to -win lasting possession of them. That intellectual curiosity which was so -soon to produce such amazing fruits was as yet unstirred. An era of -extraordinary activity had just come to a close, and the creative and -artistic genius of France had risen to the highest mark it attained -until the opening of our own century. The grand age of Lewis XIV. had -been an age of magnificent literature and unsurpassed eloquence. But, in -spite of the potent seed which Descartes had sown, it had been the age -of authority, protection, and patronage. Consequently all those subjects -for which there was no patronage, that is to say the subjects which -could add nothing to the splendour and dignity of the church and the -pageantry of the court, were virtually repressed. This ought not to -blind us to the real loftiness and magnanimity of the best or earlier -part of the age of Lewis XIV. It has been said that the best title of -Lewis XIV. to the recollection of posterity is the protection he -extended to Molière; and one reason why this was so meritorious is that -Molière’s work had a markedly critical character, in reference both to -the devout and to the courtier. The fact of this, undoubtedly the most -durable work of that time, containing critical quality, is not of -importance in reference to the generally fixed or positive aspect of the -age. For Molière is only critical by accident. There is nothing -organically negative about him, and his plays are the pure dramatic -presentation of a peculiar civilisation. He is no more a destructive -agency because he drew hypocrites and coxcombs, than Bossuet was -destructive or critical because he inveighed against sin and the excess -of human vainglory. The epoch was one of entire loyalty to itself and -its ideas. Voltaire himself perceived and admired these traits to the -full. The greatest of all overthrowers, he always understood that it is -towards such ages as these, the too short ages of conviction and -self-sufficience, that our endeavour works. We fight that others may -enjoy; and many generations struggle and debate, that one generation may -hold something for proven. - -The glories of the age of Lewis XIV. were the climax of a set of ideas -that instantly afterwards lost alike their grace, their usefulness, and -the firmness of their hold on the intelligence of men. A dignified and -venerable hierarchy, an august and powerful monarch, a court of gay and -luxurious nobles, all lost their grace, because the eyes of men were -suddenly caught and appalled by the awful phantom, which was yet so -real, of a perishing nation. Turn from Bossuet’s orations to -Boisguillebert’s _Détail de la France_; from the pulpit rhetorician’s -courtly reminders that even majesty must die, to Vauban’s pity for the -misery of the common people;[3] from Corneille and Racine to La -Bruyère’s picture of ‘certain wild animals, male and female, scattered -over the fields, black, livid, all burnt by the sun, bound to the earth -that they dig and work with unconquerable pertinacity; they have a sort -of articulate voice, and when they rise on their feet, they show a human -face, and, in fact, are men.’ The contrast had existed for generations. -The material misery caused by the wars of the great Lewis deepened the -dark side, and the lustre of genius consecrated to the glorification of -traditional authority and the order of the hour heightened the -brightness of the bright side, until the old contrast was suddenly seen -by a few startled eyes, and the new and deepest problem, destined to -strain our civilisation to a degree that not many have even now -conceived, came slowly into pale outline. - -There is no reason to think that Voltaire ever saw this gaunt and -tremendous spectacle. Rousseau was its first voice. Since him the -reorganisation of the relations of men has never faded from the sight -either of statesmen or philosophers, with vision keen enough to admit to -their eyes even what they dreaded and execrated in their hearts. -Voltaire’s task was different and preparatory. It was to make popular -the genius and authority of reason. The foundations of the social fabric -were in such a condition that the touch of reason was fatal to the whole -structure, which instantly began to crumble. Authority and use oppose a -steadfast and invincible resistance to reason, so long as the -institutions which they protect are of fair practicable service to a -society. But after the death of Lewis XIV., not only the grace and pomp, -but also the social utility of spiritual and political absolutism passed -obviously away. Spiritual absolutism was unable to maintain even a -decent semblance of unity and theological order. Political absolutism by -its material costliness, its augmenting tendency to repress the -application of individual energy and thought to public concerns, and its -pursuit of a policy in Europe which was futile and essentially -meaningless as to its ends, and disastrous and incapable in its choice -of means, was rapidly exhausting the resources of national well-being -and viciously severing the very tap-root of national life. To bring -reason into an atmosphere so charged, was, as the old figure goes, to -admit air to the chamber of the mummy. And reason was exactly what -Voltaire brought; too narrow, if we will, too contentious, too derisive, -too unmitigatedly reasonable, but still reason. And who shall measure -the consequence of this difference in the history of two great nations; -that in France absolutism in church and state fell before the sinewy -genius of stark reason, while in England it fell before a respect for -social convenience, protesting against monopolies, benevolences, -ship-money? That in France speculation had penetrated over the whole -field of social inquiry, before a single step had been taken towards -application, while in England social principles were applied, before -they received any kind of speculative vindication? That in France the -first effective enemy of the principles of despotism was Voltaire, poet, -philosopher, historian, critic; in England, a band of homely squires? - -Traditional authority, it is true, had been partially and fatally -undermined in France before the time of Voltaire, by one of the most -daring of thinkers, and one of the most acute and sceptical of scholars, -as well as by writers so acutely careless as Montaigne, and apologists -so dangerously rational as Pascal, who gave a rank and consistency to -doubt even in showing that its seas were black and shoreless. -Descartes’s Discourse on Method had been published in 1637, and Bayle’s -Thoughts on the Comet, first of the series of critical onslaughts on -prejudice and authority in matters of belief, had been published in -1682. The metaphysician and the critic had each pressed forward on the -path of examination, and had each insisted on finding grounds for -belief, or else showing the absence of such grounds with a fatal -distinctness that made belief impossible. Descartes was constructive, -and was bent on reconciling the acceptance of a certain set of ideas as -to the relations between man and the universe, and as to the mode and -composition of the universe, with the logical reason. Bayle, whose -antecedents and environment were Protestant, was careless to replace, -but careful to have evidence for whatever was allowed to remain. No -parallel nor hint of equality is here intended between the rare genius -of Descartes and the relatively lower quality of Bayle. The one, however -high a place we may give to the regeneration of thought effected by -Bacon in England, or to that wrought by the brilliant group of physical -experimentalists in Italy, still marks a new epoch in the development of -the human mind, for he had decisively separated knowledge from theology, -and systematically constituted science. The other has a place only in -the history of criticism. But, although in widely different ways, and -with vast difference in intellectual stature, they both had touched the -prevailing notions of French society with a fatal breath. - -The blast that finally dispersed and destroyed them came not from -Descartes and Bayle, but directly from Voltaire and indirectly from -England. In the seventeenth century the surrounding conditions were not -ripe. Social needs had not begun to press. The organs of authority were -still too vigorous, and performed their functions with something more -than the mechanical half-heartedness of the next century. Long -familiarity with sceptical ideas as enemies must go before their -reception as friends and deliverers. They have perhaps never gained an -effective hold in any community, until they have found allies in the -hostile camp of official orthodoxy, and so long as that orthodoxy was -able to afford them a vigorous social resistance. Voltaire’s universal -talents made one of the most powerful instruments for conveying these -bold and inquisitive notions among many sorts and conditions of men, -including both the multitude of common readers and playgoers in the -towns, and the narrower multitude of nobles and sovereigns. More than -this, the brilliance and variety of his gifts attracted, stimulated, and -directed the majority of the men of letters of his time, and imparted to -them a measure of his own singular skill in conveying the principles of -rationalistic thought. - -The effect of all this was to turn a vast number of personages who were -officially inimical to free criticism, to be at heart abettors and -fellow-conspirators in the great plot. That fact, combined with the -independent causes of the incompetency of the holders of authority to -deal with the crying social necessities of the time, left the walls of -the citadel undermined and undefended, and a few of the sacred birds -that were still found faithful cackled to no purpose. It has often been -said that in the early times of Christianity its influence gave all that -was truest and brightest in colour to the compositions of those who were -least or not at all affected by its dogma. It is more certain that -Voltaire by the extraordinary force of his personality gave a peculiar -tone and life even to those who adhered most staunchly to the ancient -ordering. The champions of authority were driven to defend their cause -by the unusual weapons of rationality; and if Voltaire had never -written, authority would never, for instance, have found such a soldier -on her side as that most able and eminent of reactionaries, Joseph de -Maistre. In reply to the favourite assertion of the apologists of -Catholicism, that whatever good side its assailants may present is the -product of the very teaching which they repudiate, one can only say that -there would be at least as much justice in maintaining that the marked -improvement which took place in the character and aims of the priesthood -between the Regency and the Revolution,[4] was an obligation -unconsciously incurred to those just and liberal ideas which Voltaire -had helped so powerfully to spread. De Maistre compares Reason putting -away Revelation to a child who should beat its nurse. The same figure -would serve just as well to describe the thanklessness of Belief to the -Disbelief which has purged and exalted it. - -One of the most striking features of the revolution wrought by Voltaire -is that it was the one great revolt in history which contained no -element of asceticism, and achieved all its victories without resort to -an instrument so potent, inflexible, and easy, but so gravely dangerous. -Such revolts are always reactions against surrounding corruption and -darkness. They are the energetic protests of the purer capacities and -aspirations of human nature; and as is the inevitable consequence of -vehement action of this sort, they seem for a while to insist on nothing -less than the extirpation of those antagonistic parts which are seen to -have brought life into such debasement. With this stern anger and -resolve in their hearts, men have no mind to refine, explain, or -moderate, and they are forced by one of the strangest instincts of our -constitution into some system of mortification, which may seem to clear -the soul of the taint of surrounding grossness. In such exalted mood, -there is no refuge but in withdrawal from the common life into recesses -of private conscience, and in severest purification of all desires. -There are not many types of good men even in the least ascetic or least -reactionary epochs, to whom this mood, and its passion for simplicity, -self-applied rigour, minute discipline, firm regulation, and veritable -continence of life, do not now and again recur, in the midst of days -that march normally on a more spacious and expansive theory. - -There was, however, no tinge of ascetic principle in Voltairism. Pascal -had remarked that relaxed opinions are naturally so pleasing to men, -that it is wonderful they should ever be displeasing. To which Voltaire -had thus retorted: ‘On the contrary, does not experience prove that -influence over men’s minds is only gained by offering them the -difficult, nay the impossible, to perform or believe? Offer only things -that are reasonable, and all the world will answer, We knew as much as -that. But enjoin things that are hard, impracticable; paint the deity as -ever armed with the thunder; make blood run before the altars; and you -will win the multitude’s ear, and everybody will say of you, He must be -right, or he would not so boldly proclaim things so marvellous.’[5] -Voltaire’s ascendency sprung from no appeal to those parts of human -nature in which ascetic practice has its foundation. On the contrary, -full exercise and play for every part was the key of all his teaching, -direct and indirect. He had not Greek serenity and composure of spirit, -but he had Greek exultation in every known form of intellectual -activity, and this audacious curiosity he made general. - -Let us remember that Voltairism was primarily and directly altogether an -intellectual movement, for this reason, that it was primarily and -directly a reaction against the subordination of the intellectual to the -moral side of men, carried to an excess that was at length fraught with -fatal mischief. Are our opinions true, provably answering to the facts -of the case, consistent with one another; is our intelligence radiant -with genuine light and knowledge; and are we bent more than all else on -testing and improving and diffusing this knowledge and the instruments -for acquiring it? The system to which this was the powerful -counter-formula, even in its least dark shapes, always reserved a large -class of most important facts from the searching glare of that scrutiny -which Voltairism taught men to direct upon every proposition that was -presented to them. - -For many centuries truth had been conceived as of the nature of a Real -Universal, of which men had full possession by the revelation of a -supreme divinity. All truth was organically one; and the relations of -men to something supernatural, their relations to one another, the -relations of outward matter, were all comprehended in a single -synthesis, within which, and subject to which, all intellectual movement -proceeded. An advancing spirit of inquiry dissolved this synthesis; and -the philosophers, as distinguished from the steadfast and single -students of science, ceasing to take it for granted as an indisputable -starting-point that truth was an assured possession, went off on two -different lines. Men of one cast of mind fell into doubt whether truth -was a reality after all, and the discovery of it accessible to mankind. -Thinkers of a different cast accepted this doctrine of the impotence of -the human understanding to discover knowledge and prove truth, but they -proceeded to the retrograde inference that therefore the ancient -tradition of knowledge actually contains that approved truth, which had -just been pronounced unattainable. This oblique mode of regaining a -position of which they had been by their own act dispossessed, was -impossible for so keen and direct a spirit as Voltaire’s. However filled -his mind may have been with the false notions of the Tribe, of the -Market, and above all of the Cave, at all events it was more free than -most, certainly than most of those subalterns of the schools, from the -Idols of the Theatre, and from either kind of that twofold excess, ‘one -sort of which too hastily constitutes sciences positive and hierarchic, -while the other presents scepticism and the pursuit of a vague inquiry -that has no limit.’[6] - -The consequence of this peculiarity, call it a destructive and blind -narrowness, or call it a wise and justly-measured openness of mind, as -we may choose, has been that Voltaire has been condemned with unsparing -severity by three of the most influential schools of modern opinion. -Every one who has a system to defend is the enemy of the famous man who -destroyed the reigning system of his day, with engines that seem to -point with uncomfortable directness against all other systems. Every one -who thinks that we have turned over the last leaf of the book of -knowledge, whatever the inscription that he may find written upon it, -naturally detests the whole spirit and impulse of one who felt all his -life that he and his generation were the first band of men who had -shaken off their chains, and ascended to the light of the sun and the -contemplation of some portion of an inexhaustible universe of realities. -Hence, the partisans of the Christian religion, in any of its forms, -have dealt unrelenting contempt and hatred to the foe who did more than -any one else to reduce their churches, once so majestically triumphant, -to their present level, where they are forced under various guises and -with much obsolete pretension to plead for the tolerance of rational -men, on the comparatively modest ground of social fitness. Their -hostility, we may agree, is not very astonishing, when we reflect on the -provocation. - -Many of those, however, who have least hope of any future revival of the -ancient creed, and who least regret its fall, are even less hostile to -the Jesuits than they are to Voltaire. Comte, for example, who -elaborated a doctrine with a corresponding system of life deduced from -it, and the central principle of whose method of social action and -movement is to destroy by replacing, has adjudged an emphatically -secondary place to Voltaire’s claims on our good-will.[7] Nor ought -this seriously to surprise us, when we consider that Voltaire trusted to -the individual to replace for himself, by the motion of his own -faculties, the old collective tradition of action and belief; and that -he showed himself too keenly alive to the curses of that empire of -prejudice, authority, social fixity, which he devoted his life to -overthrowing, to lend any help to the restoration of a similar reign -with changed watchwords. He is perhaps the one great Frenchman who has -known how to abide in patient contentment with an all but purely -critical reserve, leaving reconstruction, its form, its modes, its -epoch, for the fulness of time and maturity of effort to disclose. It -has been the fatal quality of the genius of his countrymen, from -Descartes down to Comte, to decline to rest on an uncompleted -interpretation of experience, and to insist on a hasty supplement of -unconcluded analysis by what is virtually an à priori synthesis. -Voltaire deserves no special praise for this abstention from a -premature reconstruction; for it probably was not so much the result of -deliberate persuasion that we must wait on the time, as of an inability -to conceive of need for a cultus and a firm ordering of our knowledge, -as prime demands of human nature and essential conditions of stable -progress. Whatever value we may set on this sage reserve, the fact that -Voltaire had no scheme for replacing the scheme which he destroyed, -accounts very amply for the disparagement of him by those who think -almost any fabric of common and ordered belief better for men, than the -seeming chaos of intricate and multitudinous growths which now -overspread the field of European opinion. And does it not involve us in -a defective conception of the way in which human progress accomplishes -itself, to place in our calendar of benefactors, supposing us to compose -a calendar, only those who have built up truth, to the exclusion of -those who have with pain and labour helped to demolish impudent error? -Has Jericho always fallen without the blasts from the seven trumpets? It -is sufficiently demonstrated from history that false opinions vanish -spontaneously, without a direct blow struck; that a system of belief, -corroborated in the breasts of the multitude by all the authority of a -long tradition, sanctified to the powerful few by dignity or emolument, -entrenched with a strength that seems inexpugnable among the ordinances -and institutions and unwritten uses of a great community, will -straightway succumb from inherent want of life and courage? - -There is a third kind of opinion, that is as little merciful in its own -way as either of the two others, and this is the scientific or cultured -opinion. Objections from this region express themselves in many forms, -some of them calm and suggestive, others a little empty and a little -brutal. They all seem to come to something of this kind: that Voltaire’s -assault on religion, being conducted without any smallest spark of the -religious spirit, was therefore necessarily unjust to the object of his -attack, and did the further mischief of engendering in all on whom his -influence was poured out a bitterness and moral temerity which is the -worst blight that can fall upon the character either of a man or a -generation: that while truth is relative and conditional, and while -belief is only to be understood by those who have calmly done justice to -the history of its origin and growth, Voltaire carelessly, -unphilosophically, and maliciously, handled what had once possessed a -relative truth, as if it had always been absolutely false, and what had -sprung from the views and aspirations of the best men, as if it had had -its root in the base artifices of the worst: that what ought to have -gone on, and would have gone on, as a process of soft autumnal -dissolution, was converted by the infection of Voltaire into a stained -scene of passion and battle: that assuming to possess and to furnish men -with a broad criticism of life, he left out of life its deepest, -holiest, and most exalting elements, as well as narrowed and depraved -criticism, from its right rank as the high art of stating and collating -ideas, down to an acrid trick of debate, a thing of proofs, arguments, -and rancorous polemic. - -It is certain that there is much truth in this particular strain of -objection to Voltaire’s power and his use of it, or else it would not -have found mouthpieces, as it has done, among some of the finest spirits -of the modern time. But it is the natural tendency of the hour rather to -exaggerate what weight there really is in such criticism, which, though -claiming to be the criticism of temperance and moderation and -relativity, does not as a matter of fact escape the fatal law of excess -and absoluteness even in its very moderation and relativity. In -estimating an innovator’s method, all depends on the time and the enemy; -and it may sometimes happen that the time is so out of joint and the -enemy so strong, so unscrupulous, so imminently pernicious, as to leave -no alternative between finally succumbing, and waging a war of -deliverance for which coming generations have to bear the burdens in -feuds and bitterness; between abridging somewhat of the richness and -fulness of life, and allowing it all to be gradually choked up by dust -and enwrapped in night. For let us not forget that what Catholicism was -accomplishing in France in the first half of the eighteenth century, was -really not anything less momentous than the slow strangling of French -civilisation. Though Voltaire’s spirit may be little edifying to us, who -after all partake of the freedom which he did so much to win, yet it is -only just to remember what was the spirit of his foe, and that in so -pestilent a presence a man of direct vision may well be eager to use -such weapons as he finds to his hand. Let the scientific spirit move -people to speak as it lists about Voltaire’s want of respect for things -held sacred, for the good deeds of holy men, for the sentiment and faith -of thousands of the most worthy among his fellows. Still there are times -when it may be very questionable whether, in the region of belief, one -with power and with fervid honesty ought to spare the abominable city of -the plain, just because it happens to shelter five righteous. There are -times when the inhumanity of a system stands out so red and foul, when -the burden of its iniquity weighs so heavy, and the contagion of its -hypocrisy is so laden with mortal plague, that no awe of dilettante -condemnation nor minute scruple as to the historic or the relative can -stay the hand of the man whose direct sight and moral energy have -pierced the veil of use, and revealed the shrine of the infamous thing. -The most noble of the holy men said long ago that ‘the servant of the -Lord must not strive, but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, -in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves.’ The history of -the churches is in one of its most conspicuous aspects the history of a -prolonged outrage upon these words by arrogant and blasphemous persons, -pretending to draw a sacred spirit from the very saint who uttered them. -We may well deplore that Voltaire’s attack, and every other attack of -the same sort, did not take the fair shape prescribed by the apostle to -the servant of the Lord, of gentleness, patience, and the instruction -of a sweet and firm example. But the partisans of the creed in whose -name more human blood has been violently shed than in any other cause -whatever, these, I say, can hardly find much ground of serious reproach -in a few score epigrams. Voltaire had no calm breadth of wisdom. It may -be so. There are moments which need not this calm breadth of wisdom, but -a two-edged sword, and when the deliverers of mankind are they who ‘come -to send fire on the earth.’ - - - - -CHAPTER II. - -ENGLISH INFLUENCES. - - -Voltairism may be said to have begun from the flight of its founder from -Paris to London. This, to borrow a name from the most memorable instance -of outward change marking inward revolution, was the decisive hegira, -from which the philosophy of destruction in a formal shape may be held -seriously to date. Voltaire landed in England in the middle of May, -1726. He was in the thirty-third year of his age, that earlier -climacteric, when the men with vision first feel conscious of a past, -and reflectively mark its shadow. It is then that they either press -forward eagerly with new impulse in the way of their high calling, -knowing the limitations of circumstance and hour, or else fainting draw -back their hand from the plough, and ignobly leave to another or to none -the accomplishment of the work. The narrowness of the cribbed deck that -we are doomed to tread, amid the vast space of an eternal sea with fair -shores dimly seen and never neared, oppresses the soul with a burden -that sorely tries its strength, when the fixed limits first define -themselves before it. Those are the strongest who do not tremble -beneath this gray ghostly light, but make it the precursor of an -industrious day. - -The past on which Voltaire had to look back was full of turmoil, -contention, impatience, and restless production. François Marie Arouet -was born in 1694, so feeble in constitution that, as in the case of -Fontenelle, whose hundred years surpassed even Voltaire’s lengthy span, -his life was long despaired of. His father was a notary of good repute -for integrity and skill, and was entrusted with the management of their -affairs by several of the highest families in France. His mother is -supposed to have had some of the intellectual alertness which penetrated -the character of her son, but she died when he was seven years old, and -he remained alone with his father until 1704, when he was sent to -school. His instructors at the College Louis-le-Grand were the Jesuits, -whose wise devotion to intellectual education in the broadest sense that -was then possible, is a partial set-off against their mischievous -influence on morals and politics. The hardihood of the young Arouet’s -temper broke out even from the first, and we need not inquire minutely -what were the precise subjects of education of a child, whom his tutor -took an early opportunity of pointing out as the future coryphaeus of -deism in France. He used to say in after life that he had learnt nothing -worth learning. A lad who could launch infidel epigrams at ‘his -Jansenist of a brother,’ and declaim a poem in which so important a hero -as Moses figures as an impostor,[8] was of that originality of mental -turn on whose freedom the inevitably mechanical instruction of the -school cannot be expected to make any deep or decisive impression. The -young of this independent humour begin their education where those of -less energetic nerve hardly leave off, with character ready made. - -Between a youth of bold, vivacious, imaginative disposition, and a -father of the temperament proper to a notary with many responsibilities, -there could be no sympathy, and the two were not long in coming to open -quarrel without terms. The son was taken out by his godfather, the abbé -Châteauneuf, into that gay world which presently became the infamous -world of the regency, where extraordinary sprightliness and facility in -verse gained him welcome and patronage. We need waste no words on the -corruption and intellectual trifling of the society into which Voltaire -was thus launched. For shallowness and levity, concealed by literary -artifice and play of frivolous wit which only makes the scene more -dreary or detestable, it has never been surpassed. There was brightness -in it, compared with the heavy brutality and things obscene of the court -of Lewis XV., but after all we seem to see over the brightness a sort of -foul glare, like the iridescence of putrefaction. Ninon de l’Enclos, a -friend of his mother’s, was perhaps the one free and honest soul with -whom the young Arouet had to do. Now extremely old, she still preserved -both her wit and her fine probity of intellect. She had always kept her -heart free of cant, from the time when she had ridiculed, as the -Jansenists of love, the pedantical women and platonic gallants of the -Hôtel Rambouillet, down to her rejection of Madame de Maintenon’s offer -of an invitation to the court, on condition of her joining the band of -the devout. The veteran Aspasia, now over eighty, was struck by the -brilliance and dazzling promise of the young versifier, and left him a -legacy for the purchase of books. - -The rest of the society into which Voltaire was taken was saturated with -a spirit of reaction against the austere bigotry of the court, and bad -and miserable as such austerity is, the rebellion against it is always -worse and more miserable still. The licence seems not to have been of -the most joyous sort, as indeed licence protesting and defiant is not -apt to be. The abbé Chaulieu, a versifier of sprightly fancy, grace, and -natural ease, was the dissolute Anacreon of the people of quality who -during the best part of the reign of Lewis XIV. had failed to sympathise -with its nobility and stateliness, and during the worst part revolted -against its gloom. Voltaire at twenty was his intimate and his professed -disciple.[9] To this intimacy we may perhaps trace that remarkable -continuity of tradition between Voltaire and the grand age, which -distinguishes him from the school of famous men who were called -Voltaireans, and of whom the special mark was that they had absolutely -broken with the whole past of French history and literature. Princes, -dukes, and marquises were of Chaulieu’s band. The despair and fury of -the elder Arouet at such companions and such follies reproduce once more -a very old story in the records of youthful genius. Genius and fine -friends reconcile no prudent notary to a son’s hatred for law and the -desk. Orgies with the Duke of Sully, and rhyming bouts with Chaulieu, -have sunk into small size for us, who know that they were but the -mischievous and unbecoming prologue of a life of incessant and generous -labour, but we may well believe that such enormities bulked big in the -vision of the father, as portents of degradation and ruin. We have a -glimpse of the son’s temper towards the profession to which his father -had tried so hard to bind him, in the ironical definition, thrown out -long afterwards, of an _avocat_ as a man who, not having money enough to -buy one of those brilliant offices on which the universe has its eyes -fixed, studies for three years the laws of Theodosius and Justinian so -as to know the custom of Paris, and who at length having got -matriculated has the right of pleading for money, if he has a loud -voice.[10] The young Arouet did actually himself get matriculated and -acquire this right, but his voice proved so loud that his pleadings were -destined to fill wider courts than those of Paris. - -Arouet the elder persuaded Châteauneuf’s brother, who was a diplomatist, -to take into his company the law-student who had made verse instead of -studying the laws of Theodosius. So the youth went to the Hague. Here he -straightway fell into new misadventure by conceiving an undying passion, -that lasted several weeks, for a young countrywoman whom he found in -Holland. Stolen interviews, letters, tears, and the other accustomed -circumstances of a juvenile passion on which the gods frown, were all -discovered. The ambassador sent the refractory boy back to his father, -with full details and documents, with results on the relations of the -pair that need not be described. - -In the autumn of 1715 Lewis XIV. died, and the Regent D’Orleans reigned -in his stead. There presently appeared some pungent lines, entitled _Les -j’ai vu_, in which the writer recounted a number of evil things which he -had seen in the state—a thousand prisons crowded with brave citizens and -faithful subjects, the people groaning under rigorous bondage, the -magistrates harassing every town with ruinous taxes and unrighteous -edicts; _j’ai vu, c’est dire tout, le Jésuite adoré_. The last line ran -that all these ills the writer had seen, yet was but twenty years -old.[11] Voltaire was twenty-two, but the authorities knew him for a -verse-writer of biting turn, so they treated the discrepancy of age as a -piece of mere prosopopœia, and laid him up in the Bastille (1716). As a -matter of fact, he had no hand in the offence. Even amid these sombre -shades, where he was kept for nearly a year, his spirit was blithe and -its fire unquenchable. The custom of Paris and the Codes were as -little handled as ever; and he divided his time between the study of the -two great epics of Greece and Rome, and the preparation of what he -designed to be the great epic of France. He also gave the finishing -strokes to his tragedy of Œdipe, which was represented in the course of -the following year with definite success, and was the opening of a -brilliant dramatic career, that perhaps to a mortal of more ordinary -mould might alone have sufficed for the glory of a life. - -The next six years he divided between a lively society, mostly of the -great, the assiduous composition of new plays, and the completion of the -Henriade. His fibre was gradually strengthening. By the end of this -period, the recklessness of the boyish disciple of Chaulieu had wholly -spent itself; and although Voltaire’s manner of life was assuredly not -regular nor decorously ordered, now nor for many years to come, if -measured by the rigid standard on which an improved society properly -insists, yet it was always a life of vigorous industry and clear -purposes. For a brief time his passion for the Maréchale de Villars -broke the tenacity of his diligence, and he always looked back on this -interruption of his work with the kind of remorse that might afflict a -saint for a grave spiritual backsliding. He was often at the country -seats of Sully, Villars, and elsewhere, throwing off thousands of -trifling verses, arranging theatricals, enlivening festivals, and always -corresponding indefatigably; for now and throughout his life his good -sense and good will, his business-like quality and his liking for his -friends, both united to raise him above the idle pretences and -self-indulgence of those who neglect the chief instrument of social -intercourse and friendly continuity. He preferred the country to the -town. ‘I was born,’ he says to one, ‘to be a faun or creature of the -woods; I am not made to live in a town.’ To another, ‘I fancy myself in -hell, when I am in the accursed city of Paris.’[12] The only -recommendation of the accursed city was that a solitude was attainable -in it, as in other crowded spots, which enabled him to work better there -than in the small and exacting throng of country-houses. ‘I fear -Fontainebleau, Villars, and Sully, both for my health and for Henry IV; -I should do no work, I should over-eat, and I should lose in pleasures -and in complaisance to others an amount of precious time that I ought to -be using for a necessary and creditable task.’[13] - -Yet there was even at this period much of that marvellous hurrying to -and fro in France and out of it, which continued to mark the longer -portion of Voltaire’s life, and fills it with such a busy air of turmoil -and confusion, explaining many things, when we think of the stability of -life and permanence of outward place of the next bright spirit that -shone upon Europe. Goethe never saw London, Paris, nor Vienna, and made -no journey save the famous visit to Italy, and the march at Valmy. -Voltaire moved hither and thither over the face of Europe like the wind, -and it is not until he has passed through half of his life that we can -begin to think of his home. Every association that belongs to his name -recalls tumult and haste and shrill contention with men and -circumstance. We have, however, to remember that these constant -movements were the price which Voltaire paid for the vigour and freedom -of his speech, in days when the party of superstition possessed the ear -of the temporal power, and resorted without sparing to the most violent -means of obliterating every hardy word and crushing every independent -writer. The greater number of Voltaire’s ceaseless changes of place were -flights from injustice, and the recollection of this may well soothe the -disturbance of spirit of the most fastidious zealot for calm and orderly -living. They were for the most part retreats before packs of wolves. - -In 1722 the elder Arouet died, to the last relentlessly set against a -son, not any less stubborn than himself, and unfortunately a great deal -more poetical. About the same time the name of Arouet falls away, and -the poet is known henceforth by that ever famous symbol for so much, -Voltaire; a name for which various explanations, none of them -satisfactory, have been offered, the latest and perhaps the least -improbable resolving it into a fanciful anagram.[14] - -Industrious as he was, and eager as he was for rural delights and -laborious solitude, Voltaire was still pre-eminently social. His letters -disclose in him, who really possessed all arts, the art of one who knew -how to be graciously respectful to the social superiors who took him for -a companion, without forgetting what was due to his own respect for -himself. We are all princes or poets, he exclaimed jubilantly on the -occasion of one of those nights and suppers of the gods. Such -gay-hearted freedom was not always well taken, and in time Voltaire’s -eyes were opened to the terms on which he really stood. ‘_Who is the -young man who talks so loud?_’ called out some Chevalier Rohan, at one -of these sprightly gatherings at the house of the Duke of Sully.[15] -‘_My lord_,’ the young man replied promptly, ‘_he is one who does not -carry about a great name, but wins respect for the name he has._’ A few -days afterwards the high-spirited patrician magnanimously took an -opportunity of having a caning inflicted by the hands of his lackeys on -the poet who had thrown away this lesson upon him. Voltaire, who had at -all events that substitute for true physical courage which springs up in -an intensely irritable and susceptive temperament, forthwith applied -himself to practise with the small-sword. He did his best to sting his -enemy to fight, but the chevalier either feared the swordsman, or else -despised an antagonist of the middle class; and by the influence of the -Rohan family the poet once more found himself in the Bastille, then the -house of correction at the disposal and for the use of the nobles, the -court, and the clergy. Here for six months Voltaire, then only -representing a very humble and unknown quantity in men’s minds, chafed -and fretted. The pacific Fleury, as is the wont of the pacific when in -power, cared less to punish the wrong-doer than to avoid disturbance, -knowing that disturbance was most effectually avoided by not meddling -with the person most able to resent. The multitude, however, when the -day of reckoning came, remembered all these things, and the first act of -their passion was to raze to the ground the fortress into which nearly -every distinguished champion of the freedom of human intelligence among -them had at one time or another been tyrannically thrown. - -On his release Voltaire was ordered to leave Paris. A clandestine visit -to the city showed him that there was no hope of redress from authority, -which was in the hands of men whose pride of rank prevented them from so -much as even perceiving, much more from repairing, such grievance as a -mere bourgeois could have: as if, to borrow Condorcet’s bitter phrase, a -descendant of the conquering Franks, like De Rohan, could have lost the -ancient right of life and death over a descendant of the Gauls.[16] And -this was no ironic taunt; for while Voltaire was in the Bastille, that -astounding book of the Count of Boulainvilliers was in the press, in -which it was shown that the feudal system is the master-work of the -human mind, and that the advance of the royal authority and the increase -of the liberties of the people were equally unjust usurpations of the -rights of the conquering Franks.[17] - -Voltaire was no patient victim of the practice which corresponded to -this trim historic theory. In a tumult of just indignation he quitted -France, and sought refuge with that stout and free people, who had by -the execution of one king, the deposition of another, and the definite -subjugation of the hierarchy, won a full liberty of thought and speech -and person. A modern historian has drawn up a list of the men of mark -who made the same invigorating pilgrimage. ‘During the two generations -which elapsed between the death of Lewis XIV. and the outbreak of the -Revolution, there was hardly a Frenchman of eminence who did not either -visit England or learn English; while many of them did both.’[18] Among -those who actually came to England and mixed in its society besides -Voltaire, were Buffon, Brissot, Helvétius, Gournay, Jussieu, Lafayette, -Montesquieu, Maupertuis, Morellet, Mirabeau, Roland and Madame Roland, -Rousseau. We who live after Wordsworth, Shelley, Byron, Scott, have -begun to forget the brilliant group of the Queen Anne men. They belong -to a self-complacent time, and we to a time of doubt and unsatisfied -aspiration, and the two spirits are unsympathetic. Yet they were -assuredly a band, from Newton and Locke down to Pope, of whom, taking -them for all the qualities which they united, in science, correct -judgment, love of letters, and taste, England has as good reason to be -proud as of any set of contemporary writers in her history. - -Up to this moment Voltaire had been a poet, and his mind had not moved -beyond the region of poetic creation. He had beaten every one once and -for all on the ground of light and graceful lyric verse, ‘a kind of -poetry,’ says a French critic whose word in such a matter we can hardly -refuse to take, ‘in which Voltaire is at once with us the only master -and the only writer supportable, for he is the only one whom we can -read.’[19] He had produced three tragedies. His epic was completed, -though undergoing ceaseless labour of the file. Two lines in his first -play had served to mark him for no friend to the hierophants: - - Nos prêtres ne sont point ce qu’un vain peuple pense; - Notre crédulité fait toute leur science.[20] - -And the words of Araspe in the same play had breathed the full spirit of -the future liberator: - - Ne nous fions qu’à nous; voyons tout par nos yeux: - Ce sont là nos trépieds, nos oracles, nos dieux.[21] - -Such expressions, however, were no more than the vague and casual word -of the _esprit fort_, the friend of Chaulieu, and the rhymer of a -dissolute circle, where religion only became tinged with doubt, because -conduct had already become penetrated with licence. More important than -such stray words was the Epistle to Uranie (1722), that truly masculine -and terse protest against the popular creed, its mean and fatuous and -contradictory idea of an omnipotent God, who gave us guilty hearts so as -to have the right of punishing us, and planted in us a love of pleasure -so as to torment us the more effectually by appalling ills that an -eternal miracle prevents from ever ending; who drowned the fathers in -the deluge and then died for the children; who exacts an account of -their ignorance from a hundred peoples whom he has himself plunged -helplessly into this ignorance: - - Je ne reconnais point à cette indigne image - Le dieu que je dois adorer; - Je croirais le déshonorer - Par une telle insulte et par un tel hommage.[22] - -Though called The For and Against, the poet hardly tries to maintain any -proportion between the two sides of the argument. The verses were -addressed to a lady in a state of uncertainty as to belief, of whom -there were probably more among Voltaire’s friends of quality than he can -have cared to cure or convert. Scepticism was at this time not much more -than an interesting fashion. - -The dilettante believer is indeed not a strong spirit, but the weakest, -and the facts of life were by this time far too serious for Voltaire, -for that truth to have missed his keen-seeing eye. It is not hard to -suppose that impatient weariness of the poor life that was lived around -him, had as large a share as resentment of an injustice, in driving him -to a land where men did not merely mouth idle words of making reason -their oracle, their tripod, their god, but where they had actually -systematised the rejection of Christianity, and had thrown themselves -with grave faith on the disciplined intelligence and its lessons. -Voltaire left a country where freedom of thinking was only an empty -watchword, the name for a dissipated fashion. It was considered -free-thinking if a man allowed himself to regard the existence of the -Five Propositions in Jansenius’s book as a thing indifferent to the -happiness of the human race.[23] He found in England that it was a -far-spreading reality, moulding not only the theological ideas, but the -literature, manners, politics, and philosophy, of a great society. -Voltaire left France a poet, he returned to it a sage. Before his -flight, though we do not know to what extent he may have read such -history as was then accessible, he had been actively productive only in -the sphere of the imaginative faculties, and in criticism of the form -and regulation proper to be imposed upon them. When he returned, while -his poetic power had ripened, he had tasted of the fruit of the tree of -scientific reason, and, what was not any less important, he had become -alive to the central truth of the social destination of all art and all -knowledge. - -In a word, he was transformed from the penman into the captain and -man-at-arms. ‘The example of England,’ says Condorcet, ‘showed him that -truth is not made to remain a secret in the hands of a few philosophers, -and a limited number of men of the world, instructed, or rather -indoctrinated, by the philosophers; smiling with them at the errors of -which the people are the victims, but at the same time making themselves -the champions of these very errors, when their rank or position gives -them a real or chimerical interest in them, and quite ready to permit -the proscription, or even persecution, of their teachers, if they -venture to say what in secret they themselves actually think. From the -moment of his return, Voltaire felt himself called to destroy the -prejudices of every kind, of which his country was the slave.’[24] - -It is not difficult to perceive the sorts of fact which would most -strike the exile’s attention, though it would be rash to suppose that -things struck him in exact proportion to their real weight and the depth -of their importance, or that he detected the connection subsisting among -them at their roots. Perhaps the first circumstance to press its -unfamiliarity upon him was the social and political consequence of the -men of letters in England, and the recognition given to the power of the -pen. The patronage of men of genius in the reign of Anne and part of the -reign of the first George had been profuse and splendid. The poet who -had been thrown into prison for resenting a whipping from a nobleman’s -lackeys, found himself in a land where Newton and Locke were rewarded -with lucrative posts in the administration of the country, where Prior -and Gay acted in important embassies, and where Addison was a Secretary -of State. The author of Œdipe and the Henriade had to hang ignobly -about in the crowd at Versailles at the marriage of Lewis XV. to gain a -paltry pittance from the queen’s privy purse,[25] while in England -Hughes and Rowe and Ambrose Philips and Congreve were all enjoying amply -endowed sinecures. The familiar intercourse between the ministers and -the brilliant literary group of that age has been often painted. At the -time of Voltaire’s exile it had just come to an end with the accession -to supreme power of Walpole, who neither knew anything nor cared -anything about the literature of his own time. But the usage was still -new, and the men who had profited and given profit by it were alive, and -were the central figures in the circles among which Voltaire was -introduced by Bolingbroke. Newton died in 1727, and Voltaire saw his -death mourned as a public calamity, and surrounded with a pomp and -circumstance in the eye of the country that could not have been -surpassed if he had been, not a geometer, but a king who was the -benefactor of his people.[26] The author of Gulliver’s Travels was -still a dignitary in the state church, and there was still a large -association of outward power and dignity with literary merit. - -In so far as we consider literature to be one of the purely decorative -arts, there can be no harm in this patronage of its most successful, -that is its most pleasing, professors by the political minister; but the -more closely literature approaches to being an organ of serious things, -a truly spiritual power, the more danger there is likely to be in making -it a path to temporal station or emolument. The practical instinct, -which on some of its sides seems like a miraculously implanted -substitute for scientific intelligence in English politics, has led us -almost too far in preserving this important separation of the new church -from the functions and rewards of the state. The misfortunes of France -since the Revolution have been due to no one circumstance so markedly as -to the predominance which the man of letters has acquired in that -country; and this fatal predominance was first founded, though assuredly -not of set design, by Voltaire. - -Not less amazing than the high honour paid to intellectual eminence was -the refugee from the city of the Bastille likely to find the freedom -with which public events and public personages were handled by any one -who could pay a printer. The licence of this time in press and theatre -has only been once or twice equalled since, and it has never been -surpassed. From Bolingbroke and Swift down to the author of The Golden -Rump,[27] every writer who chose to consider himself in opposition -treated the minister with a violence and ferocity, which neither -irritated nor daunted that sage head, but which would in France have -crowded the lowest dungeons of the Bastille with victims of Fleury’s -anger and fright. Such license was as natural in a country that had -within ninety years gone through a violent civil war, a revolutionary -change of government and line, and a half-suppressed dispute of -succession, as it would have been astonishing in France, where the -continuity of outward order had never been more than superficially -ruffled, even in the most turbulent times of the factious wars of the -League and the Fronde. No new idea of the relations between ruler and -subject had ever penetrated into France, as it had done so deeply in the -neighbouring country. No serious popular issues had been so much as -stated. As Voltaire wrote, in the detestable times of Charles IX. and -Henry III. it was only a question whether the people should be the slave -of the Guises, while as for the last war, it deserved only hisses and -contempt; for what was De Retz but a rebel without a purpose and a -stirrer of sedition without a name, and what was the parliament but a -body which knew neither what it meant nor what it did not mean?[28] The -apologies of Jesuit writers for the assassination of tyrants deserve an -important place in the history of the doctrine of divine right; but -they were theoretical essays in casuistry for the initiated few, and -certainly conveyed no general principles of popular right to the many. - -Protestantism, on the other hand, loosened the conception of authority -and of the respect proper for authority, to a degree which has never -been realised in the most anarchic movements in France, whose anarchy -has ever sprung less from a disrespect for authority as such, than from -a passionate and uncompromising resolve in this or that group that the -authority shall be in one set of hands and not another. Voltairism has -proved itself as little capable as Catholicism of inspiring any piece -that may match with Milton’s Areopagitica, the noblest defence that was -ever made of the noblest of causes. We know not whether Voltaire ever -thought much as to the history and foundation of that freedom of speech, -which even in its abuse struck him as so wonderful a circumstance in a -country that still preserved a stable and orderly society. He was -probably content to admire the phenomenon of a liberty so marvellous, -without searching very far for its antecedents. The mere spectacle of -such free, vigorous, many-sided, and truly social and public activity of -intellect as was visible in England at this time, was in itself enough -to fix the gaze of one who was so intensely conscious of his own energy -of intellect, and so bitterly rebellious against the system which -fastened a gag between his lips. - -If we would realise the impression of this scene of free speech on -Voltaire’s ardent spirit, we need only remember that, when in time he -returned to his own country, he had to wait long and use many arts and -suffer harassing persecution, before he could publish what he had to say -on Newton and Locke, and in other less important respects had to -suppress much of what he had most at heart to say. ‘One must disguise at -Paris,’ he wrote long after his return, ‘what I could not say too -strongly at London;’ and he vaunts his hardihood in upholding Newton -against René Descartes, while he confesses that an unfortunate but -necessary circumspection forced him to try to make Locke obscure.[29] -Judge the light which would come into such a mind as his, when he first -saw the discussion and propagation of truth freed from these vile and -demoralising affronts. The very conception of truth was a new one, as a -goddess not to be shielded behind the shades of hierophantic mystery, -but rather to be sought in the free tumult and joyous strife of many -voices, there vindicating her own majesty and marking her own children. - -Penetrating deeper, Voltaire found not only a new idea of truth as a -something rude, robust, and self-sufficient, but also what was to him a -new order of truths, the triumphs of slow-footed induction and the -positive reason. France was the hotbed of systems of the physical -universe. The provisional and suspensive attitude was intolerable to her -impetuous genius, and the gaps which scientific investigation was -unable to fill, were straightway hidden behind an artificial screen of -metaphysical phantasies. The Aristotelian system died harder in France -than anywhere else, for so late as 1693, while Oxford and Cambridge and -London were actually embracing the Newtonian principles, even the -Cartesian system was forbidden to be taught by decrees of the Sorbonne -and of the Council of the King.[30] When the Cartesian physics once got -a foothold, they kept it as firmly as the system which they had found so -much difficulty in displacing. It is easy to believe that Voltaire’s -positive intelligence would hold aloof by a certain instinct from -physical explanations which were unverified and incapable of being -verified, and which were imbrangled with theology and metaphysics. - -We can readily conceive, again, the sensation of freshness and delight -with which a mind so essentially real, and so fundamentally serious, -paradoxical as this may sound in connection with the name of the -greatest mocker that has ever lived, would exchange the poetised -astronomy of Fontenelle, excellently constituted as Fontenelle was in a -great many ways, for the sure and scientific discoveries of a Newton. -Voltaire, in whatever subject, never failed to see through rhetoric, and -for rhetoric as the substitute for clear reasoning he always had an -aversion as deep as it was wholesome. Nobody ever loved grace and form -in style more sincerely than Voltaire, but he has shown in a great many -ways that nobody ever valued grace and form more truly at their worth, -compared with correctness of argument and precision and solidity of -conclusion. Descartes, Fontenelle had said, ‘essaying a bold flight, -insisted on placing himself at the source of all, on making himself -master of the first principles of things by a certain number of clear -and fundamental ideas, having thus only to descend to the phenomena of -nature as necessary consequences; Newton, more timid or more modest, -began his advance by resting on phenomena in order to ascend to the -unknown principles, resolved to admit them, however the combination of -the results might present them. The one starts from what he understands -clearly to discover the cause of what he sees: the other starts from -what he sees, to discover its cause, whether clear or obscure.’ Caution -and reserve and sound method had achieved a generalisation more vast and -amazing than the boldest flight, or most resolute reasoning downwards -from a clearly held conception to phenomena, could possibly have -achieved. This splendid and unrivalled discovery was probably expounded -to Voltaire by Dr. Samuel Clarke, with whom he tells us that he had -several conferences in 1726,[31] and who was one of the ablest of the -Newtonians. He had no doubt learnt the theory of vortices from the -Jesuits, and clear exposition was the only thing needed to convert him -to the new theory, which shines by its own light, and must, in an -unbiassed intelligence with the humblest scientific quality, have -extinguished every artificial explanation. One of the truest signs of -the soundness of Voltaire’s intellectual activity was that his glad -reception of the Newtonian doctrine of attraction did not blind him to -the signal service and splendid genius of Descartes. That loud-shouting -yet feeble-footed enthusiasm, which can only make sure of itself by -disparaging the object of a counter-enthusiasm, had no place in an -intellect so emphatically sincere and self-penetrative. He prefaces his -account of the system of attraction by a hearty and loyal appreciation -of the propounder of the system of vortices.[32] - -The acquisition of the special theory of attraction was in itself less -important for Voltaire, than the irresistible impulse which it would -give to the innate rationality or positivity of his own mind. It fitted -him to encounter with proper freedom not only vortices, but that -tremendous apparatus of monads, sufficient reason, and pre-established -harmony, with which Leibnitz then overawed European philosophy. ‘O -Metaphysics!’ he cried, ‘we have, then, got as far as they had in the -time of the earliest Druids!’[33] - -Locke’s essay impelled him further in the same path of patient and -cautious interrogation of experience; for the same method which -established gravitation presided over the birth of the experiential -psychology. Newton instead of elaborating a system of vortices, or -another, out of his own consciousness, industriously and patiently -waited on the phenomena. Locke, too, instead of inventing a romance of -the soul, to use Voltaire’s phrase, sagaciously set himself to watch the -phenomena of thought, and ‘reduced metaphysics to being the experimental -physics of the soul.’[34] Malebranche, then the reigning philosopher in -France, ‘astonished the reason of those whom he delighted by his style. -People trusted him in what they did not understand, because he began by -being right in what they did understand; he seduced people by being -delightful, as Descartes seduced them by being daring, while Locke was -nothing more than sage.’[35] ‘After all,’ Voltaire once wrote, ‘we must -admit that anybody who has read Locke, or rather who is his own Locke, -must find the Platos mere fine talkers, and nothing more. In point of -philosophy, a chapter of Locke or Clarke is, compared with the babble of -antiquity, what Newton’s optics are compared with those of -Descartes.’[36] It is curious to observe that De Maistre, who thought -more meanly of Plato than Voltaire did, and hardly less meanly than he -thought of Voltaire himself, cried out that in the study of philosophy -contempt for Locke is the beginning of knowledge.[37] Voltaire, on the -other hand, is enchanted to hear that his niece reads the great English -philosopher, like a good father who sheds tears of joy that his -children are turning out well.[38] Augustus published an edict _de -coercendo intra fines imperio_, and like him, Locke has fixed the empire -of knowledge in order to strengthen it.[39] Locke, he says elsewhere, -traced the development of the human reason, as a good anatomist explains -the machinery of the human body: instead of defining all at once what we -do not understand, he examines by degrees what we want to understand: he -sometimes has the courage to speak positively, but sometimes also he has -the courage to doubt.[40] This is a perfectly appreciative account. -Locke perceived the hopelessness of defining things as they are in -themselves, and the necessity before all else of understanding the reach -of the human intelligence; the impossibility of attaining knowledge -absolute and transcendent; and the limitations of our thinking and -knowing faculties within the bounds of an experience that must always be -relative. The doubt which Voltaire praised in Locke had nothing to do -with that shivering mood which receives overmuch poetic praise in our -day, as the honest doubt that has more faith than half your creeds. -There was no question of the sentimental juvenilities of children crying -for light. It was by no means religious doubt, but philosophic; and it -affected only the possibilities of ontological knowledge, leaving -the grounds of faith on the one hand, and practical conduct on the -other, exactly where they were. His intense feeling for actualities -would draw Voltaire irresistibly to the writer who, in his judgment, -closed the gates of the dreamland of metaphysics, and banished the -vaulting ambition of a priori certainties, which led nowhere and assured -nothing. Voltaire’s keen practical instinct may well have revealed to -him that men were most likely to attribute to the great social problem -of the improvement of mankind its right supremacy, when they had ceased -to concentrate intellectual effort on the insoluble; and Locke went a -long way towards showing how insoluble those questions were, on which, -as it chanced, the most strenuous efforts of the intellect of Europe -since the decline of theology had been concentrated. - -That he should have acquired more scientific views either upon the -origin of ideas, or the question whether the soul always thinks, or upon -the reason why an apple falls to the ground, or why the planets remain -in their orbits, was on the whole very much less important for Voltaire, -than a profound and very vital sentiment which was raised to supreme -prominence in his mind, by the spectacle of these vast continents of -knowledge newly discovered by the adventurous yet sure explorers of -English thought. This sentiment was a noble faith, none the less firm -because it was so passionate, in the ability of the relative and -practical understanding to reach truth; a deep-rooted reverence for it, -as a majestic power bearing munificent and unnumbered gifts to mankind. -Hence the vivacity of the annotations which about this time (1728) -Voltaire affixed to Pascal’s famous Thoughts, and which were regarded at -that time as the audacious carpings of a shallow poet against a profound -philosopher. They were in truth the protest of a lively common sense -against a strained, morbid, and often sophistical, misrepresentation of -human nature and human circumstance. Voltaire shot a penetrative ray -through the clouds of doubt, out of which Pascal had made an apology for -mysticism. Even if there were no direct allusions to Locke, as there -are, we should know from whom the writer had learnt the art of insisting -on the relativity of propositions, reducing them to definable terms,[41] -and being very careful against those slippery unobserved transitions -from metaphor to reality, and from a term used in its common sense to -the same term in a transcendental sense, by which Pascal brought the -seeming contradictions of life, and its supposed pettiness, into a light -as oppressively glaring as it was artificial. ‘These pretended -oppositions that you call contradictions are necessary ingredients in -the composition of man, who is, like the rest of nature, what he is -bound to be.’[42] And where is the wise man who would be full of despair -because he cannot find out the exact constitution of his thought, -because he only knows a few attributes of matter, because God has not -disclosed to him all his secrets? He might as well despair because he -has not got four feet and two wings.[43] This sage strain was the -restoration to men of their self-respect, the revival of that -intelligence which Pascal had so humiliated and thrust under foot. It -was what he had seen in England of the positive feats which reason had -achieved, that filled Voltaire with exultation in its power, and -confidence in the prospects of the race which possessed such an -instrument. ‘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.’[44] - -From this there flowed that other vehement current in his soul, of -energetic hatred toward the black clouds of prejudice, of mean -self-love, of sinister preference of class or order, of indolence, -obstinacy, wanton fancy, and all the other unhappy leanings of human -nature, and vexed and fatal conjunctures of circumstance, which -interpose between humanity and the beneficent sunbeams of its own -intelligence, that central light of the universe. Hence, again, by a -sufficiently visible chain of thought, his marked disesteem for -far-sounding names of brutal conquerors, and his cold regard for those -outward and material circumstances in the state of nations, which strike -the sense, but do not touch the inward reason. ‘Not long ago,’ he writes -once, ‘a distinguished company were discussing the trite and frivolous -question, who was the greatest man, Caesar, Alexander, Tamerlane, or -Cromwell. Somebody answered that it was undoubtedly Isaac Newton. This -person was right; for if true greatness consists in having received from -heaven a powerful understanding and in using it to enlighten oneself and -all others, then such an one as Newton, who is hardly to be met with -once in ten centuries, is in truth the great man.... It is to him who -masters our minds by the force of truth, not to those who enslave men by -violence; it is to him who understands the universe, not to those who -disfigure it, that we owe our reverence.’[45] This may seem trite to us, -as the question which suggested it seemed to Voltaire, but we need only -reflect, first, how new this was, even as an idea, in the France which -Voltaire had quitted, and, second, how in spite of the nominal -acceptance of the idea, in the England of our own time there is, with an -immense majority not only of the general vulgar but of the special -vulgar who presume to teach in press and pulpit, no name of slight at -once so disdainful and so sure of transfixing as the name of thinker. - -The discovery of the New World did not fire the imagination and stir the -thought of Europe more intensely, than the vision of these new worlds of -knowledge kindled the ardour of the receptive spirit which had just come -into contact with them. But besides the speculative aspects of what he -saw in England, Voltaire was deeply penetrated by the social differences -between a country that had been effectively, if only partially, -transformed from feudalism, and his own, where feudalism had only been -transformed into a system more repressive than itself, and more unfit to -conduct a nation to the free and industrious developments of new -civilisation. It is a remarkable thing that though Voltaire’s habitual -companions or patrons had belonged to the privileged class, he had been -sufficiently struck by the evils incident to the privileged system to -notice the absence of such evils in England, and to make a clear -attempt, though an insufficient one, to understand the secret of the -English immunity from them. One of the worst curses of France was the -taille or capitation-tax, and the way in which it was levied and -assessed. In England, Voltaire noticed, the peasant has not his feet -bruised in wooden shoes, he eats white bread, is decently clad, is not -terrified to increase the number of his stock, or to roof his dwelling -with tiles, lest his tax should be raised next year. Again, he placed -his finger on one of the circumstances that did most to spoil the growth -of a compact and well-knit society in France, when he pointed to the -large number of farmers in England with five or six hundred pounds -sterling a year, who do not think it beneath them to cultivate the earth -which has made them rich, and on which they live in active freedom.[46] -The profoundest modern investigator of the conditions of French society -in the eighteenth century has indicated the eagerness of every man who -got a little capital to quit the country and buy a place in a town, as -doing more harm to the progress of the agriculture and commerce of -France than even the taille itself and the trade corporations.[47] - -Voltaire perceived the astonishing fact that in this country a man -because he is a noble or a priest was not exempt from paying certain -taxes, and that the Commons who regulated the taxes, though second to -the Lords in rank, were above them in legislative influence.[48] His -acute sight also revealed to him the importance of the mixture of ranks -and classes in common pursuits, and he records with admiration instances -of the younger sons of peers of the realm following trade. ‘Whoever -arrives in Paris from the depths of a remote province with money to -spend and a name in _ac_ or _ille_, can talk about a man like me, a man -of my quality,’[49] and hold a merchant in sovereign contempt. The -merchant again so constantly hears his business spoken of with disdain -that he is fool enough to blush for it; yet I am not sure which is the -more useful to a state, a thickly-bepowdered lord who knows exactly what -time the king rises and what time he goes to bed, and gives himself -mighty airs of greatness while he plays the part of a slave in a -minister’s ante-room; or the merchant who enriches his country, gives -orders from his counting-house at Surat or Cairo, and contributes to -the happiness of the globe.[50] It is easy to conceive the fury which -these contrasts drawn from English observation would excite among the -personages in France who happened to get the worst side in them, and -there was assuredly nothing surprising in the decree of the Parliament -of Paris (1734), which condemned the Letters on the English to be -publicly burnt, as scandalous and contrary alike to good manners and the -respect due to principalities and powers. - -The English reader of the Letters is naturally struck by the absence of -any adequate account of our political liberties and free constitutional -forms. There is a good chapter on Bacon, one on inoculation, and several -on the Quakers, but on the civil constitution hardly a word of large -appreciativeness. Not only this, but there is no sign that Voltaire -either set any due or special value on the popular forms of the -Hanoverian time, or clearly understood that the liberty, which was so -amazing and so precious to him in the region of speculative and literary -activity, was the direct fruit of that general spirit of freedom, which -is naturally engendered in a people accustomed to take an active part in -the conduct of its own affairs. Liberty in spirituals was adorable to -him, but for liberty in temporals he never seems to have had more than a -very distant and verbal kind of respect; just because, with all his -unmatched keenness of sight, he failed to discover that the English -sturdiness in the matter of civil rights was the very root and cause, -not only of that material prosperity which struck him so much, and of -the slightness and movableness of the line which divided the aristocracy -from the commercial classes, but also of the fact that a Newton and a -Locke were inwardly emboldened to give free play to their intelligence -without fear of being punished for their conclusions, and of the only -less important fact that whatever conclusions speculative genius might -establish would be given to the world without interposition from any -court or university or official tribunal. Voltaire undoubtedly admired -the English for their parliament, because the material and superficial -advantages that delighted him were evidently due to the system, which -happened to be parliamentary. What we miss is any consciousness that -these advantages would not have been what they were, if they had been -conferred by an absolute sovereign; any recognition that political -activity throughout a nation works in a thousand indirect but most -potent ways, and is not more to be prized for this, than for its direct -and most palpable consequences. In one place, indeed, he mentions that -the honour paid to men of letters is due to the form of government, but -his language betrays a wholly inadequate and incorrect notion of the -true operation of the form of government. ‘There are in London,’ he -says, ‘about eight hundred people with the right of speaking in public, -and maintaining the interests of the nation. Some five or six thousand -pretend to the same honour in their turn. All the rest set themselves up -to judge these, and everybody can print what he thinks. So all the -nation is bound to instruct itself. All talk is about the governments of -Athens and Rome, and it becomes necessary to read the authors who have -discussed them. That naturally leads to love of polite learning.’[51] -This is to confound a very trivial accident of popular governments with -their essence. If culture thrives under them—a very doubtful position—it -is not because voters wish to understand the historical allusions of -candidates, but because the general stir and life of public activity -tends to commove the whole system. Political freedom does not produce -men of genius, but its atmosphere is more favourable than any other to -their making the best of their genius in the service of mankind. - -Voltaire, in this as in too much besides, was content with a keen and -rapid glance at the surface. The reader may remember his story of -meeting a boatman one day on the Thames, who seeing that he was a -Frenchman, with a too characteristic kind of courtesy, took the -opportunity of bawling out, with the added emphasis of a round oath, -that he would rather be a boatman on the Thames than an archbishop in -France. The next day Voltaire saw his man in prison with irons on and -praying an alms from the passers-by, and so asked him whether he still -thought as scurvily of an archbishop in France. ‘Ah, sir,’ cried the -man, ‘what an abominable government! I have been carried off by force to -go and serve in one of the king’s ships in Norway. They take me from my -wife and my children, and lay me up in prison with irons on my legs -until the time for going on board, for fear I should run away.’ A -countryman of Voltaire’s confessed that he felt a splenetic joy that a -people who were constantly taunting the French with their servitude, -were in sooth just as much slaves themselves; but for my own part, says -Voltaire, I felt a humaner sentiment, I was afflicted at there being no -liberty on the earth.[52] - -This is well enough as a comment on the abomination of impressment; yet -we feel that there is behind it, and not here only but generally in -Voltaire, a sort of confusion between two very distinct conceptions, -that both in his day and ever since have been equally designated by the -common name of civil liberty. The first of these ideas is a mere -privative, undoubtedly of sovereign importance, but still a privative, -and implies absence, more or less complete, of arbitrary control from -without, of interference with individual action by authority, of any -pretension on the part of any organised body to hinder any member of the -society from doing or abstaining from doing what may seem right in his -own eyes, provided he pays a corresponding respect to the freedom of his -fellows. Freedom in this sense Voltaire fully understood, and valued as -profoundly as it deserves to be valued. Political liberty, however, has -not only a meaning of abstention, but a meaning of participation. If in -one sense it is a sheer negative, and a doctrine of rights, in another -sense it is thoroughly positive, and a gospel of duties. The liberty -which has really made England what it so delighted and stimulated and -inflamed Voltaire to find her, has been quite as much of the second kind -as of the first; that liberty which consists in a national habit of -independent and watchful interest in the transaction of the national -affairs by the persons most concerned in them; in a general -consciousness of the duty of having some opinion on the business of the -state; in a recognition on the part of the government that the balance -of this opinion is necessary as a sanction to any policy, to which the -effective force of the state is applied. It is true that this public -participation in public concerns has sometimes been very dark and blind, -as it has often been in the highest degree enlightened, but for good or -for evil it has been the root of the matter. - -The great Frenchmen, who have been most characteristically French, while -valuing all and envying many of the best products of our liberty, may be -said generally to have failed entirely to detect that the salt of -English character, in days when it had more robustness than we can see -just now, sprung from the double circumstance of every man being at -liberty to have, and being inclined to take the trouble to have, an -opinion about the method and doings of his government; and of so many -men being called upon in high capacity or low, in an important function -or an obscure one, to take an independent and free share in controlling -or initiating the doings of their government. Take Montesquieu, for -example. He came to England just when Voltaire quitted it, and studied -carefully those political facts which his countryman had so neglected. -Yet he saw no deeper into the spirit of our institutions than to fix on -the constitutional balance of powers as the great secret of our freedom -and order. And Montesquieu, in spite of this, was wiser than most of his -contemporaries, for he at least saw the worth of constitutional freedom, -if he failed to see other ingredients of still more importance. French -statesmen and publicists have been systematically blind to the great -truth that there is no royal road to national well-being, and that -nations will deliberately put away happiness from themselves, unless -such happiness comes to them in a given way. The Physiocrats, who were -with all their shortcomings the most nearly scientific social thinkers -France possessed, could rise to no higher conception of a national life -than the supreme authority of a wise and benevolent monarch, giving good -gifts to his subjects. Turgot, with all the breadth and sagacity of his -genius, when five-and-forty years after our present date he came into -power, austerely clung to the same disastrous idea of passing reasoned -laws, in the shape of the beneficial edicts of an absolute power. -Voltaire, in the same way, never rose above the simple political -conception of an eastern tale, a good-tempered despot with a sage -vizier. In politics, then, he failed to carry away from England the very -essence and principle of our institutions, with which it was so much -more important that his countrymen should be familiarised than that they -should follow inoculation. - -It may at first sight be astonishing to find that, while Voltaire was -impressed only in a vague and general way with the free variety of -theological opinion which Protestantism had secured for England, the -sect which made a sort of mark on his mind was that which conceived the -idea that Christianity has after all something to do with the type and -example of Christ. We know how laughable and monstrous the Quaker scheme -has appeared to people who have been steeped from their youth upwards in -elaborate systems of abstruse metaphysical dogma, mystic ceremonies, -hierarchic ordering, and profuse condemnation of rival creeds. -Voltaire’s imagination was struck by a sect who professed to regard the -religion of Christ as a simple and austere discipline of life, who -repudiated ritual, and held war for the worst of anti-christian -practices. The forms and doctrines of the established church of the -country he would be likely to take merely for so much of the common form -of the national institutions. He would simply regard it as the English -way of narrowing the mind and consolidating the social order. Gibbon’s -famous sentence was not yet written, which described all religions as -equally true in the eyes of the people, equally false in the eyes of -the philosopher, and equally useful in the eyes of the magistrate. But -the idea was the idea of the century, and Voltaire would justly look -upon the Anglican profession as a temporarily useful and statesmanlike -settlement. He praised its clergy for the superior regularity of their -manners. ‘That indefinable being, who is neither ecclesiastic nor -secular, in a word, who is called _abbé_, is an unknown species in -England; the clergy here are all prigs, and nearly all pedants. When -they learn that in France young men notorious for their debauchery, and -raised to preferment by the intrigues of women, pursue their amours -publicly, amuse themselves by the composition of gallant verses, give -everyday prolonged and luxurious suppers, and rise from them to implore -the enlightenment of the holy spirit, boldly calling themselves the -successors of the apostles—why, then our English thank God that they are -Protestants.’[53] - -If, however, in face of a young and lively French graduate, bawling -theology in the schools in the morning and in the evening singing tender -songs with the ladies, an Anglican divine is a very Cato, this Cato is a -downright gallant before a Scotch presbyterian, who assumes a grave step -and a sour mien, preaches from the nose, and gives the name of harlot of -Babylon to all churches in which some of the ecclesiastics are so -fortunate as to receive an income of fifty thousand livres a year. -However, each man takes whatever road to heaven he pleases. If there -were one religion in England, they would have to fear its despotism; if -there were only two, they would cut one another’s throats; but there are -thirty; so they live peaceably and happily together.[54] - -In the Quakers Voltaire saw something quite different from the purely -political pretensions and internecine quarrels of doctrine of the -ordinary worldly sects. It is impossible to say how much of the -kindliness with which he speaks of them is due to real admiration of -their simple, dignified, and pacific life, and how much to a mischievous -desire to make their praise a handle for the dispraise of overweening -competitors. On the whole there is a sincerity and heartiness of -interest in his long account of this sect, which persuades one that he -was moved by a genuine sympathy with a religion that could enjoin the -humane and peaceful and spiritual precepts of Christ, while putting away -baptism, ceremonial communion, and hierophantic orders. The nobility of -the social theories of the Society of Friends would naturally stir -Voltaire even more deeply than their abstention from practices that were -in his eyes degrading superstitions. He felt that the repugnance to -lower the majesty of their deity, by taking his name upon their lips as -solemn ratification of their words, had the effect of elevating the -dignity of man, by making his bare word fully credible without this -solemn ratification. Their refusal to comply with the deferential usages -of social intercourse, though nominally based on the sinfulness of -signs of homage to any mere mortal, insinuated a consciousness of -equality and self-respect in that mere mortal who was careful to make no -bows and to keep his hat on in every presence. Above all, Voltaire, who -was nowhere more veritably modern or better entitled to our veneration -than by reason of his steadfast hatred of war, revered a sect so far -removed from the brutality of the military régime as to hold peace for a -first principle of the Christian faith and religious practice. The -reason why we do not go to war, his Quaker says, is not that we are -afraid of death, but because we are not wolves, nor tigers, nor dogs, -but Christian men. ‘Our God, who has bidden us love our enemies and -suffer evil without complaint, assuredly has no mind that we should -cross the sea to go and cut the throats of our brothers, because -murderers in red clothes and hats two feet high enlist citizens, making -a noise with two little sticks on an ass’s skin tightly stretched. And -when, after victories won, all London blazes with illuminations, the sky -is aflame with rockets, and the air resounds with the din of bells, -organs, cannon, we mourn in silence over the slaughter that causes all -the public joy.’[55] - -Voltaire, let us add, was no dilettante traveller constructing views and -deducing theories of national life out of his own uninstructed -consciousness. No German could have worked more diligently at the facts, -and we may say here, once for all, that if it is often necessary to -condemn him for superficiality, this lack of depth seldom at any time -proceeds from want of painstaking. His unrivalled brilliance of -expression blinds us to the extreme and conscientious industry that -provided matter. The most illustrious exile that our free land has -received from France in our own times, and assuredly far more of a giant -in the order of imagination than Voltaire, never had intellectual -curiosity enough to learn the language of the country that had given him -twenty years of shelter. Voltaire, in the few months of his exile here -acquired such an astonishing mastery over English as to be able to read -and relish an esoteric book like Hudibras, and to compass the enormously -difficult feat of rendering portions of it into good French verse.[56] He -composed an essay on epic poetry in the English tongue, and he wrote one -act of Brutus in English. - -He read Shakespeare, and made an elaborate study of his method. He -declares that Milton does as much honour to England as the great Newton, -and he took especial pains not only to master and appreciate the secret -of Milton’s poetic power, but even to ascertain the minutest -circumstances of his life.[57] He studied Dryden, ‘an author who would -have a glory without blemish, if he had only written the tenth part of -his works.’[58] He found Addison the first Englishman who had written a -reasonable tragedy, and Addison’s character of Cato one of the finest -creations of any stage.[59] Wycherley, Vanbrugh, and Congreve he -esteemed more highly than most of their countrymen do now. An act of a -play of Lillo’s was the base of the fourth act of Mahomet. Rochester, -Waller, Prior, and Pope, he read carefully and admired as heartily as -they deserved. Long after he had left England behind, he places Pope and -Addison on a level for variety of genius with Machiavel and Leibnitz and -Fontenelle;[60] and Pope he evidently for a long while kept habitually -by his elbow. Swift he placed before Rabelais, calling him Rabelais in -his senses, and, as usual, giving good reasons for his preference; for -Swift, he says justly, has not the gaiety of Rabelais, but he has all -the finesse, the sense, the variety, the fine taste, in which the priest -of Meudon was wanting.[61] In philosophy, besides Locke, there is -evidence that he read something of Hobbes, and something of Berkeley, -and something of Cudworth.[62] Always, however, ‘harassed, wearied, -ashamed of having sought so many truths and found so many chimeras, I -returned to Locke; like a prodigal son returning to his father, I threw -myself into the arms of that modest man, who never pretends to know what -he does not know, who in truth has no enormous possessions, but whose -substance is well assured.’[63] - -Nor did Voltaire limit himself to the study of science, philosophy, and -poetry. He plunged into the field of theology, and mastered that famous -deistical controversy, of which the seed had been sown in the first half -of the seventeenth century by Lord Herbert of Cherbury, the -correspondent of Descartes and the earliest of the English metaphysical -thinkers.[64] Lord Herbert’s object was to disengage from revelation -both our conceptions of the one supreme power, and the sanctions of good -and bad conduct. Toland, whom we know also that Voltaire read, aimed at -disengaging Christianity from mystery, and discrediting the canon of the -New Testament. In 1724 Collins published his Discourse on the Grounds -and Reasons of the Christian Religion, of which we are told that few -books ever made a greater noise than this did at its first publication. -The press teemed with vindications, replies, and rejoinders to Collins’s -arguments during the whole of Voltaire’s residence in England.[65] His -position was one which no modern free-thinker would dream of making a -central point of attack, and which hardly any modern apologist would -take the pains to reply to. He maintained that Jesus Christ and the -apostles trusted to the prophecies of the Old Testament for their -credentials, and then he showed, or tried to show, in various ways, -that these prophecies would not bear the weight which was thus laid upon -them. We may be sure that Voltaire’s alert curiosity would interest him -profoundly in the lively polemical ferment which this notable contention -of Collins’s stirred up. - -Woolston’s discourses, written to prove that the miracles of the New -Testament are as mythical and allegorical as the prophecies of the old, -appeared at the same time, and had an enormous sale. Voltaire was much -struck by this writer’s coarse and hardy way of dealing with the -miraculous legends, and the article on Miracles in the Philosophical -Dictionary shows how carefully he had read Woolston’s book.[66] We find -references to Shaftesbury and Chubb in Voltaire’s letters and elsewhere, -though they are not the references of an admirer,[67] and Bolingbroke -was one of the most influential and intimate of his friends. It is not -too much to say that Bolingbroke was the direct progenitor of Voltaire’s -opinions in religion, and that nearly every one of the positive articles -in Voltaire’s rather moderately sized creed was held and inculcated by -that brilliant and disordered genius. He did not always accept -Bolingbroke’s optimism, but even as late in the century as 1767 Voltaire -thought it worth while to borrow his name for a volume of compendious -attack on the popular religion.[68] Bolingbroke’s tone was peculiarly -light and peculiarly well-bred. His infidelity was strictly infidelity -for the upper classes;[69] ingenious, full of literature, and elegantly -supercilious. He made no pretence to theological criticism in any sense -that can be gravely admitted, but looked at the claims of revelation -with the eye of a polished man of the world, and met its arguments with -those general considerations of airy probability which go so far with -men who insist on having plausible opinions on all subjects, while they -will not take pains to work to the bottom of any. - -Villemain’s observation that there is not one of Voltaire’s writings -that does not bear the mark of his sojourn in England, is specially true -of what he wrote against theology. It was the English onslaught which -sowed in him the seed of the idea, and eventually supplied him with the -argumentative instruments, of a systematic and reasoned attack upon that -mass of doctrinal superstition and social abuse, which it had hitherto -been the fashion for even the strongest spirits in his own country to do -no more than touch with a cool sneer or a flippant insinuation, directed -to the private ear of a sympathiser. Who, born within the last forty -years, cried Burke, has read one word of Collins, and Toland, and Chubb, -and Morgan, and that whole race who called themselves Freethinkers? Who -now reads Bolingbroke? Who ever read him through?[70] This was very -well, but hundreds of thousands of persons born within those last forty -years had read Voltaire, and Voltaire had drawn from the armoury of -these dead and unread Freethinkers the weapons which he made sharp with -the mockery of his own spirit. He stood on the platform which they had -constructed, to stretch forth his hand against the shrine and the image -before which so many credulous generations had bowed down. It was in -this most transformed shape among others that at length, late and -changed, but directly of descent, the free and protesting genius of the -Reformation made its decisive entry into France. - -It is easy to cite proofs of the repudiation by Protestant bodies of the -Protestant principle, to multiply instances of the narrow rigidity of -their dogma, and the intolerance of their discipline. This method -supplies an excellent answer as against Protestants who tax Catholics -with the crime of persecution, or the crime of opposing intellectual -independence. It cannot, however, touch the fact that Protestantism was -indirectly the means of creating and dispersing an atmosphere of -rationalism, in which there speedily sprang up philosophical, -theological, and political influences, all of them entirely antagonistic -to the old order of thought and institution. The whole intellectual -temperature underwent a permanent change, that was silently mortal to -the most flourishing tenets of all sorts. It is futile to ask for a -precise logical chain of relations between the beginning of a movement -and its end; and there is no more direct and logical connection between -the right of private judgment and an experiential doctrine of -psychology, than there is between experiential psychology and deism. -Nobody now thinks that the effect is homogeneous with its cause, or that -there is any objective resemblance between a blade of wheat and the -moisture and warmth which fill and expand it. All we can see is that the -proclamation of the rights of free judgment would tend to substitute -reason for authority, and evidence for tradition, as the arbiters of -opinion; and that the political expression of this change in the civil -wars of the middle of the seventeenth century would naturally deepen the -influence of the new principle, and produce the Lockian rationalism of -the end of that century, which almost instantaneously extended from the -region of metaphysics into the region of theology. - -The historian of every kind of opinion, and the student of the great -chiefs of intellectual movements, habitually do violence to actual -circumstances, by imparting too systematic a connection to the various -parts of belief, and by assuming an unreal degree of conscious logical -continuity among the notions of individual thinkers. Critics fill in the -frame with a completeness and exactitude that had no counterpart in the -man’s own judgments, and they identify him with a multitude of -deductions from his premisses, which may be fairly drawn, but which -never at all entered into his mind, and formed no part of his character. -The philosophy of the majority of men is nothing more shaped and -incorporate than a little group of potential and partially incoherent -tendencies. To stiffen these into a system of definite formulas is the -most deceptive, as it is the most common, of critical processes. A few -persons, with an exceptional turn for philosophy, consciously embody -their metaphysical principles with a certain detail in all the rest of -their thinking. With most people, however, even people of superior -capacity, the relation between their ground-system, such as a critic -might supply them with, and their manifestations of intellectual -activity, is of an extremely indirect and general kind. - -Hence the untrustworthiness of those critical schemata, so attractive -for their compact order, which first make Voltaire a Lockian -sensationalist, and then trace his deism to his sensationalism. We have -already seen that he was a deist before he came to England, just as Lord -Herbert of Cherbury was a deist, who wrote before Locke was born. It was -not the metaphysical revolution of Locke which led to deism, but the -sort of way in which he thought about metaphysics, a way which was -immediately applied to theology by other people, whether assailants or -defenders of the current opinions. Locke’s was ‘common-sense thinking,’ -and the fashion spread. The air was thick with common-sense objections -to Christianity, as it was with common-sense ideas as to the way in -which we come to have ideas. There was no temperament to which such an -atmosphere could be so congenial as Voltaire’s, of whom we cannot too -often repeat, considering the vulgar reputation he has for violence and -excess, that he was in thought the very genius of good sense, whether or -no we fully admit M. Cousin’s qualification of it as superficial good -sense. It has been said that he always speaks of Descartes, Leibnitz, -and Spinoza, like a man to whom nature has refused the metaphysical -sense.[71] At any rate he could never agree with them, and he never -tried to find truth by the roads which they had made. It is true, -however, that he shows no sign of special fitness for metaphysics, any -more than he did for physical science. The metaphysics of Locke lay -undeveloped in his mind, just as the theory of evolution lies in so many -minds at the present time. There is a faint informal reference of other -theories to this central and half-seen standard. When metaphysical -subjects came before him, he felt that he had this for a sheet-anchor, -and he did not greatly care to keep proving it again and again by -continued criticism or examination. The upshot of his acquaintance with -Locke was a systematic adherence to common-sense modes of thinking; and -he always betrayed the faults and shortcomings to which such modes -inevitably lead, when they are brought, to the exclusion of -complementary ideas, to the practical subjects that comprehend more than -prudence, self-interest, and sobriety. The subject that does beyond any -other comprehend more than these elements is religion, and the -substantial vices of Voltaire’s objections to religion first arose from -his familiarity with the English form of deism, and his instinctive -feeling for its method. - -The deism of Leibnitz was a positive belief, and made the existence of a -supreme power an actual and living object of conviction. The mark of -this belief has remained on German speculation throughout its course, -down to our own day. English deism, on the contrary, was only a -particular way of repudiating Christianity. There was as little of God -in it as could well be. Its theory was that God had given each man the -light of reason in his own breast; that by this reason every scheme of -belief must be tried, and accepted or rejected; and that the Christian -scheme being so tried was in various ways found wanting. The formula of -some book of the eighteenth century, that God created nature and nature -created the world, must be allowed to have reduced theistic conception -to something like the shadow of smoke. The English eighteenth-century -formula was, theistically, nearly as void. The Being who set the reason -of each individual on a kind of judicial bench within the forum of his -own conscience, and left him and it together to settle belief and -conduct between them, was a tolerably remote and unreal sort of -personage. His spiritual force, according to such a doctrine, became -very much as if it had no existence. - -It was not to be expected that a sovereign dwelling in such amazingly -remote lands as this would continue long with undisputed authority, when -all the negative forces of the time had reached their full momentum. In -England the reaction against this strange absentee government of the -universe took the form which might have been anticipated from the deep -hold that Protestantism had won, and the spirituality which had been -engendered by Protestant reference to the relations between the -individual conscience and the mystic operations of faith. Deism became a -reality with a God in it in the great Evangelical revival, terrible and -inevitable, which has so deeply coloured religious feeling and warped -intellectual growth in England ever since. In France, thought took a -very different and much simpler turn. Or perhaps it would be more -correct to say that it took no turn at all, but carried the godless -deism of the English school to its fair conclusion, and dismissed a -deity who only reigned and did not govern. The whole movement had a -single origin. There is not one of the arguments of the French -philosophers in the eighteenth century, says a very competent authority, -which cannot be found in the English school of the beginning of the -century.[72] Voltaire, who carried the English way of thinking about the -supernatural power into France, lived to see a band of trenchant and -energetic disciples develop principles which he had planted, into a -system of dogmatic atheism. The time came when he was spoken of -contemptuously as retrograde and superstitious: ‘_Voltaire est bigot, il -est déiste_.’ - - - - -CHAPTER III. - -LITERATURE. - - -On the whole, the critic’s task is perhaps less to classify a type of -character as good or bad, as worthy of so much praise or so much -censure, than to mark the material out of which a man has his life to -make, and the kind of use and form to which he puts his material. To -begin with, the bald division of men into sheep and goats is in one -sense so easy as not to be worth performing, and in another sense it is -so hard as only to be possible for some being with supernatural insight. -And even were the qualities employed in the task of a rarer kind than -they are, the utility of the performance is always extremely slight, -compared with that other kind of criticism which dwells less on the -final balance of good or evil, than on the first innate conditions of -temperament, the fixed limitations of opportunity, and the complex -interplay of the two with that character, which is first their creature -and then their master. It is less the concern of criticism to pronounce -its man absolutely rich or absolutely poor, than to count up his talents -and the usury of his own which he added to them. Assuredly there ought -to be little condonation of the foibles, and none at all of the moral -obliquities, of the dead, because this would mean the demoralisation of -the living. But it is seriously to overrate the power of bald words and -written opinion, to suppose that a critic’s censure of conduct which a -thousand other agents, from the child’s hornbook up to the obvious and -pressing dictates of social convenience, are daily and hourly -prescribing, can be other than a work of supererogation, which fixes the -mind on platitudes, instead of leading it on in search of special and -distinctive traits. - -It would be easy to pour overflowing vials of condemnation on many sides -of Voltaire’s character and career. No man possessed of so much good -sense ever fell so constantly into the kinds of error against which good -sense particularly warns men. There is no more wearisome or pitiful leaf -in the biographies of the great, than the tale of Voltaire’s quarrels -with ignoble creatures; with a wrecked soul, like J. B. Rousseau (whom -the reader will not confound with Jean Jacques); with a thievish -bookseller, like Jore; with a calumnious journalist, like Desfontaines; -with a rapacious knave like Hirschel; and all the other tormentors in -the Voltairean history, whose names recall vulgar, dishonest, and -indignant pertinacity on the one side, and wasteful, undignified fury on -the other. That lesson in the art of life which concerns a man’s -dealings with those who have shown patent moral inferiority, was never -mastered by Voltaire. Instead of the silence, composure, and austere -oblivion, which it is of the essence of strength to oppose to unworthy -natures, he habitually confronted the dusty creeping things that beset -his march, as if they stood valiant and erect; and the more unworthy -they were, the more vehement and strenuous and shrill was his contention -with them. The ignominy of such strife is clear. One thing only may -perhaps be said. His intense susceptibility to vulgar calumny flowed -from the same quality in his nature which made unbearable to him the -presence of superstition and injustice, those mightier calumnies on -humanity. The irritated protests against the small foes of his person -were as the dregs of potent wine, and were the lower part of that -passionate sensibility which made him the assailant of the giant -oppressors of the human mind. This reflection does not make any less -tedious to us the damnable iteration of petty quarrel and fretting -complaint which fills such a space in his correspondence and in his -biographies, nor does it lessen our regret at the havoc which this fatal -defect of his qualities made with his contentedness. We think of his -consolation to a person as susceptible as himself: ‘There have always -been Frérons in literature; but they say there must be caterpillars for -nightingales to eat, that they may sing the better:’ and we wish that -our nightingale had devoured its portion with something less of tumult. -But it may do something to prevent us from giving a prominence, that is -both unfair and extremely misleading, to mere shadow, as if that had -been the whole substance. Alas, why after all should men, from Moses -downwards, be so cheerfully ready to contemplate the hinder parts of -their divinities? - -The period of twenty years between Voltaire’s departure from England and -his departure for Berlin, although often pronounced the happiest time of -his life, is very thickly set with these humiliating incidents. To us, -however, they are dead, because though vivid enough to Voltaire—and it -is strange how constantly it happens that the minor circumstance of life -is more real and ever-present to a man than his essential and abiding -work in it—they were but transitory and accidental. Just as it does -little good to the understanding to spend much time over tenth-rate -literature, so it is little edifying to the character to rake among the -private obscurities of even first-rate men, and it is surely a good rule -to keep ourselves as much as we can in contact with what is great. - -The chief personal fact of this time was the connection which Voltaire -formed with the Marquise du Châtelet, and which lasted from 1733 to -1749. She was to him that important and peculiar influence which, in one -shape or another, some woman seems to have been to nearly every foremost -man. In Voltaire’s case this influence was not the rich and tender -inspiration with which women have so many a time sweetened the lives and -glorified the thought of illustrious workers, nor was he bound to her -by those bonds of passion which have often the effect of exalting the -strength and widening the range of the whole of the nature that is -susceptive of passion. Their inner relations hardly depended on anything -more extraordinary or more delicate than the sentiment of a masculine -friendship. Voltaire found in the divine Emily a strong and active head, -a keen and generous admiration for his own genius, and an eagerness to -surround him with the external conditions most favourable to that steady -industry which was always a thing so near his own heart. They are two -great men, one of whom wears petticoats, said Voltaire of her and of -Frederick. It is impossible to tell what share vanity had in the -beginning of a connection, which probably owed its long continuance more -to use and habit than to any deep-rooted sentiment. Vanity was one of -the most strongly marked of Voltaire’s traits, and to this side of him -relations with a woman of quality who adored his genius were no doubt -extremely gratifying. Yet one ought to do him the justice to say that -his vanity was only skin-deep. It had nothing in common with the greedy -egotism which reduces the whole broad universe to a mere microcosm of -pygmy self. The vanity which discloses a real flaw in character is a -loud and tyrannical claim for acknowledgment of literary supremacy, and -with it the mean vices of envy, jealousy, and detraction are usually in -company. Voltaire’s vanity was something very different from this -truculent kind of self-assertion. It had a source in his intensely -sympathetic quality, and was a gay and eager asking of assurance from -others that his work gave them pleasure. Let us be very careful to -remember that it never stood in the way of self-knowledge,—the great -test of the difference between the vanity that is harmless, and the -vanity that is fatuous and destructive. - -It has been rather the fashion to laugh at the Marquise du Châtelet, for -no better reasons perhaps than that she, being a woman, studied Newton, -and had relations called tender with a man so little associated in -common opinion with tenderness as Voltaire. The first reason is -disgraceful, and the second is perhaps childish. Everything goes to show -that Madame du Châtelet possessed a hardy originality of character, of -which society is so little likely to have an excess that we can hardly -ever be thankful enough for it. There is probably nothing which would -lead to so rapid and marked an improvement in the world, as a large -increase of the number of women in it with the will and the capacity to -master Newton as thoroughly as she did. And her long and sedulous -affection for a man of genius of Voltaire’s exceptional quality, -entitles her to the not too common praise of recognising and revering -intellectual greatness as it deserves. Her friendship for him was not -the semi-servile and feebly intelligent solicitude which superior men -have too often the wretched weakness to seek in their female companions, -but an imperial sympathy. She was unamiable, it is true, and possessed -neither the delicacy which a more fastidious age requires in a woman, -nor the sense of honour which we now demand in a man. These defects, -however, were not genuinely personal, but lay in the manners of the -time. It was not so with all her faults. To the weak and dependent she -was overbearing, harsh, mean, and even cruel. A fatuous caprice would -often destroy the domestic peace and pleasure of a week. But nothing was -suffered to impede the labour of a day. The industry of the house was -incessant. - -It is said, and it was said first by one who lived with them for some -time, and has left a graphic account of the interior of Cirey, that she -made Voltaire’s life a little hard to him.[73] There were many -occasional storms and short sullen fits even in these high regions of -science and the finer tastes. Yet such stormful scenes, with great -actors as with small, are perhaps more painful in description than they -were in reality; and Voltaire was less discomposed by the lively -impetuosity of a companion like Madame du Châtelet, than he would have -been by the orderly calm of a more precise and perfectly well-regulated -person. A man follows the conditions of his temperament, and Voltaire’s -unresting animation and fire might make him feel a certain joy of life -and freedom in the occasional contentiousness of a slightly shrewish -temper. We cannot think of him as ever shrinking, ever craving for -repose, as some men do as for a very necessity of existence. The health -of your friend, wrote Madame du Châtelet to D’Argental in 1739, is in so -deplorable a state that the only hope I have left of restoring it is in -the turmoil of a journey[74]. A tolerably frequent agitation was a -condition of even such health as he had, to one of Voltaire’s nervous -and feverish habit. - -Let it be said that his restlessness never took a form which involved a -sacrifice of the happiness of other people. It was never tyrannical and -exigent. There are many, too many, instances of his angry impatience -with persons against whom he thought he had cause of offence. There is -not a single instance in which any shadow of implacableness lurked for -an enemy who had repented or fallen into misfortune; and if his -resentment was constantly aflame against the ignoble, it instantly -expired and changed into warm-hearted pity, when the ignoble became -either penitent or miserable. There are many tales of the readiness with -which his anger was appeased. Any one will suffice as a type. On some -occasion when Voltaire was harassed by a storm of libels, and happened -to be on good terms with the police, a distributor of the libels was -arrested. The father, an old man of eighty, hastened to Voltaire to pray -for pardon. All Voltaire’s fury instantly vanished at the first appeal; -he wept with the old man, embraced him, consoled him, and straightway -ran to procure the liberation of the offender[75]. An eye-witness -related to Grimm how he happened to be present at Ferney when Voltaire -received Rousseau’s Lettres de la Montagne, and read the apostrophe -relating to himself. His face seemed to take fire, his eyes sparkled -with fury, his whole frame trembled, and he cried in terrible tones—‘The -miscreant! the monster! I must have him cudgelled—yes, I will have him -cudgelled in his mountains at the knees of his nurse.’ ‘Pray, calm -yourself,’ said the bystander, ‘for I know that Rousseau means to pay -you a visit, and will very shortly be at Ferney.’ ‘Ah, only let him -come,’ replied Voltaire. ‘But how will you receive him?’ ‘Receive him -... I will give him supper, put him in my own bed, and say, There is a -good supper; this is the best bed in the house; do me the pleasure to -accept one and the other, and to make yourself happy here[76].’ One does -not understand the terrible man, without remembering always how much of -the hot generosity of the child he kept in his nature to the last. When -the very Jesuits were suppressed with circumstances of extreme -harshness, he pitied even them, and took one of their number permanently -into his household[77]. - -The most important part of a man’s private conduct after that which -concerns his relations with women and his family, is generally that -which concerns his way of dealing with money, because money in its -acquisition and its dispersion is the outward and visible sign of the -absence or of the presence of so many inward and spiritual graces. As -has often been said, it is the measure of some of the most important of -a man’s virtues, his honesty, his industry, his generosity, his -self-denial, and most of the other elements in keeping the difficult -balance between his care for himself and his care for other people. -Voltaire perceived very early in life that to be needy was to be -dependent; that the rich and poor are as hammer and anvil; that the -chronicles of genius demonstrate that it is not by genius that men -either make a fortune or live happy lives. He made up his mind from the -beginning that the author of the French epic would not share the poverty -and straitened lives of Tasso and Milton, and that he for his part would -at any rate be hammer and not anvil.[78] I was so wearied, he wrote in -1752, of the humiliations that dishonour letters, that to stay my -disgust I resolved to make what scoundrels call a great fortune.[79] He -used to give his books away to the printers. He had a small fortune from -his father; he is said to have made two thousand pounds by the English -subscriptions to the Henriade; and he did not hide his talent in the -ground, but resorted skilfully to all sorts of speculations in stocks, -army contracts, and other authorised means of converting one livre into -two while you sleep. He lent large sums of money, presumably at handsome -interest, to the Duke of Richelieu and others, and though the interest -may have been handsome, the trouble of procuring it was often -desperate.[80] Yet after much experience Voltaire came to the conclusion -that though he had sometimes lost money by bankers, by the devout, by -the people of the Old Testament, who would have had many scruples about -a larded capon, who would rather die than not be idle on the sabbath, -and not be thieving on the Sunday, yet he had lost nothing by the great -except his time.[81] - -It is easy to point a sneer at a high priest of humanity jobbing in the -funds. Only let us remember that Voltaire never made any pretence of -being a high priest of humanity; that his transactions were -substantially very like those of any banker or merchant of to-day; and -that for a man who was preaching new opinions it was extremely prudent -to place himself out of the necessity of pleasing booksellers or the pit -of the theatre on the one hand, and on the other to supply himself with -ready means of frequent flight from the ceaseless persecutions of -authority. Envious scribes in his lifetime taunted him with avarice, and -the evil association still clings to his memory now that he is dead. -One can only say that good and high-minded men, who never shrank from -withstanding him when in fault, men like Condorcet for example, heard -such talk with disdain, and set it down to the disgraceful readiness of -men to credit anything that relieves them from having to admire[82]. The -people who dislike prudence in matters of money in those whose -distinction is intellectual or spiritual, resemble a sentimental lover -who should lose his illusions at sight of his mistress eating a hearty -meal. Is their lot, then, cast in the ethereal fluid of the interstellar -spaces? - -At all events Voltaire had two important gifts which do not commonly -belong to the avaricious; he was a generous helper alike of those who -had, and those who had not, a claim upon him, and he knew how to bear -serious losses with unbroken composure. Michel, the receiver-general, -became bankrupt, and Voltaire lost a considerable sum of money in -consequence. His fluency of invective and complaint, which was simply -boundless when any obscure scribbler earned a guinea by a calumny upon -him, went no farther on the occasion of this very substantial injury -than a single splenetic phrase, and a harmless quatrain: - - Michel au nom de l’Eternel, - Mit jadis le diable en déroute; - Mais, après cette banqueroute, - Que le diable emporte Michel! - -It has been fairly asked whether a genuine miser would content himself -with a stanza upon the man who had robbed him.[83] His correspondence -with the Duchess of Saxe-Gotha shows him declining to accept the -thousand louis, which she had sent as a fee for the composition of the -Annales de l’Empire. - -Much has been made of the bargaining which he carried on with Frederick, -as to the terms on which he would consent to go to Berlin. But then the -Prussian king was not one with whom it was wise to be too nice in such -affairs. He was the thriftiest of men, and as a king is a person who -lives on other people’s money, such thrift was in his case the most -princely of virtues. Haggling is not graceful, but it need not imply -avarice in either of the parties to it. The truth is that there was in -Voltaire a curious admixture of splendid generosity with virulent -tenacity about half-pence. The famous quarrel with the President de -Brosses about the fourteen cords of firewood is a worse affair. -Voltaire, who leased Tourney from him, insisted that De Brosses had made -him a present of the fourteen cords. De Brosses, no doubt truly, -declared that he had only ordered the wood to be delivered on Voltaire’s -account. On this despicable matter a long correspondence was carried on, -in which Voltaire is seen at his very worst; insolent, undignified, -low-minded, and untruthful.[84] The case happily stands alone in his -biography. As a rule, he is a steady practitioner of the Aristotelian -μεγαλοπρέπεια, or virtue of magnificent expenditure. - -The truly important feature of the life which Voltaire led at Cirey was -its unremitting diligence. Like a Homeric goddess, the divine Emily -poured a cloud round her hero. There is a sort of moral climate in a -household, an impalpable, unseizable, indefinable set of influences, -which predispose the inmates to industry and self-control, or else relax -fibre and slacken purpose. At Cirey there was an almost monastic rule. -Madame Grafigny says that though Voltaire felt himself bound by -politeness to pay her a visit from time to time in her apartment, he -usually avoided sitting down, apologetically protesting how frightful a -thing is the quantity of time people waste in talking, and that waste of -time is the most fatal kind of extravagance of which one can be -guilty[85]. He seems to have usually passed the whole day at his desk, -or in making physical experiments in his chamber. The only occasion on -which people met was at the supper at nine in the evening. Until then -the privacy of the chamber alike of the hostess, who was analysing -Leibnitz or translating Newton, and of the unofficial host, who was -compiling material for the Siècle de Louis XIV., or polishing and -repolishing Mahomet, or investigating the circumstances of the -propagation of fire, was sacredly inviolable. - -The rigour of the rule did not forbid theatrical performances, when any -company, even a company of marionettes, came into the neighbourhood of -the desolate Champagne château. Sometimes after supper Voltaire would -exhibit a magic lantern, with explanatory comments after the showman’s -manner, in which he would convulse his friends at the expense of his -enemies.[86] But after the evening’s amusement was over, the Marquise -would retire to work in her chamber until the morning, and, when morning -came, a couple of hours’ sleep was the only division between the tasks -of the night and the tasks of the day. Two splenetic women have left us -a couple of spiteful pictures of Madame du Châtelet, but neither of her -detractors could rise to any higher conception of intellectual effort -than the fine turn of phrase, the ingenious image, the keen thrust of -cruel satire, with which the polished idle of that day whiled away -dreary and worthless years. The translator of Newton’s Principia was not -of this company, and she was wholly indifferent to the raillery, -sarcasm, and hate of women whom she justly held her inferiors. It is -much the fashion to admire the women of this time, because they contrive -to hide behind a veil of witty words the coldness and hollowness of -lives which had neither the sweetness of the old industrious domesticity -of women, nor the noble largeness of some of those in whom the -Revolution kindled a pure fire of patriotism in after days. Madame du -Châtelet, with all her faults, was a far loftier character than the -malicious gossips who laughed at her. ‘Everything that occupies society -was within her power, _except slander_. She was never heard to hold up -anybody to laughter. When she was informed that certain people were bent -on not doing her justice, she would reply that she wished to ignore it.’ -This was surely better than a talent for barbing epigrams, and she led a -worthier life at Cirey than in that Paris which Voltaire described so -bitterly. - - Là, tous les soirs, la troupe vagabonde, - D’un peuple oisif, appelé le beau monde, - Va promener de réduit en réduit - L’inquiétude et l’ennui qui la suit. - Là sont en foule antiques mijaurées, - Jeunes oisons et bégueules titrées, - Disant des riens d’un ton de perroquet, - Lorgnant des sots, et trichant au piquet. - Blondins y sont, beaucoup plus femmes qu’elles, - Profondément remplis de bagatelles, - D’un air hautain, d’une bruyante voix, - Chantant, dansant, minaudant à la fois. - Si par hasard quelque personne honnête, - D’un sens plus droit et d’un goût plus heureux, - Des bons écrits ayant meublé sa tête, - Leur fait l’affront de penser à leurs yeux; - Tout aussitôt leur brillante cohue, - D’etonnement et de colère émue, - Bruyant essaim de frélons envieux, - Pique et poursuit cette abeille charmante[87]. - -It was not the fault of Madame du Châtelet that the life of Cirey was -not the undisturbed type of Voltaire’s existence during the fifteen -years of their companionship. Many pages might be filled with a mere -list of the movements from place to place to which Voltaire resorted, -partly from reasonable fear of the grip of a jealous and watchful -government, partly from eagerness to bring the hand of the government -upon his enemies, and most of all from the uncontrollable restlessness -of his own nature. Amsterdam, the Hague, Brussels, Berlin, the little -court of Lunéville, and the great world of Paris, too frequently -withdrew him from the solitary castle at Cirey, though he never failed -to declare on his return, and with perfect sincerity, that he was never -so happy anywhere else. If it was true that the Marquise made her poet’s -life a little hard to him, it is impossible to read her correspondence -without perceiving that he, too, though for no lack of sensibility and -good feeling, often made life extremely hard for her. Besides their -moral difference, there was a marked discrepancy in intellectual -temperament, which did not fail to lead to outward manifestations. -Voltaire was sometimes a little weary of Newton and exact science, while -the Marquise was naturally of the rather narrow turn for arid truths -which too often distinguishes clever women inadequately disciplined by -contact with affairs. She and Voltaire both competed for a prize offered -by the Academy for essays on the propagation of fire (1737). Neither of -them was successful, for the famous Euler was a competitor. The second -and third prizes were given to two obscurer persons, because their -essays were Cartesian, that is to say, they were scientifically -orthodox. The two philosophers of Cirey also took part, and on different -sides, in the obstinate physico-mathematical controversy which Leibnitz -had first raised towards the close of the seventeenth century, as to the -measure of moving forces[88]. The Marquise, under circumstances of -equivocal glory and with much angry buzzing, with which one has now no -concern[89], published her analysis of Leibnitz in 1740, and sided with -him against Newton and Descartes. In the notice which Voltaire wrote of -his friend’s book he gave a marvellously simple and intelligible account -of the issue of the special controversy of _vis viva_[90], but he -remained Newtonian, and in 1741 presented a paper to the Academy of -Sciences, disputing the Leibnitzian view[91]. - -Voltaire was not merely one of those ‘paper philosophers,’ whose -intrusion into the fields of physical science its professional followers -are justly wont to resent. He was an active experimenter, and more than -one letter remains, containing instructions to his agent in Paris to -forward him retorts, air-pumps, and other instruments, with the wise -hint in one place, a hint by no means of a miser, ‘In the matter of -buying things, my friend, you should always prefer the good and sound -even if a little dear, to what is only middling but cheaper[92].’ His -correspondence for some years proves the diligence and sincerity of his -interest in science. Yet it is tolerably clear that the man who did so -much to familiarise France with the most illustrious of physicists, was -himself devoid of true scientific aptitude. After long and persevering -labour in this region, Voltaire consulted Clairaut on the progress he -had made. The latter, with a loyal frankness which Voltaire knew how to -appreciate, answered that even with the most stubborn labour he was not -likely to attain to anything beyond mediocrity in science, and that he -would be only throwing away time which he owed to poetry and -philosophy.[93] The advice was taken; for, as we have already said, -Voltaire’s self-love was never fatuous, and the independent search of -physical truth was given up. There is plainly no reason to regret the -pains which Voltaire took in this kind of inquiry, not because the study -of the sciences extends the range of poetic study and enriches verse -with fresh images, but because the number of sorts of knowledge in which -a man feels at home and is intelligently cognisant of their scope and -issues, even if he be wholly incompetent to assist in the progress of -discovery, increases that intellectual confidence and self-respect of -understanding, which so fortifies and stimulates him in his own special -order of work. We cannot precisely contend that this encyclopædic -quality is an indispensable condition of such self-respect in every kind -of temper. It certainly was so with Voltaire. ‘After all, my dear -friend,’ he wrote to Cideville, ‘it is right to give every possible -form to our soul. It is a flame that God has intrusted to us, we are -bound to feed it with all that we find most precious. We should -introduce into our existence all imaginable modes, and open every door -of the soul to all sorts of knowledge and all sorts of feelings. So long -as it does not all go in pell-mell there is plenty of room for -everything.[94] - -To us, who can be wise after the event, it is clear that if ever man was -called not to science, nor to poetry, nor to theology, nor to -metaphysics, but to literature, the art, so hard to define, of showing -the ideas of all subjects in the double light of the practical and the -spiritual reason, that man was Voltaire. He has himself dwelt on the -vagueness of this much-abused term, without contributing anything more -satisfactory towards a better account of it than a crude hint that -literature, not being a special art, may be considered a kind of larger -grammar of knowledge.[95] Although, however, it is true that literature -is not a particular art, it is not the less true that there is a mental -constitution particularly fitted for its successful practice. Literature -is essentially an art of form, as distinguished from those exercises of -intellectual energy which bring new stores of matter to the stock of -acquired knowledge, and give new forces to emotion and original and -definite articulation to passion. It is a misleading classification to -call the work of Shakespeare and Molière, Shelley and Hugo, literary, -just as it would be an equally inaccurate, though more glaring piece of -classification, to count the work of Newton or Locke literature. To take -another case from Voltaire, it would not be enough to describe Bayle’s -Dictionary as a literary compilation; it would not even be enough to -describe it as a work of immense learning, because the distinguishing -and superior mark of this book is a profound dialectic. It forms men of -letters and is above them.[96] - -What is it then that literature brings to us, that earns its title to -high place, though far from a highest place, among the great humanizing -arts? Is it not that this is the master organon for giving men the two -precious qualities of breadth of interest and balance of judgment; -multiplicity of sympathies and steadiness of sight? Unhappily, -literature has too often been identified with the smirks and -affectations of mere elegant dispersiveness, with the hollow niceties of -the virtuoso, a thing of madrigals. It is not in any sense of this sort -that we can think of Voltaire as specially the born minister of -literature. What we mean is that while he had not the loftier endowments -of the highest poetic conception, subtle speculative penetration, or -triumphant scientific power, he possessed a superb combination of wide -and sincere curiosity, an intelligence of vigorous and exact -receptivity, a native inclination to candour and justice, and a -pre-eminent mastery over a wide range in the art of expression. -Literature being concerned to impose form, to diffuse the light by which -common men are able to see the great host of ideas and facts that do not -shine in the brightness of their own atmosphere, it is clear what -striking gifts Voltaire had in this way. He had a great deal of -knowledge, and he was ever on the alert both to increase and broaden his -stock, and, what was still better, to impart of it to everybody else. He -did not think it beneath him to write on Hemistichs for the -Encyclopædia. ’Tis not a very brilliant task, he said, but perhaps the -article will be useful to men of letters and amateurs; ‘one should -disdain nothing, and I will do the word Comma, if you choose.’[97] He -was very catholic in taste, being able to love Racine without ignoring -the lofty stature of Shakespeare. And he was free from the weakness -which so often attends on catholicity, when it is not supported by true -strength and independence of understanding; he did not shut his eyes to -the shortcomings of the great. While loving Molière, he was aware of the -incompleteness of his dramatic construction, as well as of the egregious -farce to which that famous writer too often descends.[98] His respect -for the sublimity and pathos of Corneille did not hinder him from noting -both his violence and his frigid argumentation.[99] Does the reader -remember that admirable saying of his to Vauvenargues; ‘_It is the part -of a man like you to have preferences, but no exclusions_?’[100] To this -fine principle Voltaire was usually thoroughly true, as every great -mind, if only endowed with adequate culture, must necessarily be. - - Nul auteur avec lui n’a tort, - Quand il a trouvé l’art de plaire; - Il le critique sans colère, - Il l’applaudit avec transport.[101] - -Thirdly, that circumfusion of bright light which is the highest aim of -speech, was easy to Voltaire, in whatever order of subject he happened -to treat. His style is like a translucent stream of purest mountain -water, moving with swift and animated flow under flashing sunbeams. -‘Voltaire,’ said an enemy, ‘is the very first man in the world at -writing down what other people have thought,’ What was meant for a -spiteful censure, was in fact a truly honourable distinction. - -The secret is incommunicable. No spectrum analysis can decompose for us -that enchanting ray. It is rather, after all, the piercing metallic -light of electricity than a glowing beam of the sun. We can detect some -of the external qualities of this striking style. We seize its dazzling -simplicity, its almost primitive closeness to the letter, its sharpness -and precision, above all, its admirable brevity. We see that no writer -ever used so few words to produce such pregnant effects.[102] Those -whom brevity only makes thin and slight, may look with despair on pages -where the nimbleness of the sentence is in proportion to the firmness of -the thought. We find no bastard attempts to reproduce in words deep and -complex effects, which can only be adequately presented in colour or in -the combinations of musical sound. Nobody has ever known better the true -limitations of the material in which he worked, or the scope and -possibilities of his art. Voltaire’s alexandrines, his witty stories, -his mock-heroic, his exposition of Newton, his histories, his dialectic, -all bear the same mark, the same natural, precise, and condensed mode of -expression, the same absolutely faultless knowledge of what is proper -and permitted in every given kind of written work. At first there seems -something paradoxical in dwelling on the brevity of an author whose -works are to be counted by scores of volumes. But this is no real -objection. A writer may be insufferably prolix in the limits of a single -volume, and Voltaire was quite right in saying that there are four times -too many words in the one volume of D’Holbach’s System of Nature. He -maintains too that Rabelais might advantageously be reduced to -one-eighth, and Bayle to a quarter, and there is hardly a book that is -not curtailed in the perfecting hands of the divine muses.[103] So -conversely an author may not waste a word in a hundred volumes. Style is -independent of quantity, and the world suffers so grievously from the -mass of books that have been written, not because they are many, but -because such vast proportion of their pages say nothing while they -purport to say so much. - -No study, however, of this outward ease and swift compendiousness of -speech will teach us the secret that was beneath it in Voltaire, an eye -and a hand that never erred in hitting the exact mark of appropriateness -in every order of prose and verse. Perhaps no such vision for the -befitting in expression has ever existed. He is the most trenchant -writer in the world, yet there is not a sentence of strained emphasis or -overwrought antithesis; he is the wittiest, yet there is not a line of -bad buffoonery. And this intense sense of the appropriate was by nature -and cultivation become so entirely a fixed condition of Voltaire’s mind -that it shows spontaneous and without an effort in his work. Nobody is -more free from the ostentatious correctness of the literary precisian, -and nobody preserves so much purity and so much dignity of language with -so little formality of demeanour. It is interesting to notice the -absence from his writings of that intensely elaborated kind of -simplicity in which some of the best authors of a later time express the -final outcome of many thoughts. - -The strain that society has undergone since Voltaire’s day has taught -men to qualify their propositions. It has forced them to follow truth -slowly along paths steep and devious. New notes have been struck in -human feeling, and all thought has now been touched by complexities that -were then unseen. Hence, as all good writers aim at simplicity and -directness, we have seen the growth of a new style, in which the rays of -many side-lights are concentrated in some single phrase. That Voltaire -does not use these focalising words and turns of composition only means -that to him thought was less complex than it is to a more subjective -generation. Though the literature which possesses Milton and Burke need -not fear comparison with the graver masters of French speech, we have no -one to place exactly by the side of Voltaire. But, then, no more has -France. There are many pages of Swift which are more like one side of -Voltaire than anything else that we have, and Voltaire probably drew the -idea of his famous stories from the creator of Gulliver, just as Swift -got the idea of the Tale of a Tub from Fontenelle’s History of Mero and -Enegu (that is, of Rome and Geneva). Swift has correctness, invention, -irony, and a trick of being effectively literal and serious in absurd -situations, just as Voltaire has; but then Swift is often truculent and -often brutally gross, both in thought and in phrase. Voltaire is never -either brutal or truculent. Even amid the licence of the Pucelle and of -his romances, he never forgets what is due to the French tongue. What -always charmed him in Racine and Boileau, he tells us, was that they -said what they intended to say, and that their thoughts have never cost -anything to the harmony or the purity of the language[104]. Voltaire -ranged over far wider ground than the two poets ever attempted to do, -and trod in many slippery places, yet he is entitled to the same praise -as that which he gave to them. - -Unhappily, one of the many evil effects which have alloyed the -revolution that Voltaire did so much to set in motion, has been both in -his country and ours that purity and harmony of language, in spite of -the examples of the great masters who have lived since, have on the -whole declined. In both countries familiarity and slang have actually -asserted a place in literature on some pretence that they are real; an -assumed vulgarity tries to pass for native homeliness, and, as though a -giant were more impressive for having a humped back, some men of true -genius seem only to make sure of fame by straining themselves into -grotesques. In a word, the reaction against a spurious dignity of style -has carried men too far, because the reaction against the dignified -elements in the old order went too far. Style, after all, as one has -always to remember, can never be anything but the reflex of ideas and -habits of mind, and when respect for one’s own personal dignity as a -ruling and unique element in character gave way to sentimental love of -the human race, often real, and often a pretence, old self-respecting -modes of expression went out of fashion. And all this has been defended -by a sort of argument that might just as appropriately have been used by -Diogenes, vindicating the filthiness of his tub against a doctrine of -clean linen. - -To follow letters, it is important to observe, meant then, or at least -after Voltaire’s influence rose to its height, it meant distinctly to -enter the ranks of the Opposition. In our own time the profession of -letters is placed with other polite avocations, and those who follow it -for the most part accept the traditional social ideas of the time, just -as clergymen, lawyers, and physicians accept them. The modern man of -letters corresponds to the ancient sophist, whose office it was to -confirm, adorn, and propagate the current prejudice. To be a man of -letters in France in the middle of the eighteenth century was to be the -official enemy of the current prejudices and their sophistical defenders -in the church and the parliaments. Parents heard of a son’s design to go -to Paris and write books, or to mix with those who wrote books, with the -same dismay with which a respectable Athenian heard of a son following -Socrates. The hyper-hellenistic collegian need not accuse us of -instituting a general parallel between Socrates and Voltaire. The only -point on which we are insisting is that each was the leader of the -assault against the sophists of his day, though their tactics and -implements of war were sufficiently unlike. To the later assailant the -conditions of the time made the pen the most effective instrument. The -clergy had the pulpit and the confessional, and their enemies had the -press. - -It was during the period of his connection with Madame du Châtelet, that -is in the active literary years between his return from England and his -removal to Berlin, that Voltaire’s dramatic talent was most -productive.[105] He is usually considered to hold the same place -relatively to Corneille and Racine that Euripides held relatively to -Æschylus and Sophocles. It is not easy to see what is the exact point of -analogy on which the critics agree, beyond the corresponding place in -the order of chronological succession, and such parallels are not really -very full of instruction. If we are to draw any parallel at all, it must -be between the Greek and Racine. The differences between Euripides and -his predecessors are not those between Voltaire and his predecessors. -There may be one common peculiarity. Each made the drama an instrument -for the expression not merely of passion, but of speculative and -philosophical matter, and this in each case of a sceptical kind in -reference to the accepted traditions of the time. But apart from the -vast superiority of the Greek in depth and passion and dramatic -invention, in Voltaire this philosophising is very much more indirect, -insinuatory, and furtive, than in the marked sententiousness of -Euripides. There are critics, indeed, who insist that all Voltaire’s -poetic work is a series of pamphlets in disguise, and that he ought to -be classified, in that jargon which makes an uncouth compound pass -muster for a new critical nicety, as a tendency-poet.[106] - -To accept this would simply be to leave out of account the very best of -Voltaire’s plays, including Mérope, Sémiramis, Tancrède, in which the -most ingenious of men and critics would be at a loss to find any -tendency of the pamphleteering kind. Voltaire’s ever-present sense of -congruity prevented him from putting the harangue of the pulpit or the -discourse of the academic doctor upon the tragic stage. If the clergy -found in ‘Mahomet,’ for instance, a covert attack on their own religion, -it was much more because the poet was suspected of unbelief, than -because the poem contained infidel doctrine. Indeed, nothing shows so -clearly as the strange affright at this and some other pieces of -Voltaire’s, that the purport and effect of poetry must depend nearly as -much upon the mind of the audience as upon the lines themselves. His -plays may be said to have led to scepticism, only because there was -sceptical predisposition in the mind which his public brought to them; -and under other circumstances, if for instance it had been produced in -the time of Lewis XIV., the exposure of Mahomet would have been counted -a glorification of the rival creed. Indeed, Pope Benedict XIV. did by -and by accept Voltaire’s dedication of the play, whether in good faith -or no we cannot tell, on the express ground that it was an indirect -homage to Christianity. Men with a sense of artistic propriety far -inferior to Voltaire’s, are yet fully alive to the monstrosity of -disguising a pamphleteer’s polemic in the form of a pretended drama. - -In choice of subject Voltaire, we may believe, was secretly guided by -his wish to relax the oppressive hold of religious prejudice. Religion, -we cannot too fully realise, was the absorbing burden of the time. There -was no sort of knowledge, from geometry onwards, on which it did not -weigh. Whatever work Voltaire set himself to, he was confronted in it by -the Infamous. Thus in accordance with the narrow theory of his time, he -held Mahomet to be a deliberate and conscious impostor, and in -presenting the founder of one great religion in this odious shape, he -was doubtless suggesting that the same account might be true of the -founder of another. But the suggestion was entirely outside of the play -itself, and we who have fully settled these questions for ourselves, may -read ‘Mahomet’ without suspecting the shade of a reference from Mecca to -Jerusalem, though hardly without contemning the feebleness of view which -could see nothing but sensuality, ambition, and crime, in the career of -the fierce eastern reformer. The sentiments of exalted deism which are -put into the mouth of the noble Zopire were perhaps meant to teach -people that the greatest devotion of character may go with the most -unflinching rejection of a pretended revelation from the gods. This -again is a gloss from without, and by no means involves Voltaire in the -offence of art with a moral purpose. - -Zaïre was the first play in which French characters appeared upon the -tragic stage. The heroine, the daughter of Lusignan, has been brought -up, unconscious of her descent, in the Mahometan faith and usage. -Consider the philosophy of these lines which are given to her: - - La coutume, la loi plia mes premiers ans - A la religion des heureux musulmans. - Je le vois trop; les soins qu’on prend de notre enfance - Ferment nos sentimens, nos mœurs, notre croyance. - J’eusse été près du Gange esclave des faux dieux, - Chrétienne dans Paris, musulmane en ces lieux. - L’instruction fait tout; et la main de nos pères - Grave en nos faibles cœurs ces premiers caractères, - Que l’exemple et le temps nous viennent retracer, - Et que peut-être en nous Dieu seul peut effacer.[107] - -This of course implied the doctrine of Pope’s Universal Prayer, and -contains an idea that was always the favourite weapon for smiting the -over-confident votaries of a single supernatural revelation. Locke had -asked whether ‘the current opinions and licensed guides of every country -are sufficient evidence and security to every man to venture his great -concernments on? Or, can these be the certain and infallible oracle and -standards of truth which teach one thing in Christendom, and another in -Turkey? Or shall a poor countryman be eternally happy for having the -chance to be born in Italy? Or a day-labourer be unavoidably lost -because he had the ill-luck to be born in England?[108] This was exactly -the kind of reasoning to which Zaïre’s lines pointed; and Voltaire was -never weary of arguing that the divine lay outside of the multitudinous -variety of creeds that were never more than local accidents. Neither, -however, in Zaïre nor anywhere else is the law of perfect dramatic -fitness violated for the sake of a lesson in heterodoxy. With Voltaire -tragedy is, as all art ought to be, a manner of disinterested -presentation. This is not the noblest energy of the human intelligence, -but it is truly art, and Voltaire did not forget it. It would be -entirely unprofitable to enter into any comparison of the relative -merits of Voltaire’s tragedies, and those either of the modern romantic -school in his own country, or of the master dramatists of our own. Every -form of composition must be judged in its own order, and the order in -which Voltaire chose to work was the French classic, with its appointed -conditions and fixed laws, its three unities, its stately alexandrines, -and all the other essentials of that special dramatic form. Here is one -of the many points at which we feel that Voltaire is trying to prolong -in literature, if not in thought, the impressive tradition of the grand -age. At the same moment, strangely enough, he was giving that stir to -the opinion of his time, which was the prime agent in definitely -breaking the hold of that tradition. It is no infidelity to the glorious -and incomparable genius of Shakespeare, nor does it involve any -blindness to the fine creation, fresh fancy, and noble thought and -imagery of our less superb men, yet to admit that there is in these -limits of construction a concentration and regularity, and in these too -contemned alexandrines a just and swelling cadence, that confer a high -degree of pleasure of the highest kind, and that demand intellectual -quality only less rare than that other priceless and unattainable -quality of having the lips touched with divine fire. It is said, -however, that such quality does not produce acting plays, but only -dramatic poems: this is really laughable if we remember first, that the -finest actors in the world have been trained in the recitation of these -alexandrines, and second, that as large and as delighted an audience -used until within some twenty years ago to crowd to a tragedy of -Corneille or Racine, seen repeatedly before, as to a bran-new -vaudeville, never to be seen again. - -‘We insist,’ said Voltaire, ‘that the rhyme shall cost nothing to the -ideas; that it shall neither be trivial nor too far-fetched; we exact -rigorously in a verse the same purity, the same precision, as in prose. -We do not permit the smallest licence; we require an author to carry -without a break all chains, and yet that he should appear ever -free.’[109] He admitted that sometimes they failed in reaching the -tragic, through excessive fear of passing its limits. He does justice, -if something less than English justice, to the singular merits of our -stage in the way of action.[110] Shakespeare, he says, ‘had a genius -full of force and fertility, of all that is natural and all that is -sublime.’ It is even the merit of Shakespeare—‘those grand and terrible -pieces that abound in his most monstrous farces’—that has been the -undoing of the English stage.[111] - -Even the famous criticism on Hamlet has been a good deal misrepresented. -Voltaire is vindicating the employment of the machinery of ghosts, and -he dwells on the fitness and fine dramatic effect of the ghost in -Shakespeare’s play. ‘I am very far,’ he goes on to say, ‘from justifying -the tragedy of Hamlet in everything: it is a rude and barbarous -piece.... Hamlet goes mad in the second act, and his mistress goes mad -in the third; the prince slays the father of his mistress, pretending to -kill a rat, and the heroine throws herself into the river. They dig her -grave on the stage; the gravediggers jest in a way worthy of them, with -skulls in their hands; Hamlet answers their odious grossnesses by -extravagances no less disgusting. Meanwhile one of the characters -conquers Poland. Hamlet, his mother, and his stepfather drink together -on the stage; they sing at table, they wrangle, they fight, they kill; -one might suppose such a work to be the fruit of the imagination of a -drunken savage. But in the midst of all these rude irregularities, -which to this day make the English theatre so absurd and so barbarous, -there are to be found in Hamlet by a yet greater incongruity sublime -strokes worthy of the loftiest geniuses. It seems as if nature had taken -a delight in collecting within the brain of Shakespeare all that we can -imagine of what is greatest and most powerful, with all that rudeness -without wit can contain of what is lowest and most detestable.’[112] - -If one were to retort upon this that anybody with a true sense of poetry -would sacrifice all the plays that Voltaire ever wrote, his -eight-and-twenty tragedies, and half-score of comedies, for the -soliloquy in Hamlet, or King Henry at Towton Fight, or ‘Roses, their -sharp spines being gone,’ there would be truth in such a retort, but it -would be that brutal truth, which is always very near being the most -subtle kind of lie. Nature wrought a miracle for us by producing -Shakespeare, as she did afterwards in an extremely different way for -France by producing Voltaire. Miracles, however, have necessarily a very -demoralising effect. A prodigy of loaves and fishes, by slackening the -motives to honest industry, must in the end multiply paupers. The -prodigy of such amazing results from such glorious carelessness as -Shakespeare’s, has plunged hundreds of men of talent into a carelessness -most inglorious, and made our acting stage a mock. It is quite true -that the academic rule is better fitted for mediocrity than for genius; -but we may perhaps trust genius to make a way for itself. It is -mediocrity that needs laws and prescriptions for its most effective -fertilisation, and the enormous majority even of those who can do good -work are still mediocre. We have preferred the methods of lawless -genius, and are left with rampant lawlessness and no genius. The very -essence of the old French tragedy was painstaking, and painstaking has -had its unfailing and exceeding great reward. When people whose taste -has been trained in the traditions of romantic and naturalistic art, or -even not trained at all except in indolence and presumption, yawn over -the French alexandrines, let them remember that Goethe at any rate -thought it worth while to translate Mahomet and Tancrède. - -An eminent German writer on Voltaire has recently declared the secret of -the French classic dramaturgy to be that the drama was a diversion of -the court. ‘The personages have to speak not as befits their true -feelings, their character, and the situation, but as is seemly in the -presence of a king and a court; not truth, nature, and beauty, but -etiquette, is the highest law of the dramatic art.’[113] This may -partially explain how it was that a return to some features of the -classic form, its dignity, elevation, and severity, came to take place -in France, but no explanation can be at all satisfactory which reduces -so distinct and genuine a manner of dramatic expression to a mere -outside accident. Corneille, Racine, Voltaire, treated their tragic -subjects as they did, with rigorous concentration of action, stately -consistency of motive, and in a solemn and balanced measure, because -these conditions answered to intellectual qualities of their own, an -affinity in themselves for elegance, clearness, elevation, and a certain -purified and weighty wisdom. It is true that they do not unseal those -deep-hidden fountains of thought and feeling and music, which flow so -freely at the waving of Shakespeare’s wand. We are not swiftly carried -from a scene of clowns up to some sublime pinnacle of the seventh -heaven, whence we see the dark abysses that lie about the path of human -action, as well as all its sweet and shadowed places. Only let us not -unjustly suppose that we are deciding the merits of the old French -dramaturgy, its severe structure and stately measure, by answering the -question, which no English nor German writer can ever seriously put, as -to the relative depth and vision in poetic things of Shakespeare and -Voltaire. Nor can we be expected to be deeply moved by a form of art -that is so unfamiliar to us. It is not a question whether we ought to be -so deeply moved. The too susceptible Marmontel describes how on the -occasion of a visit to Ferney, Voltaire took him into his study and -placed a manuscript into his hands. It was Tancrède, which was just -finished. Marmontel eagerly read it, and he tells us how he returned to -the author, his face all bathed in tears. ‘Your tears,’ said Voltaire, -‘tell me all that it most concerns me to know.’[114] The most -supercilious critic may find this very Tancrède worth reading, when he -remembers that Gibbon thought it splendid and interesting,[115] and that -Goethe found it worth translating. One could hardly be convicted now of -want of sensibility, if all Voltaire’s tragedy together failed to bathe -one’s face in tears, but this is a very bad reason for denying that it -has other merits than pathos. - -We cannot, indeed, compare the author of Zaïre and Tancrède with the -great author of Cinna and Polyeucte, any more than in another kind we -can compare Gray with Milton. Voltaire is the very genius of -correctness, elegance, and grace, and if the reader would know what this -correctness means, he will find a most wholesome exercise in reading -Voltiare’s notes on some of the most celebrated of Corneille’s -plays.[116] But in masculine energy and in poetic weightiness, as well -as in organ-like richness of music, Voltaire must be surely pronounced -inferior to his superb predecessor. There is a certain thinness -pervading the whole of his work for the stage, the conception of -character, the dramatic structure, and the measure alike. Undoubtedly we -may frequently come upon weighty and noble lines, of fine music and -lofty sense. But there is on the whole what strikes one as a fatal -excess of facility, and a fatal defect of poetic saliency. The fluent -ease of the verse destroys the impression of strength. ‘Your friend,’ -wrote Madame du Châtelet once of her friend, ‘has had a slight bout of -illness, and you know that when he is ill, he can do nothing but write -verses.’[117] We do not know whether the Marquise meant alexandrines, or -those graceful verses of society of which Voltaire was so incomparable a -master. It is certain that he wrote Zaïre in three weeks and Olympic in -six days, though with respect to the latter we may well agree with the -friend who told the author that he should not have rested on the seventh -day. However that may be, there is a quality about his tragic verse -which to one fresh from the sonorous majesty and dignified beauty of -Polyeucte, or even the fine gravity of Tartufe, vibrates too lightly in -the ear. Least of all may we compare him to Racine, whose two great -tragedies of Iphigénie and Athalie Voltaire himself declared to mark the -nearest approach ever made to dramatic perfection.[118] There is none of -the mixed austerity and tenderness, height and sweetness, grace and -firmness, that blend together with such invisible art and unique -contrivance in the poet whose verses taught Fénelon and Massillon how to -make music in their prose. To this Voltaire could only have access from -without, for he lacked the famous master’s internal depth, seriousness, -and veneration of soul. We know how little this approach from without -can avail, and how vainly a man follows the harmonious grace of a style, -when he lacks the impalpable graces of spirit that made the style live. -It is only when grave thoughts and benignant aspirations and purifying -images move with even habit through the mind, that a man masters the -noblest expression. De Maistre, to whom Voltaire’s name was the symbol -for all that is accursed, admitted the nobleness of his work in tragedy, -but he instantly took back the grudged praise by saying that even here -he only resembles his two great rivals as a clever hypocrite resembles a -saint.[119] Malignantly expressed, there is in this some truth. - -It was one of the elements in the plan of dramatic reform that sprang up -in Voltaire’s mind during his residence in England, that the subjects of -tragedy should be more masculine, and that love should cease to be an -obligatory ingredient. “It is nearly always the same piece, the same -knot, formed by jealousy and a breach, and untied by a marriage; it is a -perpetual coquetry, a simple comedy in which princes are actors, and in -which occasionally blood is spilt for form’s sake.”[120] This he counted -a mistake, for, as he justly said, the heart is but lightly touched by a -lover’s woes, while it is profoundly softened by the anguish of a mother -just about to lose her son. Thus in Mérope we have maternal sentiment -made the spring of what is probably the best of Voltaire’s tragedies, -abounding in a just vehemence, compact, full of feeling at once exalted -and natural, and moving with a sustained energy that is not a too common -mark of his work. It was the same conviction of the propriety of making -tragedy a means of expressing other emotions than that which is so apt -to degenerate into an insipidity, which dictated the composition and -novel treatment of the Roman subjects, Brutus and La Mort de César. Here -the French drama first became in some degree truly political. His -predecessors when they handled a historic theme did so, not from the -historic or social point of view, but as the illustration, or rather the -suggestion, of some central human passion. In the Cinna of Corneille the -political bearings, the moral of benevolent despotism which Bonaparte -found in it, were purely incidental, and were distinctly subordinate to -the portrayal of character and the movement of feeling. In Brutus the -whole action lies in the region of great public affairs, and of the -passions which these affairs stir in noble characters, without any -admixture of purely private tenderness. In La Mort de César we are -equally in the heroics of public action. Rome Sauvée, of which the -subject is the conspiracy of Catiline, and the hero the most eloquent of -consuls or men—a part that Voltaire was very fond of filling in private -representations, and with distinguished success—is extremely loose and -spasmodic in structure, and the speeches sound strained even when put -into Cicero’s mouth. But here also private insipidities are banished, -though perhaps it is only in favour of public insipidities. It is -impossible to tell what share, if any, these plays had in spreading that -curious feeling about Roman freedom and its most renowned defenders, -which is so striking a feature in some of the great episodes of the -Revolution. We cannot suspect Voltaire of any design to stir political -feeling. He was now essentially aristocratic and courtly in his -predilection, without the smallest active wish for an approach to -political revolution, if indeed the conception of a change of that kind -ever presented itself to him. He was indefatigable in admiring and -praising English freedom, but, as has already been said, it was not the -laudation of a lover of popular government, but the envy of a man of -letters whose life was tormented by censors of the press and the -lieutenant of police. Perhaps the only approach to a public purpose in -this fancy for his Roman subjects was a lurking idea of arousing in the -nobles, for whom we must remember that his dramatic work was above all -designed, not a passion for freedom from the authority of monarchic -government, but a passion of a more general kind for energetic -patriotism. Voltaire’s letters abound with expressions of the writer’s -belief that he was the witness of an epoch of decay in his own country. -He had in truth far too keen and practical and trained an eye not to see -how public spirit, political sagacity, national ambition, and even -valour had declined in the great orders of France since the age of the -Grand Monarch, and how much his country had fallen back in the race of -civilisation and power. We should be guilty of a very transparent -exaggeration of the facts, if any attempt were made to paint Voltaire in -the attitude and colours of one transcendentally aspiring to regenerate -his countrymen. But there is no difficulty in believing that a man who -had lived in England, and knew so much of Prussia, should have seen the -fatal enervation which had come upon France, and that with Voltaire’s -feeling for the stage, he should have dreamt, by means of a more austere -subject and more masculine treatment, of reviving the love of wisdom and -glory and devotion in connection with country. In a word, the lesson of -La Mort de César or of Brutus was not a specific admonition to slay -tyrants, or to execute stern judgments on sons, but a general example of -self-sacrificing patriotism and devoted public honour. - -It is often said that Voltaire’s Romans are mere creatures of parade and -declamation, like the figures of David’s paintings,[121] and it is very -likely that the theatre infected the French people with that mischievous -idea of the Romans, as a nation of declaimers about freedom and the -death of tyrants. The true Roman was no doubt very much more like one of -our narrow, hard, and able Scotchmen in India, than the lofty talkers -who delighted the parterre of Paris or Versailles. Unluckily for truth -of historical conception, Cicero was, after Virgil, the most potent of -Roman memories, and a man of words became with modern writers the -favourite type of a people of action. All this, however, is beside the -question. Voltaire would have laughed at the idea of any obligation to -present either Romans or other personages on the stage with realistic -fidelity. The tragic drama with him was the highest of the imaginative -and idealistic arts. If he had sought a parallel to it in the plastic -arts he would have found one, not in painting, which by reason of the -greater flexibility of its material demands a more exact verisimilitude, -but in sculpture. Considered as statuesque figures endowed with speech, -Brutus, Caesar, and the rest are noble and impressive. We may protest as -vigorously as we know how against any assimilation of the great art of -action with the great art of repose. But we can only criticise the -individual productions of a given theory, provided we for the moment -accept the conditions which the theory lays down. All art rests upon -convention, and if we choose to repudiate any particular set of -conventions, we have no more right to criticise the works of those who -submit to them than one would have to criticise sculpture, because -marble or bronze is not like flesh and blood. Within the conditions of -the French classic drama Voltaire’s Romans are high and stately figures. - -Voltaire’s innovations extended beyond the introduction of more -masculine treatment. Before his time romantic subjects had been regarded -with disfavour, and Corneille’s Bajazet was considered a bold -experiment. Racine was more strictly classic, and dramatists went on -handling the same ancient fables, ‘Thebes, or Pelops’ line, or the tale -of ‘Troy divine,’ just as the Greeks had done, or just as the painters -in the Catholic times had never wearied of painting the two eternal -figures of human mother and divine child. Voltaire treated the classic -subjects as others treated them, and if Œdipe misses the depth, -delicate reserve and fateful gloom of the Greeks, Mérope at any rate -breathes a fine and tragic spirit. But his restless mind pressed forward -into subjects which Racine would have shuddered at, and every quarter of -the universe became in turn a portion of the Voltairean stage. -L’Orphelin de la Chine introduces us to China and Genghis-Khan, Mahomet -to Arabia and its prophet, Tancrede to Sicily; in Zulime we are among -Moors, in Alzire with Peruvians. This revolutionary enlargement of -subject was significant of a general and very important enlargement of -interest which marked the time, and led presently to those contrasts -between the condition of France and the imaginary felicity and nobleness -of wilder countries, which did so much to breed an irresistible longing -for change. Voltaire’s high-minded Scythians, generous Peruvians, and -the rest, prepared the way along with other influences for that curious -cosmopolitanism, that striking eagerness to believe in the equal -virtuousness and devotion inherent in human nature, independently of the -religious or social form accidentally imposed upon them, which found its -ultimate outcome, first in an ardent passion for social equality, and a -depreciation of the special sanctity of the current religion, and next -in the ill-fated emancipating and proselytising aims of the Revolution, -and in orators of the human race. - -It has usually been thought surprising that Voltaire, consummate wit as -he was, should have been so markedly unsuccessful in comedy. Certainly -no one with so right a sense of the value of time as Voltaire himself -had, will in our day waste many hours over his productions in this -order. There are a dozen of them more or less, and we can only hope that -they were the most rapid of his writings. Lines of extraordinary -vivacity are not wanting, and at their best they offer a certain -bustling sprightliness that might have been diverting in actual -representation. But the keynote seems to be struck in farce, rather than -in comedy; the intrigue, if not quite as slight as in Molière, is too -forced; and the characters are nearly all excessively mediocre in -conception. In one of the comedies, Le Dépositaire, the poet presented -the aged patroness of his youth, but the necessity of respecting current -ideas of the becoming prevented him from making a great character out of -even so striking a figure as Ninon de l’Enclos. La Prude is a version of -Wycherly’s Plaindealer, and is in respect of force, animation, and the -genuine spirit of comedy, very inferior to its admirable original. -L’Indiscret is a sparkling and unconsidered trifle, L’Ecossaise is only -a stinging attack on Fréron, and L’Enfant Prodigue, though greater pains -were taken with it, has none of the glow of dramatic feeling. The -liveliest of all is La Femme qui a Raison, a short comedy of situation, -which for one reading is entertaining in the closet, and must be -excellent on the stage. It is very slight, however, and as usual verges -on farce. - -This inferiority of Voltaire’s ought not to astonish any one who has -reflected how much concentrated feeling and what profundity of vision go -to the production of great comedy, and how in the mind of the dramatist, -as in the movement of human life, comedy lies close to portentous -tragedy. The author of the Bourgeois Gentilhomme and L’Avare was also -the creator of the Misanthrope, that inscrutable piece, where, without -plot, fable, or intrigue, we see a section of the polished life of the -time, men and women paying visits, making and receiving compliments, -discoursing upon affairs with easy lightness, flitting backwards and -forwards with a thousand petty hurries, and among these one strange, -rough, hoarse, half-sombre figure, moving solitarily with a chilling -reality in the midst of frolicking shadows. Voltaire entered too eagerly -into the interests of the world, was by temperament too exclusively -sympathetic and receptive and social, to place himself even in -imagination thus outside of the common circle. Without capacity for -this, there is no comedy of the first order. Without serious -consciousness of contrasts, no humour that endures. Shakespeare, -Molière, and even Aristophanes, each of them unsurpassed writers of mere -farce, were each of them, though with vast difference of degree, master -of a tragic breadth of vision. Voltaire had moods of petulant spleen, -but who feels that he ever saw, much less brooded over, the dark -cavernous regions of human nature? Without this we may have brilliant -pleasantry of surprise, inimitable caricature, excellent comedy of -society, but of the veritable comedy of human character and life, -nothing. - -In dazzling and irresistible caricature Voltaire has no equal. There is -no deep humour, as in Don Quixote, or Tristram Shandy, which Voltaire -did not care for,[122] or Richter’s Siebenkäs, which he would not have -cared for any more than De Stael did. He was too purely intellectual, -too argumentative, too geometrical, and cared too much for illustrating -a principle. But in Candide, Zadig, L’Ingénu, wit is as high as mere wit -can go. They are better than Hudibras, because the motive is broader and -more intellectual. Rapidity of play, infallible accuracy of stroke, -perfect copiousness, and above all a fresh and unflagging spontaneity, -combine with a surprising invention, to give these stories a singular -quality, of which we most effectively observe the real brilliance, by -comparing them with the too numerous imitations that their success has -unhappily invited since. - -It is impossible to omit from the most cursory study of Voltaire’s work, -that too famous poem which was his favourite amusement during some of -the best years of his life, which was the delight of all who could by -any means get the high favour of sight or hearing of so much as a canto -of it, and which is now always spoken of, when it happens to be spoken -of at all, with extreme abhorrence.[123] The Pucelle offends two modern -sentiments, the love of modesty, and the love of the heroic personages -of history. The moral sense and the historic sense have both been -sharpened in some respects since Voltaire, and a poem which not only -abounds in immodesty, and centres the whole action in an indecency of -conception, but also fastens this gross chaplet round the memory of a -great deliverer of the poet’s own country, seems to offer a double -outrage to an age when relish for licentious verse has gone out of -fashion, and reverence for the heroic dead has come in. Still the fact -that the greatest man of his time should have written one of the most -unseemly poems that exist in any tongue, is worth trying to understand. -Voltaire, let us remember, had no special turn, like Gibbon or Bayle, -least of all like the unclean Swift, for extracting a malodorous -diversion out of grossness or sensuality. His writings betray no -irresistible passion for flying to an indelicacy, nor any of the vapid -lasciviousness of some more modern French writers. The Pucelle is at -least the wit of a rational man, and not the prying beastliness of a -satyr. It is wit worse than poorly employed, but it is purity itself -compared with some of the nameless abominations with which Diderot -besmirched his imagination. The Persian Letters contain what we should -now account passages of extreme licentiousness, yet Montesquieu was -assuredly no libertine. Voltaire’s life again was never indecent or -immoderate from the point of view of the manners of the time. A man of -grave character and untarnished life, like Condorcet, did not scruple to -defend a poem, in which it is hard for us to see anything but a most -indecorous burlesque of a most heroic subject. He insists that books -which divert the imagination without heating or seducing it, which by -gay and pleasurable images fill up those moments of exhaustion that are -useless alike for labour and meditation, have the effect of inclining -men to gentleness and indulgence. “It was not such books as the Pucelle -that Gérard or Clément used to read, or that the satellites of Cromwell -carried at the saddle-bow.”[124] - -The fact is that in amusing himself by the Pucelle, Voltaire was only -giving literary expression to a kind of view which had already in the -society of the time found for itself a thoroughly practical expression. -The people among whom he lived had systematised that freedom from law or -restraint in the relations of the sexes, of which his poem is so vivid a -representation. The Duke of Richelieu was the irresistible Lovelace of -his time, and it was deemed an honour, an honour to which Madame du -Châtelet among so many others has a title, to have yielded to his -fascination. A long and profoundly unedifying chronicle might be drawn -up of the memorable gallantries of that time, and for our purpose it -might fitly close with the amour with Saint Lambert that led to Madame -du Châtelet’s death. Of course, these countless gallantries in the most -licentious persons of the day, such as Richelieu or Saxe, were neither -more nor less than an outbreak of sheer dissoluteness, such as took -place among English people of quality in the time of the Restoration. -The idle and luxurious, whose imagination is uncontrolled by the -discipline of labour and purpose, and to whom the indulgence of their -own inclinations is the first and single law of life, are always ready -to profit by any relaxation of restraint, which the moral conditions of -the moment may permit. - -The peculiarity of the licence of France in the middle of the eighteenth -century is, that it was looked upon with complacency by the great -intellectual leaders of opinion. It took its place in the progressive -formula. What austerity was to other forward movements, licence was to -this. It is not difficult to perceive how so extraordinary a -circumstance came to pass. Chastity was the supreme virtue in the eyes -of the church, the mystic key to Christian holiness. Continence was one -of the most sacred of the pretensions by which the organised preachers -of superstition claimed the reverence of men and women. It was -identified, therefore, in a particular manner with that Infamous, -against which the main assault of the time was directed. So men -contended, more or less expressly, first, that continence was no -commanding chief among virtues, then that it was a very superficial and -easily practised virtue, finally that it was no virtue at all, but if -sometimes a convenience, generally an impediment to free human -happiness. These disastrous sophisms show the peril of having morality -made an appendage of a set of theological mysteries, because the -mysteries are sure in time to be dragged into the open air of reason, -and moral truth crumbles away with the false dogmas with which it had -got mixed. - -‘If,’ says Condorcet, ‘we may treat as useful the design to make -superstition ridiculous in the eyes of men given to pleasures, and -destined, by the very want of self-control which makes pleasures -attractive to them, to become one day the unfortunate victims or the -mischievous instruments of that vile tyrant of humanity; if the -affectation of austerity in manners, if the excessive value attached to -purity, only serves the hypocrites who by putting on the easy mask of -chastity can dispense with all virtues, and cover with a sacred veil the -vices most pernicious to society, hardness of heart and intolerance; if -by accustoming men to treat as so many crimes faults from which -honourable and conscientious persons are not exempt, we extend over the -purest souls the power of that dangerous caste, which to rule and -disturb the earth, has constituted itself exclusively the interpreter of -heavenly justice;—then we shall see in the author of the Pucelle no more -than a foe to hypocrisy and superstition.’[125] - -It helps us to realise the infinite vileness of a system, like that of -the Church in the last century, which could engender in men of essential -nobleness of character like Condorcet, an antipathy so violent as to -shut the eyes of their understanding to the radical sophistry of such -pleading as this. Let one reflection out of many, serve to crush the -whole of it. The key to effective life is unity of life, and unity of -life means as much as anything else the unity of our human relations. -Our identity does by no means consist in a historic continuity of -tissues, but in an organic moral coherency of relation. It is this, -which alone, if we consider the passing shortness of our days, makes -life a whole, instead of a parcel of thrums bound together by an -accident. Is not every incentive and every concession to vagrant -appetite a force that enwraps a man in gratification of self, and severs -him from duty to others, and so a force of dissolution and dispersion? -It might be necessary to pull down the Church, but the worst church that -has ever prostituted the name and the idea of religion cannot be so -disastrous to society, as a gospel that systematically relaxes -self-control as being an unmeaning curtailment of happiness. The -apologists for the Pucelle exhibit the doctrine of individualism in one -of its worst issues. ‘Your proof that this is really the best of all -possible worlds is excellent,’ says Candide for his famous last word, -‘but we must cultivate our garden.’ The same principle of exclusive -self-regard, applied to the gratification of sense, passed for a -satisfactory defence of libertinage. In the first form it destroys a -state, in the second it destroys the family. - -It is easier to account for Voltaire’s contempt for the mediæval -superstition about purity, than his want of respect for a deliverer of -France. The explanation lies in the conviction which had such power in -Voltaire’s own mind and with which he impregnated to such a degree the -minds of others, that the action of illiterate and unpolished times can -have no life in it. His view of progress was a progress of art and -knowledge, and heroic action which was dumb, or which was not expressed -in terms of intellect, was to the eighteenth century, and to Voltaire at -least as much as to any other of its leaders, mere barbaric energy. In -the order of taste, for instance, he can find only words of cool and -limited praise for Homer, while for the polish and elegance of Virgil -his admiration is supreme. The first was the bard of a rude time, while -round the second cluster all the associations of a refined and lettered -age. A self-devotion that was only articulate in the jargon of mystery -and hallucination, and that was surrounded with rude and irrational -circumstance, with ignorance, brutality, visions, miracle, was encircled -by no halo in the eyes of a poet who found no nobleness where he did not -find a definite intelligence, and who rested all his hopes and interests -on the long distance set by time and civilisation between ourselves and -such conditions and associations as belong to the name of Joan of Arc. -The foremost men of the eighteenth century despised Joan of Arc, -whenever they had occasion to think of her, for the same reason which -made them despise Gothic architecture. ‘When,’ says Voltaire in one -place, ‘the arts began to revive, they revived as Goths and Vandals; -what unhappily remains to us of the architecture and sculpture of these -times is a fantastic compound of rudeness and filigree.’[126] Just so, -even Turgot, while protesting how dear to every sensible heart were the -Gothic buildings destined to the use of the poor and the orphan, -complained of the outrage done by their rude architecture to the -delicacy of our sight.[127] Characters like Joan of Arc ranked in the -same rude and fantastic order, and respect for them meant that respect -for the middle age which was treason to the new time. Men despised her, -just as they despised the majesty and beauty of the great church at -Rheims where she brought her work to a climax, or the lofty grace and -symmetry of the church of St. Ouen, within sight of which her life came -to its terrible end. - -Henry the Fourth was a hero with Voltaire, for no better reason than -that he was the first great tolerant, the earliest historic indifferent. -The Henriade is only important because it helped to popularise the type -of its hero’s character, and so to promote the rapidly-growing tendency -in public opinion towards a still wider version of the policy of the -Edict of Nantes. The reign of Lewis XIV. had thrown all previous -monarchs into obscurity, and the French king who showed a warmer and -more generous interest in the happiness of his subjects than any they -ever had, was forgotten, until Voltaire brought him into fame. It was -just, however, because Henry’s exploits were so glorious, and at the -same time so near in point of time, that he made an indifferent hero for -an epic poem. ‘He should never choose for an epic poem history,’ said -Hume very truly, ‘the truth of which is well known; for no fiction can -come up to the interest of the actual story and incidents of the -singular life of Henry IV.’[128] These general considerations, however, -as to the propriety of the subject are hardly worth entering upon. How -could any true epic come out of that age, or find fountains in that -critical, realistic, and polemical soul? To fuse a long narrative of -heroic adventure in animated, picturesque, above all, in sincere verse, -is an achievement reserved for men with a steadier glow, a firmer, -simpler, more exuberant and more natural poetic feeling, than was -possible in that time of mean shifts, purposeless public action, and -pitiful sacrifice of private self-respect. Virgil was stirred by the -greatness of the newly-united empire, Tasso by the heroic march of -Christendom against pagan oppressors, Milton by the noble ardour of our -war for public rights. What long and glowing inspiration was possible to -a would-be courtier, thrust into the Bastille for wanting to fight a -noble who had had him caned by lackeys? Besides, an epic, of all forms -of poetic composition, most demands concentrated depth, and Voltaire was -too widely curious and vivacious on the intellectual side to be capable -of this emotional concentration. - -But it is superfluous to give reasons why Voltaire’s epic should not be -a great poem. The Henriade itself is there, the most indisputable of -arguments. Of poems whose names are known out of literary histories and -academic catalogues, it is perhaps the least worth reading in any -language by any one but a professional student of letters. It is less -worth reading than Lucan’s Pharsalia, because it is more deliberately -artificial and gratuitously unspontaneous. Paradise Regained, which it -is too ready a fashion among us to pronounce dull, still contains at -least three pieces of superb and unsurpassed description, never fails in -grave majestic verse, and is at the worst free from all the dreary -apparatus of phantom and impersonation and mystic vision, which have -never jarred so profoundly with sense of poetic fitness, as when -associated with so political and matter-of-fact a hero as Henry the -Fourth. The reader has no illusion in such transactions as Saint Lewis -taking Henry into heaven and hell, Sleep hearing from her secret caves, -the Winds at sight of him falling into Silence, and Dreams, children of -Hope, flying to cover the hero with olive and laurel. How can we -overcome our repugnance to that strange admixture of real and unreal -matter which presents us with a highly-coloured picture of the Temple of -Love, where in the forecourt sits Joy, with Mystery, Desire, -Complaisance, on the soft turf by her side, while in the inner sanctuary -haunt Jealousy, Suspicion, Malice, Fury; while the next canto describes - - L’église toujours une et partout étendue, - Libre, mais sous un chef, adorant en tout lieu, - Dans le bonheur des saints, la grandeur de son Dieu. - Le Christ, de nos péches victime renaissante, - De ses élus chéris nourriture vivante, - Descend sur les autels à ses yeux éperdus, - Et lui découvre un Dieu sous un pain qui n’est plus.[129] - -Voltaire congratulated himself in his preface that he had come -sufficiently near theological exactitude, and to this qualification, -which is so new for poetry, the critic may add elegance and flow; but -neither elegance nor theological exactitude reconciles us to an epic -that has neither a stroke of sublimity nor a touch of pathos, that -presents no grandeur in character, and no hurrying force and movement in -action. Frederick the Great used to speak of Voltaire as the French -Virgil, but then Frederick’s father had never permitted him to learn -Latin, and if he ever read Virgil at all, it must have been in some of -the jingling French translations. Even so, with the episodes of Dido and -of Nisus and Euryalus in our minds, we may wonder how so monstrous a -parallel could have occurred even to Frederick, who was no critic, -between two poets who have hardly a quality in common. If the reader -wishes to realise how nearly insipid even Voltaire’s genius could become -when working in unsuitable forms, he may turn from any canto of the -Henriade to any page of Lucretius or the Paradise Lost. A French critic -quotes the famous reviewer’s sentence, concluding an analysis of some -epic, to the effect that on the whole, when all is summed up, the given -epic was ‘one of the best that had appeared in the course of the current -year;’ and insists that Voltaire’s piece will not at any rate perish in -the oblivion of poetic annuals like these. If not, the only reason lies -in that unfortunate tenderness for the bad work of famous men, which -makes of so much reading time worse than wasted. ‘The unwise,’ said -Candide, ‘value every word in an author of repute.’ - - - - -CHAPTER IV. - -BERLIN. - - -The Marquise du Châtelet died under circumstances that were tragical -enough to herself, but which disgust the grave, while they give a -grotesque amusement to those who look with cynical eye upon what they -choose to treat as the great human comedy. In 1749 the friendship of -sixteen years thus came to its end, and Voltaire was left without the -tie that, in spite of too frequent breaking away from it, had brought -him much happiness and good help so far on the road. He was now free, -disastrously free as the event proved, to accept the invitations with -which he had so long been pressed to take up his residence with the king -who may dispute with him the claim to be held the most extraordinary man -of that century. - -Neither credit nor peace followed Voltaire in his own land. Lewis XV., -perhaps the most worthless of all the creatures that monarchy has ever -corrupted, always disliked him. The whole influence of the court and the -official world had been uniformly exerted against him. Many years went -by before he could even win a seat in the academy, a distinction, it -may be added, to which Diderot, hardly second to Voltaire in originality -and power, never attained to the end of his days. Madame de Pompadour, -the protectress of Quesnay, was Voltaire’s first friend at court. He -said of her long afterwards that in the bottom of her heart she belonged -to the philosophers, and did as much as she could to protect them.[130] -She had known him in her obscurer and more reputable days, and she -charged him with the composition of a court-piece (1745), to celebrate -the marriage of the dauphin. The task was satisfactorily performed, and -honours which had been refused to the author of Zaïre, Alzire, and the -Henriade, were at once given to the writer of the Princess of Navarre, -which Voltaire himself ranked as a mere farce of the fair. He was made -gentleman of the chamber and historiographer of France. He disarmed the -devout by the Pope’s acceptance of Mahomet, and by a letter which he -wrote to Father Latour, head of his former school, protesting his -affection for religion and his esteem for the Jesuits. Condorcet most -righteously pronounces that, in spite of the art with which he handles -his expressions in this letter, it would undoubtedly have been far -better to give up the academy than to write it.[131] It answered its -purpose, and Voltaire was admitted of the forty (May 1746). This -distinction, however, was far from securing for him the tranquillity -which he had hoped from it, and worse libels tormented him than before. -The court sun ceased to shine. Madame de Pompadour gave to Crébillon a -preference which Voltaire resented with more agitation than any -preference of Madame Pompadour’s ought to have stirred in the breast of -a strong man. - -We cannot, however, too constantly remember not to ask from Voltaire the -heroic. He was far too sympathetic, too generously eager to please, too -susceptible to opinion. Of that stern and cold stuff which supports a -man in firm march and straight course, giving him the ample content of -self-respect, he probably had less than any one of equal prominence has -ever had. Instead of writing his tragedy as well as he knew how, and -then leaving it to its destiny, he wrote it as well as he knew how, and -then went in disguise to the café of the critics to find out what his -inferiors had to say about his work. Instead of composing his -court-piece, and taking such reward as offered, or disdaining such -ignoble tasks—and nobody knew better than he how ignoble they were—he -sought to catch some crumb of praise by fawningly asking of the vilest -of men, _Trajan est-il content?_ Make what allowance we will for -difference of time and circumstance, such an attitude to such a man, -whether in Seneca towards Nero, or Voltaire towards Lewis XV., is a -baseness that we ought never to pardon and never to extenuate. Whether -or no there be in the human breast that natural religion of goodness and -virtue which was the sheet-anchor of Voltaire’s faith, there is at least -a something in the hearts of good men which sets a fast gulf between -them and those who are to the very depths of their souls irredeemably -saturated with corruption. - -We may permit ourselves to hope that it was the consciousness of the -humiliation of such relations as these, rather than the fact that they -did not answer their own paltry purpose, that made Voltaire resolve a -second time to shake the dust of his own country from off his feet In -July 1750 he reached Potsdam, and was installed with sumptuous honour in -the court of Frederick the Great, twenty-four years since he had -installed himself with Mr. Falkener, the English merchant at Wandsworth. -Diderot was busy with the first volume of the Encyclopædia, and Rousseau -had just abandoned his second child in the hospital for foundlings. If -the visit to London did everything for Voltaire, the visit to Berlin did -nothing. There was no Prussia, as there was an England. To travel from -the dominion of George II. to the dominion of his famous nephew, was to -go from the full light of the eighteenth century back to the dimness of -the fifteenth. An academy of sciences, by the influence of -Sophie-Charlotte, and under the guidance of Leibnitz, had been founded -at Berlin at the beginning of the eighteenth century; but Frederick -William had an angry contempt for every kind of activity except drill -and the preaching of orthodox theology, and during his reign the academy -languished in obscurity.[132] - -The accession of Frederick II. was the signal for its reconstitution, -and the revival of its activity under the direction of Maupertuis. To -the sciences of experiment and observation, which had been its original -objects, was added a department of speculative philosophy. The court was -materialist, sceptical, Voltairean, all at the same time; but the -academy as a body was theologically orthodox, and it was wholly and -purely metaphysical in its philosophy. We may partly understand the -distance at which Berlin was then behind Paris, when we read -D’Alembert’s just remonstrances with Frederick against giving as -subjects for prize-essays such metaphysical problems as ‘The search for -a primary and permanent force, at once substance and cause.’[133] - -Whatever activity existed outside of the court and the academy was -divided between the dialectic of Protestant scholasticism, and Wolf’s -exposition and development of Leibnitz. In literature proper there arose -with the accession of Frederick a small group of essentially secondary -critics, of whom Sulzer was the best, without the vivid and radiant -force of either Voltaire or Diderot, and without the deep inspiration -and invention of those who were to follow them, and to place Germany -finally on a level with England and France. Lessing, the founder of the -modern German literature, was at this time a youth of twenty-two, and by -a striking turn of chance was employed by Voltaire in putting into -German his pleadings in the infamous Hirschel case. It was not then -worth while for a stranger to learn the language in which Lessing had -not yet written, and Voltaire, who was a master of English and Italian, -never knew more German than was needed to curse a postilion.[134] -Leibnitz wrote everything of importance in Latin or French, the Berlin -academy conducted its transactions first in Latin, next and for many -years to come in French, and one of its earliest presidents, a man of -special competence,[135] pronounced German to be a noble but frightfully -barbarised tongue. The famous Wolf had done his best to make the tongue -of his country literate, but even his influence was unequal to the task. - -Society was in its foundations not removed from the mediæval. The -soldiers with whom Frederick won Zorndorf and Leuthen, like the Russians -and Austrians whom he defeated on those bloody days, were not more nor -less than serfs. Instead of philosophers like Newton and Locke, he had -to find the pride and safety of his country in swift rushing troopers -like Winterfield and Ziethen. A daring cavalry-charge in season was for -the moment more to Prussia than any theory why it is that an apple -falls, and a new method of drill much more urgent than a new origin for -ideas. She was concerned not with the speculative problem of the causes -why the earth keeps its place in the planetary system, but with the -practical problem how Prussia was to make her place in the system of -Europe. Prussia was then far more behind France in all thought and all -arts, save the soldier’s, than England was in front of France. - -Voltaire had nothing to learn at Berlin, and may we not add, as the king -was a rooted Voltairean long before this, he had nothing to teach there? -The sternest barrack in Europe was not a field in which the apostle of -free and refined intelligence could sow seed with good hope of harvest. -Voltaire at this time, we have to recollect, was in the public mind only -a poet, and perhaps was regarded, if not altogether by Frederick, -certainly by those who surrounded him, as much in the same order of -being with Frederick’s flute, fitted by miracle with a greater number of -stops. ‘I don’t give you any news of literature,’ D’Alembert wrote from -Potsdam in 1763, ‘for I don’t know any, and you know how barren -literature is in this country, where no one except the king concerns -himself with it.’[136] There is no particular disgrace to Berlin or its -king in this. Their task was very definite, and it was only a pleasant -error of Frederick’s rather fantastic youth to suppose that this task -lay in the direction of polite letters. The singer of the Henriade was -naturally of different quality and turn of mind from a hero who had at -least as hard an enterprise in his hand as that of Henry IV. Voltaire -and Frederick were the two leaders of the two chief movements then going -on, in the great work of the transformation of the old Europe into the -new. But the movements were in different matter, demanded vastly -different methods, and, as is so often the case, the scope of each was -hardly visible to the pursuer of the other. Voltaire’s work was to -quicken the activity and proclaim the freedom of human intelligence, and -to destroy the supremacy of an old spiritual order. Frederick’s work was -to shake down the old political order. The sum of their efforts was the -definite commencement of that revolution in the thought and the -political conformation of the West, of which the momentous local -revolution in France must, if we take a sufficiently wide survey before -and after, be counted a secondary phase. The conditions of the order -which was established after the confusion of the fall of the Roman power -before the inroads of the barbarians, and which constituted the Europe -of the early and middle ages, are now tolerably well understood, and the -historic continuity or identity of that order is typified in two -institutions, which by the middle of the eighteenth century had reached -very different stages of decay, and possessed very different powers of -resisting attack. One was the German Empire, and the other was the Holy -Catholic Church. Frederick dealt a definite blow to the first, and -Voltaire did the same to the second. - -Those who read history and biography with a sturdy and childish -pre-conception that the critical achievements in the long course of the -world’s progress must of necessity have fallen to the lot of the salt of -the earth, will find it hard to associate the beginning of the great -overt side of modern movement with the two men who versified and -wrangled together for some two and a half years in the middle of the -eighteenth century at Berlin. It is hard to think of the old state, with -all its memories of simple enthusiasm and wild valour and rude -aspiration after some better order, finally disappearing into the chaos -for which it was more than ripe, under the impulse of an arch cynic. And -it is hard, too, to think that the civilising religion which was founded -by a Jew, and first seized by Jews, noblest and holiest of their race, -got its first and severest blow from one who was not above using a Jew -to cheat Christians out of their money. But the fact remains of the vast -work which this amazing pair had to do, and did. - -The character of the founder of the greatness of Prussia, if indeed we -may call founder one rather than another member of that active, clear, -and far-sighted line, can have no attraction for those who require as an -indispensable condition of fealty that their hero shall have either -purity, or sensibility, or generosity, or high honour, or manly respect -for human nature. Frederick’s rapidity and firmness of will, his -administrative capacity, his military talent, were marvellous and -admirable enough; but on the moral side of character, in his relations -to men and women, in his feeling for the unseen, in his ideas of truth -and beauty, he belonged to a type which is not altogether uncommon. In -his youth he had much of a sort of shallow sensibility, which more -sympathetic usage might possibly have established and to some small -extent even deepened, but which the curiously rough treatment that his -pacific tastes and frivolous predilections provoked his father to -inflict, turned in time into the most bitter and profound kind of -cynicism that the world knows. No cynic is so hard and insensible as the -man who has once had sensibility, perhaps because the consciousness that -he was in earlier days open to more generous impressions persuades him -that the fault of any change in his own view of things must needs lie in -the world’s villainy, which he has now happily for himself had time to -find out. Sensibility of a true sort, springing from natural fountains -of simple and unselfish feeling, can neither be corrupted nor dried up. -But at its best, Frederick’s sensibility was of the literary and -aesthetic kind, rather than the humane and social. It concerned taste -and expression, and had little root in the recognition as at first-hand -of those facts of experience, of beauty and tenderness and cruelty and -endurance, which are the natural objects that permanently quicken a -sensitive nature. In a word, Frederick’s was the conventional -sensibility of the French literature of the time; a harmless thing -enough in the poor souls that only poured themselves out in bad romance -and worse verse, but terrible when it helped to fill with contempt for -mankind an absolute monarch, with the most perfect military machine in -Europe at his command. Frederick is constantly spoken of as a man -typical of his century. In truth he was throughout his life in -ostentatious opposition to his century on its most remarkable side. -There has never been any epoch whose foremost men had such faith and -hope in the virtues of humanity. There has never been any prominent man -who despised humanity so bitterly and unaffectedly as Frederick despised -it. - -We know what to think of a man who writes a touching and pathetic letter -condoling with a friend on the loss of his wife, and on the same day -makes an epigram on the dead woman[137]; who never found so much -pleasure in a friendly act as when he could make it the means of hurting -the recipient; whose practical pleasantries were always spiteful and -sneering and cruel. As we read of his tricks on D’Argens or Pöllnitz, we -feel how right Voltaire was in borrowing a nickname for him from a -mischievous brute whom he kept in his garden. He presented D’Argens with -a house; when D’Argens went to take possession he found the walls -adorned with pictures of all the most indecent and humiliating episodes -of his own life. This was a type of Frederick’s delicacy towards some of -those whom he honoured with his friendship. It is true that, except -Voltaire and Maupertuis, most of the French philosophers whom Frederick -seduced into coming to live at Berlin were not too good for the -corporal’s horse-play of which they were the victims. But then we know, -further, what to think of a man whose self-respect fails to proscribe -gross and unworthy companions. He is either a lover of parasites, which -Frederick certainly was not, or else the most execrable cynic, the cynic -who delights in any folly or depravity that assures him how right he is -in despising ‘that damned race.’ - -Frederick need not have summoned the least worthy French freethinkers, -men like D’Argens and La Mettrie and De Prades, in their own way as -little attractive in life and in doctrine as any monk or Geneva -preacher, to warrant him in thinking meanly of mankind. If any one wants -to know what manner of spirit this great temporal deliverer of Europe -was of, he may find what he seeks in the single episode of the -negotiations at Klein-Schnellendorf in 1741. There, although he had made -and was still bound by a solemn treaty of alliance with France, he -entered into secret engagements with the Hungarian Queen, to be veiled -by adroitly pretended hostilities. Even if, as an illustrious apologist -of the Prussian King is reduced to plead, this is in a certain fashion -defensible, on the ground that France and Austria were both playing with -cogged dice, and therefore the other dicer of the party was in -self-defence driven to show himself their superior in these excellent -artifices, there still seems a gratuitous infamy in hinting to the -Austrian general, as Frederick did, how he might assault with advantage -the French enemy, Frederick’s own ally at the moment.[138] This was the -author of the plea for political morality, called the Anti-Machiavel, -whose publication Voltaire had superintended the year before, and, for -that matter, had done his best to prevent. Still, as Frederick so -graciously said of his new guest and old friend: ‘He has all the tricks -of a monkey; but I shall make no sign, for I need him in my study of -French style. One may learn good things from a scoundrel: I want to know -his French; what is his morality to me?’ And so a royal statesman may -have the manners of the coarsest corporal, and the morality of the -grossest cynic, and still have both the eye to discern, and the hand to -control, the forces of a great forward movement. - -Frederick had the signal honour of accepting his position, and taking up -with an almost perfect fortitude the burden which it laid upon him. ‘We -are not masters of our own lot,’ he wrote to Voltaire, immediately after -his accession to the throne; ‘the whirlwind of circumstances carries us -away, and we must suffer ourselves to be carried away.’[139] And what he -said in this hour of exaltation he did not deny nearly twenty years -later, when his fortunes seemed absolutely desperate. ‘If I had been -born a private person,’ he wrote to him in 1759, ‘I would give up -everything for love of peace; but a man is bound to take on the spirit -of his position.’[140] ‘Philosophy teaches us to do our duty, to serve -our country faithfully at the price of our blood and our case, to -sacrifice for it our whole existence.’[141] Men are also called upon by -their country to abstain from sacrificing their existence, and if -Frederick’s sense of duty to his subjects had been as perfect as it was -exceptionally near being so, he would not have carried a phial of poison -round his neck.[142] Still on the whole he devoted himself to his career -with a temper that was as entirely calculated for the overthrow of a -tottering system, as Voltaire’s own. It is difficult to tell whether -Frederick’s steady attention to letters and men of letters, and his -praiseworthy endeavours to make Berlin a true academic centre, were due -to a real and disinterested love of knowledge, and a sense of its worth -to the spirit of man, or still more to weak literary vanity, and a -futile idea of universal fame so far as his own productions went, and a -purely utilitarian purpose so far as his patronage of the national -academy was concerned. One thing is certain, that the philosophy which -he learnt from French masters, which Voltaire brought in his proper -person to Berlin, and to which Frederick to the end of his days was -always adding illustrative commentaries, never made any impression on -Germany. The teaching of Leibnitz and Wolf stood like a fortified wall -in the face of the French invasion, and whatever effective share French -speculation had upon Germany, was through the influence of Descartes -upon Leibnitz. - -The dissolution of the outer framework of the European state-system, for -which Frederick’s seizure of Silesia was the first clear signal, -followed as it was by the indispensable suppression of the mischievous -independence, so called, of barbaric and feudal Poland, where bishops -and nobles held a people in the most oppressive bondage, can only -concern us here slightly, because it was for the time only indirectly -connected with the characteristic work of Voltaire’s life. But, though -indirect, the connection may be seen at our distance of time to have -been marked and unmistakable. The old order and principles of Europe -were to receive a new impress, and the decaying system of the middle age -to be replaced by a polity of revolution, which should finally change -the relations of nations, the types of European government, and the -ideas of spiritual control. - -In 1733 the war of the Polish succession between Austria and Russia on -the one hand, and France and Spain on the other, had given the first -great shock to the house of Austria, which was compelled to renounce the -pretensions and territory of the Empire in Italy, or nearly all of them, -in favour of the Spanish Bourbons, as well as to surrender Lorraine to -Stanislas, with reversion to the crown of France. We may notice in -passing that it was at Stanislas’ court of Lunéville that Voltaire and -the Marquise du Châtelet passed their last days together. The wars of -the Polish succession were remarkable for another circumstance. They -were the first occasion of the decisive interference of Russia in -Western affairs, an only less important disturbance of Europe than the -first great interference of Prussia a few years later. The falling to -pieces of the old Europe was as inevitable as, more than twelve -centuries before, had been the dissolution of that yet older Europe -whose heart had been not Vienna but Rome. Russia and Prussia were not -the only novel elements. There was a third from over the sea, the -American colonies of France and England. - -Roman Europe had been a vast imperial state, with slavery for a base. -Then, after the feudal organisation had run its course, there was a long -and chaotic transition of dynastic and territorial wars, frightfully -wasteful of humanity and worse than unfruitful to progress. In vain do -historians, intent on vindicating the foregone conclusions of the -optimism which a distorted notion about final causes demands or -engenders in them, try to show these hateful contests as parts of a -harmonious scheme of things, in which many diverse forces move in a -mysterious way to a common and happy end. As if any good use, for -instance, were served by the transfer, for one of the chief results of -the war of the Polish succession, of the Italian provinces of the Empire -of the Spanish Bourbons. As if any good or permanent use were served by -the wars which ended in the Peace of Utrecht, when victorious England -conceded, and with much wisdom conceded, the precise point which she had -for so many years been disputing. From the Peace of Westphalia to the -beginning of the Seven Years’ War, it is not too much to say that there -was a century of purely artificial strife on the continent of Europe, -of wars as factious, as merely personal, as unmeaning, as the civil war -of the Fronde was all of these things. In speaking roundly of this -period, we leave out of account the first Silesian War, because the -issue between Prussia and Austria was not decisively fought out until -the final death-struggle from 1756 to 1763. It was the entry of -Frederick the Great upon the scene, that instantly raised international -relations into the region of real matter and changed a strife of -dynasties, houses, persons, into a vital competition between old forces -and principles and new. The aimless and bloody commotions which had -raged over Europe, and ground men’s lives to dust in the red mill of -battle, came for a time to an end, and their place was taken by a -tremendous conflict, on whose issue hung not merely the triumph of a -dynasty, but the question of the type to which future civilisation was -to conform. - -In the preliminary war which followed immediately upon the death of -Charles VI. in 1740, and which had its beginning in Frederick’s invasion -of Silesia, circumstances partially marched in the usual tradition, with -France and Austria playing opposite sides in an accustomed game. Before -the opening of the Seven Years’ War the cardinal change of policy and -alliances had taken place. We are not concerned with the court intrigues -that brought the change about, with the intricate manœuvres of the -Jesuits, or the wounded vanity of Bernis, whose verses Frederick laughed -at, or the pique of Pompadour, whom Frederick declined to count an -acquaintance. When conflicting forces of tidal magnitude are at work, as -they were in the middle of the last century, the play of mere personal -aims and ambitions is necessarily of secondary importance; because we -may always count upon there being at least one great power that clearly -discerns its own vital interest, and is sure therefore to press with -steady energy in its own special direction. That power was Austria. One -force of this kind is enough to secure a universal adjustment of all the -others in their natural places. - -The situation was apparently very complex. There were in the middle of -the century two great pairs of opposed interests, the interests of -France and England on the ocean and in America, and the interests of -Austria and Prussia in Central Europe. The contest was in each of the -two cases much more than a superficial affair of dynasties or division -of territory, to meet the requirements of the metaphysical diplomacy of -the balance of power. It was a re-opening in far vaster proportions of -those profound issues of new religion and old which had only been dammed -up, and not permanently settled, by the great Peace of Westphalia in -1648. In vaster proportions, not merely because the new struggle between -the Catholic and Protestant powers extended into the new world, but -because the forces contained in these two creeds had been widened and -developed, and a multitude of indirect consequences, entirely apart from -theology and church discipline, depended upon the triumph of Great -Britain and Prussia. The Governments of France and Austria represented -the feudal and military idea, not in the strength of that idea while it -was still alive, but in the narrow and oppressive form of its decay. No -social growth was possible under its shadow, for one of its essential -conditions was discouragement, active and passive, of commercial -industry, the main pathway then open to an advancing people. Again, both -France and Austria represented the old type of monarchy, as -distinguished alike from the aristocratic oligarchy of England, and the -new type of monarchy which Prussia introduced into Europe, frugal, -encouraging industry, active in supervision, indefatigable in improving -the laws. Let us not omit above all things the splendid religious -toleration, of which Prussia set so extraordinarily early an example to -Europe. The Protestants whom episcopal tyranny drove from Salzburg found -warm hospitality among their northern brethren. While the professors of -the reformed faith were denied civil status in France, and subjected to -persecution of a mediæval bloodiness, one Christian was counted exactly -as another in Prussia. While England was revelling in the infliction of -atrocious penal laws on her Catholic citizens, Prussia extended even to -the abhorred Jesuit the shelter which was denied him in Spain and at -Rome. The transfer of territory from Austria to Prussia meant the -extension of toleration in that territory. Silesia, for instance, no -sooner became Prussian, than the University of Breslau, whose advantages -had hitherto been rigidly confined to Catholics, was at once -compulsorily opened to Protestants and Catholics alike. In criticising -Frederick’s despotism let us recognise how much enlightenment, how much -of what is truly modern, was to be found in the manner in which this -despotic power was exercised, long before the same enlightened -principles were accepted in other countries. - -We cannot understand the issues of the Seven Years’ War, nor indeed of -the eighteenth century on any of its more important sides, without -tolerably distinct ideas about the ages before and behind it, about the -sixteenth century and the twentieth; without ideas as to the conditions -of the break-up of the Catholic and the feudal organisation, and, next, -as to the attitude proper to be assumed, and the methods to be followed, -in dealing with the more or less anarchic circumstances in which their -break-up and its sequels leave us. There are two ways of regarding these -questions. You may say, as Comte says, that the ultimate type of -society, perfected on a basis of positive knowledge, will in the -essential features of its constitution correspond to the ancient or -mediæval constitution which it replaces; because that gave the fullest -possible satisfaction to those elements of human nature which are -deepest and permanent, and to those social needs which must always press -upon us; that anything which either seriously retards the dissolution of -the old, or draws men aside from the road which leads on to the same -organisation transformed, must therefore be an impediment in the way of -the new society, and a peril to civilisation. Hence, they say, the -mischievousness of Protestantism, Voltairism, and all the minor -manifestations of the critical spirit, because they inspire their -followers with a contempt, as mistaken towards the past as it is -pernicious to the future, for those fundamental principles of social -stability and individual happiness, to which alone we have to look for -the establishment of a better order; because they give to the unguided -individual judgment the force and authority that can only come with -safety from organisation and tradition, that is from a certain definite -form of shaping and expressing the common judgment; and because, -moreover, they tend directly and indirectly to detach effort from social -aims and the promotion of the common weal, to the attainment of mean and -unwholesome individual ambitions. From this point of view, we should -have to regard the acquisition of colonies, for instance, which was one -of the chief objects of Lord Chatham’s policy, as the mischievous -transfer, in the interests of commercial cupidity, of an activity, -hopefulness, and power, that ought to have been devoted to the solution -of the growing social difficulties of Europe; and that ought to have -been bent from a profoundly mean egotism, in the nation and the traders -whose interest was the key of the policy, into a generous feeling for -the public order. - -There is, however, another and a very different way of looking at all -this. You cannot be sure, it is said, that the method of social advance -is to be a return upon the old framework and the old lines; to be sure -of this implies an impatient confidence that social forms have all been -exhausted, or else an unsupported assumption that the present transitory -form is so full of danger to the stability of civilisation, as to make -the acceptance of almost any firm order better than the prolonged -endurance of a social state which, on that theory, ought hardly to be -accounted much better than the social state of Bedouin Arabs. Is it not -far better and safer to refrain from committing ourselves to a given -type of social reconstruction, and to work forward patiently upon the -only principle that can be received with entire assurance; namely, that -faithful cultivation of the intelligence, and open-minded investigation -of all that the intelligence may present to us, is the only certain -method of not missing the surest and quickest road to the manifold -improvements of which the fundamental qualities of human nature, as well -as the relations of man in society, are susceptible? There is no good -ground for supposing that this steadfast regard to the fruitfulness and -variety of the individual intelligence tends specially to lead to the -concentration of energy upon individual aims. For what lesson does free -intelligence teach us more constantly or more impressively than that man -standing alone is impotent, that every unsocial act or sentiment tends -to overthrow that collectivity of effort to which we owe all, and, most -important of all, that this collectivity is most effectively secured by -the just culture of the impulses and affections? No degree nor kind of -organisation could lead us further than this, and ought it not to be the -prime object and chief hope of those who think about society, that this -truth shall stand rooted in every one’s own reason? If it does not so -stand, you have no security for your spiritual organisation, and if it -does, then you have no necessity. It is to the spread of this -conviction, by the ever-pressing consciousness of urgent social -circumstances, that we must look to suffuse industrial and egotistic -energy with a truly moral and social sentiment. - -This is the point of view from which we may justly regard the violent -change that was the result of the Seven Years’ War, as a truly -progressive step. We cannot be as reasonably sure that the old -conditions of men’s relations in society are in whatever new shape -destined to return, as we are sure that it was a good thing to prevent a -feudal and jesuitical government like Austria from retaining a purely -obstructive power in Europe, and a jesuitical government like France -from establishing the same obstructive kind of power in America. The -advantages of the final acquisition of America by Protestantism, and the -decisive consolidation of Prussia, were not without alloy. History does -not present us with these clean balances. It is not at all difficult to -see the injurious elements in this victory of the northern powers, and -nobody would be less willing than the present writer to accept either -the Prussian polity of Frederick, or the commercial polity of England -and her western colonies, as offering final types of wholesome social -states But the alternative was the triumph of a far worse polity than -either, the polity of the Society of Jesus. - -Even those who claim our respect for the Jesuits as having in the -beginning of their course served the very useful purpose of honestly -administering that spiritual power which had fallen from the hands of -the Popes, who had mischievously entered the ranks and followed the -methods of temporal princes, do not deny that within a couple of -generations they became a dangerous obstacle to the continuity of -European progress. Indeed, it is clear that they grew into the very -worst element that has ever appeared in the whole course of European -history, because their influence rested on a systematic compromise with -moral corruption. They had barely seized the spiritual power in the -Catholic countries when it was perceived that as an engine of moral -control their supposed power was no power at all; and that the only -condition on which they could retain the honour and the political -authority which were needful to them was that they should connive at -moral depravity. They had the education of the country in their hands, -and from the confessor’s closet they pulled the wires which moved -courts. There was no counter-force, for the mass of the people was dumb, -ignorant, and fettered. Say what we will of the need for a spiritual -power, the influence of the Jesuits by the middle of the eighteenth -century was cutting off the very root of civilisation. This was the -veritably Infamous. And this was the influence which the alliance of -England and Prussia, a thing accidental enough to all appearance, -successfully and decisively checked, because the triumph of the two -northern powers was naturally the means of discrediting the Jesuit -intrigues in the court of Versailles and elsewhere, and stripping them -of those associations of political and material success, which had -hitherto stood to them in the stead of true spiritual credit. - -The peace of 1763 had important territorial consequences. By the treaty -of Paris between France, England, and Spain, Great Britain was assured -of her possessions on the other side of the Atlantic. By the treaty of -Hubertsburg between Austria, Prussia, and Saxony, Prussia was assured of -her position as an independent power in Europe. These things were much. -But the decisive repulse of the great Jesuit organisation was yet more. -It was the most important side of the same facts. The immediate -occasions of this repulse varied in different countries, and had their -origin in different sets of superficial circumstance, but the debility -of the courts of Austria and France was the only condition on which such -occasions could be seized. The very next year, after the treaties of -Paris and Hubertsburg, the Society of Jesus was suppressed in France, -and its property confiscated. Three years later it was expelled from -Spain. Within ten years from the peace of 1763 it was abolished by the -virtuous Clement XIV. In Canada, where the order had been extremely -powerful,[143] their authority vanished, and with it the probability of -establishing in the northern half of the new world those ideas of -political absolutism and theological casuistry which were undoing the -old. Whatever the accidents which hurried the catastrophe, there were -two general causes which really produced it, the revolution in ideas, -and the revolution in the seat of material power. If this be a true -description of the crisis, we can see sufficiently plainly to what an -extent Voltaire and Frederick, while they appeared to themselves to be -fellow-workers only in the culture of the muses, were in fact -unconsciously co-operating in a far mightier task. When the war was -drawing to an end, and Frederick was likely to escape from the -calamities which had so nearly overwhelmed him and his kingdom in -irretrievable ruin, we find Voltaire writing to D’Alembert thus: ‘As for -Luc’ (the nickname borrowed for the king of Prussia from an ape with a -trick of biting), ‘though I ought to be full of resentment against him, -yet I confess to you that in my quality of thinking creature and -Frenchman, I am heartily content that a certain most devout house has -not swallowed Germany up, and that the Jesuits don’t confess at Berlin. -Superstition is monstrously powerful towards the Danube.’ To which his -correspondent replied that he quite agreed that the triumph of Frederick -was a blessing for France and for philosophy. ‘These Austrians are -insolent capucins, whom I would fain see annihilated with the -superstition they protect.’[144] Here was precisely the issue. - -It would be a great mistake to suppose that Frederick consciously and -formally recognised the ultimate ends of his policy. Such deliberate -marking out of the final destination of their work, imputed to rulers, -churchmen, poets, is mostly a figment invented by philosophers. -Frederick thought nothing at all about the conformation of the European -societies in the twentieth century. It was enough for him to make a -strong and independent Prussia, without any far-reaching vision, or -indeed without any vision at all, of the effect which a strong and -independent Prussia would finally have upon the readjustment of ideas -and social forces in western civilisation. We are led to a false notion -of history, and of all the conditions of political action and the -development of nations, by attributing to statesmen deep and -far-reaching sight of consequences, which only completed knowledge and -some ingenuity enable those who live after to fit into a harmonious -scheme. ‘Fate, for whose wisdom I entertain all imaginable reverence, -often finds in chance, by which it works, an instrument not over -manageable.’[145] And the great ruler, knowing this, is content to -abstain from playing fate’s part, feeling his way slowly to the next -step. His compass is only true for a very short distance, and his chart -has marks for no long course. To make Prussia strong was the aim of -Frederick’s life. Hence, although the real destiny of his policy was to -destroy the house of Austria, he did not scruple in 1741 to offer to -assist Maria Theresa with his best help against all the other invaders -of the famous Pragmatic Sanction, which they had solemnly sworn to -uphold. Afterwards, and before the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War, he -sought the alliance of France, but happily for Europe, not until after -Kaunitz and Maria Theresa had already secured that blind and misguided -power, thus driving him into an alliance with Great Britain. And so -chance did the work of fate after all. - -It may be said that such a view of the operation of the great forces of -the world is destructive of all especial respect and gratitude towards -the eminent men, of whom chance and fate have made mere instruments. -What becomes of hero-worship, if your hero after all only half knew -whither he sought to go, and if those achievements which have done such -powerful service were not consciously directed towards the serviceable -end? We can only answer that it is not the office of history to purvey -heroes, nor always to join appreciation of a set of complex effects with -veneration for this or that performer. For this veneration, if it is to -be an intelligent mood, implies insight into the inmost privacy of aim -and motive, and this insight, in the case of those whom circumstance -raises on a towering pedestal, we can hardly ever count with assurance -on finding faithful and authentic. History is perhaps not less -interesting for not being distorted into a new hagiographa. - -It is equally unwarranted to put into Frederick’s mind conscious ideas -as to the type of monarchy proper for Europe in the epoch of passage -from old systems. Once more, he thought of his own country, and his own -country only, in all those wise measures of internal government which -have been so unjustly and so childishly thrust by historians into the -second place behind his exploits as a soldier, as if the civil activity -of the period between 1763, when peace was made, and 1786, when he died, -was not fully as remarkable in itself, and fully as momentous in its -results, as the military activity of the period between 1763 and 1740. -There is in men of the highest governing capacity, like Richelieu, or -Cromwell, or Frederick, an instinct for good order and regular -administration. They insist upon it for its own sake, independently of -its effects either on the happiness of subjects, or on the fundamental -policy and march of things. If Frederick had acceded to the supreme -power in a highly civilised country, he would have been equally bent on -imposing his own will and forcing the administration into the exact -grooves prescribed by himself, and the result would have been as -pestilent there as it was beneficial in a backward and semi-barbarous -country such as Prussia was in his time. This good internal ordering was -no more than a part of the same simple design which shaped his external -policy. He had to make a nation, and its material independence in the -face of Austria and Russia was not more a part of this process than -giving it the great elements of internal well-being, equal laws, just -administration, financial thrift, and stimulus and encouragement to -industry. Such an achievement as the restoration of the germs of order -and prosperity, which Frederick so rapidly brought about after the -appalling ruin that seven years of disastrous war had effected, is -unmatched in the history of human government. Well might he pride -himself, as we know that he did, on replacing this social chaos by -order, more than on Eossbach or Leuthen. Above all, he never forgot the -truth which every statesman ought to have burning in letters of fire -before his eyes; _I am the procurator of the poor_. - -It commits us to no general theory of government to recognise the merits -of Frederick’s internal administration. They constitute a special case, -to be judged by its own conditions. We may safely go so far as to say -that in whatever degree the social state of a nation calls for active -government, whether, as the people of the American Union boast of -themselves, they need no government, or whether, as is the case in Great -Britain, the wretched lives of the poor beneath the combined cupidity -and heartless want of thought of the rich cry aloud for justice, in this -degree it is good that the statesmen called to govern should be in that -capacity of Frederick’s type, conceding all freedom to thought, but -energetic in the use of power as trustees for the whole nation against -special classes. To meet completely the demands of their office they -should have, what Frederick neither had nor could under the -circumstances of his advent and the time be expected to have, a firm -conviction that the highest ultimate end of all kingship is to enable -nations to dispense with that organ of national life, and to fit them -for a spontaneous initiative and free control in the conduct of their -own affairs. - -Let us be careful to remember that, if Frederick was a great ruler in -the positive sense, he sprang from the critical school. The traditions -of his house were strictly Protestant, his tutors were Calvinistic -refugees, and his personal predilections had from his earliest youth -been enthusiastically Voltairean. May we not count it one of the claims -of the critical philosophy to a place among the leading progressive -influences in western history, that it tended to produce statesmen of -this positive type? I do not know of any period of corresponding length -that can produce such a group of active, wise, and truly positive -statesmen as existed in Europe between 1760 and 1780. Besides Frederick, -we have Turgot in France, Pombal in Portugal, Charles III and D’Aranda -in Spain. If Charles III was faithful to the old creed, the three -greatest, at any rate, of these extraordinary men drew inspiration from -the centre of the critical school. D’Aranda had mixed much with the -Voltairean circle while in Paris. Pombal, in spite of the taint of some -cruelty, in so many respects one of the most powerful and resolute -ministers that has ever held office in Europe, had been for some time in -England, and was a warm admirer of Voltaire, whose works he caused to be -translated into Portuguese. The famous school of Italian publicists, -whose speculations bore such admirable fruit in the humane legislation -of Leopold of Tuscany, and had so large a share in that code with which -the name of the ever hateful Bonaparte has become fraudulently -associated, these excellent thinkers found their oracles in that -critical philosophy, of which we are so unjustly bidden to think only in -connection with shallow and reckless destruction. The application of -reason to the amelioration of the social condition was the device of the -great rulers of this time, and the father and inspirer of this device -was that Voltaire who is habitually presented to us a mere mocker. - -Psychologues like Sulzer might declare that the scourge of right -thinking was to be found in ‘those philosophers who, more used to -sallies of wit than to deep reasoning, assume that they have overthrown -by a single smart trope truths only to be known by combining a multitude -of observations, so delicate and difficult that we cannot grasp them -without the aid of the firmest attention.’[146] How many of these -so-called truths were anything but sophistical propositions, the -products of intellectual ingenuity run riot, without the smallest -bearing either on positive science or social well-being? And is it not -rather an abuse of men’s willingness to take the profundity of -metaphysics on trust, that any one who has formulated a metaphysical -proposition, with due technicality of sounding words, has a claim to -arrest the serious attention of every busy passer-by, and to throw on -this innocent and laudable person the burden of disproof? If Duns Scotus -or St. Thomas Aquinas had risen from the dead, Voltaire would very -properly have declined a bout of school dialectic with those famous -shades, because he was living in the century of the Encyclopædia, when -the exploration of things and the improvement of institutions had taken -the place of subtle manipulation of unverified words, important as that -process had once been in the intellectual development of Europe. He was -equally wise in declining to throw more than a trope or sprightly sally -in the direction of people who dealt only in the multiplication of -metaphysical abracadabras. It was his task to fix the eyes of men upon -action. In the sight of Lutheran or Wolfian conjurors with words this -was egregious shallowness. Strangely enough they thought it the climax -of philosophic profundity to reconcile their natural spiritualism with -the supernatural spiritualism of the scriptures, and rationalistic -theism with the historic theism of revelation.[147] Voltaire repudiated -the supernatural and pseudo-historic half of this hybrid combination, -and in doing so he showed a far profounder logic than the cloudiest and -most sonorous of his theologico-metaphysical critics. We may call him -negative and destructive on this account if we please, yet surely the -abnegation of barren and inconsistent speculation, and of fruitless -effort to seize a vain abstract universality, was a very meritorious -trait in a man who did not stop here, but by every means, by poetry, by -history, by biography, and by the manifestation of all his vivid -personal interests, drew every one who was within the sphere of his -attraction to the consideration of social action as the first fact for -the firm attention of the leaders of mankind. - -It may be said that even from this side Voltaire was destructive only, -and undoubtedly, owing to the circumstances of the time, the destructive -side seemed to predominate in his social influence. To say this, -however, is not to bring an end to the matter. The truth is that no -negative thinking can stop at the negative point. To teach men to hate -superstition and injustice is a sure, if an indirect, way of teaching -them to seek after their opposites. Voltaire could only shake -obscurantist institutions by appealing to man’s love of light, and the -love of light, once stirred, leads far. He appealed to reason, and it -was reason in Frederick and the others, which had quickened and -strengthened the love of good order, that produced the striking -reforming spirit which moved through the eighteenth century, until the -reaction against French revolutionary violence arrested its progress. It -is one of the most difficult questions in all history to determine -whether the change from the old order to the new has been damaged or -advanced by that most memorable arrest of the work of social renovation -in the hands of sovereign and traditional governments, administered by -wise statesmen with due regard to traditional spirit; and how far the -passionate efforts of those classes, whose only tradition is a tradition -of squalor and despair, have driven the possessors of superior material -power back into obstructive trepidation. The question is more than -difficult, it is in our generation insoluble, because the movement is -wholly incomplete. But whether the French outbreak from 1789 to 1794 may -prove to have been the starting-point of a new society, or only to have -been a detrimental interruption and parent of interruptions to stable -movement forwards, we have in either case to admit that there was a most -vigorous attempt made in all the chief countries in Europe, between the -middle of the century and the fall of the French monarchy, to improve -government and to perfect administration; that Frederick of Prussia was -the author of the most permanently successful of these endeavours; and -that Frederick learnt to break loose from dark usage, to prefer equity -of administration, to abandon religious superstition, and to insist on -tolerance, from the only effective moral and intellectual masters he -ever had, first the French Calvinists, and then the French critical -school, with Voltaire for chief. It is true, as we shall presently see, -that an important change in the spirit of French writers was marked by -the Encyclopædia, which was so much besides being critical. But then -this famous work only commenced in the year when Voltaire reached -Berlin, and Frederick’s character had received its final shape long -before that time. - -With the exception of Voltaire, D’Alembert was the only really eminent -Frenchman whose work ever struck Frederick, and we are even conscious, -in comparing his letters to these two eminent men, of a certain -seriousness and deferential respect towards the later friend, which -never marked his relations with Voltaire after the early days of -youthful enthusiasm. Frederick’s admiration for France, indeed, has been -somewhat overstated by French writers, and by those of our own country -who have taken their word for granted. ‘Your nation,’ Frederick once -wrote to Voltaire, ‘is the most inconsequent in all Europe. It abounds -in bright intelligence, but has no consistency in its ideas. This is how -it appears through all its history. There is really an indelible -character imprinted on it. The only exception in a long succession of -reigns is to be found in a few years of Lewis XIV. The reign of Henry -IV. was neither tranquil enough nor long enough for us to take that into -account. During the administration of Richelieu we observe some -consistency of design and some nerve in execution; but in truth they are -uncommonly short epochs of wisdom in so long a chronicle of madnesses. -Again, France has been able to produce men like Descartes or -Malebranche, but no Leibnitz, no Lockes, no Newtons. On the other hand, -for taste, you surpass all other nations, and I will surely range myself -under your standards in all that regards delicacy of discernment and the -judicious and scrupulous choice between real beauties and those which -are only apparent. That is a great point in polite letters, but it is -not everything.’[148] Frederick, however, could never endure the least -hint that he was not a perfect Frenchman in the order of polite letters. -The article on Prussia in the Encyclopædia was full of the most -flattering eulogies of his work as a soldier and an administrator, and -even contained handsome praise for his writings; but Diderot, the author -of this part of the article, delicately suggested that a year or two in -the Faubourg St. Honoré would perhaps have dispersed the few grains of -Berlin sand which hindered the perfect purity of note of that admirable -flute. Frederick, who had hitherto been an ardent reader of the -Encyclopædia, never opened another volume. - -We can understand Voltaire’s character without wading through the slough -of mean scandals which sprung up like gross fungi during his stay at -Berlin. Who need remember that Frederick spoke of his illustrious guest -as an orange of which, when one has squeezed the juice, one throws away -the skin? Or how Voltaire retorted by speaking of his illustrious host, -whose royal verses he had to correct, as a man sending his dirty linen -to him to wash? or, still worse, as a compound of Julius Caesar and the -abbé Cotin? Nor need we examine into stories, suspicious products of -Berlin malice, how Frederick stopped his guest’s supply of sugar and -chocolate, and how Voltaire put his host’s candle-ends into his pocket. -It is enough to know that the king and the poet gradually lost their -illusions, and forgot that life was both too short and too valuable to -waste in vain efforts of making believe that an illusion is other than -it is. Voltaire took a childish delight in his gold key and his star, -and in supping as an intimate with a king who had won five battles. His -life was at once free and occupied, the two conditions of happy -existence. He worked diligently at his Siècle de Louis XIV., and -diverted himself with operas, comedies, and great entertainments among -affable queens, charming princesses, and handsome maids of honour. Yet -he could not forget the saying, which had been so faithfully carried to -him, of the orange-skin. He declared that he was like the man who fell -from the top of a high tower, and finding himself softly supported in -the air, cried out, _Good, if it only lasts._[149] Or he was like a -husband striving hard to persuade himself of the fidelity of a suspected -wife. He had fits of violent nostalgia. ‘I am writing to you by the side -of a stove, with drooping head and heavy heart, looking on to the River -Spree, because the Spree falls into the Elbe, the Elbe into the sea, and -the sea receives the Seine, and our Paris house is near the River Seine, -and I say, Why am I in this palace, in this cabinet looking into this -Spree, and not in our own chimney-corner?... How my happiness is -poisoned, how short is life! What wretchedness to seek happiness far -from you; and what remorse, if one finds it away from you.’[150] This -was to Madame Denis, his niece; but a Christmas in the Berlin barrack -made even a plain coquette in Paris attractive and homely. We may -imagine with what tender regrets he would look back upon the old days at -Cirey. - -Even in respect of the very mischief from which he had fled, the -detraction and caballing of the envious, he was hardly any better off at -Berlin than he had been at Paris. D’Argental, one of the wisest of his -friends, had forewarned him of this, and that he had fled from enemies -whom at any rate he never saw, only to find other enemies with whom he -had to live day after day. This was exactly what came to pass. Voltaire -often compared the system of life at Berlin and Potsdam to that of a -convent, half military, half literary. The vices of conventual life came -with its other features, and among them jealousy, envy, and malice. The -tale-bearer, that constant parasite of such societies, had exquisite -opportunities, and for a susceptible creature like Voltaire, the result -was wholly fatal. The nights and suppers of the gods became, in his own -phrase, suppers of Damocles. Alexander the Great was transformed into -the tyrant Dionysius. The famous Diatribe of Doctor Akakia, in the -autumn of 1752, brought matters to a climax, because its publication was -supposed to show marked defiance of the king’s wishes. - -Maupertuis had been one of the earliest and most strenuous Newtonians -in France, and had at his own personal risk helped to corroborate the -truth of the new system. In 1735 the zeal for experimental science, -which was so remarkable a trait in this century of many-sided -intellectual activity, induced the academy of sciences to despatch an -expedition to take the actual measure of a degree of meridian below the -equator, and the curious and indefatigable De la Condamine, one of the -most ardent men of that ardent time, with two other inquirers went to -Peru. In 1736 Maupertuis and Clairaut under the same auspices started -for the north pole, where, after undergoing the severest hardships, they -succeeded in measuring their degree, and verifying by observation -Newton’s demonstration of the oblate figure of the earth, a verification -that was further completed by La Caille’s voyage to the Cape of Good -Hope in 1750.[151] Maupertuis commemorated his share in this excellent -work by having a portrait of himself executed, in which the palm of a -hand gently flattens the north pole. He was extremely courageous and -extremely vain. His costume was eccentric and affected, his temper more -jealous and arbitrary than comports with the magnanimity of -philosophers, and his manner more gloomily solemn than the conditions of -human life can ever justify. With all his absurdities, he was a man of -real abilities, and of a solidity of character beyond that of any of his -countrymen at Frederick’s court. I would rather live with him, -Frederick wrote to the princess Wilhelmina, than with Voltaire; ‘his -character is surer,’ which in itself was saying little. But then, the -moment he came into collision with Voltaire, his absurdities became the -most important thing about him, because it was precisely these which -Voltaire was sure to drag into unsparing prominence. In old days they -had been good friends, and a letter still remains, mournfully testifying -to the shallowness of men’s sight into the roots of their relations with -others, for it closes by bidding Maupertuis be sure that Voltaire will -love him all the days of his life.[152] The causes of their collision -were obvious enough. As Frederick said, Of two Frenchmen in the same -court, one must perish. Maupertuis, from the heights of the exact -sciences, probably despised Voltaire as a scribbler, while Voltaire, -with a heart flowing over with gay vivacity, assuredly counted -Maupertuis arbitrary, ridiculously solemn, and something of an impostor. -The compliances of society, he said of the president of the Berlin -academy, are not problems that he is fond of solving. Maupertuis acted -to König, in the matter of an academic or discoverer’s quarrel, in a way -that struck Voltaire, and all men since, as tyrannical, unjust, and -childish, all in one. He unhappily wrote a book which gave Voltaire such -an excuse for punishing the author’s injustice to König, as even -Voltaire’s spleen could hardly have hoped for, and the result was the -wittiest and most pitiless of all the purely personal satires in the -world. The temptation was certainly irresistible. - -Maupertuis, as has been said, was courageous and venturesome, and this -venturesomeness being uncorrected by the severe discipline of a large -body of accurate positive knowledge, such as Clairaut and Lagrange -possessed, led him into some worse than equivocal speculation. He was in -the depths of the metaphysical stage, and developed physical theories -out of abstract terms. Of some of these theories the worst that could be -said was they were wholly unproved. He advanced the hypothesis, for -instance, that all the animal species sprang from some first creature, -prototype of all creatures since. Others of his theories were right in -idea, but wrong in form, and without even an attempt at verification. -The famous principle of the minimum of action, for example, in spite of -the truth at the bottom of it, was valueless and confused, until -Lagrange connected it with fundamental dynamic principles, generalised -it, and cleared the unsupported metaphysical notions out of it.[153] All -this, however, was wise and Newtonic compared with the ideas promulgated -in the Philosophic Letters, on which the wicked Akakia so swiftly -pounced. Here were notions which it needed more audacity to broach, than -to face the frosts and snows of Lapland; strange theories that in a -certain state of exaltation of the soul one may foresee the future; that -if the expiration of vital force could only be prevented, the body -might be kept alive for hundreds of years; that by careful dissection of -the brains of giants, Patagonian and other, we should ascertain -something of the composition of the mind; that a Latin town if it were -established, and this was not an original idea, would be an excellent -means of teaching the Latin language. Voltaire knew exactly what kind of -malicious gravity and feigned respect would surround this amazing -performance and its author with inextinguishable laughter, and his -thousand turns and tropes cut deep into Maupertuis like sharpened -swords. - -Voltaire was not by scientific training competent to criticise -Maupertuis. This is true; but then Voltaire had what in such cases -dispensed with special competence, a preternatural gift of detecting an -impostor, and we must add that here as in every other case his anger was -set aflame not by intellectual vapidity, but by what he counted gross -wrong. Maupertuis had acted with despotic injustice towards König, and -Voltaire resolved to punish him. This is perhaps the only side of that -world-famous and truly wretched fray which it is worth our while to -remember, besides its illustration of the general moral that active -interest in public affairs is the only sure safeguard against the -inhuman egotism, otherwise so nearly inevitable and in any wise so -revolting, of men of letters and men of science. - -Frederick took the side of the president of his academy, and had Doctor -Akakia publicly burnt within earshot of its author’s quarters.[154] -Voltaire had long been preparing for the end by depositing his funds in -the hands of the Duke of Würtemberg, and by other steps, which had come -to the king’s ears, and had by no means smoothed matters. He sees now -that the orange has been squeezed, and that it is his business to think -of saving the skin. He drew up for his own instruction, he said, a -pocket-dictionary of terms in use with kings: _My friend_ means _my -slave_; _my dear friend_ means that _you are more than indifferent to me;_ -understand by _I will make you happy_, _I will endure you, as long as I -have need of you_; _sup with me to-night_ means _I will make fun of you -to-night._[155] Voltaire, though he had been, and always was, the most -graceful of courtiers, kept to his point, and loudly gave Frederick to -understand that in literary disputes he recognised no kings. An act of -tyranny had been committed towards König, who was his friend, and -nothing would induce him to admit either that it was anything else, or -that it was other than just to have held up the tyrant to the laughter -of Europe. - -Frederick was profoundly irritated, and the terms in which he writes of -his French Virgil as an ape who ought to be flogged for his tricks, a -man worse than many who have been broken on the wheel, a creature who -may deserve a statue for his poetry but who certainly deserves chains -for his conduct, seem to imply a quite special mortification and -resentment. He had no doubt a deep and haughty contempt for all these -angers of celestial minds. The cabals of men of letters, he wrote to -Voltaire, seemed to him the lowest depth of degradation.[156] And he -would fain have flung a handful of dust on the furious creatures. After -three months of vain effort to achieve the impossible, Voltaire being -only moderately compliant, the king in March 1753 gave him leave to -depart, though with a sort of nominal understanding for politeness’ sake -that there was to be a speedy return. - -Voltaire, however, was not a man in whose breast the flame of resentment -ever flickered away in politeness, until his adversary had humbled -himself. Though no one ever so systematically convinced himself each day -for thirty years that he was on the very point of death, no one was less -careful to measure the things that were worth doing from the point of -view of a conventional _memento mori_. Nobody spoke about dying so much, -nor thought about it so little. The first use he made of his liberty was -to shoot yet another bolt at Maupertuis from Leipzig, more piercing than -any that had gone before. Frederick now in his turn abandoned the forms -of politeness, and the renowned episode of Frankfort took place. -Voltaire, on reaching Frankfort, was required by the Prussian resident -in the free city to surrender his court decorations, and, more -important than these, a certain volume of royal verse containing the -Palladium, a poem of indecencies which were probably worse than those of -the Pucelle, because an indecent German is usually worse than an -indecent Frenchman. The poems, however, were what was far worse than -indecent in Frederick’s eyes; they were impolitic, for they contained -bitter sarcasm on sovereigns whom he might be glad to have, and one of -whom he did actually have, on his side in the day of approaching storm. -Various delays and unlucky mishaps occurred, and Voltaire underwent a -kind of imprisonment for some five weeks (May 31 to July 7, 1753), under -extremely mortifying and humiliating circumstances. There was on the one -part an honest, punctual, methodic, rather dull Prussian subordinate, -anxious above all other things in the world, not excepting respect for -genius and respect for law, to obey the injunctions of his master from -Berlin. On the other part Voltaire, whom we know; excitable as a demon, -burning with fury against enemies who were out of his reach now that he -had spent all his ammunition of satire upon them, only half -understanding what was said to him in a strange tongue, mad with fear -lest Frederick meant to detain him after all. It would need the singer -of the battle of the frogs and mice to do justice to this five-weeks’ -tragi-comedy. A bookseller with whom he had had feuds years before, -injudiciously came either to pay his respects, or to demand some trivial -arears of money; the furious poet and philosopher rushed up to his -visitor and inflicted a stinging box on the ear, while Collini, his -Italian secretary, hastily offered this intrepid consolation to Van -Duren, ‘Sir, you have received a box on the ear from one of the greatest -men in the world.’ A clerk came to settle this affair or that, and -Voltaire rushed towards him with click of pistol, the friendly Collini -again interfering to better purpose by striking up the hand that had -written Mérope and was on the point of despatching a clerk. We need not -go into the minute circumstances of the Frankfort outrage. Freytag, the -subordinate, clearly overstrained his instructions, and his excess of -zeal in detaining and harassing Voltaire can only be laid indirectly to -Frederick’s charge. But Frederick is responsible, as every principal is, -who launches an agent in a lawless and tyrannic course. The German -Varnhagen has undoubtedly shown that Voltaire’s account, witty and -diverting as it is, is not free from many misrepresentations, and some -tolerably deliberate lies. French writers have as undoubtedly shown that -the detention of a French citizen by a Prussian agent in a free town of -the Empire was a distinct and outrageous illegality.[157] We, who are -fortunately not committed by the exigencies of patriotism to close our -eyes to either half of the facts, may with facile impartiality admit -both halves. Voltaire, though fundamentally a man of exceptional truth, -was by no means incapable of an untruth when his imagination was hot, -and Frederick was by no means incapable of an outrage upon law, when law -stood between him and his purpose. Frederick’s subordinates had no right -to detain Voltaire at all, and they had no right to allow themselves to -be provoked by his impatience into the infliction of even small outrages -upon him and his obnoxious niece. On the other hand, if Voltaire had -been a sort of Benjamin Franklin, if he had possessed a well-regulated -mind, a cool and gentle temper, a nice sense of the expedient, then the -most grotesque scene of a life in which there was too much of grotesque, -would not have been acted as it was, to the supreme delight of those -miserable souls who love to contemplate the follies of the wise. - -Any reader who takes the trouble to read the documents affecting this -preposterous brawl at Frankfort between a thoroughly subordinate German -and the most insubordinate Frenchman that ever lived,—this adventure, as -its victim called it, of Cimbrians and Sicambrians,—will be rather -struck by the extreme care with which Frederick impresses on the persons -concerned the propriety of having Voltaire’s written and signed word for -such parts of the transaction as needed official commemoration. In one -place he expressly insists that a given memorandum should be written by -Voltaire’s own hand from top to bottom. This precaution, which seems so -strange in a king who had won five battles, dealing with the author of a -score of tragedies, an epic, and many other fine things, sprang in truth -from no desire to cast a wanton slight on Voltaire’s honour, but from -the painful knowledge that the author of the fine things was not above -tampering with papers and denying patent superscriptions. Voltaire’s -visit had not been of long duration, before the unfortunate lawsuit with -Abraham Hirschel occurred. Of this transaction we need only say this -much, that Voltaire employed the Jew in some illegal jobbing in Saxon -securities; that he gave him bills on a Paris banker, holding diamonds -from the Jew as pledge of honest Christian dealing; that his suspicions -were aroused, that he protested his bills, then agreed to buy the -jewels, then quarrelled over the price, and finally plunged into a suit, -of which the issues were practically two, whether Hirschel had any -rights on one of the Paris bills, and whether the jewels were fairly -charged. Voltaire got his bill back, and the jewels were to be duly -valued; but the proceedings disclosed two facts of considerable -seriousness for all who should have dealings with him: first, that he -had interpolated matter to his own advantage in a document already -signed by his adversary, thus making the Jew to have signed what he had -signed not; and second, that when very hard pushed he would not swerve -from a false oath, any more than his great enemy the apostle Peter had -done.[158] Frederick had remembered all this, just as every negotiator -who had to deal with Frederick remembered that the great king was not -above such infamies as Klein-Schnellendorf, nor such meanness as -filching away with his foot a letter that had slipped unseen from an -ambassador’s pocket.[159] - -And so there was an end, if not of correspondence, yet of that -friendship, which after all had always belonged rather to the spoken -order than to the deep unspeakable. There was now cynical, hoarse-voiced -contempt on the one side, and fierce, reverberating, shrill fury on the -other. The spectacle and the sound are distressing to those who crave -dignity and admission of the serious in the relations of men with one -another, as well as some sense of the myriad indefinable relations which -encompass us unawares, giving colour and perspective to our more -definable bonds. One would rather that even in their estrangement there -had been some grace and firmness and self-control, and that at least the -long-cherished illusion had faded away worthily, as when one bids -farewell to a friend whom a perverse will carries from us over unknown -seas until a far day, and we know not if we shall see his face any more. -It jars on us that the moon which has climbed into the night and moved -like sound of music over heath and woodland, should finally set in a -gray swamp amid the harsh croaking of amphibians. But the intimacy -between Frederick and Voltaire had perhaps been always most like the -theatre moon. - -We may know what strange admixture of distrust, contempt, and -tormenting reminiscence, mingled with the admiration of these two men -for one another’s genius, from the bitterness which occasionally springs -up in the midst of their most graceful and amiable letters of a later -date. For instance, this is Voltaire to Frederick; ‘You have already -done me ill enough; you put me wrong for ever with the king of France; -you made me lose my offices and pensions; you used me shamefully at -Frankfort, me and an innocent woman who was dragged through the mud and -thrown into gaol; and now, while honouring me with letters, you mar the -sweetness of this consolation by bitter reproaches.... The greatest harm -that your works have done, is in the excuse they have given to the -enemies of philosophy throughout Europe to say, “These philosophers -cannot live in peace, and they cannot live together. Here is a king who -does not believe in Jesus Christ; he invites to his court a man who does -not believe in Jesus Christ, and he uses him ill; there is no humanity -in these pretended philosophers, and God punishes them by means of one -another.” ... Your admirable and solid wisdom is spoiled by the -unfortunate pleasure you have always had in seeing the humiliation of -other men, and in saying and writing stinging things to them; a pleasure -most unworthy of you, and all the more so as you are raised above them -by your rank and by your unique talents.’[160] To which the king answers -that he is fully aware how many faults he has, and what great faults -they are, that he does not treat himself very gently, and that in -dealing with himself he pardons nothing. As for Voltaire’s conduct, it -would not have been endured by any other philosopher. ‘If you had not -had to do with a man madly enamoured of your fine genius, you would not -have got off so well with anybody else. Consider all that as done with, -and never let me hear again of that wearisome niece, who has not so much -merit as her uncle, with which to cover her defects. People talk of the -servant of Molière, but nobody will ever speak of the niece of -Voltaire.’ - -The poet had talked, after his usual manner, of being old and worn out, -and tottering on the brink of the grave. ‘Why, you are only sixty-two,’ -said Frederick, ‘and your soul is full of that fire which animates and -sustains the body. You will bury me and half the present generation. You -will have the delight of making a spiteful couplet on my tomb.’[161] -Voltaire did not make a couplet, but he wrote a prose lampoon on the -king’s private life, which is one of the bitterest libels that malice -ever prompted, and from which the greater part of Europe has been -content to borrow its idea of the character of Frederick.[162] This was -vengeance enough even for Voltaire. We may add that while Voltaire -constantly declared that he could never forget the outrages which the -king of Prussia had inflicted on him, neither did he forget to draw his -pension from the king of Prussia even in times when Frederick was most -urgently pressed.[163] It may be said that he was ready to return -favours; ‘If things go on as they are going now,’ he wrote with sportive -malice, ‘I reckon on having to allow a pension to the king of -Prussia.’[164] - -It was not surprising that Voltaire did not return to Paris. His -correspondence during his residence at Berlin attests in every page of -it how bitterly he resented the cabals of ignoble men of letters, and -the insolence of ignoble men of authority. ‘If I had been in Paris this -Lent,’ he wrote in 1752, ‘I should have been hissed in town, and made -sport of at court, and the Siècle de Louis XIV. would have been -denounced, as smacking of heresy, as audacious, and full of ill -significance. I should have had to go to defend myself in the ante-room -of the lieutenant of police. The officers would say, as they saw me -pass, _There is a man who belongs to us_.... No, my friend, _qui bene -latuit, bene vixit_.’[165] With most just anger, he contrasted German -liberality with the tyrannical suspicion of his own government. The -emperor, he says, made no difficulty in permitting the publication of a -book in which Leopold was called a coward. Holland gave free circulation -to statements that the Dutch are ingrates and that their trade is -perishing. He was allowed to print under the eyes of the king of Prussia -that the Great Elector abased himself uselessly before Lewis XIV., and -resisted him as uselessly. It was only in France where permission was -refused for an eulogy of Lewis XIV. and of France, and that, because he -had been neither base enough nor foolish enough to disfigure his eulogy -either by shameful silences or cowardly misrepresentations.[166] The -imprisonment, nine years before this, of Lenglet Dufresnoy, an old man -of seventy, for no worse offence than publishing a supplement to De -Thou’s history, had made a deep impression on Voltaire.[167] He would -have been something lower than human if he had forgotten the treatment -which he had himself received at the hands of the most feeble and -incompetent government that ever was endured by a civilised people. - -So he found his way to Geneva, then and until 1798 an independent -republic or municipality. There (1755) he made himself two hermitages, -one for summer, called the Délices, a short distance from the spot where -the Arve falls into the Rhone, and the other near Lausanne (Monrion) for -winter. Here, he says, I see from my bed this glorious lake, which -bathes a hundred gardens at the foot of my terrace; which forms on right -and left a stream of a dozen leagues, and a calm sea in front of my -windows; and which waters the fields of Savoy, crowned with the Alps in -the distance.[168] You write to me, replied D’Alembert, from your bed, -whence you command ten leagues of the lake, and I answer you from my -hole, whence I command a patch of sky three ells long.[169] To poor -D’Alembert the name of the famous lake was fraught with evil -associations, for he had just published his too veracious article on -Geneva in the Encyclopædia, in which he paid the clergy of that city the -unwelcome compliment, that they were the most logical of all -Protestants, for they were Socinians; and he was now suffering the -penalty of men who stir up angry hives. - -The enjoyment which Voltaire had then and for twenty years to come in -his noble landscape, and which he so often commemorates in his letters, -is a proof that may be added to others, of the injustice of the common -idea that the Voltairean school of the eighteenth century were specially -insensible to the picturesque. Morellet, for instance, records his -delight and wonder at the Alps and the descent into Italy, in terms -quite as warm, if much less profuse, as those of the most impressible -modern tourist.[170] Diderot had a strong spontaneous feeling for -nature, as he shows not only in his truly remarkable criticisms on the -paintings of twenty years, but also in his most private correspondence, -where he demonstrates in terms too plain, simple, and homely, to be -suspected of insincerity, the meditative delight with which the -solitary contemplation of fine landscape inspired him. He has no -peculiar felicity in describing natural features in words, or in -reproducing the inner harmonies with which the soft lines of distant -hills, or the richness of deep embosoming woodlands, or the swift -procession of clouds driven by fierce or cheerful winds, compose and -strengthen the sympathising spirit. But he was as susceptible to them as -men of more sonorous word.[171] And Voltaire finds the liveliest -pleasure in the natural sights and objects around him, though they never -quickened in him those brooding moods of egotistic introspection and -deep questioning contemplation in which Jean Jacques, Bernardin de St. -Pierre, and Sénancour, found a sort of refuge from their own desperate -impotency of will and of material activity. Voltaire never felt this -impotency. As the very apostle of action, how should he have felt it? It -pleased him in the first few months of his settlement in new scenes, and -at other times, to borrow some of Frederick’s talk about the bestial -folly of the human race, and the absurdity of troubling oneself about -it; but what was a sincere cynicism in the king, was in Voltaire only a -bit of cant, the passing affectation of an hour. The dramatist whose -imagination had produced so long a series of dramas of situation, the -historian who had been attracted by such labours as those of Charles -XII. of Sweden and Peter the Great of Russia, as well as by the -achievements of the illustrious men who adorned the age of Lewis XIV., -proved himself of far too objective and positive a temperament to be -capable of that self-conscious despair of action, that paralysing lack -of confidence in will, which drove men of other humour and other -experience forlorn into the hermit’s caves of a new Thebaid. Voltaire’s -ostentatious enjoyment of his landscape and his garden was only the -expansion of a seafarer, who after a stormful voyage finds himself in a -fair haven. His lines to Liberty[172] give us the keynote to his mood at -this time. He did not suppose that he had got all, but he knew that he -had got somewhat. - - Je ne vante point d’avoir en cet asile - Rencontré le parfait bonheur: - Il n’est point retiré dans le fond d’un bocage; - Il est encore moins chez les rois; - Il n’est pas même chez le sage; - De cette courte vie il n’est point le partage; - Il y faut renoncer; mais on peut quelquefois - Embrasser au moins son image. - -‘’Tis a fine thing, is tranquillity,’ he wrote; ‘yes, but ennui is of -its acquaintance and belongs to the family. To repulse this ugly -relation, I have set up a theatre.’[173] Besides the theatre, guests -were frequent and multitudinous. He speaks of sometimes having a crowd -of fifty persons at table.[174] Besides Les Délices and Lausanne, he -purchased from the President de Brosses a life-interest in Tourney, and -in the same year(1758) he bought the lordship of Ferney, close by. He -was thus a citizen of Geneva, of Berne, and of France, ‘for philosophers -ought to have two or three holes underground against the hounds who -chase them.’ If the dogs of France should hunt him, he could take -shelter in Geneva. If the dogs of Geneva began to bay, he could run into -France. By and by this consideration of safety grew less absorbing, and -all was abandoned except Ferney; a name that will always remain -associated with those vigorous and terrible assaults upon the Infamous, -which first definitely opened when Voltaire became the lord of this -little domain. - - - - -CHAPTER V. - -RELIGION. - - -I - -In examining the Voltairean attack upon religion we have to remember -that it was in the first instance prompted, and throughout its course -stimulated and embittered, by antipathy to the external organisation of -the religion. It was not merely disbelief in a creed, but exasperation -against a church. Two distinct elements lay at the bottom of Voltaire’s -enmity to the peculiar form of monotheism which he found supreme around -him. One of them was the intellectual element of repugnance to a system -of belief that rested on miracles and mysteries irreconcilable with -reason, and was so intimately associated with some of the most odious -types of character and most atrocious actions in the Old Testament, -which undoubtedly contains so many of both. The other was the moral -element of anger against the expounders of this system, their -intolerance of light and hatred of knowledge, their fierce yet -profoundly contemptible struggles with one another, the scandals of -their casuistry, their besotted cruelty. Of these two elements, the -second was, no doubt, if not the earlier in time, at least the stronger -in intensity. It was because he perceived the fruit to be so deadly, -that Voltaire laid the axe to the root of the tree. It is easy to say -that these poisonous Jesuitries and black Jansenisms were no fruit of -the tree, but the produce of a mere graft, which could have been lopped -off without touching the sacred trunk. Voltaire thought otherwise, and -whether he was right or wrong, it is only just to him to keep constantly -before us the egregious failure of Catholicism in his day as a social -force. This is a fact as to which there can be no dispute among persons -with knowledge enough and mental freedom enough to be competent to have -an opinion, and Voltairism can only be fairly weighed if we regard it as -being in the first instance no outbreak of reckless speculative -intelligence, but a righteous social protest against a system socially -pestilent. It was the revival of the worst parts of this system in the -cruelty and obscurantism which broke out after the middle of the -century, that converted Voltaire into an active assailant of belief. But -for that he would pretty certainly have remained tranquilly in the phase -of deism of which some of his early verses are the expression. -Philosophy is truly, as Callicles says in the Gorgias, a most charming -accomplishment for a man to follow at the right age, but to carry -philosophy too far is the undoing of humanity. - -Voltaire no doubt deliberately set himself to overthrow the Catholic -theology, as well as the ecclesi astical system which was bound up with -it, and he did so for the very sufficient reason that it has always been -impossible for men to become indulgent in act, while they remained -fanatical in belief. They will not cease to be persecutors, he said, -until they have ceased to be absurd.[175] The object was to secure -tolerance, and tolerance could only be expected as the product of -indifference, and indifference could be spread most surely by throwing -the fullest light of reason and common sense on the mystical foundations -of revealed religion. To stop short at the inculcation of charity and -indulgence was to surrender the cause; for how should the mere homilies -of a secular moralist soften those whom the direct injunctions of a -deity and his inspired apostles, their own acknowledged masters, failed -to make charitable? It was essential that the superstitions in which -intolerance had its root should be proved detestable and ridiculous. -When men had learnt to laugh at superstition, then they would perceive -how abominable is the oppressive fanaticism which is its champion. - -It is hardly possible to deny the service which Protestantism rendered -in preventing the revolution from Catholicism to scientific modes of -thought from being that violent, abrupt, and irreconcilable breach, -which we now observe in France and Italy, when we remember that the -cause of toleration was systematically defended in England by men who as -systematically defended the cause of Christianity. The Liberty of -Prophesying, in which the expediency of tolerance was based on the -difficulty of being sure that we are right, was written by one of the -most devout and orthodox divines; while the famous Letters on Toleration -(1689), in which the truly remarkable step is taken of confining the -functions of civil government to men’s civil interests and the things of -this world, were the work of the same Locke who vindicated the -Reasonableness of Christianity.[176] The English Deists pressed home in -a very effectual way the deduction of universal freedom of speech from -the first maxims of Protestantism, and their inference was practically -admitted.[177] Hence there was no inseparable association between -adherence to the old religious ideas and the prohibition of free speech -in spirituals, and on the other hand there was no obligation on the part -of those who claimed free speech to attack a church which did not refuse -their claim. - -In France the strictly repressive policy of the church in the eighteenth -century, sometimes bloody and cruel as in the persecution of the -Protestants, sometimes minutely vexatious as in the persecution of the -men of letters, but always stubborn and lynx-eyed, had the natural -effect of making it a point of honour with most of those who valued -liberty to hurl themselves upon the religious system, of which rigorous -intolerance was so prominent a characteristic. The Protestant dilution -of the theological spirit seems thus to be in the long run a more -effective preparation for decisive abandonment of it, than its virulent -dissolution in the biting acids of Voltairism, because within limits the -slower these great transformations are in accomplishing themselves, the -better it is for many of the most precious and most tender parts of -human character. Our present contention is that the attitude of the -religionists left no alternative. It is best that creeds, like men who -have done the work of the day, should die the slow deaths of nature, yet -it is counted lawful to raise an armed hand upon the brigand who seeks -the life of another. - -Voltaire to the end of his course contended that the church only was to -blame for the storm which overtook her teaching in the later years, when -his own courageous attack had inspired a host of others, less brilliant -but not any less embittered, to throw themselves on the reeling enemy. -The cause of the inundation of Europe by the literature of negativism -and repudiation was to be sought first of all in the fierce theological -disputes which revolted the best of the laity. Of this violent revulsion -of feeling Voltaire himself was the great organ. He furnished its -justification, and nourished its fire, and invested it with a splendid -lustre. Even when with the timidity of extreme age he seemed to -deprecate the growing ferocity of the attack, he still taunted the -clerical party with their own folly in allowing a mean and egotistic -virulence to override every consideration of true wisdom and policy. -‘Now,’ he wrote in 1768, ‘a revolution has been accomplished in the -human mind, that nothing again can ever arrest. They would have -prevented this revolution, if they had been sage and moderate. The -quarrels of Jansenists and Molinists have done more harm to the -Christian religion than could have been done by four emperors like -Julian one after another.’[178] - -It cannot be too often repeated that the Christianity which Voltaire -assailed was not that of the Sermon on the Mount, for there was not a -man then alive more keenly sensible than he was of the generous humanity -which is there enjoined with a force that so strangely touches the -heart, nor one who was on the whole, in spite of constitutional -infirmities and words which were far worse than his deeds, more ardent -and persevering in its practice. Still less was he the enemy of a form -of Christian profession which now fascinates many fine and subtle minds, -and which starting from the assumption that there are certain inborn -cravings in the human heart, constant, profound, and inextinguishable, -discerns in the long religious tradition an adequate proof that the -mystic faith in the incarnation, and in the spiritual facts which pour -like rays from that awful centre, are the highest satisfaction which a -divine will has as yet been pleased to establish for all these -yearnings of the race of men. This graceful development of belief, -emancipated from dogma and reducing so many substantial bodies to pale -shades, so many articles once held as solid realities to the strange -tenuity of dreams, was not the Christianity of Voltaire’s time, any more -than it was that of the Holy Office. There was nothing resembling the -present popularity of a treatment which gives generals so immense a -preponderance over particulars—somewhat to the neglect of the old saying -about the snare that lies hidden in generals, many persons being -tolerably indifferent about the _dolus_ so long as they can make sure of -the _latet_. He attacked a definite theology, not a theosophy. We may, -indeed, imagine the kind of questions which he would have asked of one -pressing such a doctrine on his acceptance; how he would have sought the -grounds for calling aspirations universal, which the numerical majority -of the human race appear to have been without, and the grounds for -making subjective yearnings the test and the measure of the truth of -definite objective records; how he would have prayed to be instructed of -these cravings, whether they spring up spontaneously, or are the -products of spiritual self-indulgence, and also of the precise manner in -which they come to be satisfied and soothed by the momentary appearance -of a humane figure far off upon the earth; how he would have paused to -consider the intelligibility of so overwhelming a wonder as the -incarnation having been wrought, for the benefit of so infinitesimally -small a fragment of mankind. We can imagine this and much else, but -Voltaire would never have stirred a finger to attack a mysticism which -is not aggressive, and can hardly be other than negatively hurtful. - -If any one had maintained against Voltaire that the aspirations after a -future life, the longing for some token that the deity watches over his -creatures and is moved by a tender solicitude for them, and the other -spiritual desires alleged to be instinctive in men, constitute as -trustworthy and firm a guide to truth as the logical reason, we may be -sure that he would have forgiven what he must have considered an -enervating abnegation of intelligence, for the sake of the humane, if -not very actively improving, course of life to which this kind of -pietism is wont to lead. He might possibly have entertained a little -contempt for them, but it would have been quiet contempt and unspoken. -There is no case of Voltaire mocking at any set of men who lived good -lives. He did not mock the English Quakers. He doubtless attacked many -of the beliefs which good men hold sacred, but if good men take up their -abode under the same roof which shelters the children of darkness and -wrong, it is not the fault of Voltaire if they are hit by the smooth -stones shot from his sling against their unworthy comrades. The object -of his assault was that amalgam of metaphysical subtleties, degrading -legends, false miracles, and narrow depraving conceptions of divine -government which made the starting-point and vantage-ground of those -ecclesiastical oppressors, whom he habitually and justly designated the -enemies of the human race. The evil and the good, the old purity and the -superadded corruptions, were all so inextricably bound up in the -Catholicism of the eighteenth century, that it was impossible to a deal -a blow to the one without risk of harm to the other. The method was -desperate, but then the enemy was a true Chimæra, a monster sodden in -black corruption, with whom in the breast of a humane man there could be -no terms. - -The popes during the Voltairean period were above the average in virtue -and intelligence, but their power was entirely overshadowed by that -wonderful order which had assumed all effective spiritual supremacy for -something like two centuries. Nor was this order the only retrogressive -influence. The eighteenth century was the century not only of the Sacré -Cœur, but of the miracles of the dead abbé Pâris, transactions in which -Jansenist emulated Jesuit in dragging men and women into the deepest -slough of superstition. A Roman augur fresh from the inspection of the -sacrificial entrails would have had a right to despise the priests who -invented an object for the adoration of men in the diseased and hideous -visions of Mary Alacoque. The man who sells rain to savages may almost -be held to add to the self-respect of the race, if you contrast him with -the convulsionnaires and the fanatics who were transported by their -revolting performances.[179] - -France is the country where reactions are most rapid and most violent. -Nowhere else can the reformer count so surely on seeing the completion -of his reform followed so instantly by the triumph of its adversaries. -The expulsion of the Jesuits, under circumstances of marked and -uncompromising harshness, was not consummated, before the tide of -religious bigotry flowed in from the opposite shore, and swelled to a -portentous height. The exultation of the philosophers at the coming fall -of their old foes, was instantly checked by the yet worse things which -befell them and their principles at the hands of new enemies. The reign -of the Jansenists was speedily pronounced more hateful than the reign of -the Jesuits. Various accommodations were possible with heaven, so long -as the Jesuits had credit, but the Jansenists were pitiless.[180] - -The parliament or supreme judicial tribunal of Paris[181] was Jansenist, -mainly out of political hatred of the Jesuits, partly from a hostility, -very easily explained, to every manifestation of ultramontane feeling -and influence, partly from a professional jealousy of the clergy, but -partly also because the austere predestinarian dogma, and the -metaphysical theology which brought it into supreme prominence, seem -often to have had an unexplained affinity for serious minds trained in -legal ideas and their application. The Jesuits had systematically -abstained as far as was possible from purely speculative theology. -Suarez is pronounced one of the greatest writers in speculative ethics -and jurisprudence; but in the technical metaphysics of theology the -Jesuits with all their literary industry did not greatly care to -exercise themselves. Their task was social and practical, and as -confessors, directors, preachers, and instructors, they had naturally -paid less attention to abstract thought than to the arts of eloquence, -address, and pliancy. Then, too, in doctrine they had uniformily clung -to the softer, more amiable, more worldly, less repulsive, -interpretation of the eternally embarrassing claims of grace, election, -free-will. The Augustinian, Calvinistic, or Jansenist view of the -impotence of will and the saving importance of grace is the answer of -souls eager to feel immediate individual contact with a Supreme Being. -The Jesuits and their power represented extremely different sentiments, -fundamentally religious, but still fundamentally social also, the desire -of men for sympathetic and considerate guidance in conduct, and their -craving for such a unity of the external ordering of the faith as should -leave them undistracted to live their lives. The former concentrated -feelings upon the relations of men directly and immediately with a -Supreme Being; the latter upon their relations with this Being only -mediately, through their relations with one another, and with the church -to which a measure of divinity had been attributed. Hence the decline of -the Jesuits assumed the form of a depravation of morals, while the -Jansenists held more and more tightly to a narrow and bigoted -correctness of belief. The parliament was willing to resist a Molinist -archbishop and his satellites, when they refused burial to all who -should die without having received a certificate of conformity to the -famous bull Unigenitus, which proscribed Jansenist opinion.[182] But -none the less for this was it bent on suppressing the common enemy, who -despised the bull and the Five propositions, Molina and Jansenius, -archbishop Beaumont and Quesnel, all equally. Voltaire’s natural -sagacity made him alive to the fact, which perhaps remains as true now -as then, that the professional and middle classes are a worse enemy of -liberal opinion and are more intolerant than the remnants of the old -aristocratic orders. He says to D’Alembert, ‘You are right in declaring -yourself the enemy of the great and their flatterers; still, the great -protect one upon occasion, they despise the Infamous, and they will not -persecute philosophers; but as for your pedants of Paris, who have -bought their office, as for those insolent bourgeois, half fanatics, -half imbecile, they can do nothing but mischief.’[183] He had not learnt -to look away from both classes, professional and aristocratic alike, to -that third estate where the voice of the reformer has always found the -first response. Still what he said was true as against the lawyers, -whose vision perhaps never extends beyond the improvement of that mere -surface of order with which their profession is concerned. The -Parliament of Paris was the eager ally of the bigots of the court in -1757, in fulminating deadly edicts against the Encyclopædia and all -concerned in its production or circulation. In 1762, the year of the -publication of Emile and the Contrat Social, not all the influence of -Rousseau’s powerful protectors could prevent the launching of a decree -of arrest against him. Bloodier measures were not wanting. - -In 1762 Morellet had published under the title of a Manual for -Inquisitors a selection of the most cruel and revolting portions of the -procedure of the Holy Office, drawn from the Directorium Inquisitorium -of Eymeric, a grand inquisitor of the fourteenth century. The -cold-blooded cruelties of the regulations, which were thus brought into -the light of the eighteenth century, created the most profound sensation -among the rapidly increasing adherents of tolerance and humanity. -Voltaire was intensely stirred by this resuscitation of horrors that he -mistook for dead. It made the same impression upon him, he said, as the -bleeding body of Caesar made upon the men of Rome.[184] But he soon -found that it was an error to impute a special cruelty to the spiritual -power. Malesherbes, in giving Morellet the requisite permission to print -his Manual, had amazed his friend by telling him, that though he might -suppose he was giving to the world a collection of extraordinary facts -and unheard of processes, yet in truth the jurisprudence of Eymeric and -his inquisition was as nearly as possible identical with the criminal -jurisprudence of France at that very moment.[185] This was very soon to -be proved. - -The bigots, infuriated by the blows which were destroying the Jesuits, -hunted out against heretical enemies some forgotten portions of this -terrible jurisprudence. A protestant pastor, Rochette, was hung for -exercising his functions in Languedoc. The Catholics on the occasion of -the arrest of Rochette were summoned by sound of tocsin, and three young -Protestants, who were brothers, fearing massacre in the midst of the -agitation, took up their arms: for this offence they were convicted of -rebellion, and had their heads struck off.[186] It became painfully -clear how great a mistake it was to suppose the clergy touched with some -special curse of cruelty. Then, as usually, for good or for evil, they -were on about the same moral level with an immense number of laymen, and -were not much more than the incarnation of the average darkness of the -hour. If Eymeric’s procedure only copied the ordinary criminal -jurisprudence, the bigotry of the ecclesiastics was accurately reflected -in the bigotry of the secular tribunals. The Protestant Calas was broken -on the wheel (1762), because his son had been found dead, and some one -chose to say that the father had killed him, to prevent him from turning -Catholic. There was not the smallest fragment of evidence, direct or -indirect, for a single link in the chain of circumstances on which the -unfortunate man’s guilt depended; while there were many facts which made -the theory of his guilt the most improbable that could have been brought -forward. The widow and the children of Calas were put to the torture, -and eventually fled to Geneva to take refuge with Voltaire. During the -same year the same tribunal, the parliament of Toulouse, did its best to -repeat this atrocity in the case of Sirven. Sirven was a Protestant, and -his daughter had been with perfect legality snatched away from him, and -shut up in a convent, there to be better instructed in the faith. She -ran away, and was found at the bottom of a well. Sirven was accused of -murdering his daughter, and he only escaped the wheel by prompt flight. -His wife perished of misery amid the snows of the Cevennes, and he -joined the wretched family of Calas at Geneva, where the same generous -man furnished shelter and protection. - -In the north of France the fire of intolerance burnt at least as hotly -as in the south. At Abbeville a crucifix was found to have been -mutilated in the night. Two lads of eighteen, to one of whom Frederick -gave shelter in Prussia, were accused under cover of the sacrilege, and -La Barre was condemned by the tribunal of Amiens, at the instance of the -bishop, to have tongue and right hand cut off, and then be burnt alive; -a sentence that was presently commuted by the Parliament of Paris to -decapitation (1766). There was no proof whatever that either of the two -youths was in any way concerned in the outrage. The bishop of the -diocese had issued monitory proclamations, and conducted a solemn -procession to the insulted crucifix. The imagination of the town was -kindled, and the sacrilege became the universal talk of a people growing -more and more excited. Rumour ran that a new sect was being formed, -which was for breaking all the crucifixes, which threw the host on the -ground and cut it with knives. There were women who declared that they -had seen these things. All the horrible stories were revived which had -been believed against the Jews in the middle ages. A citizen took -advantage of this fierce agitation to gratify a private grudge against a -relative of La Barre. He set inquiries on foot among the lowest persons -for proof that the youth had been concerned in the original crime. By -one means or another he got together material enough to support an -indictment. Proceedings once begun, a crowd of informers rose up. It was -deposed that La Barre and D’Etallonde had passed within thirty yards of -the sacred procession without removing their hats, that La Barre had -spoken irreverently of the Virgin Mary, that he had been heard to sing -unseemly songs and recite ribald litanies. This testimony, given with a -vagueness that ought to have proved it legally valueless, was the fruit -of the episcopal monitory, which as at Toulouse in the case of Calas, -virtually incited the dregs of the people to bring accusations against -their superiors, and menaced a man with the pains of hell if he should -refuse to put his neighbour in peril of his life. The tribunal, as -excited as the witnesses and the rest of the public, relied on a royal -ordinance of 1682, directed against sacrilege and superstition and -designed to put down sorcery. In the sentence inflicting so bloody a -punishment, the offence was described as consisting in singing -abominable songs against the Virgin Mary.[187] To exact such a penalty -for such a delinquency was to make human life a mere plaything for the -ignorant passion of the populace and the intellectual confusion of the -tribunals. These atrocities kindled in Voltaire a blaze of anger and -pity, that remains among the things of which humanity has most reason to -be proud. Everybody who has read much of the French writing of the -middle of the eighteenth century, is conscious from time to time of a -sound of mocking and sardonic laughter in it. This laugh of the -eighteenth century has been too often misunderstood as the expression of -a cynical hardness of heart, proving the hollowness of the humanitarian -pretensions in the midst of which it is heard. It was in truth something -very different; it was the form in which men sought a little relief from -the monotony of the abominations which oppressed them, and from whose -taint they had such difficulty to escape. This refrain, that after all a -man can do nothing better than laugh, apparently so shallow and inhuman, -in reality so penetrated with melancholy, we may count most certainly -on finding at the close of the narration of some more than usually -iniquitous or imbecile exploit of those in authority. It was when the -thought of the political and social and intellectual degradation of -their country became too vivid to be endured, that men like Voltaire and -D’Alembert would abruptly turn away from it, and in the bitterness of -their impotence cry that there was nothing for it but to take the world -and all that befalls therein in merriment. It was the grimacing of a man -who jests when he is perishing of hunger, or is shrinking under knife or -cautery. Thus D’Alembert having given Voltaire an account of the -execution of the unfortunate La Barre, in words that show how intensely -his own narrative was afflicting him, suddenly concludes by saying that -he will add no more on this auto-da-fé, so honourable to the French -nation, for it made him ill-humoured, and he meant only to mock at -whatever might happen.[188] But Voltaire could not rest thus. The -thought of so hateful a crime, perpetrated by a tribunal of justice, -clothed him in the shirt of Nessus. All aflame, he wrote to D’Alembert -with noble impetuosity: - -“This is no longer a time for jesting: witty things do not go well with -massacres. What? These Busirises in wigs destroy in the midst of -horrible tortures children of sixteen! And that in face of the verdict -of ten upright and humane judges! And the victim suffers it! People talk -about it for a moment, and the next they are hastening to the comic -opera; and barbarity, become the more insolent for our silence, will -to-morrow cut throats juridically at pleasure. Here Calas broken on the -wheel, there Sirven condemned to be hung, further off a gag thrust into -the mouth of a lieutenant-general, a fortnight after that five youths -condemned to the flames for extravagances that deserved nothing worse -than Saint Lazare. Is this the country of philosophy and pleasure? It is -the country rather of the Saint Bartholomew massacre. Why, the -Inquisition would not have ventured to do what these Jansenist judges -have done.”[189] When he had received D’Alembert’s letter, ending as we -have seen, his remonstrance waxed vehement: ‘What, you would be content -to laugh? We ought rather to resolve to seek vengeance, or at any rate -to leave a coimtry where day after day such horrors are committed.... -No, once more, I cannot bear that you should finish your letter by -saying, I mean to laugh. Ah, my friend, is it a time for laughing? -Did men laugh when they saw Phalaris’s bull being made red-hot?’[190] - -This revival in the tribunals of Paris and the provincial towns alike, -of the ignorant fanaticism and the unscientific jurisprudence of the -most unenlightened times, was the more bitter and insupportable from the -new light which shone around such horrors. Beccaria’s treatise on -Offences and Penalties had just been translated into French by Morellet, -and furnished a strange commentary upon the atrocities of Toulouse and -Abbeville. It seemed, men said, as if at every striking vindication of -the rights of humanity the genius of cruelty broke its chains, and, to -prove the futility of all such vindications, inspired new acts of -barbarism and violence.[191] The philosophic group had yielded to a -premature exultation, and in their inexperience supposed that they who -planted the tree should see the gathering-in of the fruit. The reign of -reason was believed to be close at hand, and this belief made the -visible recrudescence of fanatical unreason signally insupportable. It -is a high honour to Voltaire and his disciples that the trial did not -prove too strong for their faith, and that when they saw how far too -sanguine they had been, they were more astonished than they were -discouraged, and their energy redoubled with the demands made upon it. -The meaner partisans of an orthodoxy which can only make wholly sure of -itself by injustice to adversaries, have always loved to paint the -Voltairean school in the character 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.[192] -At the very last Voltaire seems to have seen something of the vast space -which every ray of light has to traverse before it reaches the eye of -the common understanding. ‘I now perceive,’ he wrote the year before his -death, ‘that we must still wait three or four hundred years. One day it -cannot but be that good men 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 from time to time -they will make an auto-da-fé’[193] To speak thus was to recognise the -true character of the revolution, and the many elements which go to the -transformation of an old society. To speak thus, too, was to mark the -true character of the sincere lover of human progress, the soul of -steadfast patience and strong hope, mingled with many a pang for the -far-off and slow-coming good. - -It was a natural thing to identify the Jesuits with the strongest part -of the old society, because their organisation was both the strongest -and most striking of its external supports. Their suppression, though -not to be dispensed with except on the condition of an ultimate -overthrow of morality and an extinction of intellectual light, had one -effect which the statesmen of the time could hardly be expected to see, -and which has not been enough considered. Just as the papacy by the -fourteenth century had become more and more exclusively a temporal -power, so the Jesuits by the middle of the eighteenth had become more -and more a commercial power. They were a powerful trading corporation, -and it was as merchants, rather than as casuists and directors of -conscience, that they finally came into collision with secular authority -in France, Portugal, and Spain. Now since the revival of the order it -has been exclusively engaged in the contest for spiritual supremacy, and -for as much of temporal power as has seemed essential to its security. -This, however, is only one of the evils which counterbalance the -advantages of every progressive measure; for, alas, when the statesman -believes most confidently that he has advanced by a league, a very few -years show him or others that his league was after all no more than an -ell or two. - -The reactionary outburst of fanaticism for which the humiliation of the -Jesuits was a signal, only showed how well founded the Voltairean -allegations as to the depraving effects of the existing system of -religion had really been. It was the verification of all that Voltaire -ever said against the system, and demonstrated both the virulence and -the tenacity of the influences which Catholicism in the days of its -degradation had exerted over the character of the nation. It was most -illogical to expect a people who had been bred in the Catholic tradition -suddenly to welcome its enemies. If Catholicism had trained men up to -the temper which seeks the light and loves it, how should it have -deserved animosity? Nearly all lovers of improvement are apt in the -heat of a generous enthusiasm to forget that if all the world were ready -to embrace their cause, their improvement could hardly be needed. It is -one of the hardest conditions of things that the more numerous and -resolute the enemies of reform, then the more unmistakably urgent the -necessity for it. It was just because the cruelty, persecution, and -darkness, in the last ten years of the reign of Lewis XV. were things -possible, that the onslaught upon Catholicism was justifiable and -praiseworthy. They showed the depth and strength of the forces of the -old society, and they foreshadowed the violence which marked its -dissolution. If people had remembered in 1789 how few years separated -them from the wide-spread fanaticism which darkened the last days of -Voltaire, they might have calculated better how few years separated them -from the Napoleonic Concordat. - -No permanent transformation of a society, we may be sure, can ever take -place until a transformation has been accomplished in the spiritual -basis of thought. Voltaire may have distinctly seen this and formulated -it to himself, or not; in any case, he steered his own course exactly as -he would have done if he had seen it. As M. Guizot expresses it, the -separation between the spiritual and temporal orders was never real in -Europe except in the eighteenth century, when for the first time the -spiritual order developed itself entirely apart from the temporal -order.[194] Thus Voltaire acquiesced without murmur or reproach in the -conditions of political absolutism, and the disgrace and ruin which the -nullity of the government brought upon his country in the Seven Years’ -War, keenly as he felt it, yet provoked no thought of temporal changes. -His correspondence in that fatal time is marked by a startling apathy -about public events, and even Rossbach seems not to move him to seek its -causes. If we compare his joyful enthusiasm at the accession of Turgot -to power in 1774, we can have no doubt that this strange numbness of -feeling was only the silence of a wise man despairing of saying or -seeing anything useful, and not the criminal folly of a bad citizen to -whom the welfare of his country is not dear. The disasters of France -were as serious to him as to any one else, as may be plainly seen under -the assumed philosophy with which his vivacious spirit loved to veil -real feeling; but the impossibility of doing anything, even of taking a -part in the process with which we English are so familiar as the forming -of public opinion, drove him for consolation to the field where he was -certain of doing efficient work.[195] Writing in 1761, a year of -crushing national loss, he says to one of the oldest and most intimate -of his correspondents: ‘There is nothing to laugh at in all this. I am -struck to the heart. Our only resource is in the promptest and most -humiliating peace. I always fancy, when some overwhelming disaster -arrives, that the French will be serious for six weeks. I have not yet -been able to disabuse myself of this notion.’[196] Voltaire was -penetrated by the spirit of action, and he perceived and regretted that -the organisation of France did not permit of the effective action of -private individuals in the field of politics.[197] There are lines in -the Henriade extolling the freedom of England,[198] and he sometimes -indulges in the commonplaces of a literary republicanism; but turning to -the portion of his works which his editors have classified as political, -we scarcely find much beyond the documents, and they are important and -interesting enough, still not truly political, that relate to the -various affairs of Calas, La Barre, and others, in which he exposed the -atrocities of the tribunals. So far as they come into the region of -politics at all, it is only to assail the overt and direct injustice -done to society by the institutions, privileges, and pretensions of the -church. He constantly attacks in a great variety of forms the material -mischief inflicted on society by the vast numbers of monks, mendicant or -other; their unproductive lives, the burden of their maintenance -weighing upon more industrious subjects, the restriction of population -occasioned by their celibacy. The direct refusal of the clergy in 1750 -to consent to pay their share of the taxes like other citizens, though -owning as much as a fifth of all the property in the realm, moved him to -insist in a vigorous pamphlet that the distinction in a kingdom between -spiritual and temporal powers is a relic of barbarism; that it is -monstrous to permit a body of men to say, Let those pay who work, we -ought not to pay because we are idle; that superstition inevitably tends -to make bad citizens, and therefore princes ought to protect philosophy -which destroys superstition.[199] - -Voltaire’s task, however, was never directly political, but spiritual, -to shake the foundations of that religious system which professed to be -founded on the revelation of Christ. Was he not right? If we find -ourselves walking amid a generation of cruel and 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. - -It is necessary to admit from the point of view of impartial criticism, -that Voltaire had one defect of character, of extreme importance in a -leader of this memorable and direct attack. With all his enthusiasm for -things noble and lofty, generous and compassionate, he missed the -peculiar emotion of holiness, the soul and life alike of the words of -Christ and Saint Paul, that indefinable secret of the long hold of -mystic superstition over so many high natures, otherwise entirely -prepared for the brightness of the rational day. From this impalpable -essence which magically surrounds us with the mysterious and subtle -atmosphere of the unseen, changing distances and proportions, adding new -faculties of sight and purpose, extinguishing the flames of disorderly -passion in a flood of truly divine aspiration, we have to confess that -the virtue went out in the presence of Voltaire. To admire Voltaire, -cried a man who detested him, is the sign of a corrupt heart, and if -anybody is drawn to his works, then be very sure that God does not love -such an one.[200] The truth of which that is so vehement a paraphrase -amounts to this, that Voltaire has said no word, nor even shown an -indirect appreciation of any word said by another, which stirs or -expands the emotional susceptibility, indefinite exultation, and -far-swelling inner harmony, which De Maistre and others have known as -the love of God, and for which a better name, as covering most varieties -of form and manifestation, is holiness, deepest of all the words that -defy definition. Through the affronts which his reason received from -certain pretensions both in the writers and in some of those whose -actions they commemorated, this sublime trait in the Bible, in both -portions of it, was unhappily lost to Voltaire. He had no ear for the -finer vibrations of the spiritual voice. This had no concern in the fact -that he hated and despised, and was eager that others should hate and -despise, the religious forms that ruled France in his day. The -Christianity which he assailed was as little touched as Voltairism -itself with that spirit of holiness which poured itself round the lives -and words of the two founders, the great master and the great apostle. -The more deeply imbued a man was with this spirit, the more ardently -would he crave the demolition of that Infamous in belief and in -practice, which poisoned the stream of holiness in its springs, and shed -pestilence along its banks, and choked its issues in barrenness and -corruption. - -The point where the failure of this quality in Voltaire was especially a -source of weakness to his attack, is to be found in the crippling of his -historic imagination, and the inability which this inflicted upon him of -conceiving the true meaning and lowest roots of the Catholic legend. The -middle age between himself and the polytheism of the Empire was a -parched desert to him and to all his school, just as to the Protestant -the interval between the apostles and Luther is a long night of unclean -things. He saw only a besotted people led in chains by a crafty -priesthood; he heard only the unending repetition of records that were -fictitious, and dogmas that drew a curtain of darkness over the -understanding. Men spoke to him of the mild beams of Christian charity, -and where they pointed he saw only the yellow glare of the stake; they -talked of the gentle solace of Christian faith, and he heard only the -shrieks of the thousands and tens of thousands whom faithful Christian -persecutors had racked, strangled, gibbeted, burnt, broken on the -wheel. Through the steam of innocent blood which Christians for the -honour of their belief had spilt in every quarter of the known world, -the blood of Jews, Moors, Indians, and all the vast holocausts of -heretical sects and people in eastern and western Europe, he saw only -dismal tracts of intellectual darkness, and heard only the humming of -the doctors, as they served forth to congregations of poor men hungering -for spiritual sustenance the draff of theological superstition. - -This vehement and blinding antipathy arose partly from the intense force -with which the existing aspect of Catholicism recalled all that was -worst, and shut out all that was best in its former history. One cannot -fairly expect the man who is in the grip of a decrepit tyrant, to do -absolutely full justice to the seemly deeds and gracious promises of his -tormentor’s youth. But partly also this blindness arose from the fact -that Voltaire measured the achievements of Catholicism by the magnitude -of its pretensions. He took its supernatural claims seriously, and his -intelligence was exasperated beyond control by the amazing disproportion -and incongruity between these claims and the most conspicuous of the -actual results. Those who have parted company with a religion, as -Voltaire had parted company with Christianity, can only be counted upon -to award the well-earned praise to its better part, after they have -planted themselves stably on the assumption that the given religion is a -human and natural force like another. - -The just historic calm on which our modern prides himself, is only -possible in proportion to the mature completeness with which he takes -for granted, and believes that those to whom he speaks will take for -granted, the absence of supernatural intervention in the processes of -religious action and development. He is absolutely undisturbed by the -thought of that claim, which was omnipotent until Voltaire came to do -deadly battle with it, of Christianity to be a crowning miracle of -divine favour, which should raise men to be only a little lower than the -angels, and should be the instrument for pouring out upon them an -ever-flowing stream of special and extraordinary grace. It is not until -the idea has dropped out of our minds of the great fathers of the church -as saints, that we are free to perceive what services they rendered as -statesmen, and it is only when men have ceased to dispute whether -Christianity was a revelation, that they have eyes to see what services -it has rendered as a system. But in Voltaire’s time, if Catholicism was -justified historically, it was believed dogmatically, and therefore was -to be attacked dogmatically also. The surrender of the written legend -has never hindered its champions from taking ground which implied some -esoteric revelation, that proves to be some special interpretation of -the written legend. So long as the thinker is busy disproving the -position that a man who happens to live on a certain part of the globe -is a being of such singular and exceptional consequence in the universe -as to be held worthy by supreme heavenly powers of receiving a -miraculous message and the promise of this and that unspeakable -privilege in indescribable worlds to come, so long he is not likely to -weigh very fairly the effects of the belief in such power, messages, and -privileges, on the education and advancement of this world. The modern -historic justice which is done to Catholicism is due to the -establishment of a series of convictions that civilisation is a -structure which man by his own right arm has raised for himself, that it -has been exposed to many an era of storm and stress, and to manifold -influences which have been perpetually destroying portions of the great -edifice, adding fresh parts, modifying the old, by an interminable -succession of changes, resounding and volcanic, or still and -imperceptible; that the danger of destruction was never so terrible as -in the days of the dissolution of the old Roman society; that in this -prolonged crisis the Christian church emerged, first by its organisation -and the ability of some of its chiefs, and next by the attraction of -legends that harmonised with the needs of a dark, confused, and -terror-stricken time; that the many barbarous and absurd articles of -belief incorporated in the Christian profession by the sophists of the -East, received from time to time humane modification in the hands of the -wiser churchmen of the West, whose practical judgment was perpetually -softening down the crude, savage, unilluminated doctrines which had -naturally sprung up in the dismal age when the Catholic system acquired -substance and shape. A just recognition of all these things is only -easy to one whose expectations from humanity are moderate, who perceives -how tardy and difficult is the accomplishment of each smallest step in -the long process, and how helpful are even the simplest beliefs of rude -times in transforming men from vagrant animals into beings with a -consciousness of fixed common relations towards some object of common -worship, and so planting the first germs of social consolidation and -growth. - -Voltaire was, from the circumstances in which he was placed, too busy -proving the purely human origin of Catholicism to have a mind free to -examine how much, if we suppose it to be of purely human origin, it has -done for those who accepted it. Perhaps we ought rather to praise than -blame him for abstaining from planting himself at the historic point of -view, before settling the previous question whether the historic point -of view is permitted in considering the religious movements of Europe. -Until Voltaire and others had divested the current religion of its -supernatural pretensions, it was impossible for any thinker, who -declines to try to take the second step before he has already taken the -first, to survey the operations of such a religion as a merely secular -force. This surely is a field of thought where no serious inquirer could -content himself with a mere working hypothesis. If the supernatural -claims of Catholicism are well founded, then the historic method of -treating it is either a frivolous diversion or else a grave and -mischievous heresy. The issue being of this moment, everybody who -studies the philosophy of history with effect must have made up his mind -in one way or the other. Voltaire had made up his mind very definitely, -and the conclusion to which, for adequate or inadequate reasons, he came -in this matter was one of the most influential agencies in preparing -men’s minds for the construction and general reception of a sounder -historical philosophy than was within his own reach. That he did not see -the deduction from his work is a limitation of vision that he shares -with most of the men to whom it has fallen to overthrow old sytems, and -clear the ground on which the next generation has raised new. - - -II. - -Having said thus much on the general causes and conditions of Voltaire’s -attack, we may next briefly examine his method. A brief examination -suffices, because, like all his contemporaries, he was so very -imperfectly acquainted with the principles of scientific criticism, and -because his weapons, though sharp and deadly enough for their purpose, -are now likely to become more and more thoroughly antiquated. In -criticism he was, as has often been remarked, the direct descendant of -Bayle. That is, his instruments were purely literary and dialectical. He -examined the various sacred narratives as if he had been reviewing a -contemporary historian. He delights in the minute cavils of literary -pyrrhonism, and rejoices in the artifice of imposing the significance of -the letter, where his adversaries strove for interpretation of the -spirit. As if, for instance, anything could be more childish than to -attack baptism by asking whether Christianity consists in throwing water -on the head, with a little salt in it.[201] He is perfectly content with -the exposure of a fallacy in words, without seeking to expose the root -fallacy of idea. Nothing short of the blindest partisanship can pretend -to find in this a proper or adequate method. The utmost that can be -said, and no just historian ought to forget to say it, is that it was -not more improper nor inadequate than the orthodox method of defence. -Bayle’s commentary on the words, ‘Compel them to come in,’ would not -satisfy the modern requirements of scriptural exegesis, but it was quite -good enough to confound those who contended that the text was a direct -warrant and injunction from heaven for the bitterest persecution on -earth. But the unfair parry of unfair thrust, extenuate it as we may, -count it inevitable as we may, even reckoning up such advantages from it -as we can, and in the present case they were enormous, can never be any -pattern or masterpiece of retort; and it is folly to allow admiration -for the social merit of Voltaire’s end to blind us to the logical -demerit of his means. It is deliberately to throw away the advantage of -our distance from the contest, and to sell for a momentary -self-indulgence in the spirit of party the birthright of a free and -equitable historic vision. Let men not fail to do justice to the gains -of humanity won by the emancipation of the eighteenth century; but we -shall be worse off than if they had never been transmitted, if they are -allowed to bind us to approve of every detail of the many movements by -which the final triumph was obtained. - -The key to his method of attack is given us in a sentence in one of his -letters to D’Alembert. ‘It is never by means of metaphysics,’ he says, -‘that you will succeed in delivering men from error; you must prove the -truth by facts.’[202] In other words, the sublime abstract reasoning of -a Spinoza will do far less to dispel the narrow ideas, unfounded -beliefs, and false restrictive conceptions which cripple the human -intelligence so long as it is in bondage to a theological system, than a -direct disproval of the alleged facts on which the system professes to -rest. It is only by dealing immediately with these that you can make the -repulse of error a real question, substantially interesting to ordinary -men. Always remembering that Voltaire’s intelligence was practical -rather than speculative, and, besides this, that from the time when he -commenced his attack in earnest the object which he had at heart was the -overthrow of a crushing practical institution, we may agree that in such -a humour and with such a purpose the most effective way of harassing so -active and pestilent a foe was to carry the war into the enemy’s -quarters, and to use those kinds of arguments which the greatest number -of men would be likely to find cogent. We may complain that Voltaire -never rises from the ground into the region of the higher facts of -religion; and this is quite true. It would have been controversially -futile if he had done so. There was no audience in those times for the -discussion of the higher facts; and the reason of this was that the -spiritual instructors and champions themselves thrust into the front -place legends, miracles, and the whole of the peculiarly vulgar part of -the theological apparatus, which it would have been as absurd to -controvert metaphysically, as it would be to try to elevate a Gold-coast -negro from his fetish worship by the transcendental parts of Plato. - -It nearly always happens that the defenders of a decaying system, when -they find themselves surrounded by the wholly uncongenial atmosphere of -rationalistic method, fall back, not on the noblest, but on the -ignoblest parts of their system. Distressed by the light, they shrink -hurriedly into darkest recesses of the familiar caves, partly because -they have a sense of especial security in a region that they know so -well, and partly because they have misgivings lest the surrender of -articles or practices in which they only half believe, should by too -stringent process of logical compulsion lead to the destruction of -others in which they believe with all their hearts. Such tactics may or -may not be politic, but we can at least be quite certain that they tend -neither to elevation of religion, nor discovery of truth, nor profit and -sincerity of discussion. If a set of doctrines be attacked from many -quarters in an unworthy manner, and taken at their worst instead of at -their best, we may be quite sure that this is as much due to the -defenders as to the assailants. It was not Voltaire’s fault that the -controversy turned on issues which a more modern opponent would not care -to dispute. He is constantly flippant and trivial, and constantly -manifests gross irreverence, but it was the writers whom he was -combating, writers like Sanchez or the stercorists, who had opened -frivolous and unbecoming questions that could hardly be exposed with -gravity. He was making war on an institution, and it was not his concern -to fight on ground which his adversary had never thought, and was too -blind and demoralised to be able to think, of taking up. It was not his -fault that the upholders of the creed he attacked, made a stand upon the -letter of sacred documents, upon prophecy and miracle and special -intervention, upon the virtues of relics and the liquefaction of the -blood of Saint Januarius. The same wise man who forbade us to answer a -fool according to his folly, also enjoined upon us to answer a fool -according to his folly, and the moral commentator agrees that each -prescription is as sage as its contradictory. - -If truth means anything, it was worth while to put to rout the -distortions of truth with which the church lowered the understanding of -its votaries. If truth means anything, then it was worth while to reply -to the allegation that the history of the Christian church is a long -witness of the goodness of heaven and the ever-present guidance of its -heavenly founder, by a record of the actual facts; of the simplicity, -equality, absence of multiplied rites, orders, and dogmas, among the -primitive members of the congregation, and of the radical differences -between the use of apostolic times and of times since; of the incurable -want of authority for all those tales of demons being cast out, pious -inscriptions in letters of gold found graven on the hearts of martyrs, -and the rest, which grow rare in proportion as we draw nearer to the -times when the evidence for them would have been preserved; of the -infamous character of many Christian heroes, from Constantine downwards, -and of the promptitude with which the Christians, as soon as ever they -had power, dyed their hands in the blood of their persecutors; of the -stupefying circumstances that after a revelation was made to the human -race by no less a prodigy than the incarnation of supreme power in a -mortal body, and the miraculous maintenance of this event and its -significance in the tradition, doctrine, discipline of the Catholic -church, yet the whole of Asia, the whole of Africa, all the possessions -of the English and Dutch in America, all the uncivilised Indian tribes, -all the southern lands, amounting to one-fifth part of the globe still -remain in the clutches of the demon, to verify that holy saying of many -being called but few chosen.[203] - -It may be said that this kind of argument really proves nothing at all -about the supernatural origin or character of the Christian revelation, -for which you must seek the responses not of ecclesiastical history but -of the human heart. And that may be a fair thing to say, but then this -contention of the new revelation being only a message to the heart has -only been heard since Voltaire thrust aside the very different -contention of his day. Those various beliefs were universally accepted -about the progress of the church, which were true in no sense whatever, -literal or spiritual, mystical or historical. People accepted traditions -and records, sacred and profane, as literal, accurate, categorical -declarations and descriptions of a long series of things done and -suffered. Moreover, the modern argument in favour of the supernatural -origin of the Christian religion, drawn from its suitableness to our -needs and its divine response to our aspirations, must be admitted by -every candid person resorting to it to be of exactly equal force in the -mouth of a Mahometan or a fire-worshipper or an astrolater. If you apply -a subjective test of this kind, it must be as good for the sincere and -satisfied votaries of one creed, as it is for those of any other. The -needs and aspirations of the Mahometan would not be satisfied by -fetishism or polytheism, nor those of the developed polytheist by -totem-worship. It would be ridiculous for so small a minority of the -race as the professors of Christianity to assume that their aspirations -are the absolute measure of those of humanity in every stage. The -argument can never carry us beyond the relativity of religious truth. - -Now the French apologist a hundred years ago dealt in the most absolute -possible matter. Christianity to him meant a set of very concrete ideas -of all sorts; any one who accepted them in the concrete and literal form -prescribed by the church would share infinite bliss, and any one who -rejected them, whether deliberately or from never having been so happy -as to hear of them, would be infinitely tormented. If this theory be -right, then Voltaire must naturally be abhorred by all persons who hold -it, as a perverse and mischievous hinderer of light. If it be wrong, and -we must observe that from its terms this is not one of the marvellously -multiplying beliefs of which we hear that they may be half wrong and -half right, then Voltaire may take rank with other useful expellers of -popular error. Everybody must admit how imperfect is all such treatment -of popular error; how little rich, how little comprehensive, how little -full. Yet the surgeon who has couched his patient’s cataract has surely -done a service, even if he do not straightway carry him to enjoy the -restored faculty on some high summit of far and noble prospect. - -Voltaire’s attack was essentially the attack of the English deists, as -indeed he is always willing enough to admit, pursued with far less -gravity and honest search for truth, but, it is hardly necessary to say, -with far more adroitness, rapidity, and grace of manner than any of -them, even than Bolingbroke. As we have seen, he insisted on throwing -himself upon the facts in the records that are least easily reconciled -with a general sense of probability and evidence, as gradually developed -in men by experience. He placed the various incidents of the Bible, the -interpretation of them by the church, the statement of doctrine, the -characters of prominent actors, in the full light of common experience -and of the maxims which experience has made second nature. ‘I always -speak humanly,’ he says mockingly, ‘I always put myself in the place of -a man who, having never heard tell either of Jews or Christians, should -read these books for the first time, and not being illuminated by grace, -should be so unhappy as to trust unaided reason in the matter, until he -should be enlightened from on high.’[204] - -It is superfluous to detail the treatment to which he subjected such -mysteries of the faith as the inheritance of the curse of sin by all -following generations from the first fall of man; the appearance from -time to time, among an obscure oriental tribe, of prophets who foretold -the coming of a divine deliverer, who should wash away that fatal stain -by sacrificial expiation; the choice of this specially cruel, -treacherous, stubborn, and rebellious tribe, to be the favoured people -of a deity of spotless mercy and truth; the advent of the deliverer in -circumstances of extraordinary meanness and obscurity among a generation -that greeted his pretensions with incredulity, and finally caused him to -be put to death with ignominy, in spite of his appeal to the prophets -and to the many signs and wonders which he wrought among them; the -rising of this deliverer from the dead; the ascription to him in the -course of the next three or four centuries of claims which he never made -in person, and of propositions which he never advanced while he walked -on the earth, yet which must now be accepted by every one who would -after death escape a pitiless torment without end; the truly miraculous -preservation amid a fiery swarm of heresies, intricate, minute, subtle, -barely intelligible, but very soul-destroying, of that little fragile -thread of pure belief which can alone guide each spirit in the divinely -appointed path. Exposed to the light, which they were never meant to -endure, of ordinary principles of evidence founded on ordinary -experience, the immortal legends, the prophecies, the miracles, the -mysteries, on which the spiritual faith of Europe had hung for so many -generations, seemed to shrivel up in unlovely dissolution. The -authenticity of the texts on which the salvation of man depends, the -contradictions and inconsistencies of the documents, the incompatibility -between many acts and motives expressly approved by the holiest persons, -and the justice and mercy which are supposed to sit enthroned on high in -the bosoms, the forced constructions of prophecies and their -stultifying futility of fulfilment, the extraordinary frivolousness of -some of the occasions on which the divine power of thaumaturgy was -deliberately and solemnly exerted,—these were among the points at which -the messenger of Satan at Ferney was permitted sorely to buffet the -church. What is the date of the Apostles’ Creed? What of the so-called -Athanasian Creed? How were the seven sacraments instituted one after -another? What was the difference between the synaxis and the mass? And -so forth through many hundreds of pages. - -Along with rationalistic questions in scriptural and ecclesiastical -history, are many more as to doctrine, and the assumption on which a -doctrine rests; questions as to the trinity, as to redemption by the -shedding of innocent blood, as to the daily miracle of -transubstantiation, as to the resurrection of the body, as to the -existence of an entity called soul independently of that matter which, -apart from miracle, seems an inseparable condition of its manifestation. -His arguments on all these subjects contain a strange mixture of shallow -mockery and just objection. The questions which he suggests for the -doctors as to the resurrection of the body may serve for an example. -Among them are these: - -‘A Breton soldier goes to Canada. It happens by a not uncommon chance -that he falls short of food; he is forced to eat a piece of an Iroquois -whom he has killed over night. The Iroquois had fed on Jesuits for two -or three months, a great part of his body had thus become Jesuit. So -there is the body of the soldier with Iroquois, Jesuit, and whatever he -had eaten before, entering into it. How then will each resume exactly -what belongs to him?’ ‘In order to come to life again, to be the same -person you were, you must have a lively and present recollection; it is -memory that makes your identity. Having lost memory, how are you to be -the same man?’ Again, ‘considering that only certain material elements -are proper for the composition of the human body, where is earth enough -to be found to remake all the bodies needed for so many hundreds of -generations? And supposing that by a prodigious miracle the whole human -race could be resuscitated in the Valley of Jehoshaphat, where are all -the spirits meanwhile?’[205] - -Another very favourite mode of approaching the beliefs, incidents, and -personages of Jewish and Christian history was to show that they had -counterparts in some pagan fables or systems, in the books of Chinese -philosophers or Brahminical sages. The inference from this identity or -correspondence between some Judaical practices and myths, and the -practices and myths of Arabians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Hindoos, was -that they were in all cases equally the artificial creations of -impostors preying on the credu-lity of men, ‘the first prophet or -diviner having been the first rogue who met the first fool.’ It is -curious to observe how the modern argument from constantly extending -discoveries in comparative mythology tends to the demolition of the -special pretensions of Judaical myths of all sorts, by the very opposite -inference to that on which the Voltairean school rested. Voltaire urged -that as these myths resembled one another in this and that important -feature, therefore they were all equally spurious, false, and absurd. -The modern, on the contrary, would hold them all equally genuine, -equally free from the taint of imposture in priest or people, and -equally faithful representations of the mental states which produced and -accepted them. The weakening of the particular sanctity and objective -reality of any one form of these common primitive ways of thinking about -the action of non-human agents would be just as strong, whether we take -the new or the old view of the generation of myths, but the difference -of the effect of the two views upon the justice and fertility of -historic spirit is immeasurable. - -There is no sign, however, that Voltaire was ever seriously conscious of -the importance of a right consideration of the mental conditions of -primitive peoples. This study had been commenced in his own time by De -Brosses, the inventor of the term fetishism, and pronounced by competent -modern authorities to have been a powerful and original thinker upon the -facts of the infancy of civilisation.[206] Yet Voltaire treated the -speculations of this industrious inquirer with the same ignorant -contempt and scorn that the theological enemies of geology were once -accustomed to bestow on men who chipped bits of rock and cherished -fossils.[207] Oddly enough, Voltaire’s carelessness and want of thought -on these matters left him with that very theory of the nature of the -development of cultivation, on which the theological school insists to -this day as against the scientific ethnologists. The question is whether -the earliest men were savages, or partially civilised; in other words, -whether civilisation has consisted in a certain uniform progression from -a state a little above the brutes, or whether the savage is not a being -who has degenerated from a partial degree of civilisation. The -progression theory was no doubt in a general way a characteristic -doctrine of the men of the eighteenth century, for which De Maistre, an -ardent and most ingenious advocate of the degeneration theory, reviled -them with his usual heartiness. Yet his eagerness to depress revelation -by exalting natural theology led Voltaire to the essentially theological -position that the earliest men had a clear and lofty idea of a Supreme -Being, and a ready appreciation of justice and charity in their -relations with one another, until the vile ambition of priestly and -prophetic impostors succeeded in setting upon their necks the yoke of -systems which corrupted the heart and conscience, and sophisticated a -pure and simple faith. - -He did not hold that men were conscious of the one God as they were -conscious of light, or that they had perceptions of such a being, as -they had perceptions of the ground they tilled. The idea was derived by -process of natural logic from the contemplation of astonishing natural -effects, of harvest and dearth, of fair days and tempests, of -benefactions and scourges. They saw all these things, and felt the work -of a master.[208] Just as in each community there were men who by the -force of their reason found out that triangles with the same base and of -the same height are equal, and others who in sowing and reaping and -tending their flocks perceived that the sun and moon returned pretty -nearly to the point from which they had started, and that they never -travelled beyond a certain limit to north or south, so there was a third -man who considered that men, animals, stars could not have made -themselves, and who saw that therefore a Supreme Being must exist; while -a fourth, struck by the wrongs that men inflicted on one another, -concluded that if there exists a being who made the stars, the earth, -and men, such a being must confer favour on the virtuous, and -punishments on the wicked. This idea, Voltaire declares, is so natural -and so good that it was most readily embraced.[209] The various forms of -revelations were only so many corruptions of that simple, serviceable, -and self-proving monotheism, and so were the conceptions of polytheism. -He had no notion that monotheism is a later development of the -theological spirit than polytheism. Unable to deny that the Greeks and -Romans, about whom he knew so little and talked so much, had plurality -of gods, he drew a distinction between one Supreme Being and all the -rest, and contended that you may search all their records in vain for a -single fact or a single word to counterbalance the many passages and -monuments which attest their belief of the sovereignty of the one deity -and his superiority over all the rest.[210] We do not know whether this -was a fortuitous kind of growth in his own mind, or whether it was a -scrap of recollection from the painstaking pages in which Cudworth had -worked at the establishment of that explanation of polytheism. Voltaire -too often writes on these weighty subjects, as if trusting to a memory -that snatched effectively at plausible theories, while losing much of -their evidence and all their deeper bearings. - -It would be not a little extraordinary, if we did not constantly -remember that Voltaire’s strength did not lie in speculation or -systematic thought, that he saw none of the objections to this account -of things, and that he was content with so limited an observation of the -facts. If De Brosses had magnanimously suffered himself to be cheated in -the transaction of the fourteen cords of wood, Voltaire would perhaps -have read his book candidly, and if he had read it otherwise than with a -foregone resolution to despise it, he would have come upon a number of -circumstances entirely fatal to his smooth theory that many gods are -always subordinate to the one, because he would have had to consider -those states of the human mind in which there are no spiritual gods at -all, but in which every object whatever is invested with volition and -power. In one place he shows something like a recognition of the true -nature of the process. ‘I have always been persuaded,’ he says in a -letter to Mairan, ‘that the phenomena of the heavens have been in the -main the source of the old fables. Thunder was heard on the inaccessible -summit of a mountain; therefore there must be gods dwelling on the -mountain, and launching the thunder. The sun seems to speed from east to -west, therefore he has fine coursers. The rain does not touch the head -of one who sees a rainbow, so the rainbow is a token that there will -never again be a deluge.’[211] But then Voltaire was no systematic -thinker, and thus there was no security that any given right idea which -came into his mind would either remain present to him, or would be -followed up and placed along with other ideas in a scientific order. -Apart from this, however, it is extraordinary that Voltaire’s extreme -acuteness did not suggest to him the question, how it was that the -artless and clear belief in one God became more and more obscured by the -growing multitude of other gods, just in proportion as the primitive -tribes became more civilised in all the arts of life. If the nomad -progenitors of the Greeks had only one god, how was it that, as -knowledge, social feeling, love of beauty, and all the other ennobling -parts of man became more fully developed, the power of superstition -waxed greater, and temples and images were multiplied! - -Again, the theologist might, consistently with his deliberate principle -of resort to the miraculous, contend that this first conception of a -single supreme power, in the fact of the existence of which he is -entirely at one with Voltaire, was directly implanted by a supernatural -force. But Voltaire, debarred from such an explanation as this, was -driven silently to assume and imply the truly incredible position that -the rudest savages, being what we know them, urgently occupied in the -struggle for means of subsistence, leading lives purely animal, -possessed of no vocabulary for any abstract idea, should yet by one leap -of natural logic have risen to one of the very highest pinnacles of -speculation, and both felt and expressed the idea of cause in the most -general and comprehensive of all its forms. Surely this assumption, -measured by any of those standards of experience or probability to which -he professed to appeal, was as much of a miracle as those which he so -decisively repudiated. - -In one of his letters Voltaire declared that Locke was the only -reasonable metaphysician that he knew, and that next to him he placed -Hume.[212] Did he ever read, we may wonder, that masterly essay on the -Natural History of Religion, where Hume not only combats with his usual -vigour and effectiveness the idea of the belief in one omniscient, -omnipotent, and omnipresent spirit being the primary religion of men, -and shows that polytheism precedes monotheism, but also traces the -origin of all religion to its rudiment, in that ‘universal tendency -among mankind to conceive all beings like themselves, and to transfer to -every object those qualities with which they are familiarly acquainted, -and of which they are intimately conscious?’[213] The greater the -knowledge we acquire of the spiritual rudiments of primitive people, the -more certainly is it established that the idea of theism as the earliest -and most elementary belief, which Voltaire had picked up from -Bolingbroke and Pope, is untenable, and that Hume has been more and more -fully warranted in saying that the only point of theology on which the -consent of mankind is nearly universal is that ‘there is an invisible, -intelligent power in the world, but whether this power be supreme or -subordinate, whether confined to one being or distributed among several, -what attributes, qualities, connections, or principles of action, ought -to be ascribed to these beings, concerning all these points there is the -widest difference in the popular systems of theology.’[214] This might -be placing natural theology very low, but Hume at any rate placed it -where he did and described it as he did, because he had knowledge enough -of the condition of various nations in various parts of their history, -and was sufficiently penetrated with a cautious and scientific spirit, -to abstain from the unsupported and purely metaphysical conjectures of -men like Voltaire and Rousseau. Well might the keen-eyed De Maistre -describe him from the Catholic point of view as the most dangerous and -the guiltiest of all those pestilent writers,—the one who employed most -talent with most coolness to do most mischief.[215] - -If Voltaire had studied Hume, moreover, he might have learnt how futile -and inappropriate it is in the long run to examine a religion otherwise -than in its most fundamental and comprehensive general ideas, and how -narrow and superficial would every philosophic appreciation ultimately -find what he called refutation by facts. For his own immediate purpose, -which was to cover the church and its creed with ridicule, the method of -collecting all the ludicrous, immoral, and inconsistent circumstances in -the Scriptures and their current interpretation, was, as we have already -said, a weapon potent enough. Voltaire, however, not only did not use, -he never understood nor perceived, the fact that a religion rests for -its final base on a certain small number of ideas, or that it is only by -touching these, by loosening the firmness of their hold, by revealing -their want of coherency and consistency with other accepted ideas, that -we can expect to shake the superstructure. For example, if only the -official exponents of religion had not been so firmly bent on making -the feeblest of all their ramparts into their very citadel, it would -have been a very small thing to urge the truly singular quality of such -miracles as those of the water made wine at Cana, of the cursing of the -barren fig-tree, of the unfortunate swine who rushed violently down a -steep place and were choked. These were legends that from the right -point of view of religion were not worth defending, any more than from -the right point of view of truth they were worth attacking. The details -of the use of a supernaturally conferred power may best be let alone, -until the probability of the existence and bestowal of such power has -been discussed and decided. The important issue and matter of vital -concern turned upon the general idea of the miraculous; yet this was -what Voltaire, perhaps from an instinctive consciousness of the little -capacity he possessed for genuine speculation, postponed to the really -secondary purpose of disparaging particular cases of miraculous -performance. - -We are now touching what, before Hume, was the central defect of the -eighteenth-century attack, judged philosophically rather than -practically. The movement was a reaction against a certain set of ideas -which had been incorporated in the Christian system, as that system was -elaborated by the oriental sophisters. Yet the exact conflict between -the old ideas and the new was never conceived, much less was it -expressed, in clear comprehensive formulas. Consequently the most -general terms for the debate were neither sought nor found, and hence -the oppressive narrowness, the stifling want of free air, throughout the -controversy. The truth or falsehood which it is good for us to discover -in connection with a religion resides not in detail, but in the largest -general ideas of the subject. These draw all else along with them. Let -us take an illustration from a characteristic of the anti-christian -attack which has already been mentioned. The Voltairean school, as we -have before observed,[216] habitually derided the sacred importance -attached by the church in all ages, from Saint Paul downwards, to the -practice of continence. But there is no sign, so far as the present -writer’s knowledge goes, that they ever were near perceiving the origin -of that superstition lying deep down for so many centuries in the human -mind. The sanctity of continence was only one product of the old -far-spreading conviction of all the evil and unholiness essentially -inherent in matter. This conviction, which has itself a history and -genesis well worth tracing, probably accounts for more of the peculiar -manifestations contained in Christianity than any one principle of -belief besides. From this metaphysical idea sprang the whole theory of -asceticism; it had much to do indirectly with the first establishment of -the doctrine of the divinity of Christ; it entered into the triumph of -indispensable grace.[217] The speculative origin of practices and -sentiments which the heads of the western church valued, modified, and -sagaciously used for ecclesiastical or political reasons, ought never to -be lost sight of, because their duration has depended on the -circumstance of the original speculative idea remaining deeply sunk, -though not often put into articulate form, in the minds of the faithful, -and of all others whom these practices and sentiments have influenced. -One key to the central movement of the eighteenth century is the -dispersion of this association of evil and corruption from matter. There -was energetic and triumphant progress in the discovery of the laws of -matter, in their most stupendous, overwhelming, and majestic order. -There was a steady tendency to resolve mental manifestations into -functions of matter. There was a general inclination to forget those -depressing facts connected with the decay and dissolution of matter, -which, in the dismal times when the church was founded, had been thrust -into a prominence so humiliating to human dignity. The general movement -was carried too far by extreme spirits, but on the whole it was a -salutary and much-needed protest against the limitation of knowledge -within airy cloudlands where no true knowledge was to be reached, and of -emotion within transcendental aspirations where the deep reality of -human relations faded into dim distance. - -It is only when controversy is conducted with reference to ground ideas -of this kind, that the parties to it can be sure of being on the same -plane, and, if they are not on the same plane, one of the least -mischiefs is that their arguments fly over one another’s heads. -Voltaire failed, partly from want of historic knowledge, partly from -insufficient depth of nature, to see what these ground ideas were, -against which he was fighting. Thus, to take another instance, he failed -to see that the belief in the exertion of supernatural power, even on -occasions which struck him as so frivolous, and in a manner undoubtedly -incompatible with justice, was merely an incidental result of a -profoundly rooted idea of the closeness, constancy, and mixed holiness -and majesty, of the relations between man and an awful being other than -man, endowed with powers denied to us, and animated by motives -inscrutable to us. He chose, if we are not wrong in using a term that -may imply much conscious deliberation, to identify his own conception of -deity with the conception of deity in the first four centuries of the -Christian era, simply because the object of each was called by a common -name. He found that the actions attributed to the Supreme Being whom the -church revered, were unworthy of a personage endowed with the qualities -which he ascribed to a supreme power, in his own version of that -culminating conception. He was thus never on the same plane of thought -or argument, but he never was near finding this out. The God whom he -conceived was incapable, from the very nature attributed to him by his -worshippers, of the various transactions, lofty and mean, sublime and -puerile, described in the documents on which Catholicism relied, and -the tradition by which it corroborated and interpreted them. The ground -idea of the belief in the miraculous was an extremely anthropomorphic -notion of a divinity, possessed of complete power, but using it in -obedience to motives which finite understandings cannot pretend to -fathom or measure. Such a notion was the natural growth of the human -mind, amid such a set of circumstances as attended the development and -establishment of Christianity. Men sat in darkness, forlorn and without -hope, and it is not hard for us to imagine the exultation with which -some greater spirit would produce, and all others would embrace, the -idea of this misery and darkness being no more than an outer accident, -the mysterious and incomprehensible dispensation of a divine being, ever -alive to the destinies of men, but holding them in the hollow of an -unseen hand, and guiding them in ways that are not as our ways; ever -remote from corporeal vision, but operating at a multitude of points on -the spirit of each man through grace, and finally, by a consummating -miracle repeated daily some thousands of times, severing this spirit -from the probation of flesh, and prolonging its existence independently -of the body through all eternity in modes of being, none the less real -for being impossible to conceive. To Voltaire this was unspeakable -foolishness. The prodigies of grace, of the resurrection of the body, of -the incarnation of divinity, were inconsistent with the qualities which -he imputed to the creator of the universe, and hence he contented -himself with mocking at them; the real state of the case was simply that -a number of influences had drawn men aside from that conception of the -creator, with which such prodigies were not inconsistent, but were on -the contrary logically and inseparably associated. - -This failure to rise to the highest ideas involved in the great debate -explains, along with much besides, two striking facts connected with it. -It explains the intense acerbity of the conflict, and the flaming depth -of the chasm which divided and divides the two camps in France. For the -best natures are most violently irritated and outraged by mocking and -satiric attack upon the minor details, the accidents, the outside of the -objects of faith, when they would have been affected in a very different -way by a contrast between the loftiest parts of their own belief and the -loftiest parts of some other belief. Many persons who would listen to a -grave attack on the consistency, reasonableness, and elevation of the -currently ascribed attributes of the godhead, with something of the -respect due to the profound solemnity of the subject, would turn with -deaf and implacable resentment upon one who should make merry over the -swine of Gadara. - -The same circumstance, secondly, explains the absence of permanent -quality about all that Voltaire wrote upon religion. For instance, men -who sympathise with him in his aims, and even for their sake forgive him -his method, who have long ago struck the tents under which they once -found shelter in the lands of belief, to whom Catholicism has become as -extinct a thing as Mahometanism, even they will turn with better chance -of edification to the great masters and teachers of the old faith, than -to the fiery precursor of the new. And why, if not for the reason that -while he dealt mainly with the lower religious ideas, or with the higher -ideas in their lowest forms, they put these into the second place, and -move with an inspiring exultation amid the loftiest and most general -conceptions that fine imagination and a soaring reason could discover -among the spiritual treasures of their religion. They turned to the -diviner mind, and exercised themselves with the weightiest and most -universal circumstances of the destiny of mankind. This is what makes -their thought and eloquence of perpetual worth, because the -circumstances with which they deal are perpetually present, and the -elements of life and character to which they appeal perpetually -operative. The awful law of death, the impenetrable secret of the first -cause, the fierce play of passion and universal distribution of pain, -the momentariness of guilt and eternity of remorse, the anguish of -bereavement that chokes and rends, the hopeless inner desolation which -is the unbroken lot of myriads of the forlorn of the earth,—these -ghostly things ever laying siege to the soul were known to a Bossuet or -a Pascal, and resolved by a series of ideas about the unknowable power -and the government of the world, which are no longer the mighty weapons -of exorcism they once were, but they are at any rate of due magnitude -and proportion, sublime, solemn, never unworthy. We touch the hands of -those who have walked with the most high, and they tell us many moving -wonders; we look on faces that have shone in rays from the heaven of -noble thoughts; we hear solemn and melodious words from men who received -answers from oracles that to us are very mute, but the memory of whose -power is still upon us. Hence the work of these glowing mortals lives -even for those to whom their faith is dead, while the words that -Voltaire wrote on religion are lifeless as the Infamous which they so -meritoriously slew. As we have said, he never knew the deeper things of -Catholicism. This is what he wrote about the immortal Dante: ‘Everybody -with a spark of good sense ought to blush at that monstrous assemblage -in hell of Dante and Virgil, of Saint Peter and Madonna Beatrice. There -are to be found among us, in the eighteenth century, people who force -themselves to admire feats of imagination as stupidly extravagant and as -barbarous as this; they have the brutality to oppose them to the -masterpieces of genius, wisdom, and eloquence, that we have in our -language. _O tempora, O judicium!_’[218] To which prodigy of criticism -we can only exclaim with the echo, _O tempora, O judicium!_ - - -III. - -Let us see shortly what was Voltaire’s own solution of those facts of -life with which religion has to deal. The Catholic solution we know, and -can definitely analyse and describe; but the vagueness of Voltairean -deism defies any attempt at detailed examination. We can perceive a -supernatural existence, endowed with indefinable attributes, which are -fixed subjectively in the individual consciousness of each believer, and -which therefore can never be set forth in a scheme of general -acceptance. The Voltairean deist—and such persons exist in ample numbers -to this day—hardly ever takes the trouble to reconcile with one another -the various attributes which he imputes at various times to some great -master power of the universe. There is scarcely one of these attributes -to which, when it comes to be definitely described, he does not -encounter affronting contradiction in the real occurrences that arise -from time to time to search and try all our theories, deistical, or -other. The phenomena of moral and physical evil on the earth, and the -arrival of disasters which make no discrimination between their victims, -are constantly dealing sore blows to the conceptions which the deist -loves to erect in moments of optimistic expansion, of the clemency, -justice, and illimitable power of a being who governs the universe, and -is a something outside and independent of it. These optimist -conceptions, vague, unverified, free of definite relations with any -moral or social system, and furnishing no principle of active human -association as the Catholic idea of deity had done, constitute the -favourite religion or religiosity of those classes in all modern -countries, which have found the Voltairean kind of objection to the -Christian revelation insuperable, and which are so fortunate as to enjoy -a full measure of material prosperity. To these classes the black side -of life is strange and a matter of hearsay; and hence the awkwardness of -reconciling their complacent theory with the horror of facts is never -forced upon them. In their own happiness they love to superadd the -luxury of thankfulness to the bounty of a being to whom they owe all, -and to swell the tide of their own emotions by meditation on his -infinite and unspeakable perfections. Proof they require none, beyond -the loveliness and variety of external nature, the innocence and delight -of all young creatures, the order of the seasons bearing us their -copious fruit, the vivid intelligence and serviceable power of man, who -is the divinely appointed recipient of all these multitudinous favours. -Hence in proportion as this sort of deism stirs the soul of a man, the -more closely are his inmost thoughts reserved for contemplation of the -relations between the Supreme Being and his own individuality. It is a -creed which is specially adapted for, and has been generally seized by, -those with whom the world has gone very well, owing to their own -laudable exertion, and who are inclined to believe that the existing -ordering of society is fundamentally the best possible. It is the -superlative decoration of optimism. - -The mass of men, those who dwell in dens and whose lives are bitter, -have never, in spite even of Rousseau’s teaching, accepted deism. An -opportunity for trying the experiment had occurred in the fourth -century, and the lesson should not be forgotten. Deism had been the -prevailing opinion in religion, but, as the most instructive of all the -historians of the dissolution of the Empire observes, it was generally -felt that deism did not supply the void occasioned by the absence of the -multitude of sympathetic divinities of the pagan system. Its influence -was cold and inanimate.[219] The common people are wont to crave a -revelation, or else they find atheism a rather better synthesis than any -other. They either cling to the miraculously transmitted message with -its hopes of recompense, and its daily communication of the divine voice -in prayer or sacrament, or else they make a world which moves through -space as a black monstrous ship with no steersman. The bare deistic -idea, of a being endowed at once with sovereign power and sovereign -clemency, with might that cannot be resisted and justice that cannot be -impugned, who loves man with infinite tenderness, yet sends him no word -of comfort and gives him no way of deliverance, is too hard a thing for -those who have to endure the hardships of the brutes, but yet preserve -the intelligence of men. - - Comment concevoir un Dieu, la bonté même, - Qui prodigua ses biens à ses enfans qu’il aime, - Et qui versa sur eux les maux à pleines mains? - Quel œil peut pénétrer dans ses profonds desseins? - De l’être tout parfait le mal ne pouvait naître! - Il ne vient point d’autrui puisque Dieu seul est maître: - Il existe pourtant. O tristes vérités! - O melange etonnant de contrariétés! - Un Dieu vint consoler notre race affligée; - Il visita la terre et ne l’a point changée! - Un sophiste arrogant nous dit qu’il ne l’a pu; - Il le pouvait, dit l’autre, et ne l’a point voulu; - Il le voudra, sans doute; et tandis qu’on raisonne, - Des foudres souterraines engloutissent Lisbonne, - Et de trente cités dispersent les débris, - Des bords sanglans du Tage à la mer de Cadix.[220] - -A bald deism has undoubtedly been the creed of some of the purest and -most generous men that have ever trod the earth, but none the less on -that account is it in its essence a doctrine of self-complacent -individualism from which society has little to hope, and with which -there is little chance of the bulk of society ever sympathising. In -truth, one can scarcely call it a creed. It is mainly a name for a -particular mood of fine spiritual exaltation; the expression of a state -of indefinite aspiration and supreme feeling for lofty things. Are you -going to convert the new barbarians of our western world with this fair -word of emptiness? Will you sweeten the lives of suffering men, and -take its heaviness from that droning piteous chronicle of wrong and -cruelty and despair, which everlastingly saddens the compassionating ear -like moaning of a midnight sea; will you animate the stout of heart with -new fire, and the firm of hand with fresh joy of battle, by the thought -of a being without intelligible attributes, a mere abstract creation of -metaphysic, whose mercy is not as our mercy, nor his justice as our -justice, nor his fatherhood as the fatherhood of men? It was not by a -cold, a cheerless, a radically depraving conception such as this, that -the church became the refuge of humanity in the dark times of old, but -by the representation, to men sitting in bondage and confusion, of -godlike natures moving among them under figure of the most eternally -touching of human relations, a tender mother ever interceding for them, -and an elder brother laying down his life that their burdens might be -loosened. - -We have spoken of Voltairean deism, and the expression is a convenient -one to distinguish from the various forms of mystic theology, which -gloomily disclaim any pretence to be rational, the halting-place of -spirits too deeply penetrated with the rationalistic objections of -Voltaire to accept revelation, and either too timorous or too confident -to acquiesce in a neutral solution. It is unjust, however, to attribute -to Voltaire himself a perfect adherence to the deistical idea. For the -first half of his life there is no doubt that it floated in his mind, -as in so many others, in a random manner, as the true explanation of the -world. His introduction to the teaching of Newton would give a firmer -shape to such a belief. He has indeed told us that it was so. He -mentions that in the course of several interviews he had with Doctor -Samuel Clarke in 1726, this philosopher never pronounced the name of God -without a curious air of awe and self-collection, and he commemorates -the impression which the sight of this habit, and reflection upon its -significance, made upon him[221]. Still it was not a very active or -vital element of belief with him even then, but rather of the nature of -the sublimest of poetic figures. - - Oui, dans le sein de Dieu, loin de ce corps mortel, - L’esprit semble écouter la voix l’Eternel[222]. - -Clearly this kind of expression means very little, and has no source in -the deeper seats of the writer’s feeling. A considerable number of -Voltaire’s deistical ejaculations, and on these occasions he threw into -them a measure of real unction, may be fairly traced to the -extraordinary polemical utility of an idea of spotless purity, entire -justice, inexhaustible mercy, as an engine of battle against men who in -the sacred name of this idea were the great practitioners of intolerance -and wrong. - - Ignorer ton être suprême, - Grand Dieu! c’est un moindre blasphème, - Et moins digne de ton courroux - Que de te croire impitoyable, - De nos malheurs insatiable, - Jaloux, injuste comme nous. - Lorsqu’un dévot atrabilaire - Nourri de superstition, - A par cette affreuse chimère, - Corrompu sa religion, - Le voilà stupide et farouche: - Le fiel découle de sa bouche, - Le fanatisme arme son bras: - Et dans sa piété profonde - Sa rage immolerait le monde - A son Dieu, qu’il ne connaît pas.[223] - -To have a conception of perfect goodness was a manifest convenience in -confronting men who were to be proved masters of badness. But when the -pressure of circumstance forced Voltaire to seek in earnest for an -explanation of the world, which he had formerly been content to take in -an easy way upon trust, then the deism, which had been barely more than -nominal at best, was transformed into a very different and far sincerer -mood. It would obviously be a gross blunder from a logical point to -confound optimism with deism, but it is clear that what shook Voltaire’s -conviction of the existence of a deity was the awakening in him of a -keener sense of the calamities that afflict the race of man. Personal -misfortunes perhaps had their share. It was after the loss of Madame du -Châtelet, and after the rude dispersion of his illusions as to -Frederick, when he barely knew whither to turn for shelter or a home, -that the optimism which he had learnt in England began to lose its hold -upon him. We must do him the justice to add that he was yet more -sensible of disasters which affected others. The horrid tide of war -which devastated Europe and America, the yet more hateful tide of -persecution for opinion which swept over France, and the cruel -maladministration of justice which disgraced her tribunals, stirred all -that was best in him to the very depths. The only non-dramatic poem of -his which has strength, sincerity, and profundity of meaning enough -firmly to arrest the reader’s attention, and stimulate both thought and -feeling, is that fine and powerful piece which he wrote on the occasion -of the great earthquake of Lisbon.[224] Here he threw into energetic and -passionately argumentative verse the same protest against the theory -that whatever is is best, which he afterwards urged in a very different -form in the ‘refined insolence’ of Candide.[225] He approaches more -nearly than a quarter of a century before he would have thought -possible, to the deep gloom of the Pascal against whose terrible -pictures he had then so warmly protested. He sees mankind imprisoned in -a circle of appalling doom, from which there is no way of escape. Unlike -Pascal, he can find no solution, and he denounces that mockery of a -solution which cries that all is well in accents stifled with -lamentation. He protests against the delusion of forcing the course of -the world’s destiny into a moral formula, that shall contain the terms -of justice and mercy in their human sense. - - Aux cris demi-formés de leurs voix expirantes, - Au spectacle effrayant de leurs cendres fumantes, - Direz-vous: C’est l’effet des éternelles lois, - Qui d’un Dieu libre et bon nécessitent le choix? - Direz-vous, en voyant cet amas de victimes: - Dieu s’est vengé, leur mort est le prix de leurs crimes? - Quelle crime, quelle faute ont commis ces enfans - Sur le sein maternel écrasés et sanglans? - Lisbonne, qui n’est plus, eut-elle plus de vices - Que Londres, que Paris, plongés dans les délices? - Lisbonne est abîmée, et l’on danse á Paris. - -He equally refuses, though not in terms, to comfort himself by the -reflection that, in default of a better, the current ragged theory of -the providential government of the universe, because it may be possible, -must be true. He can find no answer, and confesses his belief that no -answer is to be found by human effort. Whatever side we take, we can -only shudder; there is nothing that we know, nothing that we have not to -fear. Nature is mute, and we interrogate her in vain; the book of -destiny is closed to our eyes. - - L’homme, étranger à soi, de l’homme est ignoré. - Que suis-je? où suis-je? où vais-je? et d’où suis-je tiré? - Atomes tourmentés sur cet amas de boue, - Que la mort engloutit, et dont le sort se joue, - Mais atomes pensans, atomes dont les yeux, - Guidés par la pensée, ont mesuré les cieux, - Au sein de l’infini nous élaçons notre être, - Sans pouvoir un moment nous voir et nous connaître. - - * * * * * - - Le passé n’est pour nous qu’un triste souvenir; - Le présent est affreux, s’il n’est point d’avenir, - Si la nuit du tombeau détruit l’être qui pense. - -He abandons Plato and rejects Epicurus. Bayle knows more than they, as, -with the balance in his hand, he teaches men to doubt; wise enough, -great enough, to be without a system. - -In a note he adds to this glorification of Bayle, whom he styles the -advocate-general of the philosophers—the thinker in whose pages all -opinions are set forth, all the reasons which shake them and all which -uphold are equally investigated, while he abstains from giving any -conclusions.[226] Elsewhere he explains that when he describes reason as -having made immense progress in Germany, he does not refer to those who -openly embrace the system of Spinoza; but the good folk who have no -fixed principles on the nature of things, who do not know what is, but -know very well what is not, these are my true philosophers.[227] - -It would not be difficult to find a score of passages in which the -writer assumes or declares certainty on this high matter to be -attainable, and to be entirely in one direction. His opinions -undoubtedly shifted with the veering of his moods, but on the whole -these axioms of suspense mark the central point to which they constantly -tended to return, and at which they rested longest. That dark word, Shut -thine eyes and thou shalt see, opened no road for him. The saying that -the Most High may be easily known, provided one does not press for -definition, offered no treasure of spiritual acquisition to the man who -never let go, even if he did not always accurately appreciate, Locke’s -injunction to us to be careful to define our terms. We cannot label -Voltaire either spiritualist or materialist. The success with which he -evades these two appellations is one of the best available tests of a -man’s capacity for approaching the great problems with that care and -positive judgment, which are quite as proper to them as to practical -affairs or to physical science. - -Thus with reference to the other great open question, he habitually -insisted that the immortality of the soul can never possibly be -demonstrated, and that this is why it has been revealed to us by -religion,[228] which is perhaps Voltaire’s way of saying that it is no -near concern of his. Sometimes he argued from considerations of general -probability. The brutes feel and think up to a certain point, and men -have only the advantage over them of a greater combination of ideas; the -more or less makes no difference in kind. ‘Well, nobody thinks of giving -an immortal soul to a flea; why should you give one any the more to an -elephant, or a monkey, or my Champagne valet, or a village steward who -has a trifle more instinct than my valet?’[229] Again, he retorted -significantly on those who contended with a vehemence of prejudice -known in some places even to this day, that belief in the immortality of -the soul is an indispensable condition of probity; as if the first Jews -accepted that dogma, and as if there were no honest men among them, and -no instruction in virtue.[230] - - -In fine, then, we search Voltaire in vain for a positive creed, which -logic may hold in coherent bonds, or social philosophy accept as a -religious force. The old word about his faith must be pronounced true. -It remains a creed of negation. But still, be it always understood, -negation of darkness. And this inevitably leads in the direction of the -day. It was an indispensable step in the process of transition. Men, it -is constantly being said since the violent breaking-up of French -society, will never consent to live on no better base than articles of -denial and formulas of suspense, for are not the deepest parts of human -character moved by strong yearning for relationship with the unknowable? -It may be so, and if it be, the Voltairean movement was the great -instrument in leading, not merely a scanty group of speculative -intellects, but vast bodies, large nations, of common folk to perceive, -or dimly to conjecture, that this object of adoration which their eyes -strain after _is_ unknowable, and that there is no attainable external -correlative of their deep desire. Voltaire never went so far in the -direction of assertion as Rousseau, and he never went so far in the -direction of denial as Holbach. And, whatever we may say generally of -the horror of the world for the spirit that denies, all that was best -and most truly progressive in French society during the eighteenth -century, Turgot and Condorcet no less than Beaumarchais, showed itself -content to follow him in this middle path. His appreciation of religion -was wanting in a hundred vital things, just as some may say that -Luther’s was, but it contained the one idea which the deepest spirit of -the time prompted men to desire, the decisive repudiation of the -religious notions of the past. We must call this negative, no doubt, but -no word should frighten us away from seeing how much positive aspiration -lay underneath. When men are in the mood of France a century and a -quarter since, when all that an old civilisation has bestowed on them of -what is best and strongest, rises up against all that the same -civilisation has bequeathed to them of what is pestilent and dangerous, -they are never nice critics. They do not decline a reinvigorating -article of faith, because it is not a system, nor do they measure a -deliverer by syllogism. The smallest chink may shine like light of the -sun to prisoners long held in black and cavernous recesses. - -When Bayle’s Dictionary came out, we read, so great was the avidity to -have sight of it, that long before the doors of the Mazarin library were -open, a little crowd assembled in the early morning of each day, and -there was as great a struggle for the first access to the precious book, -as for the front row at the performance of a piece for which there is a -rage.[231] This was the beginning of an immense impulse of curiosity, -eager to fill the vacuum occasioned by the slow subsidence of the old -religion, which had once covered not only faith, but science, history, -dialectic, and philosophy, all in a single synthesis. It was this -impulse which Voltaire both represented and accelerated. In these -periods of agitation, men forgive all to one who represents without -compromise or diminution their own dominant passions. Vehemence of -character counts for more than completeness of doctrine, and they crave -a battle-cry, not a dissertation. They need to have their own sentiment -aggressively presented, and their own defects of boldness or courage at -once rebuked and supplemented by a leader whose purpose can never be -mistaken, and whose words are never nipped by the frost of intellectual -misgiving. All through the century there was slowly growing up an inner -France, full of angry disgust against the past. Its germ was the crowd -eager to read Bayle. Its outcome was the night of the Fourth of August -1789, when the civil order of society was overthrown between a sunset -and a dawn. Voltaire, as we have seen, studiously abstained from any -public word upon things political, but it was he who in the long -interval between these two events held men by a watchword to which the -political decay of the country gave such meaning, that of hatred to the -old. And there was no such steadfast symbol of the old as the church, -to him and his school a lurid beacon on a monster-haunted shore. - -Voltaire’s selection of the church as the object of his attacks marks an -important difference between him and the other great revolutionary -precursor. Rousseau’s Savoyard Vicar was perfectly willing to accept the -cultus of Christianity, even when he had ceased to accept its dogma. He -regarded all particular religions as so many salutary institutions, all -good so long as they were the organs for a due service of God. He -actually celebrated mass with more veneration after the acquisition of -his new principles, than he had been accustomed to do when he supposed -that the mass was an occasion of personal divine presence. This kind of -teaching was clearly to perpetuate and transfix for ever the form of -religion which each country, or any given set of men in it, might -possess. It was to stereotype belief, as it is stereotyped among the -millions in the East. Whence was reform to come, whence any ray of new -light, whence a principle of growth and activity for the intelligence of -men? How on these terms is truth to win the battle at a single point? -This was the beginning of a fatal substitution of bland emotional -complacency for robust cultivation of the reason, and firm reverence for -its lessons as the highest that we can learn. Voltaire no doubt did in -practice many a time come to terms with his adversary while he was yet -on the way with him; but, disagreeable as these temporisings are to us -who live in an easier day, they never deceived any one, nor could they -ever be mistaken for the establishment of intellectual treason as a -principle, or of philosophic indifference as a climax. As has been said, -though he writes in the midst of the old régime, in the face of the -Bastille, and with the fetters of the enemy in some sort actually upon -him, he still finds a thousand means of reaching you.[232] He is always -the representative of reason, and never of sentimentalism. He was not -above superficial compromises in matters of conduct, and these it is -hard or impossible to condone; but at any rate he is free from the -deeper and more penetrating reproach of erecting hypocrisy into a -deliberate doctrine. - -We do not know how far he ever seriously approached the question, so -much debated since the overthrow of the old order in France, whether a -society can exist without a religion? He says in one place that to -believe God and spirits corporeal is an old metaphysical error, but -absolutely not to believe in any god would be an error incompatible with -wise government. But even this much was said for the sake of introducing -a taunt against the orthodox, who by a strange contradiction had risen -up with fury against Bayle for believing it possible that a society of -atheists could hold together, while they insisted with just as much -violence that the empire of China was established on a basis of -atheism.[233] His natural sagacity would most likely have shown him -that this is one of the sterile problems, with which the obstructive -defender of things as they are tries to draw the soldier of improvement -away from his strongest posts. Whether a society can exist without -religion or not, at least its existence as a structure for whose -duration we can be anxious, must depend on the number of men in it who -deal honestly with their own understandings. And, further, is no man to -be counted to have a religion who, like Voltaire, left great questions -open, and put them aside, as all questions, that must from the -limitations of human faculty eternally remain open, well deserve to be -put aside? Must we ever call an unknown God by one name? Are there so -few tasks for one on earth, that he must strain all his soul to fix the -regimen of high heaven? - -Voltaire, there is every reason to think, did in an informal kind of way -suppose in the bottom of his heart that there is nothing in human nature -to hinder a very advanced society from holding perfectly well together, -with all its opinions in a constant state of analysis. Whatever we may -think of it, this dream of what is possible, if the activity of human -intelligence were only sufficiently stimulated and the conditions of -social union were once so adjusted as to give it fair play, -unquestionably lies at the root of the revolutionary ideas with all -those who were first stirred by Voltaire rather than by Rousseau. -Condorcet, for instance, manifestly depends with the firmest confidence -upon that possibility being realised. It is the idea of every literary -revolutionist, as distinguished from the social or economic -revolutionist, in France at the present day. The knowledge that this was -the case, added to the sound conviction that men can never live by -analysis alone, gave its fire to De Maistre’s powerful attack, and its -immense force to Burke’s plea for what he called prejudice. But the -indispensable synthesis need never be immovably fixed, nor can it soon -again be one and single for our civilisation; for progress consists in -gradual modifications of it, as increase of knowledge and unforeseen -changes in the current of human affairs disclose imperfections in it, -and wherever progress is a law the stages of men’s advance are unequal. -Above all, it is monstrous to suppose that because a man does not accept -your synthesis, he is therefore a being without a positive creed or a -coherent body of belief capable of guiding and inspiring conduct. - -There are new solutions for him, if the old are fallen dumb. If he no -longer believes death to be a stroke from the sword of God’s justice, -but the leaden footfall of an inflexible law of matter, the humility of -his awe is deepened, and the tenderness of his pity made holier, that -creatures who can love so much should have their days so shut round with -a wall of darkness. The purifying anguish of remorse will be stronger, -not weaker, when he has trained himself to look upon every wrong in -thought, every duty omitted from act, each infringement of the inner -spiritual law which humanity is constantly perfecting for its own -guidance and advantage, less as a breach of the decrees of an unseen -tribunal, than as an ungrateful infection, weakening and corrupting the -future of his brothers. And he will be less effectually raised from -inmost prostration of soul by a doubtful subjective reconciliation, so -meanly comfortable to his own individuality, than by hearing full in the -ear the sound of the cry of humanity craving sleepless succour from her -children. That swelling consciousness of height and freedom with which -the old legends of an omnipotent divine majesty fill the breast, may -still remain; for how shall the universe ever cease to be a sovereign -wonder of overwhelming power and superhuman fixedness of law? And a man -will be already in no mean paradise, if at the hour of sunset a good -hope can fall upon him like harmonies of music, that the earth shall -still be fair, and the happiness of every feeling creature still receive -a constant augmentation, and each good cause yet find worthy defenders, -when the memory of his own poor name and personality has long been -blotted out of the brief recollection of men for ever. - - - - -CHAPTER VI. - -HISTORY - - -The activity of the foremost men of the eighteenth century in the -composition of history is too remarkable a circumstance, not to deserve -some attempt at explanation. There were historians in previous ages, but -in the eighteenth century there was both in France, and afterwards in -England, a special and extraordinary development in this direction. -Partially no doubt this was due to the general movement of curiosity, -the wide spread desire for all kinds of knowledge, which was in the air. -Men were emancipating themselves from the trammels of an authority which -had not widened the limits of inquiry in the same proportion as human -faculties had strengthened, and, amid the universal expansion of -intelligent interest and the eager scrutiny of all the objects of -knowledge which the new dawn was baring to sight, it was not possible -that the order of political and social facts in former epochs should be -neglected. This, however, does not sufficiently explain why such a man -as Hume betook himself to the composition of history, or why Gibbon -found himself best able to attack Christianity by tracing some of the -most important parts of its annals, or why Voltaire, who lived so -entirely and intensely in the present, should have thought it worth -while to give so much labour to presentation of the past. It is a -striking fact, which must be something more than an accident, that the -best secular histories which remain from this period, one of them the -most striking monument in historical literature, were written by the -most marked assailants of reigning superstition. - -Was it not, indeed, to be expected that as the dark clouds of an -absorbing consciousness of the supernatural cleared away, men of -understanding would be more and more drawn towards study of human -action, and that the advance of society under purely natural and -positive conditions would immediately seize a foremost place among the -objects of experiential inquiry? It is too constantly maintained by -persons with something of a vested interest in darkness, that those who -do not worship the gods are indifferent to the happiness of men. Yet the -history of intellectual progress would seem to show that it was not -until the commencement of a rapid decline in the acceptance of terrorist -and jealous deities and incomprehensible dogmas, that serious attention -was given to some of the subjects in which a sound knowledge is among -the most indispensable conditions of the advancing welfare of men. For -instance, as soon as the hold of ancient versions of the supernatural -was loosened over the stronger spirits, by the middle of the century -there instantly took place an astonishing development of activity in -the physical sciences. The interest of historic and economic studies was -at least as pressing. Becoming aware that men had made their own world, -thinkers found the consideration of the process by which this world is -made, and the order of society established and developed, forced upon -them with an entirely new significance. The dry bones of the ancient -valley of annalists and chroniclers were made to live, and the great -work of the reconstruction of the past was begun, with an alertness and -perseverance that has not been surpassed even in an age of far purer and -juster historical intelligence. It was quite reasonable that the -conviction of each act in the universe, from the crash of an empire to -the fall of a sparrow to the ground, being due to an arbitrary and -inscrutable decree, should prevent the rise of history from the level of -annals into the region of philosophy. The decay of this theory of the -government of the universe was as reasonably the cause of a new mode of -looking at the long records of the race, and we find ourselves moving in -a day of historical masterpieces. - -Voltaire has told us the circumstances under which he was led to -approach the philosophy of history. Madame du Châtelet, whose mind would -fain have reached every kind of knowledge, but who was especially apt -for metaphysics and geometry, had conceived an aversion for history. -‘What does it matter to me,’ she would ask, ‘a Frenchwoman living on my -estate, to know that Egil succeeded Haquin in Sweden, and that Ottoman -was the son of Ortogrul? I have read with pleasure the history of the -Greeks and the Romans; they offered me certain great pictures which -attracted me. But I have never yet been able to finish any long history -of our modern nations. I can see scarcely anything in them but -confusion; a host of minute events without connection or sequence, a -thousand battles which settled nothing. I renounced a study which -overwhelms the mind without illuminating it.’ To this frank statement of -the case, to which so many thousands of persons in all epochs would so -heartily subscribe, Voltaire replied by pointing out that perhaps the -study of history would be no waste of time, if by cutting away all the -details of wars, as tedious as they are untrustworthy, all the frivolous -negotiations which have been nothing but pieces of purposeless cheating, -all the minute incidents which stifle great events, and by retaining -those which paint manners, you made of this chaos a general and -well-arranged picture; in short, if you tried to disengage from the -concourse of events the history of the human mind.[234] Not all the -faults of execution ought to blind us to the merit of this notion of the -true way of studying history, or to the admirable clearness of vision -with which Voltaire, not only in this but in all his other historical -pieces, adhered to his own two leading principles; first, that laws, -arts, manners, are the chief matter and concern of history; and second, -that ‘details which lead to nothing are in history what baggage is to -an army, _impedimenta_, for we must look at things in large, for the -very reason that the human mind is small and sinks under the weight of -minutiæ.’ Minutiæ ought to be collected by annalists, or in some kind -of dictionaries where one might find them at need.[235] In this last -point Voltaire, as might be expected, was more just than Bolingbroke, -who had said somewhat petulantly that ‘he had rather take the Darius -whom Alexander conquered for the son of Hystaspes, and make as many -anachronisms as a Jewish chronologer, than sacrifice half his life to -collect all the learned lumber that fills the head of an -antiquary.’[236] The antiquary’s is a vocation like another, and the -highest kind of history can only flourish on condition that the humbler -ancillary kind flourishes also, and that there are patient and -scrupulous men to mark the difference between Darius Codomannus and -Darius the son of Hystaspes. - -We may say that three kinds of men write history: the gazetteer or -annalist, the statesman, and the philosopher. The annalist’s business is -to investigate and record events, and his highest merits are clearness, -accuracy, and simplicity. The political historian seeks the superficial -and immediate causes of great transactions, and he serves us by mixed -penetration and soundness of judgment. The historical philosopher is -concerned only with groups of events, the changes and movements that -transform communities, and with the trains of conditions that lead to -such movements. The majority of historians, from the illustrious Bacon -down to the compiler of a manual, illustrate the first kind. Thucydides -and Tacitus, among the ancients, a Machiavelli or a Finlay, among -moderns, may illustrate the second kind. As Voltaire was sometimes -gazetteer and sometimes statesman, so Montesquieu took the statesman’s -point of view in his reflections on the decline of Rome, and that of the -philosopher in the Spirit of Laws. It is the statesman or man of the -world, who, after recounting Caesar’s failure on one occasion to comply -with the etiquette of the senate, proceeds to make the following -reflection, that ‘we never offend men more, than when we shock their -ceremonies and usages: seek to oppress them, and that is sometimes a -proof of the importance you attach to them; but shock their customs, and -that is always a mark of contempt.’[237] It is the philosopher, feeling -for the causes of things and their order, who being led to inquire into -the spirit or meaning of Laws, understands such an inquiry to involve a -comparative investigation of the relations between laws and physical -climate, the quality of ground, situation and extent of territory, the -mode of life of the people, agricultural, hunting, or pastoral; between -laws and the freedom of the constitution, the religion, wealth, trade, -moral ideas, and manners, of the inhabitants; above all, historically, -between laws and their origin and the order of things on which they -were first founded. - -In a similar way we may divide Voltaire’s historical pieces into two -main classes. Indeed, if we count the Annals of the Empire, which he -wrote to please the Duchess of Saxe-Gotha, he may rank also under the -third remaining head among the annalistic historians. This, however, is -too unsatisfactory a piece of work for us to care either to classify or -to remember it. The subject was not of his own selection, he knew -comparatively little about it, his materials were extremely scanty and -imperfect, and he composed it at a time when his whole mind was -violently perturbed by his recent quarrel with Frederick, and torn by -anxiety where he should find a home in rest and freedom. It was the only -work he ever wrote, for which he perhaps had no heart, and the least -observant reader will notice how vast a difference this made in the -temper of its composition. Indeed, Voltaire was not born to be a simple -chronicler. The realistic and practical leanings of his intellect -naturally gave him a distaste for the collection of mere uninterpreted -and unapplied facts. His clear comprehensiveness, the product of a -vigorous imagination with strong sense, as naturally impelled him to -group circumstances, and to introduce the widest possible generality -among them. He has one of the peculiar gifts of the historian, as -distinguished from the gazetteer, of throwing rapid glances over a wide -field on the suggestion of a minor fact as he passes by it, and of -converting what to others would be the mere unconsidered trifles of -narrative into something possessed of its due measure of vitality and -significance. He fills his pages with reflections that are usually not -brought from very far depths, but which are almost always lively, just, -and in real matter. Perhaps this is not an unmixed good, for it is not -unconnected with an extraordinary evenness and light facility of style, -which tends to draw the reader somewhat too rapidly and too smoothly -over ground that had been rugged enough to the actual travellers. It -tends therefore tacitly to plant a false impression about the tardiness, -difficulty, peril, and infinitely varied possibilities of the social -movements which are history’s object and material. Perhaps a reader has -a better idea of the true manner in which events march, from Comines or -Clarendon, than from all the elegance and manifold graces of Voltaire, -and we sometimes feel inclined to repeat De Maistre’s angry demand for -that grave and unhasting dignity which is the life of history. - -We have already noticed one of the differences between Voltaire and -Rousseau, which arose from the predominance of sentiment over reason in -the latter. In the present connection another fact well worth noticing -is that Rousseau was entirely wanting in either taste or serious regard -for history. The past seems to have been to him a kind of blurred -tablet, confused and indecipherable, interposed between the vision of -men and the only thought or knowledge which it is good for them to -possess. Voltaire’s reading of this tablet was inadequate enough, in -many respects it was even a grave distortion of the truth; but with that -sound sense in which Rousseau was so absolutely deficient, he felt how -irrational it was, in the first place, to shut our eyes deliberately to -the course and meaning of all the foregone action of the race, and, in -the second, to leave unattacked and unturned the strong position which -the traditional parables of the past and their undisturbed -interpretation conferred upon the champions of orthodoxy and absolutism. -Rousseau, being a sentimentalist, appears to have discerned nothing of -this. His ideas all involved a breach with the past, as Voltaire’s did, -but Voltaire deserves credit for perceiving that, to make this -effective, you must at least find out as well as you can what the past -was. - -For his four works in the class of political history he had the best -attainable authorities and material, and no one was ever more diligent -in putting them to the best possible use.[238] His acute sense, -strengthened by contact with the world and its most active personages, -made him what we may almost call prematurely scientific in his demand -for adequate evidence and proof. It is rather striking, for example, to -find him anticipating more recent objections to the trustworthiness of -Tacitus, pointing out the extraordinary improbabilities in his account -of Tiberius, Nero, and the others. There is all the difference, he says, -between a faithful historian equally free from adulation and hatred, and -‘a malicious wit who poisons everything through the medium of a concise -and energetic style.’ Are we to believe, he asks elsewhere, on the story -of a man who lived long after Tiberius, that this emperor, nearly eighty -years old, who had up to that time been decent almost to austerity, yet -passed all his time in debaucheries hitherto unknown, and so monstrous -as to need new names for them?[239] And in the same way he questions the -alleged atrocities of Nero and Caligula, as well as the motives imputed -to Domitian by Tacitus for the frequency with which he sent to inquire -after the health of Agricola. These historic doubts sprang from none of -the political judgment or feeling which propounds them in more modern -times, but purely from scientific incredulity. ‘History,’ he once wrote, -‘is after all nothing but a parcel of tricks that we play the -dead.’[240] He did not hold this slightly splenetic theory, in which -assuredly there is a painful truth, to absolve him from the duty of -doing what he could to belie it, and to make history as correct and as -faithfully representative of actual occurrences, as careful inquiry -from those most likely to know the characters of the most prominent -actors could make it. In the composition of the Siècle de Louis XV., he -had of course the advantage of knowing all these leaders of the public -activity personally and at first hand, while if he had not that -advantage to the same extent in the Siècle de Louis XIV., he at least -mixed on intimate terms with many who had been intimate with the court -of the great monarch. For the history of Russia he was amply provided -with documents and authentic narratives from the Russian court, at whose -solicitation he undertook a work which was the first full introduction -of that hitherto barbarous and unknown country to the literature of -civilised Europe. His letters to Schouvalof, the imperial chamberlain, -attest the unremitting industry with which he sought for every kind of -information that might be useful to him. ‘The enlightened spirit which -now reigns among the principal nations of Europe, requires that we -should go to the bottom, where in former times a historian barely -thought it worth while to skim the surface. People wish to know how a -nation grew together; what was its population before the epoch of which -you treat; the difference in the number of the regular army then and in -former times; the nature and growth of its commerce; what arts have -sprung up within the country, and what have been introduced from -elsewhere and been perfected there; what used to be the ordinary average -revenue of the state, and what it is now; the birth and extension of -its navy; the proportion in numbers between its nobles and its -ecclesiastics and monks, and between the latter and the cultivators of -the soil, etc.’[241] Even importunities of this kind continued over a -space of some years, and the copious responses which they brought, never -consoled Voltaire for not having made the journey to the Russian capital -in his proper person. ‘I should have learnt more from you in a few hours -of conversation,’ he wrote to Schouvalof, ‘than all the compilers in the -world will ever teach me.’[242] In writing the History of Charles XII. -of Sweden, one of the most delightful of his books, the art of which is -none the less because it is so little ostentatious and striking and -seems so easy, he had procured a large quantity of material from -Fabrice, who knew the Swedish king during his detention at Bender and -subsequently, and met Voltaire in London. This material was supplemented -in later years by information picked up at Lunéville from the ex-Polish -king Stanislas, who was indebted to Charles for his sovereignty, that -true δῶρον ἄδωρον. ‘As for the portraits of men,’ Voltaire declared, -‘they are nearly all the creations of fancy; ’tis a monstrous piece of -charlatanry to pretend to paint a personage with whom you have never -lived.’[243] Napoleon, in the memorable campaign of 1812, coming to -various places which Voltaire had occasion to describe in his History of -Charles XII., found his account weak and inaccurate, and threw it aside -in favour of Adlerfeldt. This was to be expected from the very merit of -the book; for how should a picture, painted in large for the general -instruction of the world, satisfy the minute requirements of strategical -topography? It was precisely Voltaire’s object to separate history from -geography, statistics, anecdote, biography, tactics, and to invest it -with an independent character and quality apart from all these. - -It is another of the distinctions of his new method of writing history -that, with the exception of the book on Charles XII., he throws persons -and personal interests into a second place, as being no more than -instruments or convenient names for critical turning-points in the large -movements of peoples. In the narration of the rise of Russia to a place -among civilised nations, the character of Peter the Great inevitably -comes into marked prominence, because when a population lies on the -stagnant level of barbarism, the first man who summons them to undertake -the task of national elevation constitutes an element of paramount -importance in their annals. In proportion, however, as they rise to the -fulfilment of this surpassing work, the importance of the heroic -individual diminishes; as the national self-consciousness and collective -powers become greater, the figure of the individual shows less. - -Voltaire was always conscious, though not so clearly as writers are now, -of the great historical principle that besides the prominent men of a -generation there is a something at work underneath, a moving current on -whose flood they are borne. He never fixed this current by any of the -names which now fall so glibly from our lips,—tendency of the times, -tenor of public opinion, spirit of the age, and the like, by which we -give a collective name to groups of sentiments and forces, all making in -what seems to be a single direction. But although unnamed, this singular -and invisible concurrence of circumstance was yet a reality to him. The -age was something besides its heroes, and something besides its noisiest -and most resounding occurrences. His divisions of the great epochs of -humanity are undoubtedly open to much criticism, because the principles -on which he drew the dividing lines have lost their force in new -generations. It was to be expected that they would do so; and his four -great epochs[244] were not likely to remain the four great epochs of a -posterity, which has partially learnt the lesson that he had not learnt -at all, that perfection in the fine arts is not the highest mark of an -age in which humanity may glory. Nevertheless, we are bound to recognise -that a new way of regarding human action, as well as a new way of -composing history, was being introduced by a writer whose first -paragraph declared that he proposed to himself a greater object than an -account of the life of Lewis XIV.; that he designed to paint for the -instruction of posterity, not the actions of a single man, but the -spirit of men; and that while all periods must be alike to one who only -desires to fill his memory with facts, discrimination among them cannot -be dispensed with for one who thinks. - -Hence also the propriety of discrimination among the various kinds of -fact which are at the historian’s disposal, and in this order Voltaire’s -whole soul revolted against the reigning practice and prescription. ‘I -would rather have details,’ he wrote to one of his intimates so early in -his career as 1735, ‘about Racine and Despréaux, Molière, Bossuet, -Descartes, than I would about the battle of Steinkirk. There is nothing -left but the names of men who led battalions and squadrons. There is no -return to the human race from a hundred engagements; but the great men I -have spoken of prepared pure and everlasting pleasures for mortals still -unborn. A canal-sluice, a picture by Poussin, a fine tragedy, a truth -established, are all of them things a thousand times more precious than -the whole mass of annals of the court, and than all the narratives of -campaigns.’[245] From this and from a multitude of other passages, as -well as from his actual compositions, we perceive that the activity of a -court and the manœuvres of an army were no longer in Voltaire’s eyes the -fit substance of history. One reason for this might be his lively sense -of the impossibility of knowing the character and motives of people with -whom one has not lived, or the real cause of even the most momentous -intrigues and negotiations in which one has not taken a personal share. -A still deeper reason would be his most rational conviction that these -matters are only of moment to us for their larger results and -unmistakable outcome, and from the profoundly true and important -principle that the progress of intellectual enlightenment, material -prosperity, and moral elevation is not only a feature in the history of -a nation, but does itself constitute that history, while all records of -other transactions in the course of its annals, achievements in -diplomacy, feats of arms, revolutions in policy, have no true historic -value, except for the light they shed upon this economic, intellectual, -and moral progress, and are not worth studying except in that light. We -may see the immediate effects of Voltaire’s influence most markedly of -all in Gibbon, but in a less important shape in the general account of -the middle ages which Robertson contributed to his History of Charles V. -(1769), and which remained for many years the most instructive piece -that our literature possessed upon the character and spirit of the -feudal system and other features of the middle ages. Adam Ferguson’s -Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767) bears traces of the same -influence. In both of these cases much also must be added for the -kindred authority of Montesquieu. One has some hesitation in adding Hume -to the list in the present connection, because his history, the -composition of which extended from 1752 to 1763, ought perhaps to be -counted rather the direct and independent outcome of the French -philosophic spirit, than of the French historic spirit which itself -proceeded from the philosophy; and because, moreover, Hume, as a -historian, has some of Voltaire’s most serious defects, without that -breadth and size which constituted his greatest merit, though it is -needless to point out how many merits Hume had of his own. It is worth -remarking that in some pages which he wrote on Hume’s History,[246] -Voltaire gave it a joyful welcome, as might be expected, and -particularly to those parts which we now esteem most lightly, such as -the contemptuous account of Cromwell. - -To return, however, to the point from which we have digressed. One very -direct consequence of the historical principle we have described, and of -the way in which it was illustrated in the histories of Lewis XIV. and -Lewis XV., and most of all in the Essay on Manners, was the degradation -of war from the highest to the lowest place among the objects of the -historian’s regard. War began for the first time to be systematically -considered and treated as a mere instrument and means, and not as one of -the most serious of social ends. We can never honour Voltaire too long -nor too deeply for the vehemence and sincerity of his abhorrence of the -military spirit. Nowhere do we feel more distinctly that he marked the -end of the mediæval temper, than in his noble protests against the glory -of bloodshed. The great orators of the church to the very last donned -the robes of their most sumptuous rhetoric, when they were called to -consecrate the virtues of the victorious soldier. The pages of the Old -Testament supplied them with a hundred baleful heroes to whom they might -liken their warrior, and a hundred cruel and bloody tropes with which -they might decorate the funeral oration. So long as the atrocities of -the Hebrew chiefs and people, their treacheries and slaughters, were -held sacred and celebrated with unction, it was not likely that the -voice of the peacemaker could make itself heard. - -Voltaire not only held up these demoralising records to the odium they -deserve; he directly taxed the clergy with their failure to discharge -the very highest part of their duty. Of the five or six thousand sermons -of Massillon, he asked, are there a couple where you could pick out a -word or two against the scourge and crime of war? Bourdaloue preached -against impurity, but what sermon did he ever direct against the murder, -rapine, brigandage, and universal rage, which desolate the world? -‘Miserable physicians of souls, you declaim for five quarters of an hour -against the mere pricks of a pin, and say no word on the curse which -tears us into a thousand pieces! Philosophers and moralists, burn your -books: so long as the caprice of a handful of men will cause the -massacring in all loyalty of thousands of our brothers, the part of the -human race which is devoted to heroism will contain all that is most -frightful in human nature. What concern to me are humanity, benevolence, -modesty, temperance, gentleness, wisdom, piety, so long as half an ounce -of lead shatters my body, and I die at twenty in torments unspeakable, -surrounded by five or six thousand dead or dying, while my eyes, opening -for the last time, see the town I was born in delivered to fire and -sword, and the last sounds that reach my ears are the shrieks of women -and children expiring in the ruins—and the whole for the pretended -interests of a man that we do not know?’[247] His rebuke to Montesquieu -is still more distinctively modern. The author of the Esprit des Lois -had said that among societies it sometimes happens that natural defence -possibly involves the necessity of attack, when a nation perceives that -a longer peace would place another nation in a position to destroy -it.[248] ‘If ever there was a war evidently unjust,’ Voltaire replies, -‘it is that which you propose; it is to go and kill your neighbour for -fear your neighbour should be in a condition to attack you; that is to -say, you must run the risk of ruining your country, in the hope of -ruining without reason some other country.... If your neighbour grows -too powerful during a time of peace, what hinders you from growing -powerful like him? If he has made alliances, make alliances on your -side. If, having less religion, he has all the more manufacturers and -soldiers for it, imitate him in so sage an economy. If he drills his -sailors better, drill yours too: all that is perfectly just. But to -expose your people to the most horrible misery, in the idea, which is so -often chimerical, of crushing your dear brother, the most serene -bordering prince—! ’twas never for a president of a pacific order to -give you such a piece of counsel.’[249] The book in which this sound -view of justice and expediency in the dealings of nations with one -another was pressed upon the attention of France, was published in 1764, -five years before the birth of the man who turned the tide back, and -made the international policy of France a synonym both for iniquity and -folly. On the 15th of August 1769 Voltaire concluded his letter to -D’Alembert with his usual vivacity: ‘Adieu; my compliments to the devil, -for it is he who governs the world.’[250] If he had known that, while he -was writing, Napoleon Bonaparte had come into the world, and could at -the same time have foreseen the new-comer’s destiny, he might have said -the same thing more seriously. Voltaire never played the sentimentalist. -He knew that there are complexities of affairs which only the sword can -cut. But he was the first influential writer—for the abbé Saint-Pierre, -so undeservedly laughed at for his dreams of perpetual peace, had no -influence to speak of—who deliberately placed war among retrograde -agencies, and deliberately dwelt upon peaceful industry as the true life -of nations.[251] - -Diplomacy and its complex subterranean processes, which have occupied so -extremely disproportionate a space in written history, and which are in -acted history responsible for so much evil, were in the same way -informally relegated to the region of inhuman occupations. Its methods -were the tortuous and depressing methods of the same past, which had -made the many the playthings and unhappy instruments of the few, and had -never interrupted the triumphant manœuvres of craft and subtlety by a -whisper for the claims of humanity and justice. Voltaire scarcely ever -speaks of negotiations between contending powers without a shrewd -thrust, half contemptuous and half angry. The plain where some -negotiations took place in the struggles among the descendants of -Charles the Great is still called the Field of Lies; a name, he says, -that might well be common to most spots where men have negotiated.[252] -And this represents his general tone in speaking of a branch of activity -which may interest the professional diplomatist in all its details, but -which, as he thought, can only concern the historical student in its -results. Here Voltaire represented a marked tendency, which waxes -stronger as societies grow more penetrated with popular forces, to -divest diplomacy of a professional quality, and to throw the adjustment -of the relations between nations as entirely as possible into the hands -of plain men of firm and upright character, and full knowledge of the -special matters at issue. - -It is, however, when we come to the ground idea of the Essay on -Manners,[253] that we feel the full breath of the modern spirit, and -perceive that at length we are nearing the wide expanse of the sea. -There we emerge absolutely from the narrow conception of universal -history, with which Bossuet had familiarised men’s minds in the -Discourse on Universal History. This famous piece, which has had at -least as much praise as it merits, if we are to consider reason as well -as eloquence, was fundamentally and in substance no more than a bit of -theological commonplace splendidly decorated. Bossuet indeed spoke of -‘the concatenation of human affairs,’ but only in the same sentence with -‘the sequence of the counsels of God.’ The gorgeous rhetorician of the -church was not likely to rise philosophically into the larger air of -universal history, properly so called. His eloquent discourse is a -vindication of divine foresight, by means of an intensely narrow survey -of such sets of facts as might be thought not inconsistent with the -deity’s fixed purpose to make one final and decisive revelation to men. -No one who looks upon the vast assemblage of stupendous human -circumstances, from the first origin of man upon the earth, as merely -the ordained antecedent of what, seen from the long procession of all -the ages, figures in so diminutive a consummation as the Catholic -church, is likely to obtain a very effective hold of that broad sequence -and many-linked chain of events, to which Bossuet gave a right name, -but whose real meaning he never was even near seizing. His merit is -that he did in a small and rhetorical way, what Montesquieu and Voltaire -afterwards did in a truly comprehensive and philosophical way; he -pressed forward general ideas in connection with the recorded movements -of the chief races of mankind. For a teacher of history to leave the -bare chronicler’s road so far as to declare, for example, the general -principle, inadequate and overstated as it is, that ‘religion and civil -government are the two points on which human things revolve,’ even this -was a clear step in advance—and to dismiss the long series of emperors -from Augustus to Alexander Severus in two or three pages was to show a -rare sense of large historic proportion. Again, Bossuet’s expressions of -‘the concatenation of the universe,’ of the interdependence of the parts -of so vast a whole, of there coming no great change without having its -causes in foregoing centuries, and of the true object of history being -to observe in connection with each epoch those secret dispositions of -events which prepared the way for great changes, as well as the -momentous conjunctures which more immediately brought them to pass—all -these phrases seem to point to a true and philosophic survey. But they -end in themselves, and lead nowhither. The chain is an arbitrary and -one-sided collection of facts. The writer does not cautiously follow and -feel after the successive links, but forges and chooses and arranges -them after a pattern of his own, which was fixed independently of them. -A scientific term or two is not enough to disguise the purely -theological essence of the treatise. - -Bossuet’s Discourse is moreover constructed wholly on the theory that a -special revelation was delivered to the Jews, and in tracing their -course we have fast hold of the chain by which it has pleased heaven to -communicate to earth all the truths we possess as to the highest things. -Such a conception stifles a modern reader. The first pages of the Essay -on Manners, sometimes placed separately as the Philosophy of History, -prove that we have escaped from the cave. The chosen people fell into -rank with other peoples, that equally supposed themselves to be chosen -by their own peculiar gods. They lose the towering pre-eminence in -virtue and light and divine favour with which their own records and -Bossuet’s interpretation had so splendidly invested them. We find that -their pretensions were not unique, but universal among nations in such a -stage; that their virtues were not singular, though some of their vices -seem so. In a word, if some of Voltaire’s details are crude and -rudimentary, at least he has the merit of showing to his unaccustomed -readers what vast epochs of time, what uncounted multitudes of men, what -varied movements of the human spirit, surround the little speck of -Judaism. - -The bulk of the Essay was composed in 1740, but it is probable that this -preliminary examination of other oriental nations, their practices, -institutions, and religious ideas, was suggested by Montesquieu’s -memorable book, which appeared in 1748, some years before the -publication of the Essay on Manners. It is in point of execution much -less satisfactory than what follows, for Voltaire’s knowledge of Greek -and Hebrew was inadequate, and he fell into various errors which his -adversaries happily possessed scholarship enough to expose. In the -modern provinces of the book, which constitute the important part of it, -he was much more entirely at home in his subject. Here his familiarity -with detail, considering the vast quantity of his other employments, is -extremely surprising, and perhaps in no other book of equal generality -have there been discovered so few serious inaccuracies, though none have -encountered more hostile critics. - -Prejudice, alas, spares truth and light no more when it narrows the -vision of a free-thinker, than when it distorts the faculty of the -devout. Being a reaction against Bossuet’s unreasonable exaltation of -the Jews and their history, Voltaire’s conception of the place due to -them partook of the inevitable fault of all reactions, and left out of -sight considerations which it is eminently unscientific not to remember. -‘You never find,’ he says, ‘a generous action in the annals of the -Hebrews; they knew neither hospitality nor liberality nor clemency. -Their sovereign bliss is to practise usury with foreigners, and this -spirit of usury is so rooted in their hearts, that it is the continual -object of the figures they employ in the eloquence which is peculiar to -them. Their glory is to deliver to fire and slaughter the small -villages of which they may be able to take possession. They assassinate -their masters when they are slaves, and they never know how to pardon -when they are victorious; they are the enemies of the human race.’[254] -This is as great an exaggeration on one side, as Bossuet’s exaltation of -them and their deeds was on the other side. We ought to admit what -abominable traits the character and history of this race unfortunately -present, without forgetting how much is owing to them for preserving in -its sublimest shape, and investing with the most deeply impressive -images and associations, that idea of monotheism which, if destined to -be superseded by other ideas more commensurate with the limits of human -intelligence, must still be counted the germ of much that is purest and -loftiest and most inspiring among the ideals of western civilisation. - -The same kind of extreme prejudice which drove Voltaire into maintaining -of the Jews, not that they were a people whom we should do very ill -either to imitate or admire, but nothing less than that they were the -enemies of the human race, found vent in such assertions as that if any -one could have restored the Empire to its strength, or at all events -retarded its fall, that man was the Emperor Julian.[255] A historian may -justly contend, if he thinks that the evidence warrants him, that Julian -belongs to the type of virtuous reactionists, just as we may say it of -Wesley or the chiefs of the Tractarians. But to make such an assertion -as that the repression of Christianity after the middle of the fourth -century, even supposing it to have been possible of achievement, could -have given back to the rapidly declining empire a strength of which all -the roots were lifeless, was to falsify history for the sake of exalting -the name of an apostate. A Roman aristocrat, blind to the real operation -and comparative value of the forces at work, might be pardoned for -holding Christianity guilty of the general dissolution around him; but -it was a strange phantasy for a philosopher of the eighteenth century to -suppose that the Christian system, in the shape which it had assumed by -Julian’s time, did not offer principles of firmer association, than the -mere rites of a paganism which was spontaneously decaying with a -rapidity that increased day by day.[256] There is no stronger -illustration of the twist which polemical fury may give to the most -acute intelligence, than this belief of Voltaire’s, that an organisation -which had attracted to itself every able and statesmanlike intellect of -the time, could do less for the regeneration of the Empire than the -initiated disciple of Platonist theurgy. - -His account of the history of the church is composed in the same vein, -and we may see where Gibbon, who was a reader of Voltaire, drew the -inspiration of the solemn sneer with which he sapped solemn creed.[257] -‘So many frauds, so many errors, so many disgusting absurdities,’ says -Voltaire, ‘with which we have been inundated for seventeen hundred -years, have been unable to do any harm to our religion. It is -unquestionably divine, since seventeen centuries of imposture and -imbecility have not destroyed it.’[258] Voltaire thought as ill as -possible of the century to which he belonged; we cannot therefore charge -him with the inconsistency which marks some of his most prominent -disciples, who while they accepted such an account of the vileness of -the church as he had given them, did not scruple to believe that, as if -by miracle, seventeen centuries of steady depravation were _per saltum_ -to be followed by an eighteenth and other centuries of boundless virtue -and enlightenment. Still it is wonderful that he should have been able -to appreciate the admirable character of the best sovereign of the -thirteenth century, Lewis IX.,[259] and to describe his motives and his -achievements so generously, and yet should never have thought of the -education and surrounding spiritual conditions by which such a character -had been formed. If the power of Catholicism for evil was so great and -decisive, it would have been reasonable to suppose that it had some -share also in moulding to good those who came forth from it the very -flower of humanity. But Voltaire did not know how much a man is the -product of a system operating on, and with, the individual -predisposition, or he would not have chidden St. Lewis for remaining on -the level of the prejudice of his time, instead of changing the spirit -of his age.[260] How should St. Lewis have risen from the prejudice of -his age, when it was exactly that prejudice which had formed him, and of -which he represented the worthy side? - -Even without this inconsistency, the fundamental error is bad enough. We -get very wearied of the persistent identification of the church -throughout the dark ages with fraud and imposture and sinister -self-seeking, when we have once learnt, what is undoubtedly the most -important principle in the study of those times, that it was the -churchmen who kept the flickering light of civilisation alive, amid the -raging storms of uncontrolled passion and violence. The truth is that -Voltaire never realised civilisation as an organism, which if not -surrounded with the proper conditions of life will perish, and which -will prosper and wax stronger exactly in proportion as it is nourished. -That the light was more than once very near sinking in the west under -the waves of barbarism, as it has actually sunk in the eastern portions -of the Empire, seems to have been an all-important fact which he either -never saw, or which, if he saw it, never impressed him as assuredly it -ought to have done. - -This is the more curious as he was able to perceive, in a way in which -it were much to be wished that more recent historians might show an -equal discernment, that we ought to use the terms of civilisation, with -all their complex and accumulated associations, in an extremely modified -sense in speaking of the centuries between the fifth and the thirteenth, -just as it is the gravest mistake to suppose that, because you can -express the results of the various contests of those times in terms of -philosophy, therefore the actors in any one of them were both conscious -of its most general bearings, and were animated by large and -philosophical inclinations. For example, after he has told us how -William the Conqueror sent to the Pope Harold’s battle-standard and a -small portion of the small treasure that an English king might possess -in those times, he proceeds to reduce the transaction to what he -conceived to be its true proportions, in the following manner: ‘Thus,’ -he says, ‘a barbarian, the son of a harlot, the murderer of a legitimate -king, shares the plunder of this king with another barbarian; for if you -take away the names of duke of Normandy, king of England, and pope, all -is reduced to the action of a Norman brigand and a Lombard receiver of -plunder.[261] This being the case, the secular possessors of power being -so rude, petty, and barbarous, their contests being ‘those of bears and -wolves,’ their rapacity and violence being tempered by few of those -ideas of justice which form the bonds of society in its more advanced -stages, it ought to have struck even the most ardent enemy of -ecclesiastical pretensions as a thing in the highest degree -unphilosophical, to pour all the ill epithets of usurpation upon the -virtuous efforts of the great churchmen, who were least touched by the -spirit of violence, to take away as much power as they could from -barbarous princes and nobles, who were most impregnated with that and -all other dark spirits. The smaller the difference between the least -moral and the most moral orders in a community, the more desirable it is -that the order with even a small advantage should acquire as much power -as possible; for the reason that so near an approach to equality in -morals is most likely to occur when the average is low, and when -therefore the need to prevent it from falling any lower is most urgent. -Granting that the ecclesiastics were only slightly the superiors of the -barbarous laymen, this is all the better ground for rejoicing that they -succeeded in converting their ascendancy of moral idea into an -ascendancy of political fact. - -In short, Voltaire’s great panorama, magnificent as it is and most -royally planned, is not drawn in lines and with colour that explain the -story or lay bare the principles of its progress. The plan is imposed -from without, just as in Bossuet’s case, not carefully sought from -within the facts themselves. What is meant then by the assertion that -Voltaire’s Essay is one of the foundations of modern history? If he -gives no explanation of the course of history, none to himself probably, -and none to us assuredly, what is his merit? This, that he has fully -placed before us the history which is to be explained; that he has -presented the long external succession of facts in their true magnitude -and in a definite connection; that he did not write a history of France, -or of the papacy, or of the Mahometan power, or of the crusades, but -that he saw the advantage, as we see the unavoidable necessity, of -comprehending in a single idea and surveying in a single work the -various activities, the rise and fall of power, the transference from -one to another of political predominance, the contributions to the art -of living, among the societies which were once united in a single -empire. The history of each of these societies, England, France, Spain, -Italy, the Byzantine Empire, is followed in relation to the history of -Europe, which is indeed composed of these co-ordinate parts. The -movement of communities since the dissolution of the Roman Empire is -exhibited in a collective form, and that it should be exhibited and -accepted in this form was obviously a preliminary step to an organic -treatment of the multiplied laws of social physics. - -‘There are some events,’ he wrote in a note to his best poem, ‘which -have effects, and others which have none. It is with the chain of events -as it is with a genealogical tree, where we perceive branches that -become extinct at the first generation, and others that continue the -race. Many events remain without any filiation. It is thus that in every -machine there are effects necessary to the movement, while others are -indifferent, following the operation of the first, and leading to -nothing. The wheels of a vehicle serve to make it go; but whether they -raise a little more or a little less dust, the journey is accomplished -equally. Such is the general order of the world, that the links of the -chain are not deranged by a little more or a little less of -irregularity.’[262] The figures in this passage serve adequately to -describe his own treatment. We see in the Essay the lines of the -genealogical tree, but we do not learn the laws of the transmission of -qualities from one stock to another; we see the links of the chain, but -not the conditions which fastened each to the other; conditions, indeed, -only to be grasped through a scientific study of human nature which -Voltaire had never made; and finally we see the towering car drawn -slowly along a devious road by sweat and strain of millions, but we know -not why it went by this road rather than another. In a word, the inner -machinery of societies and of their movement remains as far from our -sight as it ever was. The study of those economic and material forces -which have so profound an influence upon social transformations, was in -its infancy, and the Economists, who really saw that there are definite -laws regulating the play of these forces, unfortunately mixed up with -their speculations a number of chimerical fancies, which Voltaire was -too acute to accept, but not patient enough to sift.[263] In this -respect he is as defective as Gibbon, in whose book, so justly famous -for its splendid breadth of conception and industrious elaboration of -detail, we have much of that meagre philosophy which consisted in the -exposure of falsehood, but little of the true science which shows us the -numerous organs of society in connection with their actual play and -function. Neither Gibbon nor Voltaire made any contribution, nor seems -to have been aware of the importance of contributing, to that study of -the fundamental conditions of the social union, which Aristotle -commenced, and which both Bodin in the sixteenth century and Montesquieu -in the eighteenth had so meritoriously continued.[264] Nevertheless, it -was much to lead men to study the history of modern Europe as a whole, -and we may say of Voltaire in connection with history what he said of -Corneille in connection with tragedy—‘It is so great a merit to have -opened the career, and inventors are so much above other men, that -posterity pardons their greatest faults.’[265] - - - - -CHAPTER VII. - -FERNEY. - - -Voltaire, as we have seen, took possession of Ferney in 1758, and he -lived here almost without a break for something like twenty years. His -estate was a feudal seigniory in the district of Gex, on the very -frontier of Switzerland, but in France, though enjoying immunity from -French taxation. He built a new manor-house, and in his capacity of lord -of the manor replaced the dilapidated little church of the estate by a -new one, very small, very plain, and about which, notwithstanding its -famous inscription of which he so often boasted,—_Deo erexit -Voltaire_,—much more noise has been made, than so simple and natural a -proceeding at all calls for.[266] Madame Denis kept house for him, and -according to the Paris gossips of the time, on an extravagant scale, -which often produced ruptures between the two. Guests were incessant -and the hospitality ungrudging.[267] He complained during the Seven -Years’ War of the embarrassment of being a Frenchman, when he had to -entertain daily at dinner Russians, English, and Germans.[268] He -protests that he is weary of being hotel-keeper in general for all -Europe, and so weary was he at one time of this noisy and costly post, -that the establishment was partially suspended for upwards of a year. -One of the most generous of Voltaire’s many generous acts was his -reception into his house of a child who had no other claim on him than -that of being the great-grand-daughter of the uncle of Corneille. A -soldier ought to succour the niece of his general, he said. He took the -liveliest interest in the little maid’s education, though she appears to -have been a sulky pupil, and eventually he married her with due dower to -one Dupuits. The bustle and expense of his establishment became greater -than ever, and in the spring of 1768 Paris was as much electrified by -news of a revolution at Ferney, as she has been since by some -revolutions in her own streets. Madame Denis and the two Dupuits had -suddenly made their way to Paris, and for a year and a half Voltaire was -left in peace, part of which he employed sensibly in having his house -cleaned from cellar to garret,—a bit of news which is handed down to -our times, since, according to Grimm, the domestic arrangements of the -manor-house at Ferney interested at that moment more or less every court -in Europe.[269] In the autumn of 1769 Madame Denis returned, and with -her the old stir and extravagance were resumed, for Voltaire was one of -the best-humoured of men to his family and friends, and could deny his -niece nothing. We have more than one description of this too immortal -niece. They are all equally unflattering. Her homeliness of appearance -amounted to the ugliness that is bitter. She was destitute of wit, and -had a vulgar soul. Born to be the insipid gossip of a bourgeois circle, -says one charitable writer, but having by chance the first man in the -nation for an uncle, she learnt to chatter about literature and the -theatre, as a parrot learns.[270] She wrote a comedy; but the players, -out of respect for Voltaire, declined to act in it. She wrote a tragedy; -but the one favour, which the repeated entreaties of years could never -wring from Voltaire, was that he would read it. She had histrionic as -well as dramatic ambition, and here worked a miracle, for her -representation of Mérope once drew floods of tears from some English -ladies.[271] Her affectation of intellect had not cooled the reality of -simple sensation, and if she loved art, she was said not to despise -gallantry. At any rate, though she was only sixteen years younger than -her uncle,[272] she needed continual festivities and crowds of guests. - -Ferney was rather a difficult spot for a woman with a passion for the -hum of cities. For five months in the year, says Voltaire, my deserts -are, on the admission of Russians, worse than Siberia itself; we see -thirty leagues of mountain, snow, and precipices: it is Naples in -summer, Lapland in winter.[273] One year he marks with word of -bitterness snow falling thick in the middle of May. Four feet of snow in -the courtyard constituted a normal winter state. He commemorates with -enthusiasm how one day, through these four feet of snow, he saw porters -bringing him a hamper of Champagne from a friend; for the more generous -sort of Burgundy with which he ordinarily recruited himself had fallen -short, and he had been reduced to the humble vintage of Beaujolais. - -Yet in the midst of a thousand discomforts and hardships we never hear -him wishing to be back in Paris. It remained to him the accursed city, -as it had been before his journey to England. He always thought with -horror of its cabal, intrigue, frivolity, and sovereign indifference to -the ruin of the kingdom and the shedding of innocent blood. There can be -no doubt that this wise exile prolonged his days. He was constantly -complaining of illness, and he passed months at a time in bed, which -may in truth have been the best possible preservative of life for one of -his temperament. Yet in spite of this avoidance of society, this passion -for his study, the man of ordinary capacity, with no more than an -ordinary working day, may marvel how amid so many distractions the -master of the house contrived to write so many scores of pieces, large -and small, and so many hundreds of letters, grave and gay. Of these -letters nearly seven thousand are already in print, and M. Beuchot, most -carefully informed of all Voltaire’s editors, thinks there are likely to -be quite as many more still in undiscovered existence. Ferney was the -centre of the most universal and varied correspondence that any one man -has ever carried on. Frederick the Great was not the only crowned head -with whom Voltaire interchanged royal communication. Catherine II. of -Russia, of Anhalt-Zerbst by birth, was the helpful patroness of Diderot -and D’Alembert, and was always eager to hear some word from the -patriarch of their encyclopædic church, only praying him not to think -her too importunate. Christian VII. of Denmark apologises for not being -able at a stroke to remove all the obstacles that lie in the way of the -civil liberty of his subjects. Gustavus III. of Sweden is elated by the -thought that Voltaire sometimes casts a glance on what is going on in -the North, and protests that this is their greatest encouragement to do -as well as they can in all ways.[274] Joseph II. would fain have called -at Ferney while travelling incognito through France, but fear of his -mother’s displeasure held him back, the high and devout nature of Maria -Theresa always finding Voltaire’s mockery of sacred things deeply -repugnant, as we may easily believe. - -Beside sovereigns who wrote to him as to an equal, every young aspirant -to literary distinction, however unknown and obscure, sought a criticism -from Ferney. Twenty years before he settled down here, Voltaire had been -consulted by Vauvenargues, and had replied with words of painstaking and -generous counsel. It was always the same with him. No young author ever -solicited advice in vain, and he was never sparing either of trouble or -praise. The Marquis of Chastellux sent him a copy of his Félicité -Publique, and was raised to the seventh heaven by a letter of thanks, in -which Voltaire tells him: ‘I covered the margin of my copy with notes, -as I always do when a book charms and instructs me; I even took the -liberty of not always sharing the author’s opinion. I am very old and -very feeble, but such reading makes me young again.’ And the letter -contains a large number of points where he thinks the author in -error.[275] - -Besides kings and the writers of books, plain men also besought his -dictum on high matters. ‘A burgomaster of Middleburg,’ he informs Madame -du Deffand, ‘whom I do not know, wrote to me a little while since, to -ask me in confidence whether there is a God or not; whether, in case -there be one, he takes any heed of us; whether matter is eternal; -whether it can think; whether the soul is immortal; and begging me to -answer by return of post.’[276] - -One may suspect that a little colouring is added here by the master -hand, but the substantial facts are probable enough. He corresponded -with cardinals, marshals of France, and bishops, and he corresponded -with Helvétius and with Diderot, who, greatly to the indignation of the -business-like patriarch, had a bad habit of leaving letters to answer -themselves.[277] - -If two cavalry officers fell to disputing over the mess-table as to the -propriety of using some bit of old French, it was to Ferney that the -reference was instantly made.[278] - -We get an idea of the kind of imperial authority which attached to -Voltaire’s judgment, from the eagerness with which Turgot sought, -without revealing his name, an opinion from Ferney as to the worth of a -translation with which he lightened the heavy burden of his intendance -at Limoges, a translation of the Eclogues and Fourth Æneid into French -metric verse. ‘They say,’ wrote Turgot, ‘that he is so busy with his -Encyclopædia as neither to speak nor to write to any one.’ If Turgot -could have seen Voltaire’s correspondence for 1770, he would have found -out how far this rumour was from the truth, and in fact he did get an -answer to his own letter; but it can hardly have been very much more -satisfactory than silence would have been, for Voltaire, while profuse -in praise of the fidelity and spirit of the translation, unfortunately -did not detect that it was meant for anything more ambitious than simple -prose with enthusiasm in it.[279] As Turgot especially valued in the -patriarch his ’superb ear,’ the blow was as sharp as it well could be. -He was little concerned or surprised on learning the fallacious -reasoning of the poet in political economy. ‘Reasoning,’ he adds, ‘has -never been Voltaire’s strong point.’[280] And that was true in matters -of abstract science, but he was an unrivalled populariser of the results -of other people’s reasoning, from Newton’s Principia down to Middleton’s -Free Enquiry, and this popularisation was what the conditions of the -time caused to be most ardently demanded. The proof of the demand we may -see in the extraordinary respect and curiosity, or dislike and alarm, -with which Voltaire for the twenty crowning years of his life was -regarded throughout the whole of civilised Europe. - -It is impossible to read the multitudinous volumes of Voltaire’s -correspondence, and they are being added to every two or three years, -with entire satisfaction. They are wittier than any other letters in the -world. For lightness, swiftness, grace, spontaneity, you can find no -second to them, at however long an interval. But they abound in many -things which are disagreable in the letters of an old man who had -so true an interest in the spread of virtue, knowledge, and the other -conditions of human dignity. These, however, may be passed over as the -innocent and unconscious unseemliness of a very gay nature living in a -very free age. It is less easy to banish the unpleasant impressions with -which we find him playing the equivocal part of being all things to all -men. One would have been pleased to have a little more stiffness, a -little less pliancy of phrase. We would not go through the world -insisting on grim Puritanic earnestness at every moment of a man’s life, -but Voltaire’s lively complaisance with all sorts of unworthy people is -something worse than unedifying. One can hardly help sympathising with -D’Alembert’s remonstrance. ‘You have rather spoilt the people who -persecute us. ’Tis true you have had greater need than anybody else to -keep them quiet, and that you have been obliged to offer a candle to -Lucifer to save yourself from Beelzebub, but Lucifer has only grown the -prouder, without Beelzebub growing the less malignant.’[281] The truth -probably is that Voltaire did not always take—much thought of Lucifer or -Beelzebub. For one thing, he was, as we have said more than once, -intensely sympathetic by temperament, and in writing to a friend, or -even an acquaintance only, he was for the moment animated by a lively -good will and anxiety to be in harmony with his correspondent. There was -nothing false in these purring pleasantries, with which he amused all -correspondents alike. They came as naturally from his mobile and genial -constitution, as an equality of prosaic moroseness comes from persons of -fundamentally different constitutions. For another thing, the old -fashion of his youth never dropped away from him, and the elaborate -courteousness and friendly ardour of manner, which he had learnt among -the aristocratic friends of the days of the Regency and afterwards at -Paris and Versailles, did not desert him in the solitudes of the Jura. -He was to the last a man of quality, as well as a crusher of the -Infamous, and to the last he kept up the tone of one who had been a -gentleman of the chamber to one king, and court-chamberlain to another. -Voltaire’s temperament and earliest surroundings fully explain what was -a more public, as well as more serious, falling away from the rigorous -integrity which men are now accustomed to demand from the leaders of -unpopular causes. His sins in this order are nearly as numerous as his -public acts. Rousseau, perhaps we may say without breach of charity, as -much from vanity as principle, prefixed his name to all that he wrote, -and he paid the penalty in a life of wandering and persecution. Voltaire -in his later days as invariably sheltered himself behind the anonymous, -and not only disclaimed works of which it was notorious that he was the -author, but insisted that his friends should impute them to this or that -dead name. Nobody was deceived. While he got unwelcome credit for a -multitude of pieces that were not his own, assuredly nothing really his -ever failed to be set down to its true author. We can only say that this -was the evil practice of the time, and that Voltaire was here little -worse than Turgot and many another man of general virtuousness, to whom -the ferocity of authority would not even allow freedom enough to plead -for tolerance, much less to utter uncertified opinion. ‘Time,’ said -D’Alembert, apologising for some whiff of orthodoxy which Voltaire -scented in one or two articles in the Encyclopædia, ‘will make people -distinguish what we thought from what we said.’[282] Condorcet, as we -know, deliberately defended these deceptions, which did not deceive, -while they did protect. He contended that if you rob a man of his -natural right of publishing his opinions, then you lose your own right -to hear the truth from the man’s lips.[283] Undoubtedly all laws admit -that duress introduces new conditions into the determination of what is -right and wrong in action, or at least that it mitigates pains and -penalties, and the position of every claimant for free speech was in -those days emphatically a position of duress. The choice lay between -disavowal on the one hand, and on the other abstention from proclaiming -truths by which only society could gain the freedom it so much needed; -between strict anonymity and leaving the darkness unbroken. And we must -remember that disingenuous tricks to conceal authorship were not -assuredly so unpardonable, when resorted to as protectives against -imprisonment, confiscation, and possible peril of life, as they are now -among ourselves, when they serve no more defensible purpose than -sheltering men who have not the courage of their opinions, against one -or two paltry social deprivations. The monstrous proceedings against La -Barre, and the ease with which in this and numerous other cases the -jurisprudence of the tribunals lent itself to the cruelty of fanatics, -no doubt excited in Voltaire a very genuine alarm for his own safety, -and probably with good reason. We know that he could not venture to -visit Italy, in consequence of his just fear lest the Inquisition should -throw their redoubtable foe into prison, and the parliaments of Toulouse -and Abbeville had perpetrated juridical murders as iniquitous as any of -the proceedings of the Holy Office. And though it is easy and right for -the young, who live in a time when you are not imprisoned or hung or -decapitated for holding unpopular opinions, to call out for manliness to -the uttermost in these things, one must make allowance for an occasional -fit of timorousness in a man of eighty, whom nature had never cut out -for a martyr. Yet, more than once, these fits committed Voltaire to acts -which were as great a scandal to the devout as to the atheists. That he -should rebuild the ruinous little chapel of his estate was not much more -remarked, than it would be for a Protestant landlord to subscribe to -repair the Catholic church on an Irish property containing only Catholic -tenants. The gorgeous ceremony with which in his quality of lord he -commemorated its opening, made everybody laugh, not excepting the chief -performer, for he actually took the opportunity of lifting up his voice -in the new temple and preaching a sermon against theft. The bishop of -Annecy in Savoy, his diocesan, was furious at this mockery, and urged -the minister at Paris to banish Voltaire from France. In order to avert -the blow, Voltaire tried to make a nominal peace with the church by -confessing, and participating in the solemnity of an Easter communion -(1768). The bishop wrote him a long letter of unctuous impertinences, to -which Voltaire replied by asking very tartly why the discharge of so -ordinary a duty called for this insolent congratulation. The -philosophers of Paris were bitterly scandalised, and some of them wrote -to the patriarch of the sect to remonstrate. Even D’Alembert, his own -familiar friend, could not refrain from protest.[284] Voltaire could -give no better reasons for his strange lapse than we may hear given -every day in our own country, by men who practise hypocritical -compliances for the sake of a little ignoble ease, and thus perpetuate -the yoke. He owed an example to his parish, as if the example of -feigning a belief which he repudiates could be a good example for one to -set in any parish. It was very well to shirk these observances in Paris, -because there in the tide of business one finds an excuse or is not -missed, but in the country no such excuse offers itself. One must stand -well with the curé, be he knave or dunce. One must respect the two -hundred and fifty timorous consciences around one. And so forth, down -that well-worn list of pleas by which men make anxiety about the -consciences of others a substantial reason for treachery to their own. -Voltaire, besides all these, honestly added the one true reason, that he -did not mean to be burnt alive, and that the only way of making sure -against such a fate was to close the lips of spies and informers.[285] -The bishop knew perfectly well that the squire, who had made his Easter -communion in so remarkable a manner in 1768, was the author of the -Philosophical Dictionary, of which a bran-new edition, amended and -revised, made its appearance in 1769; and he appears to have forbidden -the priest of Ferney to confess or administer the eucharist to the chief -of the flock. Voltaire was at once seized with a fever, and summoned the -priest to administer ghostly comfort. The priest pleaded the horrible -rumours of the world as to the damnable books of which the sick man was -alleged to be the author. Voltaire replied by warning him very -peremptorily that in refusing to administer the viaticum he was -infringing the law, and the consequence was that he did duly receive the -viaticum, after which he signed a solemn act in the presence of a -notary, declaring that he pardons his various calumniators; that ‘if any -indiscretion prejudicial to the religion of the State should have -escaped him,’ he seeks forgiveness from God and the State; and finally -he forgave the bishop of Annecy, who had calumniated him to the king, -and whose malicious designs had come to nought. The priest and notary -afterwards falsified this amazing declaration so as to appease the -bishop, and came to Voltaire praying him not to betray them. ‘I prove to -them,’ he says, ‘that they will be damned, I give them something to -drink, and they go away delighted.’[286] A younger philosopher of his -school remarks with his accustomed gravity on this most singular -transaction, that the satisfaction of forcing his priest to administer -by fear of the secular judges, and of insulting the bishop of Annecy in -a juridical manner, cannot excuse such a proceeding in the eyes of the -free and firm man, who weighs calmly the claims of truth and the -requirements of prudence, when laws contrary to natural justice render -truth dangerous and prudence indispensable.[287] To which reflection we -may perhaps add another, suggested by the cruel experience of the church -in France within five and twenty years from Voltaire’s impious -communion, that if any order, secular or spiritual, constrains its -adversaries under penalties to the commission of base acts, then if the -chances of time should ever transfer the power to the other side, that -order has only itself to blame for whatever wrong may mark the -retaliation. There is no more dangerous policy in affairs of state than -to strip your opponent of self-respect, and this the descendants of the -persecutors found out to their extreme cost, when in 1793 they had to -deal with the descendants of the persecuted. - -One other curious piece of sportiveness in his dealings with the church -deserves to be noticed. In the year 1770 the post of temporal father of -the order of Capucins for the district of Gex became vacant. Voltaire -applied for it, and the general at Rome, perhaps listening to a word -from Ganganelli, or else from the Duchess of Choiseul, sent to Ferney -the letters patent conferring upon its patriarch this strange dignity, -and also affiliating him to the order. What were Voltaire’s motives in -so odd a transaction, it is not very hard to divine. Probably, he -thought even this humble office would be some protection against -persecution. Then it gave him an opportunity of harassing his enemy, the -bishop of Annecy. Thirdly, it amused that whimsical element of farce and -mischief which was always so irrepressible in him, from the early days -when he is said to have nearly damned his own play by appearing on the -stage as the high-priest’s train-bearer, and burlesquing that august -person’s solemn gait. Voltaire filled his letters with infinite -pleasantries about the new Capucin, and seemed as much pleased at the -idea of wearing the cord of Saint Francis, as he had been with the gold -key of a Prussian chamberlain.[288] One of his first enjoyments was to -write letters to his episcopal foe, signed with a cross and his name: -‘✠ _Voltaire, Capucin indigne._’[289] A story is told by Grimm of a -visitor arriving at Ferney, and being greeted by the patriarch with -the news that he would find his host a changed man. ‘One grows a bigot -in one’s old age; I have a habit of having some pious work read to me -when I sit down at table.’ And in fact, some one began to read a -sermon of Massillon, Voltaire throwing in exclamations on the beauty, -eloquence, imagination of the preacher. Suddenly after three or four -pages, he called out ‘Off with Massillon!’ and launched forth during -the rest of the meal with his usual verve and fanciful extravagance of -imagination.[290] It is profoundly unedifying, but not the less -characteristic. - -Voltaire, there can be little doubt, never designed a social revolution, -being in this the representative of the method of Hobbes. His single -object was to reinstate the understanding in its full rights, to -emancipate thought, to extend knowledge, to erect the standard of -critical common sense. He either could not see, or else, as one -sometimes thinks, he closes his eyes and refuses for his part to see, -that it was impossible to revolutionise the spiritual basis of belief -without touching the social forms, which were inseparably connected with -the old basis by the strong bonds of time and a thousand fibres of -ancient association and common interest. Rousseau began where Voltaire -left off. He informs us that in the days when his character was forming, -nothing which Voltaire wrote escaped, him, and that the Philosophical -Letters, that is the Letters on the English, though assuredly not the -writer’s best work, were what first attracted him to study, and -implanted a taste which never afterwards became extinct. The -correspondence between Voltaire and the prince of Prussia, afterwards -the great Frederick, inspired Rousseau with a passionate desire to learn -how to compose with elegance, and to imitate the colouring of so fine an -author.[291] Thus Voltaire, who was eighteen years his elder, gave this -extraordinary genius his first productive impulse. But a sensibility of -temperament, to which perhaps there is no parallel in the list of -prominent men, impelled Rousseau to think, or rather to feel, about the -concrete wrongs and miseries of men and women, and not the abstract -rights of their intelligence. Hence the two great revolutionary schools, -the school which appealed to sentiment, and the school which appealed to -intelligence. The Voltarian principles of the strictest political -moderation and of literary common sense, negative, merely emancipatory, -found their political outcome, as French historians early pointed out, -in the Constituent Assembly, which was the creation of the upper and -middle class, while the spirit of Rousseau, ardent, generous, passionate -for the relief of the suffering, overwhelmed by the crowding forms of -manhood chronically degraded and womanhood systematically polluted, came -to life and power in the Convention and the sections of the Commune of -Paris which overawed the Convention. - -‘It will not do,’ wrote D’Alembert to Voltaire as early as 1762, ‘to -speak too loudly against Jean Jacques or his book, for he is rather a -king in the Halles.’[292] This must have been a new word in the ears of -the old man, who had grown up in the habit of thinking of public opinion -as the opinion, not of markets where the common people bought and sold, -but of the galleries of Versailles. Except for its theology, the age of -Lewis XIV. always remained the great age to Voltaire, the age of pomp -and literary glory, and it was too difficult a feat to cling on one side -to the Grand Monarch, and to stretch out a hand on the other to the -Social Contract. It was too difficult for the man who had been embraced -by Ninon de l’Enclos, who was the correspondent of the greatest -sovereigns in Europe, and the intimate of some of the greatest nobles in -France, to feel much sympathy with writings that made their author king -of the Halles. Frederick offered Rousseau shelter, and so did Voltaire; -but each of them disliked his work as warmly as the other. They did not -understand one who, if he wrote with an eloquence that touched all -hearts, repulsed friends and provoked enemies like a madman or a savage. -The very language of Rousseau was to Voltaire as an unknown tongue, for -it was the language of reason clothing the births of passionate -sensation. Emile only wearied him, though there were perhaps fifty pages -of it which he would have had bound in morocco.[293] It is a stale -romance, he cries, while the Social Contract is only remarkable for -some insults rudely thrown at kings by a citizen of Geneva, and for four -insipid pages against the Christian religion, which are simply -plagiarised from Bayle’s centos.[294] The author is a monster of -ingratitude and insolence, the arch-scoundrel and chief of charlatans, -the lineal descendant of the dog of Diogenes the cynic, and other evil -things not readily to be named in a polite age. Partly no doubt this -extreme irritation was due to the insults with which Jean Jacques had -repulsed his offers of shelter and assistance, had repudiated Voltaire’s -attempts to defend him, and had held up Voltaire himself as a proper -object for the persecutions of Geneva. But there was a still deeper root -of discrepancy, which we have already pointed out. Rousseau’s -exaggerated tone was an offence to Voltaire’s more just and reasonable -spirit, and the feigned austerity of a man whose life and manners he -knew, assumed in his eyes a disagreeable shade of hypocrisy.[295] -Besides these things, he was clearly apprehensive of the storms which -Rousseau’s extraordinary hardihood had the very natural effect of -raising in the circles of authority, though it is true that the most -acute observers of the time thought that they noticed a very perceptible -increase of Voltaire’s own hardihood, as a consequence of the example -which the other set him. - -The rivalry between the schools of Rousseau and Voltaire represents the -dead-lock to which social thought had come; a dead-lock of which the -catastrophe of the Revolution was both expression and result. At the -time of Voltaire’s death there was not a single institution in France -with force enough to be worth a month’s purchase. The monarchy was -decrepit; the aristocracy was as feeble and impotent as it was arrogant; -the bourgeoisie was not without aspiration, but it lacked courage and it -possessed no tradition; and the church was demoralised, first by the -direct attack of Voltaire and the not less powerful indirect attack of -the Encyclopædia, and second by the memory of its own cruelty and -selfishness in the generation just closing. But Voltaire’s theory, so -far as he ever put it into its most general form, was that the temporal -order was safe and firm, and that it would endure until criticism had -transformed thought and prepared the way for a régime of enlightenment -and humanity. Rousseau, on the contrary, directed all the engines of -passion against the whole temporal fabric, and was so little careful of -freedom of thought, so little confident in the plenary efficacy of -rational persuasion, as to insist upon the extermination of atheists by -law. The position of each was at once irrefragable and impossible. It -was impossible to effect a stable reconstitution of the social order -until men had been accustomed to use their minds freely, and had -gradually thrown off the demoralising burden of superstition. But then -the existing social order had become intolerable, and its forces were -practically extinct, and consequently such an attack as Rousseau’s was -inevitable, and was at the same time and for the same reasons -irresistible. To overthrow the power of the church only was to do -nothing in a society perishing from material decay and political -emasculation. Yet to regenerate such a society without the aid of moral -and spiritual forces, with whose activity the existence of a dominant -ecclesiastical power was absolutely incompatible, was one of the wildest -feats that ever passionate sophist attempted. - -If, however, it must be admitted that each of these two famous -destroyers was attempting an equally desperate task, it is the -contention of these pages that Voltaire was the more right and -far-sighted of the two in his perception of the conditions of the -problem. We have now for various adequate reasons acquired the habit of -looking upon the church and speaking of it, as an organisation outside -of society, or at least as a separate organisation and independent -integer within it. The truth is that in a Catholic country like France -before the Revolution, the church more than the secular order actually -was the society, as it had been, though to a far wider degree, -throughout Europe in the days of Hildebrand and Innocent. That is to -say, it furnished the strongest of the ideas, sentiments, hopes, and -associations which bound men together in a single community. The -monarchy, the nobles, the old historic French tradition, the various -bodies and processes of law, were swept away by the Revolution, -virtually never to return, in spite of the transient appearances to the -contrary. The church was swept away also, but only for a year or two; -and so little effectual was the Revolution, which was in fact Rousseau’s -Revolution, in permanently modifying its position, that those Frenchmen -at the present day who most soberly judge the future of their country -and look deepest into its state, clearly perceive that the battle to be -fought in the order of ideas is a battle between the new moral and -social ideas of the workmen, and the old moral and social ideas which -Catholicism has implanted in the breasts of the peasants, and on which -the middle class privately and unconsciously lean for the support of -their own consciences, though they may have put away Catholic dogma. We -may see here, once more, the help which Protestantism gave to the -dissolution of the old society, by the increased room it gave, apart -from the specific influence of a more democratic dogma, for that gradual -intellectual expansion throughout a community, which for those who have -faith in the reasoning faculty is the one sure secret of social advance. -The subjection of the spiritual power to the temporal, which has -commonly followed the establishment of the Protestant communion, has -very likely retarded the final disappearance of many ideas which foster -anti-social tendencies; but the subjection of the spiritual power in -such a set of circumstances has the effect of softening shocks. -Protestantism in the sixteenth century, if it could have been accepted -in France, would have been a more edifying dissolvent than Voltairism -was in the eighteenth; but it is certain that the loosening of -theological ideas and the organisation connected with them and upholding -them, was the first process towards making truly social ideas possible, -and their future realisation a thing which good men might hope for. -Napoleon, the great organ of political reaction, knew what he was about -in paying writers for years to denigrate the memory of Voltaire, whose -very name he abhorred.[296] - -In saying, however, that Rousseau’s attack was inevitable, we have -perhaps said that it was indispensable; for where a society is not able -to resist an assault upon its fundamental conditions, we may be -tolerably sure that the time has arrived when either these conditions -must be dispersed, or else the society must fall into rapid dissolution. -We may refute Rousseau’s sophisms as often and as conclusively as we -please, and may dwell as forcibly as we know how upon the untold -penalties which France has paid, and is still doomed to pay, for -whatever benefits he may have bestowed on her. But, after all this, the -benefits remain, and they may be briefly set down as two in number. In -the first place he spoke words that can never be unspoken, and kindled a -hope that can never be extinguished; he first inflamed men with a -righteous conviction that the evils of the existing order of things -reduced civilisation to a nullity for the great majority of mankind, and -that it cannot for ever be tolerable that the mass should wear away -their lives in unbroken toil without hope or aim, in order that the few -may live selfish and vacuous days. Rousseau presented this sentiment in -a shape which made it the ‘negation of society;’ but it was much to -induce thinkers to ask themselves, and the bondsmen of society to ask -their masters, whether the last word of social philosophy had been -uttered, and the last experiment in the relations of men to one another -decisively tried and irrevocably accepted. Second, by his fervid -eloquence and the burning conviction which he kindled in the breasts of -great numbers of men, he inspired energy enough in France to awaken her -from the torpor as of death which was stealing so rapidly over her. -Nobody was more keenly aware of the presence of this breath of decay in -the air than Voltaire was. It had seized such hold of the vital parts of -the old order, that, but for the fiery spirit and unquenchable ardour of -the men who read Rousseau as men of old had read the gospel, but for the -spirit and ardour which animated the Convention, and made it alike in -the tasks of peace and the tasks of war one of the most effective and -formidable assemblies that the world has ever beheld, we do not see what -there was to stop France from sinking lower and lower into impotence, -until at last the powers who vainly threatened the republic with -partition, might in the course of time actually have consummated the -threat against the monarchy. This may seem impossible to us who live -after the Revolution and after Napoleon; but we must remember the -designs of partitioning Prussia in the middle of the century, the -accomplishment of a partition of the Italian possessions of the house of -Austria in 1735, and the partition of Poland; and why was France to be -eternal, any more than the Byzantine empire, or the power of the house -of Austria, or the power of Spain, had been eternal? It was the fire -kindled by Rousseau’s passion that saved her; for even of the -Constituent, which was Voltairean, the very soul was Mirabeau, who was -Rousseauite. - -It will be seen that in one sense Rousseau was a far more original -personage than his first chief and inspirer. He contributed new ideas, -of extremely equivocal and perilous character, but still new, to the -multitudinous discussions which were throwing all the social elements -into confusion. These ideas might indeed have been found substantially -in the writings of previous thinkers like Montaigne and Locke; but -Rousseau’s passion invested them with a quality which was virtually to -constitute them a fresh and original force. Voltaire contributed -initiative and a temperament, which made his propagation of ideas that -were not new, as important a fact in social if not in intellectual -history, as if he had been possessed of superlative gifts in -speculation. This has also to be remembered when we think of comparing -him with Diderot, who, while his equal in industry, was greatly his -superior both in fresh simplicity of imagination, and in grasp and -breadth of positive knowledge. Whoever will take the trouble to turn -over some of the thirty-five volumes of the Encyclopædia, may easily see -how that gigantic undertaking (1751-1765), in which Voltaire always took -the most ardent and practical interest,[297] assisted the movement that -Voltaire had commenced. It seemed to gather up into a single great -reservoir all that men knew, and this fact of mere mechanical -collocation was a sort of substitute for a philosophic synthesis. As -Comte says, it furnished a provisional rallying-point for efforts the -most divergent, without requiring the sacrifice of any points of -essential independence, in such a way as to secure for a body of -incoherent speculation an external look of system.[298] This enterprise, -the history of which is a microcosm of the whole battle between the two -sides in France, enabled the various opponents of theological -absolutism, the Voltaireans, Rousseauites, atheists, and all other sorts -and conditions of protesting men, to confront the church and its -doctrine with a similar semblance of organic unity and completeness. The -Encyclopædia was not simply negative and critical. It was an unexampled -manual of information, and was the means of spreading over the country -some knowledge of that active scientific culture, which was producing -such abundant and astonishing discoveries. The two streams of dissolvent -influences, negative criticism on the one hand, and positive knowledge -and scientific method on the other, were led into a single channel of -multiplied volume and force. There was no real nor logical connection -between the two elements, and while one of them has daily grown less -serviceable, the other has daily grown more absorbingly powerful, so as -now to be itself the effective indirect substitute for that direct -negative criticism, with which the Encyclopædic design had once thrown -it into alliance. - -Diderot, the third chief of the attack, does even fuller justice than -Rousseau to Voltaire’s share in stimulating thought and opening the mind -of France; and in spite of the extravagance of its first clause, there -is a glimpse of true discrimination in the characteristic sentence—‘Were -I to call him the greatest man nature has produced, I might find people -to agree with me; but if I say that she has never yet produced, and is -never likely to produce again, a man so extraordinary, only his enemies -will contradict me.’[299] This panegyric was specially disinterested, -because Voltaire’s last years had been not least remarkable for his -bitter antipathy to the dogmatic atheism and dogmatic materialism of -that school, with which Diderot was most intimate personally, and with -whose doctrines, if he did not at all times seem entirely to share them, -he had at any rate a warmer sympathy than with any other system of that -negative epoch, when every chief thinker was so vague positively, so -weak constructively, and only the subalterns, like D’Holbach and -Helvétius, presumed to push on to conclusions. - -The story of Voltaire’s many long-sustained and unflagging endeavours to -procure whatever redress might be possible for the victims of legal -injustice, has been very often told, and mere commemoration of these -justly renowned achievements may suffice here. ‘The worst of the worthy -sort of people,’ he once said, ‘is that they are such cowards. A man -groans over wrong, he shuts his lips, he takes his supper, he -forgets.’[300] Voltaire was not of that temper. He was not only an -extremely humane man; extraordinary vividness of imagination, lack of -which is at the root of so much cruelty, and unparalleled sympathetic -quality, thinness of which explains so much appalling indifference, -animated him to a perseverance in protecting the helpless, which -entitles him to a place by the side of Howard and the noblest -philanthropists. There were three years in which the chief business of -his life was to procure the rehabilitation of the name of the -unfortunate Calas, and the payment of a money recompense to his family. -He agitated the whole world with indignation and pity by means of -narratives, pleas, short statements and long statements, passionate -appeals and argumentative appeals. Powerful ministers, fine ladies, -lawyers, men of letters, were all constrained by his importunate -solicitations to lend an ear to the cause of reason and tolerance, and -to lift up an arm in its vindication. The same tremendous enginery was -again brought into play in the case of Sirven. In the case of La Barre -and his comrade D’Etallonde, his tenacity was still more amazing and -heroic. For twelve years he persevered in the attempt to have the memory -of La Barre rehabilitated. One of the judicial authorities concerned in -that atrocious exploit, struck with horror at the thought of being held -up to the execration of Europe by that terrible avenger, conveyed some -menace to Voltaire of what might befall him. Voltaire replied to him by -a Chinese anecdote. ‘I forbid you,’ said a tyrannical emperor to the -chief of the tribunal of history, ‘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.’[301] -There was a something inexorable as doom about Voltaire’s unrelenting -perseverance in getting wrong definitely stamped and transfixed. If he -did not succeed in obtaining justice for the memory of La Barre, and in -procuring for D’Etallonde free pardon, at least he never abandoned the -endeavour, and he was just as ardent and unwearied in the twelfth year, -as he had been while his indignation was freshly kindled. He was more -successful in the case of Lally. Count Lally had failed to save India -from the English, had been taken prisoner, and had then in a magnanimous -way asked his captors to allow him to go to Paris to clear himself from -various charges, which the too numerous enemies he had made were -spreading against his character and administration. The French people, -infuriated at the loss of their possessions in India and Canada, were -crying for a victim, and Lally, after a process tainted with every kind -of illegality, was condemned to death by the parliament of Paris (1766) -on the vague charge of abuse of authority, exactions, and -vexations.[302] The murdered man’s son, known in the days of the -Revolution as Lally Tollendal, was joined by Voltaire in the honourable -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. - -The death of Lally is the parallel in French history to the execution of -Byng in the history of England, and, oddly enough, Voltaire was very -actively occupied in trying to avert that crime of our government, as -well as the crimes of his own. He had known Byng when he was in -England.[303] Some one told him that a letter from Richelieu, who had -been Byng’s opponent at Minorca, would be useful, and Voltaire instantly -urged the Duke to allow him to forward a letter he had, stating -Richelieu’s conviction of his defeated enemy’s bravery and good -judgment. Voltaire insists that this letter turned four votes on the -court-martial.[304] He informs a correspondent, moreover, of the fact -that Byng had instructed his executor to express his deep obligation -both to Voltaire and Richelieu.[305] Humanity is erroneously counted -among commonplace virtues. If it deserved such a place, there would be -less urgent need than, alas, there is, for its daily exercise among us. -In its pale shape of kindly sentiment and bland pity it is common -enough, and is always the portion of the cultivated. But humanity armed, -aggressive, and alert, never slumbering and never wearying, moving like -ancient hero over the land to slay monsters, is the rarest of virtues, -and Voltaire is one of its master-types. - -His interest in public transactions in his latest years was keener than -ever. That fruit of Polish anarchy, the war between Russia and Turkey -which broke out in 1768, excited his imagination to a pitch of great -heat, and the despatch in the spring of 1770 of a squadron from -Cronstadt, for the so-called liberation of Greece, made him weep for -joy. He implored Frederick not to leave to Catherine alone the burden of -so glorious a task. Superstition had had seven crusades; was it not a -noble thing to undertake one crusade to drive the barbarous Turks from -the land of Socrates and Plato, Sophocles and Euripides? Frederick -replied very sensibly that Dantzic was more to him than the Piræus, and -that he is a little indifferent about the modern Greeks, who, if ever -the arts should revive among them, would be jealous to find that a Gaul -by his Henriade had surpassed their Homer; that this same Gaul had -beaten Sophocles, equalled Thucydides, and left far behind him Plato, -Aristotle, and the whole school of the Porch;[306]—which was, perhaps, -not quite so sensibly said. - -The successes of Russia against Turkey in 1770 roused the anxiety of -Austria and Prussia, and the solution of what we know as the Eastern -question was indefinitely postponed by the device of partitioning Poland -(Aug. 5, 1772), the alternative to the acquisition of the whole of that -country by Russia, the least civilised of the three powers. Of this -memorable transaction Voltaire heartily approved, and he gave thanks -that he had lived to see ‘such glorious events.’[307] He insisted, -decidedly against the king’s will, that Frederick had devised the -scheme, for he found it full of genius, and to all seeming he discerned -none of the execration which the event he had just witnessed was -destined to raise in his own country in years to come. His friendship -with two of the chief actors may have biassed his judgment; but Voltaire -seldom allowed, indeed by the conditions of his temperament he was -unable to allow, personal considerations of this kind to obscure his -penetrating sight. He may well have thought the partition of Poland -desirable, for the reasons which a statesman of to-day may find -adequate: the country’s hopeless political anarchy, its crushing -material misery, the oppressive power of the church, the inevitable and -standing peril to Europe of the existence of such a centre of -conflagration. It is worth remarking that Rousseau was much more keenly -alive to the gravity of the event, that he protested against what had -been done, and that his influence has been one of the main causes of the -illogical sympathy of democratic Europe for one of the most pestilent of -aristocratic governments. - -The accession of Turgot to power in 1774 stirred an ardent sympathy in -Voltaire. Like the rest of the school, he looked upon this as the advent -of the political messiah,[308] and he shared the extreme hopes of that -great and virtuous man’s most sanguine lieutenants. He declared that a -new heaven and a new earth had opened to him.[309] His sallies against -the economists were forgotten, and he now entered into the famous -controversy of the free trade in grain with all his usual fire. His -fervour went too far for the sage minister, who prayed him to be -somewhat less eager in alarming uninformed prejudice. Still he insisted -on hoping all things. - - Contemple la brillante aurore - Qui t’annonce enfin les beaux jours. - Un nouveau monde est près d’éclore; - Até disparaît pour toujours. - Vois l’auguste philosophie, - Chez toi si long temps poursuivie, - Dicter ses triomphantes lois. - - * * * * * - - Je lui dis: ‘Ange tutélaire, - Quels dieux répandent ces bienfaits?’ - ‘C’est un seul homme.’[310] - -When it proved that one man alone, ‘qui ne chercha le vrai, que pour -faire le bien,’[311] was no match for the mountain torrent of ignorance, -prejudice, selfishness, and usage, and Turgot fell from power (May -1776), Voltaire sunk into a despair for his country, from which he never -arose. ‘I am as one dashed to the ground. Never can we console ourselves -for having seen the golden age dawn and perish. My eyes see only death -in front of me, now that M. Turgot is gone. It has fallen like a -thunderbolt on my brain and my heart alike. The rest of my days can -never be other than pure bitterness.’[312] - -The visit to Paris was perhaps a falsification of this prophecy for a -moment. In 1778, yielding either to the solicitations of his niece, or -to a momentary desire to enjoy the triumph of his renown at its centre, -he returned to the great city which he had not seen for nearly thirty -years. His reception has been described over and over again. It is one -of the historic events of the century. No great captain returning from a -prolonged campaign of difficulty and hazard crowned by the most glorious -victory, ever received a more splendid and far-resounding greeting. It -was the last great commotion in Paris under the old régime. The next -great commotion which the historian has to chronicle is the -ever-memorable fourteenth day of July, eleven years later, when the -Bastille fell, and a new order began for France, and new questions began -for all Europe. - -The agitation of so much loud triumph and incessant acclamation proved -more violent than Voltaire’s feeble health could resist, and he died, -probably from an over-dose of laudanum, on the thirtieth of May 1778. -His last writing was a line of rejoicing to the young Lally, that their -efforts had been successful in procuring justice for the memory of one -who had been put to death unjustly. How far Voltaire realised the -nearness of vast changes we cannot tell. There is at least one -remarkable prophecy of his, in the well-known letter to -Chauvelin:—‘Everything that I see appears the throwing broadcast of the -seed of a revolution, which must inevitably come one day, but which I -shall not have the pleasure of witnessing. The French always come late -to things, but they do come at last. Light extends so from neighbour to -neighbour, that there will be a splendid outburst on the first occasion, -and then there will be a rare commotion. The young are very happy; they -will see fine things.’[313] A less sanguine tone marks the close of the -apologue in which Reason and Truth, her daughter, take a triumphant -journey in France and elsewhere, about the time of the accession of -Turgot. ‘Ah, well,’ says Reason, ‘let us enjoy these glorious days; let -us rest here, if they last; and if storms come on, let us go back to our -well.’[314] Whether this meant much or little none can know. It would be -shallow to believe that such men as Voltaire, with faculty quickened and -outlook widened in the high air to which their fame raises them, really -discerned no more than we, who have only their uttered words for -authority, can perceive that they discerned. Great position often -invests men with a second sight whose visions they lock up in silence, -content with the work of the day. - - -FOOTNOTES: - -[1] _Œuvres_, xxxv. p. 214. - -[2] See Comte’s _Philosophic Positive_, v. 520. - -[3] Vauban and Boisguillebert are both to be found in _Les Economistes -Financiers du XVIIIième Siècle_, published by Guillaumin, 1851. - -[4] ‘Je ne sais si, à tout prendre, et malgré les vices éclatants de -quelques uns de ses membres, il y eut jamais dans le monde un clergé -plus remarquable que le clergé catholique de France au moment où la -Révolution l’a surpris, plus éclairé, plus national, moins retranché -dans les seules vertus privées, mieux pourvu de vertus publiques et en -meme temps de plus de foi: la persécution l’a bien montré’—De -Tocqueville, _Ancien Régime_, liv. ii. c. 11. - -[5] Rem. sur les Pensées de M. Pascal. _Œuvres_, xliii. p. 68. - -[6] _Novum Organum_, § 67. - -[7] Some fault has been found with this passage by one or two private -critics, as being not entirely just to the eminent thinker to whom it -refers, and to whom my own obligations, direct and indirect, are so -numerous, notwithstanding my final inability to follow him in his ideas -of social reconstruction, that the idea of adding to the sum of -misrepresentation of which Comte and his doctrines have been the -victims, is particularly disagreeable to me. Here, therefore, is one -passage in which Comte seems to speak rather more warmly of Voltaire -than the words in the text imply: ‘Toutefois, l’indispensable nécessité -mentale et sociale d’une telle élaboration provisoire laissera toujours, -dans l’ensemble de l’histoire humaine, une place importante à ses -principaux coopérateurs, et surtout à leur type le plus éminent, auquel -la postérité la plus lointaine assurera une position vraiment unique; -parceque jamais un pareil office n’avait pu jusqu’alors échoir, et -pourra désormais encore moins appartenir à un esprit de cette nature, -chez lequel la plus admirable combinaison qui ait existé jusqu’ici entre -les diverses qualités secondaires de l’intelligence présentait si -souvent la séduisante apparence de la force et du génie’ (_Phil. Pos._ -v. 518). Against this we have to place the highly significant fact that -Voltaire only appears in the calendar as a dramatic poet, as well as the -whole tenour and spirit of Comte’s teaching, namely, as he puts it in -one place, that ‘_une pure critique ne peut jamais mériter beaucoup -d’estime_’ (_Politique Positive_, iii. 547). - -[8] J. B. Rousseau’s _Moïsade_. - -[9] _Œuvres_, lxii. p. 45. - -[10] Dictionnaire Philosophique, _s.v. Œuvres_, lii. p. 378. - -[11] _Œuvres_, i. 513. - -[12] _Œuvres_, lxii. pp. 86 and 89. - -[13] _Ib._ lxii. p. 107. - -[14] A.R.O.V.E.T., L(_e_). I(_eune_). - -[15] Chevalier appears to have been a title given by courtesy to the -cadets of certain great families. - -[16] _Œuvres_, iv. 18. - -[17] _Histoire de l’ancien Gouvernement de la France_ (1727). - -[18] Buckle’s _Hist. of Civilisation_, i. 657-664. - -[19] Sainte-Beuve, _Causeries_, v. 111. - -[20] _Œdipe_, iv. sc. 1. - -[21] _Ib._ ii. v. - -[22] Le Pour et le Contre, ou Epître à Uranie. _Œuvres_, xv. pp. 399, -403. - -[23] Condorcet, _Vie de Voltaire. Œuvres_, iv. 20. - -[24] Condorcet, _Vie de Voltaire. Œuvres_, iv. 20. - -[25] Correspondence, 1725. _Œuvres_, lxii. pp. 140-49. - -[26] Lettres sur les Anglais, xv. _Œuvres_, xxxv. p. 114. Cf. also -Letter xxiv. (pp. 197-202). - -[27] Lord Stanhope’s _Hist. of England_, ii. 231 (ed. 1858). - -[28] Lettres sur les Anglais, ix. _Œuvres_, xxxv. p. 73. - -[29] Correspondence, 1732. _Œuvres_, lxii. p. 253. - -[30] Martin’s _Hist. de France_, vol. xiv. 265-67. - -[31] Philosophie de Newton, Pt. i. c. i. _Œuvres_, xli. p. 46. - -[32] Lettres sur les Anglais, xv. _Œuvres_, xxxv. pp. 115-20. - -[33] Philos. de Newton, Pt. i. c. ix. _Œuvres_, xli. p. 108. - -[34] D’Alembert. - -[35] Dictionnaire Philosophique, s.v. Locke. _Œuvres_, lvi. p. 447. - -[36] Corr. 1736. _Œuvres_, lxiii. p. 29. - -[37] _Soirées de St. Pétersbourg, 6ième Fentretien_, i. 403. - -[38] Corr. 1737; lxiii. p. 154. - -[39] _Ib._ p. 248. Cf. also lxii. p. 276. - -[40] Lettres sur les Anglais, xiv. _Œuvres_, xxxv. pp. 102-5. - -[41] _Œuvres_, vol. xliii. p. 77. - -[42] _Ib._ p. 20. - -[43] _Œuvres_, vol. xliii. p. 26. - -[44] Corr. 1737. _Œuvres_, lxiii. p. 248. - -[45] Lettres sur les Anglais, xiii. _Œuvres_, xxxv. p. 95. - -[46] Lettres, etc. x. _Œuvres_, xxxv. p. 81. - -[47] De Tocqueville’s _Ancien Régime_, liv. ii. c. 9, p. 137 (ed. 1866). - -[48] _Œuvres_, xxxv. p. 80. - -[49] The reader of _Zadig_ will remember the ‘_homme comme moi_,’ and -his ill luck at Babylon. _Œuvres_, lix. pp. 153-59. - -[50] Lettres sur les Anglais, xi. _Œuvres_, xxxv. p. 85. - -[51] Lett. Ang. xxi.; xxxv. pp. 172, etc. - -[52] Lettres sur les Anglais, i.; xxxv. p. 31. - -[53] Lett. Ang. vi.; xxxv. p. 62. - -[54] Lett. Ang. vii. pp. 62-65. - -[55] Lett. Ang. ii.; xxxv. p. 42. - -[56] _Œuvres_, xxxv. p. 185. - -[57] Ess. sur la Poésie Epique. _Œuvres_, xiii. p. 445, and pp. 513-26. - -[58] _Œuvres_, xxxv. p. 155. - -[59] _Œuvres_, xxxv. p. 159. - -[60] Corr. 1736. _Œuvres_, lxiii. p. 4. _Ib._ 60. - -[61] _Œuvres_, xxxv. pp. 189, 190. - -[62] For Berkeley, see Corr. 1736 _(Œuv_. lxiii. pp. 130, 164, etc.), -and for the other two, see Le Philosophe Ignorant (_Œuvres_, xliv. p. -69 and p. 47). - -[63] _Œuv._ xliv. p. 47. - -[64] The _De Veritate_ was published in 1624. - -[65] See the list from 1725 to 1728 in Leland’s _View of the Deistical -Writers_, i. 132-144. - -[66] _Œuvres_, lvii. pp. 107-114. - -[67] Corr. 1736-37. _Œuv._ lxiii. p. 60, p. 86, and p. 112. - -[68] Examen Important de Milord Bolingbrocke. _Œuv._ xliv. p. 89. - -[69] See Lechler’s _Geschichte des Englischen Deismus_, p. 396. - -[70] _Reflections. Works_, i. 419 (ed. 1842). - -[71] _Encyclopédic Nouvelle_ de Jean Reynaud et Pierre Leroux, s.v. -Voltaire, p. 736. De Maistre audaciously denies that Voltaire ever did -more than dip into Locke. _Soirées_, vi. - -[72] Villemain’s _Cours de Lit. Française_, i. p. 111. See also De -Maistre, _Soirées de St. Pétersbourg_, vi. p. 424. On the other hand, -see Lanfrey’s _L’Eglise et les Philosophes du 18ième Siècle_, pp. 99, -108, etc. - -[73] Madame de Grafigny. Cf. Desnoiresterres, _Voltaire au Château de -Cirey_, p. 246, etc. - -[74] Desnoiresterres, p. 257. - -[75] Condorcet, _Vie de Voltaire_, p. 61. A graceful and dignified -letter in this kind is that to Formey, May 12, 1752. _Œuv._ lxv. p. 64. - -[76] Grimm, _Correspondance Littéraire_, v. p. 5. - -[77] _Œuv._ lxv. p. 395. - -[78] Correspondence. Also, Essai sur la Poésie Epique, c. vi. _Œuvres_, -xiii. p. 481. - -[79] _Œuvres_, lxv. p. 91. - -[80] Corr. with the Abbé Moussinot, 1737, and afterwards. _Œuvres_, -lxiii. pp. 122, 160, 176, etc. - -[81] Corr. 1752. _Œuvres_, lxv. p. 115. - -[82] _Vie de Voltaire_, p. 37. - -[83] Desnoiresterres, p. 323. - -[84] Foisset’s _Correspond. de Voltaire avec De Brosses, etc._, -published in 1836. - -[85] Quoted in Desnoiresterres, p. 239. - -[86] Desnoiresterres, p. 242. - -[87] Epître à Mdme. la Marquise du Châtelet, sur la Calomnie. _Œuvres_, -xvii. p. 85. - -[88] See Whewell’s _Hist. Induc. Sci._ bk. vi. c. v. - -[89] Desnoiresterres, pp. 313-21. - -[90] Exposition du Livre des Institutions Physiques. _Œuvres _, xlii. -pp. 196-206. - -[91] _Œuvres_, xlii. p. 207, etc. - -[92] Corr. 1737. _Œuvres_, lxiii. p. 182. - -[93] Condorcet, _Vie de Voltaire_, p. 43. - -[94] Corr. 1737. _Œuvres_, lvi. p. 428. - -[95] Dict. Phil. s.v. _Œuvres_, lvi. p. 428. - -[96] Dict. Phil. s.v. _Œuvres_, lvi. p. 430. - -[97] Corr. 1758. _Œuvres_, lxxv. p. 50. - -[98] Temple du Goût. _Œuvres_, xv. p. 99. - -[99] Corr. 1743. _Œuvres_, lxiv. p. 119. - -[100] _Œuvres de Vauvenargues_, ii. 252. - -[101] Temple du Goût. _Œuvres_, xv. p. 100. - -[102] In some readings given before popular audiences in Paris in 1850, -it was found that Voltaire was only partially effective. ‘Trop -d’artifice,’ says Ste. Beuve, ‘trop d’art nuit auprès des esprits neufs; -trop de simplicité nuit aussi; ils ne s’en étonnent pas, et ils ont -jusqu’à un certain point besoin d’être étonnés.’ (_Causeries_, i. 289.) - -[103] Temple du Goût. _Œuvres_; xv. p. 95. - -[104] Corr. 1732. _Œuvres_, lxii. p. 218. - -[105] The dates of the most famous of his tragedies are these: _Œdipe_, -1718; _Brutus_, 1730; _Zaïre_, 1732; _Mort de César_, 1735; _Alzire_, -1736; _Mahomet_, 1741; _Mérope_, 1743; _Sémiramis_, 1748; _Tancrède_, -1760. - -[106] Hettnerr, for instance: _Literaturgeschichte des 18ten -Jahrhunderts_, ii. 227. - -[107] _Zaïre_, act i. sc. 1 - -[108] _Essay on Hum. Und._ iv. 19, § 3. - -[109] Discours sur la Tragédie, à Milord Bolingbrocke. _Œuvres_, ii. p. -337. See also the preface to Œdipe. _Ib._ p. 73. - -[110] _Œuvres_, ii. p. 339. - -[111] Lett. sur les Anglais, xix. _Œuvres_, xxxv. p. 151. - -[112] Introduction to Semiramis. _Œuvres_, v. p. 194. See also Du -Théâtre Anglais (1761). _Ib._ x. p. 88. Lettre à l’Acad. Franç. (1778), -iv. p. 186. - -[113] _Voltaire: sechs Vorträge_. Von D. F. Strauss; p. 74. The same -idea is found in a speech of Wilhelm Meister, bk. iii. ch. 8. - -[114] _Mém. de Marmontel_, liv. vii. ii. 245. For Diderot’s criticism, -see his _Mémoires et Œuv. Inédites_, i. 234 (1830). For D’Alembert’s, -cf. Voltaire’s _Œuv._ lxxv. p. 118. - -[115] _Decline and Fall_, c. 52, note 83. - -[116] _Œuvres_, vols. x. and xi. - -[117] Desnoiresterres, p. 342. - -[118] _Œuvres_, ix. p. 382. - -[119] _Soirées_, 4ième entretien. - -[120] _Œuvres_, v. p. 189. - -[121] Strauss, p. 79. - -[122] _Œuvres_, xviii. p. 250. - -[123] Commenced soon after 1730; published surreptitiously in 1755; -published by Voltaire himself in 1762. - -[124] _Vie de Voltaire_, p. 89. - -[125] _Vie de Voltaire_, p. 88. On the same subject of chastity, of -Condorcet’s Works, vi. p. 264, and pp. 523-26; also a passage in his -correspondence, i. p. 221. - -[126] Essai sur la Poésie Epique. _Œuvres_, xiii. p. 474 - -[127] _Œuvres_, ii. p. 591. - -[128] Burton’s _Life of David Hume_, ii. 440. - -[129] Henriade, x. 485-491. - -[130] _Œuvres_, lxxv. p.266. - -[131] _Vie de Voltaire_ p.60. - -[132] See the late C. Bartholmess’s _Histoire Philosophique de -l’Académie de Prusse_, bk. ii. - -[133] _Histoire Philosophique de l’Academie de Prusse_, bk. i. 230. - -[134] Corr. 1750. _Œuvres_, lxiv. p. 447. - -[135] Jablonski. - -[136] _Œuvres_, lxxv. p. 224. - -[137] Corr. 1750. _Œuvres_, lxiv. p. 443. - -[138] Carlyle’s _History of Frederick_, bk. xiii. ch. 5. - -[139] _Œuvres de Voltaire_, lxxiii. p. 456. - -[140] _Ib._ p. 813. - -[141] _Ib._ p. 807. - -[142] For Voltaire’s admirably expressed remonstrance, see Corr. Oct. -1757. _Œuvres_, lxiii. p. 768. - -[143] Martin’s _Hist. de France_, xv. p. 468. - -[144] _Œuvres_, lxxv. p. 207 and p. 210. - -[145] Goethe. - -[146] Bartholmess, ii. 111. - -[147] See Bartholmess, i. 168. - -[148] _Œuvres de Voltaire_, lxxiii. p. 836. - -[149] Corr. 1751. _Œuvres_, lxiv. p. 524. - -[150] Corr. 1751. _Œuvres_, lxiv. p. 453. - -[151] See Whewell’s _Hist. Ind, Sci._ bk. VII. ch. 4, § 7. - -[152] _Œuvres_, lxiv. p. 53. - -[153] See Comte’s _Phil. Pos._ i. 525-529. - -[154] It may be worth mentioning that there actually existed in the -sixteenth century a French physician, who changed his real name of -Sans-Malice into Akakia, and left descendants so called. See M. Jal’s -_Dictionnaire Critique de Biographie et d’Histoire_, p. 19 (1869). - -[155] Corr. 1752. _Œuvres_, lxv. p. 138. - -[156] Desnoiresterres, 394. - -[157] Desnoiresterres, _Voltaire et Fréderic_, cc. 9 and 10. Carlyle’s -_Frederick_, bk. xvi. ch. 12. - -[158] See Desnoiresterres, _Voltaire et Frédéric_, pp. 124-153, -including a facsimile of the fraudulently altered agreement. Also -Carlyle’s _Frederick_, bk. xvi. ch. 7. - -[159] Carlyle’s _Frederick_, bk. xiii. ch. 5. - -[160] _Œuvres_, lxxiii. p. 830 (1760). - -[161] _Œuvres_, lxxiii. pp. 835-837. - -[162] Printed in vol. i. of the Baudouin edition, as _Mémoires pour -servir à la vie de M. Voltaire_, p. 212. - -[163] Corr. 1758. _Œuvres_, lxxv. p. 80. - -[164] _Ib._ p. 31. - -[165] Corr. lxv. p. 23. Cf. also p. 83. - -[166] Corr. lxv. p. 15. - -[167] Corr. 1743. _Œuv._ lviii. p. 131. A very long and careful list of -the oppressions practised on writers in this reign is given in Mr. -Buckle’s _Hist. of Civilisation_, i. 675-681. - -[168] Foisset’s _Corres. de Voltaire avec de Brasses_, etc., p. 318. -Also Corr. 1757. _Œuvres_, lxvi. pp. 1-50 passim. - -[169] _Œuvres_, lxxv. p. 61. - -[170] _Mémoires_, i. ch. in. p. 55. - -[171] See for instance a letter to Mdlle. de Voland: _Mémoires, -Correspondance, et Ouv. inédites_, i. 99. - -[172] L’Auteur arrivant à sa terre. _Œuv._ xvii. 194. - -[173] Corr. 1757. _Œuv._ lxvi. p. 38. - -[174] _Ib._ p. 32. - -[175] Corr. _Œuv._ lxxv. p. 249. - -[176] It was to the last-named book, one may suppose, that Voltaire -referred, when he asked how it was that Locke, after having so -profoundly traced the development of the human understanding, could so -degrade his own understanding in another work. (Diet Phil. s.v. Platon. -_Œuv._ lvii. p. 369.) - -[177] See Collins’s Apology for Free Debate and Liberty of Writing, -prefixed to the _Grounds and Reasons of Christianity_. - -[178] Corr. 1768. _Œuv._ lxx. p. 140. - -[179] The reader will find an account of them in M. Lanfrey’s _L’Eglise -et les Philosophes du 18ième Siècle_, pp. 131-135. - -[180] Corr. _Œuv._ lxvi. p. 100. - -[181] For the composition of this body see Voltaire’s Histoire du -Parlement de Paris. _Œuv._ xxxiv. Or in Martin s _Hist, de France_, iv. -295; xii. 280; and xii. 53. - -[182] Siècle de Louis xv. c. 36. _Œuvres_, xxix. p. 3. - -[183] Corr. _Œuv._ lxxv. p. 145. - -[184] Corr. _Œuvres_, lxvii. p. 166. - -[185] Mém. de Morellet, ch. iii. p. 62. - -[186] Martin’s _Hist. de France_, xvi. p. 139. - -[187] Relation de la Mort du Chevalier de la Barre, 1766; Le Cri du Sang -Innocent, 1775, _Œuv._ xxxix. p. 99. - -[188] Corr. July 16, 1766. _Œuv._ lxxv. p. 357. - -[189] Corr. _Œuv._ lxxv. p. 359. - -[190] _Ib._ p. 361. - -[191] Grimm, _Corr. Lit._ v. p. 133. - -[192] Corr. 1774. _Œuv._ lxxv. p. 627. - -[193] _Ib._ p. 696. - -[194] _Hist. de la Civilisation en Europe_, 14ième leçon, p. 405. Cf. -also De Tocqueville’s _Ancien Régime_, liv. iii. ch. I. - -[195] Corr. 1757-58. _Œuv._ lxvi. pp. 92, 102, 112, 185, etc. - -[196] Corr. _Œuv._ lxvii. p. 174; also lxxv. p. 170. - -[197] See ante, p. 19. - -[198] Chant i. v. 306. - -[199] La Voix du Sage et du Peuple (1750). _Œuv._ xxxviii. p. 53. - -[200] De Maistre, _Soirées de St. Pétersbourg_, 4ième. - -[201] _Œuvres_, xxxv. p. 37. - -[202] Corr. 1773. _Œuvres_, lxxv. p. 614. - -[203] Cf. Dict. Phil. s.v. Eglise. _Œuv._ pp. 221-248. - -[204] Dieu et les Hommes, c. xiv. _Œuvres_, xlv. p. 318. - -[205] Dict. Phil. s.v. Resurrection. _Œuvres_, lviii. p. 67. - -[206] See, for instance, Tylor’s _Primitive Culture_, i. 32, ii. 131, -etc. - -[207] Corr. 1770. _Œuvres_, lxxv. pp. 522, 526, etc. This active spite -prevented the accession of De Brosses to a seat in the academy. - -[208] Diet. Phil. s. v. Dieu. _Œuvres_, liv. p. 20. - -[209] Dieu et les Hommes, c. iii. _Œuvres_, xlv. p. 270. - -[210] Dict. Phil. s. v. Polythéisme. _Œuvres_, lvii. p. 391. - -[211] Corr. 1761. _Œuvres_, lxvii. p. 186. - -[212] Corr. 1758. _Œuvres_, lxvi. p. 200. - -[213] _Nat. Hist. of Religion_, sect. iii. - -[214] _Ib._ sect. iv. - -[215] _Soirées de St. Pétersbourg_, vi. p. 403. - -[216] Ante, ch. iii. - -[217] See Milman’s _Hist. of Latin Christianity_, bk. ii. chap. ii. and -iii. - -[218] Corr. 1761. _Œuvres_, lxvii. p. 74. - -[219] Finlay’s _Greece under the Romans_ (B.C. 146-A.D. 716), pp. 146, -147. - -[220] Poëme sur le Desastre de Lisbonne. _Œuvres_, xv. p. 53. - -[221] Phil. de Newton. _Œuv._ xli. p. 46. See also the whole chapter. - -[222] A Mdme. du Châtelet sur la Philosophic de Newton (1738). _Œuv._ -xvii. p. 113. - -[223] Ode sur le Fanatisme. _Œuvres_, xvi. p. 331. - -[224] _Œuvres_, xv. pp. 39-62. - -[225] Aristotle’s definition of εὐτραπελία, or wit, as ὕβρις -πεπαιδευμένη marks one of Voltaire’s chief talents with entire accuracy. - -[226] _Œuvres_, xv. p. 58. - -[227] Corr. 1765. _Œuvres_, lxxv. p. 311. - -[228] Lettres Ang. xiv. _Œuvres_, xxxv. p. 108. - -[229] Corr. 1736. _Œuvres_, lxiii. p. 31. - -[230] Dict. Phil. s. v. Locke. _Œuvres_, lvi. p. 338. - -[231] Holberg, quoted in Sainte-Beuve’s _Nouveaux Lundis_, ix. 26. - -[232] Quinet’s _La Révolution_, i. 168. - -[233] Essai sur les Mœurs, c. ii. _Œuvres_, xx. p. 344. See also c. -clxxxii. _Œuv._ xxiv. p. 162. - -[234] Essai sur les Mœurs, pp. 1, 2. - -[235] Essai sur les Mœurs, p. 9. - -[236] _On the Study of History_, Letter i. ad finem. - -[237] _Grandeur et Décadence des Romains_, c. xi. - -[238] The dates of the publication of Voltaire’s historical works are -these:—_Charles XII._, 1731; _Siècle de Louis XIV_., 1752 (a portion of -it in 1739); _Annales de l’Empire_, 1753-54; _Essai sur les Mœurs_, 1757 -(surreptitiously in 1754); _Histoire de Russie_, Pt. I. in 1759, Pt. II. -in 1763; _Precis du Siècle de Louis XV._, 1768; _Histoire du Parlement -de Paris_, 1769. - -[239] Le Pyrrhonisme de l’Histoire, cc. xii. xiii. _Œuvres_, xxxvi, p. -346; also p. 428. - -[240] Corr. _Œuvres_, lxvi. p. 17. - -[241] Corr. 1757. _Œuvres_, lxvi. p. 61. - -[242] Corr. 1761. _Œuv._ lxvii. p. 228. - -[243] _Œuvres_, xx. p. 10 - -[244] Siècle de Louis XIV., c. i. _Œuvres_, xxv. p. 283. - -[245] Corr. 1735. _Œuvres_, lxii. pp. 455, 456. - -[246] _Œuvres_, xxxvi. pp. 428-434 (1768). - -[247] Diet. Phil. s.v. Guerre. _Œuvres_, lv. pp. 488, 489. - -[248] _Esprit des Lois_, x. ii. - -[249] _Œuvres_, lv. p. 490. - -[250] Corr. _Œuvres_, lxxv. p. 460. - -[251] See a letter of the king of Prussia in Voltaire’s _Works_, lxxiv. -p. 144, etc. - -[252] C. xxiii. _Œuvres_, xxi. p. 9. - -[253] _Mœurs_, like ἤθη is untranslatable by any single English word. -The full title is _Essai sur les Mœurs et l’Esprit des Nations, et sur -les principaux faits de l’Histoire depuís Charlemagne jusqu’ à Louis -XIII._ - -[254] C. vi. _Œuvres_, xx. p. 396. - -[255] C. xi. _Œuvres_, xx. p. 455. - -[256] See on this interesting subject Finlay’s _Greece under the Romans_ -(B.C. 146-A.D. 716), pp. 156, 157. - -[257] _Childe Harold_, iii. 106 and 107. - -[258] C. ix. _Œuvres_, xx. p. 445. - -[259] C. lviii. _Œuvres_, xxi. pp. 328-341. - -[260] Quelques petites Hardiesses, etc. _Œuvres_, xxxvi. p. 445. - -[261] C. xlii. _Œuvres_, xxi. p. 143. - -[262] Notes sur le Désastre de Lisbonne. _Œuvres_, xv. p. 57. - -[263] He ridiculed some of these in one of his most humane and otherwise -excellent pieces, L’Homme aux Quarante Ecus (1767). _Œuv._ lix. p. 395. - -[264] _The Republic_, 1577. _Esprit des Lois_, 1748. - -[265] _Œuv._ lxvii. p. 94. - -[266] A drawing of Voltaire’s château at Ferney is given in Blancheton’s -_Vues Pittoresques des Châteaux de France_ (Paris, 1826), Part II. The -château is still standing, and the prospect from the terrace repays a -visit, apart from the interest of association. The church is now a -receptacle for wine-casks. - -[267] The reader who is curious as to the most indifferent details, will -find what he seeks in a singular monument of painstaking spleen, -entitled _Ménage et Finances de Voltaire_, by M. Nicolardot (Paris, -1854). - -[268] Corr. 1761. _Œuv._ lxvii. p. 190. - -[269] _Corr. Lit._ vi. p. 272; v. p. 385. - -[270] Grimm, _Corr. Lit._ v. p. 393. - -[271] Corr. 1761. _Œuv._ lxxv. p. 158. - -[272] Born 1710; lost her first husband 1744; married one Vivier in -1779; died 1790. - -[273] Corr. 1770. _Œuv._ lxx. p. 175. - -[274] Corr. 1771-72. _Œuv._ lxxiv. pp. 733 and 737. - -[275] Corr. 1772. _Œuvres_, lxxi. p. 496. The marked copy is still in -existence, along with the rest of Voltaire’s books, at St. Petersburg; -see Lavergne’s _Economistes du 18ième Siècle_, p. 285. - -[276] Corr. 1761. _Œuvres_, lxvii. p. 166. - -[277] _Œuvres_, lxxv. pp. 64, 69, etc. - -[278] Corr. 1770. _Œuvres_, lxxi, p. 18. - -[279] _Œuvres de Turgot_, ii. pp. 814-825. - -[280] _Ib._ p. 824. - -[281] _Œuvres_, lxxv. p. 331. - -[282] _Œuvres_, lxxv. p. 33. - -[283] _Œuvres de Condorcet_, iv. pp. 33, 34, and vi. pp. 187-189. - -[284] Corr. 1768. _Œuvres_, lxxv. p. 426. - -[285] Corr. 1768. _Œuvres_, lxx. pp. 198-199. - -[286] Corr. 1769. _Œuvres_, lxx. pp. 434, 435; lxxv. p. 452. Grimm’s -_Corr. Lit._ vi. p. 231. - -[287] Condorcet, _Vie de Voltaire_, p. 126. - -[288] Corr. _Œuvres_, lxxi. pp. 25, 27, 30, etc. - -[289] Grimm, _Corr. Lit._ vi. p. 358. - -[290] Grimm, _Corr. Lit._ vi. p. 358. - -[291] _Confessions_, pt. i. liv. v. Date of 1736. - -[292] _Œuvres_, lxxv. p. 182. - -[293] Corr. 1762. _Œuvres_, lxxv. p. 188. - -[294] _Œuvres_, lxvii. p. 432. - -[295] Condorcet, p. 170. - -[296] Lamartine’s _Girondins_, iv. v. - -[297] See his correspondence with D’Alembert (_Œuvres_, lxxv.) until -1760, the date of D’Alembert’s separation from Diderot and the -Encyclopædia. - -[298] _Phil. Pos._ v. 520. - -[299] _Essais sur les règnes de Claude et Néron_, vol. vi. pp. 256, 290, -and 191 (Ed. 1819). - -[300] Corr. 1766. _Œuvres_, lxxv. p. 364. - -[301] Condorcet, p. 124. - -[302] Martin’s _Hist. de France_, xv. pp. 569-572. - -[303] Corr. 1757. _Œuvres_, lxvi. p. 51. - -[304] Corr. 1756. _Œuvres_, lxv. p. 568; lxvi. pp. 1, 19, 20, 40. - -[305] _Œuvres_, lxvi. p. 51. - -[306] Corr. 1772. _Œuvres_, lxxiv. p. 36. - -[307] _Ib._ p. 93, etc. - -[308] See Morellet, i. pp. 147, 159, etc. - -[309] _Œuvres_, lxxv. p. 641. - -[310] Ode sur le Passé et le Présent (1775). _Œuvres_, xvi. p. 415. - -[311] Epître à un Homme (1776). _Œuvres_, xvii. p. 327. - -[312] Corr. 1776. _Œuvres_, lxxii. pp. 403, 409, 412, etc. - -[313] April 2, 1764. _Œuvres_, lxviii. p. 220. - -[314] Eloge historique de la Raison (_or_ Voyage de la Raison). -_Œuvres_, lx. p. 478. - - -THE END. - -_Printed by_ R. & R. 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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: Voltaire - -Author: John Morley - -Release Date: September 23, 2012 [EBook #40846] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VOLTAIRE *** - - - - -Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Turgut Dincer and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - - - - - - - - -VOLTAIRE - -BY JOHN MORLEY - -LONDON MACMILLAN AND CO. 1886 - -_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, _Edinburgh_. - - - - -NOTE. - - -The edition to which the references are made in the following pages is -that published by Baudouin in 1826, in seventy-five volumes. This -edition is to be distinguished from that known as the first Baudouin -edition, published 1824-34, in ninety-seven volumes. The extent of the -difference between them, which is entirely in favour of the more -voluminous form, may be seen in M. Qurard's _Bibliographie -Voltairienne_ (p. 107). The large number of complete and elaborate -editions of Voltaire's works, which were undertaken and executed in the -years between the overthrow of the Empire and the overthrow of the -Monarchy in 1830, is one of the most striking facts in the history of -books. - -1872. - - - - -CONTENTS. - - - CHAPTER I. - - PRELIMINARY. - - PAGE - - Importance of Voltaire's name 1 - - Catholicism, Calvinism, and the Renaissance 1 - - Voltairism the Renaissance of the eighteenth century 4 - - His power the result of his sincerity, penetration, and - courage 6 - - Different tempers proper for different eras 11 - - Voltaire's freedom from intellectual cowardice 12 - - And from worldly indifference to truth and justice 13 - - Reason and humanity only a single word to him 15 - - His position towards the purely literary life 17 - - Enervating regrets that the movement had not a less - violent leader 19 - - The share of chance in providing leaders 20 - - Combination of favourable circumstances in Voltaire's - case 22 - - Occasion and necessity of the movement 24 - - Age of Lewis XIV. entirely loyal to its own ideas 25 - - Subsequent discredit of these ideas 26 - - Preparation for abandonment of the old system by - Descartes and Bayle 29 - - Voltaire continues the work, not wholly to the disadvantage - of the old system 31 - - No ascetic element in the Voltairean revolt 33 - - Why primarily an intellectual movement 34 - - The hostile memory of Christians for it 37 - - Comte's estimate of it 37 - - The estimate of culture 40 - - Some pleas on the other side 40 - - - CHAPTER II. - - ENGLISH INFLUENCES. - - Significance of the journey to England 44 - - His birth and youthful history 45 - - Ninon de l'Enclos, Chaulieu, and the Regency 46 - - Manner of life from 1716 49 - - Affront from the Chevalier de Rohan 53 - - Leaves France 54 - - Had previously been no more than a vague _esprit fort_ 56 - - Le Pour et le Contre 57 - - Freethinking a reality in England 58 - - Condorcet's account of the effect of England upon Voltaire 59 - - Social and political consequence of men of letters 59 - - Evil effect of this in France 60 - - Freedom of speech 61 - - Newton's discoveries 65 - - Their true influence on Voltaire 67 - - Locke 67 - - Profound effect of Lockian common-sense on Voltaire 70 - - Contrast between social condition of England and France 73 - - Voltaire's imperfect appreciation of the value and working - of a popular government 76 - - Confounds two distinct conceptions of civil liberty 79 - - A confusion shared by most of his countrymen 79 - - The Church of England 82 - - The Quakers 84 - - Voltaire's diligence in study of English literature 86 - - And in mastering one side of the deistical controversy 88 - - Through the influence of the deists on Voltaire, the genius - of Protestantism entered France 91 - - Limited consistency of Voltaire's philosophy 93 - - English deism contrasted with that of Leibnitz and with - the atheism of D'Holbach 95 - - - CHAPTER III. - - LITERATURE. - - Most just way of criticising character 98 - - Some traits in Voltaire 99 - - Acquaintance with the Marquise du Chtelet 101 - - Her character 103 - - Voltaire's placableness 105 - - His money transactions 107 - - The life at Cirey 111 - - His attempts in physical science 116 - - Literature his true calling 117 - - Qualities of his style 119 - - Significance of literature as a profession 125 - - Voltaire's dramatic art 126 - - Not deliberately art with a purpose 126 - - His plays a prolongation of the tradition of the great age - of Lewis XIV. 129 - - His criticism on Hamlet 132 - - Merits of the French classic drama 134 - - Voltaire compared with Corneille and Racine 136 - - His ideas of dramatic renovation 140 - - His Roman subjects 141 - - His enlargement of dramatic themes 143 - - Failure in comedy 144 - - Arising from want of deep humour 145 - - The Pucelle: offends two modern sentiments 147 - - Its true significance 148 - - Peculiarity of the licence of the eighteenth century 149 - - Sophisms by which it was defended 149 - - Contempt for the middle ages 152 - - The Henriade 153 - - - CHAPTER IV. - - BERLIN. - - Death of Madame du Chtelet 158 - - Voltaire and the court 158 - - He goes to Berlin 161 - - Character of literary activity in Prussia 161 - - The two movements of which Voltaire and the king were - chiefs 162 - - Character of Frederick the Great 166 - - Breaking up of the European state-system in 1740 171 - - The first shock in 1733 172 - - Frederick raises international relations into the region of - real matter 174 - - The situation defined 175 - - Two conceptions of progress 177 - - From which of them the result of the Seven Years' War - is seen to be truly progressive 180 - - The Jesuits 181 - - Their repulse after the humiliation of Austria 182 - - Frederick's probable unconsciousness of the ultimate bearings - of his policy 184 - - His type of monarchy 186 - - He sprang doubly from the critical school 188 - - Other statesmen affected by this school 188 - - Injustice of stamping Voltaire's influence as merely - destructive 191 - - Frederick the Great and France 193 - - Voltaire's life at Berlin 194 - - Maupertuis 196 - - Collision between him and Voltaire 198 - - The Diatribe of Doctor Akakia 199 - - Voltaire's departure from Berlin 201 - - The Frankfort episode 202 - - Unfortunate revelations in the Hirschel affair 206 - - Relations between Frederick and Voltaire henceforth 207 - - Voltaire fears to return to Paris 210 - - Geneva 211 - - The critical school not specially insensible to the picturesque 212 - - Voltaire buys Ferney (1758) 215 - - - CHAPTER V. - - RELIGION. - - (1) _Conditions of the Voltairean attack_. - - Two elements underlying Voltaire's enmity to Christianity 216 - - Failure of Catholicism as a social force 217 - - Utility of Protestantism in softening the transition 218 - - Compared with repression of free debate in France 219 - - Voltaire did not assail modern theosophies 221 - - The good inextricably bound up with the bad in the old - system 224 - - Jesuits and Jansenists 225 - - Voltaire declared the latter to be the worst foes 227 - - Morellet's Manual for Inquisitors 228 - - A reflex of the criminal jurisprudence of the time 229 - - Cases of Rochette, Calas, and Sirven 229 - - Of La Barre 230 - - Fervour of Voltaire's indignation 232 - - Protests against cynical acquiescence 233 - - Disappointment of the philosophers, and their courage 235 - - The reactionary fanaticism a proof of the truth of Voltaire's - allegations 237 - - Necessity of transforming spiritual basis of thought 238 - - Voltaire's abstention from the temporal sphere 239 - - His chief defect as leader of the attack 241 - - Crippling his historic imagination 243 - - The just historic calm impossible, until Voltaire had - pressed a previous question 245 - - - (2) _His method_. - - His instruments purely literary and dialectical 248 - - Leaves metaphysics of religion, and fastens on alleged - records 250 - - The other side fell back on the least worthy parts of their - system 251 - - Hence the narrow and literal character of Voltaire's - objections 252 - - His attack essentially the attack of the English deists 255 - - Rationalistic questions in scriptural and ecclesiastical - records 257 - - In doctrine 258 - - Argument from comparison with other myths 259 - - His neglect of primitive religions 260 - - His conviction that monotheism is the first religious - form 261 - - Difficulties which he thus passed over 264 - - Hume's view 266 - - Voltaire did not assail the general ideas of Christianity 267 - - Such as the idea of evil inherent in matter 270 - - And the idea of a deity as then conceived 271 - - Hence the acerbity of the debate 273 - - And the want of permanence in Voltaire's writings compared - with Bossuet or Pascal 274 - - His criticism on Dante 275 - - - (3) _His approximation to a solution_. - - Voltairean deism 276 - - Never accepted by the mass of men 278 - - Nor is it likely to be accepted by them 279 - - Voltaire's imperfect adherence to the deistical idea 280 - - Reasons for this 282 - - Does not accept belief in the immortality of the soul 286 - - Asserts less than Rousseau, and denies less than - Diderot 287 - - A popular movement begun by Bayle's Dictionary 288 - - Compromising method of Rousseau 290 - - Voltaire's view of an atheistical society 291 - - His belief in the social sufficiency of an analytic spirit 292 - - Synthesis necessary, but more than one is possible 293 - - - CHAPTER VI. - - HISTORY. - - Extraordinary activity in historical composition in the - eighteenth century 295 - - Explanation of it 296 - - Circumstances under which Voltaire thought about the - philosophy of history 297 - - The three historical styles 299 - - Voltaire's histories of two kinds 301 - - Rousseau's disregard for history 302 - - Voltaire's acute sense 303 - - His diligence in seeking authentic materials 305 - - Throws persons and personal interests into the second place 307 - - Changed view of the true subject matter of history 308 - - War always an object of Voltaire's antipathy 311 - - His distrust of diplomacy 315 - - Bossuet's Discourse on Universal History 316 - - Introduction to the Essay on Manners 318 - - Irrational disparagement of the Jews 319 - - Panegyric on the Emperor Julian 320 - - False view of the history of the church 322 - - Avoids the error of expressing barbarous activity in terms - of civilisation 323 - - Real merit of Voltaire's panorama 325 - - He was not alive to the necessity of scientifically studying - the conditions of the social union 326 - - - CHAPTER VII. - - FERNEY. - - His life at Ferney 329 - - Madame Denis 329 - - His vast correspondence 333 - - Consulted by Vauvenargues, Chastellux, Turgot, and - others 334 - - Complaisance of his letters 336 - - Sophistical defence of the practice of denying authorship 339 - - Voltaire's just alarm for his own safety 340 - - His Easter communion of 1768 341 - - Further proceedings with the Bishop of Annecy 342 - - Voltaire made temporal father of the Capucins of Gex 344 - - Voltaire's influence on Rousseau 345 - - Difference between their respective schools 347 - - Their rivalry represents the social dead-lock of the time 348 - - Voltaire the more far-sighted of the two 350 - - Two signal effects of Rousseau's teaching 352 - - Diderot and the Encyclopdia 354 - - Voltaire's constant efforts to secure redress for the victims - of wrong 357 - - Calas, Sirven, La Barre 357 - - Count Lally 358 - - Admiral Byng 359 - - His interest in the pretended liberation of Greece 360 - - In the partition of Poland 361 - - In the accession of Turgot to power 362 - - Visit to Paris and death 363 - - -=ta men gar sphronn th sphodra men eulab kai dikaia kai stria, -drimuttos de kai tinos itamottos oxeias kai praktiks endeitai.... -ta d' andreia ge au pros men to dikaion kai eulabes ekeinn -epideestera, to d' en tais praxesi diapheronts ischei. panta de kals -gignesthai ta peri tas poleis, toutoin m paragenomenoin amphoin, -adunaton.=--_Politicus_, 311 A. - -=Poteron tous andreious tharrhaleous legeis, allo ti? Kai itas ge, -eph, eph' ha hoi polloi phobountas ienai.=--_Protagoras_, 349 E. - - - - -CHAPTER I. - -PRELIMINARY. - - -When the right sense of historical proportion is more fully developed in -men's minds, the name of Voltaire will stand out like the names of the -great decisive movements in the European advance, like the Revival of -Learning, or the Reformation. The existence, character, and career of -this extraordinary person constituted in themselves a new and prodigious -era. The peculiarities of his individual genius changed the mind and -spiritual conformation of France, and in a less degree of the whole of -the West, with as far-spreading and invincible an effect as if the work -had been wholly done, as it was actually aided, by the sweep of -deep-lying collective forces. A new type of belief, and of its shadow, -disbelief, was stamped by the impression of his character and work into -the intelligence and feeling of his own and the following times. We may -think of Voltairism in France somewhat as we think of Catholicism or the -Renaissance or Calvinism. It was one of the cardinal liberations of the -growing race, one of the emphatic manifestations of some portion of the -minds of men, which an immediately foregoing system and creed had either -ignored or outraged. - -Christianity originally and generically at once awoke and satisfied a -spiritual craving for a higher, purer, less torn and fragmentary being, -than is permitted to sons of men on the troubled and corrupt earth. It -disclosed to them a gracious, benevolent, and all-powerful being, who -would one day redress all wrongs and recompense all pain, and who asked -no more from them meanwhile than that they should prove their love of -him whom they had not seen, by love of their brothers whom they had -seen. Its great glory was to have raised the moral dignity and -self-respect of the many to a level which had hitherto been reached only -by a few. Calvin, again, like some stern and austere step-son of the -Christian God, jealous of the divine benignity and abused -open-handedness of his father's house, with word of merciless power set -free all those souls that were more anxious to look the tremendous facts -of necessity and evil and punishment full in the face, than to reconcile -them with any theory of the infinite mercy and loving-kindness of a -supreme creator. Men who had been enervated or helplessly perplexed by a -creed that had sunk into ignoble optimism and self-indulgence, became -conscious of new fibre in their moral structure, when they realised life -as a long wrestling with unseen and invincible forces of grace, -election, and fore-destiny, the agencies of a being whose ways and -dealings, whose contradictory attributes of unjust justice and loving -vindictiveness, it was not for man, who is a worm and the son of a worm, -to reconcile with the puny logic of human words, or the shallow -consistency of human ideas. Catholicism was a movement of mysticism, and -so in darker regions was the Calvinism which in so many important -societies displaced it. Each did much to raise the measure of worth and -purify the spiritual self-respect of mankind, and each also discouraged -and depressed the liberal play of intelligence, the cheerful energizing -of reason, the bright and many-sided workings of fancy and imagination. -Human nature, happily for us, ever presses against this system or that, -and forces ways of escape for itself into freedom and light. The -scientific reason urgently seeks instruments and a voice; the creative -imagination unconsciously takes form to itself in manifold ways, of all -of which the emotions can give good account to the understanding. Hence -the glorious suffusion of light which the ardent desire of men brought -over the face of Europe in the latter half of the fifteenth century. -Before Luther and Calvin in their separate ways brought into splendid -prominence their new ideas of moral order, more than two generations of -men had almost ceased to care whether there be any moral order or not, -and had plunged with the delight of enchantment among ideas of grace and -beauty, whose forms were old on the earth, but which were full of -seemingly inexhaustible novelty and freshness to men, who had once -begun to receive and to understand all the ever-living gifts of Grecian -art and architecture and letters. If the Reformation, the great revival -of northern Europe, was the enfranchisement of the individual from -bondage to a collective religious tradition that had lost its virtue, -the Renaissance, the earlier revival of southern Europe, was the -admission to participate in the noblest collective tradition of free -intellect which the achievements of the race could then hand down. - -Voltairism may stand for the name of the Renaissance of the eighteenth -century, for that name takes in all the serious haltings and -shortcomings of this strange movement, as well as all its terrible fire, -swiftness, sincerity, and strength. The rays from Voltaire's burning and -far-shining spirit no sooner struck upon the genius of the time, seated -dark and dead like the black stone of Memnon's statue, than the clang of -the breaking chord was heard through Europe, and men awoke in new day -and more spacious air. The sentimentalist has proclaimed him a mere -mocker. To the critic of the schools, ever ready with compendious label, -he is the revolutionary destructive. To each alike of the countless -orthodox sects his name is the symbol for the prevailing of the gates of -hell. Erudition figures him as shallow and a trifler; culture condemns -him for pushing his hatred of spiritual falsehood much too seriously; -Christian charity feels constrained to unmask a demon from the depths of -the pit. The plain men of the earth, who are apt to measure the merits -of a philosopher by the strength of his sympathy with existing sources -of comfort, would generally approve the saying of Dr. Johnson, that he -would sooner sign a sentence for Rousseau's transportation than that of -any felon who had gone from the Old Bailey these many years, and that -the difference between him and Voltaire was so slight, that 'it would be -difficult to settle the proportion of iniquity between them.' Those of -all schools and professions who have the temperament which mistakes -strong expression for strong judgment, and violent phrase for grounded -conviction, have been stimulated by antipathy against Voltaire to a -degree that in any of them with latent turns for humour must now and -then have even stirred a kind of reacting sympathy. The rank vocabulary -of malice and hate, that noisome fringe of the history of opinion, has -received many of its most fulminant terms from critics of Voltaire, -along with some from Voltaire himself, who unwisely did not always -refuse to follow an adversary's bad example. - -Yet Voltaire was the very eye of eighteenth-century 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 fourscore volumes which he -wrote are the monument, as they were in some sort the instrument, of a -new renascence. They are the fruit and representation of a spirit of -encyclopdic 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. His works as much as those of any man -that ever lived and thought are truly his own. It is not given, we all -know, even to the most original and daring of leaders to be without -precursors, and Voltaire's march was prepared for him before he was -born, as it is for all mortals. Yet he impressed on all he said, on good -words and bad alike, a marked autochthonic quality, as of the -self-raised spontaneous products of some miraculous soil, from which -prodigies and portents spring. Many of his ideas were in the air, and -did not belong to him peculiarly; but so strangely rapid and perfect was -his assimilation of them, so vigorous and minutely penetrative was the -quality of his understanding, so firm and independent his initiative, -that even these were instantly stamped with the express image of his -personality. In a word, Voltaire's work from first to last was alert -with unquenchable life. Some of it, much of it, has ceased to be alive -for us now in all that belongs to its deeper significance, yet we -recognise that none of it was ever the dreary still-birth of a mind of -hearsays. There is no mechanical transmission of untested bits of -current coin. In the realm of mere letters, Voltaire is one of the -little band of great monarchs, and in style he remains of the supreme -potentates. But literary variety and perfection, however admirable, like -all purely literary qualities, are a fragile and secondary good which -the world is very willing to let die, where it has not been truly -begotten and engendered of living forces. - -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. -Fontenelle was both brilliant and far-sighted, but he was cold, and one -of those who love ease and a safe hearth, and carefully shun the din, -turmoil, and danger, of the great battle. 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. - -This is the temper which, when the times are auspicious, and the -fortunes of the fight do not hurry the combatant to dungeon or stake, -raises him into a force instead of leaving him the empty shadow of a -literary name. There is something in our nature which leads men to -listen coolly to the most eager hints and pregnant innuendoes of -scepticism, on the lips of teachers who still in their own persons keep -adroitly away from the fiery darts of the officially orthodox. The same -something, perhaps a moral relish for veritable proofs of honesty, -perhaps a quality of animal temperament, drives men to grasp even a -crudity with fervour, when they see it wielded like a battle-axe against -spiritual oppression. A man is always so much more than his words, as we -feel every day of our lives; what he says has its momentum indefinitely -multiplied, or reduced to nullity, by the impression that the hearer for -good reasons or bad happens to have formed of the spirit and moral size -of the speaker. There are things enough to be said of Voltaire's moral -size, and no attempt is made in these pages to dissemble in how much he -was condemnable. It is at least certain that he hated tyranny, that he -refused to lay up his hatred privily in his heart, and insisted on -giving his abhorrence a voice, and tempering for his just rage a fine -sword, very fatal to those who laid burdens too hard to be borne upon -the conscience and life of men. Voltaire's contemporaries felt this. -They were stirred to the quick by the sight and sound and thorough -directness of those ringing blows. The strange and sinister method of -assault upon religion which we of a later day watch with wondering eyes, -and which consists in wearing the shield and device of a faith, and -industriously shouting the cry of a church, the more effectually to -reduce the faith to a vague futility, and its outward ordering to a -piece of ingeniously reticulated pretence; this method of attack might -make even the champions of prevailing beliefs long for the shrewd -thrusts, the flashing scorn, the relentless fire, the downright -grapples, with which the hated Voltaire pushed on his work of 'crushing -the Infamous.' If he was bitter, he was still direct. If he was often a -mocker in form, he was always serious in meaning and laborious in -matter. If he was unflinching against theology, he always paid religion -respect enough to treat it as the most important of all subjects. The -contest was real, and not our present pantomimic stage-play, in which -muffled phantoms of debate are made to gesticulate inexpressible things -in portentously significant silence. The battle was demoralized by its -virulence. True; but is this worse than to have it demoralized by -cowardice of heart and understanding, when each controversial -man-at-arms is eager to have it thought that he wears the colours of the -other side, when the theologian would fain pass for rationalist, and the -free-thinker for a person with his own orthodoxies if you only knew -them, and when philosophic candour and intelligence are supposed to have -hit their final climax in the doctrine that everything is both true and -false at the same time? - -A man like Montaigne, as has been said, could slumber tranquilly on the -pillow of doubt, content to live his life, leaving many questions open. -Such men's meditations, when composed in the genial literary form proper -to them, are naturally the delight of people with whom the world goes -fairly well materially, who have sensibility enough to be aware that -there are unseen lands of knowledge and truth beyond the present, and -destinies beyond their own; but whose sensibility is not intense and -ardent enough to make wholly unendurable to them unscrutinizing -acquiescence in half-thoughts and faint guesses, and pale unshapen -embryos of social sympathy. There are conjunctures when this mingling of -apprehension and ease, of aspiration and content, of timorous adventure -and reflective indolence, is the natural mood of even high natures. The -great tides of circumstance swell so tardily, that whole generations -that might have produced their share of skilful and intrepid mariners, -wait in vain for the full flood on which the race is borne to new -shores. - -Nor assuredly is it well for men that every age should mark either a -revolution, or the slow inward agitation that prepares the revolution, -or that doubters and destroyers should divide between them all -admiration and gratitude and sympathy. The violent activity of a century -of great change may end in a victory, but it is always a sacrifice. The -victory may more than recompense its cost. The sacrifice may repay -itself a thousand-fold. It does not always repay itself, as the too -neglected list of good causes lost, and noble effort wasted, so -abundantly shows. Nor in any case is sacrifice ever an end. Faith and -order and steady strong movement are the conditions which everything -wise is directed to perfect and consolidate. But for this process of -perfection we need first the meditative, doubting, critical type, and -next, the dogmatic destroyer. 'In counsel it is good to see dangers,' -Bacon said; 'and in execution not to see them, except they be very -great,' There are, as history instructs us, eras of counsel and eras of -execution; the hour when those do best who walk most warily, feeling -with patience and sagacity and painstaking for the new ways, and then -the hour of march and stout-hearted engagement. - -Voltaire, if he adroitly or sagely preserved his buckler, felt that the -day was come to throw away the scabbard; that it was time to trust -firmly to the free understanding of men for guidance in the voyage after -truth, and to the instincts of uncorrupted benevolence in men for the -upholding of social justice. His was one of the robust and incisive -constitutions, to which doubt figures as a sickness, and where -intellectual apprehension is an impossibility. The old-fashioned -nomenclature puts him down among sceptics, because those who had the -official right to affix these labels could think of no more contemptuous -name, and could not suppose the most audacious soul capable of advancing -even under the leadership of Satan himself beyond a stray doubt or so. -He had perhaps as little of the sceptic in his constitution as Bossuet -or Butler, and was much less capable of becoming one than De Maistre or -Paley. This was a prime secret of his power, for the mere critic and -propounder of unanswered doubts never leads more than a handful of men -after him. Voltaire boldly put the great question, and he boldly -answered it. He asked whether the sacred records were historically -true, the Christian doctrine divinely inspired and spiritually -exhaustive, and the Christian church a holy and beneficent organization. -He answered these questions for himself and for others beyond -possibility of misconception. The records were saturated with fable and -absurdity, the doctrine imperfect at its best, and a dark and tyrannical -superstition at its worst, and the church was the arch-curse and infamy. -Say what we will of these answers, they were free from any taint of -scepticism. Our lofty new idea of rational freedom as freedom from -conviction, and of emancipation of understanding as emancipation from -the duty of settling whether important propositions are true or false, -had not dawned on Voltaire. - -He had just as little part or lot in the complaisant spirit of the man -of the world, who from the depths of his mediocrity and ease presumes to -promulgate the law of progress, and as dictator to fix its speed. Who -does not know this temper of the man of the world, that worst enemy of -the world? His inexhaustible patience of abuses that only torment -others; his apologetic word for beliefs that may perhaps not be so -precisely true as one might wish, and institutions that are not -altogether so useful as some might think possible; his cordiality -towards progress and improvement in a general way, and his coldness or -antipathy to each progressive proposal in particular; his pygmy hope -that life will one day become somewhat better, punily shivering by the -side of his gigantic conviction that it might well be infinitely worse. -To Voltaire, far different from this, an irrational prejudice was not -the object of a polite coldness, but a real evil to be combated and -overthrown at every hazard. Cruelty was not to him as a disagreeable -dream of the imagination, from thought of which he could save himself by -arousing to sense of his own comfort, but a vivid flame burning into his -thoughts and destroying peace. Wrong-doing and injustice were not simple -words on his lips; they went as knives to the heart; he suffered with -the victim, and consumed with an active rage against the oppressor. - -Nor was the coarse cruelty of the inquisitor or the politician, who -wrought iniquity by aid of the arm of flesh, the only kind of injury to -the world which stirred his passion. 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 usage. The system which threw obstacles into the way of -publishing an exposition of Newton's discoveries and ideas was as -mischievous and hateful to him, as the darker bigotry which broke Calas -on the wheel because he was a Protestant. To check the energetic -discovery and wide propagation of scientific truth, he rightly held to -be at least as destructive in the long run to the common weal, as the -unjust extermination of human life; for it is the possession of ever -more and more truth that makes life ever better worth having and better -worth preserving. And must we not admit that he was right, and that no -age nor school of men nor individual has ever been mortally afraid, as -every good man is afraid, of inflicting any wrong on his fellow, and has -not also been afraid of extinguishing a single ray from the great sun of -knowledge? - -It is well enough to say that in unscientific ages, like the twelfth -century for instance, the burner of books and the tormentor of those who -wrote them, did not feel either that he was doing an injustice to man or -a mischief to truth. It is hard to deny that St. Bernard was a good man, -nor is it needful that we should deny it; for good motives, owing to our -great blindness and slow enlightenment, have made grievous havoc in the -world. But the conception of justice towards heretics did not exist, any -more than it existed in the mind of a low type of white man towards a -black man, or than the conception of pity exists in the mind of a -sportsman towards his prey. These were ages of social cruelty, as they -were ages of intellectual repression. The debt of each to his neighbour -was as little felt, as the debt of all to the common faculties and -intelligence. Men owed nothing to man, but everything to the gods. All -the social feeling and intellectual effort and human energizing which -had made the high idea of God possible and real, seemed to have -expended themselves in a creation which instantly swallowed them up and -obliterated their recollection. The intelligence which by its active -straining upwards to the light had opened the way for the one God, -became itself forthwith identified with the chief of the devils. He who -used his reason was the child of this demon. Where it is a duty to -worship the sun, it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of -heat. The times when such was the universal idea of the rights of the -understanding, were also the times when human life was cheapest, and the -tiny bowl of a man's happiness was spilt upon the ground with least -compunction. - -The companionship between these two ideas of disrespect for the rights -of man, and disrespect for reason or the highest distinction of man, has -been an inseparable companionship. The converse is unhappily only true -with a modification, for there have been too many men with an honourable -respect for a demonstration and a proper hospitality towards a -probability, who look on the rights of man, without disrespect indeed, -but also without fervour. To Voltaire reason and humanity were but a -single word, and love of truth and passion for justice but one emotion. -None of the famous men who have fought that they themselves might think -freely and speak truly, have ever seen more clearly that the fundamental -aim of the contest was that others might live happily. Who has not been -touched by that admirable word of his, of the three years in which he -laboured without remission for justice to the widow and descendants of -Calas: '_During that time not a smile escaped me without my reproaching -myself for it, as for a crime_.' Or by his sincere avowal that of all -the words of enthusiasm and admiration which were so prodigally bestowed -upon him on the occasion of his last famous visit to Paris in 1778, none -went to his heart like that of a woman of the people, who in reply to -one asking the name of him whom the crowd followed, gave answer, '_Do -you not know that he is the preserver of the Calas?_' - -The same kind of feeling, though manifested in ways of much less -unequivocal nobleness, was at the bottom of his many efforts to make -himself of consequence in important political business. We know how many -contemptuous sarcasms have been inspired by his anxiety at various times -to perform diplomatic feats of intervention between the French -government and Frederick the Second. In 1742, after his visit to the -Prussian king at Aix-la-Chapelle, he is supposed to have hinted to -Cardinal Fleury that to have written epic and drama does not disqualify -a man for serving his king and country on the busy fields of affairs. -The following year, after Fleury's death, when French fortunes in the -war of the Austrian succession were near their lowest, Voltaire's own -idea that he might be useful from his intimacy with Frederick, seems to -have been shared by Amelot, the secretary of state, and at all events he -aspired to do some sort of active, if radically futile, diplomatic work. -In later times when the tide had turned, and Frederick's star was -clouded over with disaster, we again find Voltaire the eager -intermediary with Choiseul, pleasantly comparing himself to the mouse of -the fable, busily striving to free the lion from the meshes of the -hunter's net. - -The man of letters, usually unable to conceive loftier services to -mankind or more attractive aims to persons of capacity than the -composition of books, has treated these pretensions of Voltaire with a -supercilious kind of censure, which teaches us nothing about Voltaire, -while it implies a particularly shallow idea alike of the position of -the mere literary life in the scale of things, and of the conditions -under which the best literary work is done. 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 of his to come into -the closest contact with the practical affairs of the world. He who has -never left the life of a recluse, drawing an income from the funds and -living in a remote garden, constructing past, present, and future, out -of his own consciousness, is not qualified either to lead mankind -safely, or to think on the course of human affairs correctly. Every page -of Voltaire has the bracing air of the life of the world in it, and the -instinct which led him to seek the society of the conspicuous actors on -the great scene was essentially a right one. The book-writer takes good -advantage of his opportunity to assure men expressly or by implication -that he is their true king, and that the sacred bard is a mightier man -than his hero. Voltaire knew better. Though himself perhaps the most -puissant man of letters that ever lived, he rated literature as it ought -to be rated below action, not because written speech is less of a force, -but because the speculation and criticism of the literature that -substantially influences the world, make far less demand than the actual -conduct of great affairs on qualities which are not rare in detail, but -are amazingly rare in combination,--on temper, foresight, solidity, -daring,--on strength, in a word, strength of intelligence and strength of -character. Gibbon rightly amended his phrase, when he described Boethius -not as stooping, but rather as rising, from his life of placid -meditation to an active share in the imperial business. That he held -this sound opinion is quite as plausible an explanation of Voltaire's -anxiety to know persons of station and importance, as the current theory -that he was of sycophantic nature. Why, he asks, are the ancient -historians so full of light? 'It is because the writer had to do with -public business; it is because he could be magistrate, priest, soldier; -and because if he could not rise to the highest functions of the state, -he had at least to make himself worthy of them. I admit,' he concludes, -'that we must not expect such an advantage with us, for our own -constitution happens to be against it;' but he was deeply sensible what -an advantage it was that they thus lost.[1] - -In short, on all sides, whatever men do and think was real and alive to -Voltaire. Whatever had the quality of interesting any imaginable -temperament, had the quality of interesting him. There was no subject -which any set of men have ever cared about, which, if he once had -mention of it, Voltaire did not care about likewise. And it was just -because he was so thoroughly alive himself, that he filled the whole era -with life. The more closely one studies the various movements of that -time, the more clear it becomes that, if he was not the original centre -and first fountain of them all, at any rate he made many channels ready -and gave the sign. He was the initial principle of fermentation -throughout that vast commotion. We may deplore, if we think fit, as -Erasmus deplored in the case of Luther, that the great change was not -allowed to work itself out slowly, calmly, and without violence and -disruption. These graceful regrets are powerless, and on the whole they -are very enervating. Let us make our account with the actual, rather -than seek excuses for self-indulgence in pensive preference of something -that might have been. Practically in these great circles of affairs, -what only might have been is as though it could not be; and to know this -may well suffice for us. It is not in human power to choose the kind of -men who rise from time to time to the supreme control of momentous -changes. The force which decides this immensely important matter is as -though it were chance. We cannot decisively pronounce any circumstance -whatever an accident, yet history abounds with circumstances which in -our present ignorance of the causes of things are as if they were -accidents. - -In this respect history is neither better nor worse than the latest -explanation of the origin and order of the world of organised matter. -Here too we are landed in the final resort at what is neither more nor -less than an accident. Natural selection, or the survival of the fittest -in the universal struggle for existence, is now held by the most -competent inquirers to be the principal method to which we owe the -extinction, preservation, and distribution of organic forms on the -earth. But the appearance both of the forms that conquer and of those -that perish still remains a secret, and to science an accident and a -secret are virtually and provisionally the same thing. In a word, there -is an unknown element at the bottom of the varieties of creation, -whether we agree to call that element a volition of a supernatural -being, or an undiscovered set of facts in embryology. So in history the -Roman or Italo-Hellenic empire, rising when it did, was the salvation of -the West, and yet the appearance at the moment when anarchy threatened -rapidly to dissolve the Roman state, of a man with the power of -conceiving the best design for the new structure, seems to partake as -much of the nature of chance, as the non-appearance of men with similar -vision and power in equally momentous crises, earlier and later. The -rise of a great constructive chief like Charlemagne in the eighth -century can hardly be enough to persuade us that the occasion invariably -brings the leader whom its conditions require, when we remember that as -concerns their demands the conditions of the end of the eighth century -were not radically different from those of the beginning of the sixth, -yet that in the earlier epoch there arose no successor to continue the -work of Theodoric. We have only to examine the origin and fundamental -circumstances of the types of civilisation which rule western -communities and guide their advance, to discern in those original -circumstances a something inscrutable, a certain element of what is as -though it were fortuitous. No science can as yet tell us how such a -variation from previously existing creatures as man had its origin; nor, -any more than this, can history explain the law by which the most -striking variations in intellectual and spiritual quality within the -human order have had their origin. The appearance of the one as of the -other is a fact which cannot be further resolved. It is hard to think in -imagination of the globe as unpeopled by man, or peopled, as it may at -some remote day come to be, by beings of capacity superior enough to -extinguish man. It is hard also to think of the scene which western -Europe and all the vast space which the light of western Europe -irradiates, might have offered at this moment, if nature or the unknown -forces had not produced a Luther, a Calvin, or a Voltaire. - -It was one of the happy chances of circumstance that there arose in -France on the death of Lewis XIV. a man with all Voltaire's peculiar -gifts of intelligence, who added to them an incessant activity in their -use, and who besides this enjoyed such length of days as to make his -intellectual powers effective to the very fullest extent possible. This -combination of physical and mental conditions so amazingly favourable to -the spread of the Voltairean ideas, was a circumstance independent of -the state of the surrounding atmosphere, and was what in the phraseology -of prscientific times might well have been called providential. If -Voltaire had seen all that he saw, and yet been indolent; or if he had -been as clear-sighted and as active as he was, and yet had only lived -fifty years, instead of eighty-four, Voltairism would never have struck -root.[2] As it was, with his genius, his industry, his longevity, and -the conditions of the time being what they were, that far-spreading -movement of destruction was inevitable. - -Once more, we cannot choose. Those whom temperament or culture has made -the partisans of calm order, cannot attune progress to the stately and -harmonious march which would best please them, and which they are -perhaps right in thinking would lead with most security to the goal. - -Such a liberation of the human mind as Voltairism can only be effected -by the movement of many spirits, and they are only the few who are moved -by moderate, reflective, and scientific trains of argument. The many -need an extreme type. They are struck by what is flashing and colossal, -for they follow imagination and sympathy, and not the exactly -disciplined intelligence. They know their own wants, and have dumb -feeling of their own better aspirations. Their thoughts move in the -obscurity of things quick but unborn, and by instinct they push upwards -in whatever direction the darkness seems breaking. They are not critics -nor analysts, but when the time is ripening they never fail to know the -word of freedom and of truth, with whatever imperfections it may chance -to be spoken. No prophet all false has ever yet caught the ear of a -series of generations. No prophet all false has succeeded in separating -a nation into two clear divisions. Voltaire has in effect for a century -so divided the most emancipated of western nations. This is beyond the -power of the mere mocker, who perishes like the flash of lightning; he -does not abide as a centre of solar heat. - -There are more kinds of Voltaireans than one, but no one who has marched -ever so short a way out of the great camp of old ideas is directly or -indirectly out of the debt and out of the hand of the first liberator, -however little willing he may be to recognise one or the other. -Attention has been called by every writer on Voltaire to the immense -number of the editions of his works, a number probably unparalleled in -the case of any author within the same limits of time. Besides being one -of the most voluminous book-writers, he is one of the cheapest. We can -buy one of Voltaire's books for a few half-pence, and the keepers of the -cheap stalls in the cheap quarters of London and Paris will tell you -that this is not from lack of demand, but the contrary. So clearly does -that light burn for many even now, which scientifically speaking ought -to be extinct, and for many indeed is long ago extinct and superseded. -The reasons for this vitality are that Voltaire was himself thoroughly -alive when he did his work, and that the movement which that work began -is still unexhausted. - -How shall we attempt to characterise this movement? The historian of the -Christian church usually opens his narrative with an account of the -depravation of human nature and the corruption of society which preceded -the new religion. The Reformation in like manner is only to be -understood after we have perceived the enormous mass of superstition, -injustice, and wilful ignorance, by which the theological idea had -become so incrusted as to be wholly incompetent to guide society, -because it was equally repugnant to the intellectual perceptions and the -moral sense, the knowledge and the feelings, of the best and most -active-minded persons of the time. The same sort of consideration -explains and vindicates the enormous power of Voltaire. France had -outgrown the system that had brought her through the middle ages. The -further development of her national life was fatally hindered by the -tight bonds of an old order, which clung with the hardy tenacity of a -thriving parasite, diverting from the roots all their sustenance, eating -into the tissue, and feeding on the juices of the living tree. The -picture has often been painted, and we need not try to paint it once -more in detail here. The whole power and ordering of the nation were -with the sworn and chartered foes of light, who had every interest that -a desire to cling to authority and wealth can give, in keeping the -understanding subject. - -And, what was more important, there had been no sign made in the nation -itself of a consciousness of the immense realms of knowledge that lay -immediately in front of it, and still less of any desire or intention to -win lasting possession of them. That intellectual curiosity which was so -soon to produce such amazing fruits was as yet unstirred. An era of -extraordinary activity had just come to a close, and the creative and -artistic genius of France had risen to the highest mark it attained -until the opening of our own century. The grand age of Lewis XIV. had -been an age of magnificent literature and unsurpassed eloquence. But, in -spite of the potent seed which Descartes had sown, it had been the age -of authority, protection, and patronage. Consequently all those subjects -for which there was no patronage, that is to say the subjects which -could add nothing to the splendour and dignity of the church and the -pageantry of the court, were virtually repressed. This ought not to -blind us to the real loftiness and magnanimity of the best or earlier -part of the age of Lewis XIV. It has been said that the best title of -Lewis XIV. to the recollection of posterity is the protection he -extended to Molire; and one reason why this was so meritorious is that -Molire's work had a markedly critical character, in reference both to -the devout and to the courtier. The fact of this, undoubtedly the most -durable work of that time, containing critical quality, is not of -importance in reference to the generally fixed or positive aspect of the -age. For Molire is only critical by accident. There is nothing -organically negative about him, and his plays are the pure dramatic -presentation of a peculiar civilisation. He is no more a destructive -agency because he drew hypocrites and coxcombs, than Bossuet was -destructive or critical because he inveighed against sin and the excess -of human vainglory. The epoch was one of entire loyalty to itself and -its ideas. Voltaire himself perceived and admired these traits to the -full. The greatest of all overthrowers, he always understood that it is -towards such ages as these, the too short ages of conviction and -self-sufficience, that our endeavour works. We fight that others may -enjoy; and many generations struggle and debate, that one generation may -hold something for proven. - -The glories of the age of Lewis XIV. were the climax of a set of ideas -that instantly afterwards lost alike their grace, their usefulness, and -the firmness of their hold on the intelligence of men. A dignified and -venerable hierarchy, an august and powerful monarch, a court of gay and -luxurious nobles, all lost their grace, because the eyes of men were -suddenly caught and appalled by the awful phantom, which was yet so -real, of a perishing nation. Turn from Bossuet's orations to -Boisguillebert's _Dtail de la France_; from the pulpit rhetorician's -courtly reminders that even majesty must die, to Vauban's pity for the -misery of the common people;[3] from Corneille and Racine to La -Bruyre's picture of 'certain wild animals, male and female, scattered -over the fields, black, livid, all burnt by the sun, bound to the earth -that they dig and work with unconquerable pertinacity; they have a sort -of articulate voice, and when they rise on their feet, they show a human -face, and, in fact, are men.' The contrast had existed for generations. -The material misery caused by the wars of the great Lewis deepened the -dark side, and the lustre of genius consecrated to the glorification of -traditional authority and the order of the hour heightened the -brightness of the bright side, until the old contrast was suddenly seen -by a few startled eyes, and the new and deepest problem, destined to -strain our civilisation to a degree that not many have even now -conceived, came slowly into pale outline. - -There is no reason to think that Voltaire ever saw this gaunt and -tremendous spectacle. Rousseau was its first voice. Since him the -reorganisation of the relations of men has never faded from the sight -either of statesmen or philosophers, with vision keen enough to admit to -their eyes even what they dreaded and execrated in their hearts. -Voltaire's task was different and preparatory. It was to make popular -the genius and authority of reason. The foundations of the social fabric -were in such a condition that the touch of reason was fatal to the whole -structure, which instantly began to crumble. Authority and use oppose a -steadfast and invincible resistance to reason, so long as the -institutions which they protect are of fair practicable service to a -society. But after the death of Lewis XIV., not only the grace and pomp, -but also the social utility of spiritual and political absolutism passed -obviously away. Spiritual absolutism was unable to maintain even a -decent semblance of unity and theological order. Political absolutism by -its material costliness, its augmenting tendency to repress the -application of individual energy and thought to public concerns, and its -pursuit of a policy in Europe which was futile and essentially -meaningless as to its ends, and disastrous and incapable in its choice -of means, was rapidly exhausting the resources of national well-being -and viciously severing the very tap-root of national life. To bring -reason into an atmosphere so charged, was, as the old figure goes, to -admit air to the chamber of the mummy. And reason was exactly what -Voltaire brought; too narrow, if we will, too contentious, too derisive, -too unmitigatedly reasonable, but still reason. And who shall measure -the consequence of this difference in the history of two great nations; -that in France absolutism in church and state fell before the sinewy -genius of stark reason, while in England it fell before a respect for -social convenience, protesting against monopolies, benevolences, -ship-money? That in France speculation had penetrated over the whole -field of social inquiry, before a single step had been taken towards -application, while in England social principles were applied, before -they received any kind of speculative vindication? That in France the -first effective enemy of the principles of despotism was Voltaire, poet, -philosopher, historian, critic; in England, a band of homely squires? - -Traditional authority, it is true, had been partially and fatally -undermined in France before the time of Voltaire, by one of the most -daring of thinkers, and one of the most acute and sceptical of scholars, -as well as by writers so acutely careless as Montaigne, and apologists -so dangerously rational as Pascal, who gave a rank and consistency to -doubt even in showing that its seas were black and shoreless. -Descartes's Discourse on Method had been published in 1637, and Bayle's -Thoughts on the Comet, first of the series of critical onslaughts on -prejudice and authority in matters of belief, had been published in -1682. The metaphysician and the critic had each pressed forward on the -path of examination, and had each insisted on finding grounds for -belief, or else showing the absence of such grounds with a fatal -distinctness that made belief impossible. Descartes was constructive, -and was bent on reconciling the acceptance of a certain set of ideas as -to the relations between man and the universe, and as to the mode and -composition of the universe, with the logical reason. Bayle, whose -antecedents and environment were Protestant, was careless to replace, -but careful to have evidence for whatever was allowed to remain. No -parallel nor hint of equality is here intended between the rare genius -of Descartes and the relatively lower quality of Bayle. The one, however -high a place we may give to the regeneration of thought effected by -Bacon in England, or to that wrought by the brilliant group of physical -experimentalists in Italy, still marks a new epoch in the development of -the human mind, for he had decisively separated knowledge from theology, -and systematically constituted science. The other has a place only in -the history of criticism. But, although in widely different ways, and -with vast difference in intellectual stature, they both had touched the -prevailing notions of French society with a fatal breath. - -The blast that finally dispersed and destroyed them came not from -Descartes and Bayle, but directly from Voltaire and indirectly from -England. In the seventeenth century the surrounding conditions were not -ripe. Social needs had not begun to press. The organs of authority were -still too vigorous, and performed their functions with something more -than the mechanical half-heartedness of the next century. Long -familiarity with sceptical ideas as enemies must go before their -reception as friends and deliverers. They have perhaps never gained an -effective hold in any community, until they have found allies in the -hostile camp of official orthodoxy, and so long as that orthodoxy was -able to afford them a vigorous social resistance. Voltaire's universal -talents made one of the most powerful instruments for conveying these -bold and inquisitive notions among many sorts and conditions of men, -including both the multitude of common readers and playgoers in the -towns, and the narrower multitude of nobles and sovereigns. More than -this, the brilliance and variety of his gifts attracted, stimulated, and -directed the majority of the men of letters of his time, and imparted to -them a measure of his own singular skill in conveying the principles of -rationalistic thought. - -The effect of all this was to turn a vast number of personages who were -officially inimical to free criticism, to be at heart abettors and -fellow-conspirators in the great plot. That fact, combined with the -independent causes of the incompetency of the holders of authority to -deal with the crying social necessities of the time, left the walls of -the citadel undermined and undefended, and a few of the sacred birds -that were still found faithful cackled to no purpose. It has often been -said that in the early times of Christianity its influence gave all that -was truest and brightest in colour to the compositions of those who were -least or not at all affected by its dogma. It is more certain that -Voltaire by the extraordinary force of his personality gave a peculiar -tone and life even to those who adhered most staunchly to the ancient -ordering. The champions of authority were driven to defend their cause -by the unusual weapons of rationality; and if Voltaire had never -written, authority would never, for instance, have found such a soldier -on her side as that most able and eminent of reactionaries, Joseph de -Maistre. In reply to the favourite assertion of the apologists of -Catholicism, that whatever good side its assailants may present is the -product of the very teaching which they repudiate, one can only say that -there would be at least as much justice in maintaining that the marked -improvement which took place in the character and aims of the priesthood -between the Regency and the Revolution,[4] was an obligation -unconsciously incurred to those just and liberal ideas which Voltaire -had helped so powerfully to spread. De Maistre compares Reason putting -away Revelation to a child who should beat its nurse. The same figure -would serve just as well to describe the thanklessness of Belief to the -Disbelief which has purged and exalted it. - -One of the most striking features of the revolution wrought by Voltaire -is that it was the one great revolt in history which contained no -element of asceticism, and achieved all its victories without resort to -an instrument so potent, inflexible, and easy, but so gravely dangerous. -Such revolts are always reactions against surrounding corruption and -darkness. They are the energetic protests of the purer capacities and -aspirations of human nature; and as is the inevitable consequence of -vehement action of this sort, they seem for a while to insist on nothing -less than the extirpation of those antagonistic parts which are seen to -have brought life into such debasement. With this stern anger and -resolve in their hearts, men have no mind to refine, explain, or -moderate, and they are forced by one of the strangest instincts of our -constitution into some system of mortification, which may seem to clear -the soul of the taint of surrounding grossness. In such exalted mood, -there is no refuge but in withdrawal from the common life into recesses -of private conscience, and in severest purification of all desires. -There are not many types of good men even in the least ascetic or least -reactionary epochs, to whom this mood, and its passion for simplicity, -self-applied rigour, minute discipline, firm regulation, and veritable -continence of life, do not now and again recur, in the midst of days -that march normally on a more spacious and expansive theory. - -There was, however, no tinge of ascetic principle in Voltairism. Pascal -had remarked that relaxed opinions are naturally so pleasing to men, -that it is wonderful they should ever be displeasing. To which Voltaire -had thus retorted: 'On the contrary, does not experience prove that -influence over men's minds is only gained by offering them the -difficult, nay the impossible, to perform or believe? Offer only things -that are reasonable, and all the world will answer, We knew as much as -that. But enjoin things that are hard, impracticable; paint the deity as -ever armed with the thunder; make blood run before the altars; and you -will win the multitude's ear, and everybody will say of you, He must be -right, or he would not so boldly proclaim things so marvellous.'[5] -Voltaire's ascendency sprung from no appeal to those parts of human -nature in which ascetic practice has its foundation. On the contrary, -full exercise and play for every part was the key of all his teaching, -direct and indirect. He had not Greek serenity and composure of spirit, -but he had Greek exultation in every known form of intellectual -activity, and this audacious curiosity he made general. - -Let us remember that Voltairism was primarily and directly altogether an -intellectual movement, for this reason, that it was primarily and -directly a reaction against the subordination of the intellectual to the -moral side of men, carried to an excess that was at length fraught with -fatal mischief. Are our opinions true, provably answering to the facts -of the case, consistent with one another; is our intelligence radiant -with genuine light and knowledge; and are we bent more than all else on -testing and improving and diffusing this knowledge and the instruments -for acquiring it? The system to which this was the powerful -counter-formula, even in its least dark shapes, always reserved a large -class of most important facts from the searching glare of that scrutiny -which Voltairism taught men to direct upon every proposition that was -presented to them. - -For many centuries truth had been conceived as of the nature of a Real -Universal, of which men had full possession by the revelation of a -supreme divinity. All truth was organically one; and the relations of -men to something supernatural, their relations to one another, the -relations of outward matter, were all comprehended in a single -synthesis, within which, and subject to which, all intellectual movement -proceeded. An advancing spirit of inquiry dissolved this synthesis; and -the philosophers, as distinguished from the steadfast and single -students of science, ceasing to take it for granted as an indisputable -starting-point that truth was an assured possession, went off on two -different lines. Men of one cast of mind fell into doubt whether truth -was a reality after all, and the discovery of it accessible to mankind. -Thinkers of a different cast accepted this doctrine of the impotence of -the human understanding to discover knowledge and prove truth, but they -proceeded to the retrograde inference that therefore the ancient -tradition of knowledge actually contains that approved truth, which had -just been pronounced unattainable. This oblique mode of regaining a -position of which they had been by their own act dispossessed, was -impossible for so keen and direct a spirit as Voltaire's. However filled -his mind may have been with the false notions of the Tribe, of the -Market, and above all of the Cave, at all events it was more free than -most, certainly than most of those subalterns of the schools, from the -Idols of the Theatre, and from either kind of that twofold excess, 'one -sort of which too hastily constitutes sciences positive and hierarchic, -while the other presents scepticism and the pursuit of a vague inquiry -that has no limit.'[6] - -The consequence of this peculiarity, call it a destructive and blind -narrowness, or call it a wise and justly-measured openness of mind, as -we may choose, has been that Voltaire has been condemned with unsparing -severity by three of the most influential schools of modern opinion. -Every one who has a system to defend is the enemy of the famous man who -destroyed the reigning system of his day, with engines that seem to -point with uncomfortable directness against all other systems. Every one -who thinks that we have turned over the last leaf of the book of -knowledge, whatever the inscription that he may find written upon it, -naturally detests the whole spirit and impulse of one who felt all his -life that he and his generation were the first band of men who had -shaken off their chains, and ascended to the light of the sun and the -contemplation of some portion of an inexhaustible universe of realities. -Hence, the partisans of the Christian religion, in any of its forms, -have dealt unrelenting contempt and hatred to the foe who did more than -any one else to reduce their churches, once so majestically triumphant, -to their present level, where they are forced under various guises and -with much obsolete pretension to plead for the tolerance of rational -men, on the comparatively modest ground of social fitness. Their -hostility, we may agree, is not very astonishing, when we reflect on the -provocation. - -Many of those, however, who have least hope of any future revival of the -ancient creed, and who least regret its fall, are even less hostile to -the Jesuits than they are to Voltaire. Comte, for example, who -elaborated a doctrine with a corresponding system of life deduced from -it, and the central principle of whose method of social action and -movement is to destroy by replacing, has adjudged an emphatically -secondary place to Voltaire's claims on our good-will.[7] Nor ought -this seriously to surprise us, when we consider that Voltaire trusted to -the individual to replace for himself, by the motion of his own -faculties, the old collective tradition of action and belief; and that -he showed himself too keenly alive to the curses of that empire of -prejudice, authority, social fixity, which he devoted his life to -overthrowing, to lend any help to the restoration of a similar reign -with changed watchwords. He is perhaps the one great Frenchman who has -known how to abide in patient contentment with an all but purely -critical reserve, leaving reconstruction, its form, its modes, its -epoch, for the fulness of time and maturity of effort to disclose. It -has been the fatal quality of the genius of his countrymen, from -Descartes down to Comte, to decline to rest on an uncompleted -interpretation of experience, and to insist on a hasty supplement of -unconcluded analysis by what is virtually an priori synthesis. -Voltaire deserves no special praise for this abstention from a -premature reconstruction; for it probably was not so much the result of -deliberate persuasion that we must wait on the time, as of an inability -to conceive of need for a cultus and a firm ordering of our knowledge, -as prime demands of human nature and essential conditions of stable -progress. Whatever value we may set on this sage reserve, the fact that -Voltaire had no scheme for replacing the scheme which he destroyed, -accounts very amply for the disparagement of him by those who think -almost any fabric of common and ordered belief better for men, than the -seeming chaos of intricate and multitudinous growths which now -overspread the field of European opinion. And does it not involve us in -a defective conception of the way in which human progress accomplishes -itself, to place in our calendar of benefactors, supposing us to compose -a calendar, only those who have built up truth, to the exclusion of -those who have with pain and labour helped to demolish impudent error? -Has Jericho always fallen without the blasts from the seven trumpets? It -is sufficiently demonstrated from history that false opinions vanish -spontaneously, without a direct blow struck; that a system of belief, -corroborated in the breasts of the multitude by all the authority of a -long tradition, sanctified to the powerful few by dignity or emolument, -entrenched with a strength that seems inexpugnable among the ordinances -and institutions and unwritten uses of a great community, will -straightway succumb from inherent want of life and courage? - -There is a third kind of opinion, that is as little merciful in its own -way as either of the two others, and this is the scientific or cultured -opinion. Objections from this region express themselves in many forms, -some of them calm and suggestive, others a little empty and a little -brutal. They all seem to come to something of this kind: that Voltaire's -assault on religion, being conducted without any smallest spark of the -religious spirit, was therefore necessarily unjust to the object of his -attack, and did the further mischief of engendering in all on whom his -influence was poured out a bitterness and moral temerity which is the -worst blight that can fall upon the character either of a man or a -generation: that while truth is relative and conditional, and while -belief is only to be understood by those who have calmly done justice to -the history of its origin and growth, Voltaire carelessly, -unphilosophically, and maliciously, handled what had once possessed a -relative truth, as if it had always been absolutely false, and what had -sprung from the views and aspirations of the best men, as if it had had -its root in the base artifices of the worst: that what ought to have -gone on, and would have gone on, as a process of soft autumnal -dissolution, was converted by the infection of Voltaire into a stained -scene of passion and battle: that assuming to possess and to furnish men -with a broad criticism of life, he left out of life its deepest, -holiest, and most exalting elements, as well as narrowed and depraved -criticism, from its right rank as the high art of stating and collating -ideas, down to an acrid trick of debate, a thing of proofs, arguments, -and rancorous polemic. - -It is certain that there is much truth in this particular strain of -objection to Voltaire's power and his use of it, or else it would not -have found mouthpieces, as it has done, among some of the finest spirits -of the modern time. But it is the natural tendency of the hour rather to -exaggerate what weight there really is in such criticism, which, though -claiming to be the criticism of temperance and moderation and -relativity, does not as a matter of fact escape the fatal law of excess -and absoluteness even in its very moderation and relativity. In -estimating an innovator's method, all depends on the time and the enemy; -and it may sometimes happen that the time is so out of joint and the -enemy so strong, so unscrupulous, so imminently pernicious, as to leave -no alternative between finally succumbing, and waging a war of -deliverance for which coming generations have to bear the burdens in -feuds and bitterness; between abridging somewhat of the richness and -fulness of life, and allowing it all to be gradually choked up by dust -and enwrapped in night. For let us not forget that what Catholicism was -accomplishing in France in the first half of the eighteenth century, was -really not anything less momentous than the slow strangling of French -civilisation. Though Voltaire's spirit may be little edifying to us, who -after all partake of the freedom which he did so much to win, yet it is -only just to remember what was the spirit of his foe, and that in so -pestilent a presence a man of direct vision may well be eager to use -such weapons as he finds to his hand. Let the scientific spirit move -people to speak as it lists about Voltaire's want of respect for things -held sacred, for the good deeds of holy men, for the sentiment and faith -of thousands of the most worthy among his fellows. Still there are times -when it may be very questionable whether, in the region of belief, one -with power and with fervid honesty ought to spare the abominable city of -the plain, just because it happens to shelter five righteous. There are -times when the inhumanity of a system stands out so red and foul, when -the burden of its iniquity weighs so heavy, and the contagion of its -hypocrisy is so laden with mortal plague, that no awe of dilettante -condemnation nor minute scruple as to the historic or the relative can -stay the hand of the man whose direct sight and moral energy have -pierced the veil of use, and revealed the shrine of the infamous thing. -The most noble of the holy men said long ago that 'the servant of the -Lord must not strive, but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, -in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves.' The history of -the churches is in one of its most conspicuous aspects the history of a -prolonged outrage upon these words by arrogant and blasphemous persons, -pretending to draw a sacred spirit from the very saint who uttered them. -We may well deplore that Voltaire's attack, and every other attack of -the same sort, did not take the fair shape prescribed by the apostle to -the servant of the Lord, of gentleness, patience, and the instruction -of a sweet and firm example. But the partisans of the creed in whose -name more human blood has been violently shed than in any other cause -whatever, these, I say, can hardly find much ground of serious reproach -in a few score epigrams. Voltaire had no calm breadth of wisdom. It may -be so. There are moments which need not this calm breadth of wisdom, but -a two-edged sword, and when the deliverers of mankind are they who 'come -to send fire on the earth.' - - - - -CHAPTER II. - -ENGLISH INFLUENCES. - - -Voltairism may be said to have begun from the flight of its founder from -Paris to London. This, to borrow a name from the most memorable instance -of outward change marking inward revolution, was the decisive hegira, -from which the philosophy of destruction in a formal shape may be held -seriously to date. Voltaire landed in England in the middle of May, -1726. He was in the thirty-third year of his age, that earlier -climacteric, when the men with vision first feel conscious of a past, -and reflectively mark its shadow. It is then that they either press -forward eagerly with new impulse in the way of their high calling, -knowing the limitations of circumstance and hour, or else fainting draw -back their hand from the plough, and ignobly leave to another or to none -the accomplishment of the work. The narrowness of the cribbed deck that -we are doomed to tread, amid the vast space of an eternal sea with fair -shores dimly seen and never neared, oppresses the soul with a burden -that sorely tries its strength, when the fixed limits first define -themselves before it. Those are the strongest who do not tremble -beneath this gray ghostly light, but make it the precursor of an -industrious day. - -The past on which Voltaire had to look back was full of turmoil, -contention, impatience, and restless production. Franois Marie Arouet -was born in 1694, so feeble in constitution that, as in the case of -Fontenelle, whose hundred years surpassed even Voltaire's lengthy span, -his life was long despaired of. His father was a notary of good repute -for integrity and skill, and was entrusted with the management of their -affairs by several of the highest families in France. His mother is -supposed to have had some of the intellectual alertness which penetrated -the character of her son, but she died when he was seven years old, and -he remained alone with his father until 1704, when he was sent to -school. His instructors at the College Louis-le-Grand were the Jesuits, -whose wise devotion to intellectual education in the broadest sense that -was then possible, is a partial set-off against their mischievous -influence on morals and politics. The hardihood of the young Arouet's -temper broke out even from the first, and we need not inquire minutely -what were the precise subjects of education of a child, whom his tutor -took an early opportunity of pointing out as the future coryphaeus of -deism in France. He used to say in after life that he had learnt nothing -worth learning. A lad who could launch infidel epigrams at 'his -Jansenist of a brother,' and declaim a poem in which so important a hero -as Moses figures as an impostor,[8] was of that originality of mental -turn on whose freedom the inevitably mechanical instruction of the -school cannot be expected to make any deep or decisive impression. The -young of this independent humour begin their education where those of -less energetic nerve hardly leave off, with character ready made. - -Between a youth of bold, vivacious, imaginative disposition, and a -father of the temperament proper to a notary with many responsibilities, -there could be no sympathy, and the two were not long in coming to open -quarrel without terms. The son was taken out by his godfather, the abb -Chteauneuf, into that gay world which presently became the infamous -world of the regency, where extraordinary sprightliness and facility in -verse gained him welcome and patronage. We need waste no words on the -corruption and intellectual trifling of the society into which Voltaire -was thus launched. For shallowness and levity, concealed by literary -artifice and play of frivolous wit which only makes the scene more -dreary or detestable, it has never been surpassed. There was brightness -in it, compared with the heavy brutality and things obscene of the court -of Lewis XV., but after all we seem to see over the brightness a sort of -foul glare, like the iridescence of putrefaction. Ninon de l'Enclos, a -friend of his mother's, was perhaps the one free and honest soul with -whom the young Arouet had to do. Now extremely old, she still preserved -both her wit and her fine probity of intellect. She had always kept her -heart free of cant, from the time when she had ridiculed, as the -Jansenists of love, the pedantical women and platonic gallants of the -Htel Rambouillet, down to her rejection of Madame de Maintenon's offer -of an invitation to the court, on condition of her joining the band of -the devout. The veteran Aspasia, now over eighty, was struck by the -brilliance and dazzling promise of the young versifier, and left him a -legacy for the purchase of books. - -The rest of the society into which Voltaire was taken was saturated with -a spirit of reaction against the austere bigotry of the court, and bad -and miserable as such austerity is, the rebellion against it is always -worse and more miserable still. The licence seems not to have been of -the most joyous sort, as indeed licence protesting and defiant is not -apt to be. The abb Chaulieu, a versifier of sprightly fancy, grace, and -natural ease, was the dissolute Anacreon of the people of quality who -during the best part of the reign of Lewis XIV. had failed to sympathise -with its nobility and stateliness, and during the worst part revolted -against its gloom. Voltaire at twenty was his intimate and his professed -disciple.[9] To this intimacy we may perhaps trace that remarkable -continuity of tradition between Voltaire and the grand age, which -distinguishes him from the school of famous men who were called -Voltaireans, and of whom the special mark was that they had absolutely -broken with the whole past of French history and literature. Princes, -dukes, and marquises were of Chaulieu's band. The despair and fury of -the elder Arouet at such companions and such follies reproduce once more -a very old story in the records of youthful genius. Genius and fine -friends reconcile no prudent notary to a son's hatred for law and the -desk. Orgies with the Duke of Sully, and rhyming bouts with Chaulieu, -have sunk into small size for us, who know that they were but the -mischievous and unbecoming prologue of a life of incessant and generous -labour, but we may well believe that such enormities bulked big in the -vision of the father, as portents of degradation and ruin. We have a -glimpse of the son's temper towards the profession to which his father -had tried so hard to bind him, in the ironical definition, thrown out -long afterwards, of an _avocat_ as a man who, not having money enough to -buy one of those brilliant offices on which the universe has its eyes -fixed, studies for three years the laws of Theodosius and Justinian so -as to know the custom of Paris, and who at length having got -matriculated has the right of pleading for money, if he has a loud -voice.[10] The young Arouet did actually himself get matriculated and -acquire this right, but his voice proved so loud that his pleadings were -destined to fill wider courts than those of Paris. - -Arouet the elder persuaded Chteauneuf's brother, who was a diplomatist, -to take into his company the law-student who had made verse instead of -studying the laws of Theodosius. So the youth went to the Hague. Here he -straightway fell into new misadventure by conceiving an undying passion, -that lasted several weeks, for a young countrywoman whom he found in -Holland. Stolen interviews, letters, tears, and the other accustomed -circumstances of a juvenile passion on which the gods frown, were all -discovered. The ambassador sent the refractory boy back to his father, -with full details and documents, with results on the relations of the -pair that need not be described. - -In the autumn of 1715 Lewis XIV. died, and the Regent D'Orleans reigned -in his stead. There presently appeared some pungent lines, entitled _Les -j'ai vu_, in which the writer recounted a number of evil things which he -had seen in the state--a thousand prisons crowded with brave citizens and -faithful subjects, the people groaning under rigorous bondage, the -magistrates harassing every town with ruinous taxes and unrighteous -edicts; _j'ai vu, c'est dire tout, le Jsuite ador_. The last line ran -that all these ills the writer had seen, yet was but twenty years -old.[11] Voltaire was twenty-two, but the authorities knew him for a -verse-writer of biting turn, so they treated the discrepancy of age as a -piece of mere prosopopoeia, and laid him up in the Bastille (1716). As a -matter of fact, he had no hand in the offence. Even amid these sombre -shades, where he was kept for nearly a year, his spirit was blithe and -its fire unquenchable. The custom of Paris and the Codes were as -little handled as ever; and he divided his time between the study of the -two great epics of Greece and Rome, and the preparation of what he -designed to be the great epic of France. He also gave the finishing -strokes to his tragedy of OEdipe, which was represented in the course of -the following year with definite success, and was the opening of a -brilliant dramatic career, that perhaps to a mortal of more ordinary -mould might alone have sufficed for the glory of a life. - -The next six years he divided between a lively society, mostly of the -great, the assiduous composition of new plays, and the completion of the -Henriade. His fibre was gradually strengthening. By the end of this -period, the recklessness of the boyish disciple of Chaulieu had wholly -spent itself; and although Voltaire's manner of life was assuredly not -regular nor decorously ordered, now nor for many years to come, if -measured by the rigid standard on which an improved society properly -insists, yet it was always a life of vigorous industry and clear -purposes. For a brief time his passion for the Marchale de Villars -broke the tenacity of his diligence, and he always looked back on this -interruption of his work with the kind of remorse that might afflict a -saint for a grave spiritual backsliding. He was often at the country -seats of Sully, Villars, and elsewhere, throwing off thousands of -trifling verses, arranging theatricals, enlivening festivals, and always -corresponding indefatigably; for now and throughout his life his good -sense and good will, his business-like quality and his liking for his -friends, both united to raise him above the idle pretences and -self-indulgence of those who neglect the chief instrument of social -intercourse and friendly continuity. He preferred the country to the -town. 'I was born,' he says to one, 'to be a faun or creature of the -woods; I am not made to live in a town.' To another, 'I fancy myself in -hell, when I am in the accursed city of Paris.'[12] The only -recommendation of the accursed city was that a solitude was attainable -in it, as in other crowded spots, which enabled him to work better there -than in the small and exacting throng of country-houses. 'I fear -Fontainebleau, Villars, and Sully, both for my health and for Henry IV; -I should do no work, I should over-eat, and I should lose in pleasures -and in complaisance to others an amount of precious time that I ought to -be using for a necessary and creditable task.'[13] - -Yet there was even at this period much of that marvellous hurrying to -and fro in France and out of it, which continued to mark the longer -portion of Voltaire's life, and fills it with such a busy air of turmoil -and confusion, explaining many things, when we think of the stability of -life and permanence of outward place of the next bright spirit that -shone upon Europe. Goethe never saw London, Paris, nor Vienna, and made -no journey save the famous visit to Italy, and the march at Valmy. -Voltaire moved hither and thither over the face of Europe like the wind, -and it is not until he has passed through half of his life that we can -begin to think of his home. Every association that belongs to his name -recalls tumult and haste and shrill contention with men and -circumstance. We have, however, to remember that these constant -movements were the price which Voltaire paid for the vigour and freedom -of his speech, in days when the party of superstition possessed the ear -of the temporal power, and resorted without sparing to the most violent -means of obliterating every hardy word and crushing every independent -writer. The greater number of Voltaire's ceaseless changes of place were -flights from injustice, and the recollection of this may well soothe the -disturbance of spirit of the most fastidious zealot for calm and orderly -living. They were for the most part retreats before packs of wolves. - -In 1722 the elder Arouet died, to the last relentlessly set against a -son, not any less stubborn than himself, and unfortunately a great deal -more poetical. About the same time the name of Arouet falls away, and -the poet is known henceforth by that ever famous symbol for so much, -Voltaire; a name for which various explanations, none of them -satisfactory, have been offered, the latest and perhaps the least -improbable resolving it into a fanciful anagram.[14] - -Industrious as he was, and eager as he was for rural delights and -laborious solitude, Voltaire was still pre-eminently social. His letters -disclose in him, who really possessed all arts, the art of one who knew -how to be graciously respectful to the social superiors who took him for -a companion, without forgetting what was due to his own respect for -himself. We are all princes or poets, he exclaimed jubilantly on the -occasion of one of those nights and suppers of the gods. Such -gay-hearted freedom was not always well taken, and in time Voltaire's -eyes were opened to the terms on which he really stood. '_Who is the -young man who talks so loud?_' called out some Chevalier Rohan, at one -of these sprightly gatherings at the house of the Duke of Sully.[15] -'_My lord_,' the young man replied promptly, '_he is one who does not -carry about a great name, but wins respect for the name he has._' A few -days afterwards the high-spirited patrician magnanimously took an -opportunity of having a caning inflicted by the hands of his lackeys on -the poet who had thrown away this lesson upon him. Voltaire, who had at -all events that substitute for true physical courage which springs up in -an intensely irritable and susceptive temperament, forthwith applied -himself to practise with the small-sword. He did his best to sting his -enemy to fight, but the chevalier either feared the swordsman, or else -despised an antagonist of the middle class; and by the influence of the -Rohan family the poet once more found himself in the Bastille, then the -house of correction at the disposal and for the use of the nobles, the -court, and the clergy. Here for six months Voltaire, then only -representing a very humble and unknown quantity in men's minds, chafed -and fretted. The pacific Fleury, as is the wont of the pacific when in -power, cared less to punish the wrong-doer than to avoid disturbance, -knowing that disturbance was most effectually avoided by not meddling -with the person most able to resent. The multitude, however, when the -day of reckoning came, remembered all these things, and the first act of -their passion was to raze to the ground the fortress into which nearly -every distinguished champion of the freedom of human intelligence among -them had at one time or another been tyrannically thrown. - -On his release Voltaire was ordered to leave Paris. A clandestine visit -to the city showed him that there was no hope of redress from authority, -which was in the hands of men whose pride of rank prevented them from so -much as even perceiving, much more from repairing, such grievance as a -mere bourgeois could have: as if, to borrow Condorcet's bitter phrase, a -descendant of the conquering Franks, like De Rohan, could have lost the -ancient right of life and death over a descendant of the Gauls.[16] And -this was no ironic taunt; for while Voltaire was in the Bastille, that -astounding book of the Count of Boulainvilliers was in the press, in -which it was shown that the feudal system is the master-work of the -human mind, and that the advance of the royal authority and the increase -of the liberties of the people were equally unjust usurpations of the -rights of the conquering Franks.[17] - -Voltaire was no patient victim of the practice which corresponded to -this trim historic theory. In a tumult of just indignation he quitted -France, and sought refuge with that stout and free people, who had by -the execution of one king, the deposition of another, and the definite -subjugation of the hierarchy, won a full liberty of thought and speech -and person. A modern historian has drawn up a list of the men of mark -who made the same invigorating pilgrimage. 'During the two generations -which elapsed between the death of Lewis XIV. and the outbreak of the -Revolution, there was hardly a Frenchman of eminence who did not either -visit England or learn English; while many of them did both.'[18] Among -those who actually came to England and mixed in its society besides -Voltaire, were Buffon, Brissot, Helvtius, Gournay, Jussieu, Lafayette, -Montesquieu, Maupertuis, Morellet, Mirabeau, Roland and Madame Roland, -Rousseau. We who live after Wordsworth, Shelley, Byron, Scott, have -begun to forget the brilliant group of the Queen Anne men. They belong -to a self-complacent time, and we to a time of doubt and unsatisfied -aspiration, and the two spirits are unsympathetic. Yet they were -assuredly a band, from Newton and Locke down to Pope, of whom, taking -them for all the qualities which they united, in science, correct -judgment, love of letters, and taste, England has as good reason to be -proud as of any set of contemporary writers in her history. - -Up to this moment Voltaire had been a poet, and his mind had not moved -beyond the region of poetic creation. He had beaten every one once and -for all on the ground of light and graceful lyric verse, 'a kind of -poetry,' says a French critic whose word in such a matter we can hardly -refuse to take, 'in which Voltaire is at once with us the only master -and the only writer supportable, for he is the only one whom we can -read.'[19] He had produced three tragedies. His epic was completed, -though undergoing ceaseless labour of the file. Two lines in his first -play had served to mark him for no friend to the hierophants: - - Nos prtres ne sont point ce qu'un vain peuple pense; - Notre crdulit fait toute leur science.[20] - -And the words of Araspe in the same play had breathed the full spirit of -the future liberator: - - Ne nous fions qu' nous; voyons tout par nos yeux: - Ce sont l nos trpieds, nos oracles, nos dieux.[21] - -Such expressions, however, were no more than the vague and casual word -of the _esprit fort_, the friend of Chaulieu, and the rhymer of a -dissolute circle, where religion only became tinged with doubt, because -conduct had already become penetrated with licence. More important than -such stray words was the Epistle to Uranie (1722), that truly masculine -and terse protest against the popular creed, its mean and fatuous and -contradictory idea of an omnipotent God, who gave us guilty hearts so as -to have the right of punishing us, and planted in us a love of pleasure -so as to torment us the more effectually by appalling ills that an -eternal miracle prevents from ever ending; who drowned the fathers in -the deluge and then died for the children; who exacts an account of -their ignorance from a hundred peoples whom he has himself plunged -helplessly into this ignorance: - - Je ne reconnais point cette indigne image - Le dieu que je dois adorer; - Je croirais le dshonorer - Par une telle insulte et par un tel hommage.[22] - -Though called The For and Against, the poet hardly tries to maintain any -proportion between the two sides of the argument. The verses were -addressed to a lady in a state of uncertainty as to belief, of whom -there were probably more among Voltaire's friends of quality than he can -have cared to cure or convert. Scepticism was at this time not much more -than an interesting fashion. - -The dilettante believer is indeed not a strong spirit, but the weakest, -and the facts of life were by this time far too serious for Voltaire, -for that truth to have missed his keen-seeing eye. It is not hard to -suppose that impatient weariness of the poor life that was lived around -him, had as large a share as resentment of an injustice, in driving him -to a land where men did not merely mouth idle words of making reason -their oracle, their tripod, their god, but where they had actually -systematised the rejection of Christianity, and had thrown themselves -with grave faith on the disciplined intelligence and its lessons. -Voltaire left a country where freedom of thinking was only an empty -watchword, the name for a dissipated fashion. It was considered -free-thinking if a man allowed himself to regard the existence of the -Five Propositions in Jansenius's book as a thing indifferent to the -happiness of the human race.[23] He found in England that it was a -far-spreading reality, moulding not only the theological ideas, but the -literature, manners, politics, and philosophy, of a great society. -Voltaire left France a poet, he returned to it a sage. Before his -flight, though we do not know to what extent he may have read such -history as was then accessible, he had been actively productive only in -the sphere of the imaginative faculties, and in criticism of the form -and regulation proper to be imposed upon them. When he returned, while -his poetic power had ripened, he had tasted of the fruit of the tree of -scientific reason, and, what was not any less important, he had become -alive to the central truth of the social destination of all art and all -knowledge. - -In a word, he was transformed from the penman into the captain and -man-at-arms. 'The example of England,' says Condorcet, 'showed him that -truth is not made to remain a secret in the hands of a few philosophers, -and a limited number of men of the world, instructed, or rather -indoctrinated, by the philosophers; smiling with them at the errors of -which the people are the victims, but at the same time making themselves -the champions of these very errors, when their rank or position gives -them a real or chimerical interest in them, and quite ready to permit -the proscription, or even persecution, of their teachers, if they -venture to say what in secret they themselves actually think. From the -moment of his return, Voltaire felt himself called to destroy the -prejudices of every kind, of which his country was the slave.'[24] - -It is not difficult to perceive the sorts of fact which would most -strike the exile's attention, though it would be rash to suppose that -things struck him in exact proportion to their real weight and the depth -of their importance, or that he detected the connection subsisting among -them at their roots. Perhaps the first circumstance to press its -unfamiliarity upon him was the social and political consequence of the -men of letters in England, and the recognition given to the power of the -pen. The patronage of men of genius in the reign of Anne and part of the -reign of the first George had been profuse and splendid. The poet who -had been thrown into prison for resenting a whipping from a nobleman's -lackeys, found himself in a land where Newton and Locke were rewarded -with lucrative posts in the administration of the country, where Prior -and Gay acted in important embassies, and where Addison was a Secretary -of State. The author of OEdipe and the Henriade had to hang ignobly -about in the crowd at Versailles at the marriage of Lewis XV. to gain a -paltry pittance from the queen's privy purse,[25] while in England -Hughes and Rowe and Ambrose Philips and Congreve were all enjoying amply -endowed sinecures. The familiar intercourse between the ministers and -the brilliant literary group of that age has been often painted. At the -time of Voltaire's exile it had just come to an end with the accession -to supreme power of Walpole, who neither knew anything nor cared -anything about the literature of his own time. But the usage was still -new, and the men who had profited and given profit by it were alive, and -were the central figures in the circles among which Voltaire was -introduced by Bolingbroke. Newton died in 1727, and Voltaire saw his -death mourned as a public calamity, and surrounded with a pomp and -circumstance in the eye of the country that could not have been -surpassed if he had been, not a geometer, but a king who was the -benefactor of his people.[26] The author of Gulliver's Travels was -still a dignitary in the state church, and there was still a large -association of outward power and dignity with literary merit. - -In so far as we consider literature to be one of the purely decorative -arts, there can be no harm in this patronage of its most successful, -that is its most pleasing, professors by the political minister; but the -more closely literature approaches to being an organ of serious things, -a truly spiritual power, the more danger there is likely to be in making -it a path to temporal station or emolument. The practical instinct, -which on some of its sides seems like a miraculously implanted -substitute for scientific intelligence in English politics, has led us -almost too far in preserving this important separation of the new church -from the functions and rewards of the state. The misfortunes of France -since the Revolution have been due to no one circumstance so markedly as -to the predominance which the man of letters has acquired in that -country; and this fatal predominance was first founded, though assuredly -not of set design, by Voltaire. - -Not less amazing than the high honour paid to intellectual eminence was -the refugee from the city of the Bastille likely to find the freedom -with which public events and public personages were handled by any one -who could pay a printer. The licence of this time in press and theatre -has only been once or twice equalled since, and it has never been -surpassed. From Bolingbroke and Swift down to the author of The Golden -Rump,[27] every writer who chose to consider himself in opposition -treated the minister with a violence and ferocity, which neither -irritated nor daunted that sage head, but which would in France have -crowded the lowest dungeons of the Bastille with victims of Fleury's -anger and fright. Such license was as natural in a country that had -within ninety years gone through a violent civil war, a revolutionary -change of government and line, and a half-suppressed dispute of -succession, as it would have been astonishing in France, where the -continuity of outward order had never been more than superficially -ruffled, even in the most turbulent times of the factious wars of the -League and the Fronde. No new idea of the relations between ruler and -subject had ever penetrated into France, as it had done so deeply in the -neighbouring country. No serious popular issues had been so much as -stated. As Voltaire wrote, in the detestable times of Charles IX. and -Henry III. it was only a question whether the people should be the slave -of the Guises, while as for the last war, it deserved only hisses and -contempt; for what was De Retz but a rebel without a purpose and a -stirrer of sedition without a name, and what was the parliament but a -body which knew neither what it meant nor what it did not mean?[28] The -apologies of Jesuit writers for the assassination of tyrants deserve an -important place in the history of the doctrine of divine right; but -they were theoretical essays in casuistry for the initiated few, and -certainly conveyed no general principles of popular right to the many. - -Protestantism, on the other hand, loosened the conception of authority -and of the respect proper for authority, to a degree which has never -been realised in the most anarchic movements in France, whose anarchy -has ever sprung less from a disrespect for authority as such, than from -a passionate and uncompromising resolve in this or that group that the -authority shall be in one set of hands and not another. Voltairism has -proved itself as little capable as Catholicism of inspiring any piece -that may match with Milton's Areopagitica, the noblest defence that was -ever made of the noblest of causes. We know not whether Voltaire ever -thought much as to the history and foundation of that freedom of speech, -which even in its abuse struck him as so wonderful a circumstance in a -country that still preserved a stable and orderly society. He was -probably content to admire the phenomenon of a liberty so marvellous, -without searching very far for its antecedents. The mere spectacle of -such free, vigorous, many-sided, and truly social and public activity of -intellect as was visible in England at this time, was in itself enough -to fix the gaze of one who was so intensely conscious of his own energy -of intellect, and so bitterly rebellious against the system which -fastened a gag between his lips. - -If we would realise the impression of this scene of free speech on -Voltaire's ardent spirit, we need only remember that, when in time he -returned to his own country, he had to wait long and use many arts and -suffer harassing persecution, before he could publish what he had to say -on Newton and Locke, and in other less important respects had to -suppress much of what he had most at heart to say. 'One must disguise at -Paris,' he wrote long after his return, 'what I could not say too -strongly at London;' and he vaunts his hardihood in upholding Newton -against Ren Descartes, while he confesses that an unfortunate but -necessary circumspection forced him to try to make Locke obscure.[29] -Judge the light which would come into such a mind as his, when he first -saw the discussion and propagation of truth freed from these vile and -demoralising affronts. The very conception of truth was a new one, as a -goddess not to be shielded behind the shades of hierophantic mystery, -but rather to be sought in the free tumult and joyous strife of many -voices, there vindicating her own majesty and marking her own children. - -Penetrating deeper, Voltaire found not only a new idea of truth as a -something rude, robust, and self-sufficient, but also what was to him a -new order of truths, the triumphs of slow-footed induction and the -positive reason. France was the hotbed of systems of the physical -universe. The provisional and suspensive attitude was intolerable to her -impetuous genius, and the gaps which scientific investigation was -unable to fill, were straightway hidden behind an artificial screen of -metaphysical phantasies. The Aristotelian system died harder in France -than anywhere else, for so late as 1693, while Oxford and Cambridge and -London were actually embracing the Newtonian principles, even the -Cartesian system was forbidden to be taught by decrees of the Sorbonne -and of the Council of the King.[30] When the Cartesian physics once got -a foothold, they kept it as firmly as the system which they had found so -much difficulty in displacing. It is easy to believe that Voltaire's -positive intelligence would hold aloof by a certain instinct from -physical explanations which were unverified and incapable of being -verified, and which were imbrangled with theology and metaphysics. - -We can readily conceive, again, the sensation of freshness and delight -with which a mind so essentially real, and so fundamentally serious, -paradoxical as this may sound in connection with the name of the -greatest mocker that has ever lived, would exchange the poetised -astronomy of Fontenelle, excellently constituted as Fontenelle was in a -great many ways, for the sure and scientific discoveries of a Newton. -Voltaire, in whatever subject, never failed to see through rhetoric, and -for rhetoric as the substitute for clear reasoning he always had an -aversion as deep as it was wholesome. Nobody ever loved grace and form -in style more sincerely than Voltaire, but he has shown in a great many -ways that nobody ever valued grace and form more truly at their worth, -compared with correctness of argument and precision and solidity of -conclusion. Descartes, Fontenelle had said, 'essaying a bold flight, -insisted on placing himself at the source of all, on making himself -master of the first principles of things by a certain number of clear -and fundamental ideas, having thus only to descend to the phenomena of -nature as necessary consequences; Newton, more timid or more modest, -began his advance by resting on phenomena in order to ascend to the -unknown principles, resolved to admit them, however the combination of -the results might present them. The one starts from what he understands -clearly to discover the cause of what he sees: the other starts from -what he sees, to discover its cause, whether clear or obscure.' Caution -and reserve and sound method had achieved a generalisation more vast and -amazing than the boldest flight, or most resolute reasoning downwards -from a clearly held conception to phenomena, could possibly have -achieved. This splendid and unrivalled discovery was probably expounded -to Voltaire by Dr. Samuel Clarke, with whom he tells us that he had -several conferences in 1726,[31] and who was one of the ablest of the -Newtonians. He had no doubt learnt the theory of vortices from the -Jesuits, and clear exposition was the only thing needed to convert him -to the new theory, which shines by its own light, and must, in an -unbiassed intelligence with the humblest scientific quality, have -extinguished every artificial explanation. One of the truest signs of -the soundness of Voltaire's intellectual activity was that his glad -reception of the Newtonian doctrine of attraction did not blind him to -the signal service and splendid genius of Descartes. That loud-shouting -yet feeble-footed enthusiasm, which can only make sure of itself by -disparaging the object of a counter-enthusiasm, had no place in an -intellect so emphatically sincere and self-penetrative. He prefaces his -account of the system of attraction by a hearty and loyal appreciation -of the propounder of the system of vortices.[32] - -The acquisition of the special theory of attraction was in itself less -important for Voltaire, than the irresistible impulse which it would -give to the innate rationality or positivity of his own mind. It fitted -him to encounter with proper freedom not only vortices, but that -tremendous apparatus of monads, sufficient reason, and pre-established -harmony, with which Leibnitz then overawed European philosophy. 'O -Metaphysics!' he cried, 'we have, then, got as far as they had in the -time of the earliest Druids!'[33] - -Locke's essay impelled him further in the same path of patient and -cautious interrogation of experience; for the same method which -established gravitation presided over the birth of the experiential -psychology. Newton instead of elaborating a system of vortices, or -another, out of his own consciousness, industriously and patiently -waited on the phenomena. Locke, too, instead of inventing a romance of -the soul, to use Voltaire's phrase, sagaciously set himself to watch the -phenomena of thought, and 'reduced metaphysics to being the experimental -physics of the soul.'[34] Malebranche, then the reigning philosopher in -France, 'astonished the reason of those whom he delighted by his style. -People trusted him in what they did not understand, because he began by -being right in what they did understand; he seduced people by being -delightful, as Descartes seduced them by being daring, while Locke was -nothing more than sage.'[35] 'After all,' Voltaire once wrote, 'we must -admit that anybody who has read Locke, or rather who is his own Locke, -must find the Platos mere fine talkers, and nothing more. In point of -philosophy, a chapter of Locke or Clarke is, compared with the babble of -antiquity, what Newton's optics are compared with those of -Descartes.'[36] It is curious to observe that De Maistre, who thought -more meanly of Plato than Voltaire did, and hardly less meanly than he -thought of Voltaire himself, cried out that in the study of philosophy -contempt for Locke is the beginning of knowledge.[37] Voltaire, on the -other hand, is enchanted to hear that his niece reads the great English -philosopher, like a good father who sheds tears of joy that his -children are turning out well.[38] Augustus published an edict _de -coercendo intra fines imperio_, and like him, Locke has fixed the empire -of knowledge in order to strengthen it.[39] Locke, he says elsewhere, -traced the development of the human reason, as a good anatomist explains -the machinery of the human body: instead of defining all at once what we -do not understand, he examines by degrees what we want to understand: he -sometimes has the courage to speak positively, but sometimes also he has -the courage to doubt.[40] This is a perfectly appreciative account. -Locke perceived the hopelessness of defining things as they are in -themselves, and the necessity before all else of understanding the reach -of the human intelligence; the impossibility of attaining knowledge -absolute and transcendent; and the limitations of our thinking and -knowing faculties within the bounds of an experience that must always be -relative. The doubt which Voltaire praised in Locke had nothing to do -with that shivering mood which receives overmuch poetic praise in our -day, as the honest doubt that has more faith than half your creeds. -There was no question of the sentimental juvenilities of children crying -for light. It was by no means religious doubt, but philosophic; and it -affected only the possibilities of ontological knowledge, leaving -the grounds of faith on the one hand, and practical conduct on the -other, exactly where they were. His intense feeling for actualities -would draw Voltaire irresistibly to the writer who, in his judgment, -closed the gates of the dreamland of metaphysics, and banished the -vaulting ambition of a priori certainties, which led nowhere and assured -nothing. Voltaire's keen practical instinct may well have revealed to -him that men were most likely to attribute to the great social problem -of the improvement of mankind its right supremacy, when they had ceased -to concentrate intellectual effort on the insoluble; and Locke went a -long way towards showing how insoluble those questions were, on which, -as it chanced, the most strenuous efforts of the intellect of Europe -since the decline of theology had been concentrated. - -That he should have acquired more scientific views either upon the -origin of ideas, or the question whether the soul always thinks, or upon -the reason why an apple falls to the ground, or why the planets remain -in their orbits, was on the whole very much less important for Voltaire, -than a profound and very vital sentiment which was raised to supreme -prominence in his mind, by the spectacle of these vast continents of -knowledge newly discovered by the adventurous yet sure explorers of -English thought. This sentiment was a noble faith, none the less firm -because it was so passionate, in the ability of the relative and -practical understanding to reach truth; a deep-rooted reverence for it, -as a majestic power bearing munificent and unnumbered gifts to mankind. -Hence the vivacity of the annotations which about this time (1728) -Voltaire affixed to Pascal's famous Thoughts, and which were regarded at -that time as the audacious carpings of a shallow poet against a profound -philosopher. They were in truth the protest of a lively common sense -against a strained, morbid, and often sophistical, misrepresentation of -human nature and human circumstance. Voltaire shot a penetrative ray -through the clouds of doubt, out of which Pascal had made an apology for -mysticism. Even if there were no direct allusions to Locke, as there -are, we should know from whom the writer had learnt the art of insisting -on the relativity of propositions, reducing them to definable terms,[41] -and being very careful against those slippery unobserved transitions -from metaphor to reality, and from a term used in its common sense to -the same term in a transcendental sense, by which Pascal brought the -seeming contradictions of life, and its supposed pettiness, into a light -as oppressively glaring as it was artificial. 'These pretended -oppositions that you call contradictions are necessary ingredients in -the composition of man, who is, like the rest of nature, what he is -bound to be.'[42] And where is the wise man who would be full of despair -because he cannot find out the exact constitution of his thought, -because he only knows a few attributes of matter, because God has not -disclosed to him all his secrets? He might as well despair because he -has not got four feet and two wings.[43] This sage strain was the -restoration to men of their self-respect, the revival of that -intelligence which Pascal had so humiliated and thrust under foot. It -was what he had seen in England of the positive feats which reason had -achieved, that filled Voltaire with exultation in its power, and -confidence in the prospects of the race which possessed such an -instrument. '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.'[44] - -From this there flowed that other vehement current in his soul, of -energetic hatred toward the black clouds of prejudice, of mean -self-love, of sinister preference of class or order, of indolence, -obstinacy, wanton fancy, and all the other unhappy leanings of human -nature, and vexed and fatal conjunctures of circumstance, which -interpose between humanity and the beneficent sunbeams of its own -intelligence, that central light of the universe. Hence, again, by a -sufficiently visible chain of thought, his marked disesteem for -far-sounding names of brutal conquerors, and his cold regard for those -outward and material circumstances in the state of nations, which strike -the sense, but do not touch the inward reason. 'Not long ago,' he writes -once, 'a distinguished company were discussing the trite and frivolous -question, who was the greatest man, Caesar, Alexander, Tamerlane, or -Cromwell. Somebody answered that it was undoubtedly Isaac Newton. This -person was right; for if true greatness consists in having received from -heaven a powerful understanding and in using it to enlighten oneself and -all others, then such an one as Newton, who is hardly to be met with -once in ten centuries, is in truth the great man.... It is to him who -masters our minds by the force of truth, not to those who enslave men by -violence; it is to him who understands the universe, not to those who -disfigure it, that we owe our reverence.'[45] This may seem trite to us, -as the question which suggested it seemed to Voltaire, but we need only -reflect, first, how new this was, even as an idea, in the France which -Voltaire had quitted, and, second, how in spite of the nominal -acceptance of the idea, in the England of our own time there is, with an -immense majority not only of the general vulgar but of the special -vulgar who presume to teach in press and pulpit, no name of slight at -once so disdainful and so sure of transfixing as the name of thinker. - -The discovery of the New World did not fire the imagination and stir the -thought of Europe more intensely, than the vision of these new worlds of -knowledge kindled the ardour of the receptive spirit which had just come -into contact with them. But besides the speculative aspects of what he -saw in England, Voltaire was deeply penetrated by the social differences -between a country that had been effectively, if only partially, -transformed from feudalism, and his own, where feudalism had only been -transformed into a system more repressive than itself, and more unfit to -conduct a nation to the free and industrious developments of new -civilisation. It is a remarkable thing that though Voltaire's habitual -companions or patrons had belonged to the privileged class, he had been -sufficiently struck by the evils incident to the privileged system to -notice the absence of such evils in England, and to make a clear -attempt, though an insufficient one, to understand the secret of the -English immunity from them. One of the worst curses of France was the -taille or capitation-tax, and the way in which it was levied and -assessed. In England, Voltaire noticed, the peasant has not his feet -bruised in wooden shoes, he eats white bread, is decently clad, is not -terrified to increase the number of his stock, or to roof his dwelling -with tiles, lest his tax should be raised next year. Again, he placed -his finger on one of the circumstances that did most to spoil the growth -of a compact and well-knit society in France, when he pointed to the -large number of farmers in England with five or six hundred pounds -sterling a year, who do not think it beneath them to cultivate the earth -which has made them rich, and on which they live in active freedom.[46] -The profoundest modern investigator of the conditions of French society -in the eighteenth century has indicated the eagerness of every man who -got a little capital to quit the country and buy a place in a town, as -doing more harm to the progress of the agriculture and commerce of -France than even the taille itself and the trade corporations.[47] - -Voltaire perceived the astonishing fact that in this country a man -because he is a noble or a priest was not exempt from paying certain -taxes, and that the Commons who regulated the taxes, though second to -the Lords in rank, were above them in legislative influence.[48] His -acute sight also revealed to him the importance of the mixture of ranks -and classes in common pursuits, and he records with admiration instances -of the younger sons of peers of the realm following trade. 'Whoever -arrives in Paris from the depths of a remote province with money to -spend and a name in _ac_ or _ille_, can talk about a man like me, a man -of my quality,'[49] and hold a merchant in sovereign contempt. The -merchant again so constantly hears his business spoken of with disdain -that he is fool enough to blush for it; yet I am not sure which is the -more useful to a state, a thickly-bepowdered lord who knows exactly what -time the king rises and what time he goes to bed, and gives himself -mighty airs of greatness while he plays the part of a slave in a -minister's ante-room; or the merchant who enriches his country, gives -orders from his counting-house at Surat or Cairo, and contributes to -the happiness of the globe.[50] It is easy to conceive the fury which -these contrasts drawn from English observation would excite among the -personages in France who happened to get the worst side in them, and -there was assuredly nothing surprising in the decree of the Parliament -of Paris (1734), which condemned the Letters on the English to be -publicly burnt, as scandalous and contrary alike to good manners and the -respect due to principalities and powers. - -The English reader of the Letters is naturally struck by the absence of -any adequate account of our political liberties and free constitutional -forms. There is a good chapter on Bacon, one on inoculation, and several -on the Quakers, but on the civil constitution hardly a word of large -appreciativeness. Not only this, but there is no sign that Voltaire -either set any due or special value on the popular forms of the -Hanoverian time, or clearly understood that the liberty, which was so -amazing and so precious to him in the region of speculative and literary -activity, was the direct fruit of that general spirit of freedom, which -is naturally engendered in a people accustomed to take an active part in -the conduct of its own affairs. Liberty in spirituals was adorable to -him, but for liberty in temporals he never seems to have had more than a -very distant and verbal kind of respect; just because, with all his -unmatched keenness of sight, he failed to discover that the English -sturdiness in the matter of civil rights was the very root and cause, -not only of that material prosperity which struck him so much, and of -the slightness and movableness of the line which divided the aristocracy -from the commercial classes, but also of the fact that a Newton and a -Locke were inwardly emboldened to give free play to their intelligence -without fear of being punished for their conclusions, and of the only -less important fact that whatever conclusions speculative genius might -establish would be given to the world without interposition from any -court or university or official tribunal. Voltaire undoubtedly admired -the English for their parliament, because the material and superficial -advantages that delighted him were evidently due to the system, which -happened to be parliamentary. What we miss is any consciousness that -these advantages would not have been what they were, if they had been -conferred by an absolute sovereign; any recognition that political -activity throughout a nation works in a thousand indirect but most -potent ways, and is not more to be prized for this, than for its direct -and most palpable consequences. In one place, indeed, he mentions that -the honour paid to men of letters is due to the form of government, but -his language betrays a wholly inadequate and incorrect notion of the -true operation of the form of government. 'There are in London,' he -says, 'about eight hundred people with the right of speaking in public, -and maintaining the interests of the nation. Some five or six thousand -pretend to the same honour in their turn. All the rest set themselves up -to judge these, and everybody can print what he thinks. So all the -nation is bound to instruct itself. All talk is about the governments of -Athens and Rome, and it becomes necessary to read the authors who have -discussed them. That naturally leads to love of polite learning.'[51] -This is to confound a very trivial accident of popular governments with -their essence. If culture thrives under them--a very doubtful -position--it is not because voters wish to understand the historical -allusions of candidates, but because the general stir and life of public -activity tends to commove the whole system. Political freedom does not -produce men of genius, but its atmosphere is more favourable than any -other to their making the best of their genius in the service of -mankind. - -Voltaire, in this as in too much besides, was content with a keen and -rapid glance at the surface. The reader may remember his story of -meeting a boatman one day on the Thames, who seeing that he was a -Frenchman, with a too characteristic kind of courtesy, took the -opportunity of bawling out, with the added emphasis of a round oath, -that he would rather be a boatman on the Thames than an archbishop in -France. The next day Voltaire saw his man in prison with irons on and -praying an alms from the passers-by, and so asked him whether he still -thought as scurvily of an archbishop in France. 'Ah, sir,' cried the -man, 'what an abominable government! I have been carried off by force to -go and serve in one of the king's ships in Norway. They take me from my -wife and my children, and lay me up in prison with irons on my legs -until the time for going on board, for fear I should run away.' A -countryman of Voltaire's confessed that he felt a splenetic joy that a -people who were constantly taunting the French with their servitude, -were in sooth just as much slaves themselves; but for my own part, says -Voltaire, I felt a humaner sentiment, I was afflicted at there being no -liberty on the earth.[52] - -This is well enough as a comment on the abomination of impressment; yet -we feel that there is behind it, and not here only but generally in -Voltaire, a sort of confusion between two very distinct conceptions, -that both in his day and ever since have been equally designated by the -common name of civil liberty. The first of these ideas is a mere -privative, undoubtedly of sovereign importance, but still a privative, -and implies absence, more or less complete, of arbitrary control from -without, of interference with individual action by authority, of any -pretension on the part of any organised body to hinder any member of the -society from doing or abstaining from doing what may seem right in his -own eyes, provided he pays a corresponding respect to the freedom of his -fellows. Freedom in this sense Voltaire fully understood, and valued as -profoundly as it deserves to be valued. Political liberty, however, has -not only a meaning of abstention, but a meaning of participation. If in -one sense it is a sheer negative, and a doctrine of rights, in another -sense it is thoroughly positive, and a gospel of duties. The liberty -which has really made England what it so delighted and stimulated and -inflamed Voltaire to find her, has been quite as much of the second kind -as of the first; that liberty which consists in a national habit of -independent and watchful interest in the transaction of the national -affairs by the persons most concerned in them; in a general -consciousness of the duty of having some opinion on the business of the -state; in a recognition on the part of the government that the balance -of this opinion is necessary as a sanction to any policy, to which the -effective force of the state is applied. It is true that this public -participation in public concerns has sometimes been very dark and blind, -as it has often been in the highest degree enlightened, but for good or -for evil it has been the root of the matter. - -The great Frenchmen, who have been most characteristically French, while -valuing all and envying many of the best products of our liberty, may be -said generally to have failed entirely to detect that the salt of -English character, in days when it had more robustness than we can see -just now, sprung from the double circumstance of every man being at -liberty to have, and being inclined to take the trouble to have, an -opinion about the method and doings of his government; and of so many -men being called upon in high capacity or low, in an important function -or an obscure one, to take an independent and free share in controlling -or initiating the doings of their government. Take Montesquieu, for -example. He came to England just when Voltaire quitted it, and studied -carefully those political facts which his countryman had so neglected. -Yet he saw no deeper into the spirit of our institutions than to fix on -the constitutional balance of powers as the great secret of our freedom -and order. And Montesquieu, in spite of this, was wiser than most of his -contemporaries, for he at least saw the worth of constitutional freedom, -if he failed to see other ingredients of still more importance. French -statesmen and publicists have been systematically blind to the great -truth that there is no royal road to national well-being, and that -nations will deliberately put away happiness from themselves, unless -such happiness comes to them in a given way. The Physiocrats, who were -with all their shortcomings the most nearly scientific social thinkers -France possessed, could rise to no higher conception of a national life -than the supreme authority of a wise and benevolent monarch, giving good -gifts to his subjects. Turgot, with all the breadth and sagacity of his -genius, when five-and-forty years after our present date he came into -power, austerely clung to the same disastrous idea of passing reasoned -laws, in the shape of the beneficial edicts of an absolute power. -Voltaire, in the same way, never rose above the simple political -conception of an eastern tale, a good-tempered despot with a sage -vizier. In politics, then, he failed to carry away from England the very -essence and principle of our institutions, with which it was so much -more important that his countrymen should be familiarised than that they -should follow inoculation. - -It may at first sight be astonishing to find that, while Voltaire was -impressed only in a vague and general way with the free variety of -theological opinion which Protestantism had secured for England, the -sect which made a sort of mark on his mind was that which conceived the -idea that Christianity has after all something to do with the type and -example of Christ. We know how laughable and monstrous the Quaker scheme -has appeared to people who have been steeped from their youth upwards in -elaborate systems of abstruse metaphysical dogma, mystic ceremonies, -hierarchic ordering, and profuse condemnation of rival creeds. -Voltaire's imagination was struck by a sect who professed to regard the -religion of Christ as a simple and austere discipline of life, who -repudiated ritual, and held war for the worst of anti-christian -practices. The forms and doctrines of the established church of the -country he would be likely to take merely for so much of the common form -of the national institutions. He would simply regard it as the English -way of narrowing the mind and consolidating the social order. Gibbon's -famous sentence was not yet written, which described all religions as -equally true in the eyes of the people, equally false in the eyes of -the philosopher, and equally useful in the eyes of the magistrate. But -the idea was the idea of the century, and Voltaire would justly look -upon the Anglican profession as a temporarily useful and statesmanlike -settlement. He praised its clergy for the superior regularity of their -manners. 'That indefinable being, who is neither ecclesiastic nor -secular, in a word, who is called _abb_, is an unknown species in -England; the clergy here are all prigs, and nearly all pedants. When -they learn that in France young men notorious for their debauchery, and -raised to preferment by the intrigues of women, pursue their amours -publicly, amuse themselves by the composition of gallant verses, give -everyday prolonged and luxurious suppers, and rise from them to implore -the enlightenment of the holy spirit, boldly calling themselves the -successors of the apostles--why, then our English thank God that they are -Protestants.'[53] - -If, however, in face of a young and lively French graduate, bawling -theology in the schools in the morning and in the evening singing tender -songs with the ladies, an Anglican divine is a very Cato, this Cato is a -downright gallant before a Scotch presbyterian, who assumes a grave step -and a sour mien, preaches from the nose, and gives the name of harlot of -Babylon to all churches in which some of the ecclesiastics are so -fortunate as to receive an income of fifty thousand livres a year. -However, each man takes whatever road to heaven he pleases. If there -were one religion in England, they would have to fear its despotism; if -there were only two, they would cut one another's throats; but there are -thirty; so they live peaceably and happily together.[54] - -In the Quakers Voltaire saw something quite different from the purely -political pretensions and internecine quarrels of doctrine of the -ordinary worldly sects. It is impossible to say how much of the -kindliness with which he speaks of them is due to real admiration of -their simple, dignified, and pacific life, and how much to a mischievous -desire to make their praise a handle for the dispraise of overweening -competitors. On the whole there is a sincerity and heartiness of -interest in his long account of this sect, which persuades one that he -was moved by a genuine sympathy with a religion that could enjoin the -humane and peaceful and spiritual precepts of Christ, while putting away -baptism, ceremonial communion, and hierophantic orders. The nobility of -the social theories of the Society of Friends would naturally stir -Voltaire even more deeply than their abstention from practices that were -in his eyes degrading superstitions. He felt that the repugnance to -lower the majesty of their deity, by taking his name upon their lips as -solemn ratification of their words, had the effect of elevating the -dignity of man, by making his bare word fully credible without this -solemn ratification. Their refusal to comply with the deferential usages -of social intercourse, though nominally based on the sinfulness of -signs of homage to any mere mortal, insinuated a consciousness of -equality and self-respect in that mere mortal who was careful to make no -bows and to keep his hat on in every presence. Above all, Voltaire, who -was nowhere more veritably modern or better entitled to our veneration -than by reason of his steadfast hatred of war, revered a sect so far -removed from the brutality of the military rgime as to hold peace for a -first principle of the Christian faith and religious practice. The -reason why we do not go to war, his Quaker says, is not that we are -afraid of death, but because we are not wolves, nor tigers, nor dogs, -but Christian men. 'Our God, who has bidden us love our enemies and -suffer evil without complaint, assuredly has no mind that we should -cross the sea to go and cut the throats of our brothers, because -murderers in red clothes and hats two feet high enlist citizens, making -a noise with two little sticks on an ass's skin tightly stretched. And -when, after victories won, all London blazes with illuminations, the sky -is aflame with rockets, and the air resounds with the din of bells, -organs, cannon, we mourn in silence over the slaughter that causes all -the public joy.'[55] - -Voltaire, let us add, was no dilettante traveller constructing views and -deducing theories of national life out of his own uninstructed -consciousness. No German could have worked more diligently at the facts, -and we may say here, once for all, that if it is often necessary to -condemn him for superficiality, this lack of depth seldom at any time -proceeds from want of painstaking. His unrivalled brilliance of -expression blinds us to the extreme and conscientious industry that -provided matter. The most illustrious exile that our free land has -received from France in our own times, and assuredly far more of a giant -in the order of imagination than Voltaire, never had intellectual -curiosity enough to learn the language of the country that had given him -twenty years of shelter. Voltaire, in the few months of his exile here -acquired such an astonishing mastery over English as to be able to read -and relish an esoteric book like Hudibras, and to compass the enormously -difficult feat of rendering portions of it into good French verse.[56] He -composed an essay on epic poetry in the English tongue, and he wrote one -act of Brutus in English. - -He read Shakespeare, and made an elaborate study of his method. He -declares that Milton does as much honour to England as the great Newton, -and he took especial pains not only to master and appreciate the secret -of Milton's poetic power, but even to ascertain the minutest -circumstances of his life.[57] He studied Dryden, 'an author who would -have a glory without blemish, if he had only written the tenth part of -his works.'[58] He found Addison the first Englishman who had written a -reasonable tragedy, and Addison's character of Cato one of the finest -creations of any stage.[59] Wycherley, Vanbrugh, and Congreve he -esteemed more highly than most of their countrymen do now. An act of a -play of Lillo's was the base of the fourth act of Mahomet. Rochester, -Waller, Prior, and Pope, he read carefully and admired as heartily as -they deserved. Long after he had left England behind, he places Pope and -Addison on a level for variety of genius with Machiavel and Leibnitz and -Fontenelle;[60] and Pope he evidently for a long while kept habitually -by his elbow. Swift he placed before Rabelais, calling him Rabelais in -his senses, and, as usual, giving good reasons for his preference; for -Swift, he says justly, has not the gaiety of Rabelais, but he has all -the finesse, the sense, the variety, the fine taste, in which the priest -of Meudon was wanting.[61] In philosophy, besides Locke, there is -evidence that he read something of Hobbes, and something of Berkeley, -and something of Cudworth.[62] Always, however, 'harassed, wearied, -ashamed of having sought so many truths and found so many chimeras, I -returned to Locke; like a prodigal son returning to his father, I threw -myself into the arms of that modest man, who never pretends to know what -he does not know, who in truth has no enormous possessions, but whose -substance is well assured.'[63] - -Nor did Voltaire limit himself to the study of science, philosophy, and -poetry. He plunged into the field of theology, and mastered that famous -deistical controversy, of which the seed had been sown in the first half -of the seventeenth century by Lord Herbert of Cherbury, the -correspondent of Descartes and the earliest of the English metaphysical -thinkers.[64] Lord Herbert's object was to disengage from revelation -both our conceptions of the one supreme power, and the sanctions of good -and bad conduct. Toland, whom we know also that Voltaire read, aimed at -disengaging Christianity from mystery, and discrediting the canon of the -New Testament. In 1724 Collins published his Discourse on the Grounds -and Reasons of the Christian Religion, of which we are told that few -books ever made a greater noise than this did at its first publication. -The press teemed with vindications, replies, and rejoinders to Collins's -arguments during the whole of Voltaire's residence in England.[65] His -position was one which no modern free-thinker would dream of making a -central point of attack, and which hardly any modern apologist would -take the pains to reply to. He maintained that Jesus Christ and the -apostles trusted to the prophecies of the Old Testament for their -credentials, and then he showed, or tried to show, in various ways, -that these prophecies would not bear the weight which was thus laid upon -them. We may be sure that Voltaire's alert curiosity would interest him -profoundly in the lively polemical ferment which this notable contention -of Collins's stirred up. - -Woolston's discourses, written to prove that the miracles of the New -Testament are as mythical and allegorical as the prophecies of the old, -appeared at the same time, and had an enormous sale. Voltaire was much -struck by this writer's coarse and hardy way of dealing with the -miraculous legends, and the article on Miracles in the Philosophical -Dictionary shows how carefully he had read Woolston's book.[66] We find -references to Shaftesbury and Chubb in Voltaire's letters and elsewhere, -though they are not the references of an admirer,[67] and Bolingbroke -was one of the most influential and intimate of his friends. It is not -too much to say that Bolingbroke was the direct progenitor of Voltaire's -opinions in religion, and that nearly every one of the positive articles -in Voltaire's rather moderately sized creed was held and inculcated by -that brilliant and disordered genius. He did not always accept -Bolingbroke's optimism, but even as late in the century as 1767 Voltaire -thought it worth while to borrow his name for a volume of compendious -attack on the popular religion.[68] Bolingbroke's tone was peculiarly -light and peculiarly well-bred. His infidelity was strictly infidelity -for the upper classes;[69] ingenious, full of literature, and elegantly -supercilious. He made no pretence to theological criticism in any sense -that can be gravely admitted, but looked at the claims of revelation -with the eye of a polished man of the world, and met its arguments with -those general considerations of airy probability which go so far with -men who insist on having plausible opinions on all subjects, while they -will not take pains to work to the bottom of any. - -Villemain's observation that there is not one of Voltaire's writings -that does not bear the mark of his sojourn in England, is specially true -of what he wrote against theology. It was the English onslaught which -sowed in him the seed of the idea, and eventually supplied him with the -argumentative instruments, of a systematic and reasoned attack upon that -mass of doctrinal superstition and social abuse, which it had hitherto -been the fashion for even the strongest spirits in his own country to do -no more than touch with a cool sneer or a flippant insinuation, directed -to the private ear of a sympathiser. Who, born within the last forty -years, cried Burke, has read one word of Collins, and Toland, and Chubb, -and Morgan, and that whole race who called themselves Freethinkers? Who -now reads Bolingbroke? Who ever read him through?[70] This was very -well, but hundreds of thousands of persons born within those last forty -years had read Voltaire, and Voltaire had drawn from the armoury of -these dead and unread Freethinkers the weapons which he made sharp with -the mockery of his own spirit. He stood on the platform which they had -constructed, to stretch forth his hand against the shrine and the image -before which so many credulous generations had bowed down. It was in -this most transformed shape among others that at length, late and -changed, but directly of descent, the free and protesting genius of the -Reformation made its decisive entry into France. - -It is easy to cite proofs of the repudiation by Protestant bodies of the -Protestant principle, to multiply instances of the narrow rigidity of -their dogma, and the intolerance of their discipline. This method -supplies an excellent answer as against Protestants who tax Catholics -with the crime of persecution, or the crime of opposing intellectual -independence. It cannot, however, touch the fact that Protestantism was -indirectly the means of creating and dispersing an atmosphere of -rationalism, in which there speedily sprang up philosophical, -theological, and political influences, all of them entirely antagonistic -to the old order of thought and institution. The whole intellectual -temperature underwent a permanent change, that was silently mortal to -the most flourishing tenets of all sorts. It is futile to ask for a -precise logical chain of relations between the beginning of a movement -and its end; and there is no more direct and logical connection between -the right of private judgment and an experiential doctrine of -psychology, than there is between experiential psychology and deism. -Nobody now thinks that the effect is homogeneous with its cause, or that -there is any objective resemblance between a blade of wheat and the -moisture and warmth which fill and expand it. All we can see is that the -proclamation of the rights of free judgment would tend to substitute -reason for authority, and evidence for tradition, as the arbiters of -opinion; and that the political expression of this change in the civil -wars of the middle of the seventeenth century would naturally deepen the -influence of the new principle, and produce the Lockian rationalism of -the end of that century, which almost instantaneously extended from the -region of metaphysics into the region of theology. - -The historian of every kind of opinion, and the student of the great -chiefs of intellectual movements, habitually do violence to actual -circumstances, by imparting too systematic a connection to the various -parts of belief, and by assuming an unreal degree of conscious logical -continuity among the notions of individual thinkers. Critics fill in the -frame with a completeness and exactitude that had no counterpart in the -man's own judgments, and they identify him with a multitude of -deductions from his premisses, which may be fairly drawn, but which -never at all entered into his mind, and formed no part of his character. -The philosophy of the majority of men is nothing more shaped and -incorporate than a little group of potential and partially incoherent -tendencies. To stiffen these into a system of definite formulas is the -most deceptive, as it is the most common, of critical processes. A few -persons, with an exceptional turn for philosophy, consciously embody -their metaphysical principles with a certain detail in all the rest of -their thinking. With most people, however, even people of superior -capacity, the relation between their ground-system, such as a critic -might supply them with, and their manifestations of intellectual -activity, is of an extremely indirect and general kind. - -Hence the untrustworthiness of those critical schemata, so attractive -for their compact order, which first make Voltaire a Lockian -sensationalist, and then trace his deism to his sensationalism. We have -already seen that he was a deist before he came to England, just as Lord -Herbert of Cherbury was a deist, who wrote before Locke was born. It was -not the metaphysical revolution of Locke which led to deism, but the -sort of way in which he thought about metaphysics, a way which was -immediately applied to theology by other people, whether assailants or -defenders of the current opinions. Locke's was 'common-sense thinking,' -and the fashion spread. The air was thick with common-sense objections -to Christianity, as it was with common-sense ideas as to the way in -which we come to have ideas. There was no temperament to which such an -atmosphere could be so congenial as Voltaire's, of whom we cannot too -often repeat, considering the vulgar reputation he has for violence and -excess, that he was in thought the very genius of good sense, whether or -no we fully admit M. Cousin's qualification of it as superficial good -sense. It has been said that he always speaks of Descartes, Leibnitz, -and Spinoza, like a man to whom nature has refused the metaphysical -sense.[71] At any rate he could never agree with them, and he never -tried to find truth by the roads which they had made. It is true, -however, that he shows no sign of special fitness for metaphysics, any -more than he did for physical science. The metaphysics of Locke lay -undeveloped in his mind, just as the theory of evolution lies in so many -minds at the present time. There is a faint informal reference of other -theories to this central and half-seen standard. When metaphysical -subjects came before him, he felt that he had this for a sheet-anchor, -and he did not greatly care to keep proving it again and again by -continued criticism or examination. The upshot of his acquaintance with -Locke was a systematic adherence to common-sense modes of thinking; and -he always betrayed the faults and shortcomings to which such modes -inevitably lead, when they are brought, to the exclusion of -complementary ideas, to the practical subjects that comprehend more than -prudence, self-interest, and sobriety. The subject that does beyond any -other comprehend more than these elements is religion, and the -substantial vices of Voltaire's objections to religion first arose from -his familiarity with the English form of deism, and his instinctive -feeling for its method. - -The deism of Leibnitz was a positive belief, and made the existence of a -supreme power an actual and living object of conviction. The mark of -this belief has remained on German speculation throughout its course, -down to our own day. English deism, on the contrary, was only a -particular way of repudiating Christianity. There was as little of God -in it as could well be. Its theory was that God had given each man the -light of reason in his own breast; that by this reason every scheme of -belief must be tried, and accepted or rejected; and that the Christian -scheme being so tried was in various ways found wanting. The formula of -some book of the eighteenth century, that God created nature and nature -created the world, must be allowed to have reduced theistic conception -to something like the shadow of smoke. The English eighteenth-century -formula was, theistically, nearly as void. The Being who set the reason -of each individual on a kind of judicial bench within the forum of his -own conscience, and left him and it together to settle belief and -conduct between them, was a tolerably remote and unreal sort of -personage. His spiritual force, according to such a doctrine, became -very much as if it had no existence. - -It was not to be expected that a sovereign dwelling in such amazingly -remote lands as this would continue long with undisputed authority, when -all the negative forces of the time had reached their full momentum. In -England the reaction against this strange absentee government of the -universe took the form which might have been anticipated from the deep -hold that Protestantism had won, and the spirituality which had been -engendered by Protestant reference to the relations between the -individual conscience and the mystic operations of faith. Deism became a -reality with a God in it in the great Evangelical revival, terrible and -inevitable, which has so deeply coloured religious feeling and warped -intellectual growth in England ever since. In France, thought took a -very different and much simpler turn. Or perhaps it would be more -correct to say that it took no turn at all, but carried the godless -deism of the English school to its fair conclusion, and dismissed a -deity who only reigned and did not govern. The whole movement had a -single origin. There is not one of the arguments of the French -philosophers in the eighteenth century, says a very competent authority, -which cannot be found in the English school of the beginning of the -century.[72] Voltaire, who carried the English way of thinking about the -supernatural power into France, lived to see a band of trenchant and -energetic disciples develop principles which he had planted, into a -system of dogmatic atheism. The time came when he was spoken of -contemptuously as retrograde and superstitious: '_Voltaire est bigot, il -est diste_.' - - - - -CHAPTER III. - -LITERATURE. - - -On the whole, the critic's task is perhaps less to classify a type of -character as good or bad, as worthy of so much praise or so much -censure, than to mark the material out of which a man has his life to -make, and the kind of use and form to which he puts his material. To -begin with, the bald division of men into sheep and goats is in one -sense so easy as not to be worth performing, and in another sense it is -so hard as only to be possible for some being with supernatural insight. -And even were the qualities employed in the task of a rarer kind than -they are, the utility of the performance is always extremely slight, -compared with that other kind of criticism which dwells less on the -final balance of good or evil, than on the first innate conditions of -temperament, the fixed limitations of opportunity, and the complex -interplay of the two with that character, which is first their creature -and then their master. It is less the concern of criticism to pronounce -its man absolutely rich or absolutely poor, than to count up his talents -and the usury of his own which he added to them. Assuredly there ought -to be little condonation of the foibles, and none at all of the moral -obliquities, of the dead, because this would mean the demoralisation of -the living. But it is seriously to overrate the power of bald words and -written opinion, to suppose that a critic's censure of conduct which a -thousand other agents, from the child's hornbook up to the obvious and -pressing dictates of social convenience, are daily and hourly -prescribing, can be other than a work of supererogation, which fixes the -mind on platitudes, instead of leading it on in search of special and -distinctive traits. - -It would be easy to pour overflowing vials of condemnation on many sides -of Voltaire's character and career. No man possessed of so much good -sense ever fell so constantly into the kinds of error against which good -sense particularly warns men. There is no more wearisome or pitiful leaf -in the biographies of the great, than the tale of Voltaire's quarrels -with ignoble creatures; with a wrecked soul, like J. B. Rousseau (whom -the reader will not confound with Jean Jacques); with a thievish -bookseller, like Jore; with a calumnious journalist, like Desfontaines; -with a rapacious knave like Hirschel; and all the other tormentors in -the Voltairean history, whose names recall vulgar, dishonest, and -indignant pertinacity on the one side, and wasteful, undignified fury on -the other. That lesson in the art of life which concerns a man's -dealings with those who have shown patent moral inferiority, was never -mastered by Voltaire. Instead of the silence, composure, and austere -oblivion, which it is of the essence of strength to oppose to unworthy -natures, he habitually confronted the dusty creeping things that beset -his march, as if they stood valiant and erect; and the more unworthy -they were, the more vehement and strenuous and shrill was his contention -with them. The ignominy of such strife is clear. One thing only may -perhaps be said. His intense susceptibility to vulgar calumny flowed -from the same quality in his nature which made unbearable to him the -presence of superstition and injustice, those mightier calumnies on -humanity. The irritated protests against the small foes of his person -were as the dregs of potent wine, and were the lower part of that -passionate sensibility which made him the assailant of the giant -oppressors of the human mind. This reflection does not make any less -tedious to us the damnable iteration of petty quarrel and fretting -complaint which fills such a space in his correspondence and in his -biographies, nor does it lessen our regret at the havoc which this fatal -defect of his qualities made with his contentedness. We think of his -consolation to a person as susceptible as himself: 'There have always -been Frrons in literature; but they say there must be caterpillars for -nightingales to eat, that they may sing the better:' and we wish that -our nightingale had devoured its portion with something less of tumult. -But it may do something to prevent us from giving a prominence, that is -both unfair and extremely misleading, to mere shadow, as if that had -been the whole substance. Alas, why after all should men, from Moses -downwards, be so cheerfully ready to contemplate the hinder parts of -their divinities? - -The period of twenty years between Voltaire's departure from England and -his departure for Berlin, although often pronounced the happiest time of -his life, is very thickly set with these humiliating incidents. To us, -however, they are dead, because though vivid enough to Voltaire--and it -is strange how constantly it happens that the minor circumstance of life -is more real and ever-present to a man than his essential and abiding -work in it--they were but transitory and accidental. Just as it does -little good to the understanding to spend much time over tenth-rate -literature, so it is little edifying to the character to rake among the -private obscurities of even first-rate men, and it is surely a good rule -to keep ourselves as much as we can in contact with what is great. - -The chief personal fact of this time was the connection which Voltaire -formed with the Marquise du Chtelet, and which lasted from 1733 to -1749. She was to him that important and peculiar influence which, in one -shape or another, some woman seems to have been to nearly every foremost -man. In Voltaire's case this influence was not the rich and tender -inspiration with which women have so many a time sweetened the lives and -glorified the thought of illustrious workers, nor was he bound to her -by those bonds of passion which have often the effect of exalting the -strength and widening the range of the whole of the nature that is -susceptive of passion. Their inner relations hardly depended on anything -more extraordinary or more delicate than the sentiment of a masculine -friendship. Voltaire found in the divine Emily a strong and active head, -a keen and generous admiration for his own genius, and an eagerness to -surround him with the external conditions most favourable to that steady -industry which was always a thing so near his own heart. They are two -great men, one of whom wears petticoats, said Voltaire of her and of -Frederick. It is impossible to tell what share vanity had in the -beginning of a connection, which probably owed its long continuance more -to use and habit than to any deep-rooted sentiment. Vanity was one of -the most strongly marked of Voltaire's traits, and to this side of him -relations with a woman of quality who adored his genius were no doubt -extremely gratifying. Yet one ought to do him the justice to say that -his vanity was only skin-deep. It had nothing in common with the greedy -egotism which reduces the whole broad universe to a mere microcosm of -pygmy self. The vanity which discloses a real flaw in character is a -loud and tyrannical claim for acknowledgment of literary supremacy, and -with it the mean vices of envy, jealousy, and detraction are usually in -company. Voltaire's vanity was something very different from this -truculent kind of self-assertion. It had a source in his intensely -sympathetic quality, and was a gay and eager asking of assurance from -others that his work gave them pleasure. Let us be very careful to -remember that it never stood in the way of self-knowledge,--the great -test of the difference between the vanity that is harmless, and the -vanity that is fatuous and destructive. - -It has been rather the fashion to laugh at the Marquise du Chtelet, for -no better reasons perhaps than that she, being a woman, studied Newton, -and had relations called tender with a man so little associated in -common opinion with tenderness as Voltaire. The first reason is -disgraceful, and the second is perhaps childish. Everything goes to show -that Madame du Chtelet possessed a hardy originality of character, of -which society is so little likely to have an excess that we can hardly -ever be thankful enough for it. There is probably nothing which would -lead to so rapid and marked an improvement in the world, as a large -increase of the number of women in it with the will and the capacity to -master Newton as thoroughly as she did. And her long and sedulous -affection for a man of genius of Voltaire's exceptional quality, -entitles her to the not too common praise of recognising and revering -intellectual greatness as it deserves. Her friendship for him was not -the semi-servile and feebly intelligent solicitude which superior men -have too often the wretched weakness to seek in their female companions, -but an imperial sympathy. She was unamiable, it is true, and possessed -neither the delicacy which a more fastidious age requires in a woman, -nor the sense of honour which we now demand in a man. These defects, -however, were not genuinely personal, but lay in the manners of the -time. It was not so with all her faults. To the weak and dependent she -was overbearing, harsh, mean, and even cruel. A fatuous caprice would -often destroy the domestic peace and pleasure of a week. But nothing was -suffered to impede the labour of a day. The industry of the house was -incessant. - -It is said, and it was said first by one who lived with them for some -time, and has left a graphic account of the interior of Cirey, that she -made Voltaire's life a little hard to him.[73] There were many -occasional storms and short sullen fits even in these high regions of -science and the finer tastes. Yet such stormful scenes, with great -actors as with small, are perhaps more painful in description than they -were in reality; and Voltaire was less discomposed by the lively -impetuosity of a companion like Madame du Chtelet, than he would have -been by the orderly calm of a more precise and perfectly well-regulated -person. A man follows the conditions of his temperament, and Voltaire's -unresting animation and fire might make him feel a certain joy of life -and freedom in the occasional contentiousness of a slightly shrewish -temper. We cannot think of him as ever shrinking, ever craving for -repose, as some men do as for a very necessity of existence. The health -of your friend, wrote Madame du Chtelet to D'Argental in 1739, is in so -deplorable a state that the only hope I have left of restoring it is in -the turmoil of a journey[74]. A tolerably frequent agitation was a -condition of even such health as he had, to one of Voltaire's nervous -and feverish habit. - -Let it be said that his restlessness never took a form which involved a -sacrifice of the happiness of other people. It was never tyrannical and -exigent. There are many, too many, instances of his angry impatience -with persons against whom he thought he had cause of offence. There is -not a single instance in which any shadow of implacableness lurked for -an enemy who had repented or fallen into misfortune; and if his -resentment was constantly aflame against the ignoble, it instantly -expired and changed into warm-hearted pity, when the ignoble became -either penitent or miserable. There are many tales of the readiness with -which his anger was appeased. Any one will suffice as a type. On some -occasion when Voltaire was harassed by a storm of libels, and happened -to be on good terms with the police, a distributor of the libels was -arrested. The father, an old man of eighty, hastened to Voltaire to pray -for pardon. All Voltaire's fury instantly vanished at the first appeal; -he wept with the old man, embraced him, consoled him, and straightway -ran to procure the liberation of the offender[75]. An eye-witness -related to Grimm how he happened to be present at Ferney when Voltaire -received Rousseau's Lettres de la Montagne, and read the apostrophe -relating to himself. His face seemed to take fire, his eyes sparkled -with fury, his whole frame trembled, and he cried in terrible tones--'The -miscreant! the monster! I must have him cudgelled--yes, I will have him -cudgelled in his mountains at the knees of his nurse.' 'Pray, calm -yourself,' said the bystander, 'for I know that Rousseau means to pay -you a visit, and will very shortly be at Ferney.' 'Ah, only let him -come,' replied Voltaire. 'But how will you receive him?' 'Receive him -... I will give him supper, put him in my own bed, and say, There is a -good supper; this is the best bed in the house; do me the pleasure to -accept one and the other, and to make yourself happy here[76].' One does -not understand the terrible man, without remembering always how much of -the hot generosity of the child he kept in his nature to the last. When -the very Jesuits were suppressed with circumstances of extreme -harshness, he pitied even them, and took one of their number permanently -into his household[77]. - -The most important part of a man's private conduct after that which -concerns his relations with women and his family, is generally that -which concerns his way of dealing with money, because money in its -acquisition and its dispersion is the outward and visible sign of the -absence or of the presence of so many inward and spiritual graces. As -has often been said, it is the measure of some of the most important of -a man's virtues, his honesty, his industry, his generosity, his -self-denial, and most of the other elements in keeping the difficult -balance between his care for himself and his care for other people. -Voltaire perceived very early in life that to be needy was to be -dependent; that the rich and poor are as hammer and anvil; that the -chronicles of genius demonstrate that it is not by genius that men -either make a fortune or live happy lives. He made up his mind from the -beginning that the author of the French epic would not share the poverty -and straitened lives of Tasso and Milton, and that he for his part would -at any rate be hammer and not anvil.[78] I was so wearied, he wrote in -1752, of the humiliations that dishonour letters, that to stay my -disgust I resolved to make what scoundrels call a great fortune.[79] He -used to give his books away to the printers. He had a small fortune from -his father; he is said to have made two thousand pounds by the English -subscriptions to the Henriade; and he did not hide his talent in the -ground, but resorted skilfully to all sorts of speculations in stocks, -army contracts, and other authorised means of converting one livre into -two while you sleep. He lent large sums of money, presumably at handsome -interest, to the Duke of Richelieu and others, and though the interest -may have been handsome, the trouble of procuring it was often -desperate.[80] Yet after much experience Voltaire came to the conclusion -that though he had sometimes lost money by bankers, by the devout, by -the people of the Old Testament, who would have had many scruples about -a larded capon, who would rather die than not be idle on the sabbath, -and not be thieving on the Sunday, yet he had lost nothing by the great -except his time.[81] - -It is easy to point a sneer at a high priest of humanity jobbing in the -funds. Only let us remember that Voltaire never made any pretence of -being a high priest of humanity; that his transactions were -substantially very like those of any banker or merchant of to-day; and -that for a man who was preaching new opinions it was extremely prudent -to place himself out of the necessity of pleasing booksellers or the pit -of the theatre on the one hand, and on the other to supply himself with -ready means of frequent flight from the ceaseless persecutions of -authority. Envious scribes in his lifetime taunted him with avarice, and -the evil association still clings to his memory now that he is dead. -One can only say that good and high-minded men, who never shrank from -withstanding him when in fault, men like Condorcet for example, heard -such talk with disdain, and set it down to the disgraceful readiness of -men to credit anything that relieves them from having to admire[82]. The -people who dislike prudence in matters of money in those whose -distinction is intellectual or spiritual, resemble a sentimental lover -who should lose his illusions at sight of his mistress eating a hearty -meal. Is their lot, then, cast in the ethereal fluid of the interstellar -spaces? - -At all events Voltaire had two important gifts which do not commonly -belong to the avaricious; he was a generous helper alike of those who -had, and those who had not, a claim upon him, and he knew how to bear -serious losses with unbroken composure. Michel, the receiver-general, -became bankrupt, and Voltaire lost a considerable sum of money in -consequence. His fluency of invective and complaint, which was simply -boundless when any obscure scribbler earned a guinea by a calumny upon -him, went no farther on the occasion of this very substantial injury -than a single splenetic phrase, and a harmless quatrain: - - Michel au nom de l'Eternel, - Mit jadis le diable en droute; - Mais, aprs cette banqueroute, - Que le diable emporte Michel! - -It has been fairly asked whether a genuine miser would content himself -with a stanza upon the man who had robbed him.[83] His correspondence -with the Duchess of Saxe-Gotha shows him declining to accept the -thousand louis, which she had sent as a fee for the composition of the -Annales de l'Empire. - -Much has been made of the bargaining which he carried on with Frederick, -as to the terms on which he would consent to go to Berlin. But then the -Prussian king was not one with whom it was wise to be too nice in such -affairs. He was the thriftiest of men, and as a king is a person who -lives on other people's money, such thrift was in his case the most -princely of virtues. Haggling is not graceful, but it need not imply -avarice in either of the parties to it. The truth is that there was in -Voltaire a curious admixture of splendid generosity with virulent -tenacity about half-pence. The famous quarrel with the President de -Brosses about the fourteen cords of firewood is a worse affair. -Voltaire, who leased Tourney from him, insisted that De Brosses had made -him a present of the fourteen cords. De Brosses, no doubt truly, -declared that he had only ordered the wood to be delivered on Voltaire's -account. On this despicable matter a long correspondence was carried on, -in which Voltaire is seen at his very worst; insolent, undignified, -low-minded, and untruthful.[84] The case happily stands alone in his -biography. As a rule, he is a steady practitioner of the Aristotelian -=megaloprepeia=, or virtue of magnificent expenditure. - -The truly important feature of the life which Voltaire led at Cirey was -its unremitting diligence. Like a Homeric goddess, the divine Emily -poured a cloud round her hero. There is a sort of moral climate in a -household, an impalpable, unseizable, indefinable set of influences, -which predispose the inmates to industry and self-control, or else relax -fibre and slacken purpose. At Cirey there was an almost monastic rule. -Madame Grafigny says that though Voltaire felt himself bound by -politeness to pay her a visit from time to time in her apartment, he -usually avoided sitting down, apologetically protesting how frightful a -thing is the quantity of time people waste in talking, and that waste of -time is the most fatal kind of extravagance of which one can be -guilty[85]. He seems to have usually passed the whole day at his desk, -or in making physical experiments in his chamber. The only occasion on -which people met was at the supper at nine in the evening. Until then -the privacy of the chamber alike of the hostess, who was analysing -Leibnitz or translating Newton, and of the unofficial host, who was -compiling material for the Sicle de Louis XIV., or polishing and -repolishing Mahomet, or investigating the circumstances of the -propagation of fire, was sacredly inviolable. - -The rigour of the rule did not forbid theatrical performances, when any -company, even a company of marionettes, came into the neighbourhood of -the desolate Champagne chteau. Sometimes after supper Voltaire would -exhibit a magic lantern, with explanatory comments after the showman's -manner, in which he would convulse his friends at the expense of his -enemies.[86] But after the evening's amusement was over, the Marquise -would retire to work in her chamber until the morning, and, when morning -came, a couple of hours' sleep was the only division between the tasks -of the night and the tasks of the day. Two splenetic women have left us -a couple of spiteful pictures of Madame du Chtelet, but neither of her -detractors could rise to any higher conception of intellectual effort -than the fine turn of phrase, the ingenious image, the keen thrust of -cruel satire, with which the polished idle of that day whiled away -dreary and worthless years. The translator of Newton's Principia was not -of this company, and she was wholly indifferent to the raillery, -sarcasm, and hate of women whom she justly held her inferiors. It is -much the fashion to admire the women of this time, because they contrive -to hide behind a veil of witty words the coldness and hollowness of -lives which had neither the sweetness of the old industrious domesticity -of women, nor the noble largeness of some of those in whom the -Revolution kindled a pure fire of patriotism in after days. Madame du -Chtelet, with all her faults, was a far loftier character than the -malicious gossips who laughed at her. 'Everything that occupies society -was within her power, _except slander_. She was never heard to hold up -anybody to laughter. When she was informed that certain people were bent -on not doing her justice, she would reply that she wished to ignore it.' -This was surely better than a talent for barbing epigrams, and she led a -worthier life at Cirey than in that Paris which Voltaire described so -bitterly. - - L, tous les soirs, la troupe vagabonde, - D'un peuple oisif, appel le beau monde, - Va promener de rduit en rduit - L'inquitude et l'ennui qui la suit. - L sont en foule antiques mijaures, - Jeunes oisons et bgueules titres, - Disant des riens d'un ton de perroquet, - Lorgnant des sots, et trichant au piquet. - Blondins y sont, beaucoup plus femmes qu'elles, - Profondment remplis de bagatelles, - D'un air hautain, d'une bruyante voix, - Chantant, dansant, minaudant la fois. - Si par hasard quelque personne honnte, - D'un sens plus droit et d'un got plus heureux, - Des bons crits ayant meubl sa tte, - Leur fait l'affront de penser leurs yeux; - Tout aussitt leur brillante cohue, - D'etonnement et de colre mue, - Bruyant essaim de frlons envieux, - Pique et poursuit cette abeille charmante[87]. - -It was not the fault of Madame du Chtelet that the life of Cirey was -not the undisturbed type of Voltaire's existence during the fifteen -years of their companionship. Many pages might be filled with a mere -list of the movements from place to place to which Voltaire resorted, -partly from reasonable fear of the grip of a jealous and watchful -government, partly from eagerness to bring the hand of the government -upon his enemies, and most of all from the uncontrollable restlessness -of his own nature. Amsterdam, the Hague, Brussels, Berlin, the little -court of Lunville, and the great world of Paris, too frequently -withdrew him from the solitary castle at Cirey, though he never failed -to declare on his return, and with perfect sincerity, that he was never -so happy anywhere else. If it was true that the Marquise made her poet's -life a little hard to him, it is impossible to read her correspondence -without perceiving that he, too, though for no lack of sensibility and -good feeling, often made life extremely hard for her. Besides their -moral difference, there was a marked discrepancy in intellectual -temperament, which did not fail to lead to outward manifestations. -Voltaire was sometimes a little weary of Newton and exact science, while -the Marquise was naturally of the rather narrow turn for arid truths -which too often distinguishes clever women inadequately disciplined by -contact with affairs. She and Voltaire both competed for a prize offered -by the Academy for essays on the propagation of fire (1737). Neither of -them was successful, for the famous Euler was a competitor. The second -and third prizes were given to two obscurer persons, because their -essays were Cartesian, that is to say, they were scientifically -orthodox. The two philosophers of Cirey also took part, and on different -sides, in the obstinate physico-mathematical controversy which Leibnitz -had first raised towards the close of the seventeenth century, as to the -measure of moving forces[88]. The Marquise, under circumstances of -equivocal glory and with much angry buzzing, with which one has now no -concern[89], published her analysis of Leibnitz in 1740, and sided with -him against Newton and Descartes. In the notice which Voltaire wrote of -his friend's book he gave a marvellously simple and intelligible account -of the issue of the special controversy of _vis viva_[90], but he -remained Newtonian, and in 1741 presented a paper to the Academy of -Sciences, disputing the Leibnitzian view[91]. - -Voltaire was not merely one of those 'paper philosophers,' whose -intrusion into the fields of physical science its professional followers -are justly wont to resent. He was an active experimenter, and more than -one letter remains, containing instructions to his agent in Paris to -forward him retorts, air-pumps, and other instruments, with the wise -hint in one place, a hint by no means of a miser, 'In the matter of -buying things, my friend, you should always prefer the good and sound -even if a little dear, to what is only middling but cheaper[92].' His -correspondence for some years proves the diligence and sincerity of his -interest in science. Yet it is tolerably clear that the man who did so -much to familiarise France with the most illustrious of physicists, was -himself devoid of true scientific aptitude. After long and persevering -labour in this region, Voltaire consulted Clairaut on the progress he -had made. The latter, with a loyal frankness which Voltaire knew how to -appreciate, answered that even with the most stubborn labour he was not -likely to attain to anything beyond mediocrity in science, and that he -would be only throwing away time which he owed to poetry and -philosophy.[93] The advice was taken; for, as we have already said, -Voltaire's self-love was never fatuous, and the independent search of -physical truth was given up. There is plainly no reason to regret the -pains which Voltaire took in this kind of inquiry, not because the study -of the sciences extends the range of poetic study and enriches verse -with fresh images, but because the number of sorts of knowledge in which -a man feels at home and is intelligently cognisant of their scope and -issues, even if he be wholly incompetent to assist in the progress of -discovery, increases that intellectual confidence and self-respect of -understanding, which so fortifies and stimulates him in his own special -order of work. We cannot precisely contend that this encyclopdic -quality is an indispensable condition of such self-respect in every kind -of temper. It certainly was so with Voltaire. 'After all, my dear -friend,' he wrote to Cideville, 'it is right to give every possible -form to our soul. It is a flame that God has intrusted to us, we are -bound to feed it with all that we find most precious. We should -introduce into our existence all imaginable modes, and open every door -of the soul to all sorts of knowledge and all sorts of feelings. So long -as it does not all go in pell-mell there is plenty of room for -everything.[94] - -To us, who can be wise after the event, it is clear that if ever man was -called not to science, nor to poetry, nor to theology, nor to -metaphysics, but to literature, the art, so hard to define, of showing -the ideas of all subjects in the double light of the practical and the -spiritual reason, that man was Voltaire. He has himself dwelt on the -vagueness of this much-abused term, without contributing anything more -satisfactory towards a better account of it than a crude hint that -literature, not being a special art, may be considered a kind of larger -grammar of knowledge.[95] Although, however, it is true that literature -is not a particular art, it is not the less true that there is a mental -constitution particularly fitted for its successful practice. Literature -is essentially an art of form, as distinguished from those exercises of -intellectual energy which bring new stores of matter to the stock of -acquired knowledge, and give new forces to emotion and original and -definite articulation to passion. It is a misleading classification to -call the work of Shakespeare and Molire, Shelley and Hugo, literary, -just as it would be an equally inaccurate, though more glaring piece of -classification, to count the work of Newton or Locke literature. To take -another case from Voltaire, it would not be enough to describe Bayle's -Dictionary as a literary compilation; it would not even be enough to -describe it as a work of immense learning, because the distinguishing -and superior mark of this book is a profound dialectic. It forms men of -letters and is above them.[96] - -What is it then that literature brings to us, that earns its title to -high place, though far from a highest place, among the great humanizing -arts? Is it not that this is the master organon for giving men the two -precious qualities of breadth of interest and balance of judgment; -multiplicity of sympathies and steadiness of sight? Unhappily, -literature has too often been identified with the smirks and -affectations of mere elegant dispersiveness, with the hollow niceties of -the virtuoso, a thing of madrigals. It is not in any sense of this sort -that we can think of Voltaire as specially the born minister of -literature. What we mean is that while he had not the loftier endowments -of the highest poetic conception, subtle speculative penetration, or -triumphant scientific power, he possessed a superb combination of wide -and sincere curiosity, an intelligence of vigorous and exact -receptivity, a native inclination to candour and justice, and a -pre-eminent mastery over a wide range in the art of expression. -Literature being concerned to impose form, to diffuse the light by which -common men are able to see the great host of ideas and facts that do not -shine in the brightness of their own atmosphere, it is clear what -striking gifts Voltaire had in this way. He had a great deal of -knowledge, and he was ever on the alert both to increase and broaden his -stock, and, what was still better, to impart of it to everybody else. He -did not think it beneath him to write on Hemistichs for the -Encyclopdia. 'Tis not a very brilliant task, he said, but perhaps the -article will be useful to men of letters and amateurs; 'one should -disdain nothing, and I will do the word Comma, if you choose.'[97] He -was very catholic in taste, being able to love Racine without ignoring -the lofty stature of Shakespeare. And he was free from the weakness -which so often attends on catholicity, when it is not supported by true -strength and independence of understanding; he did not shut his eyes to -the shortcomings of the great. While loving Molire, he was aware of the -incompleteness of his dramatic construction, as well as of the egregious -farce to which that famous writer too often descends.[98] His respect -for the sublimity and pathos of Corneille did not hinder him from noting -both his violence and his frigid argumentation.[99] Does the reader -remember that admirable saying of his to Vauvenargues; '_It is the part -of a man like you to have preferences, but no exclusions_?'[100] To this -fine principle Voltaire was usually thoroughly true, as every great -mind, if only endowed with adequate culture, must necessarily be. - - Nul auteur avec lui n'a tort, - Quand il a trouv l'art de plaire; - Il le critique sans colre, - Il l'applaudit avec transport.[101] - -Thirdly, that circumfusion of bright light which is the highest aim of -speech, was easy to Voltaire, in whatever order of subject he happened -to treat. His style is like a translucent stream of purest mountain -water, moving with swift and animated flow under flashing sunbeams. -'Voltaire,' said an enemy, 'is the very first man in the world at -writing down what other people have thought,' What was meant for a -spiteful censure, was in fact a truly honourable distinction. - -The secret is incommunicable. No spectrum analysis can decompose for us -that enchanting ray. It is rather, after all, the piercing metallic -light of electricity than a glowing beam of the sun. We can detect some -of the external qualities of this striking style. We seize its dazzling -simplicity, its almost primitive closeness to the letter, its sharpness -and precision, above all, its admirable brevity. We see that no writer -ever used so few words to produce such pregnant effects.[102] Those -whom brevity only makes thin and slight, may look with despair on pages -where the nimbleness of the sentence is in proportion to the firmness of -the thought. We find no bastard attempts to reproduce in words deep and -complex effects, which can only be adequately presented in colour or in -the combinations of musical sound. Nobody has ever known better the true -limitations of the material in which he worked, or the scope and -possibilities of his art. Voltaire's alexandrines, his witty stories, -his mock-heroic, his exposition of Newton, his histories, his dialectic, -all bear the same mark, the same natural, precise, and condensed mode of -expression, the same absolutely faultless knowledge of what is proper -and permitted in every given kind of written work. At first there seems -something paradoxical in dwelling on the brevity of an author whose -works are to be counted by scores of volumes. But this is no real -objection. A writer may be insufferably prolix in the limits of a single -volume, and Voltaire was quite right in saying that there are four times -too many words in the one volume of D'Holbach's System of Nature. He -maintains too that Rabelais might advantageously be reduced to -one-eighth, and Bayle to a quarter, and there is hardly a book that is -not curtailed in the perfecting hands of the divine muses.[103] So -conversely an author may not waste a word in a hundred volumes. Style is -independent of quantity, and the world suffers so grievously from the -mass of books that have been written, not because they are many, but -because such vast proportion of their pages say nothing while they -purport to say so much. - -No study, however, of this outward ease and swift compendiousness of -speech will teach us the secret that was beneath it in Voltaire, an eye -and a hand that never erred in hitting the exact mark of appropriateness -in every order of prose and verse. Perhaps no such vision for the -befitting in expression has ever existed. He is the most trenchant -writer in the world, yet there is not a sentence of strained emphasis or -overwrought antithesis; he is the wittiest, yet there is not a line of -bad buffoonery. And this intense sense of the appropriate was by nature -and cultivation become so entirely a fixed condition of Voltaire's mind -that it shows spontaneous and without an effort in his work. Nobody is -more free from the ostentatious correctness of the literary precisian, -and nobody preserves so much purity and so much dignity of language with -so little formality of demeanour. It is interesting to notice the -absence from his writings of that intensely elaborated kind of -simplicity in which some of the best authors of a later time express the -final outcome of many thoughts. - -The strain that society has undergone since Voltaire's day has taught -men to qualify their propositions. It has forced them to follow truth -slowly along paths steep and devious. New notes have been struck in -human feeling, and all thought has now been touched by complexities that -were then unseen. Hence, as all good writers aim at simplicity and -directness, we have seen the growth of a new style, in which the rays of -many side-lights are concentrated in some single phrase. That Voltaire -does not use these focalising words and turns of composition only means -that to him thought was less complex than it is to a more subjective -generation. Though the literature which possesses Milton and Burke need -not fear comparison with the graver masters of French speech, we have no -one to place exactly by the side of Voltaire. But, then, no more has -France. There are many pages of Swift which are more like one side of -Voltaire than anything else that we have, and Voltaire probably drew the -idea of his famous stories from the creator of Gulliver, just as Swift -got the idea of the Tale of a Tub from Fontenelle's History of Mero and -Enegu (that is, of Rome and Geneva). Swift has correctness, invention, -irony, and a trick of being effectively literal and serious in absurd -situations, just as Voltaire has; but then Swift is often truculent and -often brutally gross, both in thought and in phrase. Voltaire is never -either brutal or truculent. Even amid the licence of the Pucelle and of -his romances, he never forgets what is due to the French tongue. What -always charmed him in Racine and Boileau, he tells us, was that they -said what they intended to say, and that their thoughts have never cost -anything to the harmony or the purity of the language[104]. Voltaire -ranged over far wider ground than the two poets ever attempted to do, -and trod in many slippery places, yet he is entitled to the same praise -as that which he gave to them. - -Unhappily, one of the many evil effects which have alloyed the -revolution that Voltaire did so much to set in motion, has been both in -his country and ours that purity and harmony of language, in spite of -the examples of the great masters who have lived since, have on the -whole declined. In both countries familiarity and slang have actually -asserted a place in literature on some pretence that they are real; an -assumed vulgarity tries to pass for native homeliness, and, as though a -giant were more impressive for having a humped back, some men of true -genius seem only to make sure of fame by straining themselves into -grotesques. In a word, the reaction against a spurious dignity of style -has carried men too far, because the reaction against the dignified -elements in the old order went too far. Style, after all, as one has -always to remember, can never be anything but the reflex of ideas and -habits of mind, and when respect for one's own personal dignity as a -ruling and unique element in character gave way to sentimental love of -the human race, often real, and often a pretence, old self-respecting -modes of expression went out of fashion. And all this has been defended -by a sort of argument that might just as appropriately have been used by -Diogenes, vindicating the filthiness of his tub against a doctrine of -clean linen. - -To follow letters, it is important to observe, meant then, or at least -after Voltaire's influence rose to its height, it meant distinctly to -enter the ranks of the Opposition. In our own time the profession of -letters is placed with other polite avocations, and those who follow it -for the most part accept the traditional social ideas of the time, just -as clergymen, lawyers, and physicians accept them. The modern man of -letters corresponds to the ancient sophist, whose office it was to -confirm, adorn, and propagate the current prejudice. To be a man of -letters in France in the middle of the eighteenth century was to be the -official enemy of the current prejudices and their sophistical defenders -in the church and the parliaments. Parents heard of a son's design to go -to Paris and write books, or to mix with those who wrote books, with the -same dismay with which a respectable Athenian heard of a son following -Socrates. The hyper-hellenistic collegian need not accuse us of -instituting a general parallel between Socrates and Voltaire. The only -point on which we are insisting is that each was the leader of the -assault against the sophists of his day, though their tactics and -implements of war were sufficiently unlike. To the later assailant the -conditions of the time made the pen the most effective instrument. The -clergy had the pulpit and the confessional, and their enemies had the -press. - -It was during the period of his connection with Madame du Chtelet, that -is in the active literary years between his return from England and his -removal to Berlin, that Voltaire's dramatic talent was most -productive.[105] He is usually considered to hold the same place -relatively to Corneille and Racine that Euripides held relatively to -AEschylus and Sophocles. It is not easy to see what is the exact point of -analogy on which the critics agree, beyond the corresponding place in -the order of chronological succession, and such parallels are not really -very full of instruction. If we are to draw any parallel at all, it must -be between the Greek and Racine. The differences between Euripides and -his predecessors are not those between Voltaire and his predecessors. -There may be one common peculiarity. Each made the drama an instrument -for the expression not merely of passion, but of speculative and -philosophical matter, and this in each case of a sceptical kind in -reference to the accepted traditions of the time. But apart from the -vast superiority of the Greek in depth and passion and dramatic -invention, in Voltaire this philosophising is very much more indirect, -insinuatory, and furtive, than in the marked sententiousness of -Euripides. There are critics, indeed, who insist that all Voltaire's -poetic work is a series of pamphlets in disguise, and that he ought to -be classified, in that jargon which makes an uncouth compound pass -muster for a new critical nicety, as a tendency-poet.[106] - -To accept this would simply be to leave out of account the very best of -Voltaire's plays, including Mrope, Smiramis, Tancrde, in which the -most ingenious of men and critics would be at a loss to find any -tendency of the pamphleteering kind. Voltaire's ever-present sense of -congruity prevented him from putting the harangue of the pulpit or the -discourse of the academic doctor upon the tragic stage. If the clergy -found in 'Mahomet,' for instance, a covert attack on their own religion, -it was much more because the poet was suspected of unbelief, than -because the poem contained infidel doctrine. Indeed, nothing shows so -clearly as the strange affright at this and some other pieces of -Voltaire's, that the purport and effect of poetry must depend nearly as -much upon the mind of the audience as upon the lines themselves. His -plays may be said to have led to scepticism, only because there was -sceptical predisposition in the mind which his public brought to them; -and under other circumstances, if for instance it had been produced in -the time of Lewis XIV., the exposure of Mahomet would have been counted -a glorification of the rival creed. Indeed, Pope Benedict XIV. did by -and by accept Voltaire's dedication of the play, whether in good faith -or no we cannot tell, on the express ground that it was an indirect -homage to Christianity. Men with a sense of artistic propriety far -inferior to Voltaire's, are yet fully alive to the monstrosity of -disguising a pamphleteer's polemic in the form of a pretended drama. - -In choice of subject Voltaire, we may believe, was secretly guided by -his wish to relax the oppressive hold of religious prejudice. Religion, -we cannot too fully realise, was the absorbing burden of the time. There -was no sort of knowledge, from geometry onwards, on which it did not -weigh. Whatever work Voltaire set himself to, he was confronted in it by -the Infamous. Thus in accordance with the narrow theory of his time, he -held Mahomet to be a deliberate and conscious impostor, and in -presenting the founder of one great religion in this odious shape, he -was doubtless suggesting that the same account might be true of the -founder of another. But the suggestion was entirely outside of the play -itself, and we who have fully settled these questions for ourselves, may -read 'Mahomet' without suspecting the shade of a reference from Mecca to -Jerusalem, though hardly without contemning the feebleness of view which -could see nothing but sensuality, ambition, and crime, in the career of -the fierce eastern reformer. The sentiments of exalted deism which are -put into the mouth of the noble Zopire were perhaps meant to teach -people that the greatest devotion of character may go with the most -unflinching rejection of a pretended revelation from the gods. This -again is a gloss from without, and by no means involves Voltaire in the -offence of art with a moral purpose. - -Zare was the first play in which French characters appeared upon the -tragic stage. The heroine, the daughter of Lusignan, has been brought -up, unconscious of her descent, in the Mahometan faith and usage. -Consider the philosophy of these lines which are given to her: - - La coutume, la loi plia mes premiers ans - A la religion des heureux musulmans. - Je le vois trop; les soins qu'on prend de notre enfance - Ferment nos sentimens, nos moeurs, notre croyance. - J'eusse t prs du Gange esclave des faux dieux, - Chrtienne dans Paris, musulmane en ces lieux. - L'instruction fait tout; et la main de nos pres - Grave en nos faibles coeurs ces premiers caractres, - Que l'exemple et le temps nous viennent retracer, - Et que peut-tre en nous Dieu seul peut effacer.[107] - -This of course implied the doctrine of Pope's Universal Prayer, and -contains an idea that was always the favourite weapon for smiting the -over-confident votaries of a single supernatural revelation. Locke had -asked whether 'the current opinions and licensed guides of every country -are sufficient evidence and security to every man to venture his great -concernments on? Or, can these be the certain and infallible oracle and -standards of truth which teach one thing in Christendom, and another in -Turkey? Or shall a poor countryman be eternally happy for having the -chance to be born in Italy? Or a day-labourer be unavoidably lost -because he had the ill-luck to be born in England?[108] This was exactly -the kind of reasoning to which Zare's lines pointed; and Voltaire was -never weary of arguing that the divine lay outside of the multitudinous -variety of creeds that were never more than local accidents. Neither, -however, in Zare nor anywhere else is the law of perfect dramatic -fitness violated for the sake of a lesson in heterodoxy. With Voltaire -tragedy is, as all art ought to be, a manner of disinterested -presentation. This is not the noblest energy of the human intelligence, -but it is truly art, and Voltaire did not forget it. It would be -entirely unprofitable to enter into any comparison of the relative -merits of Voltaire's tragedies, and those either of the modern romantic -school in his own country, or of the master dramatists of our own. Every -form of composition must be judged in its own order, and the order in -which Voltaire chose to work was the French classic, with its appointed -conditions and fixed laws, its three unities, its stately alexandrines, -and all the other essentials of that special dramatic form. Here is one -of the many points at which we feel that Voltaire is trying to prolong -in literature, if not in thought, the impressive tradition of the grand -age. At the same moment, strangely enough, he was giving that stir to -the opinion of his time, which was the prime agent in definitely -breaking the hold of that tradition. It is no infidelity to the glorious -and incomparable genius of Shakespeare, nor does it involve any -blindness to the fine creation, fresh fancy, and noble thought and -imagery of our less superb men, yet to admit that there is in these -limits of construction a concentration and regularity, and in these too -contemned alexandrines a just and swelling cadence, that confer a high -degree of pleasure of the highest kind, and that demand intellectual -quality only less rare than that other priceless and unattainable -quality of having the lips touched with divine fire. It is said, -however, that such quality does not produce acting plays, but only -dramatic poems: this is really laughable if we remember first, that the -finest actors in the world have been trained in the recitation of these -alexandrines, and second, that as large and as delighted an audience -used until within some twenty years ago to crowd to a tragedy of -Corneille or Racine, seen repeatedly before, as to a bran-new -vaudeville, never to be seen again. - -'We insist,' said Voltaire, 'that the rhyme shall cost nothing to the -ideas; that it shall neither be trivial nor too far-fetched; we exact -rigorously in a verse the same purity, the same precision, as in prose. -We do not permit the smallest licence; we require an author to carry -without a break all chains, and yet that he should appear ever -free.'[109] He admitted that sometimes they failed in reaching the -tragic, through excessive fear of passing its limits. He does justice, -if something less than English justice, to the singular merits of our -stage in the way of action.[110] Shakespeare, he says, 'had a genius -full of force and fertility, of all that is natural and all that is -sublime.' It is even the merit of Shakespeare--'those grand and terrible -pieces that abound in his most monstrous farces'--that has been the -undoing of the English stage.[111] - -Even the famous criticism on Hamlet has been a good deal misrepresented. -Voltaire is vindicating the employment of the machinery of ghosts, and -he dwells on the fitness and fine dramatic effect of the ghost in -Shakespeare's play. 'I am very far,' he goes on to say, 'from justifying -the tragedy of Hamlet in everything: it is a rude and barbarous -piece.... Hamlet goes mad in the second act, and his mistress goes mad -in the third; the prince slays the father of his mistress, pretending to -kill a rat, and the heroine throws herself into the river. They dig her -grave on the stage; the gravediggers jest in a way worthy of them, with -skulls in their hands; Hamlet answers their odious grossnesses by -extravagances no less disgusting. Meanwhile one of the characters -conquers Poland. Hamlet, his mother, and his stepfather drink together -on the stage; they sing at table, they wrangle, they fight, they kill; -one might suppose such a work to be the fruit of the imagination of a -drunken savage. But in the midst of all these rude irregularities, -which to this day make the English theatre so absurd and so barbarous, -there are to be found in Hamlet by a yet greater incongruity sublime -strokes worthy of the loftiest geniuses. It seems as if nature had taken -a delight in collecting within the brain of Shakespeare all that we can -imagine of what is greatest and most powerful, with all that rudeness -without wit can contain of what is lowest and most detestable.'[112] - -If one were to retort upon this that anybody with a true sense of poetry -would sacrifice all the plays that Voltaire ever wrote, his -eight-and-twenty tragedies, and half-score of comedies, for the -soliloquy in Hamlet, or King Henry at Towton Fight, or 'Roses, their -sharp spines being gone,' there would be truth in such a retort, but it -would be that brutal truth, which is always very near being the most -subtle kind of lie. Nature wrought a miracle for us by producing -Shakespeare, as she did afterwards in an extremely different way for -France by producing Voltaire. Miracles, however, have necessarily a very -demoralising effect. A prodigy of loaves and fishes, by slackening the -motives to honest industry, must in the end multiply paupers. The -prodigy of such amazing results from such glorious carelessness as -Shakespeare's, has plunged hundreds of men of talent into a carelessness -most inglorious, and made our acting stage a mock. It is quite true -that the academic rule is better fitted for mediocrity than for genius; -but we may perhaps trust genius to make a way for itself. It is -mediocrity that needs laws and prescriptions for its most effective -fertilisation, and the enormous majority even of those who can do good -work are still mediocre. We have preferred the methods of lawless -genius, and are left with rampant lawlessness and no genius. The very -essence of the old French tragedy was painstaking, and painstaking has -had its unfailing and exceeding great reward. When people whose taste -has been trained in the traditions of romantic and naturalistic art, or -even not trained at all except in indolence and presumption, yawn over -the French alexandrines, let them remember that Goethe at any rate -thought it worth while to translate Mahomet and Tancrde. - -An eminent German writer on Voltaire has recently declared the secret of -the French classic dramaturgy to be that the drama was a diversion of -the court. 'The personages have to speak not as befits their true -feelings, their character, and the situation, but as is seemly in the -presence of a king and a court; not truth, nature, and beauty, but -etiquette, is the highest law of the dramatic art.'[113] This may -partially explain how it was that a return to some features of the -classic form, its dignity, elevation, and severity, came to take place -in France, but no explanation can be at all satisfactory which reduces -so distinct and genuine a manner of dramatic expression to a mere -outside accident. Corneille, Racine, Voltaire, treated their tragic -subjects as they did, with rigorous concentration of action, stately -consistency of motive, and in a solemn and balanced measure, because -these conditions answered to intellectual qualities of their own, an -affinity in themselves for elegance, clearness, elevation, and a certain -purified and weighty wisdom. It is true that they do not unseal those -deep-hidden fountains of thought and feeling and music, which flow so -freely at the waving of Shakespeare's wand. We are not swiftly carried -from a scene of clowns up to some sublime pinnacle of the seventh -heaven, whence we see the dark abysses that lie about the path of human -action, as well as all its sweet and shadowed places. Only let us not -unjustly suppose that we are deciding the merits of the old French -dramaturgy, its severe structure and stately measure, by answering the -question, which no English nor German writer can ever seriously put, as -to the relative depth and vision in poetic things of Shakespeare and -Voltaire. Nor can we be expected to be deeply moved by a form of art -that is so unfamiliar to us. It is not a question whether we ought to be -so deeply moved. The too susceptible Marmontel describes how on the -occasion of a visit to Ferney, Voltaire took him into his study and -placed a manuscript into his hands. It was Tancrde, which was just -finished. Marmontel eagerly read it, and he tells us how he returned to -the author, his face all bathed in tears. 'Your tears,' said Voltaire, -'tell me all that it most concerns me to know.'[114] The most -supercilious critic may find this very Tancrde worth reading, when he -remembers that Gibbon thought it splendid and interesting,[115] and that -Goethe found it worth translating. One could hardly be convicted now of -want of sensibility, if all Voltaire's tragedy together failed to bathe -one's face in tears, but this is a very bad reason for denying that it -has other merits than pathos. - -We cannot, indeed, compare the author of Zare and Tancrde with the -great author of Cinna and Polyeucte, any more than in another kind we -can compare Gray with Milton. Voltaire is the very genius of -correctness, elegance, and grace, and if the reader would know what this -correctness means, he will find a most wholesome exercise in reading -Voltiare's notes on some of the most celebrated of Corneille's -plays.[116] But in masculine energy and in poetic weightiness, as well -as in organ-like richness of music, Voltaire must be surely pronounced -inferior to his superb predecessor. There is a certain thinness -pervading the whole of his work for the stage, the conception of -character, the dramatic structure, and the measure alike. Undoubtedly we -may frequently come upon weighty and noble lines, of fine music and -lofty sense. But there is on the whole what strikes one as a fatal -excess of facility, and a fatal defect of poetic saliency. The fluent -ease of the verse destroys the impression of strength. 'Your friend,' -wrote Madame du Chtelet once of her friend, 'has had a slight bout of -illness, and you know that when he is ill, he can do nothing but write -verses.'[117] We do not know whether the Marquise meant alexandrines, or -those graceful verses of society of which Voltaire was so incomparable a -master. It is certain that he wrote Zare in three weeks and Olympic in -six days, though with respect to the latter we may well agree with the -friend who told the author that he should not have rested on the seventh -day. However that may be, there is a quality about his tragic verse -which to one fresh from the sonorous majesty and dignified beauty of -Polyeucte, or even the fine gravity of Tartufe, vibrates too lightly in -the ear. Least of all may we compare him to Racine, whose two great -tragedies of Iphignie and Athalie Voltaire himself declared to mark the -nearest approach ever made to dramatic perfection.[118] There is none of -the mixed austerity and tenderness, height and sweetness, grace and -firmness, that blend together with such invisible art and unique -contrivance in the poet whose verses taught Fnelon and Massillon how to -make music in their prose. To this Voltaire could only have access from -without, for he lacked the famous master's internal depth, seriousness, -and veneration of soul. We know how little this approach from without -can avail, and how vainly a man follows the harmonious grace of a style, -when he lacks the impalpable graces of spirit that made the style live. -It is only when grave thoughts and benignant aspirations and purifying -images move with even habit through the mind, that a man masters the -noblest expression. De Maistre, to whom Voltaire's name was the symbol -for all that is accursed, admitted the nobleness of his work in tragedy, -but he instantly took back the grudged praise by saying that even here -he only resembles his two great rivals as a clever hypocrite resembles a -saint.[119] Malignantly expressed, there is in this some truth. - -It was one of the elements in the plan of dramatic reform that sprang up -in Voltaire's mind during his residence in England, that the subjects of -tragedy should be more masculine, and that love should cease to be an -obligatory ingredient. "It is nearly always the same piece, the same -knot, formed by jealousy and a breach, and untied by a marriage; it is a -perpetual coquetry, a simple comedy in which princes are actors, and in -which occasionally blood is spilt for form's sake."[120] This he counted -a mistake, for, as he justly said, the heart is but lightly touched by a -lover's woes, while it is profoundly softened by the anguish of a mother -just about to lose her son. Thus in Mrope we have maternal sentiment -made the spring of what is probably the best of Voltaire's tragedies, -abounding in a just vehemence, compact, full of feeling at once exalted -and natural, and moving with a sustained energy that is not a too common -mark of his work. It was the same conviction of the propriety of making -tragedy a means of expressing other emotions than that which is so apt -to degenerate into an insipidity, which dictated the composition and -novel treatment of the Roman subjects, Brutus and La Mort de Csar. Here -the French drama first became in some degree truly political. His -predecessors when they handled a historic theme did so, not from the -historic or social point of view, but as the illustration, or rather the -suggestion, of some central human passion. In the Cinna of Corneille the -political bearings, the moral of benevolent despotism which Bonaparte -found in it, were purely incidental, and were distinctly subordinate to -the portrayal of character and the movement of feeling. In Brutus the -whole action lies in the region of great public affairs, and of the -passions which these affairs stir in noble characters, without any -admixture of purely private tenderness. In La Mort de Csar we are -equally in the heroics of public action. Rome Sauve, of which the -subject is the conspiracy of Catiline, and the hero the most eloquent of -consuls or men--a part that Voltaire was very fond of filling in private -representations, and with distinguished success--is extremely loose and -spasmodic in structure, and the speeches sound strained even when put -into Cicero's mouth. But here also private insipidities are banished, -though perhaps it is only in favour of public insipidities. It is -impossible to tell what share, if any, these plays had in spreading that -curious feeling about Roman freedom and its most renowned defenders, -which is so striking a feature in some of the great episodes of the -Revolution. We cannot suspect Voltaire of any design to stir political -feeling. He was now essentially aristocratic and courtly in his -predilection, without the smallest active wish for an approach to -political revolution, if indeed the conception of a change of that kind -ever presented itself to him. He was indefatigable in admiring and -praising English freedom, but, as has already been said, it was not the -laudation of a lover of popular government, but the envy of a man of -letters whose life was tormented by censors of the press and the -lieutenant of police. Perhaps the only approach to a public purpose in -this fancy for his Roman subjects was a lurking idea of arousing in the -nobles, for whom we must remember that his dramatic work was above all -designed, not a passion for freedom from the authority of monarchic -government, but a passion of a more general kind for energetic -patriotism. Voltaire's letters abound with expressions of the writer's -belief that he was the witness of an epoch of decay in his own country. -He had in truth far too keen and practical and trained an eye not to see -how public spirit, political sagacity, national ambition, and even -valour had declined in the great orders of France since the age of the -Grand Monarch, and how much his country had fallen back in the race of -civilisation and power. We should be guilty of a very transparent -exaggeration of the facts, if any attempt were made to paint Voltaire in -the attitude and colours of one transcendentally aspiring to regenerate -his countrymen. But there is no difficulty in believing that a man who -had lived in England, and knew so much of Prussia, should have seen the -fatal enervation which had come upon France, and that with Voltaire's -feeling for the stage, he should have dreamt, by means of a more austere -subject and more masculine treatment, of reviving the love of wisdom and -glory and devotion in connection with country. In a word, the lesson of -La Mort de Csar or of Brutus was not a specific admonition to slay -tyrants, or to execute stern judgments on sons, but a general example of -self-sacrificing patriotism and devoted public honour. - -It is often said that Voltaire's Romans are mere creatures of parade and -declamation, like the figures of David's paintings,[121] and it is very -likely that the theatre infected the French people with that mischievous -idea of the Romans, as a nation of declaimers about freedom and the -death of tyrants. The true Roman was no doubt very much more like one of -our narrow, hard, and able Scotchmen in India, than the lofty talkers -who delighted the parterre of Paris or Versailles. Unluckily for truth -of historical conception, Cicero was, after Virgil, the most potent of -Roman memories, and a man of words became with modern writers the -favourite type of a people of action. All this, however, is beside the -question. Voltaire would have laughed at the idea of any obligation to -present either Romans or other personages on the stage with realistic -fidelity. The tragic drama with him was the highest of the imaginative -and idealistic arts. If he had sought a parallel to it in the plastic -arts he would have found one, not in painting, which by reason of the -greater flexibility of its material demands a more exact verisimilitude, -but in sculpture. Considered as statuesque figures endowed with speech, -Brutus, Caesar, and the rest are noble and impressive. We may protest as -vigorously as we know how against any assimilation of the great art of -action with the great art of repose. But we can only criticise the -individual productions of a given theory, provided we for the moment -accept the conditions which the theory lays down. All art rests upon -convention, and if we choose to repudiate any particular set of -conventions, we have no more right to criticise the works of those who -submit to them than one would have to criticise sculpture, because -marble or bronze is not like flesh and blood. Within the conditions of -the French classic drama Voltaire's Romans are high and stately figures. - -Voltaire's innovations extended beyond the introduction of more -masculine treatment. Before his time romantic subjects had been regarded -with disfavour, and Corneille's Bajazet was considered a bold -experiment. Racine was more strictly classic, and dramatists went on -handling the same ancient fables, 'Thebes, or Pelops' line, or the tale -of 'Troy divine,' just as the Greeks had done, or just as the painters -in the Catholic times had never wearied of painting the two eternal -figures of human mother and divine child. Voltaire treated the classic -subjects as others treated them, and if OEdipe misses the depth, -delicate reserve and fateful gloom of the Greeks, Mrope at any rate -breathes a fine and tragic spirit. But his restless mind pressed forward -into subjects which Racine would have shuddered at, and every quarter of -the universe became in turn a portion of the Voltairean stage. -L'Orphelin de la Chine introduces us to China and Genghis-Khan, Mahomet -to Arabia and its prophet, Tancrede to Sicily; in Zulime we are among -Moors, in Alzire with Peruvians. This revolutionary enlargement of -subject was significant of a general and very important enlargement of -interest which marked the time, and led presently to those contrasts -between the condition of France and the imaginary felicity and nobleness -of wilder countries, which did so much to breed an irresistible longing -for change. Voltaire's high-minded Scythians, generous Peruvians, and -the rest, prepared the way along with other influences for that curious -cosmopolitanism, that striking eagerness to believe in the equal -virtuousness and devotion inherent in human nature, independently of the -religious or social form accidentally imposed upon them, which found its -ultimate outcome, first in an ardent passion for social equality, and a -depreciation of the special sanctity of the current religion, and next -in the ill-fated emancipating and proselytising aims of the Revolution, -and in orators of the human race. - -It has usually been thought surprising that Voltaire, consummate wit as -he was, should have been so markedly unsuccessful in comedy. Certainly -no one with so right a sense of the value of time as Voltaire himself -had, will in our day waste many hours over his productions in this -order. There are a dozen of them more or less, and we can only hope that -they were the most rapid of his writings. Lines of extraordinary -vivacity are not wanting, and at their best they offer a certain -bustling sprightliness that might have been diverting in actual -representation. But the keynote seems to be struck in farce, rather than -in comedy; the intrigue, if not quite as slight as in Molire, is too -forced; and the characters are nearly all excessively mediocre in -conception. In one of the comedies, Le Dpositaire, the poet presented -the aged patroness of his youth, but the necessity of respecting current -ideas of the becoming prevented him from making a great character out of -even so striking a figure as Ninon de l'Enclos. La Prude is a version of -Wycherly's Plaindealer, and is in respect of force, animation, and the -genuine spirit of comedy, very inferior to its admirable original. -L'Indiscret is a sparkling and unconsidered trifle, L'Ecossaise is only -a stinging attack on Frron, and L'Enfant Prodigue, though greater pains -were taken with it, has none of the glow of dramatic feeling. The -liveliest of all is La Femme qui a Raison, a short comedy of situation, -which for one reading is entertaining in the closet, and must be -excellent on the stage. It is very slight, however, and as usual verges -on farce. - -This inferiority of Voltaire's ought not to astonish any one who has -reflected how much concentrated feeling and what profundity of vision go -to the production of great comedy, and how in the mind of the dramatist, -as in the movement of human life, comedy lies close to portentous -tragedy. The author of the Bourgeois Gentilhomme and L'Avare was also -the creator of the Misanthrope, that inscrutable piece, where, without -plot, fable, or intrigue, we see a section of the polished life of the -time, men and women paying visits, making and receiving compliments, -discoursing upon affairs with easy lightness, flitting backwards and -forwards with a thousand petty hurries, and among these one strange, -rough, hoarse, half-sombre figure, moving solitarily with a chilling -reality in the midst of frolicking shadows. Voltaire entered too eagerly -into the interests of the world, was by temperament too exclusively -sympathetic and receptive and social, to place himself even in -imagination thus outside of the common circle. Without capacity for -this, there is no comedy of the first order. Without serious -consciousness of contrasts, no humour that endures. Shakespeare, -Molire, and even Aristophanes, each of them unsurpassed writers of mere -farce, were each of them, though with vast difference of degree, master -of a tragic breadth of vision. Voltaire had moods of petulant spleen, -but who feels that he ever saw, much less brooded over, the dark -cavernous regions of human nature? Without this we may have brilliant -pleasantry of surprise, inimitable caricature, excellent comedy of -society, but of the veritable comedy of human character and life, -nothing. - -In dazzling and irresistible caricature Voltaire has no equal. There is -no deep humour, as in Don Quixote, or Tristram Shandy, which Voltaire -did not care for,[122] or Richter's Siebenks, which he would not have -cared for any more than De Stael did. He was too purely intellectual, -too argumentative, too geometrical, and cared too much for illustrating -a principle. But in Candide, Zadig, L'Ingnu, wit is as high as mere wit -can go. They are better than Hudibras, because the motive is broader and -more intellectual. Rapidity of play, infallible accuracy of stroke, -perfect copiousness, and above all a fresh and unflagging spontaneity, -combine with a surprising invention, to give these stories a singular -quality, of which we most effectively observe the real brilliance, by -comparing them with the too numerous imitations that their success has -unhappily invited since. - -It is impossible to omit from the most cursory study of Voltaire's work, -that too famous poem which was his favourite amusement during some of -the best years of his life, which was the delight of all who could by -any means get the high favour of sight or hearing of so much as a canto -of it, and which is now always spoken of, when it happens to be spoken -of at all, with extreme abhorrence.[123] The Pucelle offends two modern -sentiments, the love of modesty, and the love of the heroic personages -of history. The moral sense and the historic sense have both been -sharpened in some respects since Voltaire, and a poem which not only -abounds in immodesty, and centres the whole action in an indecency of -conception, but also fastens this gross chaplet round the memory of a -great deliverer of the poet's own country, seems to offer a double -outrage to an age when relish for licentious verse has gone out of -fashion, and reverence for the heroic dead has come in. Still the fact -that the greatest man of his time should have written one of the most -unseemly poems that exist in any tongue, is worth trying to understand. -Voltaire, let us remember, had no special turn, like Gibbon or Bayle, -least of all like the unclean Swift, for extracting a malodorous -diversion out of grossness or sensuality. His writings betray no -irresistible passion for flying to an indelicacy, nor any of the vapid -lasciviousness of some more modern French writers. The Pucelle is at -least the wit of a rational man, and not the prying beastliness of a -satyr. It is wit worse than poorly employed, but it is purity itself -compared with some of the nameless abominations with which Diderot -besmirched his imagination. The Persian Letters contain what we should -now account passages of extreme licentiousness, yet Montesquieu was -assuredly no libertine. Voltaire's life again was never indecent or -immoderate from the point of view of the manners of the time. A man of -grave character and untarnished life, like Condorcet, did not scruple to -defend a poem, in which it is hard for us to see anything but a most -indecorous burlesque of a most heroic subject. He insists that books -which divert the imagination without heating or seducing it, which by -gay and pleasurable images fill up those moments of exhaustion that are -useless alike for labour and meditation, have the effect of inclining -men to gentleness and indulgence. "It was not such books as the Pucelle -that Grard or Clment used to read, or that the satellites of Cromwell -carried at the saddle-bow."[124] - -The fact is that in amusing himself by the Pucelle, Voltaire was only -giving literary expression to a kind of view which had already in the -society of the time found for itself a thoroughly practical expression. -The people among whom he lived had systematised that freedom from law or -restraint in the relations of the sexes, of which his poem is so vivid a -representation. The Duke of Richelieu was the irresistible Lovelace of -his time, and it was deemed an honour, an honour to which Madame du -Chtelet among so many others has a title, to have yielded to his -fascination. A long and profoundly unedifying chronicle might be drawn -up of the memorable gallantries of that time, and for our purpose it -might fitly close with the amour with Saint Lambert that led to Madame -du Chtelet's death. Of course, these countless gallantries in the most -licentious persons of the day, such as Richelieu or Saxe, were neither -more nor less than an outbreak of sheer dissoluteness, such as took -place among English people of quality in the time of the Restoration. -The idle and luxurious, whose imagination is uncontrolled by the -discipline of labour and purpose, and to whom the indulgence of their -own inclinations is the first and single law of life, are always ready -to profit by any relaxation of restraint, which the moral conditions of -the moment may permit. - -The peculiarity of the licence of France in the middle of the eighteenth -century is, that it was looked upon with complacency by the great -intellectual leaders of opinion. It took its place in the progressive -formula. What austerity was to other forward movements, licence was to -this. It is not difficult to perceive how so extraordinary a -circumstance came to pass. Chastity was the supreme virtue in the eyes -of the church, the mystic key to Christian holiness. Continence was one -of the most sacred of the pretensions by which the organised preachers -of superstition claimed the reverence of men and women. It was -identified, therefore, in a particular manner with that Infamous, -against which the main assault of the time was directed. So men -contended, more or less expressly, first, that continence was no -commanding chief among virtues, then that it was a very superficial and -easily practised virtue, finally that it was no virtue at all, but if -sometimes a convenience, generally an impediment to free human -happiness. These disastrous sophisms show the peril of having morality -made an appendage of a set of theological mysteries, because the -mysteries are sure in time to be dragged into the open air of reason, -and moral truth crumbles away with the false dogmas with which it had -got mixed. - -'If,' says Condorcet, 'we may treat as useful the design to make -superstition ridiculous in the eyes of men given to pleasures, and -destined, by the very want of self-control which makes pleasures -attractive to them, to become one day the unfortunate victims or the -mischievous instruments of that vile tyrant of humanity; if the -affectation of austerity in manners, if the excessive value attached to -purity, only serves the hypocrites who by putting on the easy mask of -chastity can dispense with all virtues, and cover with a sacred veil the -vices most pernicious to society, hardness of heart and intolerance; if -by accustoming men to treat as so many crimes faults from which -honourable and conscientious persons are not exempt, we extend over the -purest souls the power of that dangerous caste, which to rule and -disturb the earth, has constituted itself exclusively the interpreter of -heavenly justice;--then we shall see in the author of the Pucelle no more -than a foe to hypocrisy and superstition.'[125] - -It helps us to realise the infinite vileness of a system, like that of -the Church in the last century, which could engender in men of essential -nobleness of character like Condorcet, an antipathy so violent as to -shut the eyes of their understanding to the radical sophistry of such -pleading as this. Let one reflection out of many, serve to crush the -whole of it. The key to effective life is unity of life, and unity of -life means as much as anything else the unity of our human relations. -Our identity does by no means consist in a historic continuity of -tissues, but in an organic moral coherency of relation. It is this, -which alone, if we consider the passing shortness of our days, makes -life a whole, instead of a parcel of thrums bound together by an -accident. Is not every incentive and every concession to vagrant -appetite a force that enwraps a man in gratification of self, and severs -him from duty to others, and so a force of dissolution and dispersion? -It might be necessary to pull down the Church, but the worst church that -has ever prostituted the name and the idea of religion cannot be so -disastrous to society, as a gospel that systematically relaxes -self-control as being an unmeaning curtailment of happiness. The -apologists for the Pucelle exhibit the doctrine of individualism in one -of its worst issues. 'Your proof that this is really the best of all -possible worlds is excellent,' says Candide for his famous last word, -'but we must cultivate our garden.' The same principle of exclusive -self-regard, applied to the gratification of sense, passed for a -satisfactory defence of libertinage. In the first form it destroys a -state, in the second it destroys the family. - -It is easier to account for Voltaire's contempt for the medival -superstition about purity, than his want of respect for a deliverer of -France. The explanation lies in the conviction which had such power in -Voltaire's own mind and with which he impregnated to such a degree the -minds of others, that the action of illiterate and unpolished times can -have no life in it. His view of progress was a progress of art and -knowledge, and heroic action which was dumb, or which was not expressed -in terms of intellect, was to the eighteenth century, and to Voltaire at -least as much as to any other of its leaders, mere barbaric energy. In -the order of taste, for instance, he can find only words of cool and -limited praise for Homer, while for the polish and elegance of Virgil -his admiration is supreme. The first was the bard of a rude time, while -round the second cluster all the associations of a refined and lettered -age. A self-devotion that was only articulate in the jargon of mystery -and hallucination, and that was surrounded with rude and irrational -circumstance, with ignorance, brutality, visions, miracle, was encircled -by no halo in the eyes of a poet who found no nobleness where he did not -find a definite intelligence, and who rested all his hopes and interests -on the long distance set by time and civilisation between ourselves and -such conditions and associations as belong to the name of Joan of Arc. -The foremost men of the eighteenth century despised Joan of Arc, -whenever they had occasion to think of her, for the same reason which -made them despise Gothic architecture. 'When,' says Voltaire in one -place, 'the arts began to revive, they revived as Goths and Vandals; -what unhappily remains to us of the architecture and sculpture of these -times is a fantastic compound of rudeness and filigree.'[126] Just so, -even Turgot, while protesting how dear to every sensible heart were the -Gothic buildings destined to the use of the poor and the orphan, -complained of the outrage done by their rude architecture to the -delicacy of our sight.[127] Characters like Joan of Arc ranked in the -same rude and fantastic order, and respect for them meant that respect -for the middle age which was treason to the new time. Men despised her, -just as they despised the majesty and beauty of the great church at -Rheims where she brought her work to a climax, or the lofty grace and -symmetry of the church of St. Ouen, within sight of which her life came -to its terrible end. - -Henry the Fourth was a hero with Voltaire, for no better reason than -that he was the first great tolerant, the earliest historic indifferent. -The Henriade is only important because it helped to popularise the type -of its hero's character, and so to promote the rapidly-growing tendency -in public opinion towards a still wider version of the policy of the -Edict of Nantes. The reign of Lewis XIV. had thrown all previous -monarchs into obscurity, and the French king who showed a warmer and -more generous interest in the happiness of his subjects than any they -ever had, was forgotten, until Voltaire brought him into fame. It was -just, however, because Henry's exploits were so glorious, and at the -same time so near in point of time, that he made an indifferent hero for -an epic poem. 'He should never choose for an epic poem history,' said -Hume very truly, 'the truth of which is well known; for no fiction can -come up to the interest of the actual story and incidents of the -singular life of Henry IV.'[128] These general considerations, however, -as to the propriety of the subject are hardly worth entering upon. How -could any true epic come out of that age, or find fountains in that -critical, realistic, and polemical soul? To fuse a long narrative of -heroic adventure in animated, picturesque, above all, in sincere verse, -is an achievement reserved for men with a steadier glow, a firmer, -simpler, more exuberant and more natural poetic feeling, than was -possible in that time of mean shifts, purposeless public action, and -pitiful sacrifice of private self-respect. Virgil was stirred by the -greatness of the newly-united empire, Tasso by the heroic march of -Christendom against pagan oppressors, Milton by the noble ardour of our -war for public rights. What long and glowing inspiration was possible to -a would-be courtier, thrust into the Bastille for wanting to fight a -noble who had had him caned by lackeys? Besides, an epic, of all forms -of poetic composition, most demands concentrated depth, and Voltaire was -too widely curious and vivacious on the intellectual side to be capable -of this emotional concentration. - -But it is superfluous to give reasons why Voltaire's epic should not be -a great poem. The Henriade itself is there, the most indisputable of -arguments. Of poems whose names are known out of literary histories and -academic catalogues, it is perhaps the least worth reading in any -language by any one but a professional student of letters. It is less -worth reading than Lucan's Pharsalia, because it is more deliberately -artificial and gratuitously unspontaneous. Paradise Regained, which it -is too ready a fashion among us to pronounce dull, still contains at -least three pieces of superb and unsurpassed description, never fails in -grave majestic verse, and is at the worst free from all the dreary -apparatus of phantom and impersonation and mystic vision, which have -never jarred so profoundly with sense of poetic fitness, as when -associated with so political and matter-of-fact a hero as Henry the -Fourth. The reader has no illusion in such transactions as Saint Lewis -taking Henry into heaven and hell, Sleep hearing from her secret caves, -the Winds at sight of him falling into Silence, and Dreams, children of -Hope, flying to cover the hero with olive and laurel. How can we -overcome our repugnance to that strange admixture of real and unreal -matter which presents us with a highly-coloured picture of the Temple of -Love, where in the forecourt sits Joy, with Mystery, Desire, -Complaisance, on the soft turf by her side, while in the inner sanctuary -haunt Jealousy, Suspicion, Malice, Fury; while the next canto describes - - L'glise toujours une et partout tendue, - Libre, mais sous un chef, adorant en tout lieu, - Dans le bonheur des saints, la grandeur de son Dieu. - Le Christ, de nos pches victime renaissante, - De ses lus chris nourriture vivante, - Descend sur les autels ses yeux perdus, - Et lui dcouvre un Dieu sous un pain qui n'est plus.[129] - -Voltaire congratulated himself in his preface that he had come -sufficiently near theological exactitude, and to this qualification, -which is so new for poetry, the critic may add elegance and flow; but -neither elegance nor theological exactitude reconciles us to an epic -that has neither a stroke of sublimity nor a touch of pathos, that -presents no grandeur in character, and no hurrying force and movement in -action. Frederick the Great used to speak of Voltaire as the French -Virgil, but then Frederick's father had never permitted him to learn -Latin, and if he ever read Virgil at all, it must have been in some of -the jingling French translations. Even so, with the episodes of Dido and -of Nisus and Euryalus in our minds, we may wonder how so monstrous a -parallel could have occurred even to Frederick, who was no critic, -between two poets who have hardly a quality in common. If the reader -wishes to realise how nearly insipid even Voltaire's genius could become -when working in unsuitable forms, he may turn from any canto of the -Henriade to any page of Lucretius or the Paradise Lost. A French critic -quotes the famous reviewer's sentence, concluding an analysis of some -epic, to the effect that on the whole, when all is summed up, the given -epic was 'one of the best that had appeared in the course of the current -year;' and insists that Voltaire's piece will not at any rate perish in -the oblivion of poetic annuals like these. If not, the only reason lies -in that unfortunate tenderness for the bad work of famous men, which -makes of so much reading time worse than wasted. 'The unwise,' said -Candide, 'value every word in an author of repute.' - - - - -CHAPTER IV. - -BERLIN. - - -The Marquise du Chtelet died under circumstances that were tragical -enough to herself, but which disgust the grave, while they give a -grotesque amusement to those who look with cynical eye upon what they -choose to treat as the great human comedy. In 1749 the friendship of -sixteen years thus came to its end, and Voltaire was left without the -tie that, in spite of too frequent breaking away from it, had brought -him much happiness and good help so far on the road. He was now free, -disastrously free as the event proved, to accept the invitations with -which he had so long been pressed to take up his residence with the king -who may dispute with him the claim to be held the most extraordinary man -of that century. - -Neither credit nor peace followed Voltaire in his own land. Lewis XV., -perhaps the most worthless of all the creatures that monarchy has ever -corrupted, always disliked him. The whole influence of the court and the -official world had been uniformly exerted against him. Many years went -by before he could even win a seat in the academy, a distinction, it -may be added, to which Diderot, hardly second to Voltaire in originality -and power, never attained to the end of his days. Madame de Pompadour, -the protectress of Quesnay, was Voltaire's first friend at court. He -said of her long afterwards that in the bottom of her heart she belonged -to the philosophers, and did as much as she could to protect them.[130] -She had known him in her obscurer and more reputable days, and she -charged him with the composition of a court-piece (1745), to celebrate -the marriage of the dauphin. The task was satisfactorily performed, and -honours which had been refused to the author of Zare, Alzire, and the -Henriade, were at once given to the writer of the Princess of Navarre, -which Voltaire himself ranked as a mere farce of the fair. He was made -gentleman of the chamber and historiographer of France. He disarmed the -devout by the Pope's acceptance of Mahomet, and by a letter which he -wrote to Father Latour, head of his former school, protesting his -affection for religion and his esteem for the Jesuits. Condorcet most -righteously pronounces that, in spite of the art with which he handles -his expressions in this letter, it would undoubtedly have been far -better to give up the academy than to write it.[131] It answered its -purpose, and Voltaire was admitted of the forty (May 1746). This -distinction, however, was far from securing for him the tranquillity -which he had hoped from it, and worse libels tormented him than before. -The court sun ceased to shine. Madame de Pompadour gave to Crbillon a -preference which Voltaire resented with more agitation than any -preference of Madame Pompadour's ought to have stirred in the breast of -a strong man. - -We cannot, however, too constantly remember not to ask from Voltaire the -heroic. He was far too sympathetic, too generously eager to please, too -susceptible to opinion. Of that stern and cold stuff which supports a -man in firm march and straight course, giving him the ample content of -self-respect, he probably had less than any one of equal prominence has -ever had. Instead of writing his tragedy as well as he knew how, and -then leaving it to its destiny, he wrote it as well as he knew how, and -then went in disguise to the caf of the critics to find out what his -inferiors had to say about his work. Instead of composing his -court-piece, and taking such reward as offered, or disdaining such -ignoble tasks--and nobody knew better than he how ignoble they were--he -sought to catch some crumb of praise by fawningly asking of the vilest -of men, _Trajan est-il content?_ Make what allowance we will for -difference of time and circumstance, such an attitude to such a man, -whether in Seneca towards Nero, or Voltaire towards Lewis XV., is a -baseness that we ought never to pardon and never to extenuate. Whether -or no there be in the human breast that natural religion of goodness and -virtue which was the sheet-anchor of Voltaire's faith, there is at least -a something in the hearts of good men which sets a fast gulf between -them and those who are to the very depths of their souls irredeemably -saturated with corruption. - -We may permit ourselves to hope that it was the consciousness of the -humiliation of such relations as these, rather than the fact that they -did not answer their own paltry purpose, that made Voltaire resolve a -second time to shake the dust of his own country from off his feet In -July 1750 he reached Potsdam, and was installed with sumptuous honour in -the court of Frederick the Great, twenty-four years since he had -installed himself with Mr. Falkener, the English merchant at Wandsworth. -Diderot was busy with the first volume of the Encyclopdia, and Rousseau -had just abandoned his second child in the hospital for foundlings. If -the visit to London did everything for Voltaire, the visit to Berlin did -nothing. There was no Prussia, as there was an England. To travel from -the dominion of George II. to the dominion of his famous nephew, was to -go from the full light of the eighteenth century back to the dimness of -the fifteenth. An academy of sciences, by the influence of -Sophie-Charlotte, and under the guidance of Leibnitz, had been founded -at Berlin at the beginning of the eighteenth century; but Frederick -William had an angry contempt for every kind of activity except drill -and the preaching of orthodox theology, and during his reign the academy -languished in obscurity.[132] - -The accession of Frederick II. was the signal for its reconstitution, -and the revival of its activity under the direction of Maupertuis. To -the sciences of experiment and observation, which had been its original -objects, was added a department of speculative philosophy. The court was -materialist, sceptical, Voltairean, all at the same time; but the -academy as a body was theologically orthodox, and it was wholly and -purely metaphysical in its philosophy. We may partly understand the -distance at which Berlin was then behind Paris, when we read -D'Alembert's just remonstrances with Frederick against giving as -subjects for prize-essays such metaphysical problems as 'The search for -a primary and permanent force, at once substance and cause.'[133] - -Whatever activity existed outside of the court and the academy was -divided between the dialectic of Protestant scholasticism, and Wolf's -exposition and development of Leibnitz. In literature proper there arose -with the accession of Frederick a small group of essentially secondary -critics, of whom Sulzer was the best, without the vivid and radiant -force of either Voltaire or Diderot, and without the deep inspiration -and invention of those who were to follow them, and to place Germany -finally on a level with England and France. Lessing, the founder of the -modern German literature, was at this time a youth of twenty-two, and by -a striking turn of chance was employed by Voltaire in putting into -German his pleadings in the infamous Hirschel case. It was not then -worth while for a stranger to learn the language in which Lessing had -not yet written, and Voltaire, who was a master of English and Italian, -never knew more German than was needed to curse a postilion.[134] -Leibnitz wrote everything of importance in Latin or French, the Berlin -academy conducted its transactions first in Latin, next and for many -years to come in French, and one of its earliest presidents, a man of -special competence,[135] pronounced German to be a noble but frightfully -barbarised tongue. The famous Wolf had done his best to make the tongue -of his country literate, but even his influence was unequal to the task. - -Society was in its foundations not removed from the medival. The -soldiers with whom Frederick won Zorndorf and Leuthen, like the Russians -and Austrians whom he defeated on those bloody days, were not more nor -less than serfs. Instead of philosophers like Newton and Locke, he had -to find the pride and safety of his country in swift rushing troopers -like Winterfield and Ziethen. A daring cavalry-charge in season was for -the moment more to Prussia than any theory why it is that an apple -falls, and a new method of drill much more urgent than a new origin for -ideas. She was concerned not with the speculative problem of the causes -why the earth keeps its place in the planetary system, but with the -practical problem how Prussia was to make her place in the system of -Europe. Prussia was then far more behind France in all thought and all -arts, save the soldier's, than England was in front of France. - -Voltaire had nothing to learn at Berlin, and may we not add, as the king -was a rooted Voltairean long before this, he had nothing to teach there? -The sternest barrack in Europe was not a field in which the apostle of -free and refined intelligence could sow seed with good hope of harvest. -Voltaire at this time, we have to recollect, was in the public mind only -a poet, and perhaps was regarded, if not altogether by Frederick, -certainly by those who surrounded him, as much in the same order of -being with Frederick's flute, fitted by miracle with a greater number of -stops. 'I don't give you any news of literature,' D'Alembert wrote from -Potsdam in 1763, 'for I don't know any, and you know how barren -literature is in this country, where no one except the king concerns -himself with it.'[136] There is no particular disgrace to Berlin or its -king in this. Their task was very definite, and it was only a pleasant -error of Frederick's rather fantastic youth to suppose that this task -lay in the direction of polite letters. The singer of the Henriade was -naturally of different quality and turn of mind from a hero who had at -least as hard an enterprise in his hand as that of Henry IV. Voltaire -and Frederick were the two leaders of the two chief movements then going -on, in the great work of the transformation of the old Europe into the -new. But the movements were in different matter, demanded vastly -different methods, and, as is so often the case, the scope of each was -hardly visible to the pursuer of the other. Voltaire's work was to -quicken the activity and proclaim the freedom of human intelligence, and -to destroy the supremacy of an old spiritual order. Frederick's work was -to shake down the old political order. The sum of their efforts was the -definite commencement of that revolution in the thought and the -political conformation of the West, of which the momentous local -revolution in France must, if we take a sufficiently wide survey before -and after, be counted a secondary phase. The conditions of the order -which was established after the confusion of the fall of the Roman power -before the inroads of the barbarians, and which constituted the Europe -of the early and middle ages, are now tolerably well understood, and the -historic continuity or identity of that order is typified in two -institutions, which by the middle of the eighteenth century had reached -very different stages of decay, and possessed very different powers of -resisting attack. One was the German Empire, and the other was the Holy -Catholic Church. Frederick dealt a definite blow to the first, and -Voltaire did the same to the second. - -Those who read history and biography with a sturdy and childish -pre-conception that the critical achievements in the long course of the -world's progress must of necessity have fallen to the lot of the salt of -the earth, will find it hard to associate the beginning of the great -overt side of modern movement with the two men who versified and -wrangled together for some two and a half years in the middle of the -eighteenth century at Berlin. It is hard to think of the old state, with -all its memories of simple enthusiasm and wild valour and rude -aspiration after some better order, finally disappearing into the chaos -for which it was more than ripe, under the impulse of an arch cynic. And -it is hard, too, to think that the civilising religion which was founded -by a Jew, and first seized by Jews, noblest and holiest of their race, -got its first and severest blow from one who was not above using a Jew -to cheat Christians out of their money. But the fact remains of the vast -work which this amazing pair had to do, and did. - -The character of the founder of the greatness of Prussia, if indeed we -may call founder one rather than another member of that active, clear, -and far-sighted line, can have no attraction for those who require as an -indispensable condition of fealty that their hero shall have either -purity, or sensibility, or generosity, or high honour, or manly respect -for human nature. Frederick's rapidity and firmness of will, his -administrative capacity, his military talent, were marvellous and -admirable enough; but on the moral side of character, in his relations -to men and women, in his feeling for the unseen, in his ideas of truth -and beauty, he belonged to a type which is not altogether uncommon. In -his youth he had much of a sort of shallow sensibility, which more -sympathetic usage might possibly have established and to some small -extent even deepened, but which the curiously rough treatment that his -pacific tastes and frivolous predilections provoked his father to -inflict, turned in time into the most bitter and profound kind of -cynicism that the world knows. No cynic is so hard and insensible as the -man who has once had sensibility, perhaps because the consciousness that -he was in earlier days open to more generous impressions persuades him -that the fault of any change in his own view of things must needs lie in -the world's villainy, which he has now happily for himself had time to -find out. Sensibility of a true sort, springing from natural fountains -of simple and unselfish feeling, can neither be corrupted nor dried up. -But at its best, Frederick's sensibility was of the literary and -aesthetic kind, rather than the humane and social. It concerned taste -and expression, and had little root in the recognition as at first-hand -of those facts of experience, of beauty and tenderness and cruelty and -endurance, which are the natural objects that permanently quicken a -sensitive nature. In a word, Frederick's was the conventional -sensibility of the French literature of the time; a harmless thing -enough in the poor souls that only poured themselves out in bad romance -and worse verse, but terrible when it helped to fill with contempt for -mankind an absolute monarch, with the most perfect military machine in -Europe at his command. Frederick is constantly spoken of as a man -typical of his century. In truth he was throughout his life in -ostentatious opposition to his century on its most remarkable side. -There has never been any epoch whose foremost men had such faith and -hope in the virtues of humanity. There has never been any prominent man -who despised humanity so bitterly and unaffectedly as Frederick despised -it. - -We know what to think of a man who writes a touching and pathetic letter -condoling with a friend on the loss of his wife, and on the same day -makes an epigram on the dead woman[137]; who never found so much -pleasure in a friendly act as when he could make it the means of hurting -the recipient; whose practical pleasantries were always spiteful and -sneering and cruel. As we read of his tricks on D'Argens or Pllnitz, we -feel how right Voltaire was in borrowing a nickname for him from a -mischievous brute whom he kept in his garden. He presented D'Argens with -a house; when D'Argens went to take possession he found the walls -adorned with pictures of all the most indecent and humiliating episodes -of his own life. This was a type of Frederick's delicacy towards some of -those whom he honoured with his friendship. It is true that, except -Voltaire and Maupertuis, most of the French philosophers whom Frederick -seduced into coming to live at Berlin were not too good for the -corporal's horse-play of which they were the victims. But then we know, -further, what to think of a man whose self-respect fails to proscribe -gross and unworthy companions. He is either a lover of parasites, which -Frederick certainly was not, or else the most execrable cynic, the cynic -who delights in any folly or depravity that assures him how right he is -in despising 'that damned race.' - -Frederick need not have summoned the least worthy French freethinkers, -men like D'Argens and La Mettrie and De Prades, in their own way as -little attractive in life and in doctrine as any monk or Geneva -preacher, to warrant him in thinking meanly of mankind. If any one wants -to know what manner of spirit this great temporal deliverer of Europe -was of, he may find what he seeks in the single episode of the -negotiations at Klein-Schnellendorf in 1741. There, although he had made -and was still bound by a solemn treaty of alliance with France, he -entered into secret engagements with the Hungarian Queen, to be veiled -by adroitly pretended hostilities. Even if, as an illustrious apologist -of the Prussian King is reduced to plead, this is in a certain fashion -defensible, on the ground that France and Austria were both playing with -cogged dice, and therefore the other dicer of the party was in -self-defence driven to show himself their superior in these excellent -artifices, there still seems a gratuitous infamy in hinting to the -Austrian general, as Frederick did, how he might assault with advantage -the French enemy, Frederick's own ally at the moment.[138] This was the -author of the plea for political morality, called the Anti-Machiavel, -whose publication Voltaire had superintended the year before, and, for -that matter, had done his best to prevent. Still, as Frederick so -graciously said of his new guest and old friend: 'He has all the tricks -of a monkey; but I shall make no sign, for I need him in my study of -French style. One may learn good things from a scoundrel: I want to know -his French; what is his morality to me?' And so a royal statesman may -have the manners of the coarsest corporal, and the morality of the -grossest cynic, and still have both the eye to discern, and the hand to -control, the forces of a great forward movement. - -Frederick had the signal honour of accepting his position, and taking up -with an almost perfect fortitude the burden which it laid upon him. 'We -are not masters of our own lot,' he wrote to Voltaire, immediately after -his accession to the throne; 'the whirlwind of circumstances carries us -away, and we must suffer ourselves to be carried away.'[139] And what he -said in this hour of exaltation he did not deny nearly twenty years -later, when his fortunes seemed absolutely desperate. 'If I had been -born a private person,' he wrote to him in 1759, 'I would give up -everything for love of peace; but a man is bound to take on the spirit -of his position.'[140] 'Philosophy teaches us to do our duty, to serve -our country faithfully at the price of our blood and our case, to -sacrifice for it our whole existence.'[141] Men are also called upon by -their country to abstain from sacrificing their existence, and if -Frederick's sense of duty to his subjects had been as perfect as it was -exceptionally near being so, he would not have carried a phial of poison -round his neck.[142] Still on the whole he devoted himself to his career -with a temper that was as entirely calculated for the overthrow of a -tottering system, as Voltaire's own. It is difficult to tell whether -Frederick's steady attention to letters and men of letters, and his -praiseworthy endeavours to make Berlin a true academic centre, were due -to a real and disinterested love of knowledge, and a sense of its worth -to the spirit of man, or still more to weak literary vanity, and a -futile idea of universal fame so far as his own productions went, and a -purely utilitarian purpose so far as his patronage of the national -academy was concerned. One thing is certain, that the philosophy which -he learnt from French masters, which Voltaire brought in his proper -person to Berlin, and to which Frederick to the end of his days was -always adding illustrative commentaries, never made any impression on -Germany. The teaching of Leibnitz and Wolf stood like a fortified wall -in the face of the French invasion, and whatever effective share French -speculation had upon Germany, was through the influence of Descartes -upon Leibnitz. - -The dissolution of the outer framework of the European state-system, for -which Frederick's seizure of Silesia was the first clear signal, -followed as it was by the indispensable suppression of the mischievous -independence, so called, of barbaric and feudal Poland, where bishops -and nobles held a people in the most oppressive bondage, can only -concern us here slightly, because it was for the time only indirectly -connected with the characteristic work of Voltaire's life. But, though -indirect, the connection may be seen at our distance of time to have -been marked and unmistakable. The old order and principles of Europe -were to receive a new impress, and the decaying system of the middle age -to be replaced by a polity of revolution, which should finally change -the relations of nations, the types of European government, and the -ideas of spiritual control. - -In 1733 the war of the Polish succession between Austria and Russia on -the one hand, and France and Spain on the other, had given the first -great shock to the house of Austria, which was compelled to renounce the -pretensions and territory of the Empire in Italy, or nearly all of them, -in favour of the Spanish Bourbons, as well as to surrender Lorraine to -Stanislas, with reversion to the crown of France. We may notice in -passing that it was at Stanislas' court of Lunville that Voltaire and -the Marquise du Chtelet passed their last days together. The wars of -the Polish succession were remarkable for another circumstance. They -were the first occasion of the decisive interference of Russia in -Western affairs, an only less important disturbance of Europe than the -first great interference of Prussia a few years later. The falling to -pieces of the old Europe was as inevitable as, more than twelve -centuries before, had been the dissolution of that yet older Europe -whose heart had been not Vienna but Rome. Russia and Prussia were not -the only novel elements. There was a third from over the sea, the -American colonies of France and England. - -Roman Europe had been a vast imperial state, with slavery for a base. -Then, after the feudal organisation had run its course, there was a long -and chaotic transition of dynastic and territorial wars, frightfully -wasteful of humanity and worse than unfruitful to progress. In vain do -historians, intent on vindicating the foregone conclusions of the -optimism which a distorted notion about final causes demands or -engenders in them, try to show these hateful contests as parts of a -harmonious scheme of things, in which many diverse forces move in a -mysterious way to a common and happy end. As if any good use, for -instance, were served by the transfer, for one of the chief results of -the war of the Polish succession, of the Italian provinces of the Empire -of the Spanish Bourbons. As if any good or permanent use were served by -the wars which ended in the Peace of Utrecht, when victorious England -conceded, and with much wisdom conceded, the precise point which she had -for so many years been disputing. From the Peace of Westphalia to the -beginning of the Seven Years' War, it is not too much to say that there -was a century of purely artificial strife on the continent of Europe, -of wars as factious, as merely personal, as unmeaning, as the civil war -of the Fronde was all of these things. In speaking roundly of this -period, we leave out of account the first Silesian War, because the -issue between Prussia and Austria was not decisively fought out until -the final death-struggle from 1756 to 1763. It was the entry of -Frederick the Great upon the scene, that instantly raised international -relations into the region of real matter and changed a strife of -dynasties, houses, persons, into a vital competition between old forces -and principles and new. The aimless and bloody commotions which had -raged over Europe, and ground men's lives to dust in the red mill of -battle, came for a time to an end, and their place was taken by a -tremendous conflict, on whose issue hung not merely the triumph of a -dynasty, but the question of the type to which future civilisation was -to conform. - -In the preliminary war which followed immediately upon the death of -Charles VI. in 1740, and which had its beginning in Frederick's invasion -of Silesia, circumstances partially marched in the usual tradition, with -France and Austria playing opposite sides in an accustomed game. Before -the opening of the Seven Years' War the cardinal change of policy and -alliances had taken place. We are not concerned with the court intrigues -that brought the change about, with the intricate manoeuvres of the -Jesuits, or the wounded vanity of Bernis, whose verses Frederick laughed -at, or the pique of Pompadour, whom Frederick declined to count an -acquaintance. When conflicting forces of tidal magnitude are at work, as -they were in the middle of the last century, the play of mere personal -aims and ambitions is necessarily of secondary importance; because we -may always count upon there being at least one great power that clearly -discerns its own vital interest, and is sure therefore to press with -steady energy in its own special direction. That power was Austria. One -force of this kind is enough to secure a universal adjustment of all the -others in their natural places. - -The situation was apparently very complex. There were in the middle of -the century two great pairs of opposed interests, the interests of -France and England on the ocean and in America, and the interests of -Austria and Prussia in Central Europe. The contest was in each of the -two cases much more than a superficial affair of dynasties or division -of territory, to meet the requirements of the metaphysical diplomacy of -the balance of power. It was a re-opening in far vaster proportions of -those profound issues of new religion and old which had only been dammed -up, and not permanently settled, by the great Peace of Westphalia in -1648. In vaster proportions, not merely because the new struggle between -the Catholic and Protestant powers extended into the new world, but -because the forces contained in these two creeds had been widened and -developed, and a multitude of indirect consequences, entirely apart from -theology and church discipline, depended upon the triumph of Great -Britain and Prussia. The Governments of France and Austria represented -the feudal and military idea, not in the strength of that idea while it -was still alive, but in the narrow and oppressive form of its decay. No -social growth was possible under its shadow, for one of its essential -conditions was discouragement, active and passive, of commercial -industry, the main pathway then open to an advancing people. Again, both -France and Austria represented the old type of monarchy, as -distinguished alike from the aristocratic oligarchy of England, and the -new type of monarchy which Prussia introduced into Europe, frugal, -encouraging industry, active in supervision, indefatigable in improving -the laws. Let us not omit above all things the splendid religious -toleration, of which Prussia set so extraordinarily early an example to -Europe. The Protestants whom episcopal tyranny drove from Salzburg found -warm hospitality among their northern brethren. While the professors of -the reformed faith were denied civil status in France, and subjected to -persecution of a medival bloodiness, one Christian was counted exactly -as another in Prussia. While England was revelling in the infliction of -atrocious penal laws on her Catholic citizens, Prussia extended even to -the abhorred Jesuit the shelter which was denied him in Spain and at -Rome. The transfer of territory from Austria to Prussia meant the -extension of toleration in that territory. Silesia, for instance, no -sooner became Prussian, than the University of Breslau, whose advantages -had hitherto been rigidly confined to Catholics, was at once -compulsorily opened to Protestants and Catholics alike. In criticising -Frederick's despotism let us recognise how much enlightenment, how much -of what is truly modern, was to be found in the manner in which this -despotic power was exercised, long before the same enlightened -principles were accepted in other countries. - -We cannot understand the issues of the Seven Years' War, nor indeed of -the eighteenth century on any of its more important sides, without -tolerably distinct ideas about the ages before and behind it, about the -sixteenth century and the twentieth; without ideas as to the conditions -of the break-up of the Catholic and the feudal organisation, and, next, -as to the attitude proper to be assumed, and the methods to be followed, -in dealing with the more or less anarchic circumstances in which their -break-up and its sequels leave us. There are two ways of regarding these -questions. You may say, as Comte says, that the ultimate type of -society, perfected on a basis of positive knowledge, will in the -essential features of its constitution correspond to the ancient or -medival constitution which it replaces; because that gave the fullest -possible satisfaction to those elements of human nature which are -deepest and permanent, and to those social needs which must always press -upon us; that anything which either seriously retards the dissolution of -the old, or draws men aside from the road which leads on to the same -organisation transformed, must therefore be an impediment in the way of -the new society, and a peril to civilisation. Hence, they say, the -mischievousness of Protestantism, Voltairism, and all the minor -manifestations of the critical spirit, because they inspire their -followers with a contempt, as mistaken towards the past as it is -pernicious to the future, for those fundamental principles of social -stability and individual happiness, to which alone we have to look for -the establishment of a better order; because they give to the unguided -individual judgment the force and authority that can only come with -safety from organisation and tradition, that is from a certain definite -form of shaping and expressing the common judgment; and because, -moreover, they tend directly and indirectly to detach effort from social -aims and the promotion of the common weal, to the attainment of mean and -unwholesome individual ambitions. From this point of view, we should -have to regard the acquisition of colonies, for instance, which was one -of the chief objects of Lord Chatham's policy, as the mischievous -transfer, in the interests of commercial cupidity, of an activity, -hopefulness, and power, that ought to have been devoted to the solution -of the growing social difficulties of Europe; and that ought to have -been bent from a profoundly mean egotism, in the nation and the traders -whose interest was the key of the policy, into a generous feeling for -the public order. - -There is, however, another and a very different way of looking at all -this. You cannot be sure, it is said, that the method of social advance -is to be a return upon the old framework and the old lines; to be sure -of this implies an impatient confidence that social forms have all been -exhausted, or else an unsupported assumption that the present transitory -form is so full of danger to the stability of civilisation, as to make -the acceptance of almost any firm order better than the prolonged -endurance of a social state which, on that theory, ought hardly to be -accounted much better than the social state of Bedouin Arabs. Is it not -far better and safer to refrain from committing ourselves to a given -type of social reconstruction, and to work forward patiently upon the -only principle that can be received with entire assurance; namely, that -faithful cultivation of the intelligence, and open-minded investigation -of all that the intelligence may present to us, is the only certain -method of not missing the surest and quickest road to the manifold -improvements of which the fundamental qualities of human nature, as well -as the relations of man in society, are susceptible? There is no good -ground for supposing that this steadfast regard to the fruitfulness and -variety of the individual intelligence tends specially to lead to the -concentration of energy upon individual aims. For what lesson does free -intelligence teach us more constantly or more impressively than that man -standing alone is impotent, that every unsocial act or sentiment tends -to overthrow that collectivity of effort to which we owe all, and, most -important of all, that this collectivity is most effectively secured by -the just culture of the impulses and affections? No degree nor kind of -organisation could lead us further than this, and ought it not to be the -prime object and chief hope of those who think about society, that this -truth shall stand rooted in every one's own reason? If it does not so -stand, you have no security for your spiritual organisation, and if it -does, then you have no necessity. It is to the spread of this -conviction, by the ever-pressing consciousness of urgent social -circumstances, that we must look to suffuse industrial and egotistic -energy with a truly moral and social sentiment. - -This is the point of view from which we may justly regard the violent -change that was the result of the Seven Years' War, as a truly -progressive step. We cannot be as reasonably sure that the old -conditions of men's relations in society are in whatever new shape -destined to return, as we are sure that it was a good thing to prevent a -feudal and jesuitical government like Austria from retaining a purely -obstructive power in Europe, and a jesuitical government like France -from establishing the same obstructive kind of power in America. The -advantages of the final acquisition of America by Protestantism, and the -decisive consolidation of Prussia, were not without alloy. History does -not present us with these clean balances. It is not at all difficult to -see the injurious elements in this victory of the northern powers, and -nobody would be less willing than the present writer to accept either -the Prussian polity of Frederick, or the commercial polity of England -and her western colonies, as offering final types of wholesome social -states But the alternative was the triumph of a far worse polity than -either, the polity of the Society of Jesus. - -Even those who claim our respect for the Jesuits as having in the -beginning of their course served the very useful purpose of honestly -administering that spiritual power which had fallen from the hands of -the Popes, who had mischievously entered the ranks and followed the -methods of temporal princes, do not deny that within a couple of -generations they became a dangerous obstacle to the continuity of -European progress. Indeed, it is clear that they grew into the very -worst element that has ever appeared in the whole course of European -history, because their influence rested on a systematic compromise with -moral corruption. They had barely seized the spiritual power in the -Catholic countries when it was perceived that as an engine of moral -control their supposed power was no power at all; and that the only -condition on which they could retain the honour and the political -authority which were needful to them was that they should connive at -moral depravity. They had the education of the country in their hands, -and from the confessor's closet they pulled the wires which moved -courts. There was no counter-force, for the mass of the people was dumb, -ignorant, and fettered. Say what we will of the need for a spiritual -power, the influence of the Jesuits by the middle of the eighteenth -century was cutting off the very root of civilisation. This was the -veritably Infamous. And this was the influence which the alliance of -England and Prussia, a thing accidental enough to all appearance, -successfully and decisively checked, because the triumph of the two -northern powers was naturally the means of discrediting the Jesuit -intrigues in the court of Versailles and elsewhere, and stripping them -of those associations of political and material success, which had -hitherto stood to them in the stead of true spiritual credit. - -The peace of 1763 had important territorial consequences. By the treaty -of Paris between France, England, and Spain, Great Britain was assured -of her possessions on the other side of the Atlantic. By the treaty of -Hubertsburg between Austria, Prussia, and Saxony, Prussia was assured of -her position as an independent power in Europe. These things were much. -But the decisive repulse of the great Jesuit organisation was yet more. -It was the most important side of the same facts. The immediate -occasions of this repulse varied in different countries, and had their -origin in different sets of superficial circumstance, but the debility -of the courts of Austria and France was the only condition on which such -occasions could be seized. The very next year, after the treaties of -Paris and Hubertsburg, the Society of Jesus was suppressed in France, -and its property confiscated. Three years later it was expelled from -Spain. Within ten years from the peace of 1763 it was abolished by the -virtuous Clement XIV. In Canada, where the order had been extremely -powerful,[143] their authority vanished, and with it the probability of -establishing in the northern half of the new world those ideas of -political absolutism and theological casuistry which were undoing the -old. Whatever the accidents which hurried the catastrophe, there were -two general causes which really produced it, the revolution in ideas, -and the revolution in the seat of material power. If this be a true -description of the crisis, we can see sufficiently plainly to what an -extent Voltaire and Frederick, while they appeared to themselves to be -fellow-workers only in the culture of the muses, were in fact -unconsciously co-operating in a far mightier task. When the war was -drawing to an end, and Frederick was likely to escape from the -calamities which had so nearly overwhelmed him and his kingdom in -irretrievable ruin, we find Voltaire writing to D'Alembert thus: 'As for -Luc' (the nickname borrowed for the king of Prussia from an ape with a -trick of biting), 'though I ought to be full of resentment against him, -yet I confess to you that in my quality of thinking creature and -Frenchman, I am heartily content that a certain most devout house has -not swallowed Germany up, and that the Jesuits don't confess at Berlin. -Superstition is monstrously powerful towards the Danube.' To which his -correspondent replied that he quite agreed that the triumph of Frederick -was a blessing for France and for philosophy. 'These Austrians are -insolent capucins, whom I would fain see annihilated with the -superstition they protect.'[144] Here was precisely the issue. - -It would be a great mistake to suppose that Frederick consciously and -formally recognised the ultimate ends of his policy. Such deliberate -marking out of the final destination of their work, imputed to rulers, -churchmen, poets, is mostly a figment invented by philosophers. -Frederick thought nothing at all about the conformation of the European -societies in the twentieth century. It was enough for him to make a -strong and independent Prussia, without any far-reaching vision, or -indeed without any vision at all, of the effect which a strong and -independent Prussia would finally have upon the readjustment of ideas -and social forces in western civilisation. We are led to a false notion -of history, and of all the conditions of political action and the -development of nations, by attributing to statesmen deep and -far-reaching sight of consequences, which only completed knowledge and -some ingenuity enable those who live after to fit into a harmonious -scheme. 'Fate, for whose wisdom I entertain all imaginable reverence, -often finds in chance, by which it works, an instrument not over -manageable.'[145] And the great ruler, knowing this, is content to -abstain from playing fate's part, feeling his way slowly to the next -step. His compass is only true for a very short distance, and his chart -has marks for no long course. To make Prussia strong was the aim of -Frederick's life. Hence, although the real destiny of his policy was to -destroy the house of Austria, he did not scruple in 1741 to offer to -assist Maria Theresa with his best help against all the other invaders -of the famous Pragmatic Sanction, which they had solemnly sworn to -uphold. Afterwards, and before the outbreak of the Seven Years' War, he -sought the alliance of France, but happily for Europe, not until after -Kaunitz and Maria Theresa had already secured that blind and misguided -power, thus driving him into an alliance with Great Britain. And so -chance did the work of fate after all. - -It may be said that such a view of the operation of the great forces of -the world is destructive of all especial respect and gratitude towards -the eminent men, of whom chance and fate have made mere instruments. -What becomes of hero-worship, if your hero after all only half knew -whither he sought to go, and if those achievements which have done such -powerful service were not consciously directed towards the serviceable -end? We can only answer that it is not the office of history to purvey -heroes, nor always to join appreciation of a set of complex effects with -veneration for this or that performer. For this veneration, if it is to -be an intelligent mood, implies insight into the inmost privacy of aim -and motive, and this insight, in the case of those whom circumstance -raises on a towering pedestal, we can hardly ever count with assurance -on finding faithful and authentic. History is perhaps not less -interesting for not being distorted into a new hagiographa. - -It is equally unwarranted to put into Frederick's mind conscious ideas -as to the type of monarchy proper for Europe in the epoch of passage -from old systems. Once more, he thought of his own country, and his own -country only, in all those wise measures of internal government which -have been so unjustly and so childishly thrust by historians into the -second place behind his exploits as a soldier, as if the civil activity -of the period between 1763, when peace was made, and 1786, when he died, -was not fully as remarkable in itself, and fully as momentous in its -results, as the military activity of the period between 1763 and 1740. -There is in men of the highest governing capacity, like Richelieu, or -Cromwell, or Frederick, an instinct for good order and regular -administration. They insist upon it for its own sake, independently of -its effects either on the happiness of subjects, or on the fundamental -policy and march of things. If Frederick had acceded to the supreme -power in a highly civilised country, he would have been equally bent on -imposing his own will and forcing the administration into the exact -grooves prescribed by himself, and the result would have been as -pestilent there as it was beneficial in a backward and semi-barbarous -country such as Prussia was in his time. This good internal ordering was -no more than a part of the same simple design which shaped his external -policy. He had to make a nation, and its material independence in the -face of Austria and Russia was not more a part of this process than -giving it the great elements of internal well-being, equal laws, just -administration, financial thrift, and stimulus and encouragement to -industry. Such an achievement as the restoration of the germs of order -and prosperity, which Frederick so rapidly brought about after the -appalling ruin that seven years of disastrous war had effected, is -unmatched in the history of human government. Well might he pride -himself, as we know that he did, on replacing this social chaos by -order, more than on Eossbach or Leuthen. Above all, he never forgot the -truth which every statesman ought to have burning in letters of fire -before his eyes; _I am the procurator of the poor_. - -It commits us to no general theory of government to recognise the merits -of Frederick's internal administration. They constitute a special case, -to be judged by its own conditions. We may safely go so far as to say -that in whatever degree the social state of a nation calls for active -government, whether, as the people of the American Union boast of -themselves, they need no government, or whether, as is the case in Great -Britain, the wretched lives of the poor beneath the combined cupidity -and heartless want of thought of the rich cry aloud for justice, in this -degree it is good that the statesmen called to govern should be in that -capacity of Frederick's type, conceding all freedom to thought, but -energetic in the use of power as trustees for the whole nation against -special classes. To meet completely the demands of their office they -should have, what Frederick neither had nor could under the -circumstances of his advent and the time be expected to have, a firm -conviction that the highest ultimate end of all kingship is to enable -nations to dispense with that organ of national life, and to fit them -for a spontaneous initiative and free control in the conduct of their -own affairs. - -Let us be careful to remember that, if Frederick was a great ruler in -the positive sense, he sprang from the critical school. The traditions -of his house were strictly Protestant, his tutors were Calvinistic -refugees, and his personal predilections had from his earliest youth -been enthusiastically Voltairean. May we not count it one of the claims -of the critical philosophy to a place among the leading progressive -influences in western history, that it tended to produce statesmen of -this positive type? I do not know of any period of corresponding length -that can produce such a group of active, wise, and truly positive -statesmen as existed in Europe between 1760 and 1780. Besides Frederick, -we have Turgot in France, Pombal in Portugal, Charles III and D'Aranda -in Spain. If Charles III was faithful to the old creed, the three -greatest, at any rate, of these extraordinary men drew inspiration from -the centre of the critical school. D'Aranda had mixed much with the -Voltairean circle while in Paris. Pombal, in spite of the taint of some -cruelty, in so many respects one of the most powerful and resolute -ministers that has ever held office in Europe, had been for some time in -England, and was a warm admirer of Voltaire, whose works he caused to be -translated into Portuguese. The famous school of Italian publicists, -whose speculations bore such admirable fruit in the humane legislation -of Leopold of Tuscany, and had so large a share in that code with which -the name of the ever hateful Bonaparte has become fraudulently -associated, these excellent thinkers found their oracles in that -critical philosophy, of which we are so unjustly bidden to think only in -connection with shallow and reckless destruction. The application of -reason to the amelioration of the social condition was the device of the -great rulers of this time, and the father and inspirer of this device -was that Voltaire who is habitually presented to us a mere mocker. - -Psychologues like Sulzer might declare that the scourge of right -thinking was to be found in 'those philosophers who, more used to -sallies of wit than to deep reasoning, assume that they have overthrown -by a single smart trope truths only to be known by combining a multitude -of observations, so delicate and difficult that we cannot grasp them -without the aid of the firmest attention.'[146] How many of these -so-called truths were anything but sophistical propositions, the -products of intellectual ingenuity run riot, without the smallest -bearing either on positive science or social well-being? And is it not -rather an abuse of men's willingness to take the profundity of -metaphysics on trust, that any one who has formulated a metaphysical -proposition, with due technicality of sounding words, has a claim to -arrest the serious attention of every busy passer-by, and to throw on -this innocent and laudable person the burden of disproof? If Duns Scotus -or St. Thomas Aquinas had risen from the dead, Voltaire would very -properly have declined a bout of school dialectic with those famous -shades, because he was living in the century of the Encyclopdia, when -the exploration of things and the improvement of institutions had taken -the place of subtle manipulation of unverified words, important as that -process had once been in the intellectual development of Europe. He was -equally wise in declining to throw more than a trope or sprightly sally -in the direction of people who dealt only in the multiplication of -metaphysical abracadabras. It was his task to fix the eyes of men upon -action. In the sight of Lutheran or Wolfian conjurors with words this -was egregious shallowness. Strangely enough they thought it the climax -of philosophic profundity to reconcile their natural spiritualism with -the supernatural spiritualism of the scriptures, and rationalistic -theism with the historic theism of revelation.[147] Voltaire repudiated -the supernatural and pseudo-historic half of this hybrid combination, -and in doing so he showed a far profounder logic than the cloudiest and -most sonorous of his theologico-metaphysical critics. We may call him -negative and destructive on this account if we please, yet surely the -abnegation of barren and inconsistent speculation, and of fruitless -effort to seize a vain abstract universality, was a very meritorious -trait in a man who did not stop here, but by every means, by poetry, by -history, by biography, and by the manifestation of all his vivid -personal interests, drew every one who was within the sphere of his -attraction to the consideration of social action as the first fact for -the firm attention of the leaders of mankind. - -It may be said that even from this side Voltaire was destructive only, -and undoubtedly, owing to the circumstances of the time, the destructive -side seemed to predominate in his social influence. To say this, -however, is not to bring an end to the matter. The truth is that no -negative thinking can stop at the negative point. To teach men to hate -superstition and injustice is a sure, if an indirect, way of teaching -them to seek after their opposites. Voltaire could only shake -obscurantist institutions by appealing to man's love of light, and the -love of light, once stirred, leads far. He appealed to reason, and it -was reason in Frederick and the others, which had quickened and -strengthened the love of good order, that produced the striking -reforming spirit which moved through the eighteenth century, until the -reaction against French revolutionary violence arrested its progress. It -is one of the most difficult questions in all history to determine -whether the change from the old order to the new has been damaged or -advanced by that most memorable arrest of the work of social renovation -in the hands of sovereign and traditional governments, administered by -wise statesmen with due regard to traditional spirit; and how far the -passionate efforts of those classes, whose only tradition is a tradition -of squalor and despair, have driven the possessors of superior material -power back into obstructive trepidation. The question is more than -difficult, it is in our generation insoluble, because the movement is -wholly incomplete. But whether the French outbreak from 1789 to 1794 may -prove to have been the starting-point of a new society, or only to have -been a detrimental interruption and parent of interruptions to stable -movement forwards, we have in either case to admit that there was a most -vigorous attempt made in all the chief countries in Europe, between the -middle of the century and the fall of the French monarchy, to improve -government and to perfect administration; that Frederick of Prussia was -the author of the most permanently successful of these endeavours; and -that Frederick learnt to break loose from dark usage, to prefer equity -of administration, to abandon religious superstition, and to insist on -tolerance, from the only effective moral and intellectual masters he -ever had, first the French Calvinists, and then the French critical -school, with Voltaire for chief. It is true, as we shall presently see, -that an important change in the spirit of French writers was marked by -the Encyclopdia, which was so much besides being critical. But then -this famous work only commenced in the year when Voltaire reached -Berlin, and Frederick's character had received its final shape long -before that time. - -With the exception of Voltaire, D'Alembert was the only really eminent -Frenchman whose work ever struck Frederick, and we are even conscious, -in comparing his letters to these two eminent men, of a certain -seriousness and deferential respect towards the later friend, which -never marked his relations with Voltaire after the early days of -youthful enthusiasm. Frederick's admiration for France, indeed, has been -somewhat overstated by French writers, and by those of our own country -who have taken their word for granted. 'Your nation,' Frederick once -wrote to Voltaire, 'is the most inconsequent in all Europe. It abounds -in bright intelligence, but has no consistency in its ideas. This is how -it appears through all its history. There is really an indelible -character imprinted on it. The only exception in a long succession of -reigns is to be found in a few years of Lewis XIV. The reign of Henry -IV. was neither tranquil enough nor long enough for us to take that into -account. During the administration of Richelieu we observe some -consistency of design and some nerve in execution; but in truth they are -uncommonly short epochs of wisdom in so long a chronicle of madnesses. -Again, France has been able to produce men like Descartes or -Malebranche, but no Leibnitz, no Lockes, no Newtons. On the other hand, -for taste, you surpass all other nations, and I will surely range myself -under your standards in all that regards delicacy of discernment and the -judicious and scrupulous choice between real beauties and those which -are only apparent. That is a great point in polite letters, but it is -not everything.'[148] Frederick, however, could never endure the least -hint that he was not a perfect Frenchman in the order of polite letters. -The article on Prussia in the Encyclopdia was full of the most -flattering eulogies of his work as a soldier and an administrator, and -even contained handsome praise for his writings; but Diderot, the author -of this part of the article, delicately suggested that a year or two in -the Faubourg St. Honor would perhaps have dispersed the few grains of -Berlin sand which hindered the perfect purity of note of that admirable -flute. Frederick, who had hitherto been an ardent reader of the -Encyclopdia, never opened another volume. - -We can understand Voltaire's character without wading through the slough -of mean scandals which sprung up like gross fungi during his stay at -Berlin. Who need remember that Frederick spoke of his illustrious guest -as an orange of which, when one has squeezed the juice, one throws away -the skin? Or how Voltaire retorted by speaking of his illustrious host, -whose royal verses he had to correct, as a man sending his dirty linen -to him to wash? or, still worse, as a compound of Julius Caesar and the -abb Cotin? Nor need we examine into stories, suspicious products of -Berlin malice, how Frederick stopped his guest's supply of sugar and -chocolate, and how Voltaire put his host's candle-ends into his pocket. -It is enough to know that the king and the poet gradually lost their -illusions, and forgot that life was both too short and too valuable to -waste in vain efforts of making believe that an illusion is other than -it is. Voltaire took a childish delight in his gold key and his star, -and in supping as an intimate with a king who had won five battles. His -life was at once free and occupied, the two conditions of happy -existence. He worked diligently at his Sicle de Louis XIV., and -diverted himself with operas, comedies, and great entertainments among -affable queens, charming princesses, and handsome maids of honour. Yet -he could not forget the saying, which had been so faithfully carried to -him, of the orange-skin. He declared that he was like the man who fell -from the top of a high tower, and finding himself softly supported in -the air, cried out, _Good, if it only lasts._[149] Or he was like a -husband striving hard to persuade himself of the fidelity of a suspected -wife. He had fits of violent nostalgia. 'I am writing to you by the side -of a stove, with drooping head and heavy heart, looking on to the River -Spree, because the Spree falls into the Elbe, the Elbe into the sea, and -the sea receives the Seine, and our Paris house is near the River Seine, -and I say, Why am I in this palace, in this cabinet looking into this -Spree, and not in our own chimney-corner?... How my happiness is -poisoned, how short is life! What wretchedness to seek happiness far -from you; and what remorse, if one finds it away from you.'[150] This -was to Madame Denis, his niece; but a Christmas in the Berlin barrack -made even a plain coquette in Paris attractive and homely. We may -imagine with what tender regrets he would look back upon the old days at -Cirey. - -Even in respect of the very mischief from which he had fled, the -detraction and caballing of the envious, he was hardly any better off at -Berlin than he had been at Paris. D'Argental, one of the wisest of his -friends, had forewarned him of this, and that he had fled from enemies -whom at any rate he never saw, only to find other enemies with whom he -had to live day after day. This was exactly what came to pass. Voltaire -often compared the system of life at Berlin and Potsdam to that of a -convent, half military, half literary. The vices of conventual life came -with its other features, and among them jealousy, envy, and malice. The -tale-bearer, that constant parasite of such societies, had exquisite -opportunities, and for a susceptible creature like Voltaire, the result -was wholly fatal. The nights and suppers of the gods became, in his own -phrase, suppers of Damocles. Alexander the Great was transformed into -the tyrant Dionysius. The famous Diatribe of Doctor Akakia, in the -autumn of 1752, brought matters to a climax, because its publication was -supposed to show marked defiance of the king's wishes. - -Maupertuis had been one of the earliest and most strenuous Newtonians -in France, and had at his own personal risk helped to corroborate the -truth of the new system. In 1735 the zeal for experimental science, -which was so remarkable a trait in this century of many-sided -intellectual activity, induced the academy of sciences to despatch an -expedition to take the actual measure of a degree of meridian below the -equator, and the curious and indefatigable De la Condamine, one of the -most ardent men of that ardent time, with two other inquirers went to -Peru. In 1736 Maupertuis and Clairaut under the same auspices started -for the north pole, where, after undergoing the severest hardships, they -succeeded in measuring their degree, and verifying by observation -Newton's demonstration of the oblate figure of the earth, a verification -that was further completed by La Caille's voyage to the Cape of Good -Hope in 1750.[151] Maupertuis commemorated his share in this excellent -work by having a portrait of himself executed, in which the palm of a -hand gently flattens the north pole. He was extremely courageous and -extremely vain. His costume was eccentric and affected, his temper more -jealous and arbitrary than comports with the magnanimity of -philosophers, and his manner more gloomily solemn than the conditions of -human life can ever justify. With all his absurdities, he was a man of -real abilities, and of a solidity of character beyond that of any of his -countrymen at Frederick's court. I would rather live with him, -Frederick wrote to the princess Wilhelmina, than with Voltaire; 'his -character is surer,' which in itself was saying little. But then, the -moment he came into collision with Voltaire, his absurdities became the -most important thing about him, because it was precisely these which -Voltaire was sure to drag into unsparing prominence. In old days they -had been good friends, and a letter still remains, mournfully testifying -to the shallowness of men's sight into the roots of their relations with -others, for it closes by bidding Maupertuis be sure that Voltaire will -love him all the days of his life.[152] The causes of their collision -were obvious enough. As Frederick said, Of two Frenchmen in the same -court, one must perish. Maupertuis, from the heights of the exact -sciences, probably despised Voltaire as a scribbler, while Voltaire, -with a heart flowing over with gay vivacity, assuredly counted -Maupertuis arbitrary, ridiculously solemn, and something of an impostor. -The compliances of society, he said of the president of the Berlin -academy, are not problems that he is fond of solving. Maupertuis acted -to Knig, in the matter of an academic or discoverer's quarrel, in a way -that struck Voltaire, and all men since, as tyrannical, unjust, and -childish, all in one. He unhappily wrote a book which gave Voltaire such -an excuse for punishing the author's injustice to Knig, as even -Voltaire's spleen could hardly have hoped for, and the result was the -wittiest and most pitiless of all the purely personal satires in the -world. The temptation was certainly irresistible. - -Maupertuis, as has been said, was courageous and venturesome, and this -venturesomeness being uncorrected by the severe discipline of a large -body of accurate positive knowledge, such as Clairaut and Lagrange -possessed, led him into some worse than equivocal speculation. He was in -the depths of the metaphysical stage, and developed physical theories -out of abstract terms. Of some of these theories the worst that could be -said was they were wholly unproved. He advanced the hypothesis, for -instance, that all the animal species sprang from some first creature, -prototype of all creatures since. Others of his theories were right in -idea, but wrong in form, and without even an attempt at verification. -The famous principle of the minimum of action, for example, in spite of -the truth at the bottom of it, was valueless and confused, until -Lagrange connected it with fundamental dynamic principles, generalised -it, and cleared the unsupported metaphysical notions out of it.[153] All -this, however, was wise and Newtonic compared with the ideas promulgated -in the Philosophic Letters, on which the wicked Akakia so swiftly -pounced. Here were notions which it needed more audacity to broach, than -to face the frosts and snows of Lapland; strange theories that in a -certain state of exaltation of the soul one may foresee the future; that -if the expiration of vital force could only be prevented, the body -might be kept alive for hundreds of years; that by careful dissection of -the brains of giants, Patagonian and other, we should ascertain -something of the composition of the mind; that a Latin town if it were -established, and this was not an original idea, would be an excellent -means of teaching the Latin language. Voltaire knew exactly what kind of -malicious gravity and feigned respect would surround this amazing -performance and its author with inextinguishable laughter, and his -thousand turns and tropes cut deep into Maupertuis like sharpened -swords. - -Voltaire was not by scientific training competent to criticise -Maupertuis. This is true; but then Voltaire had what in such cases -dispensed with special competence, a preternatural gift of detecting an -impostor, and we must add that here as in every other case his anger was -set aflame not by intellectual vapidity, but by what he counted gross -wrong. Maupertuis had acted with despotic injustice towards Knig, and -Voltaire resolved to punish him. This is perhaps the only side of that -world-famous and truly wretched fray which it is worth our while to -remember, besides its illustration of the general moral that active -interest in public affairs is the only sure safeguard against the -inhuman egotism, otherwise so nearly inevitable and in any wise so -revolting, of men of letters and men of science. - -Frederick took the side of the president of his academy, and had Doctor -Akakia publicly burnt within earshot of its author's quarters.[154] -Voltaire had long been preparing for the end by depositing his funds in -the hands of the Duke of Wrtemberg, and by other steps, which had come -to the king's ears, and had by no means smoothed matters. He sees now -that the orange has been squeezed, and that it is his business to think -of saving the skin. He drew up for his own instruction, he said, a -pocket-dictionary of terms in use with kings: _My friend_ means _my -slave_; _my dear friend_ means that _you are more than indifferent to me;_ -understand by _I will make you happy_, _I will endure you, as long as I -have need of you_; _sup with me to-night_ means _I will make fun of you -to-night._[155] Voltaire, though he had been, and always was, the most -graceful of courtiers, kept to his point, and loudly gave Frederick to -understand that in literary disputes he recognised no kings. An act of -tyranny had been committed towards Knig, who was his friend, and -nothing would induce him to admit either that it was anything else, or -that it was other than just to have held up the tyrant to the laughter -of Europe. - -Frederick was profoundly irritated, and the terms in which he writes of -his French Virgil as an ape who ought to be flogged for his tricks, a -man worse than many who have been broken on the wheel, a creature who -may deserve a statue for his poetry but who certainly deserves chains -for his conduct, seem to imply a quite special mortification and -resentment. He had no doubt a deep and haughty contempt for all these -angers of celestial minds. The cabals of men of letters, he wrote to -Voltaire, seemed to him the lowest depth of degradation.[156] And he -would fain have flung a handful of dust on the furious creatures. After -three months of vain effort to achieve the impossible, Voltaire being -only moderately compliant, the king in March 1753 gave him leave to -depart, though with a sort of nominal understanding for politeness' sake -that there was to be a speedy return. - -Voltaire, however, was not a man in whose breast the flame of resentment -ever flickered away in politeness, until his adversary had humbled -himself. Though no one ever so systematically convinced himself each day -for thirty years that he was on the very point of death, no one was less -careful to measure the things that were worth doing from the point of -view of a conventional _memento mori_. Nobody spoke about dying so much, -nor thought about it so little. The first use he made of his liberty was -to shoot yet another bolt at Maupertuis from Leipzig, more piercing than -any that had gone before. Frederick now in his turn abandoned the forms -of politeness, and the renowned episode of Frankfort took place. -Voltaire, on reaching Frankfort, was required by the Prussian resident -in the free city to surrender his court decorations, and, more -important than these, a certain volume of royal verse containing the -Palladium, a poem of indecencies which were probably worse than those of -the Pucelle, because an indecent German is usually worse than an -indecent Frenchman. The poems, however, were what was far worse than -indecent in Frederick's eyes; they were impolitic, for they contained -bitter sarcasm on sovereigns whom he might be glad to have, and one of -whom he did actually have, on his side in the day of approaching storm. -Various delays and unlucky mishaps occurred, and Voltaire underwent a -kind of imprisonment for some five weeks (May 31 to July 7, 1753), under -extremely mortifying and humiliating circumstances. There was on the one -part an honest, punctual, methodic, rather dull Prussian subordinate, -anxious above all other things in the world, not excepting respect for -genius and respect for law, to obey the injunctions of his master from -Berlin. On the other part Voltaire, whom we know; excitable as a demon, -burning with fury against enemies who were out of his reach now that he -had spent all his ammunition of satire upon them, only half -understanding what was said to him in a strange tongue, mad with fear -lest Frederick meant to detain him after all. It would need the singer -of the battle of the frogs and mice to do justice to this five-weeks' -tragi-comedy. A bookseller with whom he had had feuds years before, -injudiciously came either to pay his respects, or to demand some trivial -arears of money; the furious poet and philosopher rushed up to his -visitor and inflicted a stinging box on the ear, while Collini, his -Italian secretary, hastily offered this intrepid consolation to Van -Duren, 'Sir, you have received a box on the ear from one of the greatest -men in the world.' A clerk came to settle this affair or that, and -Voltaire rushed towards him with click of pistol, the friendly Collini -again interfering to better purpose by striking up the hand that had -written Mrope and was on the point of despatching a clerk. We need not -go into the minute circumstances of the Frankfort outrage. Freytag, the -subordinate, clearly overstrained his instructions, and his excess of -zeal in detaining and harassing Voltaire can only be laid indirectly to -Frederick's charge. But Frederick is responsible, as every principal is, -who launches an agent in a lawless and tyrannic course. The German -Varnhagen has undoubtedly shown that Voltaire's account, witty and -diverting as it is, is not free from many misrepresentations, and some -tolerably deliberate lies. French writers have as undoubtedly shown that -the detention of a French citizen by a Prussian agent in a free town of -the Empire was a distinct and outrageous illegality.[157] We, who are -fortunately not committed by the exigencies of patriotism to close our -eyes to either half of the facts, may with facile impartiality admit -both halves. Voltaire, though fundamentally a man of exceptional truth, -was by no means incapable of an untruth when his imagination was hot, -and Frederick was by no means incapable of an outrage upon law, when law -stood between him and his purpose. Frederick's subordinates had no right -to detain Voltaire at all, and they had no right to allow themselves to -be provoked by his impatience into the infliction of even small outrages -upon him and his obnoxious niece. On the other hand, if Voltaire had -been a sort of Benjamin Franklin, if he had possessed a well-regulated -mind, a cool and gentle temper, a nice sense of the expedient, then the -most grotesque scene of a life in which there was too much of grotesque, -would not have been acted as it was, to the supreme delight of those -miserable souls who love to contemplate the follies of the wise. - -Any reader who takes the trouble to read the documents affecting this -preposterous brawl at Frankfort between a thoroughly subordinate German -and the most insubordinate Frenchman that ever lived,--this adventure, as -its victim called it, of Cimbrians and Sicambrians,--will be rather -struck by the extreme care with which Frederick impresses on the persons -concerned the propriety of having Voltaire's written and signed word for -such parts of the transaction as needed official commemoration. In one -place he expressly insists that a given memorandum should be written by -Voltaire's own hand from top to bottom. This precaution, which seems so -strange in a king who had won five battles, dealing with the author of a -score of tragedies, an epic, and many other fine things, sprang in truth -from no desire to cast a wanton slight on Voltaire's honour, but from -the painful knowledge that the author of the fine things was not above -tampering with papers and denying patent superscriptions. Voltaire's -visit had not been of long duration, before the unfortunate lawsuit with -Abraham Hirschel occurred. Of this transaction we need only say this -much, that Voltaire employed the Jew in some illegal jobbing in Saxon -securities; that he gave him bills on a Paris banker, holding diamonds -from the Jew as pledge of honest Christian dealing; that his suspicions -were aroused, that he protested his bills, then agreed to buy the -jewels, then quarrelled over the price, and finally plunged into a suit, -of which the issues were practically two, whether Hirschel had any -rights on one of the Paris bills, and whether the jewels were fairly -charged. Voltaire got his bill back, and the jewels were to be duly -valued; but the proceedings disclosed two facts of considerable -seriousness for all who should have dealings with him: first, that he -had interpolated matter to his own advantage in a document already -signed by his adversary, thus making the Jew to have signed what he had -signed not; and second, that when very hard pushed he would not swerve -from a false oath, any more than his great enemy the apostle Peter had -done.[158] Frederick had remembered all this, just as every negotiator -who had to deal with Frederick remembered that the great king was not -above such infamies as Klein-Schnellendorf, nor such meanness as -filching away with his foot a letter that had slipped unseen from an -ambassador's pocket.[159] - -And so there was an end, if not of correspondence, yet of that -friendship, which after all had always belonged rather to the spoken -order than to the deep unspeakable. There was now cynical, hoarse-voiced -contempt on the one side, and fierce, reverberating, shrill fury on the -other. The spectacle and the sound are distressing to those who crave -dignity and admission of the serious in the relations of men with one -another, as well as some sense of the myriad indefinable relations which -encompass us unawares, giving colour and perspective to our more -definable bonds. One would rather that even in their estrangement there -had been some grace and firmness and self-control, and that at least the -long-cherished illusion had faded away worthily, as when one bids -farewell to a friend whom a perverse will carries from us over unknown -seas until a far day, and we know not if we shall see his face any more. -It jars on us that the moon which has climbed into the night and moved -like sound of music over heath and woodland, should finally set in a -gray swamp amid the harsh croaking of amphibians. But the intimacy -between Frederick and Voltaire had perhaps been always most like the -theatre moon. - -We may know what strange admixture of distrust, contempt, and -tormenting reminiscence, mingled with the admiration of these two men -for one another's genius, from the bitterness which occasionally springs -up in the midst of their most graceful and amiable letters of a later -date. For instance, this is Voltaire to Frederick; 'You have already -done me ill enough; you put me wrong for ever with the king of France; -you made me lose my offices and pensions; you used me shamefully at -Frankfort, me and an innocent woman who was dragged through the mud and -thrown into gaol; and now, while honouring me with letters, you mar the -sweetness of this consolation by bitter reproaches.... The greatest harm -that your works have done, is in the excuse they have given to the -enemies of philosophy throughout Europe to say, "These philosophers -cannot live in peace, and they cannot live together. Here is a king who -does not believe in Jesus Christ; he invites to his court a man who does -not believe in Jesus Christ, and he uses him ill; there is no humanity -in these pretended philosophers, and God punishes them by means of one -another." ... Your admirable and solid wisdom is spoiled by the -unfortunate pleasure you have always had in seeing the humiliation of -other men, and in saying and writing stinging things to them; a pleasure -most unworthy of you, and all the more so as you are raised above them -by your rank and by your unique talents.'[160] To which the king answers -that he is fully aware how many faults he has, and what great faults -they are, that he does not treat himself very gently, and that in -dealing with himself he pardons nothing. As for Voltaire's conduct, it -would not have been endured by any other philosopher. 'If you had not -had to do with a man madly enamoured of your fine genius, you would not -have got off so well with anybody else. Consider all that as done with, -and never let me hear again of that wearisome niece, who has not so much -merit as her uncle, with which to cover her defects. People talk of the -servant of Molire, but nobody will ever speak of the niece of -Voltaire.' - -The poet had talked, after his usual manner, of being old and worn out, -and tottering on the brink of the grave. 'Why, you are only sixty-two,' -said Frederick, 'and your soul is full of that fire which animates and -sustains the body. You will bury me and half the present generation. You -will have the delight of making a spiteful couplet on my tomb.'[161] -Voltaire did not make a couplet, but he wrote a prose lampoon on the -king's private life, which is one of the bitterest libels that malice -ever prompted, and from which the greater part of Europe has been -content to borrow its idea of the character of Frederick.[162] This was -vengeance enough even for Voltaire. We may add that while Voltaire -constantly declared that he could never forget the outrages which the -king of Prussia had inflicted on him, neither did he forget to draw his -pension from the king of Prussia even in times when Frederick was most -urgently pressed.[163] It may be said that he was ready to return -favours; 'If things go on as they are going now,' he wrote with sportive -malice, 'I reckon on having to allow a pension to the king of -Prussia.'[164] - -It was not surprising that Voltaire did not return to Paris. His -correspondence during his residence at Berlin attests in every page of -it how bitterly he resented the cabals of ignoble men of letters, and -the insolence of ignoble men of authority. 'If I had been in Paris this -Lent,' he wrote in 1752, 'I should have been hissed in town, and made -sport of at court, and the Sicle de Louis XIV. would have been -denounced, as smacking of heresy, as audacious, and full of ill -significance. I should have had to go to defend myself in the ante-room -of the lieutenant of police. The officers would say, as they saw me -pass, _There is a man who belongs to us_.... No, my friend, _qui bene -latuit, bene vixit_.'[165] With most just anger, he contrasted German -liberality with the tyrannical suspicion of his own government. The -emperor, he says, made no difficulty in permitting the publication of a -book in which Leopold was called a coward. Holland gave free circulation -to statements that the Dutch are ingrates and that their trade is -perishing. He was allowed to print under the eyes of the king of Prussia -that the Great Elector abased himself uselessly before Lewis XIV., and -resisted him as uselessly. It was only in France where permission was -refused for an eulogy of Lewis XIV. and of France, and that, because he -had been neither base enough nor foolish enough to disfigure his eulogy -either by shameful silences or cowardly misrepresentations.[166] The -imprisonment, nine years before this, of Lenglet Dufresnoy, an old man -of seventy, for no worse offence than publishing a supplement to De -Thou's history, had made a deep impression on Voltaire.[167] He would -have been something lower than human if he had forgotten the treatment -which he had himself received at the hands of the most feeble and -incompetent government that ever was endured by a civilised people. - -So he found his way to Geneva, then and until 1798 an independent -republic or municipality. There (1755) he made himself two hermitages, -one for summer, called the Dlices, a short distance from the spot where -the Arve falls into the Rhone, and the other near Lausanne (Monrion) for -winter. Here, he says, I see from my bed this glorious lake, which -bathes a hundred gardens at the foot of my terrace; which forms on right -and left a stream of a dozen leagues, and a calm sea in front of my -windows; and which waters the fields of Savoy, crowned with the Alps in -the distance.[168] You write to me, replied D'Alembert, from your bed, -whence you command ten leagues of the lake, and I answer you from my -hole, whence I command a patch of sky three ells long.[169] To poor -D'Alembert the name of the famous lake was fraught with evil -associations, for he had just published his too veracious article on -Geneva in the Encyclopdia, in which he paid the clergy of that city the -unwelcome compliment, that they were the most logical of all -Protestants, for they were Socinians; and he was now suffering the -penalty of men who stir up angry hives. - -The enjoyment which Voltaire had then and for twenty years to come in -his noble landscape, and which he so often commemorates in his letters, -is a proof that may be added to others, of the injustice of the common -idea that the Voltairean school of the eighteenth century were specially -insensible to the picturesque. Morellet, for instance, records his -delight and wonder at the Alps and the descent into Italy, in terms -quite as warm, if much less profuse, as those of the most impressible -modern tourist.[170] Diderot had a strong spontaneous feeling for -nature, as he shows not only in his truly remarkable criticisms on the -paintings of twenty years, but also in his most private correspondence, -where he demonstrates in terms too plain, simple, and homely, to be -suspected of insincerity, the meditative delight with which the -solitary contemplation of fine landscape inspired him. He has no -peculiar felicity in describing natural features in words, or in -reproducing the inner harmonies with which the soft lines of distant -hills, or the richness of deep embosoming woodlands, or the swift -procession of clouds driven by fierce or cheerful winds, compose and -strengthen the sympathising spirit. But he was as susceptible to them as -men of more sonorous word.[171] And Voltaire finds the liveliest -pleasure in the natural sights and objects around him, though they never -quickened in him those brooding moods of egotistic introspection and -deep questioning contemplation in which Jean Jacques, Bernardin de St. -Pierre, and Snancour, found a sort of refuge from their own desperate -impotency of will and of material activity. Voltaire never felt this -impotency. As the very apostle of action, how should he have felt it? It -pleased him in the first few months of his settlement in new scenes, and -at other times, to borrow some of Frederick's talk about the bestial -folly of the human race, and the absurdity of troubling oneself about -it; but what was a sincere cynicism in the king, was in Voltaire only a -bit of cant, the passing affectation of an hour. The dramatist whose -imagination had produced so long a series of dramas of situation, the -historian who had been attracted by such labours as those of Charles -XII. of Sweden and Peter the Great of Russia, as well as by the -achievements of the illustrious men who adorned the age of Lewis XIV., -proved himself of far too objective and positive a temperament to be -capable of that self-conscious despair of action, that paralysing lack -of confidence in will, which drove men of other humour and other -experience forlorn into the hermit's caves of a new Thebaid. Voltaire's -ostentatious enjoyment of his landscape and his garden was only the -expansion of a seafarer, who after a stormful voyage finds himself in a -fair haven. His lines to Liberty[172] give us the keynote to his mood at -this time. He did not suppose that he had got all, but he knew that he -had got somewhat. - - Je ne vante point d'avoir en cet asile - Rencontr le parfait bonheur: - Il n'est point retir dans le fond d'un bocage; - Il est encore moins chez les rois; - Il n'est pas mme chez le sage; - De cette courte vie il n'est point le partage; - Il y faut renoncer; mais on peut quelquefois - Embrasser au moins son image. - -''Tis a fine thing, is tranquillity,' he wrote; 'yes, but ennui is of -its acquaintance and belongs to the family. To repulse this ugly -relation, I have set up a theatre.'[173] Besides the theatre, guests -were frequent and multitudinous. He speaks of sometimes having a crowd -of fifty persons at table.[174] Besides Les Dlices and Lausanne, he -purchased from the President de Brosses a life-interest in Tourney, and -in the same year(1758) he bought the lordship of Ferney, close by. He -was thus a citizen of Geneva, of Berne, and of France, 'for philosophers -ought to have two or three holes underground against the hounds who -chase them.' If the dogs of France should hunt him, he could take -shelter in Geneva. If the dogs of Geneva began to bay, he could run into -France. By and by this consideration of safety grew less absorbing, and -all was abandoned except Ferney; a name that will always remain -associated with those vigorous and terrible assaults upon the Infamous, -which first definitely opened when Voltaire became the lord of this -little domain. - - - - -CHAPTER V. - -RELIGION. - - -I - -In examining the Voltairean attack upon religion we have to remember -that it was in the first instance prompted, and throughout its course -stimulated and embittered, by antipathy to the external organisation of -the religion. It was not merely disbelief in a creed, but exasperation -against a church. Two distinct elements lay at the bottom of Voltaire's -enmity to the peculiar form of monotheism which he found supreme around -him. One of them was the intellectual element of repugnance to a system -of belief that rested on miracles and mysteries irreconcilable with -reason, and was so intimately associated with some of the most odious -types of character and most atrocious actions in the Old Testament, -which undoubtedly contains so many of both. The other was the moral -element of anger against the expounders of this system, their -intolerance of light and hatred of knowledge, their fierce yet -profoundly contemptible struggles with one another, the scandals of -their casuistry, their besotted cruelty. Of these two elements, the -second was, no doubt, if not the earlier in time, at least the stronger -in intensity. It was because he perceived the fruit to be so deadly, -that Voltaire laid the axe to the root of the tree. It is easy to say -that these poisonous Jesuitries and black Jansenisms were no fruit of -the tree, but the produce of a mere graft, which could have been lopped -off without touching the sacred trunk. Voltaire thought otherwise, and -whether he was right or wrong, it is only just to him to keep constantly -before us the egregious failure of Catholicism in his day as a social -force. This is a fact as to which there can be no dispute among persons -with knowledge enough and mental freedom enough to be competent to have -an opinion, and Voltairism can only be fairly weighed if we regard it as -being in the first instance no outbreak of reckless speculative -intelligence, but a righteous social protest against a system socially -pestilent. It was the revival of the worst parts of this system in the -cruelty and obscurantism which broke out after the middle of the -century, that converted Voltaire into an active assailant of belief. But -for that he would pretty certainly have remained tranquilly in the phase -of deism of which some of his early verses are the expression. -Philosophy is truly, as Callicles says in the Gorgias, a most charming -accomplishment for a man to follow at the right age, but to carry -philosophy too far is the undoing of humanity. - -Voltaire no doubt deliberately set himself to overthrow the Catholic -theology, as well as the ecclesi astical system which was bound up with -it, and he did so for the very sufficient reason that it has always been -impossible for men to become indulgent in act, while they remained -fanatical in belief. They will not cease to be persecutors, he said, -until they have ceased to be absurd.[175] The object was to secure -tolerance, and tolerance could only be expected as the product of -indifference, and indifference could be spread most surely by throwing -the fullest light of reason and common sense on the mystical foundations -of revealed religion. To stop short at the inculcation of charity and -indulgence was to surrender the cause; for how should the mere homilies -of a secular moralist soften those whom the direct injunctions of a -deity and his inspired apostles, their own acknowledged masters, failed -to make charitable? It was essential that the superstitions in which -intolerance had its root should be proved detestable and ridiculous. -When men had learnt to laugh at superstition, then they would perceive -how abominable is the oppressive fanaticism which is its champion. - -It is hardly possible to deny the service which Protestantism rendered -in preventing the revolution from Catholicism to scientific modes of -thought from being that violent, abrupt, and irreconcilable breach, -which we now observe in France and Italy, when we remember that the -cause of toleration was systematically defended in England by men who as -systematically defended the cause of Christianity. The Liberty of -Prophesying, in which the expediency of tolerance was based on the -difficulty of being sure that we are right, was written by one of the -most devout and orthodox divines; while the famous Letters on Toleration -(1689), in which the truly remarkable step is taken of confining the -functions of civil government to men's civil interests and the things of -this world, were the work of the same Locke who vindicated the -Reasonableness of Christianity.[176] The English Deists pressed home in -a very effectual way the deduction of universal freedom of speech from -the first maxims of Protestantism, and their inference was practically -admitted.[177] Hence there was no inseparable association between -adherence to the old religious ideas and the prohibition of free speech -in spirituals, and on the other hand there was no obligation on the part -of those who claimed free speech to attack a church which did not refuse -their claim. - -In France the strictly repressive policy of the church in the eighteenth -century, sometimes bloody and cruel as in the persecution of the -Protestants, sometimes minutely vexatious as in the persecution of the -men of letters, but always stubborn and lynx-eyed, had the natural -effect of making it a point of honour with most of those who valued -liberty to hurl themselves upon the religious system, of which rigorous -intolerance was so prominent a characteristic. The Protestant dilution -of the theological spirit seems thus to be in the long run a more -effective preparation for decisive abandonment of it, than its virulent -dissolution in the biting acids of Voltairism, because within limits the -slower these great transformations are in accomplishing themselves, the -better it is for many of the most precious and most tender parts of -human character. Our present contention is that the attitude of the -religionists left no alternative. It is best that creeds, like men who -have done the work of the day, should die the slow deaths of nature, yet -it is counted lawful to raise an armed hand upon the brigand who seeks -the life of another. - -Voltaire to the end of his course contended that the church only was to -blame for the storm which overtook her teaching in the later years, when -his own courageous attack had inspired a host of others, less brilliant -but not any less embittered, to throw themselves on the reeling enemy. -The cause of the inundation of Europe by the literature of negativism -and repudiation was to be sought first of all in the fierce theological -disputes which revolted the best of the laity. Of this violent revulsion -of feeling Voltaire himself was the great organ. He furnished its -justification, and nourished its fire, and invested it with a splendid -lustre. Even when with the timidity of extreme age he seemed to -deprecate the growing ferocity of the attack, he still taunted the -clerical party with their own folly in allowing a mean and egotistic -virulence to override every consideration of true wisdom and policy. -'Now,' he wrote in 1768, 'a revolution has been accomplished in the -human mind, that nothing again can ever arrest. They would have -prevented this revolution, if they had been sage and moderate. The -quarrels of Jansenists and Molinists have done more harm to the -Christian religion than could have been done by four emperors like -Julian one after another.'[178] - -It cannot be too often repeated that the Christianity which Voltaire -assailed was not that of the Sermon on the Mount, for there was not a -man then alive more keenly sensible than he was of the generous humanity -which is there enjoined with a force that so strangely touches the -heart, nor one who was on the whole, in spite of constitutional -infirmities and words which were far worse than his deeds, more ardent -and persevering in its practice. Still less was he the enemy of a form -of Christian profession which now fascinates many fine and subtle minds, -and which starting from the assumption that there are certain inborn -cravings in the human heart, constant, profound, and inextinguishable, -discerns in the long religious tradition an adequate proof that the -mystic faith in the incarnation, and in the spiritual facts which pour -like rays from that awful centre, are the highest satisfaction which a -divine will has as yet been pleased to establish for all these -yearnings of the race of men. This graceful development of belief, -emancipated from dogma and reducing so many substantial bodies to pale -shades, so many articles once held as solid realities to the strange -tenuity of dreams, was not the Christianity of Voltaire's time, any more -than it was that of the Holy Office. There was nothing resembling the -present popularity of a treatment which gives generals so immense a -preponderance over particulars--somewhat to the neglect of the old saying -about the snare that lies hidden in generals, many persons being -tolerably indifferent about the _dolus_ so long as they can make sure of -the _latet_. He attacked a definite theology, not a theosophy. We may, -indeed, imagine the kind of questions which he would have asked of one -pressing such a doctrine on his acceptance; how he would have sought the -grounds for calling aspirations universal, which the numerical majority -of the human race appear to have been without, and the grounds for -making subjective yearnings the test and the measure of the truth of -definite objective records; how he would have prayed to be instructed of -these cravings, whether they spring up spontaneously, or are the -products of spiritual self-indulgence, and also of the precise manner in -which they come to be satisfied and soothed by the momentary appearance -of a humane figure far off upon the earth; how he would have paused to -consider the intelligibility of so overwhelming a wonder as the -incarnation having been wrought, for the benefit of so infinitesimally -small a fragment of mankind. We can imagine this and much else, but -Voltaire would never have stirred a finger to attack a mysticism which -is not aggressive, and can hardly be other than negatively hurtful. - -If any one had maintained against Voltaire that the aspirations after a -future life, the longing for some token that the deity watches over his -creatures and is moved by a tender solicitude for them, and the other -spiritual desires alleged to be instinctive in men, constitute as -trustworthy and firm a guide to truth as the logical reason, we may be -sure that he would have forgiven what he must have considered an -enervating abnegation of intelligence, for the sake of the humane, if -not very actively improving, course of life to which this kind of -pietism is wont to lead. He might possibly have entertained a little -contempt for them, but it would have been quiet contempt and unspoken. -There is no case of Voltaire mocking at any set of men who lived good -lives. He did not mock the English Quakers. He doubtless attacked many -of the beliefs which good men hold sacred, but if good men take up their -abode under the same roof which shelters the children of darkness and -wrong, it is not the fault of Voltaire if they are hit by the smooth -stones shot from his sling against their unworthy comrades. The object -of his assault was that amalgam of metaphysical subtleties, degrading -legends, false miracles, and narrow depraving conceptions of divine -government which made the starting-point and vantage-ground of those -ecclesiastical oppressors, whom he habitually and justly designated the -enemies of the human race. The evil and the good, the old purity and the -superadded corruptions, were all so inextricably bound up in the -Catholicism of the eighteenth century, that it was impossible to a deal -a blow to the one without risk of harm to the other. The method was -desperate, but then the enemy was a true Chimra, a monster sodden in -black corruption, with whom in the breast of a humane man there could be -no terms. - -The popes during the Voltairean period were above the average in virtue -and intelligence, but their power was entirely overshadowed by that -wonderful order which had assumed all effective spiritual supremacy for -something like two centuries. Nor was this order the only retrogressive -influence. The eighteenth century was the century not only of the Sacr -Coeur, but of the miracles of the dead abb Pris, transactions in which -Jansenist emulated Jesuit in dragging men and women into the deepest -slough of superstition. A Roman augur fresh from the inspection of the -sacrificial entrails would have had a right to despise the priests who -invented an object for the adoration of men in the diseased and hideous -visions of Mary Alacoque. The man who sells rain to savages may almost -be held to add to the self-respect of the race, if you contrast him with -the convulsionnaires and the fanatics who were transported by their -revolting performances.[179] - -France is the country where reactions are most rapid and most violent. -Nowhere else can the reformer count so surely on seeing the completion -of his reform followed so instantly by the triumph of its adversaries. -The expulsion of the Jesuits, under circumstances of marked and -uncompromising harshness, was not consummated, before the tide of -religious bigotry flowed in from the opposite shore, and swelled to a -portentous height. The exultation of the philosophers at the coming fall -of their old foes, was instantly checked by the yet worse things which -befell them and their principles at the hands of new enemies. The reign -of the Jansenists was speedily pronounced more hateful than the reign of -the Jesuits. Various accommodations were possible with heaven, so long -as the Jesuits had credit, but the Jansenists were pitiless.[180] - -The parliament or supreme judicial tribunal of Paris[181] was Jansenist, -mainly out of political hatred of the Jesuits, partly from a hostility, -very easily explained, to every manifestation of ultramontane feeling -and influence, partly from a professional jealousy of the clergy, but -partly also because the austere predestinarian dogma, and the -metaphysical theology which brought it into supreme prominence, seem -often to have had an unexplained affinity for serious minds trained in -legal ideas and their application. The Jesuits had systematically -abstained as far as was possible from purely speculative theology. -Suarez is pronounced one of the greatest writers in speculative ethics -and jurisprudence; but in the technical metaphysics of theology the -Jesuits with all their literary industry did not greatly care to -exercise themselves. Their task was social and practical, and as -confessors, directors, preachers, and instructors, they had naturally -paid less attention to abstract thought than to the arts of eloquence, -address, and pliancy. Then, too, in doctrine they had uniformily clung -to the softer, more amiable, more worldly, less repulsive, -interpretation of the eternally embarrassing claims of grace, election, -free-will. The Augustinian, Calvinistic, or Jansenist view of the -impotence of will and the saving importance of grace is the answer of -souls eager to feel immediate individual contact with a Supreme Being. -The Jesuits and their power represented extremely different sentiments, -fundamentally religious, but still fundamentally social also, the desire -of men for sympathetic and considerate guidance in conduct, and their -craving for such a unity of the external ordering of the faith as should -leave them undistracted to live their lives. The former concentrated -feelings upon the relations of men directly and immediately with a -Supreme Being; the latter upon their relations with this Being only -mediately, through their relations with one another, and with the church -to which a measure of divinity had been attributed. Hence the decline of -the Jesuits assumed the form of a depravation of morals, while the -Jansenists held more and more tightly to a narrow and bigoted -correctness of belief. The parliament was willing to resist a Molinist -archbishop and his satellites, when they refused burial to all who -should die without having received a certificate of conformity to the -famous bull Unigenitus, which proscribed Jansenist opinion.[182] But -none the less for this was it bent on suppressing the common enemy, who -despised the bull and the Five propositions, Molina and Jansenius, -archbishop Beaumont and Quesnel, all equally. Voltaire's natural -sagacity made him alive to the fact, which perhaps remains as true now -as then, that the professional and middle classes are a worse enemy of -liberal opinion and are more intolerant than the remnants of the old -aristocratic orders. He says to D'Alembert, 'You are right in declaring -yourself the enemy of the great and their flatterers; still, the great -protect one upon occasion, they despise the Infamous, and they will not -persecute philosophers; but as for your pedants of Paris, who have -bought their office, as for those insolent bourgeois, half fanatics, -half imbecile, they can do nothing but mischief.'[183] He had not learnt -to look away from both classes, professional and aristocratic alike, to -that third estate where the voice of the reformer has always found the -first response. Still what he said was true as against the lawyers, -whose vision perhaps never extends beyond the improvement of that mere -surface of order with which their profession is concerned. The -Parliament of Paris was the eager ally of the bigots of the court in -1757, in fulminating deadly edicts against the Encyclopdia and all -concerned in its production or circulation. In 1762, the year of the -publication of Emile and the Contrat Social, not all the influence of -Rousseau's powerful protectors could prevent the launching of a decree -of arrest against him. Bloodier measures were not wanting. - -In 1762 Morellet had published under the title of a Manual for -Inquisitors a selection of the most cruel and revolting portions of the -procedure of the Holy Office, drawn from the Directorium Inquisitorium -of Eymeric, a grand inquisitor of the fourteenth century. The -cold-blooded cruelties of the regulations, which were thus brought into -the light of the eighteenth century, created the most profound sensation -among the rapidly increasing adherents of tolerance and humanity. -Voltaire was intensely stirred by this resuscitation of horrors that he -mistook for dead. It made the same impression upon him, he said, as the -bleeding body of Caesar made upon the men of Rome.[184] But he soon -found that it was an error to impute a special cruelty to the spiritual -power. Malesherbes, in giving Morellet the requisite permission to print -his Manual, had amazed his friend by telling him, that though he might -suppose he was giving to the world a collection of extraordinary facts -and unheard of processes, yet in truth the jurisprudence of Eymeric and -his inquisition was as nearly as possible identical with the criminal -jurisprudence of France at that very moment.[185] This was very soon to -be proved. - -The bigots, infuriated by the blows which were destroying the Jesuits, -hunted out against heretical enemies some forgotten portions of this -terrible jurisprudence. A protestant pastor, Rochette, was hung for -exercising his functions in Languedoc. The Catholics on the occasion of -the arrest of Rochette were summoned by sound of tocsin, and three young -Protestants, who were brothers, fearing massacre in the midst of the -agitation, took up their arms: for this offence they were convicted of -rebellion, and had their heads struck off.[186] It became painfully -clear how great a mistake it was to suppose the clergy touched with some -special curse of cruelty. Then, as usually, for good or for evil, they -were on about the same moral level with an immense number of laymen, and -were not much more than the incarnation of the average darkness of the -hour. If Eymeric's procedure only copied the ordinary criminal -jurisprudence, the bigotry of the ecclesiastics was accurately reflected -in the bigotry of the secular tribunals. The Protestant Calas was broken -on the wheel (1762), because his son had been found dead, and some one -chose to say that the father had killed him, to prevent him from turning -Catholic. There was not the smallest fragment of evidence, direct or -indirect, for a single link in the chain of circumstances on which the -unfortunate man's guilt depended; while there were many facts which made -the theory of his guilt the most improbable that could have been brought -forward. The widow and the children of Calas were put to the torture, -and eventually fled to Geneva to take refuge with Voltaire. During the -same year the same tribunal, the parliament of Toulouse, did its best to -repeat this atrocity in the case of Sirven. Sirven was a Protestant, and -his daughter had been with perfect legality snatched away from him, and -shut up in a convent, there to be better instructed in the faith. She -ran away, and was found at the bottom of a well. Sirven was accused of -murdering his daughter, and he only escaped the wheel by prompt flight. -His wife perished of misery amid the snows of the Cevennes, and he -joined the wretched family of Calas at Geneva, where the same generous -man furnished shelter and protection. - -In the north of France the fire of intolerance burnt at least as hotly -as in the south. At Abbeville a crucifix was found to have been -mutilated in the night. Two lads of eighteen, to one of whom Frederick -gave shelter in Prussia, were accused under cover of the sacrilege, and -La Barre was condemned by the tribunal of Amiens, at the instance of the -bishop, to have tongue and right hand cut off, and then be burnt alive; -a sentence that was presently commuted by the Parliament of Paris to -decapitation (1766). There was no proof whatever that either of the two -youths was in any way concerned in the outrage. The bishop of the -diocese had issued monitory proclamations, and conducted a solemn -procession to the insulted crucifix. The imagination of the town was -kindled, and the sacrilege became the universal talk of a people growing -more and more excited. Rumour ran that a new sect was being formed, -which was for breaking all the crucifixes, which threw the host on the -ground and cut it with knives. There were women who declared that they -had seen these things. All the horrible stories were revived which had -been believed against the Jews in the middle ages. A citizen took -advantage of this fierce agitation to gratify a private grudge against a -relative of La Barre. He set inquiries on foot among the lowest persons -for proof that the youth had been concerned in the original crime. By -one means or another he got together material enough to support an -indictment. Proceedings once begun, a crowd of informers rose up. It was -deposed that La Barre and D'Etallonde had passed within thirty yards of -the sacred procession without removing their hats, that La Barre had -spoken irreverently of the Virgin Mary, that he had been heard to sing -unseemly songs and recite ribald litanies. This testimony, given with a -vagueness that ought to have proved it legally valueless, was the fruit -of the episcopal monitory, which as at Toulouse in the case of Calas, -virtually incited the dregs of the people to bring accusations against -their superiors, and menaced a man with the pains of hell if he should -refuse to put his neighbour in peril of his life. The tribunal, as -excited as the witnesses and the rest of the public, relied on a royal -ordinance of 1682, directed against sacrilege and superstition and -designed to put down sorcery. In the sentence inflicting so bloody a -punishment, the offence was described as consisting in singing -abominable songs against the Virgin Mary.[187] To exact such a penalty -for such a delinquency was to make human life a mere plaything for the -ignorant passion of the populace and the intellectual confusion of the -tribunals. These atrocities kindled in Voltaire a blaze of anger and -pity, that remains among the things of which humanity has most reason to -be proud. Everybody who has read much of the French writing of the -middle of the eighteenth century, is conscious from time to time of a -sound of mocking and sardonic laughter in it. This laugh of the -eighteenth century has been too often misunderstood as the expression of -a cynical hardness of heart, proving the hollowness of the humanitarian -pretensions in the midst of which it is heard. It was in truth something -very different; it was the form in which men sought a little relief from -the monotony of the abominations which oppressed them, and from whose -taint they had such difficulty to escape. This refrain, that after all a -man can do nothing better than laugh, apparently so shallow and inhuman, -in reality so penetrated with melancholy, we may count most certainly -on finding at the close of the narration of some more than usually -iniquitous or imbecile exploit of those in authority. It was when the -thought of the political and social and intellectual degradation of -their country became too vivid to be endured, that men like Voltaire and -D'Alembert would abruptly turn away from it, and in the bitterness of -their impotence cry that there was nothing for it but to take the world -and all that befalls therein in merriment. It was the grimacing of a man -who jests when he is perishing of hunger, or is shrinking under knife or -cautery. Thus D'Alembert having given Voltaire an account of the -execution of the unfortunate La Barre, in words that show how intensely -his own narrative was afflicting him, suddenly concludes by saying that -he will add no more on this auto-da-f, so honourable to the French -nation, for it made him ill-humoured, and he meant only to mock at -whatever might happen.[188] But Voltaire could not rest thus. The -thought of so hateful a crime, perpetrated by a tribunal of justice, -clothed him in the shirt of Nessus. All aflame, he wrote to D'Alembert -with noble impetuosity: - -"This is no longer a time for jesting: witty things do not go well with -massacres. What? These Busirises in wigs destroy in the midst of -horrible tortures children of sixteen! And that in face of the verdict -of ten upright and humane judges! And the victim suffers it! People talk -about it for a moment, and the next they are hastening to the comic -opera; and barbarity, become the more insolent for our silence, will -to-morrow cut throats juridically at pleasure. Here Calas broken on the -wheel, there Sirven condemned to be hung, further off a gag thrust into -the mouth of a lieutenant-general, a fortnight after that five youths -condemned to the flames for extravagances that deserved nothing worse -than Saint Lazare. Is this the country of philosophy and pleasure? It is -the country rather of the Saint Bartholomew massacre. Why, the -Inquisition would not have ventured to do what these Jansenist judges -have done."[189] When he had received D'Alembert's letter, ending as we -have seen, his remonstrance waxed vehement: 'What, you would be content -to laugh? We ought rather to resolve to seek vengeance, or at any rate -to leave a coimtry where day after day such horrors are committed.... -No, once more, I cannot bear that you should finish your letter by -saying, I mean to laugh. Ah, my friend, is it a time for laughing? -Did men laugh when they saw Phalaris's bull being made red-hot?'[190] - -This revival in the tribunals of Paris and the provincial towns alike, -of the ignorant fanaticism and the unscientific jurisprudence of the -most unenlightened times, was the more bitter and insupportable from the -new light which shone around such horrors. Beccaria's treatise on -Offences and Penalties had just been translated into French by Morellet, -and furnished a strange commentary upon the atrocities of Toulouse and -Abbeville. It seemed, men said, as if at every striking vindication of -the rights of humanity the genius of cruelty broke its chains, and, to -prove the futility of all such vindications, inspired new acts of -barbarism and violence.[191] The philosophic group had yielded to a -premature exultation, and in their inexperience supposed that they who -planted the tree should see the gathering-in of the fruit. The reign of -reason was believed to be close at hand, and this belief made the -visible recrudescence of fanatical unreason signally insupportable. It -is a high honour to Voltaire and his disciples that the trial did not -prove too strong for their faith, and that when they saw how far too -sanguine they had been, they were more astonished than they were -discouraged, and their energy redoubled with the demands made upon it. -The meaner partisans of an orthodoxy which can only make wholly sure of -itself by injustice to adversaries, have always loved to paint the -Voltairean school in the character 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.[192] -At the very last Voltaire seems to have seen something of the vast space -which every ray of light has to traverse before it reaches the eye of -the common understanding. 'I now perceive,' he wrote the year before his -death, 'that we must still wait three or four hundred years. One day it -cannot but be that good men 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 from time to time -they will make an auto-da-f'[193] To speak thus was to recognise the -true character of the revolution, and the many elements which go to the -transformation of an old society. To speak thus, too, was to mark the -true character of the sincere lover of human progress, the soul of -steadfast patience and strong hope, mingled with many a pang for the -far-off and slow-coming good. - -It was a natural thing to identify the Jesuits with the strongest part -of the old society, because their organisation was both the strongest -and most striking of its external supports. Their suppression, though -not to be dispensed with except on the condition of an ultimate -overthrow of morality and an extinction of intellectual light, had one -effect which the statesmen of the time could hardly be expected to see, -and which has not been enough considered. Just as the papacy by the -fourteenth century had become more and more exclusively a temporal -power, so the Jesuits by the middle of the eighteenth had become more -and more a commercial power. They were a powerful trading corporation, -and it was as merchants, rather than as casuists and directors of -conscience, that they finally came into collision with secular authority -in France, Portugal, and Spain. Now since the revival of the order it -has been exclusively engaged in the contest for spiritual supremacy, and -for as much of temporal power as has seemed essential to its security. -This, however, is only one of the evils which counterbalance the -advantages of every progressive measure; for, alas, when the statesman -believes most confidently that he has advanced by a league, a very few -years show him or others that his league was after all no more than an -ell or two. - -The reactionary outburst of fanaticism for which the humiliation of the -Jesuits was a signal, only showed how well founded the Voltairean -allegations as to the depraving effects of the existing system of -religion had really been. It was the verification of all that Voltaire -ever said against the system, and demonstrated both the virulence and -the tenacity of the influences which Catholicism in the days of its -degradation had exerted over the character of the nation. It was most -illogical to expect a people who had been bred in the Catholic tradition -suddenly to welcome its enemies. If Catholicism had trained men up to -the temper which seeks the light and loves it, how should it have -deserved animosity? Nearly all lovers of improvement are apt in the -heat of a generous enthusiasm to forget that if all the world were ready -to embrace their cause, their improvement could hardly be needed. It is -one of the hardest conditions of things that the more numerous and -resolute the enemies of reform, then the more unmistakably urgent the -necessity for it. It was just because the cruelty, persecution, and -darkness, in the last ten years of the reign of Lewis XV. were things -possible, that the onslaught upon Catholicism was justifiable and -praiseworthy. They showed the depth and strength of the forces of the -old society, and they foreshadowed the violence which marked its -dissolution. If people had remembered in 1789 how few years separated -them from the wide-spread fanaticism which darkened the last days of -Voltaire, they might have calculated better how few years separated them -from the Napoleonic Concordat. - -No permanent transformation of a society, we may be sure, can ever take -place until a transformation has been accomplished in the spiritual -basis of thought. Voltaire may have distinctly seen this and formulated -it to himself, or not; in any case, he steered his own course exactly as -he would have done if he had seen it. As M. Guizot expresses it, the -separation between the spiritual and temporal orders was never real in -Europe except in the eighteenth century, when for the first time the -spiritual order developed itself entirely apart from the temporal -order.[194] Thus Voltaire acquiesced without murmur or reproach in the -conditions of political absolutism, and the disgrace and ruin which the -nullity of the government brought upon his country in the Seven Years' -War, keenly as he felt it, yet provoked no thought of temporal changes. -His correspondence in that fatal time is marked by a startling apathy -about public events, and even Rossbach seems not to move him to seek its -causes. If we compare his joyful enthusiasm at the accession of Turgot -to power in 1774, we can have no doubt that this strange numbness of -feeling was only the silence of a wise man despairing of saying or -seeing anything useful, and not the criminal folly of a bad citizen to -whom the welfare of his country is not dear. The disasters of France -were as serious to him as to any one else, as may be plainly seen under -the assumed philosophy with which his vivacious spirit loved to veil -real feeling; but the impossibility of doing anything, even of taking a -part in the process with which we English are so familiar as the forming -of public opinion, drove him for consolation to the field where he was -certain of doing efficient work.[195] Writing in 1761, a year of -crushing national loss, he says to one of the oldest and most intimate -of his correspondents: 'There is nothing to laugh at in all this. I am -struck to the heart. Our only resource is in the promptest and most -humiliating peace. I always fancy, when some overwhelming disaster -arrives, that the French will be serious for six weeks. I have not yet -been able to disabuse myself of this notion.'[196] Voltaire was -penetrated by the spirit of action, and he perceived and regretted that -the organisation of France did not permit of the effective action of -private individuals in the field of politics.[197] There are lines in -the Henriade extolling the freedom of England,[198] and he sometimes -indulges in the commonplaces of a literary republicanism; but turning to -the portion of his works which his editors have classified as political, -we scarcely find much beyond the documents, and they are important and -interesting enough, still not truly political, that relate to the -various affairs of Calas, La Barre, and others, in which he exposed the -atrocities of the tribunals. So far as they come into the region of -politics at all, it is only to assail the overt and direct injustice -done to society by the institutions, privileges, and pretensions of the -church. He constantly attacks in a great variety of forms the material -mischief inflicted on society by the vast numbers of monks, mendicant or -other; their unproductive lives, the burden of their maintenance -weighing upon more industrious subjects, the restriction of population -occasioned by their celibacy. The direct refusal of the clergy in 1750 -to consent to pay their share of the taxes like other citizens, though -owning as much as a fifth of all the property in the realm, moved him to -insist in a vigorous pamphlet that the distinction in a kingdom between -spiritual and temporal powers is a relic of barbarism; that it is -monstrous to permit a body of men to say, Let those pay who work, we -ought not to pay because we are idle; that superstition inevitably tends -to make bad citizens, and therefore princes ought to protect philosophy -which destroys superstition.[199] - -Voltaire's task, however, was never directly political, but spiritual, -to shake the foundations of that religious system which professed to be -founded on the revelation of Christ. Was he not right? If we find -ourselves walking amid a generation of cruel and 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. - -It is necessary to admit from the point of view of impartial criticism, -that Voltaire had one defect of character, of extreme importance in a -leader of this memorable and direct attack. With all his enthusiasm for -things noble and lofty, generous and compassionate, he missed the -peculiar emotion of holiness, the soul and life alike of the words of -Christ and Saint Paul, that indefinable secret of the long hold of -mystic superstition over so many high natures, otherwise entirely -prepared for the brightness of the rational day. From this impalpable -essence which magically surrounds us with the mysterious and subtle -atmosphere of the unseen, changing distances and proportions, adding new -faculties of sight and purpose, extinguishing the flames of disorderly -passion in a flood of truly divine aspiration, we have to confess that -the virtue went out in the presence of Voltaire. To admire Voltaire, -cried a man who detested him, is the sign of a corrupt heart, and if -anybody is drawn to his works, then be very sure that God does not love -such an one.[200] The truth of which that is so vehement a paraphrase -amounts to this, that Voltaire has said no word, nor even shown an -indirect appreciation of any word said by another, which stirs or -expands the emotional susceptibility, indefinite exultation, and -far-swelling inner harmony, which De Maistre and others have known as -the love of God, and for which a better name, as covering most varieties -of form and manifestation, is holiness, deepest of all the words that -defy definition. Through the affronts which his reason received from -certain pretensions both in the writers and in some of those whose -actions they commemorated, this sublime trait in the Bible, in both -portions of it, was unhappily lost to Voltaire. He had no ear for the -finer vibrations of the spiritual voice. This had no concern in the fact -that he hated and despised, and was eager that others should hate and -despise, the religious forms that ruled France in his day. The -Christianity which he assailed was as little touched as Voltairism -itself with that spirit of holiness which poured itself round the lives -and words of the two founders, the great master and the great apostle. -The more deeply imbued a man was with this spirit, the more ardently -would he crave the demolition of that Infamous in belief and in -practice, which poisoned the stream of holiness in its springs, and shed -pestilence along its banks, and choked its issues in barrenness and -corruption. - -The point where the failure of this quality in Voltaire was especially a -source of weakness to his attack, is to be found in the crippling of his -historic imagination, and the inability which this inflicted upon him of -conceiving the true meaning and lowest roots of the Catholic legend. The -middle age between himself and the polytheism of the Empire was a -parched desert to him and to all his school, just as to the Protestant -the interval between the apostles and Luther is a long night of unclean -things. He saw only a besotted people led in chains by a crafty -priesthood; he heard only the unending repetition of records that were -fictitious, and dogmas that drew a curtain of darkness over the -understanding. Men spoke to him of the mild beams of Christian charity, -and where they pointed he saw only the yellow glare of the stake; they -talked of the gentle solace of Christian faith, and he heard only the -shrieks of the thousands and tens of thousands whom faithful Christian -persecutors had racked, strangled, gibbeted, burnt, broken on the -wheel. Through the steam of innocent blood which Christians for the -honour of their belief had spilt in every quarter of the known world, -the blood of Jews, Moors, Indians, and all the vast holocausts of -heretical sects and people in eastern and western Europe, he saw only -dismal tracts of intellectual darkness, and heard only the humming of -the doctors, as they served forth to congregations of poor men hungering -for spiritual sustenance the draff of theological superstition. - -This vehement and blinding antipathy arose partly from the intense force -with which the existing aspect of Catholicism recalled all that was -worst, and shut out all that was best in its former history. One cannot -fairly expect the man who is in the grip of a decrepit tyrant, to do -absolutely full justice to the seemly deeds and gracious promises of his -tormentor's youth. But partly also this blindness arose from the fact -that Voltaire measured the achievements of Catholicism by the magnitude -of its pretensions. He took its supernatural claims seriously, and his -intelligence was exasperated beyond control by the amazing disproportion -and incongruity between these claims and the most conspicuous of the -actual results. Those who have parted company with a religion, as -Voltaire had parted company with Christianity, can only be counted upon -to award the well-earned praise to its better part, after they have -planted themselves stably on the assumption that the given religion is a -human and natural force like another. - -The just historic calm on which our modern prides himself, is only -possible in proportion to the mature completeness with which he takes -for granted, and believes that those to whom he speaks will take for -granted, the absence of supernatural intervention in the processes of -religious action and development. He is absolutely undisturbed by the -thought of that claim, which was omnipotent until Voltaire came to do -deadly battle with it, of Christianity to be a crowning miracle of -divine favour, which should raise men to be only a little lower than the -angels, and should be the instrument for pouring out upon them an -ever-flowing stream of special and extraordinary grace. It is not until -the idea has dropped out of our minds of the great fathers of the church -as saints, that we are free to perceive what services they rendered as -statesmen, and it is only when men have ceased to dispute whether -Christianity was a revelation, that they have eyes to see what services -it has rendered as a system. But in Voltaire's time, if Catholicism was -justified historically, it was believed dogmatically, and therefore was -to be attacked dogmatically also. The surrender of the written legend -has never hindered its champions from taking ground which implied some -esoteric revelation, that proves to be some special interpretation of -the written legend. So long as the thinker is busy disproving the -position that a man who happens to live on a certain part of the globe -is a being of such singular and exceptional consequence in the universe -as to be held worthy by supreme heavenly powers of receiving a -miraculous message and the promise of this and that unspeakable -privilege in indescribable worlds to come, so long he is not likely to -weigh very fairly the effects of the belief in such power, messages, and -privileges, on the education and advancement of this world. The modern -historic justice which is done to Catholicism is due to the -establishment of a series of convictions that civilisation is a -structure which man by his own right arm has raised for himself, that it -has been exposed to many an era of storm and stress, and to manifold -influences which have been perpetually destroying portions of the great -edifice, adding fresh parts, modifying the old, by an interminable -succession of changes, resounding and volcanic, or still and -imperceptible; that the danger of destruction was never so terrible as -in the days of the dissolution of the old Roman society; that in this -prolonged crisis the Christian church emerged, first by its organisation -and the ability of some of its chiefs, and next by the attraction of -legends that harmonised with the needs of a dark, confused, and -terror-stricken time; that the many barbarous and absurd articles of -belief incorporated in the Christian profession by the sophists of the -East, received from time to time humane modification in the hands of the -wiser churchmen of the West, whose practical judgment was perpetually -softening down the crude, savage, unilluminated doctrines which had -naturally sprung up in the dismal age when the Catholic system acquired -substance and shape. A just recognition of all these things is only -easy to one whose expectations from humanity are moderate, who perceives -how tardy and difficult is the accomplishment of each smallest step in -the long process, and how helpful are even the simplest beliefs of rude -times in transforming men from vagrant animals into beings with a -consciousness of fixed common relations towards some object of common -worship, and so planting the first germs of social consolidation and -growth. - -Voltaire was, from the circumstances in which he was placed, too busy -proving the purely human origin of Catholicism to have a mind free to -examine how much, if we suppose it to be of purely human origin, it has -done for those who accepted it. Perhaps we ought rather to praise than -blame him for abstaining from planting himself at the historic point of -view, before settling the previous question whether the historic point -of view is permitted in considering the religious movements of Europe. -Until Voltaire and others had divested the current religion of its -supernatural pretensions, it was impossible for any thinker, who -declines to try to take the second step before he has already taken the -first, to survey the operations of such a religion as a merely secular -force. This surely is a field of thought where no serious inquirer could -content himself with a mere working hypothesis. If the supernatural -claims of Catholicism are well founded, then the historic method of -treating it is either a frivolous diversion or else a grave and -mischievous heresy. The issue being of this moment, everybody who -studies the philosophy of history with effect must have made up his mind -in one way or the other. Voltaire had made up his mind very definitely, -and the conclusion to which, for adequate or inadequate reasons, he came -in this matter was one of the most influential agencies in preparing -men's minds for the construction and general reception of a sounder -historical philosophy than was within his own reach. That he did not see -the deduction from his work is a limitation of vision that he shares -with most of the men to whom it has fallen to overthrow old sytems, and -clear the ground on which the next generation has raised new. - - -II. - -Having said thus much on the general causes and conditions of Voltaire's -attack, we may next briefly examine his method. A brief examination -suffices, because, like all his contemporaries, he was so very -imperfectly acquainted with the principles of scientific criticism, and -because his weapons, though sharp and deadly enough for their purpose, -are now likely to become more and more thoroughly antiquated. In -criticism he was, as has often been remarked, the direct descendant of -Bayle. That is, his instruments were purely literary and dialectical. He -examined the various sacred narratives as if he had been reviewing a -contemporary historian. He delights in the minute cavils of literary -pyrrhonism, and rejoices in the artifice of imposing the significance of -the letter, where his adversaries strove for interpretation of the -spirit. As if, for instance, anything could be more childish than to -attack baptism by asking whether Christianity consists in throwing water -on the head, with a little salt in it.[201] He is perfectly content with -the exposure of a fallacy in words, without seeking to expose the root -fallacy of idea. Nothing short of the blindest partisanship can pretend -to find in this a proper or adequate method. The utmost that can be -said, and no just historian ought to forget to say it, is that it was -not more improper nor inadequate than the orthodox method of defence. -Bayle's commentary on the words, 'Compel them to come in,' would not -satisfy the modern requirements of scriptural exegesis, but it was quite -good enough to confound those who contended that the text was a direct -warrant and injunction from heaven for the bitterest persecution on -earth. But the unfair parry of unfair thrust, extenuate it as we may, -count it inevitable as we may, even reckoning up such advantages from it -as we can, and in the present case they were enormous, can never be any -pattern or masterpiece of retort; and it is folly to allow admiration -for the social merit of Voltaire's end to blind us to the logical -demerit of his means. It is deliberately to throw away the advantage of -our distance from the contest, and to sell for a momentary -self-indulgence in the spirit of party the birthright of a free and -equitable historic vision. Let men not fail to do justice to the gains -of humanity won by the emancipation of the eighteenth century; but we -shall be worse off than if they had never been transmitted, if they are -allowed to bind us to approve of every detail of the many movements by -which the final triumph was obtained. - -The key to his method of attack is given us in a sentence in one of his -letters to D'Alembert. 'It is never by means of metaphysics,' he says, -'that you will succeed in delivering men from error; you must prove the -truth by facts.'[202] In other words, the sublime abstract reasoning of -a Spinoza will do far less to dispel the narrow ideas, unfounded -beliefs, and false restrictive conceptions which cripple the human -intelligence so long as it is in bondage to a theological system, than a -direct disproval of the alleged facts on which the system professes to -rest. It is only by dealing immediately with these that you can make the -repulse of error a real question, substantially interesting to ordinary -men. Always remembering that Voltaire's intelligence was practical -rather than speculative, and, besides this, that from the time when he -commenced his attack in earnest the object which he had at heart was the -overthrow of a crushing practical institution, we may agree that in such -a humour and with such a purpose the most effective way of harassing so -active and pestilent a foe was to carry the war into the enemy's -quarters, and to use those kinds of arguments which the greatest number -of men would be likely to find cogent. We may complain that Voltaire -never rises from the ground into the region of the higher facts of -religion; and this is quite true. It would have been controversially -futile if he had done so. There was no audience in those times for the -discussion of the higher facts; and the reason of this was that the -spiritual instructors and champions themselves thrust into the front -place legends, miracles, and the whole of the peculiarly vulgar part of -the theological apparatus, which it would have been as absurd to -controvert metaphysically, as it would be to try to elevate a Gold-coast -negro from his fetish worship by the transcendental parts of Plato. - -It nearly always happens that the defenders of a decaying system, when -they find themselves surrounded by the wholly uncongenial atmosphere of -rationalistic method, fall back, not on the noblest, but on the -ignoblest parts of their system. Distressed by the light, they shrink -hurriedly into darkest recesses of the familiar caves, partly because -they have a sense of especial security in a region that they know so -well, and partly because they have misgivings lest the surrender of -articles or practices in which they only half believe, should by too -stringent process of logical compulsion lead to the destruction of -others in which they believe with all their hearts. Such tactics may or -may not be politic, but we can at least be quite certain that they tend -neither to elevation of religion, nor discovery of truth, nor profit and -sincerity of discussion. If a set of doctrines be attacked from many -quarters in an unworthy manner, and taken at their worst instead of at -their best, we may be quite sure that this is as much due to the -defenders as to the assailants. It was not Voltaire's fault that the -controversy turned on issues which a more modern opponent would not care -to dispute. He is constantly flippant and trivial, and constantly -manifests gross irreverence, but it was the writers whom he was -combating, writers like Sanchez or the stercorists, who had opened -frivolous and unbecoming questions that could hardly be exposed with -gravity. He was making war on an institution, and it was not his concern -to fight on ground which his adversary had never thought, and was too -blind and demoralised to be able to think, of taking up. It was not his -fault that the upholders of the creed he attacked, made a stand upon the -letter of sacred documents, upon prophecy and miracle and special -intervention, upon the virtues of relics and the liquefaction of the -blood of Saint Januarius. The same wise man who forbade us to answer a -fool according to his folly, also enjoined upon us to answer a fool -according to his folly, and the moral commentator agrees that each -prescription is as sage as its contradictory. - -If truth means anything, it was worth while to put to rout the -distortions of truth with which the church lowered the understanding of -its votaries. If truth means anything, then it was worth while to reply -to the allegation that the history of the Christian church is a long -witness of the goodness of heaven and the ever-present guidance of its -heavenly founder, by a record of the actual facts; of the simplicity, -equality, absence of multiplied rites, orders, and dogmas, among the -primitive members of the congregation, and of the radical differences -between the use of apostolic times and of times since; of the incurable -want of authority for all those tales of demons being cast out, pious -inscriptions in letters of gold found graven on the hearts of martyrs, -and the rest, which grow rare in proportion as we draw nearer to the -times when the evidence for them would have been preserved; of the -infamous character of many Christian heroes, from Constantine downwards, -and of the promptitude with which the Christians, as soon as ever they -had power, dyed their hands in the blood of their persecutors; of the -stupefying circumstances that after a revelation was made to the human -race by no less a prodigy than the incarnation of supreme power in a -mortal body, and the miraculous maintenance of this event and its -significance in the tradition, doctrine, discipline of the Catholic -church, yet the whole of Asia, the whole of Africa, all the possessions -of the English and Dutch in America, all the uncivilised Indian tribes, -all the southern lands, amounting to one-fifth part of the globe still -remain in the clutches of the demon, to verify that holy saying of many -being called but few chosen.[203] - -It may be said that this kind of argument really proves nothing at all -about the supernatural origin or character of the Christian revelation, -for which you must seek the responses not of ecclesiastical history but -of the human heart. And that may be a fair thing to say, but then this -contention of the new revelation being only a message to the heart has -only been heard since Voltaire thrust aside the very different -contention of his day. Those various beliefs were universally accepted -about the progress of the church, which were true in no sense whatever, -literal or spiritual, mystical or historical. People accepted traditions -and records, sacred and profane, as literal, accurate, categorical -declarations and descriptions of a long series of things done and -suffered. Moreover, the modern argument in favour of the supernatural -origin of the Christian religion, drawn from its suitableness to our -needs and its divine response to our aspirations, must be admitted by -every candid person resorting to it to be of exactly equal force in the -mouth of a Mahometan or a fire-worshipper or an astrolater. If you apply -a subjective test of this kind, it must be as good for the sincere and -satisfied votaries of one creed, as it is for those of any other. The -needs and aspirations of the Mahometan would not be satisfied by -fetishism or polytheism, nor those of the developed polytheist by -totem-worship. It would be ridiculous for so small a minority of the -race as the professors of Christianity to assume that their aspirations -are the absolute measure of those of humanity in every stage. The -argument can never carry us beyond the relativity of religious truth. - -Now the French apologist a hundred years ago dealt in the most absolute -possible matter. Christianity to him meant a set of very concrete ideas -of all sorts; any one who accepted them in the concrete and literal form -prescribed by the church would share infinite bliss, and any one who -rejected them, whether deliberately or from never having been so happy -as to hear of them, would be infinitely tormented. If this theory be -right, then Voltaire must naturally be abhorred by all persons who hold -it, as a perverse and mischievous hinderer of light. If it be wrong, and -we must observe that from its terms this is not one of the marvellously -multiplying beliefs of which we hear that they may be half wrong and -half right, then Voltaire may take rank with other useful expellers of -popular error. Everybody must admit how imperfect is all such treatment -of popular error; how little rich, how little comprehensive, how little -full. Yet the surgeon who has couched his patient's cataract has surely -done a service, even if he do not straightway carry him to enjoy the -restored faculty on some high summit of far and noble prospect. - -Voltaire's attack was essentially the attack of the English deists, as -indeed he is always willing enough to admit, pursued with far less -gravity and honest search for truth, but, it is hardly necessary to say, -with far more adroitness, rapidity, and grace of manner than any of -them, even than Bolingbroke. As we have seen, he insisted on throwing -himself upon the facts in the records that are least easily reconciled -with a general sense of probability and evidence, as gradually developed -in men by experience. He placed the various incidents of the Bible, the -interpretation of them by the church, the statement of doctrine, the -characters of prominent actors, in the full light of common experience -and of the maxims which experience has made second nature. 'I always -speak humanly,' he says mockingly, 'I always put myself in the place of -a man who, having never heard tell either of Jews or Christians, should -read these books for the first time, and not being illuminated by grace, -should be so unhappy as to trust unaided reason in the matter, until he -should be enlightened from on high.'[204] - -It is superfluous to detail the treatment to which he subjected such -mysteries of the faith as the inheritance of the curse of sin by all -following generations from the first fall of man; the appearance from -time to time, among an obscure oriental tribe, of prophets who foretold -the coming of a divine deliverer, who should wash away that fatal stain -by sacrificial expiation; the choice of this specially cruel, -treacherous, stubborn, and rebellious tribe, to be the favoured people -of a deity of spotless mercy and truth; the advent of the deliverer in -circumstances of extraordinary meanness and obscurity among a generation -that greeted his pretensions with incredulity, and finally caused him to -be put to death with ignominy, in spite of his appeal to the prophets -and to the many signs and wonders which he wrought among them; the -rising of this deliverer from the dead; the ascription to him in the -course of the next three or four centuries of claims which he never made -in person, and of propositions which he never advanced while he walked -on the earth, yet which must now be accepted by every one who would -after death escape a pitiless torment without end; the truly miraculous -preservation amid a fiery swarm of heresies, intricate, minute, subtle, -barely intelligible, but very soul-destroying, of that little fragile -thread of pure belief which can alone guide each spirit in the divinely -appointed path. Exposed to the light, which they were never meant to -endure, of ordinary principles of evidence founded on ordinary -experience, the immortal legends, the prophecies, the miracles, the -mysteries, on which the spiritual faith of Europe had hung for so many -generations, seemed to shrivel up in unlovely dissolution. The -authenticity of the texts on which the salvation of man depends, the -contradictions and inconsistencies of the documents, the incompatibility -between many acts and motives expressly approved by the holiest persons, -and the justice and mercy which are supposed to sit enthroned on high in -the bosoms, the forced constructions of prophecies and their -stultifying futility of fulfilment, the extraordinary frivolousness of -some of the occasions on which the divine power of thaumaturgy was -deliberately and solemnly exerted,--these were among the points at which -the messenger of Satan at Ferney was permitted sorely to buffet the -church. What is the date of the Apostles' Creed? What of the so-called -Athanasian Creed? How were the seven sacraments instituted one after -another? What was the difference between the synaxis and the mass? And -so forth through many hundreds of pages. - -Along with rationalistic questions in scriptural and ecclesiastical -history, are many more as to doctrine, and the assumption on which a -doctrine rests; questions as to the trinity, as to redemption by the -shedding of innocent blood, as to the daily miracle of -transubstantiation, as to the resurrection of the body, as to the -existence of an entity called soul independently of that matter which, -apart from miracle, seems an inseparable condition of its manifestation. -His arguments on all these subjects contain a strange mixture of shallow -mockery and just objection. The questions which he suggests for the -doctors as to the resurrection of the body may serve for an example. -Among them are these: - -'A Breton soldier goes to Canada. It happens by a not uncommon chance -that he falls short of food; he is forced to eat a piece of an Iroquois -whom he has killed over night. The Iroquois had fed on Jesuits for two -or three months, a great part of his body had thus become Jesuit. So -there is the body of the soldier with Iroquois, Jesuit, and whatever he -had eaten before, entering into it. How then will each resume exactly -what belongs to him?' 'In order to come to life again, to be the same -person you were, you must have a lively and present recollection; it is -memory that makes your identity. Having lost memory, how are you to be -the same man?' Again, 'considering that only certain material elements -are proper for the composition of the human body, where is earth enough -to be found to remake all the bodies needed for so many hundreds of -generations? And supposing that by a prodigious miracle the whole human -race could be resuscitated in the Valley of Jehoshaphat, where are all -the spirits meanwhile?'[205] - -Another very favourite mode of approaching the beliefs, incidents, and -personages of Jewish and Christian history was to show that they had -counterparts in some pagan fables or systems, in the books of Chinese -philosophers or Brahminical sages. The inference from this identity or -correspondence between some Judaical practices and myths, and the -practices and myths of Arabians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Hindoos, was -that they were in all cases equally the artificial creations of -impostors preying on the credu-lity of men, 'the first prophet or -diviner having been the first rogue who met the first fool.' It is -curious to observe how the modern argument from constantly extending -discoveries in comparative mythology tends to the demolition of the -special pretensions of Judaical myths of all sorts, by the very opposite -inference to that on which the Voltairean school rested. Voltaire urged -that as these myths resembled one another in this and that important -feature, therefore they were all equally spurious, false, and absurd. -The modern, on the contrary, would hold them all equally genuine, -equally free from the taint of imposture in priest or people, and -equally faithful representations of the mental states which produced and -accepted them. The weakening of the particular sanctity and objective -reality of any one form of these common primitive ways of thinking about -the action of non-human agents would be just as strong, whether we take -the new or the old view of the generation of myths, but the difference -of the effect of the two views upon the justice and fertility of -historic spirit is immeasurable. - -There is no sign, however, that Voltaire was ever seriously conscious of -the importance of a right consideration of the mental conditions of -primitive peoples. This study had been commenced in his own time by De -Brosses, the inventor of the term fetishism, and pronounced by competent -modern authorities to have been a powerful and original thinker upon the -facts of the infancy of civilisation.[206] Yet Voltaire treated the -speculations of this industrious inquirer with the same ignorant -contempt and scorn that the theological enemies of geology were once -accustomed to bestow on men who chipped bits of rock and cherished -fossils.[207] Oddly enough, Voltaire's carelessness and want of thought -on these matters left him with that very theory of the nature of the -development of cultivation, on which the theological school insists to -this day as against the scientific ethnologists. The question is whether -the earliest men were savages, or partially civilised; in other words, -whether civilisation has consisted in a certain uniform progression from -a state a little above the brutes, or whether the savage is not a being -who has degenerated from a partial degree of civilisation. The -progression theory was no doubt in a general way a characteristic -doctrine of the men of the eighteenth century, for which De Maistre, an -ardent and most ingenious advocate of the degeneration theory, reviled -them with his usual heartiness. Yet his eagerness to depress revelation -by exalting natural theology led Voltaire to the essentially theological -position that the earliest men had a clear and lofty idea of a Supreme -Being, and a ready appreciation of justice and charity in their -relations with one another, until the vile ambition of priestly and -prophetic impostors succeeded in setting upon their necks the yoke of -systems which corrupted the heart and conscience, and sophisticated a -pure and simple faith. - -He did not hold that men were conscious of the one God as they were -conscious of light, or that they had perceptions of such a being, as -they had perceptions of the ground they tilled. The idea was derived by -process of natural logic from the contemplation of astonishing natural -effects, of harvest and dearth, of fair days and tempests, of -benefactions and scourges. They saw all these things, and felt the work -of a master.[208] Just as in each community there were men who by the -force of their reason found out that triangles with the same base and of -the same height are equal, and others who in sowing and reaping and -tending their flocks perceived that the sun and moon returned pretty -nearly to the point from which they had started, and that they never -travelled beyond a certain limit to north or south, so there was a third -man who considered that men, animals, stars could not have made -themselves, and who saw that therefore a Supreme Being must exist; while -a fourth, struck by the wrongs that men inflicted on one another, -concluded that if there exists a being who made the stars, the earth, -and men, such a being must confer favour on the virtuous, and -punishments on the wicked. This idea, Voltaire declares, is so natural -and so good that it was most readily embraced.[209] The various forms of -revelations were only so many corruptions of that simple, serviceable, -and self-proving monotheism, and so were the conceptions of polytheism. -He had no notion that monotheism is a later development of the -theological spirit than polytheism. Unable to deny that the Greeks and -Romans, about whom he knew so little and talked so much, had plurality -of gods, he drew a distinction between one Supreme Being and all the -rest, and contended that you may search all their records in vain for a -single fact or a single word to counterbalance the many passages and -monuments which attest their belief of the sovereignty of the one deity -and his superiority over all the rest.[210] We do not know whether this -was a fortuitous kind of growth in his own mind, or whether it was a -scrap of recollection from the painstaking pages in which Cudworth had -worked at the establishment of that explanation of polytheism. Voltaire -too often writes on these weighty subjects, as if trusting to a memory -that snatched effectively at plausible theories, while losing much of -their evidence and all their deeper bearings. - -It would be not a little extraordinary, if we did not constantly -remember that Voltaire's strength did not lie in speculation or -systematic thought, that he saw none of the objections to this account -of things, and that he was content with so limited an observation of the -facts. If De Brosses had magnanimously suffered himself to be cheated in -the transaction of the fourteen cords of wood, Voltaire would perhaps -have read his book candidly, and if he had read it otherwise than with a -foregone resolution to despise it, he would have come upon a number of -circumstances entirely fatal to his smooth theory that many gods are -always subordinate to the one, because he would have had to consider -those states of the human mind in which there are no spiritual gods at -all, but in which every object whatever is invested with volition and -power. In one place he shows something like a recognition of the true -nature of the process. 'I have always been persuaded,' he says in a -letter to Mairan, 'that the phenomena of the heavens have been in the -main the source of the old fables. Thunder was heard on the inaccessible -summit of a mountain; therefore there must be gods dwelling on the -mountain, and launching the thunder. The sun seems to speed from east to -west, therefore he has fine coursers. The rain does not touch the head -of one who sees a rainbow, so the rainbow is a token that there will -never again be a deluge.'[211] But then Voltaire was no systematic -thinker, and thus there was no security that any given right idea which -came into his mind would either remain present to him, or would be -followed up and placed along with other ideas in a scientific order. -Apart from this, however, it is extraordinary that Voltaire's extreme -acuteness did not suggest to him the question, how it was that the -artless and clear belief in one God became more and more obscured by the -growing multitude of other gods, just in proportion as the primitive -tribes became more civilised in all the arts of life. If the nomad -progenitors of the Greeks had only one god, how was it that, as -knowledge, social feeling, love of beauty, and all the other ennobling -parts of man became more fully developed, the power of superstition -waxed greater, and temples and images were multiplied! - -Again, the theologist might, consistently with his deliberate principle -of resort to the miraculous, contend that this first conception of a -single supreme power, in the fact of the existence of which he is -entirely at one with Voltaire, was directly implanted by a supernatural -force. But Voltaire, debarred from such an explanation as this, was -driven silently to assume and imply the truly incredible position that -the rudest savages, being what we know them, urgently occupied in the -struggle for means of subsistence, leading lives purely animal, -possessed of no vocabulary for any abstract idea, should yet by one leap -of natural logic have risen to one of the very highest pinnacles of -speculation, and both felt and expressed the idea of cause in the most -general and comprehensive of all its forms. Surely this assumption, -measured by any of those standards of experience or probability to which -he professed to appeal, was as much of a miracle as those which he so -decisively repudiated. - -In one of his letters Voltaire declared that Locke was the only -reasonable metaphysician that he knew, and that next to him he placed -Hume.[212] Did he ever read, we may wonder, that masterly essay on the -Natural History of Religion, where Hume not only combats with his usual -vigour and effectiveness the idea of the belief in one omniscient, -omnipotent, and omnipresent spirit being the primary religion of men, -and shows that polytheism precedes monotheism, but also traces the -origin of all religion to its rudiment, in that 'universal tendency -among mankind to conceive all beings like themselves, and to transfer to -every object those qualities with which they are familiarly acquainted, -and of which they are intimately conscious?'[213] The greater the -knowledge we acquire of the spiritual rudiments of primitive people, the -more certainly is it established that the idea of theism as the earliest -and most elementary belief, which Voltaire had picked up from -Bolingbroke and Pope, is untenable, and that Hume has been more and more -fully warranted in saying that the only point of theology on which the -consent of mankind is nearly universal is that 'there is an invisible, -intelligent power in the world, but whether this power be supreme or -subordinate, whether confined to one being or distributed among several, -what attributes, qualities, connections, or principles of action, ought -to be ascribed to these beings, concerning all these points there is the -widest difference in the popular systems of theology.'[214] This might -be placing natural theology very low, but Hume at any rate placed it -where he did and described it as he did, because he had knowledge enough -of the condition of various nations in various parts of their history, -and was sufficiently penetrated with a cautious and scientific spirit, -to abstain from the unsupported and purely metaphysical conjectures of -men like Voltaire and Rousseau. Well might the keen-eyed De Maistre -describe him from the Catholic point of view as the most dangerous and -the guiltiest of all those pestilent writers,--the one who employed most -talent with most coolness to do most mischief.[215] - -If Voltaire had studied Hume, moreover, he might have learnt how futile -and inappropriate it is in the long run to examine a religion otherwise -than in its most fundamental and comprehensive general ideas, and how -narrow and superficial would every philosophic appreciation ultimately -find what he called refutation by facts. For his own immediate purpose, -which was to cover the church and its creed with ridicule, the method of -collecting all the ludicrous, immoral, and inconsistent circumstances in -the Scriptures and their current interpretation, was, as we have already -said, a weapon potent enough. Voltaire, however, not only did not use, -he never understood nor perceived, the fact that a religion rests for -its final base on a certain small number of ideas, or that it is only by -touching these, by loosening the firmness of their hold, by revealing -their want of coherency and consistency with other accepted ideas, that -we can expect to shake the superstructure. For example, if only the -official exponents of religion had not been so firmly bent on making -the feeblest of all their ramparts into their very citadel, it would -have been a very small thing to urge the truly singular quality of such -miracles as those of the water made wine at Cana, of the cursing of the -barren fig-tree, of the unfortunate swine who rushed violently down a -steep place and were choked. These were legends that from the right -point of view of religion were not worth defending, any more than from -the right point of view of truth they were worth attacking. The details -of the use of a supernaturally conferred power may best be let alone, -until the probability of the existence and bestowal of such power has -been discussed and decided. The important issue and matter of vital -concern turned upon the general idea of the miraculous; yet this was -what Voltaire, perhaps from an instinctive consciousness of the little -capacity he possessed for genuine speculation, postponed to the really -secondary purpose of disparaging particular cases of miraculous -performance. - -We are now touching what, before Hume, was the central defect of the -eighteenth-century attack, judged philosophically rather than -practically. The movement was a reaction against a certain set of ideas -which had been incorporated in the Christian system, as that system was -elaborated by the oriental sophisters. Yet the exact conflict between -the old ideas and the new was never conceived, much less was it -expressed, in clear comprehensive formulas. Consequently the most -general terms for the debate were neither sought nor found, and hence -the oppressive narrowness, the stifling want of free air, throughout the -controversy. The truth or falsehood which it is good for us to discover -in connection with a religion resides not in detail, but in the largest -general ideas of the subject. These draw all else along with them. Let -us take an illustration from a characteristic of the anti-christian -attack which has already been mentioned. The Voltairean school, as we -have before observed,[216] habitually derided the sacred importance -attached by the church in all ages, from Saint Paul downwards, to the -practice of continence. But there is no sign, so far as the present -writer's knowledge goes, that they ever were near perceiving the origin -of that superstition lying deep down for so many centuries in the human -mind. The sanctity of continence was only one product of the old -far-spreading conviction of all the evil and unholiness essentially -inherent in matter. This conviction, which has itself a history and -genesis well worth tracing, probably accounts for more of the peculiar -manifestations contained in Christianity than any one principle of -belief besides. From this metaphysical idea sprang the whole theory of -asceticism; it had much to do indirectly with the first establishment of -the doctrine of the divinity of Christ; it entered into the triumph of -indispensable grace.[217] The speculative origin of practices and -sentiments which the heads of the western church valued, modified, and -sagaciously used for ecclesiastical or political reasons, ought never to -be lost sight of, because their duration has depended on the -circumstance of the original speculative idea remaining deeply sunk, -though not often put into articulate form, in the minds of the faithful, -and of all others whom these practices and sentiments have influenced. -One key to the central movement of the eighteenth century is the -dispersion of this association of evil and corruption from matter. There -was energetic and triumphant progress in the discovery of the laws of -matter, in their most stupendous, overwhelming, and majestic order. -There was a steady tendency to resolve mental manifestations into -functions of matter. There was a general inclination to forget those -depressing facts connected with the decay and dissolution of matter, -which, in the dismal times when the church was founded, had been thrust -into a prominence so humiliating to human dignity. The general movement -was carried too far by extreme spirits, but on the whole it was a -salutary and much-needed protest against the limitation of knowledge -within airy cloudlands where no true knowledge was to be reached, and of -emotion within transcendental aspirations where the deep reality of -human relations faded into dim distance. - -It is only when controversy is conducted with reference to ground ideas -of this kind, that the parties to it can be sure of being on the same -plane, and, if they are not on the same plane, one of the least -mischiefs is that their arguments fly over one another's heads. -Voltaire failed, partly from want of historic knowledge, partly from -insufficient depth of nature, to see what these ground ideas were, -against which he was fighting. Thus, to take another instance, he failed -to see that the belief in the exertion of supernatural power, even on -occasions which struck him as so frivolous, and in a manner undoubtedly -incompatible with justice, was merely an incidental result of a -profoundly rooted idea of the closeness, constancy, and mixed holiness -and majesty, of the relations between man and an awful being other than -man, endowed with powers denied to us, and animated by motives -inscrutable to us. He chose, if we are not wrong in using a term that -may imply much conscious deliberation, to identify his own conception of -deity with the conception of deity in the first four centuries of the -Christian era, simply because the object of each was called by a common -name. He found that the actions attributed to the Supreme Being whom the -church revered, were unworthy of a personage endowed with the qualities -which he ascribed to a supreme power, in his own version of that -culminating conception. He was thus never on the same plane of thought -or argument, but he never was near finding this out. The God whom he -conceived was incapable, from the very nature attributed to him by his -worshippers, of the various transactions, lofty and mean, sublime and -puerile, described in the documents on which Catholicism relied, and -the tradition by which it corroborated and interpreted them. The ground -idea of the belief in the miraculous was an extremely anthropomorphic -notion of a divinity, possessed of complete power, but using it in -obedience to motives which finite understandings cannot pretend to -fathom or measure. Such a notion was the natural growth of the human -mind, amid such a set of circumstances as attended the development and -establishment of Christianity. Men sat in darkness, forlorn and without -hope, and it is not hard for us to imagine the exultation with which -some greater spirit would produce, and all others would embrace, the -idea of this misery and darkness being no more than an outer accident, -the mysterious and incomprehensible dispensation of a divine being, ever -alive to the destinies of men, but holding them in the hollow of an -unseen hand, and guiding them in ways that are not as our ways; ever -remote from corporeal vision, but operating at a multitude of points on -the spirit of each man through grace, and finally, by a consummating -miracle repeated daily some thousands of times, severing this spirit -from the probation of flesh, and prolonging its existence independently -of the body through all eternity in modes of being, none the less real -for being impossible to conceive. To Voltaire this was unspeakable -foolishness. The prodigies of grace, of the resurrection of the body, of -the incarnation of divinity, were inconsistent with the qualities which -he imputed to the creator of the universe, and hence he contented -himself with mocking at them; the real state of the case was simply that -a number of influences had drawn men aside from that conception of the -creator, with which such prodigies were not inconsistent, but were on -the contrary logically and inseparably associated. - -This failure to rise to the highest ideas involved in the great debate -explains, along with much besides, two striking facts connected with it. -It explains the intense acerbity of the conflict, and the flaming depth -of the chasm which divided and divides the two camps in France. For the -best natures are most violently irritated and outraged by mocking and -satiric attack upon the minor details, the accidents, the outside of the -objects of faith, when they would have been affected in a very different -way by a contrast between the loftiest parts of their own belief and the -loftiest parts of some other belief. Many persons who would listen to a -grave attack on the consistency, reasonableness, and elevation of the -currently ascribed attributes of the godhead, with something of the -respect due to the profound solemnity of the subject, would turn with -deaf and implacable resentment upon one who should make merry over the -swine of Gadara. - -The same circumstance, secondly, explains the absence of permanent -quality about all that Voltaire wrote upon religion. For instance, men -who sympathise with him in his aims, and even for their sake forgive him -his method, who have long ago struck the tents under which they once -found shelter in the lands of belief, to whom Catholicism has become as -extinct a thing as Mahometanism, even they will turn with better chance -of edification to the great masters and teachers of the old faith, than -to the fiery precursor of the new. And why, if not for the reason that -while he dealt mainly with the lower religious ideas, or with the higher -ideas in their lowest forms, they put these into the second place, and -move with an inspiring exultation amid the loftiest and most general -conceptions that fine imagination and a soaring reason could discover -among the spiritual treasures of their religion. They turned to the -diviner mind, and exercised themselves with the weightiest and most -universal circumstances of the destiny of mankind. This is what makes -their thought and eloquence of perpetual worth, because the -circumstances with which they deal are perpetually present, and the -elements of life and character to which they appeal perpetually -operative. The awful law of death, the impenetrable secret of the first -cause, the fierce play of passion and universal distribution of pain, -the momentariness of guilt and eternity of remorse, the anguish of -bereavement that chokes and rends, the hopeless inner desolation which -is the unbroken lot of myriads of the forlorn of the earth,--these -ghostly things ever laying siege to the soul were known to a Bossuet or -a Pascal, and resolved by a series of ideas about the unknowable power -and the government of the world, which are no longer the mighty weapons -of exorcism they once were, but they are at any rate of due magnitude -and proportion, sublime, solemn, never unworthy. We touch the hands of -those who have walked with the most high, and they tell us many moving -wonders; we look on faces that have shone in rays from the heaven of -noble thoughts; we hear solemn and melodious words from men who received -answers from oracles that to us are very mute, but the memory of whose -power is still upon us. Hence the work of these glowing mortals lives -even for those to whom their faith is dead, while the words that -Voltaire wrote on religion are lifeless as the Infamous which they so -meritoriously slew. As we have said, he never knew the deeper things of -Catholicism. This is what he wrote about the immortal Dante: 'Everybody -with a spark of good sense ought to blush at that monstrous assemblage -in hell of Dante and Virgil, of Saint Peter and Madonna Beatrice. There -are to be found among us, in the eighteenth century, people who force -themselves to admire feats of imagination as stupidly extravagant and as -barbarous as this; they have the brutality to oppose them to the -masterpieces of genius, wisdom, and eloquence, that we have in our -language. _O tempora, O judicium!_'[218] To which prodigy of criticism -we can only exclaim with the echo, _O tempora, O judicium!_ - - -III. - -Let us see shortly what was Voltaire's own solution of those facts of -life with which religion has to deal. The Catholic solution we know, and -can definitely analyse and describe; but the vagueness of Voltairean -deism defies any attempt at detailed examination. We can perceive a -supernatural existence, endowed with indefinable attributes, which are -fixed subjectively in the individual consciousness of each believer, and -which therefore can never be set forth in a scheme of general -acceptance. The Voltairean deist--and such persons exist in ample numbers -to this day--hardly ever takes the trouble to reconcile with one another -the various attributes which he imputes at various times to some great -master power of the universe. There is scarcely one of these attributes -to which, when it comes to be definitely described, he does not -encounter affronting contradiction in the real occurrences that arise -from time to time to search and try all our theories, deistical, or -other. The phenomena of moral and physical evil on the earth, and the -arrival of disasters which make no discrimination between their victims, -are constantly dealing sore blows to the conceptions which the deist -loves to erect in moments of optimistic expansion, of the clemency, -justice, and illimitable power of a being who governs the universe, and -is a something outside and independent of it. These optimist -conceptions, vague, unverified, free of definite relations with any -moral or social system, and furnishing no principle of active human -association as the Catholic idea of deity had done, constitute the -favourite religion or religiosity of those classes in all modern -countries, which have found the Voltairean kind of objection to the -Christian revelation insuperable, and which are so fortunate as to enjoy -a full measure of material prosperity. To these classes the black side -of life is strange and a matter of hearsay; and hence the awkwardness of -reconciling their complacent theory with the horror of facts is never -forced upon them. In their own happiness they love to superadd the -luxury of thankfulness to the bounty of a being to whom they owe all, -and to swell the tide of their own emotions by meditation on his -infinite and unspeakable perfections. Proof they require none, beyond -the loveliness and variety of external nature, the innocence and delight -of all young creatures, the order of the seasons bearing us their -copious fruit, the vivid intelligence and serviceable power of man, who -is the divinely appointed recipient of all these multitudinous favours. -Hence in proportion as this sort of deism stirs the soul of a man, the -more closely are his inmost thoughts reserved for contemplation of the -relations between the Supreme Being and his own individuality. It is a -creed which is specially adapted for, and has been generally seized by, -those with whom the world has gone very well, owing to their own -laudable exertion, and who are inclined to believe that the existing -ordering of society is fundamentally the best possible. It is the -superlative decoration of optimism. - -The mass of men, those who dwell in dens and whose lives are bitter, -have never, in spite even of Rousseau's teaching, accepted deism. An -opportunity for trying the experiment had occurred in the fourth -century, and the lesson should not be forgotten. Deism had been the -prevailing opinion in religion, but, as the most instructive of all the -historians of the dissolution of the Empire observes, it was generally -felt that deism did not supply the void occasioned by the absence of the -multitude of sympathetic divinities of the pagan system. Its influence -was cold and inanimate.[219] The common people are wont to crave a -revelation, or else they find atheism a rather better synthesis than any -other. They either cling to the miraculously transmitted message with -its hopes of recompense, and its daily communication of the divine voice -in prayer or sacrament, or else they make a world which moves through -space as a black monstrous ship with no steersman. The bare deistic -idea, of a being endowed at once with sovereign power and sovereign -clemency, with might that cannot be resisted and justice that cannot be -impugned, who loves man with infinite tenderness, yet sends him no word -of comfort and gives him no way of deliverance, is too hard a thing for -those who have to endure the hardships of the brutes, but yet preserve -the intelligence of men. - - Comment concevoir un Dieu, la bont mme, - Qui prodigua ses biens ses enfans qu'il aime, - Et qui versa sur eux les maux pleines mains? - Quel oeil peut pntrer dans ses profonds desseins? - De l'tre tout parfait le mal ne pouvait natre! - Il ne vient point d'autrui puisque Dieu seul est matre: - Il existe pourtant. O tristes vrits! - O melange etonnant de contrarits! - Un Dieu vint consoler notre race afflige; - Il visita la terre et ne l'a point change! - Un sophiste arrogant nous dit qu'il ne l'a pu; - Il le pouvait, dit l'autre, et ne l'a point voulu; - Il le voudra, sans doute; et tandis qu'on raisonne, - Des foudres souterraines engloutissent Lisbonne, - Et de trente cits dispersent les dbris, - Des bords sanglans du Tage la mer de Cadix.[220] - -A bald deism has undoubtedly been the creed of some of the purest and -most generous men that have ever trod the earth, but none the less on -that account is it in its essence a doctrine of self-complacent -individualism from which society has little to hope, and with which -there is little chance of the bulk of society ever sympathising. In -truth, one can scarcely call it a creed. It is mainly a name for a -particular mood of fine spiritual exaltation; the expression of a state -of indefinite aspiration and supreme feeling for lofty things. Are you -going to convert the new barbarians of our western world with this fair -word of emptiness? Will you sweeten the lives of suffering men, and -take its heaviness from that droning piteous chronicle of wrong and -cruelty and despair, which everlastingly saddens the compassionating ear -like moaning of a midnight sea; will you animate the stout of heart with -new fire, and the firm of hand with fresh joy of battle, by the thought -of a being without intelligible attributes, a mere abstract creation of -metaphysic, whose mercy is not as our mercy, nor his justice as our -justice, nor his fatherhood as the fatherhood of men? It was not by a -cold, a cheerless, a radically depraving conception such as this, that -the church became the refuge of humanity in the dark times of old, but -by the representation, to men sitting in bondage and confusion, of -godlike natures moving among them under figure of the most eternally -touching of human relations, a tender mother ever interceding for them, -and an elder brother laying down his life that their burdens might be -loosened. - -We have spoken of Voltairean deism, and the expression is a convenient -one to distinguish from the various forms of mystic theology, which -gloomily disclaim any pretence to be rational, the halting-place of -spirits too deeply penetrated with the rationalistic objections of -Voltaire to accept revelation, and either too timorous or too confident -to acquiesce in a neutral solution. It is unjust, however, to attribute -to Voltaire himself a perfect adherence to the deistical idea. For the -first half of his life there is no doubt that it floated in his mind, -as in so many others, in a random manner, as the true explanation of the -world. His introduction to the teaching of Newton would give a firmer -shape to such a belief. He has indeed told us that it was so. He -mentions that in the course of several interviews he had with Doctor -Samuel Clarke in 1726, this philosopher never pronounced the name of God -without a curious air of awe and self-collection, and he commemorates -the impression which the sight of this habit, and reflection upon its -significance, made upon him[221]. Still it was not a very active or -vital element of belief with him even then, but rather of the nature of -the sublimest of poetic figures. - - Oui, dans le sein de Dieu, loin de ce corps mortel, - L'esprit semble couter la voix l'Eternel[222]. - -Clearly this kind of expression means very little, and has no source in -the deeper seats of the writer's feeling. A considerable number of -Voltaire's deistical ejaculations, and on these occasions he threw into -them a measure of real unction, may be fairly traced to the -extraordinary polemical utility of an idea of spotless purity, entire -justice, inexhaustible mercy, as an engine of battle against men who in -the sacred name of this idea were the great practitioners of intolerance -and wrong. - - Ignorer ton tre suprme, - Grand Dieu! c'est un moindre blasphme, - Et moins digne de ton courroux - Que de te croire impitoyable, - De nos malheurs insatiable, - Jaloux, injuste comme nous. - Lorsqu'un dvot atrabilaire - Nourri de superstition, - A par cette affreuse chimre, - Corrompu sa religion, - Le voil stupide et farouche: - Le fiel dcoule de sa bouche, - Le fanatisme arme son bras: - Et dans sa pit profonde - Sa rage immolerait le monde - A son Dieu, qu'il ne connat pas.[223] - -To have a conception of perfect goodness was a manifest convenience in -confronting men who were to be proved masters of badness. But when the -pressure of circumstance forced Voltaire to seek in earnest for an -explanation of the world, which he had formerly been content to take in -an easy way upon trust, then the deism, which had been barely more than -nominal at best, was transformed into a very different and far sincerer -mood. It would obviously be a gross blunder from a logical point to -confound optimism with deism, but it is clear that what shook Voltaire's -conviction of the existence of a deity was the awakening in him of a -keener sense of the calamities that afflict the race of man. Personal -misfortunes perhaps had their share. It was after the loss of Madame du -Chtelet, and after the rude dispersion of his illusions as to -Frederick, when he barely knew whither to turn for shelter or a home, -that the optimism which he had learnt in England began to lose its hold -upon him. We must do him the justice to add that he was yet more -sensible of disasters which affected others. The horrid tide of war -which devastated Europe and America, the yet more hateful tide of -persecution for opinion which swept over France, and the cruel -maladministration of justice which disgraced her tribunals, stirred all -that was best in him to the very depths. The only non-dramatic poem of -his which has strength, sincerity, and profundity of meaning enough -firmly to arrest the reader's attention, and stimulate both thought and -feeling, is that fine and powerful piece which he wrote on the occasion -of the great earthquake of Lisbon.[224] Here he threw into energetic and -passionately argumentative verse the same protest against the theory -that whatever is is best, which he afterwards urged in a very different -form in the 'refined insolence' of Candide.[225] He approaches more -nearly than a quarter of a century before he would have thought -possible, to the deep gloom of the Pascal against whose terrible -pictures he had then so warmly protested. He sees mankind imprisoned in -a circle of appalling doom, from which there is no way of escape. Unlike -Pascal, he can find no solution, and he denounces that mockery of a -solution which cries that all is well in accents stifled with -lamentation. He protests against the delusion of forcing the course of -the world's destiny into a moral formula, that shall contain the terms -of justice and mercy in their human sense. - - Aux cris demi-forms de leurs voix expirantes, - Au spectacle effrayant de leurs cendres fumantes, - Direz-vous: C'est l'effet des ternelles lois, - Qui d'un Dieu libre et bon ncessitent le choix? - Direz-vous, en voyant cet amas de victimes: - Dieu s'est veng, leur mort est le prix de leurs crimes? - Quelle crime, quelle faute ont commis ces enfans - Sur le sein maternel crass et sanglans? - Lisbonne, qui n'est plus, eut-elle plus de vices - Que Londres, que Paris, plongs dans les dlices? - Lisbonne est abme, et l'on danse Paris. - -He equally refuses, though not in terms, to comfort himself by the -reflection that, in default of a better, the current ragged theory of -the providential government of the universe, because it may be possible, -must be true. He can find no answer, and confesses his belief that no -answer is to be found by human effort. Whatever side we take, we can -only shudder; there is nothing that we know, nothing that we have not to -fear. Nature is mute, and we interrogate her in vain; the book of -destiny is closed to our eyes. - - L'homme, tranger soi, de l'homme est ignor. - Que suis-je? o suis-je? o vais-je? et d'o suis-je tir? - Atomes tourments sur cet amas de boue, - Que la mort engloutit, et dont le sort se joue, - Mais atomes pensans, atomes dont les yeux, - Guids par la pense, ont mesur les cieux, - Au sein de l'infini nous laons notre tre, - Sans pouvoir un moment nous voir et nous connatre. - - * * * * * - - Le pass n'est pour nous qu'un triste souvenir; - Le prsent est affreux, s'il n'est point d'avenir, - Si la nuit du tombeau dtruit l'tre qui pense. - -He abandons Plato and rejects Epicurus. Bayle knows more than they, as, -with the balance in his hand, he teaches men to doubt; wise enough, -great enough, to be without a system. - -In a note he adds to this glorification of Bayle, whom he styles the -advocate-general of the philosophers--the thinker in whose pages all -opinions are set forth, all the reasons which shake them and all which -uphold are equally investigated, while he abstains from giving any -conclusions.[226] Elsewhere he explains that when he describes reason as -having made immense progress in Germany, he does not refer to those who -openly embrace the system of Spinoza; but the good folk who have no -fixed principles on the nature of things, who do not know what is, but -know very well what is not, these are my true philosophers.[227] - -It would not be difficult to find a score of passages in which the -writer assumes or declares certainty on this high matter to be -attainable, and to be entirely in one direction. His opinions -undoubtedly shifted with the veering of his moods, but on the whole -these axioms of suspense mark the central point to which they constantly -tended to return, and at which they rested longest. That dark word, Shut -thine eyes and thou shalt see, opened no road for him. The saying that -the Most High may be easily known, provided one does not press for -definition, offered no treasure of spiritual acquisition to the man who -never let go, even if he did not always accurately appreciate, Locke's -injunction to us to be careful to define our terms. We cannot label -Voltaire either spiritualist or materialist. The success with which he -evades these two appellations is one of the best available tests of a -man's capacity for approaching the great problems with that care and -positive judgment, which are quite as proper to them as to practical -affairs or to physical science. - -Thus with reference to the other great open question, he habitually -insisted that the immortality of the soul can never possibly be -demonstrated, and that this is why it has been revealed to us by -religion,[228] which is perhaps Voltaire's way of saying that it is no -near concern of his. Sometimes he argued from considerations of general -probability. The brutes feel and think up to a certain point, and men -have only the advantage over them of a greater combination of ideas; the -more or less makes no difference in kind. 'Well, nobody thinks of giving -an immortal soul to a flea; why should you give one any the more to an -elephant, or a monkey, or my Champagne valet, or a village steward who -has a trifle more instinct than my valet?'[229] Again, he retorted -significantly on those who contended with a vehemence of prejudice -known in some places even to this day, that belief in the immortality of -the soul is an indispensable condition of probity; as if the first Jews -accepted that dogma, and as if there were no honest men among them, and -no instruction in virtue.[230] - - -In fine, then, we search Voltaire in vain for a positive creed, which -logic may hold in coherent bonds, or social philosophy accept as a -religious force. The old word about his faith must be pronounced true. -It remains a creed of negation. But still, be it always understood, -negation of darkness. And this inevitably leads in the direction of the -day. It was an indispensable step in the process of transition. Men, it -is constantly being said since the violent breaking-up of French -society, will never consent to live on no better base than articles of -denial and formulas of suspense, for are not the deepest parts of human -character moved by strong yearning for relationship with the unknowable? -It may be so, and if it be, the Voltairean movement was the great -instrument in leading, not merely a scanty group of speculative -intellects, but vast bodies, large nations, of common folk to perceive, -or dimly to conjecture, that this object of adoration which their eyes -strain after _is_ unknowable, and that there is no attainable external -correlative of their deep desire. Voltaire never went so far in the -direction of assertion as Rousseau, and he never went so far in the -direction of denial as Holbach. And, whatever we may say generally of -the horror of the world for the spirit that denies, all that was best -and most truly progressive in French society during the eighteenth -century, Turgot and Condorcet no less than Beaumarchais, showed itself -content to follow him in this middle path. His appreciation of religion -was wanting in a hundred vital things, just as some may say that -Luther's was, but it contained the one idea which the deepest spirit of -the time prompted men to desire, the decisive repudiation of the -religious notions of the past. We must call this negative, no doubt, but -no word should frighten us away from seeing how much positive aspiration -lay underneath. When men are in the mood of France a century and a -quarter since, when all that an old civilisation has bestowed on them of -what is best and strongest, rises up against all that the same -civilisation has bequeathed to them of what is pestilent and dangerous, -they are never nice critics. They do not decline a reinvigorating -article of faith, because it is not a system, nor do they measure a -deliverer by syllogism. The smallest chink may shine like light of the -sun to prisoners long held in black and cavernous recesses. - -When Bayle's Dictionary came out, we read, so great was the avidity to -have sight of it, that long before the doors of the Mazarin library were -open, a little crowd assembled in the early morning of each day, and -there was as great a struggle for the first access to the precious book, -as for the front row at the performance of a piece for which there is a -rage.[231] This was the beginning of an immense impulse of curiosity, -eager to fill the vacuum occasioned by the slow subsidence of the old -religion, which had once covered not only faith, but science, history, -dialectic, and philosophy, all in a single synthesis. It was this -impulse which Voltaire both represented and accelerated. In these -periods of agitation, men forgive all to one who represents without -compromise or diminution their own dominant passions. Vehemence of -character counts for more than completeness of doctrine, and they crave -a battle-cry, not a dissertation. They need to have their own sentiment -aggressively presented, and their own defects of boldness or courage at -once rebuked and supplemented by a leader whose purpose can never be -mistaken, and whose words are never nipped by the frost of intellectual -misgiving. All through the century there was slowly growing up an inner -France, full of angry disgust against the past. Its germ was the crowd -eager to read Bayle. Its outcome was the night of the Fourth of August -1789, when the civil order of society was overthrown between a sunset -and a dawn. Voltaire, as we have seen, studiously abstained from any -public word upon things political, but it was he who in the long -interval between these two events held men by a watchword to which the -political decay of the country gave such meaning, that of hatred to the -old. And there was no such steadfast symbol of the old as the church, -to him and his school a lurid beacon on a monster-haunted shore. - -Voltaire's selection of the church as the object of his attacks marks an -important difference between him and the other great revolutionary -precursor. Rousseau's Savoyard Vicar was perfectly willing to accept the -cultus of Christianity, even when he had ceased to accept its dogma. He -regarded all particular religions as so many salutary institutions, all -good so long as they were the organs for a due service of God. He -actually celebrated mass with more veneration after the acquisition of -his new principles, than he had been accustomed to do when he supposed -that the mass was an occasion of personal divine presence. This kind of -teaching was clearly to perpetuate and transfix for ever the form of -religion which each country, or any given set of men in it, might -possess. It was to stereotype belief, as it is stereotyped among the -millions in the East. Whence was reform to come, whence any ray of new -light, whence a principle of growth and activity for the intelligence of -men? How on these terms is truth to win the battle at a single point? -This was the beginning of a fatal substitution of bland emotional -complacency for robust cultivation of the reason, and firm reverence for -its lessons as the highest that we can learn. Voltaire no doubt did in -practice many a time come to terms with his adversary while he was yet -on the way with him; but, disagreeable as these temporisings are to us -who live in an easier day, they never deceived any one, nor could they -ever be mistaken for the establishment of intellectual treason as a -principle, or of philosophic indifference as a climax. As has been said, -though he writes in the midst of the old rgime, in the face of the -Bastille, and with the fetters of the enemy in some sort actually upon -him, he still finds a thousand means of reaching you.[232] He is always -the representative of reason, and never of sentimentalism. He was not -above superficial compromises in matters of conduct, and these it is -hard or impossible to condone; but at any rate he is free from the -deeper and more penetrating reproach of erecting hypocrisy into a -deliberate doctrine. - -We do not know how far he ever seriously approached the question, so -much debated since the overthrow of the old order in France, whether a -society can exist without a religion? He says in one place that to -believe God and spirits corporeal is an old metaphysical error, but -absolutely not to believe in any god would be an error incompatible with -wise government. But even this much was said for the sake of introducing -a taunt against the orthodox, who by a strange contradiction had risen -up with fury against Bayle for believing it possible that a society of -atheists could hold together, while they insisted with just as much -violence that the empire of China was established on a basis of -atheism.[233] His natural sagacity would most likely have shown him -that this is one of the sterile problems, with which the obstructive -defender of things as they are tries to draw the soldier of improvement -away from his strongest posts. Whether a society can exist without -religion or not, at least its existence as a structure for whose -duration we can be anxious, must depend on the number of men in it who -deal honestly with their own understandings. And, further, is no man to -be counted to have a religion who, like Voltaire, left great questions -open, and put them aside, as all questions, that must from the -limitations of human faculty eternally remain open, well deserve to be -put aside? Must we ever call an unknown God by one name? Are there so -few tasks for one on earth, that he must strain all his soul to fix the -regimen of high heaven? - -Voltaire, there is every reason to think, did in an informal kind of way -suppose in the bottom of his heart that there is nothing in human nature -to hinder a very advanced society from holding perfectly well together, -with all its opinions in a constant state of analysis. Whatever we may -think of it, this dream of what is possible, if the activity of human -intelligence were only sufficiently stimulated and the conditions of -social union were once so adjusted as to give it fair play, -unquestionably lies at the root of the revolutionary ideas with all -those who were first stirred by Voltaire rather than by Rousseau. -Condorcet, for instance, manifestly depends with the firmest confidence -upon that possibility being realised. It is the idea of every literary -revolutionist, as distinguished from the social or economic -revolutionist, in France at the present day. The knowledge that this was -the case, added to the sound conviction that men can never live by -analysis alone, gave its fire to De Maistre's powerful attack, and its -immense force to Burke's plea for what he called prejudice. But the -indispensable synthesis need never be immovably fixed, nor can it soon -again be one and single for our civilisation; for progress consists in -gradual modifications of it, as increase of knowledge and unforeseen -changes in the current of human affairs disclose imperfections in it, -and wherever progress is a law the stages of men's advance are unequal. -Above all, it is monstrous to suppose that because a man does not accept -your synthesis, he is therefore a being without a positive creed or a -coherent body of belief capable of guiding and inspiring conduct. - -There are new solutions for him, if the old are fallen dumb. If he no -longer believes death to be a stroke from the sword of God's justice, -but the leaden footfall of an inflexible law of matter, the humility of -his awe is deepened, and the tenderness of his pity made holier, that -creatures who can love so much should have their days so shut round with -a wall of darkness. The purifying anguish of remorse will be stronger, -not weaker, when he has trained himself to look upon every wrong in -thought, every duty omitted from act, each infringement of the inner -spiritual law which humanity is constantly perfecting for its own -guidance and advantage, less as a breach of the decrees of an unseen -tribunal, than as an ungrateful infection, weakening and corrupting the -future of his brothers. And he will be less effectually raised from -inmost prostration of soul by a doubtful subjective reconciliation, so -meanly comfortable to his own individuality, than by hearing full in the -ear the sound of the cry of humanity craving sleepless succour from her -children. That swelling consciousness of height and freedom with which -the old legends of an omnipotent divine majesty fill the breast, may -still remain; for how shall the universe ever cease to be a sovereign -wonder of overwhelming power and superhuman fixedness of law? And a man -will be already in no mean paradise, if at the hour of sunset a good -hope can fall upon him like harmonies of music, that the earth shall -still be fair, and the happiness of every feeling creature still receive -a constant augmentation, and each good cause yet find worthy defenders, -when the memory of his own poor name and personality has long been -blotted out of the brief recollection of men for ever. - - - - -CHAPTER VI. - -HISTORY - - -The activity of the foremost men of the eighteenth century in the -composition of history is too remarkable a circumstance, not to deserve -some attempt at explanation. There were historians in previous ages, but -in the eighteenth century there was both in France, and afterwards in -England, a special and extraordinary development in this direction. -Partially no doubt this was due to the general movement of curiosity, -the wide spread desire for all kinds of knowledge, which was in the air. -Men were emancipating themselves from the trammels of an authority which -had not widened the limits of inquiry in the same proportion as human -faculties had strengthened, and, amid the universal expansion of -intelligent interest and the eager scrutiny of all the objects of -knowledge which the new dawn was baring to sight, it was not possible -that the order of political and social facts in former epochs should be -neglected. This, however, does not sufficiently explain why such a man -as Hume betook himself to the composition of history, or why Gibbon -found himself best able to attack Christianity by tracing some of the -most important parts of its annals, or why Voltaire, who lived so -entirely and intensely in the present, should have thought it worth -while to give so much labour to presentation of the past. It is a -striking fact, which must be something more than an accident, that the -best secular histories which remain from this period, one of them the -most striking monument in historical literature, were written by the -most marked assailants of reigning superstition. - -Was it not, indeed, to be expected that as the dark clouds of an -absorbing consciousness of the supernatural cleared away, men of -understanding would be more and more drawn towards study of human -action, and that the advance of society under purely natural and -positive conditions would immediately seize a foremost place among the -objects of experiential inquiry? It is too constantly maintained by -persons with something of a vested interest in darkness, that those who -do not worship the gods are indifferent to the happiness of men. Yet the -history of intellectual progress would seem to show that it was not -until the commencement of a rapid decline in the acceptance of terrorist -and jealous deities and incomprehensible dogmas, that serious attention -was given to some of the subjects in which a sound knowledge is among -the most indispensable conditions of the advancing welfare of men. For -instance, as soon as the hold of ancient versions of the supernatural -was loosened over the stronger spirits, by the middle of the century -there instantly took place an astonishing development of activity in -the physical sciences. The interest of historic and economic studies was -at least as pressing. Becoming aware that men had made their own world, -thinkers found the consideration of the process by which this world is -made, and the order of society established and developed, forced upon -them with an entirely new significance. The dry bones of the ancient -valley of annalists and chroniclers were made to live, and the great -work of the reconstruction of the past was begun, with an alertness and -perseverance that has not been surpassed even in an age of far purer and -juster historical intelligence. It was quite reasonable that the -conviction of each act in the universe, from the crash of an empire to -the fall of a sparrow to the ground, being due to an arbitrary and -inscrutable decree, should prevent the rise of history from the level of -annals into the region of philosophy. The decay of this theory of the -government of the universe was as reasonably the cause of a new mode of -looking at the long records of the race, and we find ourselves moving in -a day of historical masterpieces. - -Voltaire has told us the circumstances under which he was led to -approach the philosophy of history. Madame du Chtelet, whose mind would -fain have reached every kind of knowledge, but who was especially apt -for metaphysics and geometry, had conceived an aversion for history. -'What does it matter to me,' she would ask, 'a Frenchwoman living on my -estate, to know that Egil succeeded Haquin in Sweden, and that Ottoman -was the son of Ortogrul? I have read with pleasure the history of the -Greeks and the Romans; they offered me certain great pictures which -attracted me. But I have never yet been able to finish any long history -of our modern nations. I can see scarcely anything in them but -confusion; a host of minute events without connection or sequence, a -thousand battles which settled nothing. I renounced a study which -overwhelms the mind without illuminating it.' To this frank statement of -the case, to which so many thousands of persons in all epochs would so -heartily subscribe, Voltaire replied by pointing out that perhaps the -study of history would be no waste of time, if by cutting away all the -details of wars, as tedious as they are untrustworthy, all the frivolous -negotiations which have been nothing but pieces of purposeless cheating, -all the minute incidents which stifle great events, and by retaining -those which paint manners, you made of this chaos a general and -well-arranged picture; in short, if you tried to disengage from the -concourse of events the history of the human mind.[234] Not all the -faults of execution ought to blind us to the merit of this notion of the -true way of studying history, or to the admirable clearness of vision -with which Voltaire, not only in this but in all his other historical -pieces, adhered to his own two leading principles; first, that laws, -arts, manners, are the chief matter and concern of history; and second, -that 'details which lead to nothing are in history what baggage is to -an army, _impedimenta_, for we must look at things in large, for the -very reason that the human mind is small and sinks under the weight of -minuti.' Minuti ought to be collected by annalists, or in some kind -of dictionaries where one might find them at need.[235] In this last -point Voltaire, as might be expected, was more just than Bolingbroke, -who had said somewhat petulantly that 'he had rather take the Darius -whom Alexander conquered for the son of Hystaspes, and make as many -anachronisms as a Jewish chronologer, than sacrifice half his life to -collect all the learned lumber that fills the head of an -antiquary.'[236] The antiquary's is a vocation like another, and the -highest kind of history can only flourish on condition that the humbler -ancillary kind flourishes also, and that there are patient and -scrupulous men to mark the difference between Darius Codomannus and -Darius the son of Hystaspes. - -We may say that three kinds of men write history: the gazetteer or -annalist, the statesman, and the philosopher. The annalist's business is -to investigate and record events, and his highest merits are clearness, -accuracy, and simplicity. The political historian seeks the superficial -and immediate causes of great transactions, and he serves us by mixed -penetration and soundness of judgment. The historical philosopher is -concerned only with groups of events, the changes and movements that -transform communities, and with the trains of conditions that lead to -such movements. The majority of historians, from the illustrious Bacon -down to the compiler of a manual, illustrate the first kind. Thucydides -and Tacitus, among the ancients, a Machiavelli or a Finlay, among -moderns, may illustrate the second kind. As Voltaire was sometimes -gazetteer and sometimes statesman, so Montesquieu took the statesman's -point of view in his reflections on the decline of Rome, and that of the -philosopher in the Spirit of Laws. It is the statesman or man of the -world, who, after recounting Caesar's failure on one occasion to comply -with the etiquette of the senate, proceeds to make the following -reflection, that 'we never offend men more, than when we shock their -ceremonies and usages: seek to oppress them, and that is sometimes a -proof of the importance you attach to them; but shock their customs, and -that is always a mark of contempt.'[237] It is the philosopher, feeling -for the causes of things and their order, who being led to inquire into -the spirit or meaning of Laws, understands such an inquiry to involve a -comparative investigation of the relations between laws and physical -climate, the quality of ground, situation and extent of territory, the -mode of life of the people, agricultural, hunting, or pastoral; between -laws and the freedom of the constitution, the religion, wealth, trade, -moral ideas, and manners, of the inhabitants; above all, historically, -between laws and their origin and the order of things on which they -were first founded. - -In a similar way we may divide Voltaire's historical pieces into two -main classes. Indeed, if we count the Annals of the Empire, which he -wrote to please the Duchess of Saxe-Gotha, he may rank also under the -third remaining head among the annalistic historians. This, however, is -too unsatisfactory a piece of work for us to care either to classify or -to remember it. The subject was not of his own selection, he knew -comparatively little about it, his materials were extremely scanty and -imperfect, and he composed it at a time when his whole mind was -violently perturbed by his recent quarrel with Frederick, and torn by -anxiety where he should find a home in rest and freedom. It was the only -work he ever wrote, for which he perhaps had no heart, and the least -observant reader will notice how vast a difference this made in the -temper of its composition. Indeed, Voltaire was not born to be a simple -chronicler. The realistic and practical leanings of his intellect -naturally gave him a distaste for the collection of mere uninterpreted -and unapplied facts. His clear comprehensiveness, the product of a -vigorous imagination with strong sense, as naturally impelled him to -group circumstances, and to introduce the widest possible generality -among them. He has one of the peculiar gifts of the historian, as -distinguished from the gazetteer, of throwing rapid glances over a wide -field on the suggestion of a minor fact as he passes by it, and of -converting what to others would be the mere unconsidered trifles of -narrative into something possessed of its due measure of vitality and -significance. He fills his pages with reflections that are usually not -brought from very far depths, but which are almost always lively, just, -and in real matter. Perhaps this is not an unmixed good, for it is not -unconnected with an extraordinary evenness and light facility of style, -which tends to draw the reader somewhat too rapidly and too smoothly -over ground that had been rugged enough to the actual travellers. It -tends therefore tacitly to plant a false impression about the tardiness, -difficulty, peril, and infinitely varied possibilities of the social -movements which are history's object and material. Perhaps a reader has -a better idea of the true manner in which events march, from Comines or -Clarendon, than from all the elegance and manifold graces of Voltaire, -and we sometimes feel inclined to repeat De Maistre's angry demand for -that grave and unhasting dignity which is the life of history. - -We have already noticed one of the differences between Voltaire and -Rousseau, which arose from the predominance of sentiment over reason in -the latter. In the present connection another fact well worth noticing -is that Rousseau was entirely wanting in either taste or serious regard -for history. The past seems to have been to him a kind of blurred -tablet, confused and indecipherable, interposed between the vision of -men and the only thought or knowledge which it is good for them to -possess. Voltaire's reading of this tablet was inadequate enough, in -many respects it was even a grave distortion of the truth; but with that -sound sense in which Rousseau was so absolutely deficient, he felt how -irrational it was, in the first place, to shut our eyes deliberately to -the course and meaning of all the foregone action of the race, and, in -the second, to leave unattacked and unturned the strong position which -the traditional parables of the past and their undisturbed -interpretation conferred upon the champions of orthodoxy and absolutism. -Rousseau, being a sentimentalist, appears to have discerned nothing of -this. His ideas all involved a breach with the past, as Voltaire's did, -but Voltaire deserves credit for perceiving that, to make this -effective, you must at least find out as well as you can what the past -was. - -For his four works in the class of political history he had the best -attainable authorities and material, and no one was ever more diligent -in putting them to the best possible use.[238] His acute sense, -strengthened by contact with the world and its most active personages, -made him what we may almost call prematurely scientific in his demand -for adequate evidence and proof. It is rather striking, for example, to -find him anticipating more recent objections to the trustworthiness of -Tacitus, pointing out the extraordinary improbabilities in his account -of Tiberius, Nero, and the others. There is all the difference, he says, -between a faithful historian equally free from adulation and hatred, and -'a malicious wit who poisons everything through the medium of a concise -and energetic style.' Are we to believe, he asks elsewhere, on the story -of a man who lived long after Tiberius, that this emperor, nearly eighty -years old, who had up to that time been decent almost to austerity, yet -passed all his time in debaucheries hitherto unknown, and so monstrous -as to need new names for them?[239] And in the same way he questions the -alleged atrocities of Nero and Caligula, as well as the motives imputed -to Domitian by Tacitus for the frequency with which he sent to inquire -after the health of Agricola. These historic doubts sprang from none of -the political judgment or feeling which propounds them in more modern -times, but purely from scientific incredulity. 'History,' he once wrote, -'is after all nothing but a parcel of tricks that we play the -dead.'[240] He did not hold this slightly splenetic theory, in which -assuredly there is a painful truth, to absolve him from the duty of -doing what he could to belie it, and to make history as correct and as -faithfully representative of actual occurrences, as careful inquiry -from those most likely to know the characters of the most prominent -actors could make it. In the composition of the Sicle de Louis XV., he -had of course the advantage of knowing all these leaders of the public -activity personally and at first hand, while if he had not that -advantage to the same extent in the Sicle de Louis XIV., he at least -mixed on intimate terms with many who had been intimate with the court -of the great monarch. For the history of Russia he was amply provided -with documents and authentic narratives from the Russian court, at whose -solicitation he undertook a work which was the first full introduction -of that hitherto barbarous and unknown country to the literature of -civilised Europe. His letters to Schouvalof, the imperial chamberlain, -attest the unremitting industry with which he sought for every kind of -information that might be useful to him. 'The enlightened spirit which -now reigns among the principal nations of Europe, requires that we -should go to the bottom, where in former times a historian barely -thought it worth while to skim the surface. People wish to know how a -nation grew together; what was its population before the epoch of which -you treat; the difference in the number of the regular army then and in -former times; the nature and growth of its commerce; what arts have -sprung up within the country, and what have been introduced from -elsewhere and been perfected there; what used to be the ordinary average -revenue of the state, and what it is now; the birth and extension of -its navy; the proportion in numbers between its nobles and its -ecclesiastics and monks, and between the latter and the cultivators of -the soil, etc.'[241] Even importunities of this kind continued over a -space of some years, and the copious responses which they brought, never -consoled Voltaire for not having made the journey to the Russian capital -in his proper person. 'I should have learnt more from you in a few hours -of conversation,' he wrote to Schouvalof, 'than all the compilers in the -world will ever teach me.'[242] In writing the History of Charles XII. -of Sweden, one of the most delightful of his books, the art of which is -none the less because it is so little ostentatious and striking and -seems so easy, he had procured a large quantity of material from -Fabrice, who knew the Swedish king during his detention at Bender and -subsequently, and met Voltaire in London. This material was supplemented -in later years by information picked up at Lunville from the ex-Polish -king Stanislas, who was indebted to Charles for his sovereignty, that -true =dron adron=. 'As for the portraits of men,' Voltaire declared, -'they are nearly all the creations of fancy; 'tis a monstrous piece of -charlatanry to pretend to paint a personage with whom you have never -lived.'[243] Napoleon, in the memorable campaign of 1812, coming to -various places which Voltaire had occasion to describe in his History -of Charles XII., found his account weak and inaccurate, and threw it -aside in favour of Adlerfeldt. This was to be expected from the very -merit of the book; for how should a picture, painted in large for the -general instruction of the world, satisfy the minute requirements of -strategical topography? It was precisely Voltaire's object to separate -history from geography, statistics, anecdote, biography, tactics, and -to invest it with an independent character and quality apart from all -these. - -It is another of the distinctions of his new method of writing history -that, with the exception of the book on Charles XII., he throws persons -and personal interests into a second place, as being no more than -instruments or convenient names for critical turning-points in the large -movements of peoples. In the narration of the rise of Russia to a place -among civilised nations, the character of Peter the Great inevitably -comes into marked prominence, because when a population lies on the -stagnant level of barbarism, the first man who summons them to undertake -the task of national elevation constitutes an element of paramount -importance in their annals. In proportion, however, as they rise to the -fulfilment of this surpassing work, the importance of the heroic -individual diminishes; as the national self-consciousness and collective -powers become greater, the figure of the individual shows less. - -Voltaire was always conscious, though not so clearly as writers are now, -of the great historical principle that besides the prominent men of a -generation there is a something at work underneath, a moving current on -whose flood they are borne. He never fixed this current by any of the -names which now fall so glibly from our lips,--tendency of the times, -tenor of public opinion, spirit of the age, and the like, by which we -give a collective name to groups of sentiments and forces, all making in -what seems to be a single direction. But although unnamed, this singular -and invisible concurrence of circumstance was yet a reality to him. The -age was something besides its heroes, and something besides its noisiest -and most resounding occurrences. His divisions of the great epochs of -humanity are undoubtedly open to much criticism, because the principles -on which he drew the dividing lines have lost their force in new -generations. It was to be expected that they would do so; and his four -great epochs[244] were not likely to remain the four great epochs of a -posterity, which has partially learnt the lesson that he had not learnt -at all, that perfection in the fine arts is not the highest mark of an -age in which humanity may glory. Nevertheless, we are bound to recognise -that a new way of regarding human action, as well as a new way of -composing history, was being introduced by a writer whose first -paragraph declared that he proposed to himself a greater object than an -account of the life of Lewis XIV.; that he designed to paint for the -instruction of posterity, not the actions of a single man, but the -spirit of men; and that while all periods must be alike to one who only -desires to fill his memory with facts, discrimination among them cannot -be dispensed with for one who thinks. - -Hence also the propriety of discrimination among the various kinds of -fact which are at the historian's disposal, and in this order Voltaire's -whole soul revolted against the reigning practice and prescription. 'I -would rather have details,' he wrote to one of his intimates so early in -his career as 1735, 'about Racine and Despraux, Molire, Bossuet, -Descartes, than I would about the battle of Steinkirk. There is nothing -left but the names of men who led battalions and squadrons. There is no -return to the human race from a hundred engagements; but the great men I -have spoken of prepared pure and everlasting pleasures for mortals still -unborn. A canal-sluice, a picture by Poussin, a fine tragedy, a truth -established, are all of them things a thousand times more precious than -the whole mass of annals of the court, and than all the narratives of -campaigns.'[245] From this and from a multitude of other passages, as -well as from his actual compositions, we perceive that the activity of a -court and the manoeuvres of an army were no longer in Voltaire's eyes the -fit substance of history. One reason for this might be his lively sense -of the impossibility of knowing the character and motives of people with -whom one has not lived, or the real cause of even the most momentous -intrigues and negotiations in which one has not taken a personal share. -A still deeper reason would be his most rational conviction that these -matters are only of moment to us for their larger results and -unmistakable outcome, and from the profoundly true and important -principle that the progress of intellectual enlightenment, material -prosperity, and moral elevation is not only a feature in the history of -a nation, but does itself constitute that history, while all records of -other transactions in the course of its annals, achievements in -diplomacy, feats of arms, revolutions in policy, have no true historic -value, except for the light they shed upon this economic, intellectual, -and moral progress, and are not worth studying except in that light. We -may see the immediate effects of Voltaire's influence most markedly of -all in Gibbon, but in a less important shape in the general account of -the middle ages which Robertson contributed to his History of Charles V. -(1769), and which remained for many years the most instructive piece -that our literature possessed upon the character and spirit of the -feudal system and other features of the middle ages. Adam Ferguson's -Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767) bears traces of the same -influence. In both of these cases much also must be added for the -kindred authority of Montesquieu. One has some hesitation in adding Hume -to the list in the present connection, because his history, the -composition of which extended from 1752 to 1763, ought perhaps to be -counted rather the direct and independent outcome of the French -philosophic spirit, than of the French historic spirit which itself -proceeded from the philosophy; and because, moreover, Hume, as a -historian, has some of Voltaire's most serious defects, without that -breadth and size which constituted his greatest merit, though it is -needless to point out how many merits Hume had of his own. It is worth -remarking that in some pages which he wrote on Hume's History,[246] -Voltaire gave it a joyful welcome, as might be expected, and -particularly to those parts which we now esteem most lightly, such as -the contemptuous account of Cromwell. - -To return, however, to the point from which we have digressed. One very -direct consequence of the historical principle we have described, and of -the way in which it was illustrated in the histories of Lewis XIV. and -Lewis XV., and most of all in the Essay on Manners, was the degradation -of war from the highest to the lowest place among the objects of the -historian's regard. War began for the first time to be systematically -considered and treated as a mere instrument and means, and not as one of -the most serious of social ends. We can never honour Voltaire too long -nor too deeply for the vehemence and sincerity of his abhorrence of the -military spirit. Nowhere do we feel more distinctly that he marked the -end of the medival temper, than in his noble protests against the glory -of bloodshed. The great orators of the church to the very last donned -the robes of their most sumptuous rhetoric, when they were called to -consecrate the virtues of the victorious soldier. The pages of the Old -Testament supplied them with a hundred baleful heroes to whom they might -liken their warrior, and a hundred cruel and bloody tropes with which -they might decorate the funeral oration. So long as the atrocities of -the Hebrew chiefs and people, their treacheries and slaughters, were -held sacred and celebrated with unction, it was not likely that the -voice of the peacemaker could make itself heard. - -Voltaire not only held up these demoralising records to the odium they -deserve; he directly taxed the clergy with their failure to discharge -the very highest part of their duty. Of the five or six thousand sermons -of Massillon, he asked, are there a couple where you could pick out a -word or two against the scourge and crime of war? Bourdaloue preached -against impurity, but what sermon did he ever direct against the murder, -rapine, brigandage, and universal rage, which desolate the world? -'Miserable physicians of souls, you declaim for five quarters of an hour -against the mere pricks of a pin, and say no word on the curse which -tears us into a thousand pieces! Philosophers and moralists, burn your -books: so long as the caprice of a handful of men will cause the -massacring in all loyalty of thousands of our brothers, the part of the -human race which is devoted to heroism will contain all that is most -frightful in human nature. What concern to me are humanity, benevolence, -modesty, temperance, gentleness, wisdom, piety, so long as half an ounce -of lead shatters my body, and I die at twenty in torments unspeakable, -surrounded by five or six thousand dead or dying, while my eyes, opening -for the last time, see the town I was born in delivered to fire and -sword, and the last sounds that reach my ears are the shrieks of women -and children expiring in the ruins--and the whole for the pretended -interests of a man that we do not know?'[247] His rebuke to Montesquieu -is still more distinctively modern. The author of the Esprit des Lois -had said that among societies it sometimes happens that natural defence -possibly involves the necessity of attack, when a nation perceives that -a longer peace would place another nation in a position to destroy -it.[248] 'If ever there was a war evidently unjust,' Voltaire replies, -'it is that which you propose; it is to go and kill your neighbour for -fear your neighbour should be in a condition to attack you; that is to -say, you must run the risk of ruining your country, in the hope of -ruining without reason some other country.... If your neighbour grows -too powerful during a time of peace, what hinders you from growing -powerful like him? If he has made alliances, make alliances on your -side. If, having less religion, he has all the more manufacturers and -soldiers for it, imitate him in so sage an economy. If he drills his -sailors better, drill yours too: all that is perfectly just. But to -expose your people to the most horrible misery, in the idea, which is so -often chimerical, of crushing your dear brother, the most serene -bordering prince--! 'twas never for a president of a pacific order to -give you such a piece of counsel.'[249] The book in which this sound -view of justice and expediency in the dealings of nations with one -another was pressed upon the attention of France, was published in 1764, -five years before the birth of the man who turned the tide back, and -made the international policy of France a synonym both for iniquity and -folly. On the 15th of August 1769 Voltaire concluded his letter to -D'Alembert with his usual vivacity: 'Adieu; my compliments to the devil, -for it is he who governs the world.'[250] If he had known that, while he -was writing, Napoleon Bonaparte had come into the world, and could at -the same time have foreseen the new-comer's destiny, he might have said -the same thing more seriously. Voltaire never played the sentimentalist. -He knew that there are complexities of affairs which only the sword can -cut. But he was the first influential writer--for the abb Saint-Pierre, -so undeservedly laughed at for his dreams of perpetual peace, had no -influence to speak of--who deliberately placed war among retrograde -agencies, and deliberately dwelt upon peaceful industry as the true life -of nations.[251] - -Diplomacy and its complex subterranean processes, which have occupied so -extremely disproportionate a space in written history, and which are in -acted history responsible for so much evil, were in the same way -informally relegated to the region of inhuman occupations. Its methods -were the tortuous and depressing methods of the same past, which had -made the many the playthings and unhappy instruments of the few, and had -never interrupted the triumphant manoeuvres of craft and subtlety by a -whisper for the claims of humanity and justice. Voltaire scarcely ever -speaks of negotiations between contending powers without a shrewd -thrust, half contemptuous and half angry. The plain where some -negotiations took place in the struggles among the descendants of -Charles the Great is still called the Field of Lies; a name, he says, -that might well be common to most spots where men have negotiated.[252] -And this represents his general tone in speaking of a branch of activity -which may interest the professional diplomatist in all its details, but -which, as he thought, can only concern the historical student in its -results. Here Voltaire represented a marked tendency, which waxes -stronger as societies grow more penetrated with popular forces, to -divest diplomacy of a professional quality, and to throw the adjustment -of the relations between nations as entirely as possible into the hands -of plain men of firm and upright character, and full knowledge of the -special matters at issue. - -It is, however, when we come to the ground idea of the Essay on -Manners,[253] that we feel the full breath of the modern spirit, and -perceive that at length we are nearing the wide expanse of the sea. -There we emerge absolutely from the narrow conception of universal -history, with which Bossuet had familiarised men's minds in the -Discourse on Universal History. This famous piece, which has had at -least as much praise as it merits, if we are to consider reason as well -as eloquence, was fundamentally and in substance no more than a bit of -theological commonplace splendidly decorated. Bossuet indeed spoke of -'the concatenation of human affairs,' but only in the same sentence with -'the sequence of the counsels of God.' The gorgeous rhetorician of the -church was not likely to rise philosophically into the larger air of -universal history, properly so called. His eloquent discourse is a -vindication of divine foresight, by means of an intensely narrow survey -of such sets of facts as might be thought not inconsistent with the -deity's fixed purpose to make one final and decisive revelation to men. -No one who looks upon the vast assemblage of stupendous human -circumstances, from the first origin of man upon the earth, as merely -the ordained antecedent of what, seen from the long procession of all -the ages, figures in so diminutive a consummation as the Catholic -church, is likely to obtain a very effective hold of that broad sequence -and many-linked chain of events, to which Bossuet gave a right name, -but whose real meaning he never was even near seizing. His merit is -that he did in a small and rhetorical way, what Montesquieu and Voltaire -afterwards did in a truly comprehensive and philosophical way; he -pressed forward general ideas in connection with the recorded movements -of the chief races of mankind. For a teacher of history to leave the -bare chronicler's road so far as to declare, for example, the general -principle, inadequate and overstated as it is, that 'religion and civil -government are the two points on which human things revolve,' even this -was a clear step in advance--and to dismiss the long series of emperors -from Augustus to Alexander Severus in two or three pages was to show a -rare sense of large historic proportion. Again, Bossuet's expressions of -'the concatenation of the universe,' of the interdependence of the parts -of so vast a whole, of there coming no great change without having its -causes in foregoing centuries, and of the true object of history being -to observe in connection with each epoch those secret dispositions of -events which prepared the way for great changes, as well as the -momentous conjunctures which more immediately brought them to pass--all -these phrases seem to point to a true and philosophic survey. But they -end in themselves, and lead nowhither. The chain is an arbitrary and -one-sided collection of facts. The writer does not cautiously follow and -feel after the successive links, but forges and chooses and arranges -them after a pattern of his own, which was fixed independently of them. -A scientific term or two is not enough to disguise the purely -theological essence of the treatise. - -Bossuet's Discourse is moreover constructed wholly on the theory that a -special revelation was delivered to the Jews, and in tracing their -course we have fast hold of the chain by which it has pleased heaven to -communicate to earth all the truths we possess as to the highest things. -Such a conception stifles a modern reader. The first pages of the Essay -on Manners, sometimes placed separately as the Philosophy of History, -prove that we have escaped from the cave. The chosen people fell into -rank with other peoples, that equally supposed themselves to be chosen -by their own peculiar gods. They lose the towering pre-eminence in -virtue and light and divine favour with which their own records and -Bossuet's interpretation had so splendidly invested them. We find that -their pretensions were not unique, but universal among nations in such a -stage; that their virtues were not singular, though some of their vices -seem so. In a word, if some of Voltaire's details are crude and -rudimentary, at least he has the merit of showing to his unaccustomed -readers what vast epochs of time, what uncounted multitudes of men, what -varied movements of the human spirit, surround the little speck of -Judaism. - -The bulk of the Essay was composed in 1740, but it is probable that this -preliminary examination of other oriental nations, their practices, -institutions, and religious ideas, was suggested by Montesquieu's -memorable book, which appeared in 1748, some years before the -publication of the Essay on Manners. It is in point of execution much -less satisfactory than what follows, for Voltaire's knowledge of Greek -and Hebrew was inadequate, and he fell into various errors which his -adversaries happily possessed scholarship enough to expose. In the -modern provinces of the book, which constitute the important part of it, -he was much more entirely at home in his subject. Here his familiarity -with detail, considering the vast quantity of his other employments, is -extremely surprising, and perhaps in no other book of equal generality -have there been discovered so few serious inaccuracies, though none have -encountered more hostile critics. - -Prejudice, alas, spares truth and light no more when it narrows the -vision of a free-thinker, than when it distorts the faculty of the -devout. Being a reaction against Bossuet's unreasonable exaltation of -the Jews and their history, Voltaire's conception of the place due to -them partook of the inevitable fault of all reactions, and left out of -sight considerations which it is eminently unscientific not to remember. -'You never find,' he says, 'a generous action in the annals of the -Hebrews; they knew neither hospitality nor liberality nor clemency. -Their sovereign bliss is to practise usury with foreigners, and this -spirit of usury is so rooted in their hearts, that it is the continual -object of the figures they employ in the eloquence which is peculiar to -them. Their glory is to deliver to fire and slaughter the small -villages of which they may be able to take possession. They assassinate -their masters when they are slaves, and they never know how to pardon -when they are victorious; they are the enemies of the human race.'[254] -This is as great an exaggeration on one side, as Bossuet's exaltation of -them and their deeds was on the other side. We ought to admit what -abominable traits the character and history of this race unfortunately -present, without forgetting how much is owing to them for preserving in -its sublimest shape, and investing with the most deeply impressive -images and associations, that idea of monotheism which, if destined to -be superseded by other ideas more commensurate with the limits of human -intelligence, must still be counted the germ of much that is purest and -loftiest and most inspiring among the ideals of western civilisation. - -The same kind of extreme prejudice which drove Voltaire into maintaining -of the Jews, not that they were a people whom we should do very ill -either to imitate or admire, but nothing less than that they were the -enemies of the human race, found vent in such assertions as that if any -one could have restored the Empire to its strength, or at all events -retarded its fall, that man was the Emperor Julian.[255] A historian may -justly contend, if he thinks that the evidence warrants him, that Julian -belongs to the type of virtuous reactionists, just as we may say it of -Wesley or the chiefs of the Tractarians. But to make such an assertion -as that the repression of Christianity after the middle of the fourth -century, even supposing it to have been possible of achievement, could -have given back to the rapidly declining empire a strength of which all -the roots were lifeless, was to falsify history for the sake of exalting -the name of an apostate. A Roman aristocrat, blind to the real operation -and comparative value of the forces at work, might be pardoned for -holding Christianity guilty of the general dissolution around him; but -it was a strange phantasy for a philosopher of the eighteenth century to -suppose that the Christian system, in the shape which it had assumed by -Julian's time, did not offer principles of firmer association, than the -mere rites of a paganism which was spontaneously decaying with a -rapidity that increased day by day.[256] There is no stronger -illustration of the twist which polemical fury may give to the most -acute intelligence, than this belief of Voltaire's, that an organisation -which had attracted to itself every able and statesmanlike intellect of -the time, could do less for the regeneration of the Empire than the -initiated disciple of Platonist theurgy. - -His account of the history of the church is composed in the same vein, -and we may see where Gibbon, who was a reader of Voltaire, drew the -inspiration of the solemn sneer with which he sapped solemn creed.[257] -'So many frauds, so many errors, so many disgusting absurdities,' says -Voltaire, 'with which we have been inundated for seventeen hundred -years, have been unable to do any harm to our religion. It is -unquestionably divine, since seventeen centuries of imposture and -imbecility have not destroyed it.'[258] Voltaire thought as ill as -possible of the century to which he belonged; we cannot therefore charge -him with the inconsistency which marks some of his most prominent -disciples, who while they accepted such an account of the vileness of -the church as he had given them, did not scruple to believe that, as if -by miracle, seventeen centuries of steady depravation were _per saltum_ -to be followed by an eighteenth and other centuries of boundless virtue -and enlightenment. Still it is wonderful that he should have been able -to appreciate the admirable character of the best sovereign of the -thirteenth century, Lewis IX.,[259] and to describe his motives and his -achievements so generously, and yet should never have thought of the -education and surrounding spiritual conditions by which such a character -had been formed. If the power of Catholicism for evil was so great and -decisive, it would have been reasonable to suppose that it had some -share also in moulding to good those who came forth from it the very -flower of humanity. But Voltaire did not know how much a man is the -product of a system operating on, and with, the individual -predisposition, or he would not have chidden St. Lewis for remaining on -the level of the prejudice of his time, instead of changing the spirit -of his age.[260] How should St. Lewis have risen from the prejudice of -his age, when it was exactly that prejudice which had formed him, and of -which he represented the worthy side? - -Even without this inconsistency, the fundamental error is bad enough. We -get very wearied of the persistent identification of the church -throughout the dark ages with fraud and imposture and sinister -self-seeking, when we have once learnt, what is undoubtedly the most -important principle in the study of those times, that it was the -churchmen who kept the flickering light of civilisation alive, amid the -raging storms of uncontrolled passion and violence. The truth is that -Voltaire never realised civilisation as an organism, which if not -surrounded with the proper conditions of life will perish, and which -will prosper and wax stronger exactly in proportion as it is nourished. -That the light was more than once very near sinking in the west under -the waves of barbarism, as it has actually sunk in the eastern portions -of the Empire, seems to have been an all-important fact which he either -never saw, or which, if he saw it, never impressed him as assuredly it -ought to have done. - -This is the more curious as he was able to perceive, in a way in which -it were much to be wished that more recent historians might show an -equal discernment, that we ought to use the terms of civilisation, with -all their complex and accumulated associations, in an extremely modified -sense in speaking of the centuries between the fifth and the thirteenth, -just as it is the gravest mistake to suppose that, because you can -express the results of the various contests of those times in terms of -philosophy, therefore the actors in any one of them were both conscious -of its most general bearings, and were animated by large and -philosophical inclinations. For example, after he has told us how -William the Conqueror sent to the Pope Harold's battle-standard and a -small portion of the small treasure that an English king might possess -in those times, he proceeds to reduce the transaction to what he -conceived to be its true proportions, in the following manner: 'Thus,' -he says, 'a barbarian, the son of a harlot, the murderer of a legitimate -king, shares the plunder of this king with another barbarian; for if you -take away the names of duke of Normandy, king of England, and pope, all -is reduced to the action of a Norman brigand and a Lombard receiver of -plunder.[261] This being the case, the secular possessors of power being -so rude, petty, and barbarous, their contests being 'those of bears and -wolves,' their rapacity and violence being tempered by few of those -ideas of justice which form the bonds of society in its more advanced -stages, it ought to have struck even the most ardent enemy of -ecclesiastical pretensions as a thing in the highest degree -unphilosophical, to pour all the ill epithets of usurpation upon the -virtuous efforts of the great churchmen, who were least touched by the -spirit of violence, to take away as much power as they could from -barbarous princes and nobles, who were most impregnated with that and -all other dark spirits. The smaller the difference between the least -moral and the most moral orders in a community, the more desirable it is -that the order with even a small advantage should acquire as much power -as possible; for the reason that so near an approach to equality in -morals is most likely to occur when the average is low, and when -therefore the need to prevent it from falling any lower is most urgent. -Granting that the ecclesiastics were only slightly the superiors of the -barbarous laymen, this is all the better ground for rejoicing that they -succeeded in converting their ascendancy of moral idea into an -ascendancy of political fact. - -In short, Voltaire's great panorama, magnificent as it is and most -royally planned, is not drawn in lines and with colour that explain the -story or lay bare the principles of its progress. The plan is imposed -from without, just as in Bossuet's case, not carefully sought from -within the facts themselves. What is meant then by the assertion that -Voltaire's Essay is one of the foundations of modern history? If he -gives no explanation of the course of history, none to himself probably, -and none to us assuredly, what is his merit? This, that he has fully -placed before us the history which is to be explained; that he has -presented the long external succession of facts in their true magnitude -and in a definite connection; that he did not write a history of France, -or of the papacy, or of the Mahometan power, or of the crusades, but -that he saw the advantage, as we see the unavoidable necessity, of -comprehending in a single idea and surveying in a single work the -various activities, the rise and fall of power, the transference from -one to another of political predominance, the contributions to the art -of living, among the societies which were once united in a single -empire. The history of each of these societies, England, France, Spain, -Italy, the Byzantine Empire, is followed in relation to the history of -Europe, which is indeed composed of these co-ordinate parts. The -movement of communities since the dissolution of the Roman Empire is -exhibited in a collective form, and that it should be exhibited and -accepted in this form was obviously a preliminary step to an organic -treatment of the multiplied laws of social physics. - -'There are some events,' he wrote in a note to his best poem, 'which -have effects, and others which have none. It is with the chain of events -as it is with a genealogical tree, where we perceive branches that -become extinct at the first generation, and others that continue the -race. Many events remain without any filiation. It is thus that in every -machine there are effects necessary to the movement, while others are -indifferent, following the operation of the first, and leading to -nothing. The wheels of a vehicle serve to make it go; but whether they -raise a little more or a little less dust, the journey is accomplished -equally. Such is the general order of the world, that the links of the -chain are not deranged by a little more or a little less of -irregularity.'[262] The figures in this passage serve adequately to -describe his own treatment. We see in the Essay the lines of the -genealogical tree, but we do not learn the laws of the transmission of -qualities from one stock to another; we see the links of the chain, but -not the conditions which fastened each to the other; conditions, indeed, -only to be grasped through a scientific study of human nature which -Voltaire had never made; and finally we see the towering car drawn -slowly along a devious road by sweat and strain of millions, but we know -not why it went by this road rather than another. In a word, the inner -machinery of societies and of their movement remains as far from our -sight as it ever was. The study of those economic and material forces -which have so profound an influence upon social transformations, was in -its infancy, and the Economists, who really saw that there are definite -laws regulating the play of these forces, unfortunately mixed up with -their speculations a number of chimerical fancies, which Voltaire was -too acute to accept, but not patient enough to sift.[263] In this -respect he is as defective as Gibbon, in whose book, so justly famous -for its splendid breadth of conception and industrious elaboration of -detail, we have much of that meagre philosophy which consisted in the -exposure of falsehood, but little of the true science which shows us the -numerous organs of society in connection with their actual play and -function. Neither Gibbon nor Voltaire made any contribution, nor seems -to have been aware of the importance of contributing, to that study of -the fundamental conditions of the social union, which Aristotle -commenced, and which both Bodin in the sixteenth century and Montesquieu -in the eighteenth had so meritoriously continued.[264] Nevertheless, it -was much to lead men to study the history of modern Europe as a whole, -and we may say of Voltaire in connection with history what he said of -Corneille in connection with tragedy--'It is so great a merit to have -opened the career, and inventors are so much above other men, that -posterity pardons their greatest faults.'[265] - - - - -CHAPTER VII. - -FERNEY. - - -Voltaire, as we have seen, took possession of Ferney in 1758, and he -lived here almost without a break for something like twenty years. His -estate was a feudal seigniory in the district of Gex, on the very -frontier of Switzerland, but in France, though enjoying immunity from -French taxation. He built a new manor-house, and in his capacity of lord -of the manor replaced the dilapidated little church of the estate by a -new one, very small, very plain, and about which, notwithstanding its -famous inscription of which he so often boasted,--_Deo erexit -Voltaire_,--much more noise has been made, than so simple and natural a -proceeding at all calls for.[266] Madame Denis kept house for him, and -according to the Paris gossips of the time, on an extravagant scale, -which often produced ruptures between the two. Guests were incessant -and the hospitality ungrudging.[267] He complained during the Seven -Years' War of the embarrassment of being a Frenchman, when he had to -entertain daily at dinner Russians, English, and Germans.[268] He -protests that he is weary of being hotel-keeper in general for all -Europe, and so weary was he at one time of this noisy and costly post, -that the establishment was partially suspended for upwards of a year. -One of the most generous of Voltaire's many generous acts was his -reception into his house of a child who had no other claim on him than -that of being the great-grand-daughter of the uncle of Corneille. A -soldier ought to succour the niece of his general, he said. He took the -liveliest interest in the little maid's education, though she appears to -have been a sulky pupil, and eventually he married her with due dower to -one Dupuits. The bustle and expense of his establishment became greater -than ever, and in the spring of 1768 Paris was as much electrified by -news of a revolution at Ferney, as she has been since by some -revolutions in her own streets. Madame Denis and the two Dupuits had -suddenly made their way to Paris, and for a year and a half Voltaire was -left in peace, part of which he employed sensibly in having his house -cleaned from cellar to garret,--a bit of news which is handed down to -our times, since, according to Grimm, the domestic arrangements of the -manor-house at Ferney interested at that moment more or less every court -in Europe.[269] In the autumn of 1769 Madame Denis returned, and with -her the old stir and extravagance were resumed, for Voltaire was one of -the best-humoured of men to his family and friends, and could deny his -niece nothing. We have more than one description of this too immortal -niece. They are all equally unflattering. Her homeliness of appearance -amounted to the ugliness that is bitter. She was destitute of wit, and -had a vulgar soul. Born to be the insipid gossip of a bourgeois circle, -says one charitable writer, but having by chance the first man in the -nation for an uncle, she learnt to chatter about literature and the -theatre, as a parrot learns.[270] She wrote a comedy; but the players, -out of respect for Voltaire, declined to act in it. She wrote a tragedy; -but the one favour, which the repeated entreaties of years could never -wring from Voltaire, was that he would read it. She had histrionic as -well as dramatic ambition, and here worked a miracle, for her -representation of Mrope once drew floods of tears from some English -ladies.[271] Her affectation of intellect had not cooled the reality of -simple sensation, and if she loved art, she was said not to despise -gallantry. At any rate, though she was only sixteen years younger than -her uncle,[272] she needed continual festivities and crowds of guests. - -Ferney was rather a difficult spot for a woman with a passion for the -hum of cities. For five months in the year, says Voltaire, my deserts -are, on the admission of Russians, worse than Siberia itself; we see -thirty leagues of mountain, snow, and precipices: it is Naples in -summer, Lapland in winter.[273] One year he marks with word of -bitterness snow falling thick in the middle of May. Four feet of snow in -the courtyard constituted a normal winter state. He commemorates with -enthusiasm how one day, through these four feet of snow, he saw porters -bringing him a hamper of Champagne from a friend; for the more generous -sort of Burgundy with which he ordinarily recruited himself had fallen -short, and he had been reduced to the humble vintage of Beaujolais. - -Yet in the midst of a thousand discomforts and hardships we never hear -him wishing to be back in Paris. It remained to him the accursed city, -as it had been before his journey to England. He always thought with -horror of its cabal, intrigue, frivolity, and sovereign indifference to -the ruin of the kingdom and the shedding of innocent blood. There can be -no doubt that this wise exile prolonged his days. He was constantly -complaining of illness, and he passed months at a time in bed, which -may in truth have been the best possible preservative of life for one of -his temperament. Yet in spite of this avoidance of society, this passion -for his study, the man of ordinary capacity, with no more than an -ordinary working day, may marvel how amid so many distractions the -master of the house contrived to write so many scores of pieces, large -and small, and so many hundreds of letters, grave and gay. Of these -letters nearly seven thousand are already in print, and M. Beuchot, most -carefully informed of all Voltaire's editors, thinks there are likely to -be quite as many more still in undiscovered existence. Ferney was the -centre of the most universal and varied correspondence that any one man -has ever carried on. Frederick the Great was not the only crowned head -with whom Voltaire interchanged royal communication. Catherine II. of -Russia, of Anhalt-Zerbst by birth, was the helpful patroness of Diderot -and D'Alembert, and was always eager to hear some word from the -patriarch of their encyclopdic church, only praying him not to think -her too importunate. Christian VII. of Denmark apologises for not being -able at a stroke to remove all the obstacles that lie in the way of the -civil liberty of his subjects. Gustavus III. of Sweden is elated by the -thought that Voltaire sometimes casts a glance on what is going on in -the North, and protests that this is their greatest encouragement to do -as well as they can in all ways.[274] Joseph II. would fain have called -at Ferney while travelling incognito through France, but fear of his -mother's displeasure held him back, the high and devout nature of Maria -Theresa always finding Voltaire's mockery of sacred things deeply -repugnant, as we may easily believe. - -Beside sovereigns who wrote to him as to an equal, every young aspirant -to literary distinction, however unknown and obscure, sought a criticism -from Ferney. Twenty years before he settled down here, Voltaire had been -consulted by Vauvenargues, and had replied with words of painstaking and -generous counsel. It was always the same with him. No young author ever -solicited advice in vain, and he was never sparing either of trouble or -praise. The Marquis of Chastellux sent him a copy of his Flicit -Publique, and was raised to the seventh heaven by a letter of thanks, in -which Voltaire tells him: 'I covered the margin of my copy with notes, -as I always do when a book charms and instructs me; I even took the -liberty of not always sharing the author's opinion. I am very old and -very feeble, but such reading makes me young again.' And the letter -contains a large number of points where he thinks the author in -error.[275] - -Besides kings and the writers of books, plain men also besought his -dictum on high matters. 'A burgomaster of Middleburg,' he informs Madame -du Deffand, 'whom I do not know, wrote to me a little while since, to -ask me in confidence whether there is a God or not; whether, in case -there be one, he takes any heed of us; whether matter is eternal; -whether it can think; whether the soul is immortal; and begging me to -answer by return of post.'[276] - -One may suspect that a little colouring is added here by the master -hand, but the substantial facts are probable enough. He corresponded -with cardinals, marshals of France, and bishops, and he corresponded -with Helvtius and with Diderot, who, greatly to the indignation of the -business-like patriarch, had a bad habit of leaving letters to answer -themselves.[277] - -If two cavalry officers fell to disputing over the mess-table as to the -propriety of using some bit of old French, it was to Ferney that the -reference was instantly made.[278] - -We get an idea of the kind of imperial authority which attached to -Voltaire's judgment, from the eagerness with which Turgot sought, -without revealing his name, an opinion from Ferney as to the worth of a -translation with which he lightened the heavy burden of his intendance -at Limoges, a translation of the Eclogues and Fourth neid into French -metric verse. 'They say,' wrote Turgot, 'that he is so busy with his -Encyclopdia as neither to speak nor to write to any one.' If Turgot -could have seen Voltaire's correspondence for 1770, he would have found -out how far this rumour was from the truth, and in fact he did get an -answer to his own letter; but it can hardly have been very much more -satisfactory than silence would have been, for Voltaire, while profuse -in praise of the fidelity and spirit of the translation, unfortunately -did not detect that it was meant for anything more ambitious than simple -prose with enthusiasm in it.[279] As Turgot especially valued in the -patriarch his 'superb ear,' the blow was as sharp as it well could be. -He was little concerned or surprised on learning the fallacious -reasoning of the poet in political economy. 'Reasoning,' he adds, 'has -never been Voltaire's strong point.'[280] And that was true in matters -of abstract science, but he was an unrivalled populariser of the results -of other people's reasoning, from Newton's Principia down to Middleton's -Free Enquiry, and this popularisation was what the conditions of the -time caused to be most ardently demanded. The proof of the demand we may -see in the extraordinary respect and curiosity, or dislike and alarm, -with which Voltaire for the twenty crowning years of his life was -regarded throughout the whole of civilised Europe. - -It is impossible to read the multitudinous volumes of Voltaire's -correspondence, and they are being added to every two or three years, -with entire satisfaction. They are wittier than any other letters in the -world. For lightness, swiftness, grace, spontaneity, you can find no -second to them, at however long an interval. But they abound in many -things which are disagreable in the letters of an old man who had -so true an interest in the spread of virtue, knowledge, and the other -conditions of human dignity. These, however, may be passed over as the -innocent and unconscious unseemliness of a very gay nature living in a -very free age. It is less easy to banish the unpleasant impressions with -which we find him playing the equivocal part of being all things to all -men. One would have been pleased to have a little more stiffness, a -little less pliancy of phrase. We would not go through the world -insisting on grim Puritanic earnestness at every moment of a man's life, -but Voltaire's lively complaisance with all sorts of unworthy people is -something worse than unedifying. One can hardly help sympathising with -D'Alembert's remonstrance. 'You have rather spoilt the people who -persecute us. 'Tis true you have had greater need than anybody else to -keep them quiet, and that you have been obliged to offer a candle to -Lucifer to save yourself from Beelzebub, but Lucifer has only grown the -prouder, without Beelzebub growing the less malignant.'[281] The truth -probably is that Voltaire did not always take--much thought of Lucifer or -Beelzebub. For one thing, he was, as we have said more than once, -intensely sympathetic by temperament, and in writing to a friend, or -even an acquaintance only, he was for the moment animated by a lively -good will and anxiety to be in harmony with his correspondent. There was -nothing false in these purring pleasantries, with which he amused all -correspondents alike. They came as naturally from his mobile and genial -constitution, as an equality of prosaic moroseness comes from persons of -fundamentally different constitutions. For another thing, the old -fashion of his youth never dropped away from him, and the elaborate -courteousness and friendly ardour of manner, which he had learnt among -the aristocratic friends of the days of the Regency and afterwards at -Paris and Versailles, did not desert him in the solitudes of the Jura. -He was to the last a man of quality, as well as a crusher of the -Infamous, and to the last he kept up the tone of one who had been a -gentleman of the chamber to one king, and court-chamberlain to another. -Voltaire's temperament and earliest surroundings fully explain what was -a more public, as well as more serious, falling away from the rigorous -integrity which men are now accustomed to demand from the leaders of -unpopular causes. His sins in this order are nearly as numerous as his -public acts. Rousseau, perhaps we may say without breach of charity, as -much from vanity as principle, prefixed his name to all that he wrote, -and he paid the penalty in a life of wandering and persecution. Voltaire -in his later days as invariably sheltered himself behind the anonymous, -and not only disclaimed works of which it was notorious that he was the -author, but insisted that his friends should impute them to this or that -dead name. Nobody was deceived. While he got unwelcome credit for a -multitude of pieces that were not his own, assuredly nothing really his -ever failed to be set down to its true author. We can only say that this -was the evil practice of the time, and that Voltaire was here little -worse than Turgot and many another man of general virtuousness, to whom -the ferocity of authority would not even allow freedom enough to plead -for tolerance, much less to utter uncertified opinion. 'Time,' said -D'Alembert, apologising for some whiff of orthodoxy which Voltaire -scented in one or two articles in the Encyclopdia, 'will make people -distinguish what we thought from what we said.'[282] Condorcet, as we -know, deliberately defended these deceptions, which did not deceive, -while they did protect. He contended that if you rob a man of his -natural right of publishing his opinions, then you lose your own right -to hear the truth from the man's lips.[283] Undoubtedly all laws admit -that duress introduces new conditions into the determination of what is -right and wrong in action, or at least that it mitigates pains and -penalties, and the position of every claimant for free speech was in -those days emphatically a position of duress. The choice lay between -disavowal on the one hand, and on the other abstention from proclaiming -truths by which only society could gain the freedom it so much needed; -between strict anonymity and leaving the darkness unbroken. And we must -remember that disingenuous tricks to conceal authorship were not -assuredly so unpardonable, when resorted to as protectives against -imprisonment, confiscation, and possible peril of life, as they are now -among ourselves, when they serve no more defensible purpose than -sheltering men who have not the courage of their opinions, against one -or two paltry social deprivations. The monstrous proceedings against La -Barre, and the ease with which in this and numerous other cases the -jurisprudence of the tribunals lent itself to the cruelty of fanatics, -no doubt excited in Voltaire a very genuine alarm for his own safety, -and probably with good reason. We know that he could not venture to -visit Italy, in consequence of his just fear lest the Inquisition should -throw their redoubtable foe into prison, and the parliaments of Toulouse -and Abbeville had perpetrated juridical murders as iniquitous as any of -the proceedings of the Holy Office. And though it is easy and right for -the young, who live in a time when you are not imprisoned or hung or -decapitated for holding unpopular opinions, to call out for manliness to -the uttermost in these things, one must make allowance for an occasional -fit of timorousness in a man of eighty, whom nature had never cut out -for a martyr. Yet, more than once, these fits committed Voltaire to acts -which were as great a scandal to the devout as to the atheists. That he -should rebuild the ruinous little chapel of his estate was not much more -remarked, than it would be for a Protestant landlord to subscribe to -repair the Catholic church on an Irish property containing only Catholic -tenants. The gorgeous ceremony with which in his quality of lord he -commemorated its opening, made everybody laugh, not excepting the chief -performer, for he actually took the opportunity of lifting up his voice -in the new temple and preaching a sermon against theft. The bishop of -Annecy in Savoy, his diocesan, was furious at this mockery, and urged -the minister at Paris to banish Voltaire from France. In order to avert -the blow, Voltaire tried to make a nominal peace with the church by -confessing, and participating in the solemnity of an Easter communion -(1768). The bishop wrote him a long letter of unctuous impertinences, to -which Voltaire replied by asking very tartly why the discharge of so -ordinary a duty called for this insolent congratulation. The -philosophers of Paris were bitterly scandalised, and some of them wrote -to the patriarch of the sect to remonstrate. Even D'Alembert, his own -familiar friend, could not refrain from protest.[284] Voltaire could -give no better reasons for his strange lapse than we may hear given -every day in our own country, by men who practise hypocritical -compliances for the sake of a little ignoble ease, and thus perpetuate -the yoke. He owed an example to his parish, as if the example of -feigning a belief which he repudiates could be a good example for one to -set in any parish. It was very well to shirk these observances in Paris, -because there in the tide of business one finds an excuse or is not -missed, but in the country no such excuse offers itself. One must stand -well with the cur, be he knave or dunce. One must respect the two -hundred and fifty timorous consciences around one. And so forth, down -that well-worn list of pleas by which men make anxiety about the -consciences of others a substantial reason for treachery to their own. -Voltaire, besides all these, honestly added the one true reason, that he -did not mean to be burnt alive, and that the only way of making sure -against such a fate was to close the lips of spies and informers.[285] -The bishop knew perfectly well that the squire, who had made his Easter -communion in so remarkable a manner in 1768, was the author of the -Philosophical Dictionary, of which a bran-new edition, amended and -revised, made its appearance in 1769; and he appears to have forbidden -the priest of Ferney to confess or administer the eucharist to the chief -of the flock. Voltaire was at once seized with a fever, and summoned the -priest to administer ghostly comfort. The priest pleaded the horrible -rumours of the world as to the damnable books of which the sick man was -alleged to be the author. Voltaire replied by warning him very -peremptorily that in refusing to administer the viaticum he was -infringing the law, and the consequence was that he did duly receive the -viaticum, after which he signed a solemn act in the presence of a -notary, declaring that he pardons his various calumniators; that 'if any -indiscretion prejudicial to the religion of the State should have -escaped him,' he seeks forgiveness from God and the State; and finally -he forgave the bishop of Annecy, who had calumniated him to the king, -and whose malicious designs had come to nought. The priest and notary -afterwards falsified this amazing declaration so as to appease the -bishop, and came to Voltaire praying him not to betray them. 'I prove to -them,' he says, 'that they will be damned, I give them something to -drink, and they go away delighted.'[286] A younger philosopher of his -school remarks with his accustomed gravity on this most singular -transaction, that the satisfaction of forcing his priest to administer -by fear of the secular judges, and of insulting the bishop of Annecy in -a juridical manner, cannot excuse such a proceeding in the eyes of the -free and firm man, who weighs calmly the claims of truth and the -requirements of prudence, when laws contrary to natural justice render -truth dangerous and prudence indispensable.[287] To which reflection we -may perhaps add another, suggested by the cruel experience of the church -in France within five and twenty years from Voltaire's impious -communion, that if any order, secular or spiritual, constrains its -adversaries under penalties to the commission of base acts, then if the -chances of time should ever transfer the power to the other side, that -order has only itself to blame for whatever wrong may mark the -retaliation. There is no more dangerous policy in affairs of state than -to strip your opponent of self-respect, and this the descendants of the -persecutors found out to their extreme cost, when in 1793 they had to -deal with the descendants of the persecuted. - -One other curious piece of sportiveness in his dealings with the church -deserves to be noticed. In the year 1770 the post of temporal father of -the order of Capucins for the district of Gex became vacant. Voltaire -applied for it, and the general at Rome, perhaps listening to a word -from Ganganelli, or else from the Duchess of Choiseul, sent to Ferney -the letters patent conferring upon its patriarch this strange dignity, -and also affiliating him to the order. What were Voltaire's motives in -so odd a transaction, it is not very hard to divine. Probably, he -thought even this humble office would be some protection against -persecution. Then it gave him an opportunity of harassing his enemy, the -bishop of Annecy. Thirdly, it amused that whimsical element of farce and -mischief which was always so irrepressible in him, from the early days -when he is said to have nearly damned his own play by appearing on the -stage as the high-priest's train-bearer, and burlesquing that august -person's solemn gait. Voltaire filled his letters with infinite -pleasantries about the new Capucin, and seemed as much pleased at the -idea of wearing the cord of Saint Francis, as he had been with the gold -key of a Prussian chamberlain.[288] One of his first enjoyments was to -write letters to his episcopal foe, signed with a cross and his name: -'[Cross sign] _Voltaire, Capucin indigne._'[289] A story is told by -Grimm of a visitor arriving at Ferney, and being greeted by the -patriarch with the news that he would find his host a changed man. -'One grows a bigot in one's old age; I have a habit of having some -pious work read to me when I sit down at table.' And in fact, some one -began to read a sermon of Massillon, Voltaire throwing in exclamations -on the beauty, eloquence, imagination of the preacher. Suddenly after -three or four pages, he called out 'Off with Massillon!' and launched -forth during the rest of the meal with his usual verve and fanciful -extravagance of imagination.[290] It is profoundly unedifying, but not -the less characteristic. - -Voltaire, there can be little doubt, never designed a social revolution, -being in this the representative of the method of Hobbes. His single -object was to reinstate the understanding in its full rights, to -emancipate thought, to extend knowledge, to erect the standard of -critical common sense. He either could not see, or else, as one -sometimes thinks, he closes his eyes and refuses for his part to see, -that it was impossible to revolutionise the spiritual basis of belief -without touching the social forms, which were inseparably connected with -the old basis by the strong bonds of time and a thousand fibres of -ancient association and common interest. Rousseau began where Voltaire -left off. He informs us that in the days when his character was forming, -nothing which Voltaire wrote escaped, him, and that the Philosophical -Letters, that is the Letters on the English, though assuredly not the -writer's best work, were what first attracted him to study, and -implanted a taste which never afterwards became extinct. The -correspondence between Voltaire and the prince of Prussia, afterwards -the great Frederick, inspired Rousseau with a passionate desire to learn -how to compose with elegance, and to imitate the colouring of so fine an -author.[291] Thus Voltaire, who was eighteen years his elder, gave this -extraordinary genius his first productive impulse. But a sensibility of -temperament, to which perhaps there is no parallel in the list of -prominent men, impelled Rousseau to think, or rather to feel, about the -concrete wrongs and miseries of men and women, and not the abstract -rights of their intelligence. Hence the two great revolutionary schools, -the school which appealed to sentiment, and the school which appealed to -intelligence. The Voltarian principles of the strictest political -moderation and of literary common sense, negative, merely emancipatory, -found their political outcome, as French historians early pointed out, -in the Constituent Assembly, which was the creation of the upper and -middle class, while the spirit of Rousseau, ardent, generous, passionate -for the relief of the suffering, overwhelmed by the crowding forms of -manhood chronically degraded and womanhood systematically polluted, came -to life and power in the Convention and the sections of the Commune of -Paris which overawed the Convention. - -'It will not do,' wrote D'Alembert to Voltaire as early as 1762, 'to -speak too loudly against Jean Jacques or his book, for he is rather a -king in the Halles.'[292] This must have been a new word in the ears of -the old man, who had grown up in the habit of thinking of public opinion -as the opinion, not of markets where the common people bought and sold, -but of the galleries of Versailles. Except for its theology, the age of -Lewis XIV. always remained the great age to Voltaire, the age of pomp -and literary glory, and it was too difficult a feat to cling on one side -to the Grand Monarch, and to stretch out a hand on the other to the -Social Contract. It was too difficult for the man who had been embraced -by Ninon de l'Enclos, who was the correspondent of the greatest -sovereigns in Europe, and the intimate of some of the greatest nobles in -France, to feel much sympathy with writings that made their author king -of the Halles. Frederick offered Rousseau shelter, and so did Voltaire; -but each of them disliked his work as warmly as the other. They did not -understand one who, if he wrote with an eloquence that touched all -hearts, repulsed friends and provoked enemies like a madman or a savage. -The very language of Rousseau was to Voltaire as an unknown tongue, for -it was the language of reason clothing the births of passionate -sensation. Emile only wearied him, though there were perhaps fifty pages -of it which he would have had bound in morocco.[293] It is a stale -romance, he cries, while the Social Contract is only remarkable for -some insults rudely thrown at kings by a citizen of Geneva, and for four -insipid pages against the Christian religion, which are simply -plagiarised from Bayle's centos.[294] The author is a monster of -ingratitude and insolence, the arch-scoundrel and chief of charlatans, -the lineal descendant of the dog of Diogenes the cynic, and other evil -things not readily to be named in a polite age. Partly no doubt this -extreme irritation was due to the insults with which Jean Jacques had -repulsed his offers of shelter and assistance, had repudiated Voltaire's -attempts to defend him, and had held up Voltaire himself as a proper -object for the persecutions of Geneva. But there was a still deeper root -of discrepancy, which we have already pointed out. Rousseau's -exaggerated tone was an offence to Voltaire's more just and reasonable -spirit, and the feigned austerity of a man whose life and manners he -knew, assumed in his eyes a disagreeable shade of hypocrisy.[295] -Besides these things, he was clearly apprehensive of the storms which -Rousseau's extraordinary hardihood had the very natural effect of -raising in the circles of authority, though it is true that the most -acute observers of the time thought that they noticed a very perceptible -increase of Voltaire's own hardihood, as a consequence of the example -which the other set him. - -The rivalry between the schools of Rousseau and Voltaire represents the -dead-lock to which social thought had come; a dead-lock of which the -catastrophe of the Revolution was both expression and result. At the -time of Voltaire's death there was not a single institution in France -with force enough to be worth a month's purchase. The monarchy was -decrepit; the aristocracy was as feeble and impotent as it was arrogant; -the bourgeoisie was not without aspiration, but it lacked courage and it -possessed no tradition; and the church was demoralised, first by the -direct attack of Voltaire and the not less powerful indirect attack of -the Encyclopdia, and second by the memory of its own cruelty and -selfishness in the generation just closing. But Voltaire's theory, so -far as he ever put it into its most general form, was that the temporal -order was safe and firm, and that it would endure until criticism had -transformed thought and prepared the way for a rgime of enlightenment -and humanity. Rousseau, on the contrary, directed all the engines of -passion against the whole temporal fabric, and was so little careful of -freedom of thought, so little confident in the plenary efficacy of -rational persuasion, as to insist upon the extermination of atheists by -law. The position of each was at once irrefragable and impossible. It -was impossible to effect a stable reconstitution of the social order -until men had been accustomed to use their minds freely, and had -gradually thrown off the demoralising burden of superstition. But then -the existing social order had become intolerable, and its forces were -practically extinct, and consequently such an attack as Rousseau's was -inevitable, and was at the same time and for the same reasons -irresistible. To overthrow the power of the church only was to do -nothing in a society perishing from material decay and political -emasculation. Yet to regenerate such a society without the aid of moral -and spiritual forces, with whose activity the existence of a dominant -ecclesiastical power was absolutely incompatible, was one of the wildest -feats that ever passionate sophist attempted. - -If, however, it must be admitted that each of these two famous -destroyers was attempting an equally desperate task, it is the -contention of these pages that Voltaire was the more right and -far-sighted of the two in his perception of the conditions of the -problem. We have now for various adequate reasons acquired the habit of -looking upon the church and speaking of it, as an organisation outside -of society, or at least as a separate organisation and independent -integer within it. The truth is that in a Catholic country like France -before the Revolution, the church more than the secular order actually -was the society, as it had been, though to a far wider degree, -throughout Europe in the days of Hildebrand and Innocent. That is to -say, it furnished the strongest of the ideas, sentiments, hopes, and -associations which bound men together in a single community. The -monarchy, the nobles, the old historic French tradition, the various -bodies and processes of law, were swept away by the Revolution, -virtually never to return, in spite of the transient appearances to the -contrary. The church was swept away also, but only for a year or two; -and so little effectual was the Revolution, which was in fact Rousseau's -Revolution, in permanently modifying its position, that those Frenchmen -at the present day who most soberly judge the future of their country -and look deepest into its state, clearly perceive that the battle to be -fought in the order of ideas is a battle between the new moral and -social ideas of the workmen, and the old moral and social ideas which -Catholicism has implanted in the breasts of the peasants, and on which -the middle class privately and unconsciously lean for the support of -their own consciences, though they may have put away Catholic dogma. We -may see here, once more, the help which Protestantism gave to the -dissolution of the old society, by the increased room it gave, apart -from the specific influence of a more democratic dogma, for that gradual -intellectual expansion throughout a community, which for those who have -faith in the reasoning faculty is the one sure secret of social advance. -The subjection of the spiritual power to the temporal, which has -commonly followed the establishment of the Protestant communion, has -very likely retarded the final disappearance of many ideas which foster -anti-social tendencies; but the subjection of the spiritual power in -such a set of circumstances has the effect of softening shocks. -Protestantism in the sixteenth century, if it could have been accepted -in France, would have been a more edifying dissolvent than Voltairism -was in the eighteenth; but it is certain that the loosening of -theological ideas and the organisation connected with them and upholding -them, was the first process towards making truly social ideas possible, -and their future realisation a thing which good men might hope for. -Napoleon, the great organ of political reaction, knew what he was about -in paying writers for years to denigrate the memory of Voltaire, whose -very name he abhorred.[296] - -In saying, however, that Rousseau's attack was inevitable, we have -perhaps said that it was indispensable; for where a society is not able -to resist an assault upon its fundamental conditions, we may be -tolerably sure that the time has arrived when either these conditions -must be dispersed, or else the society must fall into rapid dissolution. -We may refute Rousseau's sophisms as often and as conclusively as we -please, and may dwell as forcibly as we know how upon the untold -penalties which France has paid, and is still doomed to pay, for -whatever benefits he may have bestowed on her. But, after all this, the -benefits remain, and they may be briefly set down as two in number. In -the first place he spoke words that can never be unspoken, and kindled a -hope that can never be extinguished; he first inflamed men with a -righteous conviction that the evils of the existing order of things -reduced civilisation to a nullity for the great majority of mankind, and -that it cannot for ever be tolerable that the mass should wear away -their lives in unbroken toil without hope or aim, in order that the few -may live selfish and vacuous days. Rousseau presented this sentiment in -a shape which made it the 'negation of society;' but it was much to -induce thinkers to ask themselves, and the bondsmen of society to ask -their masters, whether the last word of social philosophy had been -uttered, and the last experiment in the relations of men to one another -decisively tried and irrevocably accepted. Second, by his fervid -eloquence and the burning conviction which he kindled in the breasts of -great numbers of men, he inspired energy enough in France to awaken her -from the torpor as of death which was stealing so rapidly over her. -Nobody was more keenly aware of the presence of this breath of decay in -the air than Voltaire was. It had seized such hold of the vital parts of -the old order, that, but for the fiery spirit and unquenchable ardour of -the men who read Rousseau as men of old had read the gospel, but for the -spirit and ardour which animated the Convention, and made it alike in -the tasks of peace and the tasks of war one of the most effective and -formidable assemblies that the world has ever beheld, we do not see what -there was to stop France from sinking lower and lower into impotence, -until at last the powers who vainly threatened the republic with -partition, might in the course of time actually have consummated the -threat against the monarchy. This may seem impossible to us who live -after the Revolution and after Napoleon; but we must remember the -designs of partitioning Prussia in the middle of the century, the -accomplishment of a partition of the Italian possessions of the house of -Austria in 1735, and the partition of Poland; and why was France to be -eternal, any more than the Byzantine empire, or the power of the house -of Austria, or the power of Spain, had been eternal? It was the fire -kindled by Rousseau's passion that saved her; for even of the -Constituent, which was Voltairean, the very soul was Mirabeau, who was -Rousseauite. - -It will be seen that in one sense Rousseau was a far more original -personage than his first chief and inspirer. He contributed new ideas, -of extremely equivocal and perilous character, but still new, to the -multitudinous discussions which were throwing all the social elements -into confusion. These ideas might indeed have been found substantially -in the writings of previous thinkers like Montaigne and Locke; but -Rousseau's passion invested them with a quality which was virtually to -constitute them a fresh and original force. Voltaire contributed -initiative and a temperament, which made his propagation of ideas that -were not new, as important a fact in social if not in intellectual -history, as if he had been possessed of superlative gifts in -speculation. This has also to be remembered when we think of comparing -him with Diderot, who, while his equal in industry, was greatly his -superior both in fresh simplicity of imagination, and in grasp and -breadth of positive knowledge. Whoever will take the trouble to turn -over some of the thirty-five volumes of the Encyclopdia, may easily see -how that gigantic undertaking (1751-1765), in which Voltaire always took -the most ardent and practical interest,[297] assisted the movement that -Voltaire had commenced. It seemed to gather up into a single great -reservoir all that men knew, and this fact of mere mechanical -collocation was a sort of substitute for a philosophic synthesis. As -Comte says, it furnished a provisional rallying-point for efforts the -most divergent, without requiring the sacrifice of any points of -essential independence, in such a way as to secure for a body of -incoherent speculation an external look of system.[298] This enterprise, -the history of which is a microcosm of the whole battle between the two -sides in France, enabled the various opponents of theological -absolutism, the Voltaireans, Rousseauites, atheists, and all other sorts -and conditions of protesting men, to confront the church and its -doctrine with a similar semblance of organic unity and completeness. The -Encyclopdia was not simply negative and critical. It was an unexampled -manual of information, and was the means of spreading over the country -some knowledge of that active scientific culture, which was producing -such abundant and astonishing discoveries. The two streams of dissolvent -influences, negative criticism on the one hand, and positive knowledge -and scientific method on the other, were led into a single channel of -multiplied volume and force. There was no real nor logical connection -between the two elements, and while one of them has daily grown less -serviceable, the other has daily grown more absorbingly powerful, so as -now to be itself the effective indirect substitute for that direct -negative criticism, with which the Encyclopdic design had once thrown -it into alliance. - -Diderot, the third chief of the attack, does even fuller justice than -Rousseau to Voltaire's share in stimulating thought and opening the mind -of France; and in spite of the extravagance of its first clause, there -is a glimpse of true discrimination in the characteristic sentence--'Were -I to call him the greatest man nature has produced, I might find people -to agree with me; but if I say that she has never yet produced, and is -never likely to produce again, a man so extraordinary, only his enemies -will contradict me.'[299] This panegyric was specially disinterested, -because Voltaire's last years had been not least remarkable for his -bitter antipathy to the dogmatic atheism and dogmatic materialism of -that school, with which Diderot was most intimate personally, and with -whose doctrines, if he did not at all times seem entirely to share them, -he had at any rate a warmer sympathy than with any other system of that -negative epoch, when every chief thinker was so vague positively, so -weak constructively, and only the subalterns, like D'Holbach and -Helvtius, presumed to push on to conclusions. - -The story of Voltaire's many long-sustained and unflagging endeavours to -procure whatever redress might be possible for the victims of legal -injustice, has been very often told, and mere commemoration of these -justly renowned achievements may suffice here. 'The worst of the worthy -sort of people,' he once said, 'is that they are such cowards. A man -groans over wrong, he shuts his lips, he takes his supper, he -forgets.'[300] Voltaire was not of that temper. He was not only an -extremely humane man; extraordinary vividness of imagination, lack of -which is at the root of so much cruelty, and unparalleled sympathetic -quality, thinness of which explains so much appalling indifference, -animated him to a perseverance in protecting the helpless, which -entitles him to a place by the side of Howard and the noblest -philanthropists. There were three years in which the chief business of -his life was to procure the rehabilitation of the name of the -unfortunate Calas, and the payment of a money recompense to his family. -He agitated the whole world with indignation and pity by means of -narratives, pleas, short statements and long statements, passionate -appeals and argumentative appeals. Powerful ministers, fine ladies, -lawyers, men of letters, were all constrained by his importunate -solicitations to lend an ear to the cause of reason and tolerance, and -to lift up an arm in its vindication. The same tremendous enginery was -again brought into play in the case of Sirven. In the case of La Barre -and his comrade D'Etallonde, his tenacity was still more amazing and -heroic. For twelve years he persevered in the attempt to have the memory -of La Barre rehabilitated. One of the judicial authorities concerned in -that atrocious exploit, struck with horror at the thought of being held -up to the execration of Europe by that terrible avenger, conveyed some -menace to Voltaire of what might befall him. Voltaire replied to him by -a Chinese anecdote. 'I forbid you,' said a tyrannical emperor to the -chief of the tribunal of history, '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.'[301] -There was a something inexorable as doom about Voltaire's unrelenting -perseverance in getting wrong definitely stamped and transfixed. If he -did not succeed in obtaining justice for the memory of La Barre, and in -procuring for D'Etallonde free pardon, at least he never abandoned the -endeavour, and he was just as ardent and unwearied in the twelfth year, -as he had been while his indignation was freshly kindled. He was more -successful in the case of Lally. Count Lally had failed to save India -from the English, had been taken prisoner, and had then in a magnanimous -way asked his captors to allow him to go to Paris to clear himself from -various charges, which the too numerous enemies he had made were -spreading against his character and administration. The French people, -infuriated at the loss of their possessions in India and Canada, were -crying for a victim, and Lally, after a process tainted with every kind -of illegality, was condemned to death by the parliament of Paris (1766) -on the vague charge of abuse of authority, exactions, and -vexations.[302] The murdered man's son, known in the days of the -Revolution as Lally Tollendal, was joined by Voltaire in the honourable -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. - -The death of Lally is the parallel in French history to the execution of -Byng in the history of England, and, oddly enough, Voltaire was very -actively occupied in trying to avert that crime of our government, as -well as the crimes of his own. He had known Byng when he was in -England.[303] Some one told him that a letter from Richelieu, who had -been Byng's opponent at Minorca, would be useful, and Voltaire instantly -urged the Duke to allow him to forward a letter he had, stating -Richelieu's conviction of his defeated enemy's bravery and good -judgment. Voltaire insists that this letter turned four votes on the -court-martial.[304] He informs a correspondent, moreover, of the fact -that Byng had instructed his executor to express his deep obligation -both to Voltaire and Richelieu.[305] Humanity is erroneously counted -among commonplace virtues. If it deserved such a place, there would be -less urgent need than, alas, there is, for its daily exercise among us. -In its pale shape of kindly sentiment and bland pity it is common -enough, and is always the portion of the cultivated. But humanity armed, -aggressive, and alert, never slumbering and never wearying, moving like -ancient hero over the land to slay monsters, is the rarest of virtues, -and Voltaire is one of its master-types. - -His interest in public transactions in his latest years was keener than -ever. That fruit of Polish anarchy, the war between Russia and Turkey -which broke out in 1768, excited his imagination to a pitch of great -heat, and the despatch in the spring of 1770 of a squadron from -Cronstadt, for the so-called liberation of Greece, made him weep for -joy. He implored Frederick not to leave to Catherine alone the burden of -so glorious a task. Superstition had had seven crusades; was it not a -noble thing to undertake one crusade to drive the barbarous Turks from -the land of Socrates and Plato, Sophocles and Euripides? Frederick -replied very sensibly that Dantzic was more to him than the Pirus, and -that he is a little indifferent about the modern Greeks, who, if ever -the arts should revive among them, would be jealous to find that a Gaul -by his Henriade had surpassed their Homer; that this same Gaul had -beaten Sophocles, equalled Thucydides, and left far behind him Plato, -Aristotle, and the whole school of the Porch;[306]--which was, perhaps, -not quite so sensibly said. - -The successes of Russia against Turkey in 1770 roused the anxiety of -Austria and Prussia, and the solution of what we know as the Eastern -question was indefinitely postponed by the device of partitioning Poland -(Aug. 5, 1772), the alternative to the acquisition of the whole of that -country by Russia, the least civilised of the three powers. Of this -memorable transaction Voltaire heartily approved, and he gave thanks -that he had lived to see 'such glorious events.'[307] He insisted, -decidedly against the king's will, that Frederick had devised the -scheme, for he found it full of genius, and to all seeming he discerned -none of the execration which the event he had just witnessed was -destined to raise in his own country in years to come. His friendship -with two of the chief actors may have biassed his judgment; but Voltaire -seldom allowed, indeed by the conditions of his temperament he was -unable to allow, personal considerations of this kind to obscure his -penetrating sight. He may well have thought the partition of Poland -desirable, for the reasons which a statesman of to-day may find -adequate: the country's hopeless political anarchy, its crushing -material misery, the oppressive power of the church, the inevitable and -standing peril to Europe of the existence of such a centre of -conflagration. It is worth remarking that Rousseau was much more keenly -alive to the gravity of the event, that he protested against what had -been done, and that his influence has been one of the main causes of the -illogical sympathy of democratic Europe for one of the most pestilent of -aristocratic governments. - -The accession of Turgot to power in 1774 stirred an ardent sympathy in -Voltaire. Like the rest of the school, he looked upon this as the advent -of the political messiah,[308] and he shared the extreme hopes of that -great and virtuous man's most sanguine lieutenants. He declared that a -new heaven and a new earth had opened to him.[309] His sallies against -the economists were forgotten, and he now entered into the famous -controversy of the free trade in grain with all his usual fire. His -fervour went too far for the sage minister, who prayed him to be -somewhat less eager in alarming uninformed prejudice. Still he insisted -on hoping all things. - - Contemple la brillante aurore - Qui t'annonce enfin les beaux jours. - Un nouveau monde est prs d'clore; - At disparat pour toujours. - Vois l'auguste philosophie, - Chez toi si long temps poursuivie, - Dicter ses triomphantes lois. - - * * * * * - - Je lui dis: 'Ange tutlaire, - Quels dieux rpandent ces bienfaits?' - 'C'est un seul homme.'[310] - -When it proved that one man alone, 'qui ne chercha le vrai, que pour -faire le bien,'[311] was no match for the mountain torrent of ignorance, -prejudice, selfishness, and usage, and Turgot fell from power (May -1776), Voltaire sunk into a despair for his country, from which he never -arose. 'I am as one dashed to the ground. Never can we console ourselves -for having seen the golden age dawn and perish. My eyes see only death -in front of me, now that M. Turgot is gone. It has fallen like a -thunderbolt on my brain and my heart alike. The rest of my days can -never be other than pure bitterness.'[312] - -The visit to Paris was perhaps a falsification of this prophecy for a -moment. In 1778, yielding either to the solicitations of his niece, or -to a momentary desire to enjoy the triumph of his renown at its centre, -he returned to the great city which he had not seen for nearly thirty -years. His reception has been described over and over again. It is one -of the historic events of the century. No great captain returning from a -prolonged campaign of difficulty and hazard crowned by the most glorious -victory, ever received a more splendid and far-resounding greeting. It -was the last great commotion in Paris under the old rgime. The next -great commotion which the historian has to chronicle is the -ever-memorable fourteenth day of July, eleven years later, when the -Bastille fell, and a new order began for France, and new questions began -for all Europe. - -The agitation of so much loud triumph and incessant acclamation proved -more violent than Voltaire's feeble health could resist, and he died, -probably from an over-dose of laudanum, on the thirtieth of May 1778. -His last writing was a line of rejoicing to the young Lally, that their -efforts had been successful in procuring justice for the memory of one -who had been put to death unjustly. How far Voltaire realised the -nearness of vast changes we cannot tell. There is at least one -remarkable prophecy of his, in the well-known letter to -Chauvelin:--'Everything that I see appears the throwing broadcast of the -seed of a revolution, which must inevitably come one day, but which I -shall not have the pleasure of witnessing. The French always come late -to things, but they do come at last. Light extends so from neighbour to -neighbour, that there will be a splendid outburst on the first occasion, -and then there will be a rare commotion. The young are very happy; they -will see fine things.'[313] A less sanguine tone marks the close of the -apologue in which Reason and Truth, her daughter, take a triumphant -journey in France and elsewhere, about the time of the accession of -Turgot. 'Ah, well,' says Reason, 'let us enjoy these glorious days; let -us rest here, if they last; and if storms come on, let us go back to our -well.'[314] Whether this meant much or little none can know. It would be -shallow to believe that such men as Voltaire, with faculty quickened and -outlook widened in the high air to which their fame raises them, really -discerned no more than we, who have only their uttered words for -authority, can perceive that they discerned. Great position often -invests men with a second sight whose visions they lock up in silence, -content with the work of the day. - - -FOOTNOTES: - -[1] _OEuvres_, xxxv. p. 214. - -[2] See Comte's _Philosophic Positive_, v. 520. - -[3] Vauban and Boisguillebert are both to be found in _Les Economistes -Financiers du XVIIIime Sicle_, published by Guillaumin, 1851. - -[4] 'Je ne sais si, tout prendre, et malgr les vices clatants de -quelques uns de ses membres, il y eut jamais dans le monde un clerg -plus remarquable que le clerg catholique de France au moment o la -Rvolution l'a surpris, plus clair, plus national, moins retranch -dans les seules vertus prives, mieux pourvu de vertus publiques et en -meme temps de plus de foi: la perscution l'a bien montr'--De -Tocqueville, _Ancien Rgime_, liv. ii. c. 11. - -[5] Rem. sur les Penses de M. Pascal. _OEuvres_, xliii. p. 68. - -[6] _Novum Organum_, 67. - -[7] Some fault has been found with this passage by one or two private -critics, as being not entirely just to the eminent thinker to whom it -refers, and to whom my own obligations, direct and indirect, are so -numerous, notwithstanding my final inability to follow him in his ideas -of social reconstruction, that the idea of adding to the sum of -misrepresentation of which Comte and his doctrines have been the -victims, is particularly disagreeable to me. Here, therefore, is one -passage in which Comte seems to speak rather more warmly of Voltaire -than the words in the text imply: 'Toutefois, l'indispensable ncessit -mentale et sociale d'une telle laboration provisoire laissera toujours, -dans l'ensemble de l'histoire humaine, une place importante ses -principaux cooprateurs, et surtout leur type le plus minent, auquel -la postrit la plus lointaine assurera une position vraiment unique; -parceque jamais un pareil office n'avait pu jusqu'alors choir, et -pourra dsormais encore moins appartenir un esprit de cette nature, -chez lequel la plus admirable combinaison qui ait exist jusqu'ici entre -les diverses qualits secondaires de l'intelligence prsentait si -souvent la sduisante apparence de la force et du gnie' (_Phil. Pos._ -v. 518). Against this we have to place the highly significant fact that -Voltaire only appears in the calendar as a dramatic poet, as well as the -whole tenour and spirit of Comte's teaching, namely, as he puts it in -one place, that '_une pure critique ne peut jamais mriter beaucoup -d'estime_' (_Politique Positive_, iii. 547). - -[8] J. B. Rousseau's _Mosade_. - -[9] _OEuvres_, lxii. p. 45. - -[10] Dictionnaire Philosophique, _s.v. OEuvres_, lii. p. 378. - -[11] _OEuvres_, i. 513. - -[12] _OEuvres_, lxii. pp. 86 and 89. - -[13] _Ib._ lxii. p. 107. - -[14] A.R.O.V.E.T., L(_e_). I(_eune_). - -[15] Chevalier appears to have been a title given by courtesy to the -cadets of certain great families. - -[16] _OEuvres_, iv. 18. - -[17] _Histoire de l'ancien Gouvernement de la France_ (1727). - -[18] Buckle's _Hist. of Civilisation_, i. 657-664. - -[19] Sainte-Beuve, _Causeries_, v. 111. - -[20] _OEdipe_, iv. sc. 1. - -[21] _Ib._ ii. v. - -[22] Le Pour et le Contre, ou Eptre Uranie. _OEuvres_, xv. pp. 399, -403. - -[23] Condorcet, _Vie de Voltaire. OEuvres_, iv. 20. - -[24] Condorcet, _Vie de Voltaire. OEuvres_, iv. 20. - -[25] Correspondence, 1725. _OEuvres_, lxii. pp. 140-49. - -[26] Lettres sur les Anglais, xv. _OEuvres_, xxxv. p. 114. Cf. also -Letter xxiv. (pp. 197-202). - -[27] Lord Stanhope's _Hist. of England_, ii. 231 (ed. 1858). - -[28] Lettres sur les Anglais, ix. _OEuvres_, xxxv. p. 73. - -[29] Correspondence, 1732. _OEuvres_, lxii. p. 253. - -[30] Martin's _Hist. de France_, vol. xiv. 265-67. - -[31] Philosophie de Newton, Pt. i. c. i. _OEuvres_, xli. p. 46. - -[32] Lettres sur les Anglais, xv. _OEuvres_, xxxv. pp. 115-20. - -[33] Philos. de Newton, Pt. i. c. ix. _OEuvres_, xli. p. 108. - -[34] D'Alembert. - -[35] Dictionnaire Philosophique, s.v. Locke. _OEuvres_, lvi. p. 447. - -[36] Corr. 1736. _OEuvres_, lxiii. p. 29. - -[37] _Soires de St. Ptersbourg, 6ime Fentretien_, i. 403. - -[38] Corr. 1737; lxiii. p. 154. - -[39] _Ib._ p. 248. Cf. also lxii. p. 276. - -[40] Lettres sur les Anglais, xiv. _OEuvres_, xxxv. pp. 102-5. - -[41] _OEuvres_, vol. xliii. p. 77. - -[42] _Ib._ p. 20. - -[43] _OEuvres_, vol. xliii. p. 26. - -[44] Corr. 1737. _OEuvres_, lxiii. p. 248. - -[45] Lettres sur les Anglais, xiii. _OEuvres_, xxxv. p. 95. - -[46] Lettres, etc. x. _OEuvres_, xxxv. p. 81. - -[47] De Tocqueville's _Ancien Rgime_, liv. ii. c. 9, p. 137 (ed. 1866). - -[48] _OEuvres_, xxxv. p. 80. - -[49] The reader of _Zadig_ will remember the '_homme comme moi_,' and -his ill luck at Babylon. _OEuvres_, lix. pp. 153-59. - -[50] Lettres sur les Anglais, xi. _OEuvres_, xxxv. p. 85. - -[51] Lett. Ang. xxi.; xxxv. pp. 172, etc. - -[52] Lettres sur les Anglais, i.; xxxv. p. 31. - -[53] Lett. Ang. vi.; xxxv. p. 62. - -[54] Lett. Ang. vii. pp. 62-65. - -[55] Lett. Ang. ii.; xxxv. p. 42. - -[56] _OEuvres_, xxxv. p. 185. - -[57] Ess. sur la Posie Epique. _OEuvres_, xiii. p. 445, and pp. 513-26. - -[58] _OEuvres_, xxxv. p. 155. - -[59] _OEuvres_, xxxv. p. 159. - -[60] Corr. 1736. _OEuvres_, lxiii. p. 4. _Ib._ 60. - -[61] _OEuvres_, xxxv. pp. 189, 190. - -[62] For Berkeley, see Corr. 1736 _(OEuv_. lxiii. pp. 130, 164, etc.), -and for the other two, see Le Philosophe Ignorant (_OEuvres_, xliv. p. -69 and p. 47). - -[63] _OEuv._ xliv. p. 47. - -[64] The _De Veritate_ was published in 1624. - -[65] See the list from 1725 to 1728 in Leland's _View of the Deistical -Writers_, i. 132-144. - -[66] _OEuvres_, lvii. pp. 107-114. - -[67] Corr. 1736-37. _OEuv._ lxiii. p. 60, p. 86, and p. 112. - -[68] Examen Important de Milord Bolingbrocke. _OEuv._ xliv. p. 89. - -[69] See Lechler's _Geschichte des Englischen Deismus_, p. 396. - -[70] _Reflections. Works_, i. 419 (ed. 1842). - -[71] _Encyclopdic Nouvelle_ de Jean Reynaud et Pierre Leroux, s.v. -Voltaire, p. 736. De Maistre audaciously denies that Voltaire ever did -more than dip into Locke. _Soires_, vi. - -[72] Villemain's _Cours de Lit. Franaise_, i. p. 111. See also De -Maistre, _Soires de St. Ptersbourg_, vi. p. 424. On the other hand, -see Lanfrey's _L'Eglise et les Philosophes du 18ime Sicle_, pp. 99, -108, etc. - -[73] Madame de Grafigny. Cf. Desnoiresterres, _Voltaire au Chteau de -Cirey_, p. 246, etc. - -[74] Desnoiresterres, p. 257. - -[75] Condorcet, _Vie de Voltaire_, p. 61. A graceful and dignified -letter in this kind is that to Formey, May 12, 1752. _OEuv._ lxv. p. 64. - -[76] Grimm, _Correspondance Littraire_, v. p. 5. - -[77] _OEuv._ lxv. p. 395. - -[78] Correspondence. Also, Essai sur la Posie Epique, c. vi. _OEuvres_, -xiii. p. 481. - -[79] _OEuvres_, lxv. p. 91. - -[80] Corr. with the Abb Moussinot, 1737, and afterwards. _OEuvres_, -lxiii. pp. 122, 160, 176, etc. - -[81] Corr. 1752. _OEuvres_, lxv. p. 115. - -[82] _Vie de Voltaire_, p. 37. - -[83] Desnoiresterres, p. 323. - -[84] Foisset's _Correspond. de Voltaire avec De Brosses, etc._, -published in 1836. - -[85] Quoted in Desnoiresterres, p. 239. - -[86] Desnoiresterres, p. 242. - -[87] Eptre Mdme. la Marquise du Chtelet, sur la Calomnie. _OEuvres_, -xvii. p. 85. - -[88] See Whewell's _Hist. Induc. Sci._ bk. vi. c. v. - -[89] Desnoiresterres, pp. 313-21. - -[90] Exposition du Livre des Institutions Physiques. _OEuvres _, xlii. -pp. 196-206. - -[91] _OEuvres_, xlii. p. 207, etc. - -[92] Corr. 1737. _OEuvres_, lxiii. p. 182. - -[93] Condorcet, _Vie de Voltaire_, p. 43. - -[94] Corr. 1737. _OEuvres_, lvi. p. 428. - -[95] Dict. Phil. s.v. _OEuvres_, lvi. p. 428. - -[96] Dict. Phil. s.v. _OEuvres_, lvi. p. 430. - -[97] Corr. 1758. _OEuvres_, lxxv. p. 50. - -[98] Temple du Got. _OEuvres_, xv. p. 99. - -[99] Corr. 1743. _OEuvres_, lxiv. p. 119. - -[100] _OEuvres de Vauvenargues_, ii. 252. - -[101] Temple du Got. _OEuvres_, xv. p. 100. - -[102] In some readings given before popular audiences in Paris in 1850, -it was found that Voltaire was only partially effective. 'Trop -d'artifice,' says Ste. Beuve, 'trop d'art nuit auprs des esprits neufs; -trop de simplicit nuit aussi; ils ne s'en tonnent pas, et ils ont -jusqu' un certain point besoin d'tre tonns.' (_Causeries_, i. 289.) - -[103] Temple du Got. _OEuvres_; xv. p. 95. - -[104] Corr. 1732. _OEuvres_, lxii. p. 218. - -[105] The dates of the most famous of his tragedies are these: _OEdipe_, -1718; _Brutus_, 1730; _Zare_, 1732; _Mort de Csar_, 1735; _Alzire_, -1736; _Mahomet_, 1741; _Mrope_, 1743; _Smiramis_, 1748; _Tancrde_, -1760. - -[106] Hettnerr, for instance: _Literaturgeschichte des 18ten -Jahrhunderts_, ii. 227. - -[107] _Zare_, act i. sc. 1 - -[108] _Essay on Hum. Und._ iv. 19, 3. - -[109] Discours sur la Tragdie, Milord Bolingbrocke. _OEuvres_, ii. p. -337. See also the preface to OEdipe. _Ib._ p. 73. - -[110] _OEuvres_, ii. p. 339. - -[111] Lett. sur les Anglais, xix. _OEuvres_, xxxv. p. 151. - -[112] Introduction to Semiramis. _OEuvres_, v. p. 194. See also Du -Thtre Anglais (1761). _Ib._ x. p. 88. Lettre l'Acad. Fran. (1778), -iv. p. 186. - -[113] _Voltaire: sechs Vortrge_. Von D. F. Strauss; p. 74. The same -idea is found in a speech of Wilhelm Meister, bk. iii. ch. 8. - -[114] _Mm. de Marmontel_, liv. vii. ii. 245. For Diderot's criticism, -see his _Mmoires et OEuv. Indites_, i. 234 (1830). For D'Alembert's, -cf. Voltaire's _OEuv._ lxxv. p. 118. - -[115] _Decline and Fall_, c. 52, note 83. - -[116] _OEuvres_, vols. x. and xi. - -[117] Desnoiresterres, p. 342. - -[118] _OEuvres_, ix. p. 382. - -[119] _Soires_, 4ime entretien. - -[120] _OEuvres_, v. p. 189. - -[121] Strauss, p. 79. - -[122] _OEuvres_, xviii. p. 250. - -[123] Commenced soon after 1730; published surreptitiously in 1755; -published by Voltaire himself in 1762. - -[124] _Vie de Voltaire_, p. 89. - -[125] _Vie de Voltaire_, p. 88. On the same subject of chastity, of -Condorcet's Works, vi. p. 264, and pp. 523-26; also a passage in his -correspondence, i. p. 221. - -[126] Essai sur la Posie Epique. _OEuvres_, xiii. p. 474 - -[127] _OEuvres_, ii. p. 591. - -[128] Burton's _Life of David Hume_, ii. 440. - -[129] Henriade, x. 485-491. - -[130] _OEuvres_, lxxv. p.266. - -[131] _Vie de Voltaire_ p.60. - -[132] See the late C. Bartholmess's _Histoire Philosophique de -l'Acadmie de Prusse_, bk. ii. - -[133] _Histoire Philosophique de l'Academie de Prusse_, bk. i. 230. - -[134] Corr. 1750. _OEuvres_, lxiv. p. 447. - -[135] Jablonski. - -[136] _OEuvres_, lxxv. p. 224. - -[137] Corr. 1750. _OEuvres_, lxiv. p. 443. - -[138] Carlyle's _History of Frederick_, bk. xiii. ch. 5. - -[139] _OEuvres de Voltaire_, lxxiii. p. 456. - -[140] _Ib._ p. 813. - -[141] _Ib._ p. 807. - -[142] For Voltaire's admirably expressed remonstrance, see Corr. Oct. -1757. _OEuvres_, lxiii. p. 768. - -[143] Martin's _Hist. de France_, xv. p. 468. - -[144] _OEuvres_, lxxv. p. 207 and p. 210. - -[145] Goethe. - -[146] Bartholmess, ii. 111. - -[147] See Bartholmess, i. 168. - -[148] _OEuvres de Voltaire_, lxxiii. p. 836. - -[149] Corr. 1751. _OEuvres_, lxiv. p. 524. - -[150] Corr. 1751. _OEuvres_, lxiv. p. 453. - -[151] See Whewell's _Hist. Ind, Sci._ bk. VII. ch. 4, 7. - -[152] _OEuvres_, lxiv. p. 53. - -[153] See Comte's _Phil. Pos._ i. 525-529. - -[154] It may be worth mentioning that there actually existed in the -sixteenth century a French physician, who changed his real name of -Sans-Malice into Akakia, and left descendants so called. See M. Jal's -_Dictionnaire Critique de Biographie et d'Histoire_, p. 19 (1869). - -[155] Corr. 1752. _OEuvres_, lxv. p. 138. - -[156] Desnoiresterres, 394. - -[157] Desnoiresterres, _Voltaire et Frderic_, cc. 9 and 10. Carlyle's -_Frederick_, bk. xvi. ch. 12. - -[158] See Desnoiresterres, _Voltaire et Frdric_, pp. 124-153, -including a facsimile of the fraudulently altered agreement. Also -Carlyle's _Frederick_, bk. xvi. ch. 7. - -[159] Carlyle's _Frederick_, bk. xiii. ch. 5. - -[160] _OEuvres_, lxxiii. p. 830 (1760). - -[161] _OEuvres_, lxxiii. pp. 835-837. - -[162] Printed in vol. i. of the Baudouin edition, as _Mmoires pour -servir la vie de M. Voltaire_, p. 212. - -[163] Corr. 1758. _OEuvres_, lxxv. p. 80. - -[164] _Ib._ p. 31. - -[165] Corr. lxv. p. 23. Cf. also p. 83. - -[166] Corr. lxv. p. 15. - -[167] Corr. 1743. _OEuv._ lviii. p. 131. A very long and careful list of -the oppressions practised on writers in this reign is given in Mr. -Buckle's _Hist. of Civilisation_, i. 675-681. - -[168] Foisset's _Corres. de Voltaire avec de Brasses_, etc., p. 318. -Also Corr. 1757. _OEuvres_, lxvi. pp. 1-50 passim. - -[169] _OEuvres_, lxxv. p. 61. - -[170] _Mmoires_, i. ch. in. p. 55. - -[171] See for instance a letter to Mdlle. de Voland: _Mmoires, -Correspondance, et Ouv. indites_, i. 99. - -[172] L'Auteur arrivant sa terre. _OEuv._ xvii. 194. - -[173] Corr. 1757. _OEuv._ lxvi. p. 38. - -[174] _Ib._ p. 32. - -[175] Corr. _OEuv._ lxxv. p. 249. - -[176] It was to the last-named book, one may suppose, that Voltaire -referred, when he asked how it was that Locke, after having so -profoundly traced the development of the human understanding, could so -degrade his own understanding in another work. (Diet Phil. s.v. Platon. -_OEuv._ lvii. p. 369.) - -[177] See Collins's Apology for Free Debate and Liberty of Writing, -prefixed to the _Grounds and Reasons of Christianity_. - -[178] Corr. 1768. _OEuv._ lxx. p. 140. - -[179] The reader will find an account of them in M. Lanfrey's _L'Eglise -et les Philosophes du 18ime Sicle_, pp. 131-135. - -[180] Corr. _OEuv._ lxvi. p. 100. - -[181] For the composition of this body see Voltaire's Histoire du -Parlement de Paris. _OEuv._ xxxiv. Or in Martin s _Hist, de France_, iv. -295; xii. 280; and xii. 53. - -[182] Sicle de Louis xv. c. 36. _OEuvres_, xxix. p. 3. - -[183] Corr. _OEuv._ lxxv. p. 145. - -[184] Corr. _OEuvres_, lxvii. p. 166. - -[185] Mm. de Morellet, ch. iii. p. 62. - -[186] Martin's _Hist. de France_, xvi. p. 139. - -[187] Relation de la Mort du Chevalier de la Barre, 1766; Le Cri du Sang -Innocent, 1775, _OEuv._ xxxix. p. 99. - -[188] Corr. July 16, 1766. _OEuv._ lxxv. p. 357. - -[189] Corr. _OEuv._ lxxv. p. 359. - -[190] _Ib._ p. 361. - -[191] Grimm, _Corr. Lit._ v. p. 133. - -[192] Corr. 1774. _OEuv._ lxxv. p. 627. - -[193] _Ib._ p. 696. - -[194] _Hist. de la Civilisation en Europe_, 14ime leon, p. 405. Cf. -also De Tocqueville's _Ancien Rgime_, liv. iii. ch. I. - -[195] Corr. 1757-58. _OEuv._ lxvi. pp. 92, 102, 112, 185, etc. - -[196] Corr. _OEuv._ lxvii. p. 174; also lxxv. p. 170. - -[197] See ante, p. 19. - -[198] Chant i. v. 306. - -[199] La Voix du Sage et du Peuple (1750). _OEuv._ xxxviii. p. 53. - -[200] De Maistre, _Soires de St. Ptersbourg_, 4ime. - -[201] _OEuvres_, xxxv. p. 37. - -[202] Corr. 1773. _OEuvres_, lxxv. p. 614. - -[203] Cf. Dict. Phil. s.v. Eglise. _OEuv._ pp. 221-248. - -[204] Dieu et les Hommes, c. xiv. _OEuvres_, xlv. p. 318. - -[205] Dict. Phil. s.v. Resurrection. _OEuvres_, lviii. p. 67. - -[206] See, for instance, Tylor's _Primitive Culture_, i. 32, ii. 131, -etc. - -[207] Corr. 1770. _OEuvres_, lxxv. pp. 522, 526, etc. This active spite -prevented the accession of De Brosses to a seat in the academy. - -[208] Diet. Phil. s. v. Dieu. _OEuvres_, liv. p. 20. - -[209] Dieu et les Hommes, c. iii. _OEuvres_, xlv. p. 270. - -[210] Dict. Phil. s. v. Polythisme. _OEuvres_, lvii. p. 391. - -[211] Corr. 1761. _OEuvres_, lxvii. p. 186. - -[212] Corr. 1758. _OEuvres_, lxvi. p. 200. - -[213] _Nat. Hist. of Religion_, sect. iii. - -[214] _Ib._ sect. iv. - -[215] _Soires de St. Ptersbourg_, vi. p. 403. - -[216] Ante, ch. iii. - -[217] See Milman's _Hist. of Latin Christianity_, bk. ii. chap. ii. and -iii. - -[218] Corr. 1761. _OEuvres_, lxvii. p. 74. - -[219] Finlay's _Greece under the Romans_ (B.C. 146-A.D. 716), pp. 146, -147. - -[220] Pome sur le Desastre de Lisbonne. _OEuvres_, xv. p. 53. - -[221] Phil. de Newton. _OEuv._ xli. p. 46. See also the whole chapter. - -[222] A Mdme. du Chtelet sur la Philosophic de Newton (1738). _OEuv._ -xvii. p. 113. - -[223] Ode sur le Fanatisme. _OEuvres_, xvi. p. 331. - -[224] _OEuvres_, xv. pp. 39-62. - -[225] Aristotle's definition of =eutrapelia=, or wit, as =hubris -pepaideumen= marks one of Voltaire's chief talents with entire -accuracy. - -[226] _OEuvres_, xv. p. 58. - -[227] Corr. 1765. _OEuvres_, lxxv. p. 311. - -[228] Lettres Ang. xiv. _OEuvres_, xxxv. p. 108. - -[229] Corr. 1736. _OEuvres_, lxiii. p. 31. - -[230] Dict. Phil. s. v. Locke. _OEuvres_, lvi. p. 338. - -[231] Holberg, quoted in Sainte-Beuve's _Nouveaux Lundis_, ix. 26. - -[232] Quinet's _La Rvolution_, i. 168. - -[233] Essai sur les Moeurs, c. ii. _OEuvres_, xx. p. 344. See also c. -clxxxii. _OEuv._ xxiv. p. 162. - -[234] Essai sur les Moeurs, pp. 1, 2. - -[235] Essai sur les Moeurs, p. 9. - -[236] _On the Study of History_, Letter i. ad finem. - -[237] _Grandeur et Dcadence des Romains_, c. xi. - -[238] The dates of the publication of Voltaire's historical works are -these:--_Charles XII._, 1731; _Sicle de Louis XIV_., 1752 (a portion of -it in 1739); _Annales de l'Empire_, 1753-54; _Essai sur les Moeurs_, 1757 -(surreptitiously in 1754); _Histoire de Russie_, Pt. I. in 1759, Pt. II. -in 1763; _Precis du Sicle de Louis XV._, 1768; _Histoire du Parlement -de Paris_, 1769. - -[239] Le Pyrrhonisme de l'Histoire, cc. xii. xiii. _OEuvres_, xxxvi, p. -346; also p. 428. - -[240] Corr. _OEuvres_, lxvi. p. 17. - -[241] Corr. 1757. _OEuvres_, lxvi. p. 61. - -[242] Corr. 1761. _OEuv._ lxvii. p. 228. - -[243] _OEuvres_, xx. p. 10 - -[244] Sicle de Louis XIV., c. i. _OEuvres_, xxv. p. 283. - -[245] Corr. 1735. _OEuvres_, lxii. pp. 455, 456. - -[246] _OEuvres_, xxxvi. pp. 428-434 (1768). - -[247] Diet. Phil. s.v. Guerre. _OEuvres_, lv. pp. 488, 489. - -[248] _Esprit des Lois_, x. ii. - -[249] _OEuvres_, lv. p. 490. - -[250] Corr. _OEuvres_, lxxv. p. 460. - -[251] See a letter of the king of Prussia in Voltaire's _Works_, lxxiv. -p. 144, etc. - -[252] C. xxiii. _OEuvres_, xxi. p. 9. - -[253] _Moeurs_, like =th= is untranslatable by any single English -word. The full title is _Essai sur les Moeurs et l'Esprit des Nations, -et sur les principaux faits de l'Histoire depus Charlemagne jusqu' -Louis XIII._ - -[254] C. vi. _OEuvres_, xx. p. 396. - -[255] C. xi. _OEuvres_, xx. p. 455. - -[256] See on this interesting subject Finlay's _Greece under the Romans_ -(B.C. 146-A.D. 716), pp. 156, 157. - -[257] _Childe Harold_, iii. 106 and 107. - -[258] C. ix. _OEuvres_, xx. p. 445. - -[259] C. lviii. _OEuvres_, xxi. pp. 328-341. - -[260] Quelques petites Hardiesses, etc. _OEuvres_, xxxvi. p. 445. - -[261] C. xlii. _OEuvres_, xxi. p. 143. - -[262] Notes sur le Dsastre de Lisbonne. _OEuvres_, xv. p. 57. - -[263] He ridiculed some of these in one of his most humane and otherwise -excellent pieces, L'Homme aux Quarante Ecus (1767). _OEuv._ lix. p. 395. - -[264] _The Republic_, 1577. _Esprit des Lois_, 1748. - -[265] _OEuv._ lxvii. p. 94. - -[266] A drawing of Voltaire's chteau at Ferney is given in Blancheton's -_Vues Pittoresques des Chteaux de France_ (Paris, 1826), Part II. The -chteau is still standing, and the prospect from the terrace repays a -visit, apart from the interest of association. The church is now a -receptacle for wine-casks. - -[267] The reader who is curious as to the most indifferent details, will -find what he seeks in a singular monument of painstaking spleen, -entitled _Mnage et Finances de Voltaire_, by M. Nicolardot (Paris, -1854). - -[268] Corr. 1761. _OEuv._ lxvii. p. 190. - -[269] _Corr. Lit._ vi. p. 272; v. p. 385. - -[270] Grimm, _Corr. Lit._ v. p. 393. - -[271] Corr. 1761. _OEuv._ lxxv. p. 158. - -[272] Born 1710; lost her first husband 1744; married one Vivier in -1779; died 1790. - -[273] Corr. 1770. _OEuv._ lxx. p. 175. - -[274] Corr. 1771-72. _OEuv._ lxxiv. pp. 733 and 737. - -[275] Corr. 1772. _OEuvres_, lxxi. p. 496. The marked copy is still in -existence, along with the rest of Voltaire's books, at St. Petersburg; -see Lavergne's _Economistes du 18ime Sicle_, p. 285. - -[276] Corr. 1761. _OEuvres_, lxvii. p. 166. - -[277] _OEuvres_, lxxv. pp. 64, 69, etc. - -[278] Corr. 1770. _OEuvres_, lxxi, p. 18. - -[279] _OEuvres de Turgot_, ii. pp. 814-825. - -[280] _Ib._ p. 824. - -[281] _OEuvres_, lxxv. p. 331. - -[282] _OEuvres_, lxxv. p. 33. - -[283] _OEuvres de Condorcet_, iv. pp. 33, 34, and vi. pp. 187-189. - -[284] Corr. 1768. _OEuvres_, lxxv. p. 426. - -[285] Corr. 1768. _OEuvres_, lxx. pp. 198-199. - -[286] Corr. 1769. _OEuvres_, lxx. pp. 434, 435; lxxv. p. 452. Grimm's -_Corr. Lit._ vi. p. 231. - -[287] Condorcet, _Vie de Voltaire_, p. 126. - -[288] Corr. _OEuvres_, lxxi. pp. 25, 27, 30, etc. - -[289] Grimm, _Corr. Lit._ vi. p. 358. - -[290] Grimm, _Corr. Lit._ vi. p. 358. - -[291] _Confessions_, pt. i. liv. v. Date of 1736. - -[292] _OEuvres_, lxxv. p. 182. - -[293] Corr. 1762. _OEuvres_, lxxv. p. 188. - -[294] _OEuvres_, lxvii. p. 432. - -[295] Condorcet, p. 170. - -[296] Lamartine's _Girondins_, iv. v. - -[297] See his correspondence with D'Alembert (_OEuvres_, lxxv.) until -1760, the date of D'Alembert's separation from Diderot and the -Encyclopdia. - -[298] _Phil. Pos._ v. 520. - -[299] _Essais sur les rgnes de Claude et Nron_, vol. vi. pp. 256, 290, -and 191 (Ed. 1819). - -[300] Corr. 1766. _OEuvres_, lxxv. p. 364. - -[301] Condorcet, p. 124. - -[302] Martin's _Hist. de France_, xv. pp. 569-572. - -[303] Corr. 1757. _OEuvres_, lxvi. p. 51. - -[304] Corr. 1756. _OEuvres_, lxv. p. 568; lxvi. pp. 1, 19, 20, 40. - -[305] _OEuvres_, lxvi. p. 51. - -[306] Corr. 1772. _OEuvres_, lxxiv. p. 36. - -[307] _Ib._ p. 93, etc. - -[308] See Morellet, i. pp. 147, 159, etc. - -[309] _OEuvres_, lxxv. p. 641. - -[310] Ode sur le Pass et le Prsent (1775). _OEuvres_, xvi. p. 415. - -[311] Eptre un Homme (1776). _OEuvres_, xvii. p. 327. - -[312] Corr. 1776. _OEuvres_, lxxii. pp. 403, 409, 412, etc. - -[313] April 2, 1764. _OEuvres_, lxviii. p. 220. - -[314] Eloge historique de la Raison (_or_ Voyage de la Raison). -_OEuvres_, lx. p. 478. - - -THE END. - -_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, _Edinburgh_. - - - - -Transcriber's Note - -In this version, Greek text has been transliterated and enclosed in -equal signs, e.g. =megaloprepeia=. Underscores have been used to -indicate _italics_. 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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: Voltaire - -Author: John Morley - -Release Date: September 23, 2012 [EBook #40846] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VOLTAIRE *** - - - - -Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Turgut Dincer and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - - - - - -</pre> - - - -<h1>VOLTAIRE</h1> - -<h4>BY</h4> - -<h3>JOHN MORLEY</h3> - -<h4>LONDON<br /> -MACMILLAN AND CO.<br /> -1886</h4> - -<h5><i>Printed by</i> R. & R. CLARK, <i>Edinburgh</i>.</h5> - -<h3>NOTE.</h3> - -<p><span class="smcap">The</span> edition to which the references are made in the following pages is -that published by Baudouin in 1826, in seventy-five volumes. This -edition is to be distinguished from that known as the first Baudouin -edition, published 1824-34, in ninety-seven volumes. The extent of the -difference between them, which is entirely in favour of the more -voluminous form, may be seen in M. Quérard’s <i>Bibliographie -Voltairienne</i> (p. 107). The large number of complete and elaborate -editions of Voltaire’s works, which were undertaken and executed in the -years between the overthrow of the Empire and the overthrow of the -Monarchy in 1830, is one of the most striking facts in the history of -books.</p> - -<p> 1872.</p> - -<hr /> - -<h2>CONTENTS.</h2> - -<table width="100%" summary="contents" border="0"> -<tr> -<td class="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER I.</td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="center2" colspan="2">PRELIMINARY.</td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="right" colspan="2">PAGE</td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Importance of Voltaire’s name</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Catholicism, Calvinism, and the Renaissance</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Voltairism the Renaissance of the eighteenth century</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_4">4</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">His power the result of his sincerity, penetration, and -courage</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_6">6</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Different tempers proper for different eras</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_11">11</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Voltaire’s freedom from intellectual cowardice</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_12">12</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">And from worldly indifference to truth and justice</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_13">13</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Reason and humanity only a single word to him</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_15">15</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">His position towards the purely literary life</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_17">17</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Enervating regrets that the movement had not a less violent leader</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_19">19</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">The share of chance in providing leaders</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_20">20</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Combination of favourable circumstances in Voltaire’s -case</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_22">22</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Occasion and necessity of the movement</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_24">24</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Age of Lewis XIV. entirely loyal to its own ideas</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_25">25</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Subsequent discredit of these ideas</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_26">26</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">vii</a></span>Preparation for abandonment of the old system by -Descartes and Bayle</td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_29">29</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Voltaire continues the work, not wholly to the disadvantage -of the old system</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_31">31</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">No ascetic element in the Voltairean revolt</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_33">33</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Why primarily an intellectual movement</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_34">34</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">The hostile memory of Christians for it</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_37">37</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Comte’s estimate of it</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_37">37</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">The estimate of culture</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_40">40</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Some pleas on the other side</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_40">40</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER II.</td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="center2" colspan="2">ENGLISH INFLUENCES.</td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Significance of the journey to England</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_44">44</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">His birth and youthful history</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_45">45</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Ninon de l’Enclos, Chaulieu, and the Regency</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_46">46</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Manner of life from 1716</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_49">49</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Affront from the Chevalier de Rohan</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_53">53</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Leaves France</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_54">54</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left">Had previously been no more than a vague <i>esprit fort</i></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_56">56</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Le Pour et le Contre</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_57">57</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Freethinking a reality in England</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_58">58</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Condorcet’s account of the effect of England upon Voltaire</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_59">59</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Social and political consequence of men of letters</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_59">59</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Evil effect of this in France</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_60">60</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Freedom of speech</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_61">61</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Newton’s discoveries</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_65">65</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Their true influence on Voltaire</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_67">67</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Locke</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_67">67</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Profound effect of Lockian common-sense on Voltaire</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_70">70</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Contrast between social condition of England and France</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_73">73</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">viii</a></span>Voltaire’s imperfect appreciation of the value and working -of a popular government</td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_76">76</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Confounds two distinct conceptions of civil liberty</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_79">79</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">A confusion shared by most of his countrymen</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_79">79</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">The Church of England</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_82">82</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">The Quakers</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_84">84</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Voltaire’s diligence in study of English literature</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_86">86</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">And in mastering one side of the deistical controversy</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_88">88</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Through the influence of the deists on Voltaire, the genius of Protestantism entered France</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_91">91</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Limited consistency of Voltaire’s philosophy</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_93">93</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">English deism contrasted with that of Leibnitz and with the atheism of D’Holbach</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_95">95</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER III.</td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="center2" colspan="2">LITERATURE.</td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Most just way of criticising character</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_98">98</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Some traits in Voltaire</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_99">99</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Acquaintance with the Marquise du Châtelet</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_101">101</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Her character</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_103">103</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Voltaire’s placableness</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_105">105</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">His money transactions</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_107">107</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">The life at Cirey</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_111">111</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">His attempts in physical science</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_116">116</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Literature his true calling</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_117">117</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Qualities of his style</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_119">119</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Significance of literature as a profession</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_125">125</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Voltaire’s dramatic art</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_126">126</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Not deliberately art with a purpose</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_126">126</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">His plays a prolongation of the tradition of the great age of Lewis XIV.</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_129">129</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">ix</a></span>His criticism on Hamlet</td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_132">132</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Merits of the French classic drama</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_134">134</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Voltaire compared with Corneille and Racine</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_136">136</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">His ideas of dramatic renovation</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_140">140</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">His Roman subjects</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_141">141</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">His enlargement of dramatic themes</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_143">143</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Failure in comedy</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_144">144</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Arising from want of deep humour</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_145">145</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">The Pucelle: offends two modern sentiments</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_147">147</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Its true significance</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_148">148</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Peculiarity of the licence of the eighteenth century</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_149">149</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Sophisms by which it was defended</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_149">149</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Contempt for the middle ages</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_152">152</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">The Henriade</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_153">153</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER IV.</td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="center2" colspan="2">BERLIN.</td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Death of Madame du Châtelet</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_158">158</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Voltaire and the court</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_158">158</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">He goes to Berlin</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_161">161</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Character of literary activity in Prussia</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_161">161</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">The two movements of which Voltaire and the king were chiefs</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_162">162</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Character of Frederick the Great</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_166">166</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Breaking up of the European state-system in 1740</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_171">171</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">The first shock in 1733</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_172">172</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Frederick raises international relations into the region of -real matter</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_174">174</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">The situation defined</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_175">175</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Two conceptions of progress</p></td> -<td class="right"> 177</td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">x</a></span>From which of them the result of the Seven Years’ War -is seen to be truly progressive</td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_180">180</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">The Jesuits</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_181">181</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Their repulse after the humiliation of Austria</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_182">182</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Frederick’s probable unconsciousness of the ultimate bearings -of his policy</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_184">184</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">His type of monarchy</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_186">186</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">He sprang doubly from the critical school</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_188">188</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Other statesmen affected by this school</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_188">188</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Injustice of stamping Voltaire’s influence as merely destructive</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_191">191</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Frederick the Great and France</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_193">193</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Voltaire’s life at Berlin</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_194">194</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Maupertuis</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_196">196</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Collision between him and Voltaire</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_198">198</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">The Diatribe of Doctor Akakia</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_199">199</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Voltaire’s departure from Berlin</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_201">201</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">The Frankfort episode</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_202">202</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Unfortunate revelations in the Hirschel affair</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_206">206</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Relations between Frederick and Voltaire henceforth</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_207">207</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Voltaire fears to return to Paris</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_210">210</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Geneva</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_211">211</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">The critical school not specially insensible to the picturesque</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_212">212</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Voltaire buys Ferney (1758)</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_215">215</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER V.</td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="center2" colspan="2">RELIGION.</td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="center2" colspan="2">(1) <i>Conditions of the Voltairean attack</i>.</td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Two elements underlying Voltaire’s enmity to Christianity</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_216">216</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left">Failure of Catholicism as a social force</td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_217">217</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">xi</a></span><p class="indent">Utility of Protestantism in softening the transition</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_218">218</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Compared with repression of free debate in France</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_219">219</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Voltaire did not assail modern theosophies</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_221">221</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">The good inextricably bound up with the bad in the old system</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_224">224</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Jesuits and Jansenists</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_225">225</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Voltaire declared the latter to be the worst foes</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_227">227</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Morellet’s Manual for Inquisitors</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_228">228</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">A reflex of the criminal jurisprudence of the time</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_229">229</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Cases of Rochette, Calas, and Sirven</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_229">229</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Of La Barre</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_230">230</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Fervour of Voltaire’s indignation</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_232">232</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Protests against cynical acquiescence</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_233">233</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Disappointment of the philosophers, and their courage</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_235">235</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">The reactionary fanaticism a proof of the truth of Voltaire’s -allegations</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_237">237</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Necessity of transforming spiritual basis of thought</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_238">238</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Voltaire’s abstention from the temporal sphere</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_239">239</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">His chief defect as leader of the attack</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_241">241</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Crippling his historic imagination</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_243">243</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">The just historic calm impossible, until Voltaire had -pressed a previous question</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_245">245</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="center2" colspan="2">(2) <i>His method</i>.</td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">His instruments purely literary and dialectical</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_248">248</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Leaves metaphysics of religion, and fastens on alleged -records</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_250">250</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">The other side fell back on the least worthy parts of their -system</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_251">251</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Hence the narrow and literal character of Voltaire’s -objections</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_252">252</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">His attack essentially the attack of the English deists</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_255">255</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">xii</a></span>Rationalistic questions in scriptural and ecclesiastical -records</td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_257">257</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">In doctrine</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_258">258</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Argument from comparison with other myths</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_259">259</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">His neglect of primitive religions</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_260">260</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">His conviction that monotheism is the first religious form</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_261">261</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Difficulties which he thus passed over</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_264">264</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Hume’s view</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_266">266</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Voltaire did not assail the general ideas of Christianity</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_267">267</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Such as the idea of evil inherent in matter</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_270">270</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">And the idea of a deity as then conceived</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_271">271</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Hence the acerbity of the debate</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_273">273</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">And the want of permanence in Voltaire’s writings compared -with Bossuet or Pascal</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_274">274</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">His criticism on Dante</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_275">275</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="center2" colspan="2">(3) <i>His approximation to a solution</i>.</td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Voltairean deism</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_276">276</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Never accepted by the mass of men</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_278">278</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Nor is it likely to be accepted by them</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_279">279</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Voltaire’s imperfect adherence to the deistical idea</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_280">280</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Reasons for this</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_282">282</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Does not accept belief in the immortality of the soul</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_286">286</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Asserts less than Rousseau, and denies less than Diderot</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_287">287</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">A popular movement begun by Bayle’s Dictionary</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_288">288</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Compromising method of Rousseau</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_290">290</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Voltaire’s view of an atheistical society</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_291">291</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">His belief in the social sufficiency of an analytic spirit</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_292">292</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Synthesis necessary, but more than one is possible</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_293">293</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="center" colspan="2"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii">xiii</a></span>CHAPTER VI.</td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="center2" colspan="2">HISTORY.</td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Extraordinary activity in historical composition in the -eighteenth century</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_295">295</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Explanation of it</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_296">296</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Circumstances under which Voltaire thought about the philosophy of history</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_297">297</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">The three historical styles</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_299">299</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Voltaire’s histories of two kinds</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_301">301</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Rousseau’s disregard for history</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_302">302</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Voltaire’s acute sense</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_303">303</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">His diligence in seeking authentic materials</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_305">305</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Throws persons and personal interests into the second place</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_307">307</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Changed view of the true subject matter of history</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_308">308</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">War always an object of Voltaire’s antipathy</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_311">311</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">His distrust of diplomacy</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_315">315</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Bossuet’s Discourse on Universal History</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_316">316</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Introduction to the Essay on Manners</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_318">318</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Irrational disparagement of the Jews</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_319">319</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Panegyric on the Emperor Julian</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_320">320</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">False view of the history of the church</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_322">322</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Avoids the error of expressing barbarous activity in terms of civilisation</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_323">323</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Real merit of Voltaire’s panorama</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_325">325</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">He was not alive to the necessity of scientifically studying -the conditions of the social union</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_326">326</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="center" colspan="2">CHAPTER VII.</td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="center2" colspan="2">FERNEY.</td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">His life at Ferney</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_329">329</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Madame Denis</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_329">329</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xiv" id="Page_xiv">xiv</a></span>His vast correspondence</td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_333">333</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Consulted by Vauvenargues, Chastellux, Turgot, and others</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_334">334</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Complaisance of his letters</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_336">336</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Sophistical defence of the practice of denying authorship</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_339">339</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Voltaire’s just alarm for his own safety</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_340">340</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">His Easter communion of 1768</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_341">341</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Further proceedings with the Bishop of Annecy</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_342">342</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Voltaire made temporal father of the Capucins of Gex</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_344">344</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Voltaire’s influence on Rousseau</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_345">345</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Difference between their respective schools</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_347">347</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Their rivalry represents the social dead-lock of the time</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_348">348</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Voltaire the more far-sighted of the two</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_350">350</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Two signal effects of Rousseau’s teaching</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_352">352</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Diderot and the Encyclopædia</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_354">354</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Voltaire’s constant efforts to secure redress for the victims -of wrong</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_357">357</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Calas, Sirven, La Barre</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_357">357</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Count Lally</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_358">358</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Admiral Byng</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_359">359</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">His interest in the pretended liberation of Greece</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_360">360</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">In the partition of Poland</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_361">361</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">In the accession of Turgot to power</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_362">362</a></td> -</tr><tr> -<td class="left"><p class="indent">Visit to Paris and death</p></td> -<td class="right"><a href="#Page_363">363</a></td> -</tr> -</table> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xv" id="Page_xv">xv</a></span></p> - -<p>τὰ μὲν γὰρ σωφρόνων ἤθη σφόδρα μὲν εὐλαβῆ καὶ δίκαια καὶ σωτήρια, -δριμύτητος δὲ καί τινος ἰταμότητος ὀξείας καὶ πρακτικῆς ἐνδεῖται.... τὰ -δ’ ἀνδρεῖά γε αὖ πρὸς μὲν τὸ δίκαιον καὶ εὐλαβὲς ἐκείνων ἐπιδεέστερα, -τὸ δ’ ἐν ταῖς πράξεσι διαφερόντως ἴσχει. πάντα δὲ καλῶς γίγνεσθαι τὰ περὶ -τὰς πόλεις, τούτοιν μὴ παραγενομένοιν ἀμφοῖν, ἀδύνατον.—<i>Politicus</i>, 311 <span class="smcap lower">A</span>. -</p> -<p> -πότερον τοὺς ἀνδρείους θαῤῥαλέους λέγεις, ἢ ἄλλο τι; -Καὶ ἴτας γε, ἔφη, ἐφ’ ἃ οἱ πολλοὶ φοβοῦντας ἰέvαι.—<i>Protagoras</i>, 349 <span class="smcap lower">E</span>.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">1</a></span></p> - -<h2>CHAPTER I.</h2> - -<h5>PRELIMINARY.</h5> - -<p><span class="smcap">When</span> the right sense of historical proportion is more fully developed in -men’s minds, the name of Voltaire will stand out like the names of the -great decisive movements in the European advance, like the Revival of -Learning, or the Reformation. The existence, character, and career of -this extraordinary person constituted in themselves a new and prodigious -era. The peculiarities of his individual genius changed the mind and -spiritual conformation of France, and in a less degree of the whole of -the West, with as far-spreading and invincible an effect as if the work -had been wholly done, as it was actually aided, by the sweep of -deep-lying collective forces. A new type of belief, and of its shadow, -disbelief, was stamped by the impression of his character and work into -the intelligence and feeling of his own and the following times. We may -think of Voltairism in France somewhat as we think of Catholicism or the -Renaissance or Calvinism. It was one of the cardinal liberations<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">2</a></span> of the -growing race, one of the emphatic manifestations of some portion of the -minds of men, which an immediately foregoing system and creed had either -ignored or outraged.</p> - -<p>Christianity originally and generically at once awoke and satisfied a -spiritual craving for a higher, purer, less torn and fragmentary being, -than is permitted to sons of men on the troubled and corrupt earth. It -disclosed to them a gracious, benevolent, and all-powerful being, who -would one day redress all wrongs and recompense all pain, and who asked -no more from them meanwhile than that they should prove their love of -him whom they had not seen, by love of their brothers whom they had -seen. Its great glory was to have raised the moral dignity and -self-respect of the many to a level which had hitherto been reached only -by a few. Calvin, again, like some stern and austere step-son of the -Christian God, jealous of the divine benignity and abused -open-handedness of his father’s house, with word of merciless power set -free all those souls that were more anxious to look the tremendous facts -of necessity and evil and punishment full in the face, than to reconcile -them with any theory of the infinite mercy and loving-kindness of a -supreme creator. Men who had been enervated or helplessly perplexed by a -creed that had sunk into ignoble optimism and self-indulgence, became -conscious of new fibre in their moral structure, when they realised life -as a long wrestling with unseen and invincible forces of grace, -election, and fore-destiny,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">3</a></span> the agencies of a being whose ways and -dealings, whose contradictory attributes of unjust justice and loving -vindictiveness, it was not for man, who is a worm and the son of a worm, -to reconcile with the puny logic of human words, or the shallow -consistency of human ideas. Catholicism was a movement of mysticism, and -so in darker regions was the Calvinism which in so many important -societies displaced it. Each did much to raise the measure of worth and -purify the spiritual self-respect of mankind, and each also discouraged -and depressed the liberal play of intelligence, the cheerful energizing -of reason, the bright and many-sided workings of fancy and imagination. -Human nature, happily for us, ever presses against this system or that, -and forces ways of escape for itself into freedom and light. The -scientific reason urgently seeks instruments and a voice; the creative -imagination unconsciously takes form to itself in manifold ways, of all -of which the emotions can give good account to the understanding. Hence -the glorious suffusion of light which the ardent desire of men brought -over the face of Europe in the latter half of the fifteenth century. -Before Luther and Calvin in their separate ways brought into splendid -prominence their new ideas of moral order, more than two generations of -men had almost ceased to care whether there be any moral order or not, -and had plunged with the delight of enchantment among ideas of grace and -beauty, whose forms were old on the earth, but which were full of -seemingly inexhaustible<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">4</a></span> novelty and freshness to men, who had once -begun to receive and to understand all the ever-living gifts of Grecian -art and architecture and letters. If the Reformation, the great revival -of northern Europe, was the enfranchisement of the individual from -bondage to a collective religious tradition that had lost its virtue, -the Renaissance, the earlier revival of southern Europe, was the -admission to participate in the noblest collective tradition of free -intellect which the achievements of the race could then hand down.</p> - -<p>Voltairism may stand for the name of the Renaissance of the eighteenth -century, for that name takes in all the serious haltings and -shortcomings of this strange movement, as well as all its terrible fire, -swiftness, sincerity, and strength. The rays from Voltaire’s burning and -far-shining spirit no sooner struck upon the genius of the time, seated -dark and dead like the black stone of Memnon’s statue, than the clang of -the breaking chord was heard through Europe, and men awoke in new day -and more spacious air. The sentimentalist has proclaimed him a mere -mocker. To the critic of the schools, ever ready with compendious label, -he is the revolutionary destructive. To each alike of the countless -orthodox sects his name is the symbol for the prevailing of the gates of -hell. Erudition figures him as shallow and a trifler; culture condemns -him for pushing his hatred of spiritual falsehood much too seriously; -Christian charity feels constrained to unmask a demon from the depths of -the pit. The plain men of the earth, who are apt to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">5</a></span> measure the merits -of a philosopher by the strength of his sympathy with existing sources -of comfort, would generally approve the saying of Dr. Johnson, that he -would sooner sign a sentence for Rousseau’s transportation than that of -any felon who had gone from the Old Bailey these many years, and that -the difference between him and Voltaire was so slight, that ‘it would be -difficult to settle the proportion of iniquity between them.’ Those of -all schools and professions who have the temperament which mistakes -strong expression for strong judgment, and violent phrase for grounded -conviction, have been stimulated by antipathy against Voltaire to a -degree that in any of them with latent turns for humour must now and -then have even stirred a kind of reacting sympathy. The rank vocabulary -of malice and hate, that noisome fringe of the history of opinion, has -received many of its most fulminant terms from critics of Voltaire, -along with some from Voltaire himself, who unwisely did not always -refuse to follow an adversary’s bad example.</p> - -<p>Yet Voltaire was the very eye of eighteenth-century 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 fourscore volumes which he -wrote are the monument, as they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">6</a></span> were in some sort 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. His works as much as those of any man -that ever lived and thought are truly his own. It is not given, we all -know, even to the most original and daring of leaders to be without -precursors, and Voltaire’s march was prepared for him before he was -born, as it is for all mortals. Yet he impressed on all he said, on good -words and bad alike, a marked autochthonic quality, as of the -self-raised spontaneous products of some miraculous soil, from which -prodigies and portents spring. Many of his ideas were in the air, and -did not belong to him peculiarly; but so strangely rapid and perfect was -his assimilation of them, so vigorous and minutely penetrative was the -quality of his understanding, so firm and independent his initiative, -that even these were instantly stamped with the express image of his -personality. In a word, Voltaire’s work from first to last was alert -with unquenchable life. Some of it, much of it, has ceased to be alive -for us now in all that belongs to its deeper significance, yet we -recognise that none of it was ever the dreary still-birth of a mind of -hearsays. There is no mechanical transmission of untested bits of -current coin. In the realm of mere letters, Voltaire is one of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">7</a></span> the -little band of great monarchs, and in style he remains of the supreme -potentates. But literary variety and perfection, however admirable, like -all purely literary qualities, are a fragile and secondary good which -the world is very willing to let die, where it has not been truly -begotten and engendered of living forces.</p> - -<p>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. -Fontenelle was both brilliant and far-sighted, but he was cold, and one -of those who love ease and a safe hearth, and carefully shun the din, -turmoil, and danger, of the great battle. 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.</p> - -<p>This is the temper which, when the times are auspicious, and the -fortunes of the fight do not hurry the combatant to dungeon or stake, -raises him into a force instead of leaving him the empty shadow of a -literary name. There is something in our nature which leads men to -listen coolly to the most eager hints and pregnant innuendoes of -scepticism, on the lips of teachers who still in their own persons keep<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">8</a></span> -adroitly away from the fiery darts of the officially orthodox. The same -something, perhaps a moral relish for veritable proofs of honesty, -perhaps a quality of animal temperament, drives men to grasp even a -crudity with fervour, when they see it wielded like a battle-axe against -spiritual oppression. A man is always so much more than his words, as we -feel every day of our lives; what he says has its momentum indefinitely -multiplied, or reduced to nullity, by the impression that the hearer for -good reasons or bad happens to have formed of the spirit and moral size -of the speaker. There are things enough to be said of Voltaire’s moral -size, and no attempt is made in these pages to dissemble in how much he -was condemnable. It is at least certain that he hated tyranny, that he -refused to lay up his hatred privily in his heart, and insisted on -giving his abhorrence a voice, and tempering for his just rage a fine -sword, very fatal to those who laid burdens too hard to be borne upon -the conscience and life of men. Voltaire’s contemporaries felt this. -They were stirred to the quick by the sight and sound and thorough -directness of those ringing blows. The strange and sinister method of -assault upon religion which we of a later day watch with wondering eyes, -and which consists in wearing the shield and device of a faith, and -industriously shouting the cry of a church, the more effectually to -reduce the faith to a vague futility, and its outward ordering to a -piece of ingeniously reticulated pretence; this method of attack might -make even the champions<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">9</a></span> of prevailing beliefs long for the shrewd -thrusts, the flashing scorn, the relentless fire, the downright -grapples, with which the hated Voltaire pushed on his work of ‘crushing -the Infamous.’ If he was bitter, he was still direct. If he was often a -mocker in form, he was always serious in meaning and laborious in -matter. If he was unflinching against theology, he always paid religion -respect enough to treat it as the most important of all subjects. The -contest was real, and not our present pantomimic stage-play, in which -muffled phantoms of debate are made to gesticulate inexpressible things -in portentously significant silence. The battle was demoralized by its -virulence. True; but is this worse than to have it demoralized by -cowardice of heart and understanding, when each controversial -man-at-arms is eager to have it thought that he wears the colours of the -other side, when the theologian would fain pass for rationalist, and the -free-thinker for a person with his own orthodoxies if you only knew -them, and when philosophic candour and intelligence are supposed to have -hit their final climax in the doctrine that everything is both true and -false at the same time?</p> - -<p>A man like Montaigne, as has been said, could slumber tranquilly on the -pillow of doubt, content to live his life, leaving many questions open. -Such men’s meditations, when composed in the genial literary form proper -to them, are naturally the delight of people with whom the world goes -fairly well materially, who have sensibility enough to be aware<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">10</a></span> that -there are unseen lands of knowledge and truth beyond the present, and -destinies beyond their own; but whose sensibility is not intense and -ardent enough to make wholly unendurable to them unscrutinizing -acquiescence in half-thoughts and faint guesses, and pale unshapen -embryos of social sympathy. There are conjunctures when this mingling of -apprehension and ease, of aspiration and content, of timorous adventure -and reflective indolence, is the natural mood of even high natures. The -great tides of circumstance swell so tardily, that whole generations -that might have produced their share of skilful and intrepid mariners, -wait in vain for the full flood on which the race is borne to new -shores.</p> - -<p>Nor assuredly is it well for men that every age should mark either a -revolution, or the slow inward agitation that prepares the revolution, -or that doubters and destroyers should divide between them all -admiration and gratitude and sympathy. The violent activity of a century -of great change may end in a victory, but it is always a sacrifice. The -victory may more than recompense its cost. The sacrifice may repay -itself a thousand-fold. It does not always repay itself, as the too -neglected list of good causes lost, and noble effort wasted, so -abundantly shows. Nor in any case is sacrifice ever an end. Faith and -order and steady strong movement are the conditions which everything -wise is directed to perfect and consolidate. But for this process of -perfection we need first the meditative, doubting, critical type, and -next,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">11</a></span> the dogmatic destroyer. ‘In counsel it is good to see dangers,’ -Bacon said; ‘and in execution not to see them, except they be very -great,’ There are, as history instructs us, eras of counsel and eras of -execution; the hour when those do best who walk most warily, feeling -with patience and sagacity and painstaking for the new ways, and then -the hour of march and stout-hearted engagement.</p> - -<p>Voltaire, if he adroitly or sagely preserved his buckler, felt that the -day was come to throw away the scabbard; that it was time to trust -firmly to the free understanding of men for guidance in the voyage after -truth, and to the instincts of uncorrupted benevolence in men for the -upholding of social justice. His was one of the robust and incisive -constitutions, to which doubt figures as a sickness, and where -intellectual apprehension is an impossibility. The old-fashioned -nomenclature puts him down among sceptics, because those who had the -official right to affix these labels could think of no more contemptuous -name, and could not suppose the most audacious soul capable of advancing -even under the leadership of Satan himself beyond a stray doubt or so. -He had perhaps as little of the sceptic in his constitution as Bossuet -or Butler, and was much less capable of becoming one than De Maistre or -Paley. This was a prime secret of his power, for the mere critic and -propounder of unanswered doubts never leads more than a handful of men -after him. Voltaire boldly put the great question, and he boldly -answered it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">12</a></span> He asked whether the sacred records were historically -true, the Christian doctrine divinely inspired and spiritually -exhaustive, and the Christian church a holy and beneficent organization. -He answered these questions for himself and for others beyond -possibility of misconception. The records were saturated with fable and -absurdity, the doctrine imperfect at its best, and a dark and tyrannical -superstition at its worst, and the church was the arch-curse and infamy. -Say what we will of these answers, they were free from any taint of -scepticism. Our lofty new idea of rational freedom as freedom from -conviction, and of emancipation of understanding as emancipation from -the duty of settling whether important propositions are true or false, -had not dawned on Voltaire.</p> - -<p>He had just as little part or lot in the complaisant spirit of the man -of the world, who from the depths of his mediocrity and ease presumes to -promulgate the law of progress, and as dictator to fix its speed. Who -does not know this temper of the man of the world, that worst enemy of -the world? His inexhaustible patience of abuses that only torment -others; his apologetic word for beliefs that may perhaps not be so -precisely true as one might wish, and institutions that are not -altogether so useful as some might think possible; his cordiality -towards progress and improvement in a general way, and his coldness or -antipathy to each progressive proposal in particular; his pygmy hope -that life will one day become somewhat better, punily shivering by the -side of his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">13</a></span> gigantic conviction that it might well be infinitely worse. -To Voltaire, far different from this, an irrational prejudice was not -the object of a polite coldness, but a real evil to be combated and -overthrown at every hazard. Cruelty was not to him as a disagreeable -dream of the imagination, from thought of which he could save himself by -arousing to sense of his own comfort, but a vivid flame burning into his -thoughts and destroying peace. Wrong-doing and injustice were not simple -words on his lips; they went as knives to the heart; he suffered with -the victim, and consumed with an active rage against the oppressor.</p> - -<p>Nor was the coarse cruelty of the inquisitor or the politician, who -wrought iniquity by aid of the arm of flesh, the only kind of injury to -the world which stirred his passion. 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 usage. The system which threw obstacles into the way of -publishing an exposition of Newton’s discoveries and ideas was as -mischievous and hateful to him, as the darker bigotry which broke Calas -on the wheel because he was a Protestant. To check the energetic -discovery and wide propagation of scientific truth, he rightly held to -be at least as destructive in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">14</a></span> long run to the common weal, as the -unjust extermination of human life; for it is the possession of ever -more and more truth that makes life ever better worth having and better -worth preserving. And must we not admit that he was right, and that no -age nor school of men nor individual has ever been mortally afraid, as -every good man is afraid, of inflicting any wrong on his fellow, and has -not also been afraid of extinguishing a single ray from the great sun of -knowledge?</p> - -<p>It is well enough to say that in unscientific ages, like the twelfth -century for instance, the burner of books and the tormentor of those who -wrote them, did not feel either that he was doing an injustice to man or -a mischief to truth. It is hard to deny that St. Bernard was a good man, -nor is it needful that we should deny it; for good motives, owing to our -great blindness and slow enlightenment, have made grievous havoc in the -world. But the conception of justice towards heretics did not exist, any -more than it existed in the mind of a low type of white man towards a -black man, or than the conception of pity exists in the mind of a -sportsman towards his prey. These were ages of social cruelty, as they -were ages of intellectual repression. The debt of each to his neighbour -was as little felt, as the debt of all to the common faculties and -intelligence. Men owed nothing to man, but everything to the gods. All -the social feeling and intellectual effort and human energizing which -had made the high idea of God possible and real, seemed to have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">15</a></span> -expended themselves in a creation which instantly swallowed them up and -obliterated their recollection. The intelligence which by its active -straining upwards to the light had opened the way for the one God, -became itself forthwith identified with the chief of the devils. He who -used his reason was the child of this demon. Where it is a duty to -worship the sun, it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of -heat. The times when such was the universal idea of the rights of the -understanding, were also the times when human life was cheapest, and the -tiny bowl of a man’s happiness was spilt upon the ground with least -compunction.</p> - -<p>The companionship between these two ideas of disrespect for the rights -of man, and disrespect for reason or the highest distinction of man, has -been an inseparable companionship. The converse is unhappily only true -with a modification, for there have been too many men with an honourable -respect for a demonstration and a proper hospitality towards a -probability, who look on the rights of man, without disrespect indeed, -but also without fervour. To Voltaire reason and humanity were but a -single word, and love of truth and passion for justice but one emotion. -None of the famous men who have fought that they themselves might think -freely and speak truly, have ever seen more clearly that the fundamental -aim of the contest was that others might live happily. Who has not been -touched by that admirable word of his, of the three years in which he -laboured without remission<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">16</a></span> for justice to the widow and descendants of -Calas: ‘<i>During that time not a smile escaped me without my reproaching -myself for it, as for a crime</i>.’ Or by his sincere avowal that of all -the words of enthusiasm and admiration which were so prodigally bestowed -upon him on the occasion of his last famous visit to Paris in 1778, none -went to his heart like that of a woman of the people, who in reply to -one asking the name of him whom the crowd followed, gave answer, ‘<i>Do -you not know that he is the preserver of the Calas?</i>’</p> - -<p>The same kind of feeling, though manifested in ways of much less -unequivocal nobleness, was at the bottom of his many efforts to make -himself of consequence in important political business. We know how many -contemptuous sarcasms have been inspired by his anxiety at various times -to perform diplomatic feats of intervention between the French -government and Frederick the Second. In 1742, after his visit to the -Prussian king at Aix-la-Chapelle, he is supposed to have hinted to -Cardinal Fleury that to have written epic and drama does not disqualify -a man for serving his king and country on the busy fields of affairs. -The following year, after Fleury’s death, when French fortunes in the -war of the Austrian succession were near their lowest, Voltaire’s own -idea that he might be useful from his intimacy with Frederick, seems to -have been shared by Amelot, the secretary of state, and at all events he -aspired to do some sort of active, if radically futile, diplomatic work. -In later times when the tide had turned, and Frederick’s star was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">17</a></span> -clouded over with disaster, we again find Voltaire the eager -intermediary with Choiseul, pleasantly comparing himself to the mouse of -the fable, busily striving to free the lion from the meshes of the -hunter’s net.</p> - -<p>The man of letters, usually unable to conceive loftier services to -mankind or more attractive aims to persons of capacity than the -composition of books, has treated these pretensions of Voltaire with a -supercilious kind of censure, which teaches us nothing about Voltaire, -while it implies a particularly shallow idea alike of the position of -the mere literary life in the scale of things, and of the conditions -under which the best literary work is done. 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 of his to come into -the closest contact with the practical affairs of the world. He who has -never left the life of a recluse, drawing an income from the funds and -living in a remote garden, constructing past, present, and future, out -of his own consciousness, is not qualified either to lead mankind -safely, or to think on the course of human affairs correctly. Every page -of Voltaire has the bracing air of the life of the world in it, and the -instinct which led him to seek<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">18</a></span> the society of the conspicuous actors on -the great scene was essentially a right one. The book-writer takes good -advantage of his opportunity to assure men expressly or by implication -that he is their true king, and that the sacred bard is a mightier man -than his hero. Voltaire knew better. Though himself perhaps the most -puissant man of letters that ever lived, he rated literature as it ought -to be rated below action, not because written speech is less of a force, -but because the speculation and criticism of the literature that -substantially influences the world, make far less demand than the actual -conduct of great affairs on qualities which are not rare in detail, but -are amazingly rare in combination,—on temper, foresight, solidity, -daring,—on strength, in a word, strength of intelligence and strength -of character. Gibbon rightly amended his phrase, when he described -Boethius not as stooping, but rather as rising, from his life of placid -meditation to an active share in the imperial business. That he held -this sound opinion is quite as plausible an explanation of Voltaire’s -anxiety to know persons of station and importance, as the current theory -that he was of sycophantic nature. Why, he asks, are the ancient -historians so full of light? ‘It is because the writer had to do with -public business; it is because he could be magistrate, priest, soldier; -and because if he could not rise to the highest functions of the state, -he had at least to make himself worthy of them. I admit,’ he concludes, -‘that we must not expect such an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">19</a></span> advantage with us, for our own -constitution happens to be against it;’ but he was deeply sensible what -an advantage it was that they thus lost.<a name="FNanchor_1" id="FNanchor_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">1</a></p> - -<p>In short, on all sides, whatever men do and think was real and alive to -Voltaire. Whatever had the quality of interesting any imaginable -temperament, had the quality of interesting him. There was no subject -which any set of men have ever cared about, which, if he once had -mention of it, Voltaire did not care about likewise. And it was just -because he was so thoroughly alive himself, that he filled the whole era -with life. The more closely one studies the various movements of that -time, the more clear it becomes that, if he was not the original centre -and first fountain of them all, at any rate he made many channels ready -and gave the sign. He was the initial principle of fermentation -throughout that vast commotion. We may deplore, if we think fit, as -Erasmus deplored in the case of Luther, that the great change was not -allowed to work itself out slowly, calmly, and without violence and -disruption. These graceful regrets are powerless, and on the whole they -are very enervating. Let us make our account with the actual, rather -than seek excuses for self-indulgence in pensive preference of something -that might have been. Practically in these great circles of affairs, -what only might have been is as though it could not be; and to know this -may well suffice for us. It is not in human power to choose the kind of -men who rise from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">20</a></span> -time to time to the supreme control of momentous changes. The force -which decides this immensely important matter is as though it were -chance. We cannot decisively pronounce any circumstance whatever an -accident, yet history abounds with circumstances which in our present -ignorance of the causes of things are as if they were accidents. -In this respect history is neither better nor worse than the latest -explanation of the origin and order of the world of organised matter. -Here too we are landed in the final resort at what is neither more nor -less than an accident. Natural selection, or the survival of the fittest -in the universal struggle for existence, is now held by the most -competent inquirers to be the principal method to which we owe the -extinction, preservation, and distribution of organic forms on the -earth. But the appearance both of the forms that conquer and of those -that perish still remains a secret, and to science an accident and a -secret are virtually and provisionally the same thing. In a word, there -is an unknown element at the bottom of the varieties of creation, -whether we agree to call that element a volition of a supernatural -being, or an undiscovered set of facts in embryology. So in history the -Roman or Italo-Hellenic empire, rising when it did, was the salvation of -the West, and yet the appearance at the moment when anarchy threatened -rapidly to dissolve the Roman state, of a man with the power of -conceiving the best design for the new structure, seems to partake as -much of the nature of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">21</a></span> chance, as the non-appearance of men with similar -vision and power in equally momentous crises, earlier and later. The -rise of a great constructive chief like Charlemagne in the eighth -century can hardly be enough to persuade us that the occasion invariably -brings the leader whom its conditions require, when we remember that as -concerns their demands the conditions of the end of the eighth century -were not radically different from those of the beginning of the sixth, -yet that in the earlier epoch there arose no successor to continue the -work of Theodoric. We have only to examine the origin and fundamental -circumstances of the types of civilisation which rule western -communities and guide their advance, to discern in those original -circumstances a something inscrutable, a certain element of what is as -though it were fortuitous. No science can as yet tell us how such a -variation from previously existing creatures as man had its origin; nor, -any more than this, can history explain the law by which the most -striking variations in intellectual and spiritual quality within the -human order have had their origin. The appearance of the one as of the -other is a fact which cannot be further resolved. It is hard to think in -imagination of the globe as unpeopled by man, or peopled, as it may at -some remote day come to be, by beings of capacity superior enough to -extinguish man. It is hard also to think of the scene which western -Europe and all the vast space which the light of western Europe -irradiates, might have offered at this -<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">22</a></span> -moment, if nature or the -unknown forces had not produced a Luther, a Calvin, or a Voltaire.</p> - -<p>It was one of the happy chances of circumstance that there arose in -France on the death of Lewis XIV. a man with all Voltaire’s peculiar -gifts of intelligence, who added to them an incessant activity in their -use, and who besides this enjoyed such length of days as to make his -intellectual powers effective to the very fullest extent possible. This -combination of physical and mental conditions so amazingly favourable to -the spread of the Voltairean ideas, was a circumstance independent of -the state of the surrounding atmosphere, and was what in the phraseology -of præscientific times might well have been called providential. If -Voltaire had seen all that he saw, and yet been indolent; or if he had -been as clear-sighted and as active as he was, and yet had only lived -fifty years, instead of eighty-four, Voltairism would never have struck -root.<a name="FNanchor_2" id="FNanchor_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">2</a> As it was, with his genius, his industry, his longevity, and -the conditions of the time being what they were, that far-spreading -movement of destruction was inevitable.</p> - -<p>Once more, we cannot choose. Those whom temperament or culture has made -the partisans of calm order, cannot attune progress to the stately and -harmonious march which would best please them, and which they are -perhaps right in thinking would lead with most security to the goal.</p> - -<p>Such a liberation of the human mind as Voltairism <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">23</a></span>can only be effected -by the movement of many spirits, and they are only the few who are moved -by moderate, reflective, and scientific trains of argument. The many -need an extreme type. They are struck by what is flashing and colossal, -for they follow imagination and sympathy, and not the exactly -disciplined intelligence. They know their own wants, and have dumb -feeling of their own better aspirations. Their thoughts move in the -obscurity of things quick but unborn, and by instinct they push upwards -in whatever direction the darkness seems breaking. They are not critics -nor analysts, but when the time is ripening they never fail to know the -word of freedom and of truth, with whatever imperfections it may chance -to be spoken. No prophet all false has ever yet caught the ear of a -series of generations. No prophet all false has succeeded in separating -a nation into two clear divisions. Voltaire has in effect for a century -so divided the most emancipated of western nations. This is beyond the -power of the mere mocker, who perishes like the flash of lightning; he -does not abide as a centre of solar heat.</p> - -<p>There are more kinds of Voltaireans than one, but no one who has marched -ever so short a way out of the great camp of old ideas is directly or -indirectly out of the debt and out of the hand of the first liberator, -however little willing he may be to recognise one or the other. -Attention has been called by every writer on Voltaire to the immense -number of the editions of his works, a number probably <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">24</a></span>unparalleled in -the case of any author within the same limits of time. Besides being one -of the most voluminous book-writers, he is one of the cheapest. We can -buy one of Voltaire’s books for a few halfpence, and the keepers of the -cheap stalls in the cheap quarters of London and Paris will tell you -that this is not from lack of demand, but the contrary. So clearly does -that light burn for many even now, which scientifically speaking ought -to be extinct, and for many indeed is long ago extinct and superseded. -The reasons for this vitality are that Voltaire was himself thoroughly -alive when he did his work, and that the movement which that work began -is still unexhausted.</p> - -<p>How shall we attempt to characterise this movement? The historian of the -Christian church usually opens his narrative with an account of the -depravation of human nature and the corruption of society which preceded -the new religion. The Reformation in like manner is only to be -understood after we have perceived the enormous mass of superstition, -injustice, and wilful ignorance, by which the theological idea had -become so incrusted as to be wholly incompetent to guide society, -because it was equally repugnant to the intellectual perceptions and the -moral sense, the knowledge and the feelings, of the best and most -active-minded persons of the time. The same sort of consideration -explains and vindicates the enormous power of Voltaire. France had -outgrown the system that had brought her through the middle ages. The -further development of her national life was fatally<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">25</a></span> hindered by the -tight bonds of an old order, which clung with the hardy tenacity of a -thriving parasite, diverting from the roots all their sustenance, eating -into the tissue, and feeding on the juices of the living tree. The -picture has often been painted, and we need not try to paint it once -more in detail here. The whole power and ordering of the nation were -with the sworn and chartered foes of light, who had every interest that -a desire to cling to authority and wealth can give, in keeping the -understanding subject.</p> - -<p>And, what was more important, there had been no sign made in the nation -itself of a consciousness of the immense realms of knowledge that lay -immediately in front of it, and still less of any desire or intention to -win lasting possession of them. That intellectual curiosity which was so -soon to produce such amazing fruits was as yet unstirred. An era of -extraordinary activity had just come to a close, and the creative and -artistic genius of France had risen to the highest mark it attained -until the opening of our own century. The grand age of Lewis XIV. had -been an age of magnificent literature and unsurpassed eloquence. But, in -spite of the potent seed which Descartes had sown, it had been the age -of authority, protection, and patronage. Consequently all those subjects -for which there was no patronage, that is to say the subjects which -could add nothing to the splendour and dignity of the church and the -pageantry of the court, were virtually repressed. This ought not to -blind us to the real loftiness and magnanimity<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">26</a></span> of the best or earlier -part of the age of Lewis XIV. It has been said that the best title of -Lewis XIV. to the recollection of posterity is the protection he -extended to Molière; and one reason why this was so meritorious is that -Molière’s work had a markedly critical character, in reference both to -the devout and to the courtier. The fact of this, undoubtedly the most -durable work of that time, containing critical quality, is not of -importance in reference to the generally fixed or positive aspect of the -age. For Molière is only critical by accident. There is nothing -organically negative about him, and his plays are the pure dramatic -presentation of a peculiar civilisation. He is no more a destructive -agency because he drew hypocrites and coxcombs, than Bossuet was -destructive or critical because he inveighed against sin and the excess -of human vainglory. The epoch was one of entire loyalty to itself and -its ideas. Voltaire himself perceived and admired these traits to the -full. The greatest of all overthrowers, he always understood that it is -towards such ages as these, the too short ages of conviction and -self-sufficience, that our endeavour works. We fight that others may -enjoy; and many generations struggle and debate, that one generation may -hold something for proven.</p> - -<p>The glories of the age of Lewis XIV. were the climax of a set of ideas -that instantly afterwards lost alike their grace, their usefulness, and -the firmness of their hold on the intelligence of men. A dignified and -venerable hierarchy, an august and powerful<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">27</a></span> monarch, a court of gay and -luxurious nobles, all lost their grace, because the eyes of men were -suddenly caught and appalled by the awful phantom, which was yet so -real, of a perishing nation. Turn from Bossuet’s orations to -Boisguillebert’s <i>Détail de la France</i>; from the pulpit rhetorician’s -courtly reminders that even majesty must die, to Vauban’s pity for the -misery of the common people;<a name="FNanchor_3" id="FNanchor_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">3</a> from Corneille and Racine to La -Bruyère’s picture of ‘certain wild animals, male and female, scattered -over the fields, black, livid, all burnt by the sun, bound to the earth -that they dig and work with unconquerable pertinacity; they have a sort -of articulate voice, and when they rise on their feet, they show a human -face, and, in fact, are men.’ The contrast had existed for generations. -The material misery caused by the wars of the great Lewis deepened the -dark side, and the lustre of genius consecrated to the glorification of -traditional authority and the order of the hour heightened the -brightness of the bright side, until the old contrast was suddenly seen -by a few startled eyes, and the new and deepest problem, destined to -strain our civilisation to a degree that not many have even now -conceived, came slowly into pale outline.</p> - -<p>There is no reason to think that Voltaire ever saw this gaunt and -tremendous spectacle. Rousseau was its first voice. Since him the -reorganisation of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">28</a></span>relations of men has never faded from the sight -either of statesmen or philosophers, with vision keen enough to admit to -their eyes even what they dreaded and execrated in their hearts. -Voltaire’s task was different and preparatory. It was to make popular -the genius and authority of reason. The foundations of the social fabric -were in such a condition that the touch of reason was fatal to the whole -structure, which instantly began to crumble. Authority and use oppose a -steadfast and invincible resistance to reason, so long as the -institutions which they protect are of fair practicable service to a -society. But after the death of Lewis XIV., not only the grace and pomp, -but also the social utility of spiritual and political absolutism passed -obviously away. Spiritual absolutism was unable to maintain even a -decent semblance of unity and theological order. Political absolutism by -its material costliness, its augmenting tendency to repress the -application of individual energy and thought to public concerns, and its -pursuit of a policy in Europe which was futile and essentially -meaningless as to its ends, and disastrous and incapable in its choice -of means, was rapidly exhausting the resources of national well-being -and viciously severing the very tap-root of national life. To bring -reason into an atmosphere so charged, was, as the old figure goes, to -admit air to the chamber of the mummy. And reason was exactly what -Voltaire brought; too narrow, if we will, too contentious, too derisive, -too unmitigatedly reasonable, but still reason.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">29</a></span> And who shall measure -the consequence of this difference in the history of two great nations; -that in France absolutism in church and state fell before the sinewy -genius of stark reason, while in England it fell before a respect for -social convenience, protesting against monopolies, benevolences, -ship-money? That in France speculation had penetrated over the whole -field of social inquiry, before a single step had been taken towards -application, while in England social principles were applied, before -they received any kind of speculative vindication? That in France the -first effective enemy of the principles of despotism was Voltaire, poet, -philosopher, historian, critic; in England, a band of homely squires?</p> - -<p>Traditional authority, it is true, had been partially and fatally -undermined in France before the time of Voltaire, by one of the most -daring of thinkers, and one of the most acute and sceptical of scholars, -as well as by writers so acutely careless as Montaigne, and apologists -so dangerously rational as Pascal, who gave a rank and consistency to -doubt even in showing that its seas were black and shoreless. -Descartes’s Discourse on Method had been published in 1637, and Bayle’s -Thoughts on the Comet, first of the series of critical onslaughts on -prejudice and authority in matters of belief, had been published in -1682. The metaphysician and the critic had each pressed forward on the -path of examination, and had each insisted on finding grounds for -belief, or else showing the absence of such grounds with a fatal -distinctness that made<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">30</a></span> belief impossible. Descartes was constructive, -and was bent on reconciling the acceptance of a certain set of ideas as -to the relations between man and the universe, and as to the mode and -composition of the universe, with the logical reason. Bayle, whose -antecedents and environment were Protestant, was careless to replace, -but careful to have evidence for whatever was allowed to remain. No -parallel nor hint of equality is here intended between the rare genius -of Descartes and the relatively lower quality of Bayle. The one, however -high a place we may give to the regeneration of thought effected by -Bacon in England, or to that wrought by the brilliant group of physical -experimentalists in Italy, still marks a new epoch in the development of -the human mind, for he had decisively separated knowledge from theology, -and systematically constituted science. The other has a place only in -the history of criticism. But, although in widely different ways, and -with vast difference in intellectual stature, they both had touched the -prevailing notions of French society with a fatal breath.</p> - -<p>The blast that finally dispersed and destroyed them came not from -Descartes and Bayle, but directly from Voltaire and indirectly from -England. In the seventeenth century the surrounding conditions were not -ripe. Social needs had not begun to press. The organs of authority were -still too vigorous, and performed their functions with something more -than the mechanical half-heartedness of the next century.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">31</a></span> Long -familiarity with sceptical ideas as enemies must go before their -reception as friends and deliverers. They have perhaps never gained an -effective hold in any community, until they have found allies in the -hostile camp of official orthodoxy, and so long as that orthodoxy was -able to afford them a vigorous social resistance. Voltaire’s universal -talents made one of the most powerful instruments for conveying these -bold and inquisitive notions among many sorts and conditions of men, -including both the multitude of common readers and playgoers in the -towns, and the narrower multitude of nobles and sovereigns. More than -this, the brilliance and variety of his gifts attracted, stimulated, and -directed the majority of the men of letters of his time, and imparted to -them a measure of his own singular skill in conveying the principles of -rationalistic thought.</p> - -<p>The effect of all this was to turn a vast number of personages who were -officially inimical to free criticism, to be at heart abettors and -fellow-conspirators in the great plot. That fact, combined with the -independent causes of the incompetency of the holders of authority to -deal with the crying social necessities of the time, left the walls of -the citadel undermined and undefended, and a few of the sacred birds -that were still found faithful cackled to no purpose. It has often been -said that in the early times of Christianity its influence gave all that -was truest and brightest in colour to the compositions of those who were -least or not at all affected by its dogma. It is more certain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">32</a></span> that -Voltaire by the extraordinary force of his personality gave a peculiar -tone and life even to those who adhered most staunchly to the ancient -ordering. The champions of authority were driven to defend their cause -by the unusual weapons of rationality; and if Voltaire had never -written, authority would never, for instance, have found such a soldier -on her side as that most able and eminent of reactionaries, Joseph de -Maistre. In reply to the favourite assertion of the apologists of -Catholicism, that whatever good side its assailants may present is the -product of the very teaching which they repudiate, one can only say that -there would be at least as much justice in maintaining that the marked -improvement which took place in the character and aims of the priesthood -between the Regency and the Revolution,<a name="FNanchor_4" id="FNanchor_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">4</a> was an obligation -unconsciously incurred to those just and liberal ideas which Voltaire -had helped so powerfully to spread. De Maistre compares Reason putting -away Revelation to a child who should beat its nurse. The same figure -would serve just as well to describe the thanklessness of Belief to the -Disbelief which has purged and exalted it. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">33</a></span></p> - -<p>One of the most striking features of the revolution wrought by Voltaire -is that it was the one great revolt in history which contained no -element of asceticism, and achieved all its victories without resort to -an instrument so potent, inflexible, and easy, but so gravely dangerous. -Such revolts are always reactions against surrounding corruption and -darkness. They are the energetic protests of the purer capacities and -aspirations of human nature; and as is the inevitable consequence of -vehement action of this sort, they seem for a while to insist on nothing -less than the extirpation of those antagonistic parts which are seen to -have brought life into such debasement. With this stern anger and -resolve in their hearts, men have no mind to refine, explain, or -moderate, and they are forced by one of the strangest instincts of our -constitution into some system of mortification, which may seem to clear -the soul of the taint of surrounding grossness. In such exalted mood, -there is no refuge but in withdrawal from the common life into recesses -of private conscience, and in severest purification of all desires. -There are not many types of good men even in the least ascetic or least -reactionary epochs, to whom this mood, and its passion for simplicity, -self-applied rigour, minute discipline, firm regulation, and veritable -continence of life, do not now and again recur, in the midst of days -that march normally on a more spacious and expansive theory.</p> - -<p>There was, however, no tinge of ascetic principle in Voltairism. Pascal -had remarked that relaxed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">34</a></span> opinions are naturally so pleasing to men, -that it is wonderful they should ever be displeasing. To which Voltaire -had thus retorted: ‘On the contrary, does not experience prove that -influence over men’s minds is only gained by offering them the -difficult, nay the impossible, to perform or believe? Offer only things -that are reasonable, and all the world will answer, We knew as much as -that. But enjoin things that are hard, impracticable; paint the deity as -ever armed with the thunder; make blood run before the altars; and you -will win the multitude’s ear, and everybody will say of you, He must be -right, or he would not so boldly proclaim things so marvellous.’<a name="FNanchor_5" id="FNanchor_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5" class="fnanchor">5</a> -Voltaire’s ascendency sprung from no appeal to those parts of human -nature in which ascetic practice has its foundation. On the contrary, -full exercise and play for every part was the key of all his teaching, -direct and indirect. He had not Greek serenity and composure of spirit, -but he had Greek exultation in every known form of intellectual -activity, and this audacious curiosity he made general.</p> - -<p>Let us remember that Voltairism was primarily and directly altogether an -intellectual movement, for this reason, that it was primarily and -directly a reaction against the subordination of the intellectual to the -moral side of men, carried to an excess that was at length fraught with -fatal mischief. Are our opinions true, provably answering to the facts -of the case, consistent with one another; is our intelligence<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">35</a></span> radiant -with genuine light and knowledge; and are we bent more than all else on -testing and improving and diffusing this knowledge and the instruments -for acquiring it? The system to which this was the powerful -counter-formula, even in its least dark shapes, always reserved a large -class of most important facts from the searching glare of that scrutiny -which Voltairism taught men to direct upon every proposition that was -presented to them.</p> - -<p>For many centuries truth had been conceived as of the nature of a Real -Universal, of which men had full possession by the revelation of a -supreme divinity. All truth was organically one; and the relations of -men to something supernatural, their relations to one another, the -relations of outward matter, were all comprehended in a single -synthesis, within which, and subject to which, all intellectual movement -proceeded. An advancing spirit of inquiry dissolved this synthesis; and -the philosophers, as distinguished from the steadfast and single -students of science, ceasing to take it for granted as an indisputable -starting-point that truth was an assured possession, went off on two -different lines. Men of one cast of mind fell into doubt whether truth -was a reality after all, and the discovery of it accessible to mankind. -Thinkers of a different cast accepted this doctrine of the impotence of -the human understanding to discover knowledge and prove truth, but they -proceeded to the retrograde inference that therefore the ancient -tradition of knowledge actually contains that approved<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">36</a></span> truth, which had -just been pronounced unattainable. This oblique mode of regaining a -position of which they had been by their own act dispossessed, was -impossible for so keen and direct a spirit as Voltaire’s. However filled -his mind may have been with the false notions of the Tribe, of the -Market, and above all of the Cave, at all events it was more free than -most, certainly than most of those subalterns of the schools, from the -Idols of the Theatre, and from either kind of that twofold excess, ‘one -sort of which too hastily constitutes sciences positive and hierarchic, -while the other presents scepticism and the pursuit of a vague inquiry -that has no limit.’<a name="FNanchor_6" id="FNanchor_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6" class="fnanchor">6</a></p> - -<p>The consequence of this peculiarity, call it a destructive and blind -narrowness, or call it a wise and justly-measured openness of mind, as -we may choose, has been that Voltaire has been condemned with unsparing -severity by three of the most influential schools of modern opinion. -Every one who has a system to defend is the enemy of the famous man who -destroyed the reigning system of his day, with engines that seem to -point with uncomfortable directness against all other systems. Every one -who thinks that we have turned over the last leaf of the book of -knowledge, whatever the inscription that he may find written upon it, -naturally detests the whole spirit and impulse of one who felt all his -life that he and his generation were the first band of men who had -shaken off their chains, and ascended to the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">37</a></span>light of the sun and the -contemplation of some portion of an inexhaustible universe of realities. -Hence, the partisans of the Christian religion, in any of its forms, -have dealt unrelenting contempt and hatred to the foe who did more than -any one else to reduce their churches, once so majestically triumphant, -to their present level, where they are forced under various guises and -with much obsolete pretension to plead for the tolerance of rational -men, on the comparatively modest ground of social fitness. Their -hostility, we may agree, is not very astonishing, when we reflect on the -provocation.</p> - -<p>Many of those, however, who have least hope of any future revival of the -ancient creed, and who least regret its fall, are even less hostile to -the Jesuits than they are to Voltaire. Comte, for example, who -elaborated a doctrine with a corresponding system of life deduced from -it, and the central principle of whose method of social action and -movement is to destroy by replacing, has adjudged an emphatically -secondary place to Voltaire’s claims on our good-will.<a name="FNanchor_7" id="FNanchor_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7" class="fnanchor">7</a> Nor <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">38</a></span>ought -this seriously to surprise us, when we consider that Voltaire trusted to -the individual to replace for himself, by the motion of his own -faculties, the old collective tradition of action and belief; and that -he showed himself too keenly alive to the curses of that empire of -prejudice, authority, social fixity, which he devoted his life to -overthrowing, to lend any help to the restoration of a similar reign -with changed watchwords. He is perhaps the one great Frenchman who has -known how to abide in patient contentment with an all but purely -critical reserve, leaving reconstruction, its form, its modes, its -epoch, for the fulness of time and maturity of effort to disclose. It -has been the fatal quality of the genius of his countrymen, from -Descartes down to Comte, to decline to rest on an uncompleted -interpretation of experience, and to insist on a hasty supplement of -unconcluded analysis by what is virtually an à priori synthesis. -Voltaire deserves no special praise for this abstention from a -<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">39</a></span>premature reconstruction; for it probably was not so much the result of -deliberate persuasion that we must wait on the time, as of an inability -to conceive of need for a cultus and a firm ordering of our knowledge, -as prime demands of human nature and essential conditions of stable -progress. Whatever value we may set on this sage reserve, the fact that -Voltaire had no scheme for replacing the scheme which he destroyed, -accounts very amply for the disparagement of him by those who think -almost any fabric of common and ordered belief better for men, than the -seeming chaos of intricate and multitudinous growths which now -overspread the field of European opinion. And does it not involve us in -a defective conception of the way in which human progress accomplishes -itself, to place in our calendar of benefactors, supposing us to compose -a calendar, only those who have built up truth, to the exclusion of -those who have with pain and labour helped to demolish impudent error? -Has Jericho always fallen without the blasts from the seven trumpets? It -is sufficiently demonstrated from history that false opinions vanish -spontaneously, without a direct blow struck; that a system of belief, -corroborated in the breasts of the multitude by all the authority of a -long tradition, sanctified to the powerful few by dignity or emolument, -entrenched with a strength that seems inexpugnable among the ordinances -and institutions and unwritten uses of a great community, will -straightway succumb from inherent want of life and courage?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">40</a></span></p> - -<p>There is a third kind of opinion, that is as little merciful in its own -way as either of the two others, and this is the scientific or cultured -opinion. Objections from this region express themselves in many forms, -some of them calm and suggestive, others a little empty and a little -brutal. They all seem to come to something of this kind: that Voltaire’s -assault on religion, being conducted without any smallest spark of the -religious spirit, was therefore necessarily unjust to the object of his -attack, and did the further mischief of engendering in all on whom his -influence was poured out a bitterness and moral temerity which is the -worst blight that can fall upon the character either of a man or a -generation: that while truth is relative and conditional, and while -belief is only to be understood by those who have calmly done justice to -the history of its origin and growth, Voltaire carelessly, -unphilosophically, and maliciously, handled what had once possessed a -relative truth, as if it had always been absolutely false, and what had -sprung from the views and aspirations of the best men, as if it had had -its root in the base artifices of the worst: that what ought to have -gone on, and would have gone on, as a process of soft autumnal -dissolution, was converted by the infection of Voltaire into a stained -scene of passion and battle: that assuming to possess and to furnish men -with a broad criticism of life, he left out of life its deepest, -holiest, and most exalting elements, as well as narrowed and depraved -criticism, from its right rank as the high art of stating<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">41</a></span> and collating -ideas, down to an acrid trick of debate, a thing of proofs, arguments, -and rancorous polemic.</p> - -<p>It is certain that there is much truth in this particular strain of -objection to Voltaire’s power and his use of it, or else it would not -have found mouthpieces, as it has done, among some of the finest spirits -of the modern time. But it is the natural tendency of the hour rather to -exaggerate what weight there really is in such criticism, which, though -claiming to be the criticism of temperance and moderation and -relativity, does not as a matter of fact escape the fatal law of excess -and absoluteness even in its very moderation and relativity. In -estimating an innovator’s method, all depends on the time and the enemy; -and it may sometimes happen that the time is so out of joint and the -enemy so strong, so unscrupulous, so imminently pernicious, as to leave -no alternative between finally succumbing, and waging a war of -deliverance for which coming generations have to bear the burdens in -feuds and bitterness; between abridging somewhat of the richness and -fulness of life, and allowing it all to be gradually choked up by dust -and enwrapped in night. For let us not forget that what Catholicism was -accomplishing in France in the first half of the eighteenth century, was -really not anything less momentous than the slow strangling of French -civilisation. Though Voltaire’s spirit may be little edifying to us, who -after all partake of the freedom which he did so much to win, yet it is -only just to remember what was the spirit of his foe, and that in so -pestilent a presence a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">42</a></span> man of direct vision may well be eager to use -such weapons as he finds to his hand. Let the scientific spirit move -people to speak as it lists about Voltaire’s want of respect for things -held sacred, for the good deeds of holy men, for the sentiment and faith -of thousands of the most worthy among his fellows. Still there are times -when it may be very questionable whether, in the region of belief, one -with power and with fervid honesty ought to spare the abominable city of -the plain, just because it happens to shelter five righteous. There are -times when the inhumanity of a system stands out so red and foul, when -the burden of its iniquity weighs so heavy, and the contagion of its -hypocrisy is so laden with mortal plague, that no awe of dilettante -condemnation nor minute scruple as to the historic or the relative can -stay the hand of the man whose direct sight and moral energy have -pierced the veil of use, and revealed the shrine of the infamous thing. -The most noble of the holy men said long ago that ‘the servant of the -Lord must not strive, but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, -in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves.’ The history of -the churches is in one of its most conspicuous aspects the history of a -prolonged outrage upon these words by arrogant and blasphemous persons, -pretending to draw a sacred spirit from the very saint who uttered them. -We may well deplore that Voltaire’s attack, and every other attack of -the same sort, did not take the fair shape prescribed by the apostle to -the servant of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">43</a></span> Lord, of gentleness, patience, and the instruction -of a sweet and firm example. But the partisans of the creed in whose -name more human blood has been violently shed than in any other cause -whatever, these, I say, can hardly find much ground of serious reproach -in a few score epigrams. Voltaire had no calm breadth of wisdom. It may -be so. There are moments which need not this calm breadth of wisdom, but -a two-edged sword, and when the deliverers of mankind are they who ‘come -to send fire on the earth.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">44</a></span></p> - -<h2>CHAPTER II.</h2> - -<h5>ENGLISH INFLUENCES.</h5> - -<p>Voltairism may be said to have begun from the flight of its founder from -Paris to London. This, to borrow a name from the most memorable instance -of outward change marking inward revolution, was the decisive hegira, -from which the philosophy of destruction in a formal shape may be held -seriously to date. Voltaire landed in England in the middle of May, -1726. He was in the thirty-third year of his age, that earlier -climacteric, when the men with vision first feel conscious of a past, -and reflectively mark its shadow. It is then that they either press -forward eagerly with new impulse in the way of their high calling, -knowing the limitations of circumstance and hour, or else fainting draw -back their hand from the plough, and ignobly leave to another or to none -the accomplishment of the work. The narrowness of the cribbed deck that -we are doomed to tread, amid the vast space of an eternal sea with fair -shores dimly seen and never neared, oppresses the soul with a burden -that sorely tries its strength, when the fixed limits first define -themselves before it. Those are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">45</a></span> the strongest who do not tremble -beneath this gray ghostly light, but make it the precursor of an -industrious day.</p> - -<p>The past on which Voltaire had to look back was full of turmoil, -contention, impatience, and restless production. François Marie Arouet -was born in 1694, so feeble in constitution that, as in the case of -Fontenelle, whose hundred years surpassed even Voltaire’s lengthy span, -his life was long despaired of. His father was a notary of good repute -for integrity and skill, and was entrusted with the management of their -affairs by several of the highest families in France. His mother is -supposed to have had some of the intellectual alertness which penetrated -the character of her son, but she died when he was seven years old, and -he remained alone with his father until 1704, when he was sent to -school. His instructors at the College Louis-le-Grand were the Jesuits, -whose wise devotion to intellectual education in the broadest sense that -was then possible, is a partial set-off against their mischievous -influence on morals and politics. The hardihood of the young Arouet’s -temper broke out even from the first, and we need not inquire minutely -what were the precise subjects of education of a child, whom his tutor -took an early opportunity of pointing out as the future coryphaeus of -deism in France. He used to say in after life that he had learnt nothing -worth learning. A lad who could launch infidel epigrams at ‘his -Jansenist of a brother,’ and declaim a poem in which so important a hero -as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">46</a></span> Moses figures as an impostor,<a name="FNanchor_8" id="FNanchor_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8" class="fnanchor">8</a> was of that originality of mental -turn on whose freedom the inevitably mechanical instruction of the -school cannot be expected to make any deep or decisive impression. The -young of this independent humour begin their education where those of -less energetic nerve hardly leave off, with character ready made.</p> - -<p>Between a youth of bold, vivacious, imaginative disposition, and a -father of the temperament proper to a notary with many responsibilities, -there could be no sympathy, and the two were not long in coming to open -quarrel without terms. The son was taken out by his godfather, the abbé -Châteauneuf, into that gay world which presently became the infamous -world of the regency, where extraordinary sprightliness and facility in -verse gained him welcome and patronage. We need waste no words on the -corruption and intellectual trifling of the society into which Voltaire -was thus launched. For shallowness and levity, concealed by literary -artifice and play of frivolous wit which only makes the scene more -dreary or detestable, it has never been surpassed. There was brightness -in it, compared with the heavy brutality and things obscene of the court -of Lewis XV., but after all we seem to see over the brightness a sort of -foul glare, like the iridescence of putrefaction. Ninon de l’Enclos, a -friend of his mother’s, was perhaps the one free and honest soul with -whom the young Arouet had to do. Now extremely old, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">47</a></span>she still preserved -both her wit and her fine probity of intellect. She had always kept her -heart free of cant, from the time when she had ridiculed, as the -Jansenists of love, the pedantical women and platonic gallants of the -Hôtel Rambouillet, down to her rejection of Madame de Maintenon’s offer -of an invitation to the court, on condition of her joining the band of -the devout. The veteran Aspasia, now over eighty, was struck by the -brilliance and dazzling promise of the young versifier, and left him a -legacy for the purchase of books.</p> - -<p>The rest of the society into which Voltaire was taken was saturated with -a spirit of reaction against the austere bigotry of the court, and bad -and miserable as such austerity is, the rebellion against it is always -worse and more miserable still. The licence seems not to have been of -the most joyous sort, as indeed licence protesting and defiant is not -apt to be. The abbé Chaulieu, a versifier of sprightly fancy, grace, and -natural ease, was the dissolute Anacreon of the people of quality who -during the best part of the reign of Lewis XIV. had failed to sympathise -with its nobility and stateliness, and during the worst part revolted -against its gloom. Voltaire at twenty was his intimate and his professed -disciple.<a name="FNanchor_9" id="FNanchor_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9" class="fnanchor">9</a> To this intimacy we may perhaps trace that remarkable -continuity of tradition between Voltaire and the grand age, which -distinguishes him from the school of famous men who were called -Voltaireans, and of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">48</a></span>whom the special mark was that they had absolutely -broken with the whole past of French history and literature. Princes, -dukes, and marquises were of Chaulieu’s band. The despair and fury of -the elder Arouet at such companions and such follies reproduce once more -a very old story in the records of youthful genius. Genius and fine -friends reconcile no prudent notary to a son’s hatred for law and the -desk. Orgies with the Duke of Sully, and rhyming bouts with Chaulieu, -have sunk into small size for us, who know that they were but the -mischievous and unbecoming prologue of a life of incessant and generous -labour, but we may well believe that such enormities bulked big in the -vision of the father, as portents of degradation and ruin. We have a -glimpse of the son’s temper towards the profession to which his father -had tried so hard to bind him, in the ironical definition, thrown out -long afterwards, of an <i>avocat</i> as a man who, not having money enough to -buy one of those brilliant offices on which the universe has its eyes -fixed, studies for three years the laws of Theodosius and Justinian so -as to know the custom of Paris, and who at length having got -matriculated has the right of pleading for money, if he has a loud -voice.<a name="FNanchor_10" id="FNanchor_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10" class="fnanchor">10</a> The young Arouet did actually himself get matriculated and -acquire this right, but his voice proved so loud that his pleadings were -destined to fill wider courts than those of Paris.</p> - -<p>Arouet the elder persuaded Châteauneuf’s brother, who was a diplomatist, -to take into his company the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">49</a></span>law-student who had made verse instead of -studying the laws of Theodosius. So the youth went to the Hague. Here he -straightway fell into new misadventure by conceiving an undying passion, -that lasted several weeks, for a young countrywoman whom he found in -Holland. Stolen interviews, letters, tears, and the other accustomed -circumstances of a juvenile passion on which the gods frown, were all -discovered. The ambassador sent the refractory boy back to his father, -with full details and documents, with results on the relations of the -pair that need not be described.</p> - -<p>In the autumn of 1715 Lewis XIV. died, and the Regent D’Orleans reigned -in his stead. There presently appeared some pungent lines, entitled <i>Les -j’ai vu</i>, in which the writer recounted a number of evil things which he -had seen in the state—a thousand prisons crowded with brave citizens -and faithful subjects, the people groaning under rigorous bondage, the -magistrates harassing every town with ruinous taxes and unrighteous -edicts; <i>j’ai vu, c’est dire tout, le Jésuite adoré</i>. The last line ran -that all these ills the writer had seen, yet was but twenty years -old.<a name="FNanchor_11" id="FNanchor_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11" class="fnanchor">11</a> Voltaire was twenty-two, but the authorities knew him for a -verse-writer of biting turn, so they treated the discrepancy of age as a -piece of mere prosopopœia, and laid him up in the Bastille (1716). As a -matter of fact, he had no hand in the offence. Even amid these sombre -shades, where he was kept for nearly a year, his spirit was blithe and -its fire unquenchable. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">50</a></span></p> - -<p>The custom of Paris and the Codes were as little handled as ever; and he -divided his time between the study of the two great epics of Greece and -Rome, and the preparation of what he designed to be the great epic of -France. He also gave the finishing strokes to his tragedy of Œdipe, -which was represented in the course of the following year with definite -success, and was the opening of a brilliant dramatic career, that -perhaps to a mortal of more ordinary mould might alone have sufficed for -the glory of a life.</p> - -<p>The next six years he divided between a lively society, mostly of the -great, the assiduous composition of new plays, and the completion of the -Henriade. His fibre was gradually strengthening. By the end of this -period, the recklessness of the boyish disciple of Chaulieu had wholly -spent itself; and although Voltaire’s manner of life was assuredly not -regular nor decorously ordered, now nor for many years to come, if -measured by the rigid standard on which an improved society properly -insists, yet it was always a life of vigorous industry and clear -purposes. For a brief time his passion for the Maréchale de Villars -broke the tenacity of his diligence, and he always looked back on this -interruption of his work with the kind of remorse that might afflict a -saint for a grave spiritual backsliding. He was often at the country -seats of Sully, Villars, and elsewhere, throwing off thousands of -trifling verses, arranging theatricals, enlivening festivals, and always -corresponding <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">51</a></span>indefatigably; for now and throughout his life his good -sense and good will, his business-like quality and his liking for his -friends, both united to raise him above the idle pretences and -self-indulgence of those who neglect the chief instrument of social -intercourse and friendly continuity. He preferred the country to the -town. ‘I was born,’ he says to one, ‘to be a faun or creature of the -woods; I am not made to live in a town.’ To another, ‘I fancy myself in -hell, when I am in the accursed city of Paris.’<a name="FNanchor_12" id="FNanchor_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12" class="fnanchor">12</a> The only -recommendation of the accursed city was that a solitude was attainable -in it, as in other crowded spots, which enabled him to work better there -than in the small and exacting throng of country-houses. ‘I fear -Fontainebleau, Villars, and Sully, both for my health and for Henry IV; -I should do no work, I should over-eat, and I should lose in pleasures -and in complaisance to others an amount of precious time that I ought to -be using for a necessary and creditable task.’<a name="FNanchor_13" id="FNanchor_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13" class="fnanchor">13</a></p> - -<p>Yet there was even at this period much of that marvellous hurrying to -and fro in France and out of it, which continued to mark the longer -portion of Voltaire’s life, and fills it with such a busy air of turmoil -and confusion, explaining many things, when we think of the stability of -life and permanence of outward place of the next bright spirit that -shone upon Europe. Goethe never saw London, Paris, nor Vienna, and made -no journey save the famous visit to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">52</a></span>Italy, and the march at Valmy. -Voltaire moved hither and thither over the face of Europe like the wind, -and it is not until he has passed through half of his life that we can -begin to think of his home. Every association that belongs to his name -recalls tumult and haste and shrill contention with men and -circumstance. We have, however, to remember that these constant -movements were the price which Voltaire paid for the vigour and freedom -of his speech, in days when the party of superstition possessed the ear -of the temporal power, and resorted without sparing to the most violent -means of obliterating every hardy word and crushing every independent -writer. The greater number of Voltaire’s ceaseless changes of place were -flights from injustice, and the recollection of this may well soothe the -disturbance of spirit of the most fastidious zealot for calm and orderly -living. They were for the most part retreats before packs of wolves.</p> - -<p>In 1722 the elder Arouet died, to the last relentlessly set against a -son, not any less stubborn than himself, and unfortunately a great deal -more poetical. About the same time the name of Arouet falls away, and -the poet is known henceforth by that ever famous symbol for so much, -Voltaire; a name for which various explanations, none of them -satisfactory, have been offered, the latest and perhaps the least -improbable resolving it into a fanciful anagram.<a name="FNanchor_14" id="FNanchor_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14" class="fnanchor">14</a></p> - -<p>Industrious as he was, and eager as he was for <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">53</a></span>rural delights and -laborious solitude, Voltaire was still pre-eminently social. His letters -disclose in him, who really possessed all arts, the art of one who knew -how to be graciously respectful to the social superiors who took him for -a companion, without forgetting what was due to his own respect for -himself. We are all princes or poets, he exclaimed jubilantly on the -occasion of one of those nights and suppers of the gods. Such -gay-hearted freedom was not always well taken, and in time Voltaire’s -eyes were opened to the terms on which he really stood. ‘<i>Who is the -young man who talks so loud?’</i> called out some Chevalier Rohan, at one -of these sprightly gatherings at the house of the Duke of Sully.<a name="FNanchor_15" id="FNanchor_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15" class="fnanchor">15</a> -‘<i>My lord</i>,’ the young man replied promptly, ‘<i>he is one who does not -carry about a great name, but wins respect for the name he has.’</i> A few -days afterwards the high-spirited patrician magnanimously took an -opportunity of having a caning inflicted by the hands of his lackeys on -the poet who had thrown away this lesson upon him. Voltaire, who had at -all events that substitute for true physical courage which springs up in -an intensely irritable and susceptive temperament, forthwith applied -himself to practise with the small-sword. He did his best to sting his -enemy to fight, but the chevalier either feared the swordsman, or else -despised an antagonist of the middle class; and by the influence of the -Rohan family the poet once more found himself<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">54</a></span> in the Bastille, then the -house of correction at the disposal and for the use of the nobles, the -court, and the clergy. Here for six months Voltaire, then only -representing a very humble and unknown quantity in men’s minds, chafed -and fretted. The pacific Fleury, as is the wont of the pacific when in -power, cared less to punish the wrong-doer than to avoid disturbance, -knowing that disturbance was most effectually avoided by not meddling -with the person most able to resent. The multitude, however, when the -day of reckoning came, remembered all these things, and the first act of -their passion was to raze to the ground the fortress into which nearly -every distinguished champion of the freedom of human intelligence among -them had at one time or another been tyrannically thrown.</p> - -<p>On his release Voltaire was ordered to leave Paris. A clandestine visit -to the city showed him that there was no hope of redress from authority, -which was in the hands of men whose pride of rank prevented them from so -much as even perceiving, much more from repairing, such grievance as a -mere bourgeois could have: as if, to borrow Condorcet’s bitter phrase, a -descendant of the conquering Franks, like De Rohan, could have lost the -ancient right of life and death over a descendant of the Gauls.<a name="FNanchor_16" id="FNanchor_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16" class="fnanchor">16</a> And -this was no ironic taunt; for while Voltaire was in the Bastille, that -astounding book of the Count of Boulainvilliers was in the press, in -which it was shown that the feudal <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">55</a></span>system is the master-work of the -human mind, and that the advance of the royal authority and the increase -of the liberties of the people were equally unjust usurpations of the -rights of the conquering Franks.<a name="FNanchor_17" id="FNanchor_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17" class="fnanchor">17</a></p> - -<p>Voltaire was no patient victim of the practice which corresponded to -this trim historic theory. In a tumult of just indignation he quitted -France, and sought refuge with that stout and free people, who had by -the execution of one king, the deposition of another, and the definite -subjugation of the hierarchy, won a full liberty of thought and speech -and person. A modern historian has drawn up a list of the men of mark -who made the same invigorating pilgrimage. ‘During the two generations -which elapsed between the death of Lewis XIV. and the outbreak of the -Revolution, there was hardly a Frenchman of eminence who did not either -visit England or learn English; while many of them did both.’<a name="FNanchor_18" id="FNanchor_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18" class="fnanchor">18</a> Among -those who actually came to England and mixed in its society besides -Voltaire, were Buffon, Brissot, Helvétius, Gournay, Jussieu, Lafayette, -Montesquieu, Maupertuis, Morellet, Mirabeau, Roland and Madame Roland, -Rousseau. We who live after Wordsworth, Shelley, Byron, Scott, have -begun to forget the brilliant group of the Queen Anne men. They belong -to a self-complacent time, and we to a time of doubt and unsatisfied -aspiration, and the two spirits are unsympathetic. Yet they were -assuredly a band, from Newton and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">56</a></span>Locke down to Pope, of whom, taking -them for all the qualities which they united, in science, correct -judgment, love of letters, and taste, England has as good reason to be -proud as of any set of contemporary writers in her history.</p> - -<p>Up to this moment Voltaire had been a poet, and his mind had not moved -beyond the region of poetic creation. He had beaten every one once and -for all on the ground of light and graceful lyric verse, ‘a kind of -poetry,’ says a French critic whose word in such a matter we can hardly -refuse to take, ‘in which Voltaire is at once with us the only master -and the only writer supportable, for he is the only one whom we can -read.’<a name="FNanchor_19" id="FNanchor_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19" class="fnanchor">19</a> He had produced three tragedies. His epic was completed, -though undergoing ceaseless labour of the file. Two lines in his first -play had served to mark him for no friend to the hierophants:</p> - -<div class="poem"> -<div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Nos prêtres ne sont point ce qu’un vain peuple pense;</span> -<span class="i0">Notre crédulité fait toute leur science.<a name="FNanchor_20" id="FNanchor_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20" class="fnanchor">20</a></span> -</div></div> - -<p>And the words of Araspe in the same play had breathed the full spirit of -the future liberator:</p> - -<div class="poem"> -<div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Ne nous fions qu’à nous; voyons tout par nos yeux:</span> -<span class="i0">Ce sont là nos trépieds, nos oracles, nos dieux.<a name="FNanchor_21" id="FNanchor_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21" class="fnanchor">21</a></span> -</div></div> - -<p>Such expressions, however, were no more than the vague and casual word -of the <i>esprit fort</i>, the friend of Chaulieu, and the rhymer of a -dissolute circle, where religion only became tinged with doubt, because -<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">57</a></span>conduct had already become penetrated with licence. More important than -such stray words was the Epistle to Uranie (1722), that truly masculine -and terse protest against the popular creed, its mean and fatuous and -contradictory idea of an omnipotent God, who gave us guilty hearts so as -to have the right of punishing us, and planted in us a love of pleasure -so as to torment us the more effectually by appalling ills that an -eternal miracle prevents from ever ending; who drowned the fathers in -the deluge and then died for the children; who exacts an account of -their ignorance from a hundred peoples whom he has himself plunged -helplessly into this ignorance:</p> - -<div class="poem"> -<div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Je ne reconnais point à cette indigne image</span> -<span class="i4">Le dieu que je dois adorer;</span> -<span class="i4">Je croirais le déshonorer</span> -<span class="i0">Par une telle insulte et par un tel hommage.<a name="FNanchor_22" id="FNanchor_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22" class="fnanchor">22</a></span> -</div></div> - -<p>Though called The For and Against, the poet hardly tries to maintain any -proportion between the two sides of the argument. The verses were -addressed to a lady in a state of uncertainty as to belief, of whom -there were probably more among Voltaire’s friends of quality than he can -have cared to cure or convert. Scepticism was at this time not much more -than an interesting fashion.</p> - -<p>The dilettante believer is indeed not a strong spirit, but the weakest, -and the facts of life were by this time far too serious for Voltaire, -for that truth <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">58</a></span>to have missed his keen-seeing eye. It is not hard to -suppose that impatient weariness of the poor life that was lived around -him, had as large a share as resentment of an injustice, in driving him -to a land where men did not merely mouth idle words of making reason -their oracle, their tripod, their god, but where they had actually -systematised the rejection of Christianity, and had thrown themselves -with grave faith on the disciplined intelligence and its lessons. -Voltaire left a country where freedom of thinking was only an empty -watchword, the name for a dissipated fashion. It was considered -free-thinking if a man allowed himself to regard the existence of the -Five Propositions in Jansenius’s book as a thing indifferent to the -happiness of the human race.<a name="FNanchor_23" id="FNanchor_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23" class="fnanchor">23</a> He found in England that it was a -far-spreading reality, moulding not only the theological ideas, but the -literature, manners, politics, and philosophy, of a great society. -Voltaire left France a poet, he returned to it a sage. Before his -flight, though we do not know to what extent he may have read such -history as was then accessible, he had been actively productive only in -the sphere of the imaginative faculties, and in criticism of the form -and regulation proper to be imposed upon them. When he returned, while -his poetic power had ripened, he had tasted of the fruit of the tree of -scientific reason, and, what was not any less important, he had become -alive to the central truth of the social destination of all art and all -knowledge. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">59</a></span></p> - -<p>In a word, he was transformed from the penman into the captain and -man-at-arms. ‘The example of England,’ says Condorcet, ‘showed him that -truth is not made to remain a secret in the hands of a few philosophers, -and a limited number of men of the world, instructed, or rather -indoctrinated, by the philosophers; smiling with them at the errors of -which the people are the victims, but at the same time making themselves -the champions of these very errors, when their rank or position gives -them a real or chimerical interest in them, and quite ready to permit -the proscription, or even persecution, of their teachers, if they -venture to say what in secret they themselves actually think. From the -moment of his return, Voltaire felt himself called to destroy the -prejudices of every kind, of which his country was the slave.’<a name="FNanchor_24" id="FNanchor_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24" class="fnanchor">24</a></p> - -<p>It is not difficult to perceive the sorts of fact which would most -strike the exile’s attention, though it would be rash to suppose that -things struck him in exact proportion to their real weight and the depth -of their importance, or that he detected the connection subsisting among -them at their roots. Perhaps the first circumstance to press its -unfamiliarity upon him was the social and political consequence of the -men of letters in England, and the recognition given to the power of the -pen. The patronage of men of genius in the reign of Anne and part of the -reign of the first George had been profuse and splendid. The <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">60</a></span>poet who -had been thrown into prison for resenting a whipping from a nobleman’s -lackeys, found himself in a land where Newton and Locke were rewarded -with lucrative posts in the administration of the country, where Prior -and Gay acted in important embassies, and where Addison was a Secretary -of State. The author of Œdipe and the Henriade had to hang ignobly -about in the crowd at Versailles at the marriage of Lewis XV. to gain a -paltry pittance from the queen’s privy purse,<a name="FNanchor_25" id="FNanchor_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25" class="fnanchor">25</a> while in England -Hughes and Rowe and Ambrose Philips and Congreve were all enjoying amply -endowed sinecures. The familiar intercourse between the ministers and -the brilliant literary group of that age has been often painted. At the -time of Voltaire’s exile it had just come to an end with the accession -to supreme power of Walpole, who neither knew anything nor cared -anything about the literature of his own time. But the usage was still -new, and the men who had profited and given profit by it were alive, and -were the central figures in the circles among which Voltaire was -introduced by Bolingbroke. Newton died in 1727, and Voltaire saw his -death mourned as a public calamity, and surrounded with a pomp and -circumstance in the eye of the country that could not have been -surpassed if he had been, not a geometer, but a king who was the -benefactor of his people.<a name="FNanchor_26" id="FNanchor_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26" class="fnanchor">26</a> The author of Gulliver’s <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">61</a></span>Travels was -still a dignitary in the state church, and there was still a large -association of outward power and dignity with literary merit.</p> - -<p>In so far as we consider literature to be one of the purely decorative -arts, there can be no harm in this patronage of its most successful, -that is its most pleasing, professors by the political minister; but the -more closely literature approaches to being an organ of serious things, -a truly spiritual power, the more danger there is likely to be in making -it a path to temporal station or emolument. The practical instinct, -which on some of its sides seems like a miraculously implanted -substitute for scientific intelligence in English politics, has led us -almost too far in preserving this important separation of the new church -from the functions and rewards of the state. The misfortunes of France -since the Revolution have been due to no one circumstance so markedly as -to the predominance which the man of letters has acquired in that -country; and this fatal predominance was first founded, though assuredly -not of set design, by Voltaire.</p> - -<p>Not less amazing than the high honour paid to intellectual eminence was -the refugee from the city of the Bastille likely to find the freedom -with which public events and public personages were handled by any one -who could pay a printer. The licence of this time in press and theatre -has only been once or twice equalled since, and it has never been -surpassed. From Bolingbroke and Swift down to the author of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">62</a></span> The Golden -Rump,<a name="FNanchor_27" id="FNanchor_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27" class="fnanchor">27</a> every writer who chose to consider himself in opposition -treated the minister with a violence and ferocity, which neither -irritated nor daunted that sage head, but which would in France have -crowded the lowest dungeons of the Bastille with victims of Fleury’s -anger and fright. Such license was as natural in a country that had -within ninety years gone through a violent civil war, a revolutionary -change of government and line, and a half-suppressed dispute of -succession, as it would have been astonishing in France, where the -continuity of outward order had never been more than superficially -ruffled, even in the most turbulent times of the factious wars of the -League and the Fronde. No new idea of the relations between ruler and -subject had ever penetrated into France, as it had done so deeply in the -neighbouring country. No serious popular issues had been so much as -stated. As Voltaire wrote, in the detestable times of Charles IX. and -Henry III. it was only a question whether the people should be the slave -of the Guises, while as for the last war, it deserved only hisses and -contempt; for what was De Retz but a rebel without a purpose and a -stirrer of sedition without a name, and what was the parliament but a -body which knew neither what it meant nor what it did not mean?<a name="FNanchor_28" id="FNanchor_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28" class="fnanchor">28</a> The -apologies of Jesuit writers for the assassination of tyrants deserve an -important place in the history of the doctrine of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">63</a></span>divine right; but -they were theoretical essays in casuistry for the initiated few, and -certainly conveyed no general principles of popular right to the many.</p> - -<p>Protestantism, on the other hand, loosened the conception of authority -and of the respect proper for authority, to a degree which has never -been realised in the most anarchic movements in France, whose anarchy -has ever sprung less from a disrespect for authority as such, than from -a passionate and uncompromising resolve in this or that group that the -authority shall be in one set of hands and not another. Voltairism has -proved itself as little capable as Catholicism of inspiring any piece -that may match with Milton’s Areopagitica, the noblest defence that was -ever made of the noblest of causes. We know not whether Voltaire ever -thought much as to the history and foundation of that freedom of speech, -which even in its abuse struck him as so wonderful a circumstance in a -country that still preserved a stable and orderly society. He was -probably content to admire the phenomenon of a liberty so marvellous, -without searching very far for its antecedents. The mere spectacle of -such free, vigorous, many-sided, and truly social and public activity of -intellect as was visible in England at this time, was in itself enough -to fix the gaze of one who was so intensely conscious of his own energy -of intellect, and so bitterly rebellious against the system which -fastened a gag between his lips.</p> - -<p>If we would realise the impression of this scene of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">64</a></span> free speech on -Voltaire’s ardent spirit, we need only remember that, when in time he -returned to his own country, he had to wait long and use many arts and -suffer harassing persecution, before he could publish what he had to say -on Newton and Locke, and in other less important respects had to -suppress much of what he had most at heart to say. ‘One must disguise at -Paris,’ he wrote long after his return, ‘what I could not say too -strongly at London;’ and he vaunts his hardihood in upholding Newton -against René Descartes, while he confesses that an unfortunate but -necessary circumspection forced him to try to make Locke obscure.<a name="FNanchor_29" id="FNanchor_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29" class="fnanchor">29</a> -Judge the light which would come into such a mind as his, when he first -saw the discussion and propagation of truth freed from these vile and -demoralising affronts. The very conception of truth was a new one, as a -goddess not to be shielded behind the shades of hierophantic mystery, -but rather to be sought in the free tumult and joyous strife of many -voices, there vindicating her own majesty and marking her own children.</p> - -<p>Penetrating deeper, Voltaire found not only a new idea of truth as a -something rude, robust, and self-sufficient, but also what was to him a -new order of truths, the triumphs of slow-footed induction and the -positive reason. France was the hotbed of systems of the physical -universe. The provisional and suspensive attitude was intolerable to her -impetuous genius, and the gaps which scientific investigation <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">65</a></span>was -unable to fill, were straightway hidden behind an artificial screen of -metaphysical phantasies. The Aristotelian system died harder in France -than anywhere else, for so late as 1693, while Oxford and Cambridge and -London were actually embracing the Newtonian principles, even the -Cartesian system was forbidden to be taught by decrees of the Sorbonne -and of the Council of the King.<a name="FNanchor_30" id="FNanchor_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30" class="fnanchor">30</a> When the Cartesian physics once got -a foothold, they kept it as firmly as the system which they had found so -much difficulty in displacing. It is easy to believe that Voltaire’s -positive intelligence would hold aloof by a certain instinct from -physical explanations which were unverified and incapable of being -verified, and which were imbrangled with theology and metaphysics.</p> - -<p>We can readily conceive, again, the sensation of freshness and delight -with which a mind so essentially real, and so fundamentally serious, -paradoxical as this may sound in connection with the name of the -greatest mocker that has ever lived, would exchange the poetised -astronomy of Fontenelle, excellently constituted as Fontenelle was in a -great many ways, for the sure and scientific discoveries of a Newton. -Voltaire, in whatever subject, never failed to see through rhetoric, and -for rhetoric as the substitute for clear reasoning he always had an -aversion as deep as it was wholesome. Nobody ever loved grace and form -in style more sincerely than Voltaire, but he has shown in a great many -ways that nobody ever <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">66</a></span>valued grace and form more truly at their worth, -compared with correctness of argument and precision and solidity of -conclusion. Descartes, Fontenelle had said, ‘essaying a bold flight, -insisted on placing himself at the source of all, on making himself -master of the first principles of things by a certain number of clear -and fundamental ideas, having thus only to descend to the phenomena of -nature as necessary consequences; Newton, more timid or more modest, -began his advance by resting on phenomena in order to ascend to the -unknown principles, resolved to admit them, however the combination of -the results might present them. The one starts from what he understands -clearly to discover the cause of what he sees: the other starts from -what he sees, to discover its cause, whether clear or obscure.’ Caution -and reserve and sound method had achieved a generalisation more vast and -amazing than the boldest flight, or most resolute reasoning downwards -from a clearly held conception to phenomena, could possibly have -achieved. This splendid and unrivalled discovery was probably expounded -to Voltaire by Dr. Samuel Clarke, with whom he tells us that he had -several conferences in 1726,<a name="FNanchor_31" id="FNanchor_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31" class="fnanchor">31</a> and who was one of the ablest of the -Newtonians. He had no doubt learnt the theory of vortices from the -Jesuits, and clear exposition was the only thing needed to convert him -to the new theory, which shines by its own light, and must, in an -unbiassed intelligence with the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">67</a></span>humblest scientific quality, have -extinguished every artificial explanation. One of the truest signs of -the soundness of Voltaire’s intellectual activity was that his glad -reception of the Newtonian doctrine of attraction did not blind him to -the signal service and splendid genius of Descartes. That loud-shouting -yet feeble-footed enthusiasm, which can only make sure of itself by -disparaging the object of a counter-enthusiasm, had no place in an -intellect so emphatically sincere and self-penetrative. He prefaces his -account of the system of attraction by a hearty and loyal appreciation -of the propounder of the system of vortices.<a name="FNanchor_32" id="FNanchor_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32" class="fnanchor">32</a></p> - -<p>The acquisition of the special theory of attraction was in itself less -important for Voltaire, than the irresistible impulse which it would -give to the innate rationality or positivity of his own mind. It fitted -him to encounter with proper freedom not only vortices, but that -tremendous apparatus of monads, sufficient reason, and pre-established -harmony, with which Leibnitz then overawed European philosophy. ‘O -Metaphysics!’ he cried, ‘we have, then, got as far as they had in the -time of the earliest Druids!’<a name="FNanchor_33" id="FNanchor_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33" class="fnanchor">33</a></p> - -<p>Locke’s essay impelled him further in the same path of patient and -cautious interrogation of experience; for the same method which -established gravitation presided over the birth of the experiential -psychology. Newton instead of elaborating a system of vortices, or -another, out of his own consciousness, industriously <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">68</a></span>and patiently -waited on the phenomena. Locke, too, instead of inventing a romance of -the soul, to use Voltaire’s phrase, sagaciously set himself to watch the -phenomena of thought, and ‘reduced metaphysics to being the experimental -physics of the soul.’<a name="FNanchor_34" id="FNanchor_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34" class="fnanchor">34</a> Malebranche, then the reigning philosopher in -France, ‘astonished the reason of those whom he delighted by his style. -People trusted him in what they did not understand, because he began by -being right in what they did understand; he seduced people by being -delightful, as Descartes seduced them by being daring, while Locke was -nothing more than sage.’<a name="FNanchor_35" id="FNanchor_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35" class="fnanchor">35</a> ‘After all,’ Voltaire once wrote, ‘we must -admit that anybody who has read Locke, or rather who is his own Locke, -must find the Platos mere fine talkers, and nothing more. In point of -philosophy, a chapter of Locke or Clarke is, compared with the babble of -antiquity, what Newton’s optics are compared with those of -Descartes.’<a name="FNanchor_36" id="FNanchor_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36" class="fnanchor">36</a> It is curious to observe that De Maistre, who thought -more meanly of Plato than Voltaire did, and hardly less meanly than he -thought of Voltaire himself, cried out that in the study of philosophy -contempt for Locke is the beginning of knowledge.<a name="FNanchor_37" id="FNanchor_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37" class="fnanchor">37</a> Voltaire, on the -other hand, is enchanted to hear that his niece reads the great English -philosopher, like a good father who sheds tears of joy that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">69</a></span>his -children are turning out well.<a name="FNanchor_38" id="FNanchor_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38" class="fnanchor">38</a> Augustus published an edict <i>de -coercendo intra fines imperio</i>, and like him, Locke has fixed the empire -of knowledge in order to strengthen it.<a name="FNanchor_39" id="FNanchor_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39" class="fnanchor">39</a> Locke, he says elsewhere, -traced the development of the human reason, as a good anatomist explains -the machinery of the human body: instead of defining all at once what we -do not understand, he examines by degrees what we want to understand: he -sometimes has the courage to speak positively, but sometimes also he has -the courage to doubt.<a name="FNanchor_40" id="FNanchor_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40" class="fnanchor">40</a> This is a perfectly appreciative account. -Locke perceived the hopelessness of defining things as they are in -themselves, and the necessity before all else of understanding the reach -of the human intelligence; the impossibility of attaining knowledge -absolute and transcendent; and the limitations of our thinking and -knowing faculties within the bounds of an experience that must always be -relative. The doubt which Voltaire praised in Locke had nothing to do -with that shivering mood which receives overmuch poetic praise in our -day, as the honest doubt that has more faith than half your creeds. -There was no question of the sentimental juvenilities of children crying -for light. It was by no means religious doubt, but philosophic; and it -affected only the possibilities1139 of ontological knowledge, leaving -the grounds of faith on the one hand, and practical conduct on the -other, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">70</a></span>exactly where they were. His intense feeling for actualities -would draw Voltaire irresistibly to the writer who, in his judgment, -closed the gates of the dreamland of metaphysics, and banished the -vaulting ambition of a priori certainties, which led nowhere and assured -nothing. Voltaire’s keen practical instinct may well have revealed to -him that men were most likely to attribute to the great social problem -of the improvement of mankind its right supremacy, when they had ceased -to concentrate intellectual effort on the insoluble; and Locke went a -long way towards showing how insoluble those questions were, on which, -as it chanced, the most strenuous efforts of the intellect of Europe -since the decline of theology had been concentrated.</p> - -<p>That he should have acquired more scientific views either upon the -origin of ideas, or the question whether the soul always thinks, or upon -the reason why an apple falls to the ground, or why the planets remain -in their orbits, was on the whole very much less important for Voltaire, -than a profound and very vital sentiment which was raised to supreme -prominence in his mind, by the spectacle of these vast continents of -knowledge newly discovered by the adventurous yet sure explorers of -English thought. This sentiment was a noble faith, none the less firm -because it was so passionate, in the ability of the relative and -practical understanding to reach truth; a deep-rooted reverence for it, -as a majestic power bearing munificent and unnumbered gifts to mankind.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">71</a></span> -Hence the vivacity of the annotations which about this time (1728) -Voltaire affixed to Pascal’s famous Thoughts, and which were regarded at -that time as the audacious carpings of a shallow poet against a profound -philosopher. They were in truth the protest of a lively common sense -against a strained, morbid, and often sophistical, misrepresentation of -human nature and human circumstance. Voltaire shot a penetrative ray -through the clouds of doubt, out of which Pascal had made an apology for -mysticism. Even if there were no direct allusions to Locke, as there -are, we should know from whom the writer had learnt the art of insisting -on the relativity of propositions, reducing them to definable terms,<a name="FNanchor_41" id="FNanchor_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41" class="fnanchor">41</a> -and being very careful against those slippery unobserved transitions -from metaphor to reality, and from a term used in its common sense to -the same term in a transcendental sense, by which Pascal brought the -seeming contradictions of life, and its supposed pettiness, into a light -as oppressively glaring as it was artificial. ‘These pretended -oppositions that you call contradictions are necessary ingredients in -the composition of man, who is, like the rest of nature, what he is -bound to be.’<a name="FNanchor_42" id="FNanchor_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42" class="fnanchor">42</a> And where is the wise man who would be full of despair -because he cannot find out the exact constitution of his thought, -because he only knows a few attributes of matter, because God has not -disclosed to him all his secrets? He might as well despair because he -has not got four feet <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">72</a></span>and two wings.<a name="FNanchor_43" id="FNanchor_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43" class="fnanchor">43</a> This sage strain was the -restoration to men of their self-respect, the revival of that -intelligence which Pascal had so humiliated and thrust under foot. It -was what he had seen in England of the positive feats which reason had -achieved, that filled Voltaire with exultation in its power, and -confidence in the prospects of the race which possessed such an -instrument. ‘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.’<a name="FNanchor_44" id="FNanchor_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44" class="fnanchor">44</a></p> - -<p>From this there flowed that other vehement current in his soul, of -energetic hatred toward the black clouds of prejudice, of mean -self-love, of sinister preference of class or order, of indolence, -obstinacy, wanton fancy, and all the other unhappy leanings of human -nature, and vexed and fatal conjunctures of circumstance, which -interpose between humanity and the beneficent sunbeams of its own -intelligence, that central light of the universe. Hence, again, by a -sufficiently visible chain of thought, his marked disesteem for -far-sounding names of brutal conquerors, and his cold regard for those -outward and material circumstances in the state of nations, which strike -the sense, but do not touch the inward reason. ‘Not long ago,’ he writes -once, ‘a distinguished company were discussing the trite and frivolous -question, who was the greatest man, Caesar, Alexander, Tamerlane, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">73</a></span>or -Cromwell. Somebody answered that it was undoubtedly Isaac Newton. This -person was right; for if true greatness consists in having received from -heaven a powerful understanding and in using it to enlighten oneself and -all others, then such an one as Newton, who is hardly to be met with -once in ten centuries, is in truth the great man.... It is to him who -masters our minds by the force of truth, not to those who enslave men by -violence; it is to him who understands the universe, not to those who -disfigure it, that we owe our reverence.’<a name="FNanchor_45" id="FNanchor_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45" class="fnanchor">45</a> This may seem trite to us, -as the question which suggested it seemed to Voltaire, but we need only -reflect, first, how new this was, even as an idea, in the France which -Voltaire had quitted, and, second, how in spite of the nominal -acceptance of the idea, in the England of our own time there is, with an -immense majority not only of the general vulgar but of the special -vulgar who presume to teach in press and pulpit, no name of slight at -once so disdainful and so sure of transfixing as the name of thinker.</p> - -<p>The discovery of the New World did not fire the imagination and stir the -thought of Europe more intensely, than the vision of these new worlds of -knowledge kindled the ardour of the receptive spirit which had just come -into contact with them. But besides the speculative aspects of what he -saw in England, Voltaire was deeply penetrated by the social differences -between a country that had been <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">74</a></span>effectively, if only partially, -transformed from feudalism, and his own, where feudalism had only been -transformed into a system more repressive than itself, and more unfit to -conduct a nation to the free and industrious developments of new -civilisation. It is a remarkable thing that though Voltaire’s habitual -companions or patrons had belonged to the privileged class, he had been -sufficiently struck by the evils incident to the privileged system to -notice the absence of such evils in England, and to make a clear -attempt, though an insufficient one, to understand the secret of the -English immunity from them. One of the worst curses of France was the -taille or capitation-tax, and the way in which it was levied and -assessed. In England, Voltaire noticed, the peasant has not his feet -bruised in wooden shoes, he eats white bread, is decently clad, is not -terrified to increase the number of his stock, or to roof his dwelling -with tiles, lest his tax should be raised next year. Again, he placed -his finger on one of the circumstances that did most to spoil the growth -of a compact and well-knit society in France, when he pointed to the -large number of farmers in England with five or six hundred pounds -sterling a year, who do not think it beneath them to cultivate the earth -which has made them rich, and on which they live in active freedom.<a name="FNanchor_46" id="FNanchor_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46" class="fnanchor">46</a> -The profoundest modern investigator of the conditions of French society -in the eighteenth century has indicated the eagerness of every man who -got a little <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">75</a></span>capital to quit the country and buy a place in a town, as -doing more harm to the progress of the agriculture and commerce of -France than even the taille itself and the trade corporations.<a name="FNanchor_47" id="FNanchor_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47" class="fnanchor">47</a></p> - -<p>Voltaire perceived the astonishing fact that in this country a man -because he is a noble or a priest was not exempt from paying certain -taxes, and that the Commons who regulated the taxes, though second to -the Lords in rank, were above them in legislative influence.<a name="FNanchor_48" id="FNanchor_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48" class="fnanchor">48</a> His -acute sight also revealed to him the importance of the mixture of ranks -and classes in common pursuits, and he records with admiration instances -of the younger sons of peers of the realm following trade. ‘Whoever -arrives in Paris from the depths of a remote province with money to -spend and a name in <i>ac</i> or <i>ille</i>, can talk about a man like me, a man -of my quality,’<a name="FNanchor_49" id="FNanchor_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49" class="fnanchor">49</a> and hold a merchant in sovereign contempt. The -merchant again so constantly hears his business spoken of with disdain -that he is fool enough to blush for it; yet I am not sure which is the -more useful to a state, a thickly-bepowdered lord who knows exactly what -time the king rises and what time he goes to bed, and gives himself -mighty airs of greatness while he plays the part of a slave in a -minister’s ante-room; or the merchant who enriches his country, gives -orders <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">76</a></span>from his counting-house at Surat or Cairo, and contributes to -the happiness of the globe.<a name="FNanchor_50" id="FNanchor_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50" class="fnanchor">50</a> It is easy to conceive the fury which -these contrasts drawn from English observation would excite among the -personages in France who happened to get the worst side in them, and -there was assuredly nothing surprising in the decree of the Parliament -of Paris (1734), which condemned the Letters on the English to be -publicly burnt, as scandalous and contrary alike to good manners and the -respect due to principalities and powers.</p> - -<p>The English reader of the Letters is naturally struck by the absence of -any adequate account of our political liberties and free constitutional -forms. There is a good chapter on Bacon, one on inoculation, and several -on the Quakers, but on the civil constitution hardly a word of large -appreciativeness. Not only this, but there is no sign that Voltaire -either set any due or special value on the popular forms of the -Hanoverian time, or clearly understood that the liberty, which was so -amazing and so precious to him in the region of speculative and literary -activity, was the direct fruit of that general spirit of freedom, which -is naturally engendered in a people accustomed to take an active part in -the conduct of its own affairs. Liberty in spirituals was adorable to -him, but for liberty in temporals he never seems to have had more than a -very distant and verbal kind of respect; just because, with all his -unmatched keenness of sight, he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">77</a></span>failed to discover that the English -sturdiness in the matter of civil rights was the very root and cause, -not only of that material prosperity which struck him so much, and of -the slightness and movableness of the line which divided the aristocracy -from the commercial classes, but also of the fact that a Newton and a -Locke were inwardly emboldened to give free play to their intelligence -without fear of being punished for their conclusions, and of the only -less important fact that whatever conclusions speculative genius might -establish would be given to the world without interposition from any -court or university or official tribunal. Voltaire undoubtedly admired -the English for their parliament, because the material and superficial -advantages that delighted him were evidently due to the system, which -happened to be parliamentary. What we miss is any consciousness that -these advantages would not have been what they were, if they had been -conferred by an absolute sovereign; any recognition that political -activity throughout a nation works in a thousand indirect but most -potent ways, and is not more to be prized for this, than for its direct -and most palpable consequences. In one place, indeed, he mentions that -the honour paid to men of letters is due to the form of government, but -his language betrays a wholly inadequate and incorrect notion of the -true operation of the form of government. ‘There are in London,’ he -says, ‘about eight hundred people with the right of speaking in public, -and maintaining the interests of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">78</a></span> nation. Some five or six thousand -pretend to the same honour in their turn. All the rest set themselves up -to judge these, and everybody can print what he thinks. So all the -nation is bound to instruct itself. All talk is about the governments of -Athens and Rome, and it becomes necessary to read the authors who have -discussed them. That naturally leads to love of polite learning.’<a name="FNanchor_51" id="FNanchor_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51" class="fnanchor">51</a> -This is to confound a very trivial accident of popular governments with -their essence. If culture thrives under them—a very doubtful -position—it is not because voters wish to understand the historical -allusions of candidates, but because the general stir and life of public -activity tends to commove the whole system. Political freedom does not -produce men of genius, but its atmosphere is more favourable than any -other to their making the best of their genius in the service of -mankind.</p> - -<p>Voltaire, in this as in too much besides, was content with a keen and -rapid glance at the surface. The reader may remember his story of -meeting a boatman one day on the Thames, who seeing that he was a -Frenchman, with a too characteristic kind of courtesy, took the -opportunity of bawling out, with the added emphasis of a round oath, -that he would rather be a boatman on the Thames than an archbishop in -France. The next day Voltaire saw his man in prison with irons on and -praying an alms from the passers-by, and so asked him whether he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">79</a></span>still -thought as scurvily of an archbishop in France. ‘Ah, sir,’ cried the -man, ‘what an abominable government! I have been carried off by force to -go and serve in one of the king’s ships in Norway. They take me from my -wife and my children, and lay me up in prison with irons on my legs -until the time for going on board, for fear I should run away.’ A -countryman of Voltaire’s confessed that he felt a splenetic joy that a -people who were constantly taunting the French with their servitude, -were in sooth just as much slaves themselves; but for my own part, says -Voltaire, I felt a humaner sentiment, I was afflicted at there being no -liberty on the earth.<a name="FNanchor_52" id="FNanchor_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_52" class="fnanchor">52</a></p> - -<p>This is well enough as a comment on the abomination of impressment; yet -we feel that there is behind it, and not here only but generally in -Voltaire, a sort of confusion between two very distinct conceptions, -that both in his day and ever since have been equally designated by the -common name of civil liberty. The first of these ideas is a mere -privative, undoubtedly of sovereign importance, but still a privative, -and implies absence, more or less complete, of arbitrary control from -without, of interference with individual action by authority, of any -pretension on the part of any organised body to hinder any member of the -society from doing or abstaining from doing what may seem right in his -own eyes, provided he pays a corresponding respect to the freedom of his -fellows. Freedom in this sense Voltaire fully understood, and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">80</a></span>valued as -profoundly as it deserves to be valued. Political liberty, however, has -not only a meaning of abstention, but a meaning of participation. If in -one sense it is a sheer negative, and a doctrine of rights, in another -sense it is thoroughly positive, and a gospel of duties. The liberty -which has really made England what it so delighted and stimulated and -inflamed Voltaire to find her, has been quite as much of the second kind -as of the first; that liberty which consists in a national habit of -independent and watchful interest in the transaction of the national -affairs by the persons most concerned in them; in a general -consciousness of the duty of having some opinion on the business of the -state; in a recognition on the part of the government that the balance -of this opinion is necessary as a sanction to any policy, to which the -effective force of the state is applied. It is true that this public -participation in public concerns has sometimes been very dark and blind, -as it has often been in the highest degree enlightened, but for good or -for evil it has been the root of the matter.</p> - -<p>The great Frenchmen, who have been most characteristically French, while -valuing all and envying many of the best products of our liberty, may be -said generally to have failed entirely to detect that the salt of -English character, in days when it had more robustness than we can see -just now, sprung from the double circumstance of every man being at -liberty to have, and being inclined to take the trouble to have, an -opinion about the method and doings of his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">81</a></span> government; and of so many -men being called upon in high capacity or low, in an important function -or an obscure one, to take an independent and free share in controlling -or initiating the doings of their government. Take Montesquieu, for -example. He came to England just when Voltaire quitted it, and studied -carefully those political facts which his countryman had so neglected. -Yet he saw no deeper into the spirit of our institutions than to fix on -the constitutional balance of powers as the great secret of our freedom -and order. And Montesquieu, in spite of this, was wiser than most of his -contemporaries, for he at least saw the worth of constitutional freedom, -if he failed to see other ingredients of still more importance. French -statesmen and publicists have been systematically blind to the great -truth that there is no royal road to national well-being, and that -nations will deliberately put away happiness from themselves, unless -such happiness comes to them in a given way. The Physiocrats, who were -with all their shortcomings the most nearly scientific social thinkers -France possessed, could rise to no higher conception of a national life -than the supreme authority of a wise and benevolent monarch, giving good -gifts to his subjects. Turgot, with all the breadth and sagacity of his -genius, when five-and-forty years after our present date he came into -power, austerely clung to the same disastrous idea of passing reasoned -laws, in the shape of the beneficial edicts of an absolute power. -Voltaire, in the same way, never rose above the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">82</a></span> simple political -conception of an eastern tale, a good-tempered despot with a sage -vizier. In politics, then, he failed to carry away from England the very -essence and principle of our institutions, with which it was so much -more important that his countrymen should be familiarised than that they -should follow inoculation.</p> - -<p>It may at first sight be astonishing to find that, while Voltaire was -impressed only in a vague and general way with the free variety of -theological opinion which Protestantism had secured for England, the -sect which made a sort of mark on his mind was that which conceived the -idea that Christianity has after all something to do with the type and -example of Christ. We know how laughable and monstrous the Quaker scheme -has appeared to people who have been steeped from their youth upwards in -elaborate systems of abstruse metaphysical dogma, mystic ceremonies, -hierarchic ordering, and profuse condemnation of rival creeds. -Voltaire’s imagination was struck by a sect who professed to regard the -religion of Christ as a simple and austere discipline of life, who -repudiated ritual, and held war for the worst of anti-christian -practices. The forms and doctrines of the established church of the -country he would be likely to take merely for so much of the common form -of the national institutions. He would simply regard it as the English -way of narrowing the mind and consolidating the social order. Gibbon’s -famous sentence was not yet written, which described all religions as -equally true in the eyes of the people,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">83</a></span> equally false in the eyes of -the philosopher, and equally useful in the eyes of the magistrate. But -the idea was the idea of the century, and Voltaire would justly look -upon the Anglican profession as a temporarily useful and statesmanlike -settlement. He praised its clergy for the superior regularity of their -manners. ‘That indefinable being, who is neither ecclesiastic nor -secular, in a word, who is called <i>abbé</i>, is an unknown species in -England; the clergy here are all prigs, and nearly all pedants. When -they learn that in France young men notorious for their debauchery, and -raised to preferment by the intrigues of women, pursue their amours -publicly, amuse themselves by the composition of gallant verses, give -everyday prolonged and luxurious suppers, and rise from them to implore -the enlightenment of the holy spirit, boldly calling themselves the -successors of the apostles—why, then our English thank God that they -are Protestants.’<a name="FNanchor_53" id="FNanchor_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53" class="fnanchor">53</a></p> - -<p>If, however, in face of a young and lively French graduate, bawling -theology in the schools in the morning and in the evening singing tender -songs with the ladies, an Anglican divine is a very Cato, this Cato is a -downright gallant before a Scotch presbyterian, who assumes a grave step -and a sour mien, preaches from the nose, and gives the name of harlot of -Babylon to all churches in which some of the ecclesiastics are so -fortunate as to receive an income of fifty thousand livres a year. -However, each man takes whatever road to heaven he pleases. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">84</a></span>If there -were one religion in England, they would have to fear its despotism; if -there were only two, they would cut one another’s throats; but there are -thirty; so they live peaceably and happily together.<a name="FNanchor_54" id="FNanchor_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_54" class="fnanchor">54</a></p> - -<p>In the Quakers Voltaire saw something quite different from the purely -political pretensions and internecine quarrels of doctrine of the -ordinary worldly sects. It is impossible to say how much of the -kindliness with which he speaks of them is due to real admiration of -their simple, dignified, and pacific life, and how much to a mischievous -desire to make their praise a handle for the dispraise of overweening -competitors. On the whole there is a sincerity and heartiness of -interest in his long account of this sect, which persuades one that he -was moved by a genuine sympathy with a religion that could enjoin the -humane and peaceful and spiritual precepts of Christ, while putting away -baptism, ceremonial communion, and hierophantic orders. The nobility of -the social theories of the Society of Friends would naturally stir -Voltaire even more deeply than their abstention from practices that were -in his eyes degrading superstitions. He felt that the repugnance to -lower the majesty of their deity, by taking his name upon their lips as -solemn ratification of their words, had the effect of elevating the -dignity of man, by making his bare word fully credible without this -solemn ratification. Their refusal to comply with the deferential usages -of social intercourse, though nominally based <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">85</a></span>on the sinfulness of -signs of homage to any mere mortal, insinuated a consciousness of -equality and self-respect in that mere mortal who was careful to make no -bows and to keep his hat on in every presence. Above all, Voltaire, who -was nowhere more veritably modern or better entitled to our veneration -than by reason of his steadfast hatred of war, revered a sect so far -removed from the brutality of the military régime as to hold peace for a -first principle of the Christian faith and religious practice. The -reason why we do not go to war, his Quaker says, is not that we are -afraid of death, but because we are not wolves, nor tigers, nor dogs, -but Christian men. ‘Our God, who has bidden us love our enemies and -suffer evil without complaint, assuredly has no mind that we should -cross the sea to go and cut the throats of our brothers, because -murderers in red clothes and hats two feet high enlist citizens, making -a noise with two little sticks on an ass’s skin tightly stretched. And -when, after victories won, all London blazes with illuminations, the sky -is aflame with rockets, and the air resounds with the din of bells, -organs, cannon, we mourn in silence over the slaughter that causes all -the public joy.’<a name="FNanchor_55" id="FNanchor_55"></a><a href="#Footnote_55" class="fnanchor">55</a></p> - -<p>Voltaire, let us add, was no dilettante traveller constructing views and -deducing theories of national life out of his own uninstructed -consciousness. No German could have worked more diligently at the facts, -and we may say here, once for all, that if it is <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">86</a></span>often necessary to -condemn him for superficiality, this lack of depth seldom at any time -proceeds from want of painstaking. His unrivalled brilliance of -expression blinds us to the extreme and conscientious industry that -provided matter. The most illustrious exile that our free land has -received from France in our own times, and assuredly far more of a giant -in the order of imagination than Voltaire, never had intellectual -curiosity enough to learn the language of the country that had given him -twenty years of shelter. Voltaire, in the few months of his exile here -acquired such an astonishing mastery over English as to be able to read -and relish an esoteric book like Hudibras, and to compass the enormously -difficult feat of rendering portions of it into good French verse.<a name="FNanchor_56" id="FNanchor_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_56" class="fnanchor">56</a> He -composed an essay on epic poetry in the English tongue, and he wrote one -act of Brutus in English.</p> - -<p>He read Shakespeare, and made an elaborate study of his method. He -declares that Milton does as much honour to England as the great Newton, -and he took especial pains not only to master and appreciate the secret -of Milton’s poetic power, but even to ascertain the minutest -circumstances of his life.<a name="FNanchor_57" id="FNanchor_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_57" class="fnanchor">57</a> He studied Dryden, ‘an author who would -have a glory without blemish, if he had only written the tenth part of -his works.’<a name="FNanchor_58" id="FNanchor_58"></a><a href="#Footnote_58" class="fnanchor">58</a> He found Addison the first <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">87</a></span>Englishman who had written a -reasonable tragedy, and Addison’s character of Cato one of the finest -creations of any stage.<a name="FNanchor_59" id="FNanchor_59"></a><a href="#Footnote_59" class="fnanchor">59</a> Wycherley, Vanbrugh, and Congreve he -esteemed more highly than most of their countrymen do now. An act of a -play of Lillo’s was the base of the fourth act of Mahomet. Rochester, -Waller, Prior, and Pope, he read carefully and admired as heartily as -they deserved. Long after he had left England behind, he places Pope and -Addison on a level for variety of genius with Machiavel and Leibnitz and -Fontenelle;<a name="FNanchor_60" id="FNanchor_60"></a><a href="#Footnote_60" class="fnanchor">60</a> and Pope he evidently for a long while kept habitually -by his elbow. Swift he placed before Rabelais, calling him Rabelais in -his senses, and, as usual, giving good reasons for his preference; for -Swift, he says justly, has not the gaiety of Rabelais, but he has all -the finesse, the sense, the variety, the fine taste, in which the priest -of Meudon was wanting.<a name="FNanchor_61" id="FNanchor_61"></a><a href="#Footnote_61" class="fnanchor">61</a> In philosophy, besides Locke, there is -evidence that he read something of Hobbes, and something of Berkeley, -and something of Cudworth.<a name="FNanchor_62" id="FNanchor_62"></a><a href="#Footnote_62" class="fnanchor">62</a> Always, however, ‘harassed, wearied, -ashamed of having sought so many truths and found so many chimeras, I -returned to Locke; like a prodigal son returning to his father, I threw -myself into the arms of that modest man, who never pretends to know what -he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">88</a></span>does not know, who in truth has no enormous possessions, but whose -substance is well assured.’<a name="FNanchor_63" id="FNanchor_63"></a><a href="#Footnote_63" class="fnanchor">63</a></p> - -<p>Nor did Voltaire limit himself to the study of science, philosophy, and -poetry. He plunged into the field of theology, and mastered that famous -deistical controversy, of which the seed had been sown in the first half -of the seventeenth century by Lord Herbert of Cherbury, the -correspondent of Descartes and the earliest of the English metaphysical -thinkers.<a name="FNanchor_64" id="FNanchor_64"></a><a href="#Footnote_64" class="fnanchor">64</a> Lord Herbert’s object was to disengage from revelation -both our conceptions of the one supreme power, and the sanctions of good -and bad conduct. Toland, whom we know also that Voltaire read, aimed at -disengaging Christianity from mystery, and discrediting the canon of the -New Testament. In 1724 Collins published his Discourse on the Grounds -and Reasons of the Christian Religion, of which we are told that few -books ever made a greater noise than this did at its first publication. -The press teemed with vindications, replies, and rejoinders to Collins’s -arguments during the whole of Voltaire’s residence in England.<a name="FNanchor_65" id="FNanchor_65"></a><a href="#Footnote_65" class="fnanchor">65</a> His -position was one which no modern freethinker would dream of making a -central point of attack, and which hardly any modern apologist would -take the pains to reply to. He maintained that Jesus Christ and the -apostles trusted to the prophecies of the Old Testament for their -credentials, and then he showed, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">89</a></span>or tried to show, in various ways, -that these prophecies would not bear the weight which was thus laid upon -them. We may be sure that Voltaire’s alert curiosity would interest him -profoundly in the lively polemical ferment which this notable contention -of Collins’s stirred up.</p> - -<p>Woolston’s discourses, written to prove that the miracles of the New -Testament are as mythical and allegorical as the prophecies of the old, -appeared at the same time, and had an enormous sale. Voltaire was much -struck by this writer’s coarse and hardy way of dealing with the -miraculous legends, and the article on Miracles in the Philosophical -Dictionary shows how carefully he had read Woolston’s book.<a name="FNanchor_66" id="FNanchor_66"></a><a href="#Footnote_66" class="fnanchor">66</a> We find -references to Shaftesbury and Chubb in Voltaire’s letters and elsewhere, -though they are not the references of an admirer,<a name="FNanchor_67" id="FNanchor_67"></a><a href="#Footnote_67" class="fnanchor">67</a> and Bolingbroke -was one of the most influential and intimate of his friends. It is not -too much to say that Bolingbroke was the direct progenitor of Voltaire’s -opinions in religion, and that nearly every one of the positive articles -in Voltaire’s rather moderately sized creed was held and inculcated by -that brilliant and disordered genius. He did not always accept -Bolingbroke’s optimism, but even as late in the century as 1767 Voltaire -thought it worth while to borrow his name for a volume of compendious -attack on the popular religion.<a name="FNanchor_68" id="FNanchor_68"></a><a href="#Footnote_68" class="fnanchor">68</a> <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">90</a></span>Bolingbroke’s tone was peculiarly -light and peculiarly well-bred. His infidelity was strictly infidelity -for the upper classes;<a name="FNanchor_69" id="FNanchor_69"></a><a href="#Footnote_69" class="fnanchor">69</a> ingenious, full of literature, and elegantly -supercilious. He made no pretence to theological criticism in any sense -that can be gravely admitted, but looked at the claims of revelation -with the eye of a polished man of the world, and met its arguments with -those general considerations of airy probability which go so far with -men who insist on having plausible opinions on all subjects, while they -will not take pains to work to the bottom of any.</p> - -<p>Villemain’s observation that there is not one of Voltaire’s writings -that does not bear the mark of his sojourn in England, is specially true -of what he wrote against theology. It was the English onslaught which -sowed in him the seed of the idea, and eventually supplied him with the -argumentative instruments, of a systematic and reasoned attack upon that -mass of doctrinal superstition and social abuse, which it had hitherto -been the fashion for even the strongest spirits in his own country to do -no more than touch with a cool sneer or a flippant insinuation, directed -to the private ear of a sympathiser. Who, born within the last forty -years, cried Burke, has read one word of Collins, and Toland, and Chubb, -and Morgan, and that whole race who called themselves Freethinkers? Who -now reads Bolingbroke? Who ever read him through?<a name="FNanchor_70" id="FNanchor_70"></a><a href="#Footnote_70" class="fnanchor">70</a> This was very -well, but hundreds of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">91</a></span>thousands of persons born within those last forty -years had read Voltaire, and Voltaire had drawn from the armoury of -these dead and unread Freethinkers the weapons which he made sharp with -the mockery of his own spirit. He stood on the platform which they had -constructed, to stretch forth his hand against the shrine and the image -before which so many credulous generations had bowed down. It was in -this most transformed shape among others that at length, late and -changed, but directly of descent, the free and protesting genius of the -Reformation made its decisive entry into France.</p> - -<p>It is easy to cite proofs of the repudiation by Protestant bodies of the -Protestant principle, to multiply instances of the narrow rigidity of -their dogma, and the intolerance of their discipline. This method -supplies an excellent answer as against Protestants who tax Catholics -with the crime of persecution, or the crime of opposing intellectual -independence. It cannot, however, touch the fact that Protestantism was -indirectly the means of creating and dispersing an atmosphere of -rationalism, in which there speedily sprang up philosophical, -theological, and political influences, all of them entirely antagonistic -to the old order of thought and institution. The whole intellectual -temperature underwent a permanent change, that was silently mortal to -the most flourishing tenets of all sorts. It is futile to ask for a -precise logical chain of relations between the beginning of a movement -and its end; and there is no more direct and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">92</a></span> logical connection between -the right of private judgment and an experiential doctrine of -psychology, than there is between experiential psychology and deism. -Nobody now thinks that the effect is homogeneous with its cause, or that -there is any objective resemblance between a blade of wheat and the -moisture and warmth which fill and expand it. All we can see is that the -proclamation of the rights of free judgment would tend to substitute -reason for authority, and evidence for tradition, as the arbiters of -opinion; and that the political expression of this change in the civil -wars of the middle of the seventeenth century would naturally deepen the -influence of the new principle, and produce the Lockian rationalism of -the end of that century, which almost instantaneously extended from the -region of metaphysics into the region of theology.</p> - -<p>The historian of every kind of opinion, and the student of the great -chiefs of intellectual movements, habitually do violence to actual -circumstances, by imparting too systematic a connection to the various -parts of belief, and by assuming an unreal degree of conscious logical -continuity among the notions of individual thinkers. Critics fill in the -frame with a completeness and exactitude that had no counterpart in the -man’s own judgments, and they identify him with a multitude of -deductions from his premisses, which may be fairly drawn, but which -never at all entered into his mind, and formed no part of his character. -The philosophy of the majority of men<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">93</a></span> is nothing more shaped and -incorporate than a little group of potential and partially incoherent -tendencies. To stiffen these into a system of definite formulas is the -most deceptive, as it is the most common, of critical processes. A few -persons, with an exceptional turn for philosophy, consciously embody -their metaphysical principles with a certain detail in all the rest of -their thinking. With most people, however, even people of superior -capacity, the relation between their ground-system, such as a critic -might supply them with, and their manifestations of intellectual -activity, is of an extremely indirect and general kind.</p> - -<p>Hence the untrustworthiness of those critical schemata, so attractive -for their compact order, which first make Voltaire a Lockian -sensationalist, and then trace his deism to his sensationalism. We have -already seen that he was a deist before he came to England, just as Lord -Herbert of Cherbury was a deist, who wrote before Locke was born. It was -not the metaphysical revolution of Locke which led to deism, but the -sort of way in which he thought about metaphysics, a way which was -immediately applied to theology by other people, whether assailants or -defenders of the current opinions. Locke’s was ‘common-sense thinking,’ -and the fashion spread. The air was thick with common-sense objections -to Christianity, as it was with common-sense ideas as to the way in -which we come to have ideas. There was no temperament to which such an -atmosphere could be so congenial as Voltaire’s, of whom we cannot too<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">94</a></span> -often repeat, considering the vulgar reputation he has for violence and -excess, that he was in thought the very genius of good sense, whether or -no we fully admit M. Cousin’s qualification of it as superficial good -sense. It has been said that he always speaks of Descartes, Leibnitz, -and Spinoza, like a man to whom nature has refused the metaphysical -sense.<a name="FNanchor_71" id="FNanchor_71"></a><a href="#Footnote_71" class="fnanchor">71</a> At any rate he could never agree with them, and he never -tried to find truth by the roads which they had made. It is true, -however, that he shows no sign of special fitness for metaphysics, any -more than he did for physical science. The metaphysics of Locke lay -undeveloped in his mind, just as the theory of evolution lies in so many -minds at the present time. There is a faint informal reference of other -theories to this central and half-seen standard. When metaphysical -subjects came before him, he felt that he had this for a sheet-anchor, -and he did not greatly care to keep proving it again and again by -continued criticism or examination. The upshot of his acquaintance with -Locke was a systematic adherence to common-sense modes of thinking; and -he always betrayed the faults and shortcomings to which such modes -inevitably lead, when they are brought, to the exclusion of -complementary ideas, to the practical subjects that comprehend more than -prudence, self-interest, and sobriety. The subject that does beyond any -other comprehend <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">95</a></span>more than these elements is religion, and the -substantial vices of Voltaire’s objections to religion first arose from -his familiarity with the English form of deism, and his instinctive -feeling for its method.</p> - -<p>The deism of Leibnitz was a positive belief, and made the existence of a -supreme power an actual and living object of conviction. The mark of -this belief has remained on German speculation throughout its course, -down to our own day. English deism, on the contrary, was only a -particular way of repudiating Christianity. There was as little of God -in it as could well be. Its theory was that God had given each man the -light of reason in his own breast; that by this reason every scheme of -belief must be tried, and accepted or rejected; and that the Christian -scheme being so tried was in various ways found wanting. The formula of -some book of the eighteenth century, that God created nature and nature -created the world, must be allowed to have reduced theistic conception -to something like the shadow of smoke. The English eighteenth-century -formula was, theistically, nearly as void. The Being who set the reason -of each individual on a kind of judicial bench within the forum of his -own conscience, and left him and it together to settle belief and -conduct between them, was a tolerably remote and unreal sort of -personage. His spiritual force, according to such a doctrine, became -very much as if it had no existence.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">96</a></span></p> - -<p>It was not to be expected that a sovereign dwelling in such amazingly -remote lands as this would continue long with undisputed authority, when -all the negative forces of the time had reached their full momentum. In -England the reaction against this strange absentee government of the -universe took the form which might have been anticipated from the deep -hold that Protestantism had won, and the spirituality which had been -engendered by Protestant reference to the relations between the -individual conscience and the mystic operations of faith. Deism became a -reality with a God in it in the great Evangelical revival, terrible and -inevitable, which has so deeply coloured religious feeling and warped -intellectual growth in England ever since. In France, thought took a -very different and much simpler turn. Or perhaps it would be more -correct to say that it took no turn at all, but carried the godless -deism of the English school to its fair conclusion, and dismissed a -deity who only reigned and did not govern. The whole movement had a -single origin. There is not one of the arguments of the French -philosophers in the eighteenth century, says a very competent authority, -which cannot be found in the English school of the beginning of the -century.<a name="FNanchor_72" id="FNanchor_72"></a><a href="#Footnote_72" class="fnanchor">72</a> Voltaire, who carried the English way of thinking about the -supernatural power into <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">97</a></span></p> - -<p>France, lived to see a band of trenchant and energetic disciples develop -principles which he had planted, into a system of dogmatic atheism. The -time came when he was spoken of contemptuously as retrograde and -superstitious: ‘<i>Voltaire est bigot, il est déiste</i>.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">98</a></span>’</p> - -<h2>CHAPTER III.</h2> - -<h5>LITERATURE.</h5> - -<p>On the whole, the critic’s task is perhaps less to classify a type of -character as good or bad, as worthy of so much praise or so much -censure, than to mark the material out of which a man has his life to -make, and the kind of use and form to which he puts his material. To -begin with, the bald division of men into sheep and goats is in one -sense so easy as not to be worth performing, and in another sense it is -so hard as only to be possible for some being with supernatural insight. -And even were the qualities employed in the task of a rarer kind than -they are, the utility of the performance is always extremely slight, -compared with that other kind of criticism which dwells less on the -final balance of good or evil, than on the first innate conditions of -temperament, the fixed limitations of opportunity, and the complex -interplay of the two with that character, which is first their creature -and then their master. It is less the concern of criticism to pronounce -its man absolutely rich or absolutely poor, than to count up his talents -and the usury of his own which he added to them. Assuredly there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">99</a></span> ought -to be little condonation of the foibles, and none at all of the moral -obliquities, of the dead, because this would mean the demoralisation of -the living. But it is seriously to overrate the power of bald words and -written opinion, to suppose that a critic’s censure of conduct which a -thousand other agents, from the child’s hornbook up to the obvious and -pressing dictates of social convenience, are daily and hourly -prescribing, can be other than a work of supererogation, which fixes the -mind on platitudes, instead of leading it on in search of special and -distinctive traits.</p> - -<p>It would be easy to pour overflowing vials of condemnation on many sides -of Voltaire’s character and career. No man possessed of so much good -sense ever fell so constantly into the kinds of error against which good -sense particularly warns men. There is no more wearisome or pitiful leaf -in the biographies of the great, than the tale of Voltaire’s quarrels -with ignoble creatures; with a wrecked soul, like J. B. Rousseau (whom -the reader will not confound with Jean Jacques); with a thievish -bookseller, like Jore; with a calumnious journalist, like Desfontaines; -with a rapacious knave like Hirschel; and all the other tormentors in -the Voltairean history, whose names recall vulgar, dishonest, and -indignant pertinacity on the one side, and wasteful, undignified fury on -the other. That lesson in the art of life which concerns a man’s -dealings with those who have shown patent moral inferiority, was never -mastered by Voltaire.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">100</a></span> Instead of the silence, composure, and austere -oblivion, which it is of the essence of strength to oppose to unworthy -natures, he habitually confronted the dusty creeping things that beset -his march, as if they stood valiant and erect; and the more unworthy -they were, the more vehement and strenuous and shrill was his contention -with them. The ignominy of such strife is clear. One thing only may -perhaps be said. His intense susceptibility to vulgar calumny flowed -from the same quality in his nature which made unbearable to him the -presence of superstition and injustice, those mightier calumnies on -humanity. The irritated protests against the small foes of his person -were as the dregs of potent wine, and were the lower part of that -passionate sensibility which made him the assailant of the giant -oppressors of the human mind. This reflection does not make any less -tedious to us the damnable iteration of petty quarrel and fretting -complaint which fills such a space in his correspondence and in his -biographies, nor does it lessen our regret at the havoc which this fatal -defect of his qualities made with his contentedness. We think of his -consolation to a person as susceptible as himself: ‘There have always -been Frérons in literature; but they say there must be caterpillars for -nightingales to eat, that they may sing the better:’ and we wish that -our nightingale had devoured its portion with something less of tumult. -But it may do something to prevent us from giving a prominence, that is -both unfair and extremely misleading, to mere<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">101</a></span> shadow, as if that had -been the whole substance. Alas, why after all should men, from Moses -downwards, be so cheerfully ready to contemplate the hinder parts of -their divinities?</p> - -<p>The period of twenty years between Voltaire’s departure from England and -his departure for Berlin, although often pronounced the happiest time of -his life, is very thickly set with these humiliating incidents. To us, -however, they are dead, because though vivid enough to Voltaire—and it -is strange how constantly it happens that the minor circumstance of life -is more real and ever-present to a man than his essential and abiding -work in it—they were but transitory and accidental. Just as it does -little good to the understanding to spend much time over tenth-rate -literature, so it is little edifying to the character to rake among the -private obscurities of even first-rate men, and it is surely a good rule -to keep ourselves as much as we can in contact with what is great.</p> - -<p>The chief personal fact of this time was the connection which Voltaire -formed with the Marquise du Châtelet, and which lasted from 1733 to -1749. She was to him that important and peculiar influence which, in one -shape or another, some woman seems to have been to nearly every foremost -man. In Voltaire’s case this influence was not the rich and tender -inspiration with which women have so many a time sweetened the lives and -glorified the thought of illustrious workers, nor was he bound to her -by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">102</a></span> those bonds of passion which have often the effect of exalting the -strength and widening the range of the whole of the nature that is -susceptive of passion. Their inner relations hardly depended on anything -more extraordinary or more delicate than the sentiment of a masculine -friendship. Voltaire found in the divine Emily a strong and active head, -a keen and generous admiration for his own genius, and an eagerness to -surround him with the external conditions most favourable to that steady -industry which was always a thing so near his own heart. They are two -great men, one of whom wears petticoats, said Voltaire of her and of -Frederick. It is impossible to tell what share vanity had in the -beginning of a connection, which probably owed its long continuance more -to use and habit than to any deep-rooted sentiment. Vanity was one of -the most strongly marked of Voltaire’s traits, and to this side of him -relations with a woman of quality who adored his genius were no doubt -extremely gratifying. Yet one ought to do him the justice to say that -his vanity was only skin-deep. It had nothing in common with the greedy -egotism which reduces the whole broad universe to a mere microcosm of -pygmy self. The vanity which discloses a real flaw in character is a -loud and tyrannical claim for acknowledgment of literary supremacy, and -with it the mean vices of envy, jealousy, and detraction are usually in -company. Voltaire’s vanity was something very different from this -truculent kind of self-assertion. It had a source<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">103</a></span> in his intensely -sympathetic quality, and was a gay and eager asking of assurance from -others that his work gave them pleasure. Let us be very careful to -remember that it never stood in the way of self-knowledge,—the great -test of the difference between the vanity that is harmless, and the -vanity that is fatuous and destructive.</p> - -<p>It has been rather the fashion to laugh at the Marquise du Châtelet, for -no better reasons perhaps than that she, being a woman, studied Newton, -and had relations called tender with a man so little associated in -common opinion with tenderness as Voltaire. The first reason is -disgraceful, and the second is perhaps childish. Everything goes to show -that Madame du Châtelet possessed a hardy originality of character, of -which society is so little likely to have an excess that we can hardly -ever be thankful enough for it. There is probably nothing which would -lead to so rapid and marked an improvement in the world, as a large -increase of the number of women in it with the will and the capacity to -master Newton as thoroughly as she did. And her long and sedulous -affection for a man of genius of Voltaire’s exceptional quality, -entitles her to the not too common praise of recognising and revering -intellectual greatness as it deserves. Her friendship for him was not -the semi-servile and feebly intelligent solicitude which superior men -have too often the wretched weakness to seek in their female companions, -but an imperial sympathy. She was unamiable, it is true, and possessed -neither the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">104</a></span> delicacy which a more fastidious age requires in a woman, -nor the sense of honour which we now demand in a man. These defects, -however, were not genuinely personal, but lay in the manners of the -time. It was not so with all her faults. To the weak and dependent she -was overbearing, harsh, mean, and even cruel. A fatuous caprice would -often destroy the domestic peace and pleasure of a week. But nothing was -suffered to impede the labour of a day. The industry of the house was -incessant.</p> - -<p>It is said, and it was said first by one who lived with them for some -time, and has left a graphic account of the interior of Cirey, that she -made Voltaire’s life a little hard to him.<a name="FNanchor_73" id="FNanchor_73"></a><a href="#Footnote_73" class="fnanchor">73</a> There were many -occasional storms and short sullen fits even in these high regions of -science and the finer tastes. Yet such stormful scenes, with great -actors as with small, are perhaps more painful in description than they -were in reality; and Voltaire was less discomposed by the lively -impetuosity of a companion like Madame du Châtelet, than he would have -been by the orderly calm of a more precise and perfectly well-regulated -person. A man follows the conditions of his temperament, and Voltaire’s -unresting animation and fire might make him feel a certain joy of life -and freedom in the occasional contentiousness of a slightly shrewish -temper. We cannot think of him as ever <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">105</a></span>shrinking, ever craving for -repose, as some men do as for a very necessity of existence. The health -of your friend, wrote Madame du Châtelet to D’Argental in 1739, is in so -deplorable a state that the only hope I have left of restoring it is in -the turmoil of a journey<a name="FNanchor_74" id="FNanchor_74"></a><a href="#Footnote_74" class="fnanchor">74</a>. A tolerably frequent agitation was a -condition of even such health as he had, to one of Voltaire’s nervous -and feverish habit.</p> - -<p>Let it be said that his restlessness never took a form which involved a -sacrifice of the happiness of other people. It was never tyrannical and -exigent. There are many, too many, instances of his angry impatience -with persons against whom he thought he had cause of offence. There is -not a single instance in which any shadow of implacableness lurked for -an enemy who had repented or fallen into misfortune; and if his -resentment was constantly aflame against the ignoble, it instantly -expired and changed into warm-hearted pity, when the ignoble became -either penitent or miserable. There are many tales of the readiness with -which his anger was appeased. Any one will suffice as a type. On some -occasion when Voltaire was harassed by a storm of libels, and happened -to be on good terms with the police, a distributor of the libels was -arrested. The father, an old man of eighty, hastened to Voltaire to pray -for pardon. All Voltaire’s fury instantly vanished at the first appeal; -he wept with the old man, embraced him, consoled him, and straightway -ran to procure <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">106</a></span>the liberation of the offender<a name="FNanchor_75" id="FNanchor_75"></a><a href="#Footnote_75" class="fnanchor">75</a>. An eye-witness -related to Grimm how he happened to be present at Ferney when Voltaire -received Rousseau’s Lettres de la Montagne, and read the apostrophe -relating to himself. His face seemed to take fire, his eyes sparkled -with fury, his whole frame trembled, and he cried in terrible -tones—‘The miscreant! the monster! I must have him cudgelled—yes, I -will have him cudgelled in his mountains at the knees of his nurse.’ -‘Pray, calm yourself,’ said the bystander, ‘for I know that Rousseau -means to pay you a visit, and will very shortly be at Ferney.’ ‘Ah, only -let him come,’ replied Voltaire. ‘But how will you receive him?’ -‘Receive him ... I will give him supper, put him in my own bed, and say, -There is a good supper; this is the best bed in the house; do me the -pleasure to accept one and the other, and to make yourself happy -here<a name="FNanchor_76" id="FNanchor_76"></a><a href="#Footnote_76" class="fnanchor">76</a>.’ One does not understand the terrible man, without remembering -always how much of the hot generosity of the child he kept in his nature -to the last. When the very Jesuits were suppressed with circumstances of -extreme harshness, he pitied even them, and took one of their number -permanently into his household<a name="FNanchor_77" id="FNanchor_77"></a><a href="#Footnote_77" class="fnanchor">77</a>.</p> - -<p>The most important part of a man’s private conduct after that which -concerns his relations with <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">107</a></span>women and his family, is generally that -which concerns his way of dealing with money, because money in its -acquisition and its dispersion is the outward and visible sign of the -absence or of the presence of so many inward and spiritual graces. As -has often been said, it is the measure of some of the most important of -a man’s virtues, his honesty, his industry, his generosity, his -self-denial, and most of the other elements in keeping the difficult -balance between his care for himself and his care for other people. -Voltaire perceived very early in life that to be needy was to be -dependent; that the rich and poor are as hammer and anvil; that the -chronicles of genius demonstrate that it is not by genius that men -either make a fortune or live happy lives. He made up his mind from the -beginning that the author of the French epic would not share the poverty -and straitened lives of Tasso and Milton, and that he for his part would -at any rate be hammer and not anvil.<a name="FNanchor_78" id="FNanchor_78"></a><a href="#Footnote_78" class="fnanchor">78</a> I was so wearied, he wrote in -1752, of the humiliations that dishonour letters, that to stay my -disgust I resolved to make what scoundrels call a great fortune.<a name="FNanchor_79" id="FNanchor_79"></a><a href="#Footnote_79" class="fnanchor">79</a> He -used to give his books away to the printers. He had a small fortune from -his father; he is said to have made two thousand pounds by the English -subscriptions to the Henriade; and he did not hide his talent in the -ground, but resorted skilfully to all sorts of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">108</a></span>speculations in stocks, -army contracts, and other authorised means of converting one livre into -two while you sleep. He lent large sums of money, presumably at handsome -interest, to the Duke of Richelieu and others, and though the interest -may have been handsome, the trouble of procuring it was often -desperate.<a name="FNanchor_80" id="FNanchor_80"></a><a href="#Footnote_80" class="fnanchor">80</a> Yet after much experience Voltaire came to the conclusion -that though he had sometimes lost money by bankers, by the devout, by -the people of the Old Testament, who would have had many scruples about -a larded capon, who would rather die than not be idle on the sabbath, -and not be thieving on the Sunday, yet he had lost nothing by the great -except his time.<a name="FNanchor_81" id="FNanchor_81"></a><a href="#Footnote_81" class="fnanchor">81</a></p> - -<p>It is easy to point a sneer at a high priest of humanity jobbing in the -funds. Only let us remember that Voltaire never made any pretence of -being a high priest of humanity; that his transactions were -substantially very like those of any banker or merchant of to-day; and -that for a man who was preaching new opinions it was extremely prudent -to place himself out of the necessity of pleasing booksellers or the pit -of the theatre on the one hand, and on the other to supply himself with -ready means of frequent flight from the ceaseless persecutions of -authority. Envious scribes in his lifetime taunted him with avarice, and -the evil association still clings to his memory now that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">109</a></span>he is dead. -One can only say that good and high-minded men, who never shrank from -withstanding him when in fault, men like Condorcet for example, heard -such talk with disdain, and set it down to the disgraceful readiness of -men to credit anything that relieves them from having to admire<a name="FNanchor_82" id="FNanchor_82"></a><a href="#Footnote_82" class="fnanchor">82</a>. The -people who dislike prudence in matters of money in those whose -distinction is intellectual or spiritual, resemble a sentimental lover -who should lose his illusions at sight of his mistress eating a hearty -meal. Is their lot, then, cast in the ethereal fluid of the interstellar -spaces?</p> - -<p>At all events Voltaire had two important gifts which do not commonly -belong to the avaricious; he was a generous helper alike of those who -had, and those who had not, a claim upon him, and he knew how to bear -serious losses with unbroken composure. Michel, the receiver-general, -became bankrupt, and Voltaire lost a considerable sum of money in -consequence. His fluency of invective and complaint, which was simply -boundless when any obscure scribbler earned a guinea by a calumny upon -him, went no farther on the occasion of this very substantial injury -than a single splenetic phrase, and a harmless quatrain:</p> - -<div class="poem2"> -<div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Michel au nom de l’Eternel,</span> -<span class="i0">Mit jadis le diable en déroute;</span> -<span class="i0">Mais, après cette banqueroute,</span> -<span class="i0">Que le diable emporte Michel!</span> -</div></div> - -<p>It has been fairly asked whether a genuine miser <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">110</a></span>would content himself -with a stanza upon the man who had robbed him.<a name="FNanchor_83" id="FNanchor_83"></a><a href="#Footnote_83" class="fnanchor">83</a> His correspondence -with the Duchess of Saxe-Gotha shows him declining to accept the -thousand louis, which she had sent as a fee for the composition of the -Annales de l’Empire.</p> - -<p>Much has been made of the bargaining which he carried on with Frederick, -as to the terms on which he would consent to go to Berlin. But then the -Prussian king was not one with whom it was wise to be too nice in such -affairs. He was the thriftiest of men, and as a king is a person who -lives on other people’s money, such thrift was in his case the most -princely of virtues. Haggling is not graceful, but it need not imply -avarice in either of the parties to it. The truth is that there was in -Voltaire a curious admixture of splendid generosity with virulent -tenacity about half-pence. The famous quarrel with the President de -Brosses about the fourteen cords of firewood is a worse affair. -Voltaire, who leased Tourney from him, insisted that De Brosses had made -him a present of the fourteen cords. De Brosses, no doubt truly, -declared that he had only ordered the wood to be delivered on Voltaire’s -account. On this despicable matter a long correspondence was carried on, -in which Voltaire is seen at his very worst; insolent, undignified, -low-minded, and untruthful.<a name="FNanchor_84" id="FNanchor_84"></a><a href="#Footnote_84" class="fnanchor">84</a> The case happily stands alone in his -biography. As a rule, he is a steady <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">111</a></span>practitioner of the Aristotelian -μεγαλοπρέπεια, or virtue of magnificent expenditure.</p> - -<p>The truly important feature of the life which Voltaire led at Cirey was -its unremitting diligence. Like a Homeric goddess, the divine Emily -poured a cloud round her hero. There is a sort of moral climate in a -household, an impalpable, unseizable, indefinable set of influences, -which predispose the inmates to industry and self-control, or else relax -fibre and slacken purpose. At Cirey there was an almost monastic rule. -Madame Grafigny says that though Voltaire felt himself bound by -politeness to pay her a visit from time to time in her apartment, he -usually avoided sitting down, apologetically protesting how frightful a -thing is the quantity of time people waste in talking, and that waste of -time is the most fatal kind of extravagance of which one can be -guilty<a name="FNanchor_85" id="FNanchor_85"></a><a href="#Footnote_85" class="fnanchor">85</a>. He seems to have usually passed the whole day at his desk, -or in making physical experiments in his chamber. The only occasion on -which people met was at the supper at nine in the evening. Until then -the privacy of the chamber alike of the hostess, who was analysing -Leibnitz or translating Newton, and of the unofficial host, who was -compiling material for the Siècle de Louis XIV., or polishing and -repolishing Mahomet, or investigating the circumstances of the -propagation of fire, was sacredly inviolable.</p> - -<p>The rigour of the rule did not forbid theatrical performances, when any -company, even a company <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">112</a></span>of marionettes, came into the neighbourhood of -the desolate Champagne château. Sometimes after supper Voltaire would -exhibit a magic lantern, with explanatory comments after the showman’s -manner, in which he would convulse his friends at the expense of his -enemies.<a name="FNanchor_86" id="FNanchor_86"></a><a href="#Footnote_86" class="fnanchor">86</a> But after the evening’s amusement was over, the Marquise -would retire to work in her chamber until the morning, and, when morning -came, a couple of hours’ sleep was the only division between the tasks -of the night and the tasks of the day. Two splenetic women have left us -a couple of spiteful pictures of Madame du Châtelet, but neither of her -detractors could rise to any higher conception of intellectual effort -than the fine turn of phrase, the ingenious image, the keen thrust of -cruel satire, with which the polished idle of that day whiled away -dreary and worthless years. The translator of Newton’s Principia was not -of this company, and she was wholly indifferent to the raillery, -sarcasm, and hate of women whom she justly held her inferiors. It is -much the fashion to admire the women of this time, because they contrive -to hide behind a veil of witty words the coldness and hollowness of -lives which had neither the sweetness of the old industrious domesticity -of women, nor the noble largeness of some of those in whom the -Revolution kindled a pure fire of patriotism in after days. Madame du -Châtelet, with all her faults, was a far loftier character than the -malicious gossips who laughed at her. ‘Everything<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">113</a></span> that occupies society -was within her power, <i>except slander</i>. She was never heard to hold up -anybody to laughter. When she was informed that certain people were bent -on not doing her justice, she would reply that she wished to ignore it.’ -This was surely better than a talent for barbing epigrams, and she led a -worthier life at Cirey than in that Paris which Voltaire described so -bitterly.</p> - -<div class="poem"> -<div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Là, tous les soirs, la troupe vagabonde,</span> -<span class="i0">D’un peuple oisif, appelé le beau monde,</span> -<span class="i0">Va promener de réduit en réduit</span> -<span class="i0">L’inquiétude et l’ennui qui la suit.</span> -<span class="i0">Là sont en foule antiques mijaurées,</span> -<span class="i0">Jeunes oisons et bégueules titrées,</span> -<span class="i0">Disant des riens d’un ton de perroquet,</span> -<span class="i0">Lorgnant des sots, et trichant au piquet.</span> -<span class="i0">Blondins y sont, beaucoup plus femmes qu’elles,</span> -<span class="i0">Profondément remplis de bagatelles,</span> -<span class="i0">D’un air hautain, d’une bruyante voix,</span> -<span class="i0">Chantant, dansant, minaudant à la fois.</span> -<span class="i0">Si par hasard quelque personne honnête,</span> -<span class="i0">D’un sens plus droit et d’un goût plus heureux,</span> -<span class="i0">Des bons écrits ayant meublé sa tête,</span> -<span class="i0">Leur fait l’affront de penser à leurs yeux;</span> -<span class="i0">Tout aussitôt leur brillante cohue,</span> -<span class="i0">D’etonnement et de colère émue,</span> -<span class="i0">Bruyant essaim de frélons envieux,</span> -<span class="i0">Pique et poursuit cette abeille charmante<a name="FNanchor_87" id="FNanchor_87"></a><a href="#Footnote_87" class="fnanchor">87</a>.</span> -</div></div> - -<p>It was not the fault of Madame du Châtelet that the life of Cirey was -not the undisturbed type of Voltaire’s existence during the fifteen -years of their <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">114</a></span>companionship. Many pages might be filled with a mere -list of the movements from place to place to which Voltaire resorted, -partly from reasonable fear of the grip of a jealous and watchful -government, partly from eagerness to bring the hand of the government -upon his enemies, and most of all from the uncontrollable restlessness -of his own nature. Amsterdam, the Hague, Brussels, Berlin, the little -court of Luneville, and the great world of Paris, too frequently -withdrew him from the solitary castle at Cirey, though he never failed -to declare on his return, and with perfect sincerity, that he was never -so happy anywhere else. If it was true that the Marquise made her poet’s -life a little hard to him, it is impossible to read her correspondence -without perceiving that he, too, though for no lack of sensibility and -good feeling, often made life extremely hard for her. Besides their -moral difference, there was a marked discrepancy in intellectual -temperament, which did not fail to lead to outward manifestations. -Voltaire was sometimes a little weary of Newton and exact science, while -the Marquise was naturally of the rather narrow turn for arid truths -which too often distinguishes clever women inadequately disciplined by -contact with affairs. She and Voltaire both competed for a prize offered -by the Academy for essays on the propagation of fire (1737). Neither of -them was successful, for the famous Euler was a competitor. The second -and third prizes were given to two obscurer persons, because their -essays were Cartesian, that is to say, they were scientifically<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">115</a></span> -orthodox. The two philosophers of Cirey also took part, and on different -sides, in the obstinate physico-mathematical controversy which Leibnitz -had first raised towards the close of the seventeenth century, as to the -measure of moving forces<a name="FNanchor_88" id="FNanchor_88"></a><a href="#Footnote_88" class="fnanchor">88</a>. The Marquise, under circumstances of -equivocal glory and with much angry buzzing, with which one has now no -concern<a name="FNanchor_89" id="FNanchor_89"></a><a href="#Footnote_89" class="fnanchor">89</a>, published her analysis of Leibnitz in 1740, and sided with -him against Newton and Descartes. In the notice which Voltaire wrote of -his friend’s book he gave a marvellously simple and intelligible account -of the issue of the special controversy of <i>vis viva</i><a name="FNanchor_90" id="FNanchor_90"></a><a href="#Footnote_90" class="fnanchor">90</a>, but he -remained Newtonian, and in 1741 presented a paper to the Academy of -Sciences, disputing the Leibnitzian view<a name="FNanchor_91" id="FNanchor_91"></a><a href="#Footnote_91" class="fnanchor">91</a>.</p> - -<p>Voltaire was not merely one of those ‘paper philosophers,’ whose -intrusion into the fields of physical science its professional followers -are justly wont to resent. He was an active experimenter, and more than -one letter remains, containing instructions to his agent in Paris to -forward him retorts, air-pumps, and other instruments, with the wise -hint in one place, a hint by no means of a miser, ‘In the matter of -buying things, my friend, you should always prefer the good and sound -even if a little dear, to what is only middling but cheaper<a name="FNanchor_92" id="FNanchor_92"></a><a href="#Footnote_92" class="fnanchor">92</a>.’ His -correspondence <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">116</a></span>for some years proves the diligence and sincerity of his -interest in science. Yet it is tolerably clear that the man who did so -much to familiarise France with the most illustrious of physicists, was -himself devoid of true scientific aptitude. After long and persevering -labour in this region, Voltaire consulted Clairaut on the progress he -had made. The latter, with a loyal frankness which Voltaire knew how to -appreciate, answered that even with the most stubborn labour he was not -likely to attain to anything beyond mediocrity in science, and that he -would be only throwing away time which he owed to poetry and -philosophy.<a name="FNanchor_93" id="FNanchor_93"></a><a href="#Footnote_93" class="fnanchor">93</a> The advice was taken; for, as we have already said, -Voltaire’s self-love was never fatuous, and the independent search of -physical truth was given up. There is plainly no reason to regret the -pains which Voltaire took in this kind of inquiry, not because the study -of the sciences extends the range of poetic study and enriches verse -with fresh images, but because the number of sorts of knowledge in which -a man feels at home and is intelligently cognisant of their scope and -issues, even if he be wholly incompetent to assist in the progress of -discovery, increases that intellectual confidence and self-respect of -understanding, which so fortifies and stimulates him in his own special -order of work. We cannot precisely contend that this encyclopædic -quality is an indispensable condition of such self-respect in every kind -of temper. It certainly was so with Voltaire. ‘After all, my dear -friend,’ <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">117</a></span>he wrote to Cideville, ‘it is right to give every possible -form to our soul. It is a flame that God has intrusted to us, we are -bound to feed it with all that we find most precious. We should -introduce into our existence all imaginable modes, and open every door -of the soul to all sorts of knowledge and all sorts of feelings. So long -as it does not all go in pell-mell there is plenty of room for -everything.<a name="FNanchor_94" id="FNanchor_94"></a><a href="#Footnote_94" class="fnanchor">94</a></p> - -<p>To us, who can be wise after the event, it is clear that if ever man was -called not to science, nor to poetry, nor to theology, nor to -metaphysics, but to literature, the art, so hard to define, of showing -the ideas of all subjects in the double light of the practical and the -spiritual reason, that man was Voltaire. He has himself dwelt on the -vagueness of this much-abused term, without contributing anything more -satisfactory towards a better account of it than a crude hint that -literature, not being a special art, may be considered a kind of larger -grammar of knowledge.<a name="FNanchor_95" id="FNanchor_95"></a><a href="#Footnote_95" class="fnanchor">95</a> Although, however, it is true that literature -is not a particular art, it is not the less true that there is a mental -constitution particularly fitted for its successful practice. Literature -is essentially an art of form, as distinguished from those exercises of -intellectual energy which bring new stores of matter to the stock of -acquired knowledge, and give new forces to emotion and original and -definite articulation to passion. It is a misleading classification to -call the work of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">118</a></span>Shakespeare and Molière, Shelley and Hugo, literary, -just as it would be an equally inaccurate, though more glaring piece of -classification, to count the work of Newton or Locke literature. To take -another case from Voltaire, it would not be enough to describe Bayle’s -Dictionary as a literary compilation; it would not even be enough to -describe it as a work of immense learning, because the distinguishing -and superior mark of this book is a profound dialectic. It forms men of -letters and is above them.<a name="FNanchor_96" id="FNanchor_96"></a><a href="#Footnote_96" class="fnanchor">96</a></p> - -<p>What is it then that literature brings to us, that earns its title to -high place, though far from a highest place, among the great humanizing -arts? Is it not that this is the master organon for giving men the two -precious qualities of breadth of interest and balance of judgment; -multiplicity of sympathies and steadiness of sight? Unhappily, -literature has too often been identified with the smirks and -affectations of mere elegant dispersiveness, with the hollow niceties of -the virtuoso, a thing of madrigals. It is not in any sense of this sort -that we can think of Voltaire as specially the born minister of -literature. What we mean is that while he had not the loftier endowments -of the highest poetic conception, subtle speculative penetration, or -triumphant scientific power, he possessed a superb combination of wide -and sincere curiosity, an intelligence of vigorous and exact -receptivity, a native inclination to candour and justice, and a -pre-eminent mastery over a wide range in the art <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">119</a></span>of expression. -Literature being concerned to impose form, to diffuse the light by which -common men are able to see the great host of ideas and facts that do not -shine in the brightness of their own atmosphere, it is clear what -striking gifts Voltaire had in this way. He had a great deal of -knowledge, and he was ever on the alert both to increase and broaden his -stock, and, what was still better, to impart of it to everybody else. He -did not think it beneath him to write on Hemistichs for the -Encyclopaedia. ’Tis not a very brilliant task, he said, but perhaps the -article will be useful to men of letters and amateurs; ‘one should -disdain nothing, and I will do the word Comma, if you choose.’<a name="FNanchor_97" id="FNanchor_97"></a><a href="#Footnote_97" class="fnanchor">97</a> He -was very catholic in taste, being able to love Racine without ignoring -the lofty stature of Shakespeare. And he was free from the weakness -which so often attends on catholicity, when it is not supported by true -strength and independence of understanding; he did not shut his eyes to -the shortcomings of the great. While loving Moliere, he was aware of the -incompleteness of his dramatic construction, as well as of the egregious -farce to which that famous writer too often descends.<a name="FNanchor_98" id="FNanchor_98"></a><a href="#Footnote_98" class="fnanchor">98</a> His respect -for the sublimity and pathos of Corneille did not hinder him from noting -both his violence and his frigid argumentation.<a name="FNanchor_99" id="FNanchor_99"></a><a href="#Footnote_99" class="fnanchor">99</a> Does the reader -remember that admirable saying of his to Vauvenargues; ‘<i>It is the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">120</a></span>part -of a man like you to have preferences, hut no exclusions</i>?’<a name="FNanchor_100" id="FNanchor_100"></a><a href="#Footnote_100" class="fnanchor">100</a> To this -fine principle Voltaire was usually thoroughly true, as every great -mind, if only endowed with adequate culture, must necessarily be.</p> - -<div class="poem2"> -<div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Nul auteur avec lui n’a tort,</span> -<span class="i0">Quand il a trouvé l’art de plaire;</span> -<span class="i0">Il le critique sans colere,</span> -<span class="i0">Il l’applaudit avec transport.<a name="FNanchor_101" id="FNanchor_101"></a><a href="#Footnote_101" class="fnanchor">101</a></span> -</div></div> - -<p>Thirdly, that circumfusion of bright light which is the highest aim of -speech, was easy to Voltaire, in whatever order of subject he happened -to treat. His style is like a translucent stream of purest mountain -water, moving with swift and animated flow under flashing sunbeams. -‘Voltaire,’ said an enemy, ‘is the very first man in the world at -writing down what other people have thought,’ What was meant for a -spiteful censure, was in fact a truly honourable distinction.</p> - -<p>The secret is incommunicable. No spectrum analysis can decompose for us -that enchanting ray. It is rather, after all, the piercing metallic -light of electricity than a glowing beam of the sun. We can detect some -of the external qualities of this striking style. We seize its dazzling -simplicity, its almost primitive closeness to the letter, its sharpness -and precision, above all, its admirable brevity. We see that no writer -ever used so few words to produce <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">121</a></span>such pregnant effects.<a name="FNanchor_102" id="FNanchor_102"></a><a href="#Footnote_102" class="fnanchor">102</a> Those -whom brevity only makes thin and slight, may look with despair on pages -where the nimbleness of the sentence is in proportion to the firmness of -the thought. We find no bastard attempts to reproduce in words deep and -complex effects, which can only be adequately presented in colour or in -the combinations of musical sound. Nobody has ever known better the true -limitations of the material in which he worked, or the scope and -possibilities of his art. Voltaire’s alexandrines, his witty stories, -his mock-heroic, his exposition of Newton, his histories, his dialectic, -all bear the same mark, the same natural, precise, and condensed mode of -expression, the same absolutely faultless knowledge of what is proper -and permitted in every given kind of written work. At first there seems -something paradoxical in dwelling on the brevity of an author whose -works are to be counted by scores of volumes. But this is no real -objection. A writer may be insufferably prolix in the limits of a single -volume, and Voltaire was quite right in saying that there are four times -too many words in the one volume of D’Holbach’s System of Nature. He -maintains too that Rabelais might advantageously be reduced to -one-eighth, and Bayle to a quarter, and there is hardly a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">122</a></span>book that is -not curtailed in the perfecting hands of the divine muses.<a name="FNanchor_103" id="FNanchor_103"></a><a href="#Footnote_103" class="fnanchor">103</a> So -conversely an author may not waste a word in a hundred volumes. Style is -independent of quantity, and the world suffers so grievously from the -mass of books that have been written, not because they are many, but -because such vast proportion of their pages say nothing while they -purport to say so much.</p> - -<p>No study, however, of this outward ease and swift compendiousness of -speech will teach us the secret that was beneath it in Voltaire, an eye -and a hand that never erred in hitting the exact mark of appropriateness -in every order of prose and verse. Perhaps no such vision for the -befitting in expression has ever existed. He is the most trenchant -writer in the world, yet there is not a sentence of strained emphasis or -overwrought antithesis; he is the wittiest, yet there is not a line of -bad buffoonery. And this intense sense of the appropriate was by nature -and cultivation become so entirely a fixed condition of Voltaire’s mind -that it shows spontaneous and without an effort in his work. Nobody is -more free from the ostentatious correctness of the literary precisian, -and nobody preserves so much purity and so much dignity of language with -so little formality of demeanour. It is interesting to notice the -absence from his writings of that intensely elaborated kind of -simplicity in which some of the best authors of a later time express the -final outcome of many thoughts. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">123</a></span></p> - -<p>The strain that society has undergone since Voltaire’s day has taught -men to qualify their propositions. It has forced them to follow truth -slowly along paths steep and devious. New notes have been struck in -human feeling, and all thought has now been touched by complexities that -were then unseen. Hence, as all good writers aim at simplicity and -directness, we have seen the growth of a new style, in which the rays of -many side-lights are concentrated in some single phrase. That Voltaire -does not use these focalising words and turns of composition only means -that to him thought was less complex than it is to a more subjective -generation. Though the literature which possesses Milton and Burke need -not fear comparison with the graver masters of French speech, we have no -one to place exactly by the side of Voltaire. But, then, no more has -France. There are many pages of Swift which are more like one side of -Voltaire than anything else that we have, and Voltaire probably drew the -idea of his famous stories from the creator of Gulliver, just as Swift -got the idea of the Tale of a Tub from Fontenelle’s History of Mero and -Enegu (that is, of Rome and Geneva). Swift has correctness, invention, -irony, and a trick of being effectively literal and serious in absurd -situations, just as Voltaire has; but then Swift is often truculent and -often brutally gross, both in thought and in phrase. Voltaire is never -either brutal or truculent. Even amid the licence of the Pucelle and of -his romances, he never forgets what is due to the French<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">124</a></span> tongue. What -always charmed him in Racine and Boileau, he tells us, was that they -said what they intended to say, and that their thoughts have never cost -anything to the harmony or the purity of the language<a name="FNanchor_104" id="FNanchor_104"></a><a href="#Footnote_104" class="fnanchor">104</a>. Voltaire -ranged over far wider ground than the two poets ever attempted to do, -and trod in many slippery places, yet he is entitled to the same praise -as that which he gave to them.</p> - -<p>Unhappily, one of the many evil effects which have alloyed the -revolution that Voltaire did so much to set in motion, has been both in -his country and ours that purity and harmony of language, in spite of -the examples of the great masters who have lived since, have on the -whole declined. In both countries familiarity and slang have actually -asserted a place in literature on some pretence that they are real; an -assumed vulgarity tries to pass for native homeliness, and, as though a -giant were more impressive for having a humped back, some men of true -genius seem only to make sure of fame by straining themselves into -grotesques. In a word, the reaction against a spurious dignity of style -has carried men too far, because the reaction against the dignified -elements in the old order went too far. Style, after all, as one has -always to remember, can never be anything but the reflex of ideas and -habits of mind, and when respect for one’s own personal dignity as a -ruling and unique element in character gave way to sentimental love of -the human race, often real, and often a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">125</a></span>pretence, old self-respecting -modes of expression went out of fashion. And all this has been defended -by a sort of argument that might just as appropriately have been used by -Diogenes, vindicating the filthiness of his tub against a doctrine of -clean linen.</p> - -<p>To follow letters, it is important to observe, meant then, or at least -after Voltaire’s influence rose to its height, it meant distinctly to -enter the ranks of the Opposition. In our own time the profession of -letters is placed with other polite avocations, and those who follow it -for the most part accept the traditional social ideas of the time, just -as clergymen, lawyers, and physicians accept them. The modern man of -letters corresponds to the ancient sophist, whose office it was to -confirm, adorn, and propagate the current prejudice. To be a man of -letters in France in the middle of the eighteenth century was to be the -official enemy of the current prejudices and their sophistical defenders -in the church and the parliaments. Parents heard of a son’s design to go -to Paris and write books, or to mix with those who wrote books, with the -same dismay with which a respectable Athenian heard of a son following -Socrates. The hyper-hellenistic collegian need not accuse us of -instituting a general parallel between Socrates and Voltaire. The only -point on which we are insisting is that each was the leader of the -assault against the sophists of his day, though their tactics and -implements of war were sufficiently unlike. To the later assailant the -conditions of the time made the pen the most effective<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">126</a></span> instrument. The -clergy had the pulpit and the confessional, and their enemies had the -press.</p> - -<p>It was during the period of his connection with Madame du Châtelet, that -is in the active literary years between his return from England and his -removal to Berlin, that Voltaire’s dramatic talent was most -productive.<a name="FNanchor_105" id="FNanchor_105"></a><a href="#Footnote_105" class="fnanchor">105</a> He is usually considered to hold the same place -relatively to Corneille and Racine that Euripides held relatively to -Æschylus and Sophocles. It is not easy to see what is the exact point of -analogy on which the critics agree, beyond the corresponding place in -the order of chronological succession, and such parallels are not really -very full of instruction. If we are to draw any parallel at all, it must -be between the Greek and Racine. The differences between Euripides and -his predecessors are not those between Voltaire and his predecessors. -There may be one common peculiarity. Each made the drama an instrument -for the expression not merely of passion, but of speculative and -philosophical matter, and this in each case of a sceptical kind in -reference to the accepted traditions of the time. But apart from the -vast superiority of the Greek in depth and passion and dramatic -invention, in Voltaire this philosophising is very much more indirect, -insinuatory, and furtive, than in the marked sententiousness of -<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">127</a></span>Euripides. There are critics, indeed, who insist that all Voltaire’s -poetic work is a series of pamphlets in disguise, and that he ought to -be classified, in that jargon which makes an uncouth compound pass -muster for a new critical nicety, as a tendency-poet.<a name="FNanchor_106" id="FNanchor_106"></a><a href="#Footnote_106" class="fnanchor">106</a></p> - -<p>To accept this would simply be to leave out of account the very best of -Voltaire’s plays, including Mérope, Sémiramis, Tancrède, in which the -most ingenious of men and critics would be at a loss to find any -tendency of the pamphleteering kind. Voltaire’s ever-present sense of -congruity prevented him from putting the harangue of the pulpit or the -discourse of the academic doctor upon the tragic stage. If the clergy -found in ‘Mahomet,’ for instance, a covert attack on their own religion, -it was much more because the poet was suspected of unbelief, than -because the poem contained infidel doctrine. Indeed, nothing shows so -clearly as the strange affright at this and some other pieces of -Voltaire’s, that the purport and effect of poetry must depend nearly as -much upon the mind of the audience as upon the lines themselves. His -plays may be said to have led to scepticism, only because there was -sceptical predisposition in the mind which his public brought to them; -and under other circumstances, if for instance it had been produced in -the time of Lewis XIV., the exposure of Mahomet would have been counted -a glorification of the rival creed. Indeed, Pope Benedict XIV. did by -and by <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">128</a></span>accept Voltaire’s dedication of the play, whether in good faith -or no we cannot tell, on the express ground that it was an indirect -homage to Christianity. Men with a sense of artistic propriety far -inferior to Voltaire’s, are yet fully alive to the monstrosity of -disguising a pamphleteer’s polemic in the form of a pretended drama.</p> - -<p>In choice of subject Voltaire, we may believe, was secretly guided by -his wish to relax the oppressive hold of religious prejudice. Religion, -we cannot too fully realise, was the absorbing burden of the time. There -was no sort of knowledge, from geometry onwards, on which it did not -weigh. Whatever work Voltaire set himself to, he was confronted in it by -the Infamous. Thus in accordance with the narrow theory of his time, he -held Mahomet to be a deliberate and conscious impostor, and in -presenting the founder of one great religion in this odious shape, he -was doubtless suggesting that the same account might be true of the -founder of another. But the suggestion was entirely outside of the play -itself, and we who have fully settled these questions for ourselves, may -read ‘Mahomet’ without suspecting the shade of a reference from Mecca to -Jerusalem, though hardly without contemning the feebleness of view which -could see nothing but sensuality, ambition, and crime, in the career of -the fierce eastern reformer. The sentiments of exalted deism which are -put into the mouth of the noble Zopire were perhaps meant to teach -people that the greatest devotion of character may go with the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">129</a></span> most -unflinching rejection of a pretended revelation from the gods. This -again is a gloss from without, and by no means involves Voltaire in the -offence of art with a moral purpose.</p> - -<p>Zaïre was the first play in which French characters appeared upon the -tragic stage. The heroine, the daughter of Lusignan, has been brought -up, unconscious of her descent, in the Mahometan faith and usage. -Consider the philosophy of these lines which are given to her:</p> - -<div class="poem"> -<div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">La coutume, la loi plia mes premiers ans</span> -<span class="i0">A la religion des heureux musulmans.</span> -<span class="i0">Je le vois trop; les soins qu’on prend de notre enfance</span> -<span class="i0">Ferment nos sentimens, nos mœurs, notre croyance.</span> -<span class="i0">J’eusse êtè près du Gange esclave des faux dieux,</span> -<span class="i0">Chrétienne dans Paris, musulmane en ces lieux.</span> -<span class="i0">L’instruction fait tout; et la main de nos pères</span> -<span class="i0">Grave en nos faibles cœurs ces premiers caractères,</span> -<span class="i0">Que l’exemple et le temps nous viennent retracer,</span> -<span class="i0">Et que peut-être en nous Dieu seul peut effacer.<a name="FNanchor_107" id="FNanchor_107"></a><a href="#Footnote_107" class="fnanchor">107</a></span> -</div></div> - -<p>This of course implied the doctrine of Pope’s Universal Prayer, and -contains an idea that was always the favourite weapon for smiting the -over-confident votaries of a single supernatural revelation. Locke had -asked whether ‘the current opinions and licensed guides of every country -are sufficient evidence and security to every man to venture his great -concernments on? Or, can these be the certain and infallible oracle and -standards of truth which teach one thing in Christendom, and another in -Turkey? Or <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">130</a></span>shall a poor countryman be eternally happy for having the -chance to be born in Italy? Or a day-labourer be unavoidably lost -because he had the ill-luck to be born in England?<a name="FNanchor_108" id="FNanchor_108"></a><a href="#Footnote_108" class="fnanchor">108</a> This was exactly -the kind of reasoning to which Zaïre’s lines pointed; and Voltaire was -never weary of arguing that the divine lay outside of the multitudinous -variety of creeds that were never more than local accidents. Neither, -however, in Zaïre nor anywhere else is the law of perfect dramatic -fitness violated for the sake of a lesson in heterodoxy. With Voltaire -tragedy is, as all art ought to be, a manner of disinterested -presentation. This is not the noblest energy of the human intelligence, -but it is truly art, and Voltaire did not forget it. It would be -entirely unprofitable to enter into any comparison of the relative -merits of Voltaire’s tragedies, and those either of the modern romantic -school in his own country, or of the master dramatists of our own. Every -form of composition must be judged in its own order, and the order in -which Voltaire chose to work was the French classic, with its appointed -conditions and fixed laws, its three unities, its stately alexandrines, -and all the other essentials of that special dramatic form. Here is one -of the many points at which we feel that Voltaire is trying to prolong -in literature, if not in thought, the impressive tradition of the grand -age. At the same moment, strangely enough, he was giving that stir to -the opinion of his time, which was the prime agent in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">131</a></span>definitely -breaking the hold of that tradition. It is no infidelity to the glorious -and incomparable genius of Shakespeare, nor does it involve any -blindness to the fine creation, fresh fancy, and noble thought and -imagery of our less superb men, yet to admit that there is in these -limits of construction a concentration and regularity, and in these too -contemned alexandrines a just and swelling cadence, that confer a high -degree of pleasure of the highest kind, and that demand intellectual -quality only less rare than that other priceless and unattainable -quality of having the lips touched with divine fire. It is said, -however, that such quality does not produce acting plays, but only -dramatic poems: this is really laughable if we remember first, that the -finest actors in the world have been trained in the recitation of these -alexandrines, and second, that as large and as delighted an audience -used until within some twenty years ago to crowd to a tragedy of -Corneille or Racine, seen repeatedly before, as to a bran-new -vaudeville, never to be seen again.</p> - -<p>‘We insist,’ said Voltaire, ‘that the rhyme shall cost nothing to the -ideas; that it shall neither be trivial nor too far-fetched; we exact -rigorously in a verse the same purity, the same precision, as in prose. -We do not permit the smallest licence; we require an author to carry -without a break all chains, and yet that he should appear ever -free.’<a name="FNanchor_109" id="FNanchor_109"></a><a href="#Footnote_109" class="fnanchor">109</a> He admitted that sometimes they failed in reaching the -<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">132</a></span>tragic, through excessive fear of passing its limits. He does justice, -if something less than English justice, to the singular merits of our -stage in the way of action.<a name="FNanchor_110" id="FNanchor_110"></a><a href="#Footnote_110" class="fnanchor">110</a> Shakespeare, he says, ‘had a genius -full of force and fertility, of all that is natural and all that is -sublime.’ It is even the merit of Shakespeare—‘those grand and terrible -pieces that abound in his most monstrous farces’—that has been the -undoing of the English stage.<a name="FNanchor_111" id="FNanchor_111"></a><a href="#Footnote_111" class="fnanchor">111</a></p> - -<p>Even the famous criticism on Hamlet has been a good deal misrepresented. -Voltaire is vindicating the employment of the machinery of ghosts, and -he dwells on the fitness and fine dramatic effect of the ghost in -Shakespeare’s play. ‘I am very far,’ he goes on to say, ‘from justifying -the tragedy of Hamlet in everything: it is a rude and barbarous -piece.... Hamlet goes mad in the second act, and his mistress goes mad -in the third; the prince slays the father of his mistress, pretending to -kill a rat, and the heroine throws herself into the river. They dig her -grave on the stage; the gravediggers jest in a way worthy of them, with -skulls in their hands; Hamlet answers their odious grossnesses by -extravagances no less disgusting. Meanwhile one of the characters -conquers Poland. Hamlet, his mother, and his stepfather drink together -on the stage; they sing at table, they wrangle, they fight, they kill; -one might suppose such a work to be the fruit of the imagination of a -drunken <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">133</a></span>savage. But in the midst of all these rude irregularities, -which to this day make the English theatre so absurd and so barbarous, -there are to be found in Hamlet by a yet greater incongruity sublime -strokes worthy of the loftiest geniuses. It seems as if nature had taken -a delight in collecting within the brain of Shakespeare all that we can -imagine of what is greatest and most powerful, with all that rudeness -without wit can contain of what is lowest and most detestable.’<a name="FNanchor_112" id="FNanchor_112"></a><a href="#Footnote_112" class="fnanchor">112</a></p> - -<p>If one were to retort upon this that anybody with a true sense of poetry -would sacrifice all the plays that Voltaire ever wrote, his -eight-and-twenty tragedies, and half-score of comedies, for the -soliloquy in Hamlet, or King Henry at Towton Fight, or ‘Roses, their -sharp spines being gone,’ there would be truth in such a retort, but it -would be that brutal truth, which is always very near being the most -subtle kind of lie. Nature wrought a miracle for us by producing -Shakespeare, as she did afterwards in an extremely different way for -France by producing Voltaire. Miracles, however, have necessarily a very -demoralising effect. A prodigy of loaves and fishes, by slackening the -motives to honest industry, must in the end multiply paupers. The -prodigy of such amazing results from such glorious carelessness as -Shakespeare’s, has plunged hundreds of men of talent into a carelessness -most inglorious, and made our acting stage a mock. It is quite true -<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">134</a></span>that the academic rule is better fitted for mediocrity than for genius; -but we may perhaps trust genius to make a way for itself. It is -mediocrity that needs laws and prescriptions for its most effective -fertilisation, and the enormous majority even of those who can do good -work are still mediocre. We have preferred the methods of lawless -genius, and are left with rampant lawlessness and no genius. The very -essence of the old French tragedy was painstaking, and painstaking has -had its unfailing and exceeding great reward. When people whose taste -has been trained in the traditions of romantic and naturalistic art, or -even not trained at all except in indolence and presumption, yawn over -the French alexandrines, let them remember that Goethe at any rate -thought it worth while to translate Mahomet and Tancrède.</p> - -<p>An eminent German writer on Voltaire has recently declared the secret of -the French classic dramaturgy to be that the drama was a diversion of -the court. ‘The personages have to speak not as befits their true -feelings, their character, and the situation, but as is seemly in the -presence of a king and a court; not truth, nature, and beauty, but -etiquette, is the highest law of the dramatic art.’<a name="FNanchor_113" id="FNanchor_113"></a><a href="#Footnote_113" class="fnanchor">113</a> This may -partially explain how it was that a return to some features of the -classic form, its dignity, elevation, and severity, came to take place -in France, but no explanation can <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">135</a></span>be at all satisfactory which reduces -so distinct and genuine a manner of dramatic expression to a mere -outside accident. Corneille, Racine, Voltaire, treated their tragic -subjects as they did, with rigorous concentration of action, stately -consistency of motive, and in a solemn and balanced measure, because -these conditions answered to intellectual qualities of their own, an -affinity in themselves for elegance, clearness, elevation, and a certain -purified and weighty wisdom. It is true that they do not unseal those -deep-hidden fountains of thought and feeling and music, which flow so -freely at the waving of Shakespeare’s wand. We are not swiftly carried -from a scene of clowns up to some sublime pinnacle of the seventh -heaven, whence we see the dark abysses that lie about the path of human -action, as well as all its sweet and shadowed places. Only let us not -unjustly suppose that we are deciding the merits of the old French -dramaturgy, its severe structure and stately measure, by answering the -question, which no English nor German writer can ever seriously put, as -to the relative depth and vision in poetic things of Shakespeare and -Voltaire. Nor can we be expected to be deeply moved by a form of art -that is so unfamiliar to us. It is not a question whether we ought to be -so deeply moved. The too susceptible Marmontel describes how on the -occasion of a visit to Ferney, Voltaire took him into his study and -placed a manuscript into his hands. It was Tancrède, which was just -finished. Marmontel eagerly read it, and he tells us how he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">136</a></span> returned to -the author, his face all bathed in tears. ‘Your tears,’ said Voltaire, -‘tell me all that it most concerns me to know.’<a name="FNanchor_114" id="FNanchor_114"></a><a href="#Footnote_114" class="fnanchor">114</a> The most -supercilious critic may find this very Tancrède worth reading, when he -remembers that Gibbon thought it splendid and interesting,<a name="FNanchor_115" id="FNanchor_115"></a><a href="#Footnote_115" class="fnanchor">115</a> and that -Goethe found it worth translating. One could hardly be convicted now of -want of sensibility, if all Voltaire’s tragedy together failed to bathe -one’s face in tears, but this is a very bad reason for denying that it -has other merits than pathos.</p> - -<p>We cannot, indeed, compare the author of Zaïre and Tancrède with the -great author of Cinna and Polyeucte, any more than in another kind we -can compare Gray with Milton. Voltaire is the very genius of -correctness, elegance, and grace, and if the reader would know what this -correctness means, he will find a most wholesome exercise in reading -Voltiare’s notes on some of the most celebrated of Corneille’s -plays.<a name="FNanchor_116" id="FNanchor_116"></a><a href="#Footnote_116" class="fnanchor">116</a> But in masculine energy and in poetic weightiness, as well -as in organ-like richness of music, Voltaire must be surely pronounced -inferior to his superb predecessor. There is a certain thinness -pervading the whole of his work for the stage, the conception of -character, the dramatic structure, and the measure alike. Undoubtedly we -may frequently come upon weighty and noble lines, of fine music and -<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">137</a></span>lofty sense. But there is on the whole what strikes one as a fatal -excess of facility, and a fatal defect of poetic saliency. The fluent -ease of the verse destroys the impression of strength. ‘Your friend,’ -wrote Madame du Châtelet once of her friend, ‘has had a slight bout of -illness, and you know that when he is ill, he can do nothing but write -verses.’<a name="FNanchor_117" id="FNanchor_117"></a><a href="#Footnote_117" class="fnanchor">117</a> We do not know whether the Marquise meant alexandrines, or -those graceful verses of society of which Voltaire was so incomparable a -master. It is certain that he wrote Zaïre in three weeks and Olympic in -six days, though with respect to the latter we may well agree with the -friend who told the author that he should not have rested on the seventh -day. However that may be, there is a quality about his tragic verse -which to one fresh from the sonorous majesty and dignified beauty of -Polyeucte, or even the fine gravity of Tartufe, vibrates too lightly in -the ear. Least of all may we compare him to Racine, whose two great -tragedies of Iphigénie and Athalie Voltaire himself declared to mark the -nearest approach ever made to dramatic perfection.<a name="FNanchor_118" id="FNanchor_118"></a><a href="#Footnote_118" class="fnanchor">118</a> There is none of -the mixed austerity and tenderness, height and sweetness, grace and -firmness, that blend together with such invisible art and unique -contrivance in the poet whose verses taught Fénelon and Massillon how to -make music in their prose. To this Voltaire could only have access from -without, for he lacked the famous master’s internal depth, seriousness, -and veneration <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">138</a></span>of soul. We know how little this approach from without -can avail, and how vainly a man follows the harmonious grace of a style, -when he lacks the impalpable graces of spirit that made the style live. -It is only when grave thoughts and benignant aspirations and purifying -images move with even habit through the mind, that a man masters the -noblest expression. De Maistre, to whom Voltaire’s name was the symbol -for all that is accursed, admitted the nobleness of his work in tragedy, -but he instantly took back the grudged praise by saying that even here -he only resembles his two great rivals as a clever hypocrite resembles a -saint.<a name="FNanchor_119" id="FNanchor_119"></a><a href="#Footnote_119" class="fnanchor">119</a> Malignantly expressed, there is in this some truth.</p> - -<p>It was one of the elements in the plan of dramatic reform that sprang up -in Voltaire’s mind during his residence in England, that the subjects of -tragedy should be more masculine, and that love should cease to be an -obligatory ingredient. “It is nearly always the same piece, the same -knot, formed by jealousy and a breach, and untied by a marriage; it is a -perpetual coquetry, a simple comedy in which princes are actors, and in -which occasionally blood is spilt for form’s sake.”<a name="FNanchor_120" id="FNanchor_120"></a><a href="#Footnote_120" class="fnanchor">120</a> This he counted -a mistake, for, as he justly said, the heart is but lightly touched by a -lover’s woes, while it is profoundly softened by the anguish of a mother -just about to lose her son. Thus in Mérope we have maternal sentiment -made the spring of what is probably the best of Voltaire’s tragedies, -<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">139</a></span>abounding in a just vehemence, compact, full of feeling at once exalted -and natural, and moving with a sustained energy that is not a too common -mark of his work. It was the same conviction of the propriety of making -tragedy a means of expressing other emotions than that which is so apt -to degenerate into an insipidity, which dictated the composition and -novel treatment of the Roman subjects, Brutus and La Mort de César. Here -the French drama first became in some degree truly political. His -predecessors when they handled a historic theme did so, not from the -historic or social point of view, but as the illustration, or rather the -suggestion, of some central human passion. In the Cinna of Corneille the -political bearings, the moral of benevolent despotism which Bonaparte -found in it, were purely incidental, and were distinctly subordinate to -the portrayal of character and the movement of feeling. In Brutus the -whole action lies in the region of great public affairs, and of the -passions which these affairs stir in noble characters, without any -admixture of purely private tenderness. In La Mort de César we are -equally in the heroics of public action. Rome Sauvée, of which the -subject is the conspiracy of Catiline, and the hero the most eloquent of -consuls or men—a part that Voltaire was very fond of filling in private -representations, and with distinguished success—is extremely loose and -spasmodic in structure, and the speeches sound strained even when put -into Cicero’s mouth. But here also private insipidities are banished,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">140</a></span> -though perhaps it is only in favour of public insipidities. It is -impossible to tell what share, if any, these plays had in spreading that -curious feeling about Roman freedom and its most renowned defenders, -which is so striking a feature in some of the great episodes of the -Revolution. We cannot suspect Voltaire of any design to stir political -feeling. He was now essentially aristocratic and courtly in his -predilection, without the smallest active wish for an approach to -political revolution, if indeed the conception of a change of that kind -ever presented itself to him. He was indefatigable in admiring and -praising English freedom, but, as has already been said, it was not the -laudation of a lover of popular government, but the envy of a man of -letters whose life was tormented by censors of the press and the -lieutenant of police. Perhaps the only approach to a public purpose in -this fancy for his Roman subjects was a lurking idea of arousing in the -nobles, for whom we must remember that his dramatic work was above all -designed, not a passion for freedom from the authority of monarchic -government, but a passion of a more general kind for energetic -patriotism. Voltaire’s letters abound with expressions of the writer’s -belief that he was the witness of an epoch of decay in his own country. -He had in truth far too keen and practical and trained an eye not to see -how public spirit, political sagacity, national ambition, and even -valour had declined in the great orders of France since the age of the -Grand Monarch, and how much his country had fallen back in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">141</a></span> race of -civilisation and power. We should be guilty of a very transparent -exaggeration of the facts, if any attempt were made to paint Voltaire in -the attitude and colours of one transcendentally aspiring to regenerate -his countrymen. But there is no difficulty in believing that a man who -had lived in England, and knew so much of Prussia, should have seen the -fatal enervation which had come upon France, and that with Voltaire’s -feeling for the stage, he should have dreamt, by means of a more austere -subject and more masculine treatment, of reviving the love of wisdom and -glory and devotion in connection with country. In a word, the lesson of -La Mort de César or of Brutus was not a specific admonition to slay -tyrants, or to execute stern judgments on sons, but a general example of -self-sacrificing patriotism and devoted public honour.</p> - -<p>It is often said that Voltaire’s Romans are mere creatures of parade and -declamation, like the figures of David’s paintings,<a name="FNanchor_121" id="FNanchor_121"></a><a href="#Footnote_121" class="fnanchor">121</a> and it is very -likely that the theatre infected the French people with that mischievous -idea of the Romans, as a nation of declaimers about freedom and the -death of tyrants. The true Roman was no doubt very much more like one of -our narrow, hard, and able Scotchmen in India, than the lofty talkers -who delighted the parterre of Paris or Versailles. Unluckily for truth -of historical conception, Cicero was, after Virgil, the most potent of -Roman memories, and a man of words became with <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">142</a></span>modern writers the -favourite type of a people of action. All this, however, is beside the -question. Voltaire would have laughed at the idea of any obligation to -present either Romans or other personages on the stage with realistic -fidelity. The tragic drama with him was the highest of the imaginative -and idealistic arts. If he had sought a parallel to it in the plastic -arts he would have found one, not in painting, which by reason of the -greater flexibility of its material demands a more exact verisimilitude, -but in sculpture. Considered as statuesque figures endowed with speech, -Brutus, Caesar, and the rest are noble and impressive. We may protest as -vigorously as we know how against any assimilation of the great art of -action with the great art of repose. But we can only criticise the -individual productions of a given theory, provided we for the moment -accept the conditions which the theory lays down. All art rests upon -convention, and if we choose to repudiate any particular set of -conventions, we have no more right to criticise the works of those who -submit to them than one would have to criticise sculpture, because -marble or bronze is not like flesh and blood. Within the conditions of -the French classic drama Voltaire’s Romans are high and stately figures.</p> - -<p>Voltaire’s innovations extended beyond the introduction of more -masculine treatment. Before his time romantic subjects had been regarded -with disfavour, and Corneille’s Bajazet was considered a bold -experiment. Racine was more strictly classic, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">143</a></span> dramatists went on -handling the same ancient fables, ‘Thebes, or Pelops’ line, or the tale -of ‘Troy divine,’ just as the Greeks had done, or just as the painters -in the Catholic times had never wearied of painting the two eternal -figures of human mother and divine child. Voltaire treated the classic -subjects as others treated them, and if Œdipe misses the depth, -delicate reserve and fateful gloom of the Greeks, Mérope at any rate -breathes a fine and tragic spirit. But his restless mind pressed forward -into subjects which Racine would have shuddered at, and every quarter of -the universe became in turn a portion of the Voltairean stage. -L’Orphelin de la Chine introduces us to China and Genghis-Khan, Mahomet -to Arabia and its prophet, Tancrede to Sicily; in Zulime we are among -Moors, in Alzire with Peruvians. This revolutionary enlargement of -subject was significant of a general and very important enlargement of -interest which marked the time, and led presently to those contrasts -between the condition of France and the imaginary felicity and nobleness -of wilder countries, which did so much to breed an irresistible longing -for change. Voltaire’s high-minded Scythians, generous Peruvians, and -the rest, prepared the way along with other influences for that curious -cosmopolitanism, that striking eagerness to believe in the equal -virtuousness and devotion inherent in human nature, independently of the -religious or social form accidentally imposed upon them, which found its -ultimate outcome, first in an ardent passion for social equality, and a -depreciation of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">144</a></span> special sanctity of the current religion, and next -in the ill-fated emancipating and proselytising aims of the Revolution, -and in orators of the human race.</p> - -<p>It has usually been thought surprising that Voltaire, consummate wit as -he was, should have been so markedly unsuccessful in comedy. Certainly -no one with so right a sense of the value of time as Voltaire himself -had, will in our day waste many hours over his productions in this -order. There are a dozen of them more or less, and we can only hope that -they were the most rapid of his writings. Lines of extraordinary -vivacity are not wanting, and at their best they offer a certain -bustling sprightliness that might have been diverting in actual -representation. But the keynote seems to be struck in farce, rather than -in comedy; the intrigue, if not quite as slight as in Molière, is too -forced; and the characters are nearly all excessively mediocre in -conception. In one of the comedies, Le Dépositaire, the poet presented -the aged patroness of his youth, but the necessity of respecting current -ideas of the becoming prevented him from making a great character out of -even so striking a figure as Ninon de l’Enclos. La Prude is a version of -Wycherly’s Plaindealer, and is in respect of force, animation, and the -genuine spirit of comedy, very inferior to its admirable original. -L’Indiscret is a sparkling and unconsidered trifle, L’Ecossaise is only -a stinging attack on Fréron, and L’Enfant Prodigue, though greater pains -were taken with it, has none of the glow of dramatic feeling. The -liveliest of all is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">145</a></span> La Femme qui a Raison, a short comedy of situation, -which for one reading is entertaining in the closet, and must be -excellent on the stage. It is very slight, however, and as usual verges -on farce.</p> - -<p>This inferiority of Voltaire’s ought not to astonish any one who has -reflected how much concentrated feeling and what profundity of vision go -to the production of great comedy, and how in the mind of the dramatist, -as in the movement of human life, comedy lies close to portentous -tragedy. The author of the Bourgeois Gentilhomme and L’Avare was also -the creator of the Misanthrope, that inscrutable piece, where, without -plot, fable, or intrigue, we see a section of the polished life of the -time, men and women paying visits, making and receiving compliments, -discoursing upon affairs with easy lightness, flitting backwards and -forwards with a thousand petty hurries, and among these one strange, -rough, hoarse, half-sombre figure, moving solitarily with a chilling -reality in the midst of frolicking shadows. Voltaire entered too eagerly -into the interests of the world, was by temperament too exclusively -sympathetic and receptive and social, to place himself even in -imagination thus outside of the common circle. Without capacity for -this, there is no comedy of the first order. Without serious -consciousness of contrasts, no humour that endures. Shakespeare, -Molière, and even Aristophanes, each of them unsurpassed writers of mere -farce, were each of them, though with vast difference of degree, master -of a tragic breadth of vision. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">146</a></span>Voltaire had moods of petulant spleen, -but who feels that he ever saw, much less brooded over, the dark -cavernous regions of human nature? Without this we may have brilliant -pleasantry of surprise, inimitable caricature, excellent comedy of -society, but of the veritable comedy of human character and life, -nothing.</p> - -<p>In dazzling and irresistible caricature Voltaire has no equal. There is -no deep humour, as in Don Quixote, or Tristram Shandy, which Voltaire -did not care for,<a name="FNanchor_122" id="FNanchor_122"></a><a href="#Footnote_122" class="fnanchor">122</a> or Richter’s Siebenkäs, which he would not have -cared for any more than De Stael did. He was too purely intellectual, -too argumentative, too geometrical, and cared too much for illustrating -a principle. But in Candide, Zadig, L’Ingénu, wit is as high as mere wit -can go. They are better than Hudibras, because the motive is broader and -more intellectual. Rapidity of play, infallible accuracy of stroke, -perfect copiousness, and above all a fresh and unflagging spontaneity, -combine with a surprising invention, to give these stories a singular -quality, of which we most effectively observe the real brilliance, by -comparing them with the too numerous imitations that their success has -unhappily invited since.</p> - -<p>It is impossible to omit from the most cursory study of Voltaire’s work, -that too famous poem which was his favourite amusement during some of -the best years of his life, which was the delight of all who could by -any means get the high favour of sight or hearing of so much as a canto -of it, and which is now always <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">147</a></span>spoken of, when it happens to be spoken -of at all, with extreme abhorrence.<a name="FNanchor_123" id="FNanchor_123"></a><a href="#Footnote_123" class="fnanchor">123</a> The Pucelle offends two modern -sentiments, the love of modesty, and the love of the heroic personages -of history. The moral sense and the historic sense have both been -sharpened in some respects since Voltaire, and a poem which not only -abounds in immodesty, and centres the whole action in an indecency of -conception, but also fastens this gross chaplet round the memory of a -great deliverer of the poet’s own country, seems to offer a double -outrage to an age when relish for licentious verse has gone out of -fashion, and reverence for the heroic dead has come in. Still the fact -that the greatest man of his time should have written one of the most -unseemly poems that exist in any tongue, is worth trying to understand. -Voltaire, let us remember, had no special turn, like Gibbon or Bayle, -least of all like the unclean Swift, for extracting a malodorous -diversion out of grossness or sensuality. His writings betray no -irresistible passion for flying to an indelicacy, nor any of the vapid -lasciviousness of some more modern French writers. The Pucelle is at -least the wit of a rational man, and not the prying beastliness of a -satyr. It is wit worse than poorly employed, but it is purity itself -compared with some of the nameless abominations with which Diderot -besmirched his imagination. The Persian Letters contain what we should -now account passages of extreme <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">148</a></span>licentiousness, yet Montesquieu was -assuredly no libertine. Voltaire’s life again was never indecent or -immoderate from the point of view of the manners of the time. A man of -grave character and untarnished life, like Condorcet, did not scruple to -defend a poem, in which it is hard for us to see anything but a most -indecorous burlesque of a most heroic subject. He insists that books -which divert the imagination without heating or seducing it, which by -gay and pleasurable images fill up those moments of exhaustion that are -useless alike for labour and meditation, have the effect of inclining -men to gentleness and indulgence. “It was not such books as the Pucelle -that Gérard or Clément used to read, or that the satellites of Cromwell -carried at the saddle-bow.”<a name="FNanchor_124" id="FNanchor_124"></a><a href="#Footnote_124" class="fnanchor">124</a></p> - -<p>The fact is that in amusing himself by the Pucelle, Voltaire was only -giving literary expression to a kind of view which had already in the -society of the time found for itself a thoroughly practical expression. -The people among whom he lived had systematised that freedom from law or -restraint in the relations of the sexes, of which his poem is so vivid a -representation. The Duke of Richelieu was the irresistible Lovelace of -his time, and it was deemed an honour, an honour to which Madame du -Châtelet among so many others has a title, to have yielded to his -fascination. A long and profoundly unedifying chronicle might be drawn -up of the memorable gallantries of that time, and for our purpose it -might fitly close <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">149</a></span>with the amour with Saint Lambert that led to Madame -du Châtelet’s death. Of course, these countless gallantries in the most -licentious persons of the day, such as Richelieu or Saxe, were neither -more nor less than an outbreak of sheer dissoluteness, such as took -place among English people of quality in the time of the Restoration. -The idle and luxurious, whose imagination is uncontrolled by the -discipline of labour and purpose, and to whom the indulgence of their -own inclinations is the first and single law of life, are always ready -to profit by any relaxation of restraint, which the moral conditions of -the moment may permit.</p> - -<p>The peculiarity of the licence of France in the middle of the eighteenth -century is, that it was looked upon with complacency by the great -intellectual leaders of opinion. It took its place in the progressive -formula. What austerity was to other forward movements, licence was to -this. It is not difficult to perceive how so extraordinary a -circumstance came to pass. Chastity was the supreme virtue in the eyes -of the church, the mystic key to Christian holiness. Continence was one -of the most sacred of the pretensions by which the organised preachers -of superstition claimed the reverence of men and women. It was -identified, therefore, in a particular manner with that Infamous, -against which the main assault of the time was directed. So men -contended, more or less expressly, first, that continence was no -commanding chief among virtues, then that it was a very superficial and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">150</a></span> -easily practised virtue, finally that it was no virtue at all, but if -sometimes a convenience, generally an impediment to free human -happiness. These disastrous sophisms show the peril of having morality -made an appendage of a set of theological mysteries, because the -mysteries are sure in time to be dragged into the open air of reason, -and moral truth crumbles away with the false dogmas with which it had -got mixed.</p> - -<p>‘If,’ says Condorcet, ‘we may treat as useful the design to make -superstition ridiculous in the eyes of men given to pleasures, and -destined, by the very want of self-control which makes pleasures -attractive to them, to become one day the unfortunate victims or the -mischievous instruments of that vile tyrant of humanity; if the -affectation of austerity in manners, if the excessive value attached to -purity, only serves the hypocrites who by putting on the easy mask of -chastity can dispense with all virtues, and cover with a sacred veil the -vices most pernicious to society, hardness of heart and intolerance; if -by accustoming men to treat as so many crimes faults from which -honourable and conscientious persons are not exempt, we extend over the -purest souls the power of that dangerous caste, which to rule and -disturb the earth, has constituted itself exclusively the interpreter of -heavenly justice;—then we shall see in the author of the Pucelle no -more than a foe to hypocrisy and superstition.’<a name="FNanchor_125" id="FNanchor_125"></a><a href="#Footnote_125" class="fnanchor">125</a> <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">151</a></span></p> - -<p>It helps us to realise the infinite vileness of a system, like that of -the Church in the last century, which could engender in men of essential -nobleness of character like Condorcet, an antipathy so violent as to -shut the eyes of their understanding to the radical sophistry of such -pleading as this. Let one reflection out of many, serve to crush the -whole of it. The key to effective life is unity of life, and unity of -life means as much as anything else the unity of our human relations. -Our identity does by no means consist in a historic continuity of -tissues, but in an organic moral coherency of relation. It is this, -which alone, if we consider the passing shortness of our days, makes -life a whole, instead of a parcel of thrums bound together by an -accident. Is not every incentive and every concession to vagrant -appetite a force that enwraps a man in gratification of self, and severs -him from duty to others, and so a force of dissolution and dispersion? -It might be necessary to pull down the Church, but the worst church that -has ever prostituted the name and the idea of religion cannot be so -disastrous to society, as a gospel that systematically relaxes -self-control as being an unmeaning curtailment of happiness. The -apologists for the Pucelle exhibit the doctrine of individualism in one -of its worst issues. ‘Your proof that this is really the best of all -possible worlds is excellent,’ says Candide for his famous last word, -‘but we must cultivate our garden.’ The same principle of exclusive -self-regard, applied to the gratification of sense, passed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">152</a></span> for a -satisfactory defence of libertinage. In the first form it destroys a -state, in the second it destroys the family.</p> - -<p>It is easier to account for Voltaire’s contempt for the mediæval -superstition about purity, than his want of respect for a deliverer of -France. The explanation lies in the conviction which had such power in -Voltaire’s own mind and with which he impregnated to such a degree the -minds of others, that the action of illiterate and unpolished times can -have no life in it. His view of progress was a progress of art and -knowledge, and heroic action which was dumb, or which was not expressed -in terms of intellect, was to the eighteenth century, and to Voltaire at -least as much as to any other of its leaders, mere barbaric energy. In -the order of taste, for instance, he can find only words of cool and -limited praise for Homer, while for the polish and elegance of Virgil -his admiration is supreme. The first was the bard of a rude time, while -round the second cluster all the associations of a refined and lettered -age. A self-devotion that was only articulate in the jargon of mystery -and hallucination, and that was surrounded with rude and irrational -circumstance, with ignorance, brutality, visions, miracle, was encircled -by no halo in the eyes of a poet who found no nobleness where he did not -find a definite intelligence, and who rested all his hopes and interests -on the long distance set by time and civilisation between ourselves and -such conditions and associations as belong to the name of Joan of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">153</a></span> Arc. -The foremost men of the eighteenth century despised Joan of Arc, -whenever they had occasion to think of her, for the same reason which -made them despise Gothic architecture. ‘When,’ says Voltaire in one -place, ‘the arts began to revive, they revived as Goths and Vandals; -what unhappily remains to us of the architecture and sculpture of these -times is a fantastic compound of rudeness and filigree.’<a name="FNanchor_126" id="FNanchor_126"></a><a href="#Footnote_126" class="fnanchor">126</a> Just so, -even Turgot, while protesting how dear to every sensible heart were the -Gothic buildings destined to the use of the poor and the orphan, -complained of the outrage done by their rude architecture to the -delicacy of our sight.<a name="FNanchor_127" id="FNanchor_127"></a><a href="#Footnote_127" class="fnanchor">127</a> Characters like Joan of Arc ranked in the -same rude and fantastic order, and respect for them meant that respect -for the middle age which was treason to the new time. Men despised her, -just as they despised the majesty and beauty of the great church at -Rheims where she brought her work to a climax, or the lofty grace and -symmetry of the church of St. Ouen, within sight of which her life came -to its terrible end.</p> - -<p>Henry the Fourth was a hero with Voltaire, for no better reason than -that he was the first great tolerant, the earliest historic indifferent. -The Henriade is only important because it helped to popularise the type -of its hero’s character, and so to promote the rapidly-growing tendency -in public opinion towards a still wider version of the policy of the -Edict of Nantes. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">154</a></span>The reign of Lewis XIV. had thrown all previous -monarchs into obscurity, and the French king who showed a warmer and -more generous interest in the happiness of his subjects than any they -ever had, was forgotten, until Voltaire brought him into fame. It was -just, however, because Henry’s exploits were so glorious, and at the -same time so near in point of time, that he made an indifferent hero for -an epic poem. ‘He should never choose for an epic poem history,’ said -Hume very truly, ‘the truth of which is well known; for no fiction can -come up to the interest of the actual story and incidents of the -singular life of Henry IV.’<a name="FNanchor_128" id="FNanchor_128"></a><a href="#Footnote_128" class="fnanchor">128</a> These general considerations, however, -as to the propriety of the subject are hardly worth entering upon. How -could any true epic come out of that age, or find fountains in that -critical, realistic, and polemical soul? To fuse a long narrative of -heroic adventure in animated, picturesque, above all, in sincere verse, -is an achievement reserved for men with a steadier glow, a firmer, -simpler, more exuberant and more natural poetic feeling, than was -possible in that time of mean shifts, purposeless public action, and -pitiful sacrifice of private self-respect. Virgil was stirred by the -greatness of the newly-united empire, Tasso by the heroic march of -Christendom against pagan oppressors, Milton by the noble ardour of our -war for public rights. What long and glowing inspiration was possible to -a would-be courtier, thrust into the Bastille for wanting to fight a -noble who <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">155</a></span>had had him caned by lackeys? Besides, an epic, of all forms -of poetic composition, most demands concentrated depth, and Voltaire was -too widely curious and vivacious on the intellectual side to be capable -of this emotional concentration.</p> - -<p>But it is superfluous to give reasons why Voltaire’s epic should not be -a great poem. The Henriade itself is there, the most indisputable of -arguments. Of poems whose names are known out of literary histories and -academic catalogues, it is perhaps the least worth reading in any -language by any one but a professional student of letters. It is less -worth reading than Lucan’s Pharsalia, because it is more deliberately -artificial and gratuitously unspontaneous. Paradise Regained, which it -is too ready a fashion among us to pronounce dull, still contains at -least three pieces of superb and unsurpassed description, never fails in -grave majestic verse, and is at the worst free from all the dreary -apparatus of phantom and impersonation and mystic vision, which have -never jarred so profoundly with sense of poetic fitness, as when -associated with so political and matter-of-fact a hero as Henry the -Fourth. The reader has no illusion in such transactions as Saint Lewis -taking Henry into heaven and hell, Sleep hearing from her secret caves, -the Winds at sight of him falling into Silence, and Dreams, children of -Hope, flying to cover the hero with olive and laurel. How can we -overcome our repugnance to that strange admixture of real and unreal -matter which presents us with a highly-coloured<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">156</a></span> picture of the Temple of -Love, where in the forecourt sits Joy, with Mystery, Desire, -Complaisance, on the soft turf by her side, while in the inner sanctuary -haunt Jealousy, Suspicion, Malice, Fury; while the next canto describes</p> - -<div class="poem"> -<div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">L’église toujours une et partout étendue,</span> -<span class="i0">Libre, mais sous un chef, adorant en tout lieu,</span> -<span class="i0">Dans le bonheur des saints, la grandeur de son Dieu.</span> -<span class="i0">Le Christ, de nos péches victime renaissante,</span> -<span class="i0">De ses élus chéris nourriture vivante,</span> -<span class="i0">Descend sur les autels à ses yeux éperdus,</span> -<span class="i0">Et lui découvre un Dieu sous un pain qui n’est plus.<a name="FNanchor_129" id="FNanchor_129"></a><a href="#Footnote_129" class="fnanchor">129</a></span> -</div></div> - -<p>Voltaire congratulated himself in his preface that he had come -sufficiently near theological exactitude, and to this qualification, -which is so new for poetry, the critic may add elegance and flow; but -neither elegance nor theological exactitude reconciles us to an epic -that has neither a stroke of sublimity nor a touch of pathos, that -presents no grandeur in character, and no hurrying force and movement in -action. Frederick the Great used to speak of Voltaire as the French -Virgil, but then Frederick’s father had never permitted him to learn -Latin, and if he ever read Virgil at all, it must have been in some of -the jingling French translations. Even so, with the episodes of Dido and -of Nisus and Euryalus in our minds, we may wonder how so monstrous a -parallel could have occurred even to Frederick, who was no critic, -between two poets who have hardly a quality in common. If <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">157</a></span>the reader -wishes to realise how nearly insipid even Voltaire’s genius could become -when working in unsuitable forms, he may turn from any canto of the -Henriade to any page of Lucretius or the Paradise Lost. A French critic -quotes the famous reviewer’s sentence, concluding an analysis of some -epic, to the effect that on the whole, when all is summed up, the given -epic was ‘one of the best that had appeared in the course of the current -year;’ and insists that Voltaire’s piece will not at any rate perish in -the oblivion of poetic annuals like these. If not, the only reason lies -in that unfortunate tenderness for the bad work of famous men, which -makes of so much reading time worse than wasted. ‘The unwise,’ said -Candide, ‘value every word in an author of repute.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">158</a></span>’</p> - -<h2>CHAPTER IV.</h2> - -<h5>BERLIN.</h5> - -<p>The Marquise du Châtelet died under circumstances that were tragical -enough to herself, but which disgust the grave, while they give a -grotesque amusement to those who look with cynical eye upon what they -choose to treat as the great human comedy. In 1749 the friendship of -sixteen years thus came to its end, and Voltaire was left without the -tie that, in spite of too frequent breaking away from it, had brought -him much happiness and good help so far on the road. He was now free, -disastrously free as the event proved, to accept the invitations with -which he had so long been pressed to take up his residence with the king -who may dispute with him the claim to be held the most extraordinary man -of that century.</p> - -<p>Neither credit nor peace followed Voltaire in his own land. Lewis XV., -perhaps the most worthless of all the creatures that monarchy has ever -corrupted, always disliked him. The whole influence of the court and the -official world had been uniformly exerted against him. Many years went -by before he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">159</a></span> could even win a seat in the academy, a distinction, it -may be added, to which Diderot, hardly second to Voltaire in originality -and power, never attained to the end of his days. Madame de Pompadour, -the protectress of Quesnay, was Voltaire’s first friend at court. He -said of her long afterwards that in the bottom of her heart she belonged -to the philosophers, and did as much as she could to protect them.<a name="FNanchor_130" id="FNanchor_130"></a><a href="#Footnote_130" class="fnanchor">130</a> -She had known him in her obscurer and more reputable days, and she -charged him with the composition of a court-piece (1745), to celebrate -the marriage of the dauphin. The task was satisfactorily performed, and -honours which had been refused to the author of Zaïre, Alzire, and the -Henriade, were at once given to the writer of the Princess of Navarre, -which Voltaire himself ranked as a mere farce of the fair. He was made -gentleman of the chamber and historiographer of France. He disarmed the -devout by the Pope’s acceptance of Mahomet, and by a letter which he -wrote to Father Latour, head of his former school, protesting his -affection for religion and his esteem for the Jesuits. Condorcet most -righteously pronounces that, in spite of the art with which he handles -his expressions in this letter, it would undoubtedly have been far -better to give up the academy than to write it.<a name="FNanchor_131" id="FNanchor_131"></a><a href="#Footnote_131" class="fnanchor">131</a> It answered its -purpose, and Voltaire was admitted of the forty (May 1746). This -distinction, however, was far from securing for him the tranquillity -which he had hoped from it, and worse libels <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">160</a></span>tormented him than before. -The court sun ceased to shine. Madame de Pompadour gave to Crébillon a -preference which Voltaire resented with more agitation than any -preference of Madame Pompadour’s ought to have stirred in the breast of -a strong man.</p> - -<p>We cannot, however, too constantly remember not to ask from Voltaire the -heroic. He was far too sympathetic, too generously eager to please, too -susceptible to opinion. Of that stern and cold stuff which supports a -man in firm march and straight course, giving him the ample content of -self-respect, he probably had less than any one of equal prominence has -ever had. Instead of writing his tragedy as well as he knew how, and -then leaving it to its destiny, he wrote it as well as he knew how, and -then went in disguise to the café of the critics to find out what his -inferiors had to say about his work. Instead of composing his -court-piece, and taking such reward as offered, or disdaining such -ignoble tasks—and nobody knew better than he how ignoble they were—he -sought to catch some crumb of praise by fawningly asking of the vilest -of men, <i>Trajan est-il content?</i> Make what allowance we will for -difference of time and circumstance, such an attitude to such a man, -whether in Seneca towards Nero, or Voltaire towards Lewis XV., is a -baseness that we ought never to pardon and never to extenuate. Whether -or no there be in the human breast that natural religion of goodness and -virtue which was the sheet-anchor of Voltaire’s faith, there is at least -a something in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">161</a></span> hearts of good men which sets a fast gulf between -them and those who are to the very depths of their souls irredeemably -saturated with corruption.</p> - -<p>We may permit ourselves to hope that it was the consciousness of the -humiliation of such relations as these, rather than the fact that they -did not answer their own paltry purpose, that made Voltaire resolve a -second time to shake the dust of his own country from off his feet In -July 1750 he reached Potsdam, and was installed with sumptuous honour in -the court of Frederick the Great, twenty-four years since he had -installed himself with Mr. Falkener, the English merchant at Wandsworth. -Diderot was busy with the first volume of the Encyclopædia, and Rousseau -had just abandoned his second child in the hospital for foundlings. If -the visit to London did everything for Voltaire, the visit to Berlin did -nothing. There was no Prussia, as there was an England. To travel from -the dominion of George II. to the dominion of his famous nephew, was to -go from the full light of the eighteenth century back to the dimness of -the fifteenth. An academy of sciences, by the influence of -Sophie-Charlotte, and under the guidance of Leibnitz, had been founded -at Berlin at the beginning of the eighteenth century; but Frederick -William had an angry contempt for every kind of activity except drill -and the preaching of orthodox theology, and during his reign the academy -languished in obscurity.<a name="FNanchor_132" id="FNanchor_132"></a><a href="#Footnote_132" class="fnanchor">132</a> <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">162</a></span></p> - -<p>The accession of Frederick II. was the signal for its reconstitution, -and the revival of its activity under the direction of Maupertuis. To -the sciences of experiment and observation, which had been its original -objects, was added a department of speculative philosophy. The court was -materialist, sceptical, Voltairean, all at the same time; but the -academy as a body was theologically orthodox, and it was wholly and -purely metaphysical in its philosophy. We may partly understand the -distance at which Berlin was then behind Paris, when we read -D’Alembert’s just remonstrances with Frederick against giving as -subjects for prize-essays such metaphysical problems as ‘The search for -a primary and permanent force, at once substance and cause.’<a name="FNanchor_133" id="FNanchor_133"></a><a href="#Footnote_133" class="fnanchor">133</a></p> - -<p>Whatever activity existed outside of the court and the academy was -divided between the dialectic of Protestant scholasticism, and Wolf’s -exposition and development of Leibnitz. In literature proper there arose -with the accession of Frederick a small group of essentially secondary -critics, of whom Sulzer was the best, without the vivid and radiant -force of either Voltaire or Diderot, and without the deep inspiration -and invention of those who were to follow them, and to place Germany -finally on a level with England and France. Lessing, the founder of the -modern German literature, was at this time a youth of twenty-two, and by -a striking turn of chance was employed by Voltaire in putting into -German his pleadings in the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">163</a></span>infamous Hirschel case. It was not then -worth while for a stranger to learn the language in which Lessing had -not yet written, and Voltaire, who was a master of English and Italian, -never knew more German than was needed to curse a postilion.<a name="FNanchor_134" id="FNanchor_134"></a><a href="#Footnote_134" class="fnanchor">134</a> -Leibnitz wrote everything of importance in Latin or French, the Berlin -academy conducted its transactions first in Latin, next and for many -years to come in French, and one of its earliest presidents, a man of -special competence,<a name="FNanchor_135" id="FNanchor_135"></a><a href="#Footnote_135" class="fnanchor">135</a> pronounced German to be a noble but frightfully -barbarised tongue. The famous Wolf had done his best to make the tongue -of his country literate, but even his influence was unequal to the task.</p> - -<p>Society was in its foundations not removed from the mediæval. The -soldiers with whom Frederick won Zorndorf and Leuthen, like the Russians -and Austrians whom he defeated on those bloody days, were not more nor -less than serfs. Instead of philosophers like Newton and Locke, he had -to find the pride and safety of his country in swift rushing troopers -like Winterfield and Ziethen. A daring cavalry-charge in season was for -the moment more to Prussia than any theory why it is that an apple -falls, and a new method of drill much more urgent than a new origin for -ideas. She was concerned not with the speculative problem of the causes -why the earth keeps its place in the planetary system, but with the -practical problem how Prussia was to make her place in the system of -Europe. Prussia was then far more <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">164</a></span>behind France in all thought and all -arts, save the soldier’s, than England was in front of France.</p> - -<p>Voltaire had nothing to learn at Berlin, and may we not add, as the king -was a rooted Voltairean long before this, he had nothing to teach there? -The sternest barrack in Europe was not a field in which the apostle of -free and refined intelligence could sow seed with good hope of harvest. -Voltaire at this time, we have to recollect, was in the public mind only -a poet, and perhaps was regarded, if not altogether by Frederick, -certainly by those who surrounded him, as much in the same order of -being with Frederick’s flute, fitted by miracle with a greater number of -stops. ‘I don’t give you any news of literature,’ D’Alembert wrote from -Potsdam in 1763, ‘for I don’t know any, and you know how barren -literature is in this country, where no one except the king concerns -himself with it.’<a name="FNanchor_136" id="FNanchor_136"></a><a href="#Footnote_136" class="fnanchor">136</a> There is no particular disgrace to Berlin or its -king in this. Their task was very definite, and it was only a pleasant -error of Frederick’s rather fantastic youth to suppose that this task -lay in the direction of polite letters. The singer of the Henriade was -naturally of different quality and turn of mind from a hero who had at -least as hard an enterprise in his hand as that of Henry IV. Voltaire -and Frederick were the two leaders of the two chief movements then going -on, in the great work of the transformation of the old Europe into the -new. But the movements were in different matter, demanded vastly -different <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">165</a></span>methods, and, as is so often the case, the scope of each was -hardly visible to the pursuer of the other. Voltaire’s work was to -quicken the activity and proclaim the freedom of human intelligence, and -to destroy the supremacy of an old spiritual order. Frederick’s work was -to shake down the old political order. The sum of their efforts was the -definite commencement of that revolution in the thought and the -political conformation of the West, of which the momentous local -revolution in France must, if we take a sufficiently wide survey before -and after, be counted a secondary phase. The conditions of the order -which was established after the confusion of the fall of the Roman power -before the inroads of the barbarians, and which constituted the Europe -of the early and middle ages, are now tolerably well understood, and the -historic continuity or identity of that order is typified in two -institutions, which by the middle of the eighteenth century had reached -very different stages of decay, and possessed very different powers of -resisting attack. One was the German Empire, and the other was the Holy -Catholic Church. Frederick dealt a definite blow to the first, and -Voltaire did the same to the second.</p> - -<p>Those who read history and biography with a sturdy and childish -pre-conception that the critical achievements in the long course of the -world’s progress must of necessity have fallen to the lot of the salt of -the earth, will find it hard to associate the beginning of the great -overt side of modern movement with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">166</a></span> the two men who versified and -wrangled together for some two and a half years in the middle of the -eighteenth century at Berlin. It is hard to think of the old state, with -all its memories of simple enthusiasm and wild valour and rude -aspiration after some better order, finally disappearing into the chaos -for which it was more than ripe, under the impulse of an arch cynic. And -it is hard, too, to think that the civilising religion which was founded -by a Jew, and first seized by Jews, noblest and holiest of their race, -got its first and severest blow from one who was not above using a Jew -to cheat Christians out of their money. But the fact remains of the vast -work which this amazing pair had to do, and did.</p> - -<p>The character of the founder of the greatness of Prussia, if indeed we -may call founder one rather than another member of that active, clear, -and far-sighted line, can have no attraction for those who require as an -indispensable condition of fealty that their hero shall have either -purity, or sensibility, or generosity, or high honour, or manly respect -for human nature. Frederick’s rapidity and firmness of will, his -administrative capacity, his military talent, were marvellous and -admirable enough; but on the moral side of character, in his relations -to men and women, in his feeling for the unseen, in his ideas of truth -and beauty, he belonged to a type which is not altogether uncommon. In -his youth he had much of a sort of shallow sensibility, which more -sympathetic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">167</a></span> usage might possibly have established and to some small -extent even deepened, but which the curiously rough treatment that his -pacific tastes and frivolous predilections provoked his father to -inflict, turned in time into the most bitter and profound kind of -cynicism that the world knows. No cynic is so hard and insensible as the -man who has once had sensibility, perhaps because the consciousness that -he was in earlier days open to more generous impressions persuades him -that the fault of any change in his own view of things must needs lie in -the world’s villainy, which he has now happily for himself had time to -find out. Sensibility of a true sort, springing from natural fountains -of simple and unselfish feeling, can neither be corrupted nor dried up. -But at its best, Frederick’s sensibility was of the literary and -aesthetic kind, rather than the humane and social. It concerned taste -and expression, and had little root in the recognition as at first-hand -of those facts of experience, of beauty and tenderness and cruelty and -endurance, which are the natural objects that permanently quicken a -sensitive nature. In a word, Frederick’s was the conventional -sensibility of the French literature of the time; a harmless thing -enough in the poor souls that only poured themselves out in bad romance -and worse verse, but terrible when it helped to fill with contempt for -mankind an absolute monarch, with the most perfect military machine in -Europe at his command. Frederick is constantly spoken of as a man -typical of his century. In truth he was throughout<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">168</a></span> his life in -ostentatious opposition to his century on its most remarkable side. -There has never been any epoch whose foremost men had such faith and -hope in the virtues of humanity. There has never been any prominent man -who despised humanity so bitterly and unaffectedly as Frederick despised -it.</p> - -<p>We know what to think of a man who writes a touching and pathetic letter -condoling with a friend on the loss of his wife, and on the same day -makes an epigram on the dead woman<a name="FNanchor_137" id="FNanchor_137"></a><a href="#Footnote_137" class="fnanchor">137</a>; who never found so much -pleasure in a friendly act as when he could make it the means of hurting -the recipient; whose practical pleasantries were always spiteful and -sneering and cruel. As we read of his tricks on D’Argens or Pöllnitz, we -feel how right Voltaire was in borrowing a nickname for him from a -mischievous brute whom he kept in his garden. He presented D’Argens with -a house; when D’Argens went to take possession he found the walls -adorned with pictures of all the most indecent and humiliating episodes -of his own life. This was a type of Frederick’s delicacy towards some of -those whom he honoured with his friendship. It is true that, except -Voltaire and Maupertuis, most of the French philosophers whom Frederick -seduced into coming to live at Berlin were not too good for the -corporal’s horse-play of which they were the victims. But then we know, -further, what to think of a man whose self-respect fails to proscribe -gross and unworthy companions. He is either a lover of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">169</a></span>parasites, which -Frederick certainly was not, or else the most execrable cynic, the cynic -who delights in any folly or depravity that assures him how right he is -in despising ‘that damned race.’</p> - -<p>Frederick need not have summoned the least worthy French freethinkers, -men like D’Argens and La Mettrie and De Prades, in their own way as -little attractive in life and in doctrine as any monk or Geneva -preacher, to warrant him in thinking meanly of mankind. If any one wants -to know what manner of spirit this great temporal deliverer of Europe -was of, he may find what he seeks in the single episode of the -negotiations at Klein-Schnellendorf in 1741. There, although he had made -and was still bound by a solemn treaty of alliance with France, he -entered into secret engagements with the Hungarian Queen, to be veiled -by adroitly pretended hostilities. Even if, as an illustrious apologist -of the Prussian King is reduced to plead, this is in a certain fashion -defensible, on the ground that France and Austria were both playing with -cogged dice, and therefore the other dicer of the party was in -self-defence driven to show himself their superior in these excellent -artifices, there still seems a gratuitous infamy in hinting to the -Austrian general, as Frederick did, how he might assault with advantage -the French enemy, Frederick’s own ally at the moment.<a name="FNanchor_138" id="FNanchor_138"></a><a href="#Footnote_138" class="fnanchor">138</a> This was the -author of the plea for political morality, called the Anti-Machiavel, -whose publication Voltaire had superintended<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">170</a></span> the year before, and, for -that matter, had done his best to prevent. Still, as Frederick so -graciously said of his new guest and old friend: ‘He has all the tricks -of a monkey; but I shall make no sign, for I need him in my study of -French style. One may learn good things from a scoundrel: I want to know -his French; what is his morality to me?’ And so a royal statesman may -have the manners of the coarsest corporal, and the morality of the -grossest cynic, and still have both the eye to discern, and the hand to -control, the forces of a great forward movement.</p> - -<p>Frederick had the signal honour of accepting his position, and taking up -with an almost perfect fortitude the burden which it laid upon him. ‘We -are not masters of our own lot,’ he wrote to Voltaire, immediately after -his accession to the throne; ‘the whirlwind of circumstances carries us -away, and we must suffer ourselves to be carried away.’<a name="FNanchor_139" id="FNanchor_139"></a><a href="#Footnote_139" class="fnanchor">139</a> And what he -said in this hour of exaltation he did not deny nearly twenty years -later, when his fortunes seemed absolutely desperate. ‘If I had been -born a private person,’ he wrote to him in 1759, ‘I would give up -everything for love of peace; but a man is bound to take on the spirit -of his position.’<a name="FNanchor_140" id="FNanchor_140"></a><a href="#Footnote_140" class="fnanchor">140</a> ‘Philosophy teaches us to do our duty, to serve -our country faithfully at the price of our blood and our case, to -sacrifice for it our whole existence.’<a name="FNanchor_141" id="FNanchor_141"></a><a href="#Footnote_141" class="fnanchor">141</a> Men are also <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">171</a></span>called upon by -their country to abstain from sacrificing their existence, and if -Frederick’s sense of duty to his subjects had been as perfect as it was -exceptionally near being so, he would not have carried a phial of poison -round his neck.<a name="FNanchor_142" id="FNanchor_142"></a><a href="#Footnote_142" class="fnanchor">142</a> Still on the whole he devoted himself to his career -with a temper that was as entirely calculated for the overthrow of a -tottering system, as Voltaire’s own. It is difficult to tell whether -Frederick’s steady attention to letters and men of letters, and his -praiseworthy endeavours to make Berlin a true academic centre, were due -to a real and disinterested love of knowledge, and a sense of its worth -to the spirit of man, or still more to weak literary vanity, and a -futile idea of universal fame so far as his own productions went, and a -purely utilitarian purpose so far as his patronage of the national -academy was concerned. One thing is certain, that the philosophy which -he learnt from French masters, which Voltaire brought in his proper -person to Berlin, and to which Frederick to the end of his days was -always adding illustrative commentaries, never made any impression on -Germany. The teaching of Leibnitz and Wolf stood like a fortified wall -in the face of the French invasion, and whatever effective share French -speculation had upon Germany, was through the influence of Descartes -upon Leibnitz.</p> - -<p>The dissolution of the outer framework of the European state-system, for -which Frederick’s seizure <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">172</a></span>of Silesia was the first clear signal, -followed as it was by the indispensable suppression of the mischievous -independence, so called, of barbaric and feudal Poland, where bishops -and nobles held a people in the most oppressive bondage, can only -concern us here slightly, because it was for the time only indirectly -connected with the characteristic work of Voltaire’s life. But, though -indirect, the connection may be seen at our distance of time to have -been marked and unmistakable. The old order and principles of Europe -were to receive a new impress, and the decaying system of the middle age -to be replaced by a polity of revolution, which should finally change -the relations of nations, the types of European government, and the -ideas of spiritual control.</p> - -<p>In 1733 the war of the Polish succession between Austria and Russia on -the one hand, and France and Spain on the other, had given the first -great shock to the house of Austria, which was compelled to renounce the -pretensions and territory of the Empire in Italy, or nearly all of them, -in favour of the Spanish Bourbons, as well as to surrender Lorraine to -Stanislas, with reversion to the crown of France. We may notice in -passing that it was at Stanislas’ court of Lunéville that Voltaire and -the Marquise du Châtelet passed their last days together. The wars of -the Polish succession were remarkable for another circumstance. They -were the first occasion of the decisive interference of Russia in -Western affairs, an only less important disturbance of Europe than the -first great interference<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">173</a></span> of Prussia a few years later. The falling to -pieces of the old Europe was as inevitable as, more than twelve -centuries before, had been the dissolution of that yet older Europe -whose heart had been not Vienna but Rome. Russia and Prussia were not -the only novel elements. There was a third from over the sea, the -American colonies of France and England.</p> - -<p>Roman Europe had been a vast imperial state, with slavery for a base. -Then, after the feudal organisation had run its course, there was a long -and chaotic transition of dynastic and territorial wars, frightfully -wasteful of humanity and worse than unfruitful to progress. In vain do -historians, intent on vindicating the foregone conclusions of the -optimism which a distorted notion about final causes demands or -engenders in them, try to show these hateful contests as parts of a -harmonious scheme of things, in which many diverse forces move in a -mysterious way to a common and happy end. As if any good use, for -instance, were served by the transfer, for one of the chief results of -the war of the Polish succession, of the Italian provinces of the Empire -of the Spanish Bourbons. As if any good or permanent use were served by -the wars which ended in the Peace of Utrecht, when victorious England -conceded, and with much wisdom conceded, the precise point which she had -for so many years been disputing. From the Peace of Westphalia to the -beginning of the Seven Years’ War, it is not too much to say that there -was a century of purely artificial strife on the continent of Europe, -of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">174</a></span> wars as factious, as merely personal, as unmeaning, as the civil war -of the Fronde was all of these things. In speaking roundly of this -period, we leave out of account the first Silesian War, because the -issue between Prussia and Austria was not decisively fought out until -the final death-struggle from 1756 to 1763. It was the entry of -Frederick the Great upon the scene, that instantly raised international -relations into the region of real matter and changed a strife of -dynasties, houses, persons, into a vital competition between old forces -and principles and new. The aimless and bloody commotions which had -raged over Europe, and ground men’s lives to dust in the red mill of -battle, came for a time to an end, and their place was taken by a -tremendous conflict, on whose issue hung not merely the triumph of a -dynasty, but the question of the type to which future civilisation was -to conform.</p> - -<p>In the preliminary war which followed immediately upon the death of -Charles VI. in 1740, and which had its beginning in Frederick’s invasion -of Silesia, circumstances partially marched in the usual tradition, with -France and Austria playing opposite sides in an accustomed game. Before -the opening of the Seven Years’ War the cardinal change of policy and -alliances had taken place. We are not concerned with the court intrigues -that brought the change about, with the intricate manœuvres of the -Jesuits, or the wounded vanity of Bernis, whose verses Frederick laughed -at, or the pique of Pompadour, whom Frederick declined<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">175</a></span> to count an -acquaintance. When conflicting forces of tidal magnitude are at work, as -they were in the middle of the last century, the play of mere personal -aims and ambitions is necessarily of secondary importance; because we -may always count upon there being at least one great power that clearly -discerns its own vital interest, and is sure therefore to press with -steady energy in its own special direction. That power was Austria. One -force of this kind is enough to secure a universal adjustment of all the -others in their natural places.</p> - -<p>The situation was apparently very complex. There were in the middle of -the century two great pairs of opposed interests, the interests of -France and England on the ocean and in America, and the interests of -Austria and Prussia in Central Europe. The contest was in each of the -two cases much more than a superficial affair of dynasties or division -of territory, to meet the requirements of the metaphysical diplomacy of -the balance of power. It was a re-opening in far vaster proportions of -those profound issues of new religion and old which had only been dammed -up, and not permanently settled, by the great Peace of Westphalia in -1648. In vaster proportions, not merely because the new struggle between -the Catholic and Protestant powers extended into the new world, but -because the forces contained in these two creeds had been widened and -developed, and a multitude of indirect consequences, entirely apart from -theology and church discipline, depended upon the triumph of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">176</a></span> Great -Britain and Prussia. The Governments of France and Austria represented -the feudal and military idea, not in the strength of that idea while it -was still alive, but in the narrow and oppressive form of its decay. No -social growth was possible under its shadow, for one of its essential -conditions was discouragement, active and passive, of commercial -industry, the main pathway then open to an advancing people. Again, both -France and Austria represented the old type of monarchy, as -distinguished alike from the aristocratic oligarchy of England, and the -new type of monarchy which Prussia introduced into Europe, frugal, -encouraging industry, active in supervision, indefatigable in improving -the laws. Let us not omit above all things the splendid religious -toleration, of which Prussia set so extraordinarily early an example to -Europe. The Protestants whom episcopal tyranny drove from Salzburg found -warm hospitality among their northern brethren. While the professors of -the reformed faith were denied civil status in France, and subjected to -persecution of a mediæval bloodiness, one Christian was counted exactly -as another in Prussia. While England was revelling in the infliction of -atrocious penal laws on her Catholic citizens, Prussia extended even to -the abhorred Jesuit the shelter which was denied him in Spain and at -Rome. The transfer of territory from Austria to Prussia meant the -extension of toleration in that territory. Silesia, for instance, no -sooner became Prussian, than the University of Breslau, whose advantages -had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">177</a></span> hitherto been rigidly confined to Catholics, was at once -compulsorily opened to Protestants and Catholics alike. In criticising -Frederick’s despotism let us recognise how much enlightenment, how much -of what is truly modern, was to be found in the manner in which this -despotic power was exercised, long before the same enlightened -principles were accepted in other countries.</p> - -<p>We cannot understand the issues of the Seven Years’ War, nor indeed of -the eighteenth century on any of its more important sides, without -tolerably distinct ideas about the ages before and behind it, about the -sixteenth century and the twentieth; without ideas as to the conditions -of the break-up of the Catholic and the feudal organisation, and, next, -as to the attitude proper to be assumed, and the methods to be followed, -in dealing with the more or less anarchic circumstances in which their -break-up and its sequels leave us. There are two ways of regarding these -questions. You may say, as Comte says, that the ultimate type of -society, perfected on a basis of positive knowledge, will in the -essential features of its constitution correspond to the ancient or -mediæval constitution which it replaces; because that gave the fullest -possible satisfaction to those elements of human nature which are -deepest and permanent, and to those social needs which must always press -upon us; that anything which either seriously retards the dissolution of -the old, or draws men aside from the road which leads on to the same -organisation transformed, must therefore be an impediment in the way of -the new<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">178</a></span> society, and a peril to civilisation. Hence, they say, the -mischievousness of Protestantism, Voltairism, and all the minor -manifestations of the critical spirit, because they inspire their -followers with a contempt, as mistaken towards the past as it is -pernicious to the future, for those fundamental principles of social -stability and individual happiness, to which alone we have to look for -the establishment of a better order; because they give to the unguided -individual judgment the force and authority that can only come with -safety from organisation and tradition, that is from a certain definite -form of shaping and expressing the common judgment; and because, -moreover, they tend directly and indirectly to detach effort from social -aims and the promotion of the common weal, to the attainment of mean and -unwholesome individual ambitions. From this point of view, we should -have to regard the acquisition of colonies, for instance, which was one -of the chief objects of Lord Chatham’s policy, as the mischievous -transfer, in the interests of commercial cupidity, of an activity, -hopefulness, and power, that ought to have been devoted to the solution -of the growing social difficulties of Europe; and that ought to have -been bent from a profoundly mean egotism, in the nation and the traders -whose interest was the key of the policy, into a generous feeling for -the public order.</p> - -<p>There is, however, another and a very different way of looking at all -this. You cannot be sure, it is said, that the method of social advance -is to be a return upon the old framework and the old lines; to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">179</a></span> be sure -of this implies an impatient confidence that social forms have all been -exhausted, or else an unsupported assumption that the present transitory -form is so full of danger to the stability of civilisation, as to make -the acceptance of almost any firm order better than the prolonged -endurance of a social state which, on that theory, ought hardly to be -accounted much better than the social state of Bedouin Arabs. Is it not -far better and safer to refrain from committing ourselves to a given -type of social reconstruction, and to work forward patiently upon the -only principle that can be received with entire assurance; namely, that -faithful cultivation of the intelligence, and open-minded investigation -of all that the intelligence may present to us, is the only certain -method of not missing the surest and quickest road to the manifold -improvements of which the fundamental qualities of human nature, as well -as the relations of man in society, are susceptible? There is no good -ground for supposing that this steadfast regard to the fruitfulness and -variety of the individual intelligence tends specially to lead to the -concentration of energy upon individual aims. For what lesson does free -intelligence teach us more constantly or more impressively than that man -standing alone is impotent, that every unsocial act or sentiment tends -to overthrow that collectivity of effort to which we owe all, and, most -important of all, that this collectivity is most effectively secured by -the just culture of the impulses and affections? No degree nor kind of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">180</a></span> -organisation could lead us further than this, and ought it not to be the -prime object and chief hope of those who think about society, that this -truth shall stand rooted in every one’s own reason? If it does not so -stand, you have no security for your spiritual organisation, and if it -does, then you have no necessity. It is to the spread of this -conviction, by the ever-pressing consciousness of urgent social -circumstances, that we must look to suffuse industrial and egotistic -energy with a truly moral and social sentiment.</p> - -<p>This is the point of view from which we may justly regard the violent -change that was the result of the Seven Years’ War, as a truly -progressive step. We cannot be as reasonably sure that the old -conditions of men’s relations in society are in whatever new shape -destined to return, as we are sure that it was a good thing to prevent a -feudal and jesuitical government like Austria from retaining a purely -obstructive power in Europe, and a jesuitical government like France -from establishing the same obstructive kind of power in America. The -advantages of the final acquisition of America by Protestantism, and the -decisive consolidation of Prussia, were not without alloy. History does -not present us with these clean balances. It is not at all difficult to -see the injurious elements in this victory of the northern powers, and -nobody would be less willing than the present writer to accept either -the Prussian polity of Frederick, or the commercial polity of England -and her western colonies, as offering final types of wholesome social -states<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">181</a></span> But the alternative was the triumph of a far worse polity than -either, the polity of the Society of Jesus.</p> - -<p>Even those who claim our respect for the Jesuits as having in the -beginning of their course served the very useful purpose of honestly -administering that spiritual power which had fallen from the hands of -the Popes, who had mischievously entered the ranks and followed the -methods of temporal princes, do not deny that within a couple of -generations they became a dangerous obstacle to the continuity of -European progress. Indeed, it is clear that they grew into the very -worst element that has ever appeared in the whole course of European -history, because their influence rested on a systematic compromise with -moral corruption. They had barely seized the spiritual power in the -Catholic countries when it was perceived that as an engine of moral -control their supposed power was no power at all; and that the only -condition on which they could retain the honour and the political -authority which were needful to them was that they should connive at -moral depravity. They had the education of the country in their hands, -and from the confessor’s closet they pulled the wires which moved -courts. There was no counter-force, for the mass of the people was dumb, -ignorant, and fettered. Say what we will of the need for a spiritual -power, the influence of the Jesuits by the middle of the eighteenth -century was cutting off the very root of civilisation. This was the -veritably Infamous. And this was the influence which the alliance of -England and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">182</a></span> Prussia, a thing accidental enough to all appearance, -successfully and decisively checked, because the triumph of the two -northern powers was naturally the means of discrediting the Jesuit -intrigues in the court of Versailles and elsewhere, and stripping them -of those associations of political and material success, which had -hitherto stood to them in the stead of true spiritual credit.</p> - -<p>The peace of 1763 had important territorial consequences. By the treaty -of Paris between France, England, and Spain, Great Britain was assured -of her possessions on the other side of the Atlantic. By the treaty of -Hubertsburg between Austria, Prussia, and Saxony, Prussia was assured of -her position as an independent power in Europe. These things were much. -But the decisive repulse of the great Jesuit organisation was yet more. -It was the most important side of the same facts. The immediate -occasions of this repulse varied in different countries, and had their -origin in different sets of superficial circumstance, but the debility -of the courts of Austria and France was the only condition on which such -occasions could be seized. The very next year, after the treaties of -Paris and Hubertsburg, the Society of Jesus was suppressed in France, -and its property confiscated. Three years later it was expelled from -Spain. Within ten years from the peace of 1763 it was abolished by the -virtuous Clement XIV. In Canada, where the order had been extremely -powerful,<a name="FNanchor_143" id="FNanchor_143"></a><a href="#Footnote_143" class="fnanchor">143</a> their authority vanished, and with it the probability of -establishing <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">183</a></span>in the northern half of the new world those ideas of -political absolutism and theological casuistry which were undoing the -old. Whatever the accidents which hurried the catastrophe, there were -two general causes which really produced it, the revolution in ideas, -and the revolution in the seat of material power. If this be a true -description of the crisis, we can see sufficiently plainly to what an -extent Voltaire and Frederick, while they appeared to themselves to be -fellow-workers only in the culture of the muses, were in fact -unconsciously co-operating in a far mightier task. When the war was -drawing to an end, and Frederick was likely to escape from the -calamities which had so nearly overwhelmed him and his kingdom in -irretrievable ruin, we find Voltaire writing to D’Alembert thus: ‘As for -Luc’ (the nickname borrowed for the king of Prussia from an ape with a -trick of biting), ‘though I ought to be full of resentment against him, -yet I confess to you that in my quality of thinking creature and -Frenchman, I am heartily content that a certain most devout house has -not swallowed Germany up, and that the Jesuits don’t confess at Berlin. -Superstition is monstrously powerful towards the Danube.’ To which his -correspondent replied that he quite agreed that the triumph of Frederick -was a blessing for France and for philosophy. ‘These Austrians are -insolent capucins, whom I would fain see annihilated with the -superstition they protect.’<a name="FNanchor_144" id="FNanchor_144"></a><a href="#Footnote_144" class="fnanchor">144</a> Here was precisely the issue. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">184</a></span></p> - -<p>It would be a great mistake to suppose that Frederick consciously and -formally recognised the ultimate ends of his policy. Such deliberate -marking out of the final destination of their work, imputed to rulers, -churchmen, poets, is mostly a figment invented by philosophers. -Frederick thought nothing at all about the conformation of the European -societies in the twentieth century. It was enough for him to make a -strong and independent Prussia, without any far-reaching vision, or -indeed without any vision at all, of the effect which a strong and -independent Prussia would finally have upon the readjustment of ideas -and social forces in western civilisation. We are led to a false notion -of history, and of all the conditions of political action and the -development of nations, by attributing to statesmen deep and -far-reaching sight of consequences, which only completed knowledge and -some ingenuity enable those who live after to fit into a harmonious -scheme. ‘Fate, for whose wisdom I entertain all imaginable reverence, -often finds in chance, by which it works, an instrument not over -manageable.’<a name="FNanchor_145" id="FNanchor_145"></a><a href="#Footnote_145" class="fnanchor">145</a> And the great ruler, knowing this, is content to -abstain from playing fate’s part, feeling his way slowly to the next -step. His compass is only true for a very short distance, and his chart -has marks for no long course. To make Prussia strong was the aim of -Frederick’s life. Hence, although the real destiny of his policy was to -destroy the house of Austria, he did not scruple in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">185</a></span>1741 to offer to -assist Maria Theresa with his best help against all the other invaders -of the famous Pragmatic Sanction, which they had solemnly sworn to -uphold. Afterwards, and before the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War, he -sought the alliance of France, but happily for Europe, not until after -Kaunitz and Maria Theresa had already secured that blind and misguided -power, thus driving him into an alliance with Great Britain. And so -chance did the work of fate after all.</p> - -<p>It may be said that such a view of the operation of the great forces of -the world is destructive of all especial respect and gratitude towards -the eminent men, of whom chance and fate have made mere instruments. -What becomes of hero-worship, if your hero after all only half knew -whither he sought to go, and if those achievements which have done such -powerful service were not consciously directed towards the serviceable -end? We can only answer that it is not the office of history to purvey -heroes, nor always to join appreciation of a set of complex effects with -veneration for this or that performer. For this veneration, if it is to -be an intelligent mood, implies insight into the inmost privacy of aim -and motive, and this insight, in the case of those whom circumstance -raises on a towering pedestal, we can hardly ever count with assurance -on finding faithful and authentic. History is perhaps not less -interesting for not being distorted into a new hagiographa.</p> - -<p>It is equally unwarranted to put into <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">186</a></span>Frederick’s mind conscious ideas -as to the type of monarchy proper for Europe in the epoch of passage -from old systems. Once more, he thought of his own country, and his own -country only, in all those wise measures of internal government which -have been so unjustly and so childishly thrust by historians into the -second place behind his exploits as a soldier, as if the civil activity -of the period between 1763, when peace was made, and 1786, when he died, -was not fully as remarkable in itself, and fully as momentous in its -results, as the military activity of the period between 1763 and 1740. -There is in men of the highest governing capacity, like Richelieu, or -Cromwell, or Frederick, an instinct for good order and regular -administration. They insist upon it for its own sake, independently of -its effects either on the happiness of subjects, or on the fundamental -policy and march of things. If Frederick had acceded to the supreme -power in a highly civilised country, he would have been equally bent on -imposing his own will and forcing the administration into the exact -grooves prescribed by himself, and the result would have been as -pestilent there as it was beneficial in a backward and semi-barbarous -country such as Prussia was in his time. This good internal ordering was -no more than a part of the same simple design which shaped his external -policy. He had to make a nation, and its material independence in the -face of Austria and Russia was not more a part of this process than -giving it the great elements of internal well-being, equal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">187</a></span> laws, just -administration, financial thrift, and stimulus and encouragement to -industry. Such an achievement as the restoration of the germs of order -and prosperity, which Frederick so rapidly brought about after the -appalling ruin that seven years of disastrous war had effected, is -unmatched in the history of human government. Well might he pride -himself, as we know that he did, on replacing this social chaos by -order, more than on Eossbach or Leuthen. Above all, he never forgot the -truth which every statesman ought to have burning in letters of fire -before his eyes; <i>I am the procurator of the poor</i>.</p> - -<p>It commits us to no general theory of government to recognise the merits -of Frederick’s internal administration. They constitute a special case, -to be judged by its own conditions. We may safely go so far as to say -that in whatever degree the social state of a nation calls for active -government, whether, as the people of the American Union boast of -themselves, they need no government, or whether, as is the case in Great -Britain, the wretched lives of the poor beneath the combined cupidity -and heartless want of thought of the rich cry aloud for justice, in this -degree it is good that the statesmen called to govern should be in that -capacity of Frederick’s type, conceding all freedom to thought, but -energetic in the use of power as trustees for the whole nation against -special classes. To meet completely the demands of their office they -should have, what Frederick neither had nor could under the -circumstances of his advent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">188</a></span> and the time be expected to have, a firm -conviction that the highest ultimate end of all kingship is to enable -nations to dispense with that organ of national life, and to fit them -for a spontaneous initiative and free control in the conduct of their -own affairs.</p> - -<p>Let us be careful to remember that, if Frederick was a great ruler in -the positive sense, he sprang from the critical school. The traditions -of his house were strictly Protestant, his tutors were Calvinistic -refugees, and his personal predilections had from his earliest youth -been enthusiastically Voltairean. May we not count it one of the claims -of the critical philosophy to a place among the leading progressive -influences in western history, that it tended to produce statesmen of -this positive type? I do not know of any period of corresponding length -that can produce such a group of active, wise, and truly positive -statesmen as existed in Europe between 1760 and 1780. Besides Frederick, -we have Turgot in France, Pombal in Portugal, Charles III and D’Aranda -in Spain. If Charles III was faithful to the old creed, the three -greatest, at any rate, of these extraordinary men drew inspiration from -the centre of the critical school. D’Aranda had mixed much with the -Voltairean circle while in Paris. Pombal, in spite of the taint of some -cruelty, in so many respects one of the most powerful and resolute -ministers that has ever held office in Europe, had been for some time in -England, and was a warm admirer of Voltaire, whose works he caused to be -translated into Portuguese. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">189</a></span> famous school of Italian publicists, -whose speculations bore such admirable fruit in the humane legislation -of Leopold of Tuscany, and had so large a share in that code with which -the name of the ever hateful Bonaparte has become fraudulently -associated, these excellent thinkers found their oracles in that -critical philosophy, of which we are so unjustly bidden to think only in -connection with shallow and reckless destruction. The application of -reason to the amelioration of the social condition was the device of the -great rulers of this time, and the father and inspirer of this device -was that Voltaire who is habitually presented to us a mere mocker.</p> - -<p>Psychologues like Sulzer might declare that the scourge of right -thinking was to be found in ‘those philosophers who, more used to -sallies of wit than to deep reasoning, assume that they have overthrown -by a single smart trope truths only to be known by combining a multitude -of observations, so delicate and difficult that we cannot grasp them -without the aid of the firmest attention.’<a name="FNanchor_146" id="FNanchor_146"></a><a href="#Footnote_146" class="fnanchor">146</a> How many of these -so-called truths were anything but sophistical propositions, the -products of intellectual ingenuity run riot, without the smallest -bearing either on positive science or social well-being? And is it not -rather an abuse of men’s willingness to take the profundity of -metaphysics on trust, that any one who has formulated a metaphysical -proposition, with due technicality of sounding words, has a claim to -arrest the serious <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">190</a></span>attention of every busy passer-by, and to throw on -this innocent and laudable person the burden of disproof? If Duns Scotus -or St. Thomas Aquinas had risen from the dead, Voltaire would very -properly have declined a bout of school dialectic with those famous -shades, because he was living in the century of the Encyclopædia, when -the exploration of things and the improvement of institutions had taken -the place of subtle manipulation of unverified words, important as that -process had once been in the intellectual development of Europe. He was -equally wise in declining to throw more than a trope or sprightly sally -in the direction of people who dealt only in the multiplication of -metaphysical abracadabras. It was his task to fix the eyes of men upon -action. In the sight of Lutheran or Wolfian conjurors with words this -was egregious shallowness. Strangely enough they thought it the climax -of philosophic profundity to reconcile their natural spiritualism with -the supernatural spiritualism of the scriptures, and rationalistic -theism with the historic theism of revelation.<a name="FNanchor_147" id="FNanchor_147"></a><a href="#Footnote_147" class="fnanchor">147</a> Voltaire repudiated -the supernatural and pseudo-historic half of this hybrid combination, -and in doing so he showed a far profounder logic than the cloudiest and -most sonorous of his theologico-metaphysical critics. We may call him -negative and destructive on this account if we please, yet surely the -abnegation of barren and inconsistent speculation, and of fruitless -effort to seize a vain abstract universality, was a very <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">191</a></span>meritorious -trait in a man who did not stop here, but by every means, by poetry, by -history, by biography, and by the manifestation of all his vivid -personal interests, drew every one who was within the sphere of his -attraction to the consideration of social action as the first fact for -the firm attention of the leaders of mankind.</p> - -<p>It may be said that even from this side Voltaire was destructive only, -and undoubtedly, owing to the circumstances of the time, the destructive -side seemed to predominate in his social influence. To say this, -however, is not to bring an end to the matter. The truth is that no -negative thinking can stop at the negative point. To teach men to hate -superstition and injustice is a sure, if an indirect, way of teaching -them to seek after their opposites. Voltaire could only shake -obscurantist institutions by appealing to man’s love of light, and the -love of light, once stirred, leads far. He appealed to reason, and it -was reason in Frederick and the others, which had quickened and -strengthened the love of good order, that produced the striking -reforming spirit which moved through the eighteenth century, until the -reaction against French revolutionary violence arrested its progress. It -is one of the most difficult questions in all history to determine -whether the change from the old order to the new has been damaged or -advanced by that most memorable arrest of the work of social renovation -in the hands of sovereign and traditional governments, administered by -wise statesmen with due <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">192</a></span>regard to traditional spirit; and how far the -passionate efforts of those classes, whose only tradition is a tradition -of squalor and despair, have driven the possessors of superior material -power back into obstructive trepidation. The question is more than -difficult, it is in our generation insoluble, because the movement is -wholly incomplete. But whether the French outbreak from 1789 to 1794 may -prove to have been the starting-point of a new society, or only to have -been a detrimental interruption and parent of interruptions to stable -movement forwards, we have in either case to admit that there was a most -vigorous attempt made in all the chief countries in Europe, between the -middle of the century and the fall of the French monarchy, to improve -government and to perfect administration; that Frederick of Prussia was -the author of the most permanently successful of these endeavours; and -that Frederick learnt to break loose from dark usage, to prefer equity -of administration, to abandon religious superstition, and to insist on -tolerance, from the only effective moral and intellectual masters he -ever had, first the French Calvinists, and then the French critical -school, with Voltaire for chief. It is true, as we shall presently see, -that an important change in the spirit of French writers was marked by -the Encyclopædia, which was so much besides being critical. But then -this famous work only commenced in the year when Voltaire reached -Berlin, and Frederick’s character had received its final shape long -before that time.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">193</a></span></p> - -<p>With the exception of Voltaire, D’Alembert was the only really eminent -Frenchman whose work ever struck Frederick, and we are even conscious, -in comparing his letters to these two eminent men, of a certain -seriousness and deferential respect towards the later friend, which -never marked his relations with Voltaire after the early days of -youthful enthusiasm. Frederick’s admiration for France, indeed, has been -somewhat overstated by French writers, and by those of our own country -who have taken their word for granted. ‘Your nation,’ Frederick once -wrote to Voltaire, ‘is the most inconsequent in all Europe. It abounds -in bright intelligence, but has no consistency in its ideas. This is how -it appears through all its history. There is really an indelible -character imprinted on it. The only exception in a long succession of -reigns is to be found in a few years of Lewis XIV. The reign of Henry -IV. was neither tranquil enough nor long enough for us to take that into -account. During the administration of Richelieu we observe some -consistency of design and some nerve in execution; but in truth they are -uncommonly short epochs of wisdom in so long a chronicle of madnesses. -Again, France has been able to produce men like Descartes or -Malebranche, but no Leibnitz, no Lockes, no Newtons. On the other hand, -for taste, you surpass all other nations, and I will surely range myself -under your standards in all that regards delicacy of discernment and the -judicious and scrupulous choice between real beauties and those<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">194</a></span> which -are only apparent. That is a great point in polite letters, but it is -not everything.’<a name="FNanchor_148" id="FNanchor_148"></a><a href="#Footnote_148" class="fnanchor">148</a> Frederick, however, could never endure the least -hint that he was not a perfect Frenchman in the order of polite letters. -The article on Prussia in the Encyclopædia was full of the most -flattering eulogies of his work as a soldier and an administrator, and -even contained handsome praise for his writings; but Diderot, the author -of this part of the article, delicately suggested that a year or two in -the Faubourg St. Honoré would perhaps have dispersed the few grains of -Berlin sand which hindered the perfect purity of note of that admirable -flute. Frederick, who had hitherto been an ardent reader of the -Encyclopædia, never opened another volume.</p> - -<p>We can understand Voltaire’s character without wading through the slough -of mean scandals which sprung up like gross fungi during his stay at -Berlin. Who need remember that Frederick spoke of his illustrious guest -as an orange of which, when one has squeezed the juice, one throws away -the skin? Or how Voltaire retorted by speaking of his illustrious host, -whose royal verses he had to correct, as a man sending his dirty linen -to him to wash? or, still worse, as a compound of Julius Caesar and the -abbé Cotin? Nor need we examine into stories, suspicious products of -Berlin malice, how Frederick stopped his guest’s supply of sugar and -chocolate, and how Voltaire put <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">195</a></span>his host’s candle-ends into his pocket. -It is enough to know that the king and the poet gradually lost their -illusions, and forgot that life was both too short and too valuable to -waste in vain efforts of making believe that an illusion is other than -it is. Voltaire took a childish delight in his gold key and his star, -and in supping as an intimate with a king who had won five battles. His -life was at once free and occupied, the two conditions of happy -existence. He worked diligently at his Siècle de Louis XIV., and -diverted himself with operas, comedies, and great entertainments among -affable queens, charming princesses, and handsome maids of honour. Yet -he could not forget the saying, which had been so faithfully carried to -him, of the orange-skin. He declared that he was like the man who fell -from the top of a high tower, and finding himself softly supported in -the air, cried out, <i>Good, if it only lasts.</i><a name="FNanchor_149" id="FNanchor_149"></a><a href="#Footnote_149" class="fnanchor">149</a> Or he was like a -husband striving hard to persuade himself of the fidelity of a suspected -wife. He had fits of violent nostalgia. ‘I am writing to you by the side -of a stove, with drooping head and heavy heart, looking on to the River -Spree, because the Spree falls into the Elbe, the Elbe into the sea, and -the sea receives the Seine, and our Paris house is near the River Seine, -and I say, Why am I in this palace, in this cabinet looking into this -Spree, and not in our own chimney-corner?... How my happiness is -poisoned, how short is life! What wretchedness to seek <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">196</a></span>happiness far -from you; and what remorse, if one finds it away from you.’<a name="FNanchor_150" id="FNanchor_150"></a><a href="#Footnote_150" class="fnanchor">150</a> This -was to Madame Denis, his niece; but a Christmas in the Berlin barrack -made even a plain coquette in Paris attractive and homely. We may -imagine with what tender regrets he would look back upon the old days at -Cirey.</p> - -<p>Even in respect of the very mischief from which he had fled, the -detraction and caballing of the envious, he was hardly any better off at -Berlin than he had been at Paris. D’Argental, one of the wisest of his -friends, had forewarned him of this, and that he had fled from enemies -whom at any rate he never saw, only to find other enemies with whom he -had to live day after day. This was exactly what came to pass. Voltaire -often compared the system of life at Berlin and Potsdam to that of a -convent, half military, half literary. The vices of conventual life came -with its other features, and among them jealousy, envy, and malice. The -tale-bearer, that constant parasite of such societies, had exquisite -opportunities, and for a susceptible creature like Voltaire, the result -was wholly fatal. The nights and suppers of the gods became, in his own -phrase, suppers of Damocles. Alexander the Great was transformed into -the tyrant Dionysius. The famous Diatribe of Doctor Akakia, in the -autumn of 1752, brought matters to a climax, because its publication was -supposed to show marked defiance of the king’s wishes.</p> - -<p>Maupertuis had been one of the earliest and most <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">197</a></span>strenuous Newtonians -in France, and had at his own personal risk helped to corroborate the -truth of the new system. In 1735 the zeal for experimental science, -which was so remarkable a trait in this century of many-sided -intellectual activity, induced the academy of sciences to despatch an -expedition to take the actual measure of a degree of meridian below the -equator, and the curious and indefatigable De la Condamine, one of the -most ardent men of that ardent time, with two other inquirers went to -Peru. In 1736 Maupertuis and Clairaut under the same auspices started -for the north pole, where, after undergoing the severest hardships, they -succeeded in measuring their degree, and verifying by observation -Newton’s demonstration of the oblate figure of the earth, a verification -that was further completed by La Caille’s voyage to the Cape of Good -Hope in 1750.<a name="FNanchor_151" id="FNanchor_151"></a><a href="#Footnote_151" class="fnanchor">151</a> Maupertuis commemorated his share in this excellent -work by having a portrait of himself executed, in which the palm of a -hand gently flattens the north pole. He was extremely courageous and -extremely vain. His costume was eccentric and affected, his temper more -jealous and arbitrary than comports with the magnanimity of -philosophers, and his manner more gloomily solemn than the conditions of -human life can ever justify. With all his absurdities, he was a man of -real abilities, and of a solidity of character beyond that of any of his -countrymen at Frederick’s court. I would rather live with him, -<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">198</a></span>Frederick wrote to the princess Wilhelmina, than with Voltaire; ‘his -character is surer,’ which in itself was saying little. But then, the -moment he came into collision with Voltaire, his absurdities became the -most important thing about him, because it was precisely these which -Voltaire was sure to drag into unsparing prominence. In old days they -had been good friends, and a letter still remains, mournfully testifying -to the shallowness of men’s sight into the roots of their relations with -others, for it closes by bidding Maupertuis be sure that Voltaire will -love him all the days of his life.<a name="FNanchor_152" id="FNanchor_152"></a><a href="#Footnote_152" class="fnanchor">152</a> The causes of their collision -were obvious enough. As Frederick said, Of two Frenchmen in the same -court, one must perish. Maupertuis, from the heights of the exact -sciences, probably despised Voltaire as a scribbler, while Voltaire, -with a heart flowing over with gay vivacity, assuredly counted -Maupertuis arbitrary, ridiculously solemn, and something of an impostor. -The compliances of society, he said of the president of the Berlin -academy, are not problems that he is fond of solving. Maupertuis acted -to König, in the matter of an academic or discoverer’s quarrel, in a way -that struck Voltaire, and all men since, as tyrannical, unjust, and -childish, all in one. He unhappily wrote a book which gave Voltaire such -an excuse for punishing the author’s injustice to Konig, as even -Voltaire’s spleen could hardly have hoped for, and the result was the -wittiest and most pitiless of all the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">199</a></span>purely personal satires in the -world. The temptation was certainly irresistible.</p> - -<p>Maupertuis, as has been said, was courageous and venturesome, and this -venturesomeness being uncorrected by the severe discipline of a large -body of accurate positive knowledge, such as Clairaut and Lagrange -possessed, led him into some worse than equivocal speculation. He was in -the depths of the metaphysical stage, and developed physical theories -out of abstract terms. Of some of these theories the worst that could be -said was they were wholly unproved. He advanced the hypothesis, for -instance, that all the animal species sprang from some first creature, -prototype of all creatures since. Others of his theories were right in -idea, but wrong in form, and without even an attempt at verification. -The famous principle of the minimum of action, for example, in spite of -the truth at the bottom of it, was valueless and confused, until -Lagrange connected it with fundamental dynamic principles, generalised -it, and cleared the unsupported metaphysical notions out of it.<a name="FNanchor_153" id="FNanchor_153"></a><a href="#Footnote_153" class="fnanchor">153</a> All -this, however, was wise and Newtonic compared with the ideas promulgated -in the Philosophic Letters, on which the wicked Akakia so swiftly -pounced. Here were notions which it needed more audacity to broach, than -to face the frosts and snows of Lapland; strange theories that in a -certain state of exaltation of the soul one may foresee the future; that -if the expiration of vital force could only be <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">200</a></span>prevented, the body -might be kept alive for hundreds of years; that by careful dissection of -the brains of giants, Patagonian and other, we should ascertain -something of the composition of the mind; that a Latin town if it were -established, and this was not an original idea, would be an excellent -means of teaching the Latin language. Voltaire knew exactly what kind of -malicious gravity and feigned respect would surround this amazing -performance and its author with inextinguishable laughter, and his -thousand turns and tropes cut deep into Maupertuis like sharpened -swords.</p> - -<p>Voltaire was not by scientific training competent to criticise -Maupertuis. This is true; but then Voltaire had what in such cases -dispensed with special competence, a preternatural gift of detecting an -impostor, and we must add that here as in every other case his anger was -set aflame not by intellectual vapidity, but by what he counted gross -wrong. Maupertuis had acted with despotic injustice towards König, and -Voltaire resolved to punish him. This is perhaps the only side of that -world-famous and truly wretched fray which it is worth our while to -remember, besides its illustration of the general moral that active -interest in public affairs is the only sure safeguard against the -inhuman egotism, otherwise so nearly inevitable and in any wise so -revolting, of men of letters and men of science.</p> - -<p>Frederick took the side of the president of his academy, and had Doctor -Akakia publicly burnt<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">201</a></span> within earshot of its author’s quarters.<a name="FNanchor_154" id="FNanchor_154"></a><a href="#Footnote_154" class="fnanchor">154</a> -Voltaire had long been preparing for the end by depositing his funds in -the hands of the Duke of Würtemberg, and by other steps, which had come -to the king’s ears, and had by no means smoothed matters. He sees now -that the orange has been squeezed, and that it is his business to think -of saving the skin. He drew up for his own instruction, he said, a -pocket-dictionary of terms in use with kings: <i>My friend</i> means <i>my -slave; my dear friend</i> means that <i>you are more than indifferent to me;</i> -understand by <i>I will make you happy, I mil endure you, as long as I -have need of you; sup with me to-night</i> means <i>I will make fun of you -to-night.</i><a name="FNanchor_155" id="FNanchor_155"></a><a href="#Footnote_155" class="fnanchor">155</a> Voltaire, though he had been, and always was, the most -graceful of courtiers, kept to his point, and loudly gave Frederick to -understand that in literary disputes he recognised no kings. An act of -tyranny had been committed towards König, who was his friend, and -nothing would induce him to admit either that it was anything else, or -that it was other than just to have held up the tyrant to the laughter -of Europe.</p> - -<p>Frederick was profoundly irritated, and the terms in which he writes of -his French Virgil as an ape who ought to be flogged for his tricks, a -man worse than many who have been broken on the wheel, a creature <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">202</a></span>who -may deserve a statue for his poetry but who certainly deserves chains -for his conduct, seem to imply a quite special mortification and -resentment. He had no doubt a deep and haughty contempt for all these -angers of celestial minds. The cabals of men of letters, he wrote to -Voltaire, seemed to him the lowest depth of degradation.<a name="FNanchor_156" id="FNanchor_156"></a><a href="#Footnote_156" class="fnanchor">156</a> And he -would fain have flung a handful of dust on the furious creatures. After -three months of vain effort to achieve the impossible, Voltaire being -only moderately compliant, the king in March 1753 gave him leave to -depart, though with a sort of nominal understanding for politeness’ sake -that there was to be a speedy return.</p> - -<p>Voltaire, however, was not a man in whose breast the flame of resentment -ever flickered away in politeness, until his adversary had humbled -himself. Though no one ever so systematically convinced himself each day -for thirty years that he was on the very point of death, no one was less -careful to measure the things that were worth doing from the point of -view of a conventional <i>memento mori</i>. Nobody spoke about dying so much, -nor thought about it so little. The first use he made of his liberty was -to shoot yet another bolt at Maupertuis from Leipzig, more piercing than -any that had gone before. Frederick now in his turn abandoned the forms -of politeness, and the renowned episode of Frankfort took place. -Voltaire, on reaching Frankfort, was required by the Prussian resident -in the free city to surrender his court <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">203</a></span>decorations, and, more -important than these, a certain volume of royal verse containing the -Palladium, a poem of indecencies which were probably worse than those of -the Pucelle, because an indecent German is usually worse than an -indecent Frenchman. The poems, however, were what was far worse than -indecent in Frederick’s eyes; they were impolitic, for they contained -bitter sarcasm on sovereigns whom he might be glad to have, and one of -whom he did actually have, on his side in the day of approaching storm. -Various delays and unlucky mishaps occurred, and Voltaire underwent a -kind of imprisonment for some five weeks (May 31 to July 7, 1753), under -extremely mortifying and humiliating circumstances. There was on the one -part an honest, punctual, methodic, rather dull Prussian subordinate, -anxious above all other things in the world, not excepting respect for -genius and respect for law, to obey the injunctions of his master from -Berlin. On the other part Voltaire, whom we know; excitable as a demon, -burning with fury against enemies who were out of his reach now that he -had spent all his ammunition of satire upon them, only half -understanding what was said to him in a strange tongue, mad with fear -lest Frederick meant to detain him after all. It would need the singer -of the battle of the frogs and mice to do justice to this five-weeks’ -tragi-comedy. A bookseller with whom he had had feuds years before, -injudiciously came either to pay his respects, or to demand some trivial -arears of money; the furious poet and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">204</a></span>philosopher rushed up to his -visitor and inflicted a stinging box on the ear, while Collini, his -Italian secretary, hastily offered this intrepid consolation to Van -Duren, ‘Sir, you have received a box on the ear from one of the greatest -men in the world.’ A clerk came to settle this affair or that, and -Voltaire rushed towards him with click of pistol, the friendly Collini -again interfering to better purpose by striking up the hand that had -written Mérope and was on the point of despatching a clerk. We need not -go into the minute circumstances of the Frankfort outrage. Freytag, the -subordinate, clearly overstrained his instructions, and his excess of -zeal in detaining and harassing Voltaire can only be laid indirectly to -Frederick’s charge. But Frederick is responsible, as every principal is, -who launches an agent in a lawless and tyrannic course. The German -Varnhagen has undoubtedly shown that Voltaire’s account, witty and -diverting as it is, is not free from many misrepresentations, and some -tolerably deliberate lies. French writers have as undoubtedly shown that -the detention of a French citizen by a Prussian agent in a free town of -the Empire was a distinct and outrageous illegality.<a name="FNanchor_157" id="FNanchor_157"></a><a href="#Footnote_157" class="fnanchor">157</a> We, who are -fortunately not committed by the exigencies of patriotism to close our -eyes to either half of the facts, may with facile impartiality admit -both halves. Voltaire, though fundamentally a man of exceptional truth, -was by no means incapable of an untruth when <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">205</a></span>his imagination was hot, -and Frederick was by no means incapable of an outrage upon law, when law -stood between him and his purpose. Frederick’s subordinates had no right -to detain Voltaire at all, and they had no right to allow themselves to -be provoked by his impatience into the infliction of even small outrages -upon him and his obnoxious niece. On the other hand, if Voltaire had -been a sort of Benjamin Franklin, if he had possessed a well-regulated -mind, a cool and gentle temper, a nice sense of the expedient, then the -most grotesque scene of a life in which there was too much of grotesque, -would not have been acted as it was, to the supreme delight of those -miserable souls who love to contemplate the follies of the wise.</p> - -<p>Any reader who takes the trouble to read the documents affecting this -preposterous brawl at Frankfort between a thoroughly subordinate German -and the most insubordinate Frenchman that ever lived,—this adventure, -as its victim called it, of Cimbrians and Sicambrians,—will be rather -struck by the extreme care with which Frederick impresses on the persons -concerned the propriety of having Voltaire’s written and signed word for -such parts of the transaction as needed official commemoration. In one -place he expressly insists that a given memorandum should be written by -Voltaire’s own hand from top to bottom. This precaution, which seems so -strange in a king who had won five battles, dealing with the author of a -score of tragedies, an epic, and many other fine things, sprang in truth -from no desire to cast a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">206</a></span> wanton slight on Voltaire’s honour, but from -the painful knowledge that the author of the fine things was not above -tampering with papers and denying patent superscriptions. Voltaire’s -visit had not been of long duration, before the unfortunate lawsuit with -Abraham Hirschel occurred. Of this transaction we need only say this -much, that Voltaire employed the Jew in some illegal jobbing in Saxon -securities; that he gave him bills on a Paris banker, holding diamonds -from the Jew as pledge of honest Christian dealing; that his suspicions -were aroused, that he protested his bills, then agreed to buy the -jewels, then quarrelled over the price, and finally plunged into a suit, -of which the issues were practically two, whether Hirschel had any -rights on one of the Paris bills, and whether the jewels were fairly -charged. Voltaire got his bill back, and the jewels were to be duly -valued; but the proceedings disclosed two facts of considerable -seriousness for all who should have dealings with him: first, that he -had interpolated matter to his own advantage in a document already -signed by his adversary, thus making the Jew to have signed what he had -signed not; and second, that when very hard pushed he would not swerve -from a false oath, any more than his great enemy the apostle Peter had -done.<a name="FNanchor_158" id="FNanchor_158"></a><a href="#Footnote_158" class="fnanchor">158</a> Frederick had remembered all this, just as every negotiator -who had to deal with Frederick remembered that the great <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">207</a></span>king was not -above such infamies as Klein-Schnellendorf, nor such meanness as -filching away with his foot a letter that had slipped unseen from an -ambassador’s pocket.<a name="FNanchor_159" id="FNanchor_159"></a><a href="#Footnote_159" class="fnanchor">159</a></p> - -<p>And so there was an end, if not of correspondence, yet of that -friendship, which after all had always belonged rather to the spoken -order than to the deep unspeakable. There was now cynical, hoarse-voiced -contempt on the one side, and fierce, reverberating, shrill fury on the -other. The spectacle and the sound are distressing to those who crave -dignity and admission of the serious in the relations of men with one -another, as well as some sense of the myriad indefinable relations which -encompass us unawares, giving colour and perspective to our more -definable bonds. One would rather that even in their estrangement there -had been some grace and firmness and self-control, and that at least the -long-cherished illusion had faded away worthily, as when one bids -farewell to a friend whom a perverse will carries from us over unknown -seas until a far day, and we know not if we shall see his face any more. -It jars on us that the moon which has climbed into the night and moved -like sound of music over heath and woodland, should finally set in a -gray swamp amid the harsh croaking of amphibians. But the intimacy -between Frederick and Voltaire had perhaps been always most like the -theatre moon.</p> - -<p>We may know what strange admixture of distrust, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">208</a></span>contempt, and -tormenting reminiscence, mingled with the admiration of these two men -for one another’s genius, from the bitterness which occasionally springs -up in the midst of their most graceful and amiable letters of a later -date. For instance, this is Voltaire to Frederick; ‘You have already -done me ill enough; you put me wrong for ever with the king of France; -you made me lose my offices and pensions; you used me shamefully at -Frankfort, me and an innocent woman who was dragged through the mud and -thrown into gaol; and now, while honouring me with letters, you mar the -sweetness of this consolation by bitter reproaches.... The greatest harm -that your works have done, is in the excuse they have given to the -enemies of philosophy throughout Europe to say, “These philosophers -cannot live in peace, and they cannot live together. Here is a king who -does not believe in Jesus Christ; he invites to his court a man who does -not believe in Jesus Christ, and he uses him ill; there is no humanity -in these pretended philosophers, and God punishes them by means of one -another.” ... Your admirable and solid wisdom is spoiled by the -unfortunate pleasure you have always had in seeing the humiliation of -other men, and in saying and writing stinging things to them; a pleasure -most unworthy of you, and all the more so as you are raised above them -by your rank and by your unique talents.’<a name="FNanchor_160" id="FNanchor_160"></a><a href="#Footnote_160" class="fnanchor">160</a> To which the king answers -that he is fully aware how many faults he has, and what great faults -<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">209</a></span>they are, that he does not treat himself very gently, and that in -dealing with himself he pardons nothing. As for Voltaire’s conduct, it -would not have been endured by any other philosopher. ‘If you had not -had to do with a man madly enamoured of your fine genius, you would not -have got off so well with anybody else. Consider all that as done with, -and never let me hear again of that wearisome niece, who has not so much -merit as her uncle, with which to cover her defects. People talk of the -servant of Molière, but nobody will ever speak of the niece of -Voltaire.’</p> - -<p>The poet had talked, after his usual manner, of being old and worn out, -and tottering on the brink of the grave. ‘Why, you are only sixty-two,’ -said Frederick, ‘and your soul is full of that fire which animates and -sustains the body. You will bury me and half the present generation. You -will have the delight of making a spiteful couplet on my tomb.’<a name="FNanchor_161" id="FNanchor_161"></a><a href="#Footnote_161" class="fnanchor">161</a> -Voltaire did not make a couplet, but he wrote a prose lampoon on the -king’s private life, which is one of the bitterest libels that malice -ever prompted, and from which the greater part of Europe has been -content to borrow its idea of the character of Frederick.<a name="FNanchor_162" id="FNanchor_162"></a><a href="#Footnote_162" class="fnanchor">162</a> This was -vengeance enough even for Voltaire. We may add that while Voltaire -constantly declared that he could never forget the outrages which the -king of Prussia had inflicted on him, neither did he forget to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">210</a></span>draw his -pension from the king of Prussia even in times when Frederick was most -urgently pressed.<a name="FNanchor_163" id="FNanchor_163"></a><a href="#Footnote_163" class="fnanchor">163</a> It may be said that he was ready to return -favours; ‘If things go on as they are going now,’ he wrote with sportive -malice, ‘I reckon on having to allow a pension to the king of -Prussia.’<a name="FNanchor_164" id="FNanchor_164"></a><a href="#Footnote_164" class="fnanchor">164</a></p> - -<p>It was not surprising that Voltaire did not return to Paris. His -correspondence during his residence at Berlin attests in every page of -it how bitterly he resented the cabals of ignoble men of letters, and -the insolence of ignoble men of authority. ‘If I had been in Paris this -Lent,’ he wrote in 1752, ‘I should have been hissed in town, and made -sport of at court, and the Siècle de Louis XIV. would have been -denounced, as smacking of heresy, as audacious, and full of ill -significance. I should have had to go to defend myself in the anteroom -of the lieutenant of police. The officers would say, as they saw me -pass, <i>There is a man who belongs to us</i>.... No, my friend, <i>qui bene -latuit, bene vixit</i>.’<a name="FNanchor_165" id="FNanchor_165"></a><a href="#Footnote_165" class="fnanchor">165</a> With most just anger, he contrasted German -liberality with the tyrannical suspicion of his own government. The -emperor, he says, made no difficulty in permitting the publication of a -book in which Leopold was called a coward. Holland gave free circulation -to statements that the Dutch are ingrates and that their trade is -perishing. He was allowed to print under the eyes of the king of Prussia -that the Great Elector abased himself <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">211</a></span>uselessly before Lewis XIV., and -resisted him as uselessly. It was only in France where permission was -refused for an eulogy of Lewis XIV. and of France, and that, because he -had been neither base enough nor foolish enough to disfigure his eulogy -either by shameful silences or cowardly misrepresentations.<a name="FNanchor_166" id="FNanchor_166"></a><a href="#Footnote_166" class="fnanchor">166</a> The -imprisonment, nine years before this, of Lenglet Dufresnoy, an old man -of seventy, for no worse offence than publishing a supplement to De -Thou’s history, had made a deep impression on Voltaire.<a name="FNanchor_167" id="FNanchor_167"></a><a href="#Footnote_167" class="fnanchor">167</a> He would -have been something lower than human if he had forgotten the treatment -which he had himself received at the hands of the most feeble and -incompetent government that ever was endured by a civilised people.</p> - -<p>So he found his way to Geneva, then and until 1798 an independent -republic or municipality. There (1755) he made himself two hermitages, -one for summer, called the Délices, a short distance from the spot where -the Arve falls into the Rhone, and the other near Lausanne (Monrion) for -winter. Here, he says, I see from my bed this glorious lake, which -bathes a hundred gardens at the foot of my terrace; which forms on right -and left a stream of a dozen leagues, and a calm sea in front of my -windows; and which waters the fields of Savoy, crowned with the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">212</a></span>Alps in -the distance.<a name="FNanchor_168" id="FNanchor_168"></a><a href="#Footnote_168" class="fnanchor">168</a> You write to me, replied D’Alembert, from your bed, -whence you command ten leagues of the lake, and I answer you from my -hole, whence I command a patch of sky three ells long.<a name="FNanchor_169" id="FNanchor_169"></a><a href="#Footnote_169" class="fnanchor">169</a> To poor -D’Alembert the name of the famous lake was fraught with evil -associations, for he had just published his too veracious article on -Geneva in the Encyclopædia, in which he paid the clergy of that city the -unwelcome compliment, that they were the most logical of all -Protestants, for they were Socinians; and he was now suffering the -penalty of men who stir up angry hives.</p> - -<p>The enjoyment which Voltaire had then and for twenty years to come in -his noble landscape, and which he so often commemorates in his letters, -is a proof that may be added to others, of the injustice of the common -idea that the Voltairean school of the eighteenth century were specially -insensible to the picturesque. Morellet, for instance, records his -delight and wonder at the Alps and the descent into Italy, in terms -quite as warm, if much less profuse, as those of the most impressible -modern tourist.<a name="FNanchor_170" id="FNanchor_170"></a><a href="#Footnote_170" class="fnanchor">170</a> Diderot had a strong spontaneous feeling for -nature, as he shows not only in his truly remarkable criticisms on the -paintings of twenty years, but also in his most private correspondence, -where he demonstrates in terms too plain, simple, and homely, to be -suspected <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">213</a></span>of insincerity, the meditative delight with which the -solitary contemplation of fine landscape inspired him. He has no -peculiar felicity in describing natural features in words, or in -reproducing the inner harmonies with which the soft lines of distant -hills, or the richness of deep embosoming woodlands, or the swift -procession of clouds driven by fierce or cheerful winds, compose and -strengthen the sympathising spirit. But he was as susceptible to them as -men of more sonorous word.<a name="FNanchor_171" id="FNanchor_171"></a><a href="#Footnote_171" class="fnanchor">171</a> And Voltaire finds the liveliest -pleasure in the natural sights and objects around him, though they never -quickened in him those brooding moods of egotistic introspection and -deep questioning contemplation in which Jean Jacques, Bernardin de St. -Pierre, and Sénancour, found a sort of refuge from their own desperate -impotency of will and of material activity. Voltaire never felt this -impotency. As the very apostle of action, how should he have felt it? It -pleased him in the first few months of his settlement in new scenes, and -at other times, to borrow some of Frederick’s talk about the bestial -folly of the human race, and the absurdity of troubling oneself about -it; but what was a sincere cynicism in the king, was in Voltaire only a -bit of cant, the passing affectation of an hour. The dramatist whose -imagination had produced so long a series of dramas of situation, the -historian who had been attracted by such labours as those of Charles -XII. of Sweden and Peter the Great <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">214</a></span>of Russia, as well as by the -achievements of the illustrious men who adorned the age of Lewis XIV., -proved himself of far too objective and positive a temperament to be -capable of that self-conscious despair of action, that paralysing lack -of confidence in will, which drove men of other humour and other -experience forlorn into the hermit’s caves of a new Thebaid. Voltaire’s -ostentatious enjoyment of his landscape and his garden was only the -expansion of a seafarer, who after a stormful voyage finds himself in a -fair haven. His lines to Liberty<a name="FNanchor_172" id="FNanchor_172"></a><a href="#Footnote_172" class="fnanchor">172</a> give us the keynote to his mood at -this time. He did not suppose that he had got all, but he knew that he -had got somewhat.</p> - -<div class="poem"> -<div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Je ne vante point d’avoir en cet asile</span> -<span class="i4">Rencontré le parfait bonheur:</span> -<span class="i0">Il n’est point retiré dans le fond d’un bocage;</span> -<span class="i4">Il est encore moins chez les rois;</span> -<span class="i4">Il n’est pas même chez le sage;</span> -<span class="i0">De cette courte vie il n’est point le partage;</span> -<span class="i0">Il y faut renoncer; mais on peut quelquefois</span> -<span class="i4">Embrasser au moins son image.</span> -</div></div> - -<p>‘Tis a fine thing, is tranquillity,’ he wrote; ‘yes, but ennui is of its -acquaintance and belongs to the family. To repulse this ugly relation, I -have set up a theatre.’<a name="FNanchor_173" id="FNanchor_173"></a><a href="#Footnote_173" class="fnanchor">173</a> Besides the theatre, guests were frequent -and multitudinous. He speaks of sometimes having a crowd of fifty -persons at table.<a name="FNanchor_174" id="FNanchor_174"></a><a href="#Footnote_174" class="fnanchor">174</a> Besides Les Délices and Lausanne, he purchased -from the President de <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">215</a></span>Brosses a life-interest in Tourney, and in the -same year(1758) he bought the lordship of Ferney, close by. He was thus -a citizen of Geneva, of Berne, and of France, ‘for philosophers ought to -have two or three holes underground against the hounds who chase them.’ -If the dogs of France should hunt him, he could take shelter in Geneva. -If the dogs of Geneva began to bay, he could run into France. By and by -this consideration of safety grew less absorbing, and all was abandoned -except Ferney; a name that will always remain associated with those -vigorous and terrible assaults upon the Infamous, which first definitely -opened when Voltaire became the lord of this little domain.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">216</a></span></p> - -<h2>CHAPTER V.</h2> - -<h5>RELIGION.</h5> - -<h5>I</h5> - -<p>In examining the Voltairean attack upon religion we have to remember -that it was in the first instance prompted, and throughout its course -stimulated and embittered, by antipathy to the external organisation of -the religion. It was not merely disbelief in a creed, but exasperation -against a church. Two distinct elements lay at the bottom of Voltaire’s -enmity to the peculiar form of monotheism which he found supreme around -him. One of them was the intellectual element of repugnance to a system -of belief that rested on miracles and mysteries irreconcilable with -reason, and was so intimately associated with some of the most odious -types of character and most atrocious actions in the Old Testament, -which undoubtedly contains so many of both. The other was the moral -element of anger against the expounders of this system, their -intolerance of light and hatred of knowledge, their fierce yet -profoundly contemptible struggles with one another, the scandals of -their casuistry, their besotted cruelty. Of these two elements, the -second<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">217</a></span> was, no doubt, if not the earlier in time, at least the stronger -in intensity. It was because he perceived the fruit to be so deadly, -that Voltaire laid the axe to the root of the tree. It is easy to say -that these poisonous Jesuitries and black Jansenisms were no fruit of -the tree, but the produce of a mere graft, which could have been lopped -off without touching the sacred trunk. Voltaire thought otherwise, and -whether he was right or wrong, it is only just to him to keep constantly -before us the egregious failure of Catholicism in his day as a social -force. This is a fact as to which there can be no dispute among persons -with knowledge enough and mental freedom enough to be competent to have -an opinion, and Voltairism can only be fairly weighed if we regard it as -being in the first instance no outbreak of reckless speculative -intelligence, but a righteous social protest against a system socially -pestilent. It was the revival of the worst parts of this system in the -cruelty and obscurantism which broke out after the middle of the -century, that converted Voltaire into an active assailant of belief. But -for that he would pretty certainly have remained tranquilly in the phase -of deism of which some of his early verses are the expression. -Philosophy is truly, as Callicles says in the Gorgias, a most charming -accomplishment for a man to follow at the right age, but to carry -philosophy too far is the undoing of humanity.</p> - -<p>Voltaire no doubt deliberately set himself to overthrow the Catholic -theology, as well as the ecclesi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">218</a></span> astical system which was bound up with -it, and he did so for the very sufficient reason that it has always been -impossible for men to become indulgent in act, while they remained -fanatical in belief. They will not cease to be persecutors, he said, -until they have ceased to be absurd.<a name="FNanchor_175" id="FNanchor_175"></a><a href="#Footnote_175" class="fnanchor">175</a> The object was to secure -tolerance, and tolerance could only be expected as the product of -indifference, and indifference could be spread most surely by throwing -the fullest light of reason and common sense on the mystical foundations -of revealed religion. To stop short at the inculcation of charity and -indulgence was to surrender the cause; for how should the mere homilies -of a secular moralist soften those whom the direct injunctions of a -deity and his inspired apostles, their own acknowledged masters, failed -to make charitable? It was essential that the superstitions in which -intolerance had its root should be proved detestable and ridiculous. -When men had learnt to laugh at superstition, then they would perceive -how abominable is the oppressive fanaticism which is its champion.</p> - -<p>It is hardly possible to deny the service which Protestantism rendered -in preventing the revolution from Catholicism to scientific modes of -thought from being that violent, abrupt, and irreconcilable breach, -which we now observe in France and Italy, when we remember that the -cause of toleration was systematically defended in England by men who as -systematically defended the cause of Christianity. The <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">219</a></span>Liberty of -Prophesying, in which the expediency of tolerance was based on the -difficulty of being sure that we are right, was written by one of the -most devout and orthodox divines; while the famous Letters on Toleration -(1689), in which the truly remarkable step is taken of confining the -functions of civil government to men’s civil interests and the things of -this world, were the work of the same Locke who vindicated the -Reasonableness of Christianity.<a name="FNanchor_176" id="FNanchor_176"></a><a href="#Footnote_176" class="fnanchor">176</a> The English Deists pressed home in -a very effectual way the deduction of universal freedom of speech from -the first maxims of Protestantism, and their inference was practically -admitted.<a name="FNanchor_177" id="FNanchor_177"></a><a href="#Footnote_177" class="fnanchor">177</a> Hence there was no inseparable association between -adherence to the old religious ideas and the prohibition of free speech -in spirituals, and on the other hand there was no obligation on the part -of those who claimed free speech to attack a church which did not refuse -their claim.</p> - -<p>In France the strictly repressive policy of the church in the eighteenth -century, sometimes bloody and cruel as in the persecution of the -Protestants, sometimes minutely vexatious as in the persecution of the -men of letters, but always stubborn and lynx-eyed,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">220</a></span> had the natural -effect of making it a point of honour with most of those who valued -liberty to hurl themselves upon the religious system, of which rigorous -intolerance was so prominent a characteristic. The Protestant dilution -of the theological spirit seems thus to be in the long run a more -effective preparation for decisive abandonment of it, than its virulent -dissolution in the biting acids of Voltairism, because within limits the -slower these great transformations are in accomplishing themselves, the -better it is for many of the most precious and most tender parts of -human character. Our present contention is that the attitude of the -religionists left no alternative. It is best that creeds, like men who -have done the work of the day, should die the slow deaths of nature, yet -it is counted lawful to raise an armed hand upon the brigand who seeks -the life of another.</p> - -<p>Voltaire to the end of his course contended that the church only was to -blame for the storm which overtook her teaching in the later years, when -his own courageous attack had inspired a host of others, less brilliant -but not any less embittered, to throw themselves on the reeling enemy. -The cause of the inundation of Europe by the literature of negativism -and repudiation was to be sought first of all in the fierce theological -disputes which revolted the best of the laity. Of this violent revulsion -of feeling Voltaire himself was the great organ. He furnished its -justification, and nourished its fire, and invested it with a splendid -lustre. Even when with the timidity of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">221</a></span>extreme age he seemed to -deprecate the growing ferocity of the attack, he still taunted the -clerical party with their own folly in allowing a mean and egotistic -virulence to override every consideration of true wisdom and policy. -‘Now,’ he wrote in 1768, ‘a revolution has been accomplished in the -human mind, that nothing again can ever arrest. They would have -prevented this revolution, if they had been sage and moderate. The -quarrels of Jansenists and Molinists have done more harm to the -Christian religion than could have been done by four emperors like -Julian one after another.’<a name="FNanchor_178" id="FNanchor_178"></a><a href="#Footnote_178" class="fnanchor">178</a></p> - -<p>It cannot be too often repeated that the Christianity which Voltaire -assailed was not that of the Sermon on the Mount, for there was not a -man then alive more keenly sensible than he was of the generous humanity -which is there enjoined with a force that so strangely touches the -heart, nor one who was on the whole, in spite of constitutional -infirmities and words which were far worse than his deeds, more ardent -and persevering in its practice. Still less was he the enemy of a form -of Christian profession which now fascinates many fine and subtle minds, -and which starting from the assumption that there are certain inborn -cravings in the human heart, constant, profound, and inextinguishable, -discerns in the long religious tradition an adequate proof that the -mystic faith in the incarnation, and in the spiritual facts which pour -like rays from that awful centre, are the highest satisfaction which a -divine will has as yet <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">222</a></span>been pleased to establish for all these -yearnings of the race of men. This graceful development of belief, -emancipated from dogma and reducing so many substantial bodies to pale -shades, so many articles once held as solid realities to the strange -tenuity of dreams, was not the Christianity of Voltaire’s time, any more -than it was that of the Holy Office. There was nothing resembling the -present popularity of a treatment which gives generals so immense a -preponderance over particulars—somewhat to the neglect of the old -saying about the snare that lies hidden in generals, many persons being -tolerably indifferent about the <i>dolus</i> so long as they can make sure of -the <i>latet</i>. He attacked a definite theology, not a theosophy. We may, -indeed, imagine the kind of questions which he would have asked of one -pressing such a doctrine on his acceptance; how he would have sought the -grounds for calling aspirations universal, which the numerical majority -of the human race appear to have been without, and the grounds for -making subjective yearnings the test and the measure of the truth of -definite objective records; how he would have prayed to be instructed of -these cravings, whether they spring up spontaneously, or are the -products of spiritual self-indulgence, and also of the precise manner in -which they come to be satisfied and soothed by the momentary appearance -of a humane figure far off upon the earth; how he would have paused to -consider the intelligibility of so overwhelming a wonder as the -incarnation having been wrought, for the benefit<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">223</a></span> of so infinitesimally -small a fragment of mankind. We can imagine this and much else, but -Voltaire would never have stirred a finger to attack a mysticism which -is not aggressive, and can hardly be other than negatively hurtful.</p> - -<p>If any one had maintained against Voltaire that the aspirations after a -future life, the longing for some token that the deity watches over his -creatures and is moved by a tender solicitude for them, and the other -spiritual desires alleged to be instinctive in men, constitute as -trustworthy and firm a guide to truth as the logical reason, we may be -sure that he would have forgiven what he must have considered an -enervating abnegation of intelligence, for the sake of the humane, if -not very actively improving, course of life to which this kind of -pietism is wont to lead. He might possibly have entertained a little -contempt for them, but it would have been quiet contempt and unspoken. -There is no case of Voltaire mocking at any set of men who lived good -lives. He did not mock the English Quakers. He doubtless attacked many -of the beliefs which good men hold sacred, but if good men take up their -abode under the same roof which shelters the children of darkness and -wrong, it is not the fault of Voltaire if they are hit by the smooth -stones shot from his sling against their unworthy comrades. The object -of his assault was that amalgam of metaphysical subtleties, degrading -legends, false miracles, and narrow depraving conceptions of divine -government which made the starting-point and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">224</a></span> vantage-ground of those -ecclesiastical oppressors, whom he habitually and justly designated the -enemies of the human race. The evil and the good, the old purity and the -superadded corruptions, were all so inextricably bound up in the -Catholicism of the eighteenth century, that it was impossible to a deal -a blow to the one without risk of harm to the other. The method was -desperate, but then the enemy was a true Chimæra, a monster sodden in -black corruption, with whom in the breast of a humane man there could be -no terms.</p> - -<p>The popes during the Voltairean period were above the average in virtue -and intelligence, but their power was entirely overshadowed by that -wonderful order which had assumed all effective spiritual supremacy for -something like two centuries. Nor was this order the only retrogressive -influence. The eighteenth century was the century not only of the Sacré -Cœur, but of the miracles of the dead abbé Pâris, transactions in which -Jansenist emulated Jesuit in dragging men and women into the deepest -slough of superstition. A Roman augur fresh from the inspection of the -sacrificial entrails would have had a right to despise the priests who -invented an object for the adoration of men in the diseased and hideous -visions of Mary Alacoque. The man who sells rain to savages may almost -be held to add to the self-respect of the race, if you contrast him with -the convulsionnaires and the fanatics who were transported by their -revolting performances.<a name="FNanchor_179" id="FNanchor_179"></a><a href="#Footnote_179" class="fnanchor">179</a> <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">225</a></span></p> - -<p>France is the country where reactions are most rapid and most violent. -Nowhere else can the reformer count so surely on seeing the completion -of his reform followed so instantly by the triumph of its adversaries. -The expulsion of the Jesuits, under circumstances of marked and -uncompromising harshness, was not consummated, before the tide of -religious bigotry flowed in from the opposite shore, and swelled to a -portentous height. The exultation of the philosophers at the coming fall -of their old foes, was instantly checked by the yet worse things which -befell them and their principles at the hands of new enemies. The reign -of the Jansenists was speedily pronounced more hateful than the reign of -the Jesuits. Various accommodations were possible with heaven, so long -as the Jesuits had credit, but the Jansenists were pitiless.<a name="FNanchor_180" id="FNanchor_180"></a><a href="#Footnote_180" class="fnanchor">180</a></p> - -<p>The parliament or supreme judicial tribunal of Paris<a name="FNanchor_181" id="FNanchor_181"></a><a href="#Footnote_181" class="fnanchor">181</a> was Jansenist, -mainly out of political hatred of the Jesuits, partly from a hostility, -very easily explained, to every manifestation of ultramontane feeling -and influence, partly from a professional jealousy of the clergy, but -partly also because the austere predestinarian dogma, and the -metaphysical theology which brought it into supreme prominence, seem -often to have had an unexplained affinity for serious minds trained in -legal ideas and their <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">226</a></span>application. The Jesuits had systematically -abstained as far as was possible from purely speculative theology. -Suarez is pronounced one of the greatest writers in speculative ethics -and jurisprudence; but in the technical metaphysics of theology the -Jesuits with all their literary industry did not greatly care to -exercise themselves. Their task was social and practical, and as -confessors, directors, preachers, and instructors, they had naturally -paid less attention to abstract thought than to the arts of eloquence, -address, and pliancy. Then, too, in doctrine they had uniformily clung -to the softer, more amiable, more worldly, less repulsive, -interpretation of the eternally embarrassing claims of grace, election, -free-will. The Augustinian, Calvinistic, or Jansenist view of the -impotence of will and the saving importance of grace is the answer of -souls eager to feel immediate individual contact with a Supreme Being. -The Jesuits and their power represented extremely different sentiments, -fundamentally religious, but still fundamentally social also, the desire -of men for sympathetic and considerate guidance in conduct, and their -craving for such a unity of the external ordering of the faith as should -leave them undistracted to live their lives. The former concentrated -feelings upon the relations of men directly and immediately with a -Supreme Being; the latter upon their relations with this Being only -mediately, through their relations with one another, and with the church -to which a measure of divinity had been attributed. Hence the decline of -the Jesuits<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">227</a></span> assumed the form of a depravation of morals, while the -Jansenists held more and more tightly to a narrow and bigoted -correctness of belief. The parliament was willing to resist a Molinist -archbishop and his satellites, when they refused burial to all who -should die without having received a certificate of conformity to the -famous bull Unigenitus, which proscribed Jansenist opinion.<a name="FNanchor_182" id="FNanchor_182"></a><a href="#Footnote_182" class="fnanchor">182</a> But -none the less for this was it bent on suppressing the common enemy, who -despised the bull and the Five propositions, Molina and Jansenius, -archbishop Beaumont and Quesnel, all equally. Voltaire’s natural -sagacity made him alive to the fact, which perhaps remains as true now -as then, that the professional and middle classes are a worse enemy of -liberal opinion and are more intolerant than the remnants of the old -aristocratic orders. He says to D’Alembert, ‘You are right in declaring -yourself the enemy of the great and their flatterers; still, the great -protect one upon occasion, they despise the Infamous, and they will not -persecute philosophers; but as for your pedants of Paris, who have -bought their office, as for those insolent bourgeois, half fanatics, -half imbecile, they can do nothing but mischief.’<a name="FNanchor_183" id="FNanchor_183"></a><a href="#Footnote_183" class="fnanchor">183</a> He had not learnt -to look away from both classes, professional and aristocratic alike, to -that third estate where the voice of the reformer has always found the -first response. Still what he said was true as against the lawyers, -whose vision perhaps never extends <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">228</a></span>beyond the improvement of that mere -surface of order with which their profession is concerned. The -Parliament of Paris was the eager ally of the bigots of the court in -1757, in fulminating deadly edicts against the Encyclopaedia and all -concerned in its production or circulation. In 1762, the year of the -publication of Emile and the Contrat Social, not all the influence of -Rousseau’s powerful protectors could prevent the launching of a decree -of arrest against him. Bloodier measures were not wanting.</p> - -<p>In 1762 Morellet had published under the title of a Manual for -Inquisitors a selection of the most cruel and revolting portions of the -procedure of the Holy Office, drawn from the Directorium Inquisitorium -of Eymeric, a grand inquisitor of the fourteenth century. The -cold-blooded cruelties of the regulations, which were thus brought into -the light of the eighteenth century, created the most profound sensation -among the rapidly increasing adherents of tolerance and humanity. -Voltaire was intensely stirred by this resuscitation of horrors that he -mistook for dead. It made the same impression upon him, he said, as the -bleeding body of Caesar made upon the men of Rome.<a name="FNanchor_184" id="FNanchor_184"></a><a href="#Footnote_184" class="fnanchor">184</a> But he soon -found that it was an error to impute a special cruelty to the spiritual -power. Malesherbes, in giving Morellet the requisite permission to print -his Manual, had amazed his friend by telling him, that though he might -suppose he was giving to the world a collection of extraordinary facts -and unheard<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">229</a></span> of processes, yet in truth the jurisprudence of Eymeric and -his inquisition was as nearly as possible identical with the criminal -jurisprudence of France at that very moment.<a name="FNanchor_185" id="FNanchor_185"></a><a href="#Footnote_185" class="fnanchor">185</a> This was very soon to -be proved.</p> - -<p>The bigots, infuriated by the blows which were destroying the Jesuits, -hunted out against heretical enemies some forgotten portions of this -terrible jurisprudence. A protestant pastor, Rochette, was hung for -exercising his functions in Languedoc. The Catholics on the occasion of -the arrest of Rochette were summoned by sound of tocsin, and three young -Protestants, who were brothers, fearing massacre in the midst of the -agitation, took up their arms: for this offence they were convicted of -rebellion, and had their heads struck off.<a name="FNanchor_186" id="FNanchor_186"></a><a href="#Footnote_186" class="fnanchor">186</a> It became painfully -clear how great a mistake it was to suppose the clergy touched with some -special curse of cruelty. Then, as usually, for good or for evil, they -were on about the same moral level with an immense number of laymen, and -were not much more than the incarnation of the average darkness of the -hour. If Eymeric’s procedure only copied the ordinary criminal -jurisprudence, the bigotry of the ecclesiastics was accurately reflected -in the bigotry of the secular tribunals. The Protestant Calas was broken -on the wheel (1762), because his son had been found dead, and some one -chose to say that the father had killed him, to prevent him from turning -Catholic. There was not the smallest fragment <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">230</a></span>of evidence, direct or -indirect, for a single link in the chain of circumstances on which the -unfortunate man’s guilt depended; while there were many facts which made -the theory of his guilt the most improbable that could have been brought -forward. The widow and the children of Calas were put to the torture, -and eventually fled to Geneva to take refuge with Voltaire. During the -same year the same tribunal, the parliament of Toulouse, did its best to -repeat this atrocity in the case of Sirven. Sirven was a Protestant, and -his daughter had been with perfect legality snatched away from him, and -shut up in a convent, there to be better instructed in the faith. She -ran away, and was found at the bottom of a well. Sirven was accused of -murdering his daughter, and he only escaped the wheel by prompt flight. -His wife perished of misery amid the snows of the Cevennes, and he -joined the wretched family of Calas at Geneva, where the same generous -man furnished shelter and protection.</p> - -<p>In the north of France the fire of intolerance burnt at least as hotly -as in the south. At Abbeville a crucifix was found to have been -mutilated in the night. Two lads of eighteen, to one of whom Frederick -gave shelter in Prussia, were accused under cover of the sacrilege, and -La Barre was condemned by the tribunal of Amiens, at the instance of the -bishop, to have tongue and right hand cut off, and then be burnt alive; -a sentence that was presently commuted by the Parliament of Paris to -decapitation (1766). There was no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">231</a></span> proof whatever that either of the two -youths was in any way concerned in the outrage. The bishop of the -diocese had issued monitory proclamations, and conducted a solemn -procession to the insulted crucifix. The imagination of the town was -kindled, and the sacrilege became the universal talk of a people growing -more and more excited. Rumour ran that a new sect was being formed, -which was for breaking all the crucifixes, which threw the host on the -ground and cut it with knives. There were women who declared that they -had seen these things. All the horrible stories were revived which had -been believed against the Jews in the middle ages. A citizen took -advantage of this fierce agitation to gratify a private grudge against a -relative of La Barre. He set inquiries on foot among the lowest persons -for proof that the youth had been concerned in the original crime. By -one means or another he got together material enough to support an -indictment. Proceedings once begun, a crowd of informers rose up. It was -deposed that La Barre and D’Etallonde had passed within thirty yards of -the sacred procession without removing their hats, that La Barre had -spoken irreverently of the Virgin Mary, that he had been heard to sing -unseemly songs and recite ribald litanies. This testimony, given with a -vagueness that ought to have proved it legally valueless, was the fruit -of the episcopal monitory, which as at Toulouse in the case of Calas, -virtually incited the dregs of the people to bring accusations against -their superiors, and menaced a man with the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">232</a></span> pains of hell if he should -refuse to put his neighbour in peril of his life. The tribunal, as -excited as the witnesses and the rest of the public, relied on a royal -ordinance of 1682, directed against sacrilege and superstition and -designed to put down sorcery. In the sentence inflicting so bloody a -punishment, the offence was described as consisting in singing -abominable songs against the Virgin Mary.<a name="FNanchor_187" id="FNanchor_187"></a><a href="#Footnote_187" class="fnanchor">187</a> To exact such a penalty -for such a delinquency was to make human life a mere plaything for the -ignorant passion of the populace and the intellectual confusion of the -tribunals. These atrocities kindled in Voltaire a blaze of anger and -pity, that remains among the things of which humanity has most reason to -be proud. Everybody who has read much of the French writing of the -middle of the eighteenth century, is conscious from time to time of a -sound of mocking and sardonic laughter in it. This laugh of the -eighteenth century has been too often misunderstood as the expression of -a cynical hardness of heart, proving the hollowness of the humanitarian -pretensions in the midst of which it is heard. It was in truth something -very different; it was the form in which men sought a little relief from -the monotony of the abominations which oppressed them, and from whose -taint they had such difficulty to escape. This refrain, that after all a -man can do nothing better than laugh, apparently so shallow and inhuman, -in reality so penetrated with <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">233</a></span>melancholy, we may count most certainly -on finding at the close of the narration of some more than usually -iniquitous or imbecile exploit of those in authority. It was when the -thought of the political and social and intellectual degradation of -their country became too vivid to be endured, that men like Voltaire and -D’Alembert would abruptly turn away from it, and in the bitterness of -their impotence cry that there was nothing for it but to take the world -and all that befalls therein in merriment. It was the grimacing of a man -who jests when he is perishing of hunger, or is shrinking under knife or -cautery. Thus D’Alembert having given Voltaire an account of the -execution of the unfortunate La Barre, in words that show how intensely -his own narrative was afflicting him, suddenly concludes by saying that -he will add no more on this auto-da-fé, so honourable to the French -nation, for it made him ill-humoured, and he meant only to mock at -whatever might happen.<a name="FNanchor_188" id="FNanchor_188"></a><a href="#Footnote_188" class="fnanchor">188</a> But Voltaire could not rest thus. The -thought of so hateful a crime, perpetrated by a tribunal of justice, -clothed him in the shirt of Nessus. All aflame, he wrote to D’Alembert -with noble impetuosity:</p> - -<p>“This is no longer a time for jesting: witty things do not go well with -massacres. What? These Busirises in wigs destroy in the midst of -horrible tortures children of sixteen! And that in face of the verdict -of ten upright and humane judges! And the victim suffers it! People talk -about it for a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">234</a></span>moment, and the next they are hastening to the comic -opera; and barbarity, become the more insolent for our silence, will -to-morrow cut throats juridically at pleasure. Here Calas broken on the -wheel, there Sirven condemned to be hung, further off a gag thrust into -the mouth of a lieutenant-general, a fortnight after that five youths -condemned to the flames for extravagances that deserved nothing worse -than Saint Lazare. Is this the country of philosophy and pleasure? It is -the country rather of the Saint Bartholomew massacre. Why, the -Inquisition would not have ventured to do what these Jansenist judges -have done.”<a name="FNanchor_189" id="FNanchor_189"></a><a href="#Footnote_189" class="fnanchor">189</a> When he had received D’Alembert’s letter, ending as we -have seen, his remonstrance waxed vehement: ‘What, you would be content -to laugh? We ought rather to resolve to seek vengeance, or at any rate -to leave a coimtry where day after day such horrors are committed.... -No, once more, I cannot bear that you should finish your letter by -saying, I mean to laugh. Ah, my friend, is it a time for laughing? -Did men laugh when they saw Phalaris’s bull being made red-hot?’<a name="FNanchor_190" id="FNanchor_190"></a><a href="#Footnote_190" class="fnanchor">190</a></p> - -<p>This revival in the tribunals of Paris and the provincial towns alike, -of the ignorant fanaticism and the unscientific jurisprudence of the -most unenlightened times, was the more bitter and insupportable from the -new light which shone around such horrors. Beccaria’s treatise on -Offences and Penalties had just been translated into French by Morellet, -and furnished <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">235</a></span>a strange commentary upon the atrocities of Toulouse and -Abbeville. It seemed, men said, as if at every striking vindication of -the rights of humanity the genius of cruelty broke its chains, and, to -prove the futility of all such vindications, inspired new acts of -barbarism and violence.<a name="FNanchor_191" id="FNanchor_191"></a><a href="#Footnote_191" class="fnanchor">191</a> The philosophic group had yielded to a -premature exultation, and in their inexperience supposed that they who -planted the tree should see the gathering-in of the fruit. The reign of -reason was believed to be close at hand, and this belief made the -visible recrudescence of fanatical unreason signally insupportable. It -is a high honour to Voltaire and his disciples that the trial did not -prove too strong for their faith, and that when they saw how far too -sanguine they had been, they were more astonished than they were -discouraged, and their energy redoubled with the demands made upon it. -The meaner partisans of an orthodoxy which can only make wholly sure of -itself by injustice to adversaries, have always loved to paint the -Voltairean school in the character 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 -<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">236</a></span>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.<a name="FNanchor_192" id="FNanchor_192"></a><a href="#Footnote_192" class="fnanchor">192</a> -At the very last Voltaire seems to have seen something of the vast space -which every ray of light has to traverse before it reaches the eye of -the common understanding. ‘I now perceive,’ he wrote the year before his -death, ‘that we must still wait three or four hundred years. One day it -cannot but be that good men 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 from time to time -they will make an auto-da-fé’<a name="FNanchor_193" id="FNanchor_193"></a><a href="#Footnote_193" class="fnanchor">193</a> To speak thus was to recognise the -true character of the revolution, and the many elements which go to the -transformation of an old society. To speak thus, too, was to mark the -true character of the sincere lover of human progress, the soul of -steadfast patience and strong hope, mingled with many a pang for the -far-off and slow-coming good.</p> - -<p>It was a natural thing to identify the Jesuits with the strongest part -of the old society, because their organisation was both the strongest -and most striking of its external supports. Their suppression, though -not to be dispensed with except on the condition of an ultimate -overthrow of morality and an extinction of intellectual light, had one -effect which the statesmen of the time could hardly be expected to see, -and which has not been enough considered. Just as the papacy by the -fourteenth century had become more <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">237</a></span>and more exclusively a temporal -power, so the Jesuits by the middle of the eighteenth had become more -and more a commercial power. They were a powerful trading corporation, -and it was as merchants, rather than as casuists and directors of -conscience, that they finally came into collision with secular authority -in France, Portugal, and Spain. Now since the revival of the order it -has been exclusively engaged in the contest for spiritual supremacy, and -for as much of temporal power as has seemed essential to its security. -This, however, is only one of the evils which counterbalance the -advantages of every progressive measure; for, alas, when the statesman -believes most confidently that he has advanced by a league, a very few -years show him or others that his league was after all no more than an -ell or two.</p> - -<p>The reactionary outburst of fanaticism for which the humiliation of the -Jesuits was a signal, only showed how well founded the Voltairean -allegations as to the depraving effects of the existing system of -religion had really been. It was the verification of all that Voltaire -ever said against the system, and demonstrated both the virulence and -the tenacity of the influences which Catholicism in the days of its -degradation had exerted over the character of the nation. It was most -illogical to expect a people who had been bred in the Catholic tradition -suddenly to welcome its enemies. If Catholicism had trained men up to -the temper which seeks the light and loves it, how should it have -deserved animosity? Nearly all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">238</a></span> lovers of improvement are apt in the -heat of a generous enthusiasm to forget that if all the world were ready -to embrace their cause, their improvement could hardly be needed. It is -one of the hardest conditions of things that the more numerous and -resolute the enemies of reform, then the more unmistakably urgent the -necessity for it. It was just because the cruelty, persecution, and -darkness, in the last ten years of the reign of Lewis XV. were things -possible, that the onslaught upon Catholicism was justifiable and -praiseworthy. They showed the depth and strength of the forces of the -old society, and they foreshadowed the violence which marked its -dissolution. If people had remembered in 1789 how few years separated -them from the wide-spread fanaticism which darkened the last days of -Voltaire, they might have calculated better how few years separated them -from the Napoleonic Concordat.</p> - -<p>No permanent transformation of a society, we may be sure, can ever take -place until a transformation has been accomplished in the spiritual -basis of thought. Voltaire may have distinctly seen this and formulated -it to himself, or not; in any case, he steered his own course exactly as -he would have done if he had seen it. As M. Guizot expresses it, the -separation between the spiritual and temporal orders was never real in -Europe except in the eighteenth century, when for the first time the -spiritual order developed itself entirely apart from the temporal -order.<a name="FNanchor_194" id="FNanchor_194"></a><a href="#Footnote_194" class="fnanchor">194</a> Thus <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">239</a></span>Voltaire acquiesced without murmur or reproach in the -conditions of political absolutism, and the disgrace and ruin which the -nullity of the government brought upon his country in the Seven Years’ -War, keenly as he felt it, yet provoked no thought of temporal changes. -His correspondence in that fatal time is marked by a startling apathy -about public events, and even Rossbach seems not to move him to seek its -causes. If we compare his joyful enthusiasm at the accession of Turgot -to power in 1774, we can have no doubt that this strange numbness of -feeling was only the silence of a wise man despairing of saying or -seeing anything useful, and not the criminal folly of a bad citizen to -whom the welfare of his country is not dear. The disasters of France -were as serious to him as to any one else, as may be plainly seen under -the assumed philosophy with which his vivacious spirit loved to veil -real feeling; but the impossibility of doing anything, even of taking a -part in the process with which we English are so familiar as the forming -of public opinion, drove him for consolation to the field where he was -certain of doing efficient work.<a name="FNanchor_195" id="FNanchor_195"></a><a href="#Footnote_195" class="fnanchor">195</a> Writing in 1761, a year of -crushing national loss, he says to one of the oldest and most intimate -of his correspondents: ‘There is nothing to laugh at in all this. I am -struck to the heart. Our only resource is in the promptest and most -humiliating peace. I always fancy, when some overwhelming disaster -arrives, that the French will be serious for six weeks. I have not yet -been <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">240</a></span>able to disabuse myself of this notion.’<a name="FNanchor_196" id="FNanchor_196"></a><a href="#Footnote_196" class="fnanchor">196</a> Voltaire was -penetrated by the spirit of action, and he perceived and regretted that -the organisation of France did not permit of the effective action of -private individuals in the field of politics.<a name="FNanchor_197" id="FNanchor_197"></a><a href="#Footnote_197" class="fnanchor">197</a> There are lines in -the Henriade extolling the freedom of England,<a name="FNanchor_198" id="FNanchor_198"></a><a href="#Footnote_198" class="fnanchor">198</a> and he sometimes -indulges in the commonplaces of a literary republicanism; but turning to -the portion of his works which his editors have classified as political, -we scarcely find much beyond the documents, and they are important and -interesting enough, still not truly political, that relate to the -various affairs of Calas, La Barre, and others, in which he exposed the -atrocities of the tribunals. So far as they come into the region of -politics at all, it is only to assail the overt and direct injustice -done to society by the institutions, privileges, and pretensions of the -church. He constantly attacks in a great variety of forms the material -mischief inflicted on society by the vast numbers of monks, mendicant or -other; their unproductive lives, the burden of their maintenance -weighing upon more industrious subjects, the restriction of population -occasioned by their celibacy. The direct refusal of the clergy in 1750 -to consent to pay their share of the taxes like other citizens, though -owning as much as a fifth of all the property in the realm, moved him to -insist in a vigorous pamphlet that the distinction in a kingdom between -spiritual and temporal powers is a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">241</a></span>relic of barbarism; that it is -monstrous to permit a body of men to say, Let those pay who work, we -ought not to pay because we are idle; that superstition inevitably tends -to make bad citizens, and therefore princes ought to protect philosophy -which destroys superstition.<a name="FNanchor_199" id="FNanchor_199"></a><a href="#Footnote_199" class="fnanchor">199</a></p> - -<p>Voltaire’s task, however, was never directly political, but spiritual, -to shake the foundations of that religious system which professed to be -founded on the revelation of Christ. Was he not right? If we find -ourselves walking amid a generation of cruel and 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>It is necessary to admit from the point of view of impartial criticism, -that Voltaire had one defect of character, of extreme importance in a -leader of this memorable and direct attack. With all his enthusiasm for -things noble and lofty, generous and compassionate, he missed the -peculiar emotion of holiness, the soul and life alike of the words of -Christ and Saint Paul, that indefinable secret of the long hold of -mystic superstition over so many high natures, otherwise <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">242</a></span>entirely -prepared for the brightness of the rational day. From this impalpable -essence which magically surrounds us with the mysterious and subtle -atmosphere of the unseen, changing distances and proportions, adding new -faculties of sight and purpose, extinguishing the flames of disorderly -passion in a flood of truly divine aspiration, we have to confess that -the virtue went out in the presence of Voltaire. To admire Voltaire, -cried a man who detested him, is the sign of a corrupt heart, and if -anybody is drawn to his works, then be very sure that God does not love -such an one.<a name="FNanchor_200" id="FNanchor_200"></a><a href="#Footnote_200" class="fnanchor">200</a> The truth of which that is so vehement a paraphrase -amounts to this, that Voltaire has said no word, nor even shown an -indirect appreciation of any word said by another, which stirs or -expands the emotional susceptibility, indefinite exultation, and -far-swelling inner harmony, which De Maistre and others have known as -the love of God, and for which a better name, as covering most varieties -of form and manifestation, is holiness, deepest of all the words that -defy definition. Through the affronts which his reason received from -certain pretensions both in the writers and in some of those whose -actions they commemorated, this sublime trait in the Bible, in both -portions of it, was unhappily lost to Voltaire. He had no ear for the -finer vibrations of the spiritual voice. This had no concern in the fact -that he hated and despised, and was eager that others should hate and -despise, the religious forms that ruled France in his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">243</a></span>day. The -Christianity which he assailed was as little touched as Voltairism -itself with that spirit of holiness which poured itself round the lives -and words of the two founders, the great master and the great apostle. -The more deeply imbued a man was with this spirit, the more ardently -would he crave the demolition of that Infamous in belief and in -practice, which poisoned the stream of holiness in its springs, and shed -pestilence along its banks, and choked its issues in barrenness and -corruption.</p> - -<p>The point where the failure of this quality in Voltaire was especially a -source of weakness to his attack, is to be found in the crippling of his -historic imagination, and the inability which this inflicted upon him of -conceiving the true meaning and lowest roots of the Catholic legend. The -middle age between himself and the polytheism of the Empire was a -parched desert to him and to all his school, just as to the Protestant -the interval between the apostles and Luther is a long night of unclean -things. He saw only a besotted people led in chains by a crafty -priesthood; he heard only the unending repetition of records that were -fictitious, and dogmas that drew a curtain of darkness over the -understanding. Men spoke to him of the mild beams of Christian charity, -and where they pointed he saw only the yellow glare of the stake; they -talked of the gentle solace of Christian faith, and he heard only the -shrieks of the thousands and tens of thousands whom faithful Christian -persecutors had racked, strangled, gibbeted,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">244</a></span> burnt, broken on the -wheel. Through the steam of innocent blood which Christians for the -honour of their belief had spilt in every quarter of the known world, -the blood of Jews, Moors, Indians, and all the vast holocausts of -heretical sects and people in eastern and western Europe, he saw only -dismal tracts of intellectual darkness, and heard only the humming of -the doctors, as they served forth to congregations of poor men hungering -for spiritual sustenance the draff of theological superstition.</p> - -<p>This vehement and blinding antipathy arose partly from the intense force -with which the existing aspect of Catholicism recalled all that was -worst, and shut out all that was best in its former history. One cannot -fairly expect the man who is in the grip of a decrepit tyrant, to do -absolutely full justice to the seemly deeds and gracious promises of his -tormentor’s youth. But partly also this blindness arose from the fact -that Voltaire measured the achievements of Catholicism by the magnitude -of its pretensions. He took its supernatural claims seriously, and his -intelligence was exasperated beyond control by the amazing disproportion -and incongruity between these claims and the most conspicuous of the -actual results. Those who have parted company with a religion, as -Voltaire had parted company with Christianity, can only be counted upon -to award the well-earned praise to its better part, after they have -planted themselves stably on the assumption that the given religion is a -human and natural force like another.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">245</a></span></p> - -<p>The just historic calm on which our modern prides himself, is only -possible in proportion to the mature completeness with which he takes -for granted, and believes that those to whom he speaks will take for -granted, the absence of supernatural intervention in the processes of -religious action and development. He is absolutely undisturbed by the -thought of that claim, which was omnipotent until Voltaire came to do -deadly battle with it, of Christianity to be a crowning miracle of -divine favour, which should raise men to be only a little lower than the -angels, and should be the instrument for pouring out upon them an -ever-flowing stream of special and extraordinary grace. It is not until -the idea has dropped out of our minds of the great fathers of the church -as saints, that we are free to perceive what services they rendered as -statesmen, and it is only when men have ceased to dispute whether -Christianity was a revelation, that they have eyes to see what services -it has rendered as a system. But in Voltaire’s time, if Catholicism was -justified historically, it was believed dogmatically, and therefore was -to be attacked dogmatically also. The surrender of the written legend -has never hindered its champions from taking ground which implied some -esoteric revelation, that proves to be some special interpretation of -the written legend. So long as the thinker is busy disproving the -position that a man who happens to live on a certain part of the globe -is a being of such singular and exceptional consequence in the universe -as to be held worthy by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">246</a></span> supreme heavenly powers of receiving a -miraculous message and the promise of this and that unspeakable -privilege in indescribable worlds to come, so long he is not likely to -weigh very fairly the effects of the belief in such power, messages, and -privileges, on the education and advancement of this world. The modern -historic justice which is done to Catholicism is due to the -establishment of a series of convictions that civilisation is a -structure which man by his own right arm has raised for himself, that it -has been exposed to many an era of storm and stress, and to manifold -influences which have been perpetually destroying portions of the great -edifice, adding fresh parts, modifying the old, by an interminable -succession of changes, resounding and volcanic, or still and -imperceptible; that the danger of destruction was never so terrible as -in the days of the dissolution of the old Roman society; that in this -prolonged crisis the Christian church emerged, first by its organisation -and the ability of some of its chiefs, and next by the attraction of -legends that harmonised with the needs of a dark, confused, and -terror-stricken time; that the many barbarous and absurd articles of -belief incorporated in the Christian profession by the sophists of the -East, received from time to time humane modification in the hands of the -wiser churchmen of the West, whose practical judgment was perpetually -softening down the crude, savage, unilluminated doctrines which had -naturally sprung up in the dismal age when the Catholic system acquired -substance and shape.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">247</a></span> A just recognition of all these things is only -easy to one whose expectations from humanity are moderate, who perceives -how tardy and difficult is the accomplishment of each smallest step in -the long process, and how helpful are even the simplest beliefs of rude -times in transforming men from vagrant animals into beings with a -consciousness of fixed common relations towards some object of common -worship, and so planting the first germs of social consolidation and -growth.</p> - -<p>Voltaire was, from the circumstances in which he was placed, too busy -proving the purely human origin of Catholicism to have a mind free to -examine how much, if we suppose it to be of purely human origin, it has -done for those who accepted it. Perhaps we ought rather to praise than -blame him for abstaining from planting himself at the historic point of -view, before settling the previous question whether the historic point -of view is permitted in considering the religious movements of Europe. -Until Voltaire and others had divested the current religion of its -supernatural pretensions, it was impossible for any thinker, who -declines to try to take the second step before he has already taken the -first, to survey the operations of such a religion as a merely secular -force. This surely is a field of thought where no serious inquirer could -content himself with a mere working hypothesis. If the supernatural -claims of Catholicism are well founded, then the historic method of -treating it is either a frivolous diversion or else a grave and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">248</a></span> -mischievous heresy. The issue being of this moment, everybody who -studies the philosophy of history with effect must have made up his mind -in one way or the other. Voltaire had made up his mind very definitely, -and the conclusion to which, for adequate or inadequate reasons, he came -in this matter was one of the most influential agencies in preparing -men’s minds for the construction and general reception of a sounder -historical philosophy than was within his own reach. That he did not see -the deduction from his work is a limitation of vision that he shares -with most of the men to whom it has fallen to overthrow old sytems, and -clear the ground on which the next generation has raised new.</p> - -<h5><br />II.</h5> - -<p>Having said thus much on the general causes and conditions of Voltaire’s -attack, we may next briefly examine his method. A brief examination -suffices, because, like all his contemporaries, he was so very -imperfectly acquainted with the principles of scientific criticism, and -because his weapons, though sharp and deadly enough for their purpose, -are now likely to become more and more thoroughly antiquated. In -criticism he was, as has often been remarked, the direct descendant of -Bayle. That is, his instruments were purely literary and dialectical. He -examined the various sacred narratives as if he had been reviewing a -contemporary historian. He delights in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">249</a></span> the minute cavils of literary -pyrrhonism, and rejoices in the artifice of imposing the significance of -the letter, where his adversaries strove for interpretation of the -spirit. As if, for instance, anything could be more childish than to -attack baptism by asking whether Christianity consists in throwing water -on the head, with a little salt in it.<a name="FNanchor_201" id="FNanchor_201"></a><a href="#Footnote_201" class="fnanchor">201</a> He is perfectly content with -the exposure of a fallacy in words, without seeking to expose the root -fallacy of idea. Nothing short of the blindest partisanship can pretend -to find in this a proper or adequate method. The utmost that can be -said, and no just historian ought to forget to say it, is that it was -not more improper nor inadequate than the orthodox method of defence. -Bayle’s commentary on the words, ‘Compel them to come in,’ would not -satisfy the modern requirements of scriptural exegesis, but it was quite -good enough to confound those who contended that the text was a direct -warrant and injunction from heaven for the bitterest persecution on -earth. But the unfair parry of unfair thrust, extenuate it as we may, -count it inevitable as we may, even reckoning up such advantages from it -as we can, and in the present case they were enormous, can never be any -pattern or masterpiece of retort; and it is folly to allow admiration -for the social merit of Voltaire’s end to blind us to the logical -demerit of his means. It is deliberately to throw away the advantage of -our distance from the contest, and to sell for a momentary -self-indulgence in the spirit of party <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">250</a></span>the birthright of a free and -equitable historic vision. Let men not fail to do justice to the gains -of humanity won by the emancipation of the eighteenth century; but we -shall be worse off than if they had never been transmitted, if they are -allowed to bind us to approve of every detail of the many movements by -which the final triumph was obtained.</p> - -<p>The key to his method of attack is given us in a sentence in one of his -letters to D’Alembert. ‘It is never by means of metaphysics,’ he says, -‘that you will succeed in delivering men from error; you must prove the -truth by facts.’<a name="FNanchor_202" id="FNanchor_202"></a><a href="#Footnote_202" class="fnanchor">202</a> In other words, the sublime abstract reasoning of -a Spinoza will do far less to dispel the narrow ideas, unfounded -beliefs, and false restrictive conceptions which cripple the human -intelligence so long as it is in bondage to a theological system, than a -direct disproval of the alleged facts on which the system professes to -rest. It is only by dealing immediately with these that you can make the -repulse of error a real question, substantially interesting to ordinary -men. Always remembering that Voltaire’s intelligence was practical -rather than speculative, and, besides this, that from the time when he -commenced his attack in earnest the object which he had at heart was the -overthrow of a crushing practical institution, we may agree that in such -a humour and with such a purpose the most effective way of harassing so -active and pestilent a foe was to carry the war into the enemy’s -quarters, and to use those <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">251</a></span>kinds of arguments which the greatest number -of men would be likely to find cogent. We may complain that Voltaire -never rises from the ground into the region of the higher facts of -religion; and this is quite true. It would have been controversially -futile if he had done so. There was no audience in those times for the -discussion of the higher facts; and the reason of this was that the -spiritual instructors and champions themselves thrust into the front -place legends, miracles, and the whole of the peculiarly vulgar part of -the theological apparatus, which it would have been as absurd to -controvert metaphysically, as it would be to try to elevate a Gold-coast -negro from his fetish worship by the transcendental parts of Plato.</p> - -<p>It nearly always happens that the defenders of a decaying system, when -they find themselves surrounded by the wholly uncongenial atmosphere of -rationalistic method, fall back, not on the noblest, but on the -ignoblest parts of their system. Distressed by the light, they shrink -hurriedly into darkest recesses of the familiar caves, partly because -they have a sense of especial security in a region that they know so -well, and partly because they have misgivings lest the surrender of -articles or practices in which they only half believe, should by too -stringent process of logical compulsion lead to the destruction of -others in which they believe with all their hearts. Such tactics may or -may not be politic, but we can at least be quite certain that they tend<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">252</a></span> -neither to elevation of religion, nor discovery of truth, nor profit and -sincerity of discussion. If a set of doctrines be attacked from many -quarters in an unworthy manner, and taken at their worst instead of at -their best, we may be quite sure that this is as much due to the -defenders as to the assailants. It was not Voltaire’s fault that the -controversy turned on issues which a more modern opponent would not care -to dispute. He is constantly flippant and trivial, and constantly -manifests gross irreverence, but it was the writers whom he was -combating, writers like Sanchez or the stercorists, who had opened -frivolous and unbecoming questions that could hardly be exposed with -gravity. He was making war on an institution, and it was not his concern -to fight on ground which his adversary had never thought, and was too -blind and demoralised to be able to think, of taking up. It was not his -fault that the upholders of the creed he attacked, made a stand upon the -letter of sacred documents, upon prophecy and miracle and special -intervention, upon the virtues of relics and the liquefaction of the -blood of Saint Januarius. The same wise man who forbade us to answer a -fool according to his folly, also enjoined upon us to answer a fool -according to his folly, and the moral commentator agrees that each -prescription is as sage as its contradictory.</p> - -<p>If truth means anything, it was worth while to put to rout the -distortions of truth with which the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">253</a></span> church lowered the understanding of -its votaries. If truth means anything, then it was worth while to reply -to the allegation that the history of the Christian church is a long -witness of the goodness of heaven and the ever-present guidance of its -heavenly founder, by a record of the actual facts; of the simplicity, -equality, absence of multiplied rites, orders, and dogmas, among the -primitive members of the congregation, and of the radical differences -between the use of apostolic times and of times since; of the incurable -want of authority for all those tales of demons being cast out, pious -inscriptions in letters of gold found graven on the hearts of martyrs, -and the rest, which grow rare in proportion as we draw nearer to the -times when the evidence for them would have been preserved; of the -infamous character of many Christian heroes, from Constantine downwards, -and of the promptitude with which the Christians, as soon as ever they -had power, dyed their hands in the blood of their persecutors; of the -stupefying circumstances that after a revelation was made to the human -race by no less a prodigy than the incarnation of supreme power in a -mortal body, and the miraculous maintenance of this event and its -significance in the tradition, doctrine, discipline of the Catholic -church, yet the whole of Asia, the whole of Africa, all the possessions -of the English and Dutch in America, all the uncivilised Indian tribes, -all the southern lands, amounting to one-fifth part of the globe still -remain in the clutches of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">254</a></span> demon, to verify that holy saying of many -being called but few chosen.<a name="FNanchor_203" id="FNanchor_203"></a><a href="#Footnote_203" class="fnanchor">203</a></p> - -<p>It may be said that this kind of argument really proves nothing at all -about the supernatural origin or character of the Christian revelation, -for which you must seek the responses not of ecclesiastical history but -of the human heart. And that may be a fair thing to say, but then this -contention of the new revelation being only a message to the heart has -only been heard since Voltaire thrust aside the very different -contention of his day. Those various beliefs were universally accepted -about the progress of the church, which were true in no sense whatever, -literal or spiritual, mystical or historical. People accepted traditions -and records, sacred and profane, as literal, accurate, categorical -declarations and descriptions of a long series of things done and -suffered. Moreover, the modern argument in favour of the supernatural -origin of the Christian religion, drawn from its suitableness to our -needs and its divine response to our aspirations, must be admitted by -every candid person resorting to it to be of exactly equal force in the -mouth of a Mahometan or a fire-worshipper or an astrolater. If you apply -a subjective test of this kind, it must be as good for the sincere and -satisfied votaries of one creed, as it is for those of any other. The -needs and aspirations of the Mahometan would not be satisfied by -fetishism or polytheism, nor those of the developed polytheist by -<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">255</a></span>totem-worship. It would be ridiculous for so small a minority of the -race as the professors of Christianity to assume that their aspirations -are the absolute measure of those of humanity in every stage. The -argument can never carry us beyond the relativity of religious truth.</p> - -<p>Now the French apologist a hundred years ago dealt in the most absolute -possible matter. Christianity to him meant a set of very concrete ideas -of all sorts; any one who accepted them in the concrete and literal form -prescribed by the church would share infinite bliss, and any one who -rejected them, whether deliberately or from never having been so happy -as to hear of them, would be infinitely tormented. If this theory be -right, then Voltaire must naturally be abhorred by all persons who hold -it, as a perverse and mischievous hinderer of light. If it be wrong, and -we must observe that from its terms this is not one of the marvellously -multiplying beliefs of which we hear that they may be half wrong and -half right, then Voltaire may take rank with other useful expellers of -popular error. Everybody must admit how imperfect is all such treatment -of popular error; how little rich, how little comprehensive, how little -full. Yet the surgeon who has couched his patient’s cataract has surely -done a service, even if he do not straightway carry him to enjoy the -restored faculty on some high summit of far and noble prospect.</p> - -<p>Voltaire’s attack was essentially the attack of the English deists, as -indeed he is always willing enough<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">256</a></span> to admit, pursued with far less -gravity and honest search for truth, but, it is hardly necessary to say, -with far more adroitness, rapidity, and grace of manner than any of -them, even than Bolingbroke. As we have seen, he insisted on throwing -himself upon the facts in the records that are least easily reconciled -with a general sense of probability and evidence, as gradually developed -in men by experience. He placed the various incidents of the Bible, the -interpretation of them by the church, the statement of doctrine, the -characters of prominent actors, in the full light of common experience -and of the maxims which experience has made second nature. ‘I always -speak humanly,’ he says mockingly, ‘I always put myself in the place of -a man who, having never heard tell either of Jews or Christians, should -read these books for the first time, and not being illuminated by grace, -should be so unhappy as to trust unaided reason in the matter, until he -should be enlightened from on high.’<a name="FNanchor_204" id="FNanchor_204"></a><a href="#Footnote_204" class="fnanchor">204</a></p> - -<p>It is superfluous to detail the treatment to which he subjected such -mysteries of the faith as the inheritance of the curse of sin by all -following generations from the first fall of man; the appearance from -time to time, among an obscure oriental tribe, of prophets who foretold -the coming of a divine deliverer, who should wash away that fatal stain -by sacrificial expiation; the choice of this specially cruel, -treacherous, stubborn, and rebellious tribe, to be the favoured <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">257</a></span>people -of a deity of spotless mercy and truth; the advent of the deliverer in -circumstances of extraordinary meanness and obscurity among a generation -that greeted his pretensions with incredulity, and finally caused him to -be put to death with ignominy, in spite of his appeal to the prophets -and to the many signs and wonders which he wrought among them; the -rising of this deliverer from the dead; the ascription to him in the -course of the next three or four centuries of claims which he never made -in person, and of propositions which he never advanced while he walked -on the earth, yet which must now be accepted by every one who would -after death escape a pitiless torment without end; the truly miraculous -preservation amid a fiery swarm of heresies, intricate, minute, subtle, -barely intelligible, but very soul-destroying, of that little fragile -thread of pure belief which can alone guide each spirit in the divinely -appointed path. Exposed to the light, which they were never meant to -endure, of ordinary principles of evidence founded on ordinary -experience, the immortal legends, the prophecies, the miracles, the -mysteries, on which the spiritual faith of Europe had hung for so many -generations, seemed to shrivel up in unlovely dissolution. The -authenticity of the texts on which the salvation of man depends, the -contradictions and inconsistencies of the documents, the incompatibility -between many acts and motives expressly approved by the holiest persons, -and the justice and mercy which are supposed to sit enthroned on high in -the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">258</a></span> bosoms, the forced constructions of prophecies and their -stultifying futility of fulfilment, the extraordinary frivolousness of -some of the occasions on which the divine power of thaumaturgy was -deliberately and solemnly exerted,—these were among the points at which -the messenger of Satan at Ferney was permitted sorely to buffet the -church. What is the date of the Apostles’ Creed? What of the so-called -Athanasian Creed? How were the seven sacraments instituted one after -another? What was the difference between the synaxis and the mass? And -so forth through many hundreds of pages.</p> - -<p>Along with rationalistic questions in scriptural and ecclesiastical -history, are many more as to doctrine, and the assumption on which a -doctrine rests; questions as to the trinity, as to redemption by the -shedding of innocent blood, as to the daily miracle of -transubstantiation, as to the resurrection of the body, as to the -existence of an entity called soul independently of that matter which, -apart from miracle, seems an inseparable condition of its manifestation. -His arguments on all these subjects contain a strange mixture of shallow -mockery and just objection. The questions which he suggests for the -doctors as to the resurrection of the body may serve for an example. -Among them are these:</p> - -<p>‘A Breton soldier goes to Canada. It happens by a not uncommon chance -that he falls short of food; he is forced to eat a piece of an Iroquois -whom he has killed over night. The Iroquois had fed on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">259</a></span> Jesuits for two -or three months, a great part of his body had thus become Jesuit. So -there is the body of the soldier with Iroquois, Jesuit, and whatever he -had eaten before, entering into it. How then will each resume exactly -what belongs to him?’ ‘In order to come to life again, to be the same -person you were, you must have a lively and present recollection; it is -memory that makes your identity. Having lost memory, how are you to be -the same man?’ Again, ‘considering that only certain material elements -are proper for the composition of the human body, where is earth enough -to be found to remake all the bodies needed for so many hundreds of -generations? And supposing that by a prodigious miracle the whole human -race could be resuscitated in the Valley of Jehoshaphat, where are all -the spirits meanwhile?’<a name="FNanchor_205" id="FNanchor_205"></a><a href="#Footnote_205" class="fnanchor">205</a></p> - -<p>Another very favourite mode of approaching the beliefs, incidents, and -personages of Jewish and Christian history was to show that they had -counterparts in some pagan fables or systems, in the books of Chinese -philosophers or Brahminical sages. The inference from this identity or -correspondence between some Judaical practices and myths, and the -practices and myths of Arabians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Hindoos, was -that they were in all cases equally the artificial creations of -impostors preying on the credu-lity of men, ‘the first prophet or -diviner having been the first rogue who met the first fool.’ It is -curious <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">260</a></span>to observe how the modern argument from constantly extending -discoveries in comparative mythology tends to the demolition of the -special pretensions of Judaical myths of all sorts, by the very opposite -inference to that on which the Voltairean school rested. Voltaire urged -that as these myths resembled one another in this and that important -feature, therefore they were all equally spurious, false, and absurd. -The modern, on the contrary, would hold them all equally genuine, -equally free from the taint of imposture in priest or people, and -equally faithful representations of the mental states which produced and -accepted them. The weakening of the particular sanctity and objective -reality of any one form of these common primitive ways of thinking about -the action of non-human agents would be just as strong, whether we take -the new or the old view of the generation of myths, but the difference -of the effect of the two views upon the justice and fertility of -historic spirit is immeasurable.</p> - -<p>There is no sign, however, that Voltaire was ever seriously conscious of -the importance of a right consideration of the mental conditions of -primitive peoples. This study had been commenced in his own time by De -Brosses, the inventor of the term fetishism, and pronounced by competent -modern authorities to have been a powerful and original thinker upon the -facts of the infancy of civilisation.<a name="FNanchor_206" id="FNanchor_206"></a><a href="#Footnote_206" class="fnanchor">206</a> Yet Voltaire treated the -speculations of this industrious inquirer with the same ignorant -contempt and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">261</a></span>scorn that the theological enemies of geology were once -accustomed to bestow on men who chipped bits of rock and cherished -fossils.<a name="FNanchor_207" id="FNanchor_207"></a><a href="#Footnote_207" class="fnanchor">207</a> Oddly enough, Voltaire’s carelessness and want of thought -on these matters left him with that very theory of the nature of the -development of cultivation, on which the theological school insists to -this day as against the scientific ethnologists. The question is whether -the earliest men were savages, or partially civilised; in other words, -whether civilisation has consisted in a certain uniform progression from -a state a little above the brutes, or whether the savage is not a being -who has degenerated from a partial degree of civilisation. The -progression theory was no doubt in a general way a characteristic -doctrine of the men of the eighteenth century, for which De Maistre, an -ardent and most ingenious advocate of the degeneration theory, reviled -them with his usual heartiness. Yet his eagerness to depress revelation -by exalting natural theology led Voltaire to the essentially theological -position that the earliest men had a clear and lofty idea of a Supreme -Being, and a ready appreciation of justice and charity in their -relations with one another, until the vile ambition of priestly and -prophetic impostors succeeded in setting upon their necks the yoke of -systems which corrupted the heart and conscience, and sophisticated a -pure and simple faith. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">262</a></span></p> - -<p>He did not hold that men were conscious of the one God as they were -conscious of light, or that they had perceptions of such a being, as -they had perceptions of the ground they tilled. The idea was derived by -process of natural logic from the contemplation of astonishing natural -effects, of harvest and dearth, of fair days and tempests, of -benefactions and scourges. They saw all these things, and felt the work -of a master.<a name="FNanchor_208" id="FNanchor_208"></a><a href="#Footnote_208" class="fnanchor">208</a> Just as in each community there were men who by the -force of their reason found out that triangles with the same base and of -the same height are equal, and others who in sowing and reaping and -tending their flocks perceived that the sun and moon returned pretty -nearly to the point from which they had started, and that they never -travelled beyond a certain limit to north or south, so there was a third -man who considered that men, animals, stars could not have made -themselves, and who saw that therefore a Supreme Being must exist; while -a fourth, struck by the wrongs that men inflicted on one another, -concluded that if there exists a being who made the stars, the earth, -and men, such a being must confer favour on the virtuous, and -punishments on the wicked. This idea, Voltaire declares, is so natural -and so good that it was most readily embraced.<a name="FNanchor_209" id="FNanchor_209"></a><a href="#Footnote_209" class="fnanchor">209</a> The various forms of -revelations were only so many corruptions of that simple, serviceable, -and self-proving monotheism, and so were the conceptions of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">263</a></span>polytheism. -He had no notion that monotheism is a later development of the -theological spirit than polytheism. Unable to deny that the Greeks and -Romans, about whom he knew so little and talked so much, had plurality -of gods, he drew a distinction between one Supreme Being and all the -rest, and contended that you may search all their records in vain for a -single fact or a single word to counterbalance the many passages and -monuments which attest their belief of the sovereignty of the one deity -and his superiority over all the rest.<a name="FNanchor_210" id="FNanchor_210"></a><a href="#Footnote_210" class="fnanchor">210</a> We do not know whether this -was a fortuitous kind of growth in his own mind, or whether it was a -scrap of recollection from the painstaking pages in which Cudworth had -worked at the establishment of that explanation of polytheism. Voltaire -too often writes on these weighty subjects, as if trusting to a memory -that snatched effectively at plausible theories, while losing much of -their evidence and all their deeper bearings.</p> - -<p>It would be not a little extraordinary, if we did not constantly -remember that Voltaire’s strength did not lie in speculation or -systematic thought, that he saw none of the objections to this account -of things, and that he was content with so limited an observation of the -facts. If De Brosses had magnanimously suffered himself to be cheated in -the transaction of the fourteen cords of wood, Voltaire would perhaps -have read his book candidly, and if he had read it otherwise than with a -foregone resolution to despise it, he would <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">264</a></span>have come upon a number of -circumstances entirely fatal to his smooth theory that many gods are -always subordinate to the one, because he would have had to consider -those states of the human mind in which there are no spiritual gods at -all, but in which every object whatever is invested with volition and -power. In one place he shows something like a recognition of the true -nature of the process. ‘I have always been persuaded,’ he says in a -letter to Mairan, ‘that the phenomena of the heavens have been in the -main the source of the old fables. Thunder was heard on the inaccessible -summit of a mountain; therefore there must be gods dwelling on the -mountain, and launching the thunder. The sun seems to speed from east to -west, therefore he has fine coursers. The rain does not touch the head -of one who sees a rainbow, so the rainbow is a token that there will -never again be a deluge.’<a name="FNanchor_211" id="FNanchor_211"></a><a href="#Footnote_211" class="fnanchor">211</a> But then Voltaire was no systematic -thinker, and thus there was no security that any given right idea which -came into his mind would either remain present to him, or would be -followed up and placed along with other ideas in a scientific order. -Apart from this, however, it is extraordinary that Voltaire’s extreme -acuteness did not suggest to him the question, how it was that the -artless and clear belief in one God became more and more obscured by the -growing multitude of other gods, just in proportion as the primitive -tribes became more civilised in all the arts of life. If the nomad -progenitors of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">265</a></span>Greeks had only one god, how was it that, as -knowledge, social feeling, love of beauty, and all the other ennobling -parts of man became more fully developed, the power of superstition -waxed greater, and temples and images were multiplied!</p> - -<p>Again, the theologist might, consistently with his deliberate principle -of resort to the miraculous, contend that this first conception of a -single supreme power, in the fact of the existence of which he is -entirely at one with Voltaire, was directly implanted by a supernatural -force. But Voltaire, debarred from such an explanation as this, was -driven silently to assume and imply the truly incredible position that -the rudest savages, being what we know them, urgently occupied in the -struggle for means of subsistence, leading lives purely animal, -possessed of no vocabulary for any abstract idea, should yet by one leap -of natural logic have risen to one of the very highest pinnacles of -speculation, and both felt and expressed the idea of cause in the most -general and comprehensive of all its forms. Surely this assumption, -measured by any of those standards of experience or probability to which -he professed to appeal, was as much of a miracle as those which he so -decisively repudiated.</p> - -<p>In one of his letters Voltaire declared that Locke was the only -reasonable metaphysician that he knew, and that next to him he placed -Hume.<a name="FNanchor_212" id="FNanchor_212"></a><a href="#Footnote_212" class="fnanchor">212</a> Did he ever read, we may wonder, that masterly essay on the -<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">266</a></span>Natural History of Religion, where Hume not only combats with his usual -vigour and effectiveness the idea of the belief in one omniscient, -omnipotent, and omnipresent spirit being the primary religion of men, -and shows that polytheism precedes monotheism, but also traces the -origin of all religion to its rudiment, in that ‘universal tendency -among mankind to conceive all beings like themselves, and to transfer to -every object those qualities with which they are familiarly acquainted, -and of which they are intimately conscious?’<a name="FNanchor_213" id="FNanchor_213"></a><a href="#Footnote_213" class="fnanchor">213</a> The greater the -knowledge we acquire of the spiritual rudiments of primitive people, the -more certainly is it established that the idea of theism as the earliest -and most elementary belief, which Voltaire had picked up from -Bolingbroke and Pope, is untenable, and that Hume has been more and more -fully warranted in saying that the only point of theology on which the -consent of mankind is nearly universal is that ‘there is an invisible, -intelligent power in the world, but whether this power be supreme or -subordinate, whether confined to one being or distributed among several, -what attributes, qualities, connections, or principles of action, ought -to be ascribed to these beings, concerning all these points there is the -widest difference in the popular systems of theology.’<a name="FNanchor_214" id="FNanchor_214"></a><a href="#Footnote_214" class="fnanchor">214</a> This might -be placing natural theology very low, but Hume at any rate placed it -where he did and described it as he did, because he had knowledge enough -of the condition of various nations in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">267</a></span>various parts of their history, -and was sufficiently penetrated with a cautious and scientific spirit, -to abstain from the unsupported and purely metaphysical conjectures of -men like Voltaire and Rousseau. Well might the keen-eyed De Maistre -describe him from the Catholic point of view as the most dangerous and -the guiltiest of all those pestilent writers,—the one who employed most -talent with most coolness to do most mischief.<a name="FNanchor_215" id="FNanchor_215"></a><a href="#Footnote_215" class="fnanchor">215</a></p> - -<p>If Voltaire had studied Hume, moreover, he might have learnt how futile -and inappropriate it is in the long run to examine a religion otherwise -than in its most fundamental and comprehensive general ideas, and how -narrow and superficial would every philosophic appreciation ultimately -find what he called refutation by facts. For his own immediate purpose, -which was to cover the church and its creed with ridicule, the method of -collecting all the ludicrous, immoral, and inconsistent circumstances in -the Scriptures and their current interpretation, was, as we have already -said, a weapon potent enough. Voltaire, however, not only did not use, -he never understood nor perceived, the fact that a religion rests for -its final base on a certain small number of ideas, or that it is only by -touching these, by loosening the firmness of their hold, by revealing -their want of coherency and consistency with other accepted ideas, that -we can expect to shake the superstructure. For example, if only the -official exponents of religion had not been <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">268</a></span>so firmly bent on making -the feeblest of all their ramparts into their very citadel, it would -have been a very small thing to urge the truly singular quality of such -miracles as those of the water made wine at Cana, of the cursing of the -barren fig-tree, of the unfortunate swine who rushed violently down a -steep place and were choked. These were legends that from the right -point of view of religion were not worth defending, any more than from -the right point of view of truth they were worth attacking. The details -of the use of a supernaturally conferred power may best be let alone, -until the probability of the existence and bestowal of such power has -been discussed and decided. The important issue and matter of vital -concern turned upon the general idea of the miraculous; yet this was -what Voltaire, perhaps from an instinctive consciousness of the little -capacity he possessed for genuine speculation, postponed to the really -secondary purpose of disparaging particular cases of miraculous -performance.</p> - -<p>We are now touching what, before Hume, was the central defect of the -eighteenth-century attack, judged philosophically rather than -practically. The movement was a reaction against a certain set of ideas -which had been incorporated in the Christian system, as that system was -elaborated by the oriental sophisters. Yet the exact conflict between -the old ideas and the new was never conceived, much less was it -expressed, in clear comprehensive formulas. Consequently the most -general terms for the debate were neither sought<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">269</a></span> nor found, and hence -the oppressive narrowness, the stifling want of free air, throughout the -controversy. The truth or falsehood which it is good for us to discover -in connection with a religion resides not in detail, but in the largest -general ideas of the subject. These draw all else along with them. Let -us take an illustration from a characteristic of the anti-christian -attack which has already been mentioned. The Voltairean school, as we -have before observed,<a name="FNanchor_216" id="FNanchor_216"></a><a href="#Footnote_216" class="fnanchor">216</a> habitually derided the sacred importance -attached by the church in all ages, from Saint Paul downwards, to the -practice of continence. But there is no sign, so far as the present -writer’s knowledge goes, that they ever were near perceiving the origin -of that superstition lying deep down for so many centuries in the human -mind. The sanctity of continence was only one product of the old -far-spreading conviction of all the evil and unholiness essentially -inherent in matter. This conviction, which has itself a history and -genesis well worth tracing, probably accounts for more of the peculiar -manifestations contained in Christianity than any one principle of -belief besides. From this metaphysical idea sprang the whole theory of -asceticism; it had much to do indirectly with the first establishment of -the doctrine of the divinity of Christ; it entered into the triumph of -indispensable grace.<a name="FNanchor_217" id="FNanchor_217"></a><a href="#Footnote_217" class="fnanchor">217</a> The speculative origin of practices and -sentiments which the heads of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">270</a></span>the western church valued, modified, and -sagaciously used for ecclesiastical or political reasons, ought never to -be lost sight of, because their duration has depended on the -circumstance of the original speculative idea remaining deeply sunk, -though not often put into articulate form, in the minds of the faithful, -and of all others whom these practices and sentiments have influenced. -One key to the central movement of the eighteenth century is the -dispersion of this association of evil and corruption from matter. There -was energetic and triumphant progress in the discovery of the laws of -matter, in their most stupendous, overwhelming, and majestic order. -There was a steady tendency to resolve mental manifestations into -functions of matter. There was a general inclination to forget those -depressing facts connected with the decay and dissolution of matter, -which, in the dismal times when the church was founded, had been thrust -into a prominence so humiliating to human dignity. The general movement -was carried too far by extreme spirits, but on the whole it was a -salutary and much-needed protest against the limitation of knowledge -within airy cloudlands where no true knowledge was to be reached, and of -emotion within transcendental aspirations where the deep reality of -human relations faded into dim distance.</p> - -<p>It is only when controversy is conducted with reference to ground ideas -of this kind, that the parties to it can be sure of being on the same -plane, and, if they are not on the same plane, one of the least -<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">271</a></span>mischiefs is that their arguments fly over one another’s heads. -Voltaire failed, partly from want of historic knowledge, partly from -insufficient depth of nature, to see what these ground ideas were, -against which he was fighting. Thus, to take another instance, he failed -to see that the belief in the exertion of supernatural power, even on -occasions which struck him as so frivolous, and in a manner undoubtedly -incompatible with justice, was merely an incidental result of a -profoundly rooted idea of the closeness, constancy, and mixed holiness -and majesty, of the relations between man and an awful being other than -man, endowed with powers denied to us, and animated by motives -inscrutable to us. He chose, if we are not wrong in using a term that -may imply much conscious deliberation, to identify his own conception of -deity with the conception of deity in the first four centuries of the -Christian era, simply because the object of each was called by a common -name. He found that the actions attributed to the Supreme Being whom the -church revered, were unworthy of a personage endowed with the qualities -which he ascribed to a supreme power, in his own version of that -culminating conception. He was thus never on the same plane of thought -or argument, but he never was near finding this out. The God whom he -conceived was incapable, from the very nature attributed to him by his -worshippers, of the various transactions, lofty and mean, sublime and -puerile, described in the documents on which Catholicism<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">272</a></span> relied, and -the tradition by which it corroborated and interpreted them. The ground -idea of the belief in the miraculous was an extremely anthropomorphic -notion of a divinity, possessed of complete power, but using it in -obedience to motives which finite understandings cannot pretend to -fathom or measure. Such a notion was the natural growth of the human -mind, amid such a set of circumstances as attended the development and -establishment of Christianity. Men sat in darkness, forlorn and without -hope, and it is not hard for us to imagine the exultation with which -some greater spirit would produce, and all others would embrace, the -idea of this misery and darkness being no more than an outer accident, -the mysterious and incomprehensible dispensation of a divine being, ever -alive to the destinies of men, but holding them in the hollow of an -unseen hand, and guiding them in ways that are not as our ways; ever -remote from corporeal vision, but operating at a multitude of points on -the spirit of each man through grace, and finally, by a consummating -miracle repeated daily some thousands of times, severing this spirit -from the probation of flesh, and prolonging its existence independently -of the body through all eternity in modes of being, none the less real -for being impossible to conceive. To Voltaire this was unspeakable -foolishness. The prodigies of grace, of the resurrection of the body, of -the incarnation of divinity, were inconsistent with the qualities which -he imputed to the creator of the universe, and hence he contented<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">273</a></span> -himself with mocking at them; the real state of the case was simply that -a number of influences had drawn men aside from that conception of the -creator, with which such prodigies were not inconsistent, but were on -the contrary logically and inseparably associated.</p> - -<p>This failure to rise to the highest ideas involved in the great debate -explains, along with much besides, two striking facts connected with it. -It explains the intense acerbity of the conflict, and the flaming depth -of the chasm which divided and divides the two camps in France. For the -best natures are most violently irritated and outraged by mocking and -satiric attack upon the minor details, the accidents, the outside of the -objects of faith, when they would have been affected in a very different -way by a contrast between the loftiest parts of their own belief and the -loftiest parts of some other belief. Many persons who would listen to a -grave attack on the consistency, reasonableness, and elevation of the -currently ascribed attributes of the godhead, with something of the -respect due to the profound solemnity of the subject, would turn with -deaf and implacable resentment upon one who should make merry over the -swine of Gadara.</p> - -<p>The same circumstance, secondly, explains the absence of permanent -quality about all that Voltaire wrote upon religion. For instance, men -who sympathise with him in his aims, and even for their sake forgive him -his method, who have long ago<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">274</a></span> struck the tents under which they once -found shelter in the lands of belief, to whom Catholicism has become as -extinct a thing as Mahometanism, even they will turn with better chance -of edification to the great masters and teachers of the old faith, than -to the fiery precursor of the new. And why, if not for the reason that -while he dealt mainly with the lower religious ideas, or with the higher -ideas in their lowest forms, they put these into the second place, and -move with an inspiring exultation amid the loftiest and most general -conceptions that fine imagination and a soaring reason could discover -among the spiritual treasures of their religion. They turned to the -diviner mind, and exercised themselves with the weightiest and most -universal circumstances of the destiny of mankind. This is what makes -their thought and eloquence of perpetual worth, because the -circumstances with which they deal are perpetually present, and the -elements of life and character to which they appeal perpetually -operative. The awful law of death, the impenetrable secret of the first -cause, the fierce play of passion and universal distribution of pain, -the momentariness of guilt and eternity of remorse, the anguish of -bereavement that chokes and rends, the hopeless inner desolation which -is the unbroken lot of myriads of the forlorn of the earth,—these -ghostly things ever laying siege to the soul were known to a Bossuet or -a Pascal, and resolved by a series of ideas about the unknowable power -and the government of the world, which are no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">275</a></span> longer the mighty weapons -of exorcism they once were, but they are at any rate of due magnitude -and proportion, sublime, solemn, never unworthy. We touch the hands of -those who have walked with the most high, and they tell us many moving -wonders; we look on faces that have shone in rays from the heaven of -noble thoughts; we hear solemn and melodious words from men who received -answers from oracles that to us are very mute, but the memory of whose -power is still upon us. Hence the work of these glowing mortals lives -even for those to whom their faith is dead, while the words that -Voltaire wrote on religion are lifeless as the Infamous which they so -meritoriously slew. As we have said, he never knew the deeper things of -Catholicism. This is what he wrote about the immortal Dante: ‘Everybody -with a spark of good sense ought to blush at that monstrous assemblage -in hell of Dante and Virgil, of Saint Peter and Madonna Beatrice. There -are to be found among us, in the eighteenth century, people who force -themselves to admire feats of imagination as stupidly extravagant and as -barbarous as this; they have the brutality to oppose them to the -masterpieces of genius, wisdom, and eloquence, that we have in our -language. <i>O tempora, O judicium!</i>’<a name="FNanchor_218" id="FNanchor_218"></a><a href="#Footnote_218" class="fnanchor">218</a> To which prodigy of criticism -we can only exclaim with the echo, <i>O tempora, O judicium!</i> <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">276</a></span></p> - -<h5><br />III.</h5> - -<p>Let us see shortly what was Voltaire’s own solution of those facts of -life with which religion has to deal. The Catholic solution we know, and -can definitely analyse and describe; but the vagueness of Voltairean -deism defies any attempt at detailed examination. We can perceive a -supernatural existence, endowed with indefinable attributes, which are -fixed subjectively in the individual consciousness of each believer, and -which therefore can never be set forth in a scheme of general -acceptance. The Voltairean deist—and such persons exist in ample -numbers to this day—hardly ever takes the trouble to reconcile with one -another the various attributes which he imputes at various times to some -great master power of the universe. There is scarcely one of these -attributes to which, when it comes to be definitely described, he does -not encounter affronting contradiction in the real occurrences that -arise from time to time to search and try all our theories, deistical, -or other. The phenomena of moral and physical evil on the earth, and the -arrival of disasters which make no discrimination between their victims, -are constantly dealing sore blows to the conceptions which the deist -loves to erect in moments of optimistic expansion, of the clemency, -justice, and illimitable power of a being who governs the universe, and -is a something outside and independent of it. These<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">277</a></span> optimist -conceptions, vague, unverified, free of definite relations with any -moral or social system, and furnishing no principle of active human -association as the Catholic idea of deity had done, constitute the -favourite religion or religiosity of those classes in all modern -countries, which have found the Voltairean kind of objection to the -Christian revelation insuperable, and which are so fortunate as to enjoy -a full measure of material prosperity. To these classes the black side -of life is strange and a matter of hearsay; and hence the awkwardness of -reconciling their complacent theory with the horror of facts is never -forced upon them. In their own happiness they love to superadd the -luxury of thankfulness to the bounty of a being to whom they owe all, -and to swell the tide of their own emotions by meditation on his -infinite and unspeakable perfections. Proof they require none, beyond -the loveliness and variety of external nature, the innocence and delight -of all young creatures, the order of the seasons bearing us their -copious fruit, the vivid intelligence and serviceable power of man, who -is the divinely appointed recipient of all these multitudinous favours. -Hence in proportion as this sort of deism stirs the soul of a man, the -more closely are his inmost thoughts reserved for contemplation of the -relations between the Supreme Being and his own individuality. It is a -creed which is specially adapted for, and has been generally seized by, -those with whom the world has gone very well, owing to their own<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">278</a></span> -laudable exertion, and who are inclined to believe that the existing -ordering of society is fundamentally the best possible. It is the -superlative decoration of optimism.</p> - -<p>The mass of men, those who dwell in dens and whose lives are bitter, -have never, in spite even of Rousseau’s teaching, accepted deism. An -opportunity for trying the experiment had occurred in the fourth -century, and the lesson should not be forgotten. Deism had been the -prevailing opinion in religion, but, as the most instructive of all the -historians of the dissolution of the Empire observes, it was generally -felt that deism did not supply the void occasioned by the absence of the -multitude of sympathetic divinities of the pagan system. Its influence -was cold and inanimate.<a name="FNanchor_219" id="FNanchor_219"></a><a href="#Footnote_219" class="fnanchor">219</a> The common people are wont to crave a -revelation, or else they find atheism a rather better synthesis than any -other. They either cling to the miraculously transmitted message with -its hopes of recompense, and its daily communication of the divine voice -in prayer or sacrament, or else they make a world which moves through -space as a black monstrous ship with no steersman. The bare deistic -idea, of a being endowed at once with sovereign power and sovereign -clemency, with might that cannot be resisted and justice that cannot be -impugned, who loves man with infinite tenderness, yet sends him no word -of comfort and gives him no way <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">279</a></span>of deliverance, is too hard a thing for -those who have to endure the hardships of the brutes, but yet preserve -the intelligence of men.</p> - -<div class="poem"> -<div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Comment concevoir un Dieu, la bonté même,</span> -<span class="i0">Qui prodigua ses biens a ses enfans qu’il aime,</span> -<span class="i0">Et qui versa sur eux les maux a pleines mains?</span> -<span class="i0">Quel œil peut penetrer dans ses profonds desseins?</span> -<span class="i0">De l’etre tout parfait le mal ne pouvait naitre!</span> -<span class="i0">Il ne vient point d’autrui puisque Dieu seul est maitre:</span> -<span class="i0">Il existe pourtant. O tristes verittés!</span> -<span class="i0">O melange etonnant de contraritéttés!</span> -<span class="i0">Un Dieu vint consoler notre race affligée;</span> -<span class="i0">Il visita la terre et ne l’a point changée!</span> -<span class="i0">Un sophiste arrogant nous dit qu’il ne l’a pu;</span> -<span class="i0">Il le pouvait, dit l’autre, et ne l’a point voulu;</span> -<span class="i0">Il le voudra, sans doute; et tandis qu’on raisonne,</span> -<span class="i0">Des foudres souterraines engloutissent Lisbonne,</span> -<span class="i0">Et de trente cites dispersent les débris,</span> -<span class="i0">Des bords sanglans du Tage à la mer de Cadix.<a name="FNanchor_220" id="FNanchor_220"></a><a href="#Footnote_220" class="fnanchor">220</a></span> -</div></div> - -<p>A bald deism has undoubtedly been the creed of some of the purest and -most generous men that have ever trod the earth, but none the less on -that account is it in its essence a doctrine of self-complacent -individualism from which society has little to hope, and with which -there is little chance of the bulk of society ever sympathising. In -truth, one can scarcely call it a creed. It is mainly a name for a -particular mood of fine spiritual exaltation; the expression of a state -of indefinite aspiration and supreme feeling for lofty things. Are you -going to convert the new barbarians of our western world with this fair -word of emptiness?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">280</a></span> -Will you sweeten the lives of suffering men, and -take its heaviness from that droning piteous chronicle of wrong and -cruelty and despair, which everlastingly saddens the compassionating ear -like moaning of a midnight sea; will you animate the stout of heart with -new fire, and the firm of hand with fresh joy of battle, by the thought -of a being without intelligible attributes, a mere abstract creation of -metaphysic, whose mercy is not as our mercy, nor his justice as our -justice, nor his fatherhood as the fatherhood of men? It was not by a -cold, a cheerless, a radically depraving conception such as this, that -the church became the refuge of humanity in the dark times of old, but -by the representation, to men sitting in bondage and confusion, of -godlike natures moving among them under figure of the most eternally -touching of human relations, a tender mother ever interceding for them, -and an elder brother laying down his life that their burdens might be -loosened. -</p> - -<p>We have spoken of Voltairean deism, and the expression is a convenient -one to distinguish from the various forms of mystic theology, which -gloomily disclaim any pretence to be rational, the halting-place of -spirits too deeply penetrated with the rationalistic objections of -Voltaire to accept revelation, and either too timorous or too confident -to acquiesce in a neutral solution. It is unjust, however, to attribute -to Voltaire himself a perfect adherence to the deistical idea. For the -first half of his life there is no doubt<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">281</a></span> that it floated in his mind, -as in so many others, in a random manner, as the true explanation of the -world. His introduction to the teaching of Newton would give a firmer -shape to such a belief. He has indeed told us that it was so. He -mentions that in the course of several interviews he had with Doctor -Samuel Clarke in 1726, this philosopher never pronounced the name of God -without a curious air of awe and self-collection, and he commemorates -the impression which the sight of this habit, and reflection upon its -significance, made upon him<a name="FNanchor_221" id="FNanchor_221"></a><a href="#Footnote_221" class="fnanchor">221</a>. Still it was not a very active or -vital element of belief with him even then, but rather of the nature of -the sublimest of poetic figures.</p> - -<p> -<span class="i0">Oui, dans le sein de Dieu, loin de ce corps mortel,</span><br /> -<span class="i0">L’esprit semble écouter la voix l’Eternel<a name="FNanchor_222" id="FNanchor_222"></a><a href="#Footnote_222" class="fnanchor">222</a>.</span><br /> -</p> - -<p>Clearly this kind of expression means very little, and has no source in -the deeper seats of the writer’s feeling. A considerable number of -Voltaire’s deistical ejaculations, and on these occasions he threw into -them a measure of real unction, may be fairly traced to the -extraordinary polemical utility of an idea of spotless purity, entire -justice, inexhaustible mercy, as an engine of battle against men who in -the sacred name of this idea were the great practitioners of intolerance -and wrong.</p> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">282</a></span></p> - -<div class="poem2"> -<div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Ignorer ton être suprême,</span> -<span class="i0">Grand Dieu! c’est un moindre blasphème,</span> -<span class="i0">Et moins digne de ton courroux</span> -<span class="i0">Que de te croire impitoyable,</span> -<span class="i0">De nos malheurs insatiable,</span> -<span class="i0">Jaloux, injuste comme nous.</span> -<span class="i0">Lorsqu’un dévot atrabilaire</span> -<span class="i0">Nourri de superstition,</span> -<span class="i0">A par cette affreuse chimère,</span> -<span class="i0">Corrompu sa religion,</span> -<span class="i0">Le voilà stupide et farouche:</span> -<span class="i0">Le fiel découle de sa bouche,</span> -<span class="i0">Le fanatisme arme son bras:</span> -<span class="i0">Et dans sa piété profonde</span> -<span class="i0">Sa rage immolerait le monde</span> -<span class="i0">A son Dieu, qu’il ne connaît pas.<a name="FNanchor_223" id="FNanchor_223"></a><a href="#Footnote_223" class="fnanchor">223</a></span> -</div></div> - -<p>To have a conception of perfect goodness was a manifest convenience in -confronting men who were to be proved masters of badness. But when the -pressure of circumstance forced Voltaire to seek in earnest for an -explanation of the world, which he had formerly been content to take in -an easy way upon trust, then the deism, which had been barely more than -nominal at best, was transformed into a very different and far sincerer -mood. It would obviously be a gross blunder from a logical point to -confound optimism with deism, but it is clear that what shook Voltaire’s -conviction of the existence of a deity was the awakening in him of a -keener sense of the calamities that afflict the race of man. Personal -misfortunes perhaps had their share. It was after the loss of Madame du -Châtelet, and after the rude dispersion of his illusions as to -<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">283</a></span>Frederick, when he barely knew whither to turn for shelter or a home, -that the optimism which he had learnt in England began to lose its hold -upon him. We must do him the justice to add that he was yet more -sensible of disasters which affected others. The horrid tide of war -which devastated Europe and America, the yet more hateful tide of -persecution for opinion which swept over France, and the cruel -maladministration of justice which disgraced her tribunals, stirred all -that was best in him to the very depths. The only non-dramatic poem of -his which has strength, sincerity, and profundity of meaning enough -firmly to arrest the reader’s attention, and stimulate both thought and -feeling, is that fine and powerful piece which he wrote on the occasion -of the great earthquake of Lisbon.<a name="FNanchor_224" id="FNanchor_224"></a><a href="#Footnote_224" class="fnanchor">224</a> Here he threw into energetic and -passionately argumentative verse the same protest against the theory -that whatever is is best, which he afterwards urged in a very different -form in the ‘refined insolence’ of Candide.<a name="FNanchor_225" id="FNanchor_225"></a><a href="#Footnote_225" class="fnanchor">225</a> He approaches more -nearly than a quarter of a century before he would have thought -possible, to the deep gloom of the Pascal against whose terrible -pictures he had then so warmly protested. He sees mankind imprisoned in -a circle of appalling doom, from which there is no way of escape. Unlike -Pascal, he can find no solution, and he denounces that mockery of a -solution which <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">284</a></span>cries that all is well in accents stifled with -lamentation. He protests against the delusion of forcing the course of -the world’s destiny into a moral formula, that shall contain the terms -of justice and mercy in their human sense.</p> - -<div class="poem"> -<div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Aux cris demi-formés de leurs voix expirantes,</span> -<span class="i0">Au spectacle effrayant de leurs cendres fumantes,</span> -<span class="i0">Direz-vous: C’est l’effet des éternelles lois,</span> -<span class="i0">Qui d’un Dieu libre et bon nécessitent le choix?</span> -<span class="i0">Direz-vous, en voyant cet amas de victimes:</span> -<span class="i0">Dieu s’est vengé, leur mort est le prix de leurs crimes?</span> -<span class="i0">Quelle crime, quelle faute ont commis ces enfans</span> -<span class="i0">Sur le sein maternel écrasés et sanglans?</span> -<span class="i0">Lisbonne, qui n’est plus, eut-elle plus de vices</span> -<span class="i0">Que Londres, que Paris, plongés dans les délices?</span> -<span class="i0">Lisbonne est abîmée, et l’on danse á Paris.</span> -</div></div> - -<p>He equally refuses, though not in terms, to comfort himself by the -reflection that, in default of a better, the current ragged theory of -the providential government of the universe, because it may be possible, -must be true. He can find no answer, and confesses his belief that no -answer is to be found by human effort. Whatever side we take, we can -only shudder; there is nothing that we know, nothing that we have not to -fear. Nature is mute, and we interrogate her in vain; the book of -destiny is closed to our eyes.</p> - -<div class="poem"> -<div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">L’homme, étranger à soi, de l’homme est ignoré.</span> -<span class="i0">Que suis-je? où suis-je? où vais-je? et d’où suis-je tiré?</span> -<span class="i0">Atomes tourmentés sur cet amas de boue,</span> -<span class="i0">Que la mort engloutit, et dont le sort se joue,</span> -<span class="i0">Mais atomes pensans, atomes dont les yeux,</span> -<span class="i0">Guidés par la pensée, ont mesuré les cieux,</span> -<span class="i0"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">285</a></span>Au sein de l’infini nous élaçons notre être,</span> -<span class="i0">Sans pouvoir un moment nous voir et nous connaître.</span> -<span class="i0 padt05"><span class="gesperrt">*****</span></span> -<span class="i0">Le passé n’est pour nous qu’un triste souvenir;</span> -<span class="i0">Le présent est affreux, s’il n’est point d’avenir,</span> -<span class="i0">Si la nuit du tombeau détruit l’être qui pense.</span> -</div> -</div> - -<p>He abandons Plato and rejects Epicurus. Bayle knows more than they, as, -with the balance in his hand, he teaches men to doubt; wise enough, -great enough, to be without a system.</p> - -<p>In a note he adds to this glorification of Bayle, whom he styles the -advocate-general of the philosophers—the thinker in whose pages all -opinions are set forth, all the reasons which shake them and all which -uphold are equally investigated, while he abstains from giving any -conclusions.<a name="FNanchor_226" id="FNanchor_226"></a><a href="#Footnote_226" class="fnanchor">226</a> Elsewhere he explains that when he describes reason as -having made immense progress in Germany, he does not refer to those who -openly embrace the system of Spinoza; but the good folk who have no -fixed principles on the nature of things, who do not know what is, but -know very well what is not, these are my true philosophers.<a name="FNanchor_227" id="FNanchor_227"></a><a href="#Footnote_227" class="fnanchor">227</a></p> - -<p>It would not be difficult to find a score of passages in which the -writer assumes or declares certainty on this high matter to be -attainable, and to be entirely in one direction. His opinions -undoubtedly shifted with the veering of his moods, but on the whole -these axioms of suspense mark the central point to which they constantly -tended to return, and at which they rested longest. That dark word, Shut -thine eyes and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">286</a></span>thou shalt see, opened no road for him. The saying that -the Most High may be easily known, provided one does not press for -definition, offered no treasure of spiritual acquisition to the man who -never let go, even if he did not always accurately appreciate, Locke’s -injunction to us to be careful to define our terms. We cannot label -Voltaire either spiritualist or materialist. The success with which he -evades these two appellations is one of the best available tests of a -man’s capacity for approaching the great problems with that care and -positive judgment, which are quite as proper to them as to practical -affairs or to physical science.</p> - -<p>Thus with reference to the other great open question, he habitually -insisted that the immortality of the soul can never possibly be -demonstrated, and that this is why it has been revealed to us by -religion,<a name="FNanchor_228" id="FNanchor_228"></a><a href="#Footnote_228" class="fnanchor">228</a> which is perhaps Voltaire’s way of saying that it is no -near concern of his. Sometimes he argued from considerations of general -probability. The brutes feel and think up to a certain point, and men -have only the advantage over them of a greater combination of ideas; the -more or less makes no difference in kind. ‘Well, nobody thinks of giving -an immortal soul to a flea; why should you give one any the more to an -elephant, or a monkey, or my Champagne valet, or a village steward who -has a trifle more instinct than my valet?’<a name="FNanchor_229" id="FNanchor_229"></a><a href="#Footnote_229" class="fnanchor">229</a> Again, he retorted -significantly on those <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">287</a></span>who contended with a vehemence of prejudice -known in some places even to this day, that belief in the immortality of -the soul is an indispensable condition of probity; as if the first Jews -accepted that dogma, and as if there were no honest men among them, and -no instruction in virtue.<a name="FNanchor_230" id="FNanchor_230"></a><a href="#Footnote_230" class="fnanchor">230</a></p> - -<hr style='width: 45%;' /> - -<p>In fine, then, we search Voltaire in vain for a positive creed, which -logic may hold in coherent bonds, or social philosophy accept as a -religious force. The old word about his faith must be pronounced true. -It remains a creed of negation. But still, be it always understood, -negation of darkness. And this inevitably leads in the direction of the -day. It was an indispensable step in the process of transition. Men, it -is constantly being said since the violent breaking-up of French -society, will never consent to live on no better base than articles of -denial and formulas of suspense, for are not the deepest parts of human -character moved by strong yearning for relationship with the unknowable? -It may be so, and if it be, the Voltairean movement was the great -instrument in leading, not merely a scanty group of speculative -intellects, but vast bodies, large nations, of common folk to perceive, -or dimly to conjecture, that this object of adoration which their eyes -strain after <i>is</i> unknowable, and that there is no attainable external -correlative of their deep desire. Voltaire never went so far in the -direction of assertion as Rousseau, and he never went so far in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">288</a></span>the -direction of denial as Holbach. And, whatever we may say generally of -the horror of the world for the spirit that denies, all that was best -and most truly progressive in French society during the eighteenth -century, Turgot and Condorcet no less than Beaumarchais, showed itself -content to follow him in this middle path. His appreciation of religion -was wanting in a hundred vital things, just as some may say that -Luther’s was, but it contained the one idea which the deepest spirit of -the time prompted men to desire, the decisive repudiation of the -religious notions of the past. We must call this negative, no doubt, but -no word should frighten us away from seeing how much positive aspiration -lay underneath. When men are in the mood of France a century and a -quarter since, when all that an old civilisation has bestowed on them of -what is best and strongest, rises up against all that the same -civilisation has bequeathed to them of what is pestilent and dangerous, -they are never nice critics. They do not decline a reinvigorating -article of faith, because it is not a system, nor do they measure a -deliverer by syllogism. The smallest chink may shine like light of the -sun to prisoners long held in black and cavernous recesses.</p> - -<p>When Bayle’s Dictionary came out, we read, so great was the avidity to -have sight of it, that long before the doors of the Mazarin library were -open, a little crowd assembled in the early morning of each day, and -there was as great a struggle for the first access to the precious book, -as for the front row<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">289</a></span> at the performance of a piece for which there is a -rage.<a name="FNanchor_231" id="FNanchor_231"></a><a href="#Footnote_231" class="fnanchor">231</a> This was the beginning of an immense impulse of curiosity, -eager to fill the vacuum occasioned by the slow subsidence of the old -religion, which had once covered not only faith, but science, history, -dialectic, and philosophy, all in a single synthesis. It was this -impulse which Voltaire both represented and accelerated. In these -periods of agitation, men forgive all to one who represents without -compromise or diminution their own dominant passions. Vehemence of -character counts for more than completeness of doctrine, and they crave -a battle-cry, not a dissertation. They need to have their own sentiment -aggressively presented, and their own defects of boldness or courage at -once rebuked and supplemented by a leader whose purpose can never be -mistaken, and whose words are never nipped by the frost of intellectual -misgiving. All through the century there was slowly growing up an inner -France, full of angry disgust against the past. Its germ was the crowd -eager to read Bayle. Its outcome was the night of the Fourth of August -1789, when the civil order of society was overthrown between a sunset -and a dawn. Voltaire, as we have seen, studiously abstained from any -public word upon things political, but it was he who in the long -interval between these two events held men by a watchword to which the -political decay of the country gave such meaning, that of hatred to the -old. And there was no such steadfast symbol of the old as <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">290</a></span>the church, -to him and his school a lurid beacon on a monster-haunted shore.</p> - -<p>Voltaire’s selection of the church as the object of his attacks marks an -important difference between him and the other great revolutionary -precursor. Rousseau’s Savoyard Vicar was perfectly willing to accept the -cultus of Christianity, even when he had ceased to accept its dogma. He -regarded all particular religions as so many salutary institutions, all -good so long as they were the organs for a due service of God. He -actually celebrated mass with more veneration after the acquisition of -his new principles, than he had been accustomed to do when he supposed -that the mass was an occasion of personal divine presence. This kind of -teaching was clearly to perpetuate and transfix for ever the form of -religion which each country, or any given set of men in it, might -possess. It was to stereotype belief, as it is stereotyped among the -millions in the East. Whence was reform to come, whence any ray of new -light, whence a principle of growth and activity for the intelligence of -men? How on these terms is truth to win the battle at a single point? -This was the beginning of a fatal substitution of bland emotional -complacency for robust cultivation of the reason, and firm reverence for -its lessons as the highest that we can learn. Voltaire no doubt did in -practice many a time come to terms with his adversary while he was yet -on the way with him; but, disagreeable as these temporisings are to us -who live in an easier day, they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">291</a></span> never deceived any one, nor could they -ever be mistaken for the establishment of intellectual treason as a -principle, or of philosophic indifference as a climax. As has been said, -though he writes in the midst of the old régime, in the face of the -Bastille, and with the fetters of the enemy in some sort actually upon -him, he still finds a thousand means of reaching you.<a name="FNanchor_232" id="FNanchor_232"></a><a href="#Footnote_232" class="fnanchor">232</a> He is always -the representative of reason, and never of sentimentalism. He was not -above superficial compromises in matters of conduct, and these it is -hard or impossible to condone; but at any rate he is free from the -deeper and more penetrating reproach of erecting hypocrisy into a -deliberate doctrine.</p> - -<p>We do not know how far he ever seriously approached the question, so -much debated since the overthrow of the old order in France, whether a -society can exist without a religion? He says in one place that to -believe God and spirits corporeal is an old metaphysical error, but -absolutely not to believe in any god would be an error incompatible with -wise government. But even this much was said for the sake of introducing -a taunt against the orthodox, who by a strange contradiction had risen -up with fury against Bayle for believing it possible that a society of -atheists could hold together, while they insisted with just as much -violence that the empire of China was established on a basis of -atheism.<a name="FNanchor_233" id="FNanchor_233"></a><a href="#Footnote_233" class="fnanchor">233</a> His natural <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">292</a></span>sagacity would most likely have shown him -that this is one of the sterile problems, with which the obstructive -defender of things as they are tries to draw the soldier of improvement -away from his strongest posts. Whether a society can exist without -religion or not, at least its existence as a structure for whose -duration we can be anxious, must depend on the number of men in it who -deal honestly with their own understandings. And, further, is no man to -be counted to have a religion who, like Voltaire, left great questions -open, and put them aside, as all questions, that must from the -limitations of human faculty eternally remain open, well deserve to be -put aside? Must we ever call an unknown God by one name? Are there so -few tasks for one on earth, that he must strain all his soul to fix the -regimen of high heaven?</p> - -<p>Voltaire, there is every reason to think, did in an informal kind of way -suppose in the bottom of his heart that there is nothing in human nature -to hinder a very advanced society from holding perfectly well together, -with all its opinions in a constant state of analysis. Whatever we may -think of it, this dream of what is possible, if the activity of human -intelligence were only sufficiently stimulated and the conditions of -social union were once so adjusted as to give it fair play, -unquestionably lies at the root of the revolutionary ideas with all -those who were first stirred by Voltaire rather than by Rousseau. -Condorcet, for instance, manifestly depends with the firmest confidence -upon that possibility being realised.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">293</a></span> It is the idea of every literary -revolutionist, as distinguished from the social or economic -revolutionist, in France at the present day. The knowledge that this was -the case, added to the sound conviction that men can never live by -analysis alone, gave its fire to De Maistre’s powerful attack, and its -immense force to Burke’s plea for what he called prejudice. But the -indispensable synthesis need never be immovably fixed, nor can it soon -again be one and single for our civilisation; for progress consists in -gradual modifications of it, as increase of knowledge and unforeseen -changes in the current of human affairs disclose imperfections in it, -and wherever progress is a law the stages of men’s advance are unequal. -Above all, it is monstrous to suppose that because a man does not accept -your synthesis, he is therefore a being without a positive creed or a -coherent body of belief capable of guiding and inspiring conduct.</p> - -<p>There are new solutions for him, if the old are fallen dumb. If he no -longer believes death to be a stroke from the sword of God’s justice, -but the leaden footfall of an inflexible law of matter, the humility of -his awe is deepened, and the tenderness of his pity made holier, that -creatures who can love so much should have their days so shut round with -a wall of darkness. The purifying anguish of remorse will be stronger, -not weaker, when he has trained himself to look upon every wrong in -thought, every duty omitted from act, each infringement of the inner -spiritual law which humanity is constantly perfecting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">294</a></span> for its own -guidance and advantage, less as a breach of the decrees of an unseen -tribunal, than as an ungrateful infection, weakening and corrupting the -future of his brothers. And he will be less effectually raised from -inmost prostration of soul by a doubtful subjective reconciliation, so -meanly comfortable to his own individuality, than by hearing full in the -ear the sound of the cry of humanity craving sleepless succour from her -children. That swelling consciousness of height and freedom with which -the old legends of an omnipotent divine majesty fill the breast, may -still remain; for how shall the universe ever cease to be a sovereign -wonder of overwhelming power and superhuman fixedness of law? And a man -will be already in no mean paradise, if at the hour of sunset a good -hope can fall upon him like harmonies of music, that the earth shall -still be fair, and the happiness of every feeling creature still receive -a constant augmentation, and each good cause yet find worthy defenders, -when the memory of his own poor name and personality has long been -blotted out of the brief recollection of men for ever.</p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">295</a></span></p> - -<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2> - -<h5>HISTORY</h5> - -<p>The activity of the foremost men of the eighteenth century in the -composition of history is too remarkable a circumstance, not to deserve -some attempt at explanation. There were historians in previous ages, but -in the eighteenth century there was both in France, and afterwards in -England, a special and extraordinary development in this direction. -Partially no doubt this was due to the general movement of curiosity, -the wide spread desire for all kinds of knowledge, which was in the air. -Men were emancipating themselves from the trammels of an authority which -had not widened the limits of inquiry in the same proportion as human -faculties had strengthened, and, amid the universal expansion of -intelligent interest and the eager scrutiny of all the objects of -knowledge which the new dawn was baring to sight, it was not possible -that the order of political and social facts in former epochs should be -neglected. This, however, does not sufficiently explain why such a man -as Hume betook himself to the composition of history, or why Gibbon -found himself best able to attack Christianity by tracing some of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">296</a></span> -most important parts of its annals, or why Voltaire, who lived so -entirely and intensely in the present, should have thought it worth -while to give so much labour to presentation of the past. It is a -striking fact, which must be something more than an accident, that the -best secular histories which remain from this period, one of them the -most striking monument in historical literature, were written by the -most marked assailants of reigning superstition.</p> - -<p>Was it not, indeed, to be expected that as the dark clouds of an -absorbing consciousness of the supernatural cleared away, men of -understanding would be more and more drawn towards study of human -action, and that the advance of society under purely natural and -positive conditions would immediately seize a foremost place among the -objects of experiential inquiry? It is too constantly maintained by -persons with something of a vested interest in darkness, that those who -do not worship the gods are indifferent to the happiness of men. Yet the -history of intellectual progress would seem to show that it was not -until the commencement of a rapid decline in the acceptance of terrorist -and jealous deities and incomprehensible dogmas, that serious attention -was given to some of the subjects in which a sound knowledge is among -the most indispensable conditions of the advancing welfare of men. For -instance, as soon as the hold of ancient versions of the supernatural -was loosened over the stronger spirits, by the middle of the century -there instantly took place an astonishing development<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">297</a></span> of activity in -the physical sciences. The interest of historic and economic studies was -at least as pressing. Becoming aware that men had made their own world, -thinkers found the consideration of the process by which this world is -made, and the order of society established and developed, forced upon -them with an entirely new significance. The dry bones of the ancient -valley of annalists and chroniclers were made to live, and the great -work of the reconstruction of the past was begun, with an alertness and -perseverance that has not been surpassed even in an age of far purer and -juster historical intelligence. It was quite reasonable that the -conviction of each act in the universe, from the crash of an empire to -the fall of a sparrow to the ground, being due to an arbitrary and -inscrutable decree, should prevent the rise of history from the level of -annals into the region of philosophy. The decay of this theory of the -government of the universe was as reasonably the cause of a new mode of -looking at the long records of the race, and we find ourselves moving in -a day of historical masterpieces.</p> - -<p>Voltaire has told us the circumstances under which he was led to -approach the philosophy of history. Madame du Châtelet, whose mind would -fain have reached every kind of knowledge, but who was especially apt -for metaphysics and geometry, had conceived an aversion for history. -‘What does it matter to me,’ she would ask, ‘a Frenchwoman living on my -estate, to know that Egil succeeded Haquin<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">298</a></span> in Sweden, and that Ottoman -was the son of Ortogrul? I have read with pleasure the history of the -Greeks and the Romans; they offered me certain great pictures which -attracted me. But I have never yet been able to finish any long history -of our modern nations. I can see scarcely anything in them but -confusion; a host of minute events without connection or sequence, a -thousand battles which settled nothing. I renounced a study which -overwhelms the mind without illuminating it.’ To this frank statement of -the case, to which so many thousands of persons in all epochs would so -heartily subscribe, Voltaire replied by pointing out that perhaps the -study of history would be no waste of time, if by cutting away all the -details of wars, as tedious as they are untrustworthy, all the frivolous -negotiations which have been nothing but pieces of purposeless cheating, -all the minute incidents which stifle great events, and by retaining -those which paint manners, you made of this chaos a general and -well-arranged picture; in short, if you tried to disengage from the -concourse of events the history of the human mind.<a name="FNanchor_234" id="FNanchor_234"></a><a href="#Footnote_234" class="fnanchor">234</a> Not all the -faults of execution ought to blind us to the merit of this notion of the -true way of studying history, or to the admirable clearness of vision -with which Voltaire, not only in this but in all his other historical -pieces, adhered to his own two leading principles; first, that laws, -arts, manners, are the chief matter and concern of history; and second, -that ‘details which lead to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">299</a></span>nothing are in history what baggage is to -an army, <i>impedimenta</i>, for we must look at things in large, for the -very reason that the human mind is small and sinks under the weight of -minutiæ.’ Minutiæ ought to be collected by annalists, or in some kind -of dictionaries where one might find them at need.<a name="FNanchor_235" id="FNanchor_235"></a><a href="#Footnote_235" class="fnanchor">235</a> In this last -point Voltaire, as might be expected, was more just than Bolingbroke, -who had said somewhat petulantly that ‘he had rather take the Darius -whom Alexander conquered for the son of Hystaspes, and make as many -anachronisms as a Jewish chronologer, than sacrifice half his life to -collect all the learned lumber that fills the head of an -antiquary.’<a name="FNanchor_236" id="FNanchor_236"></a><a href="#Footnote_236" class="fnanchor">236</a> The antiquary’s is a vocation like another, and the -highest kind of history can only flourish on condition that the humbler -ancillary kind flourishes also, and that there are patient and -scrupulous men to mark the difference between Darius Codomannus and -Darius the son of Hystaspes.</p> - -<p>We may say that three kinds of men write history: the gazetteer or -annalist, the statesman, and the philosopher. The annalist’s business is -to investigate and record events, and his highest merits are clearness, -accuracy, and simplicity. The political historian seeks the superficial -and immediate causes of great transactions, and he serves us by mixed -penetration and soundness of judgment. The historical philosopher is -concerned only with groups of events, the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">300</a></span>changes and movements that -transform communities, and with the trains of conditions that lead to -such movements. The majority of historians, from the illustrious Bacon -down to the compiler of a manual, illustrate the first kind. Thucydides -and Tacitus, among the ancients, a Machiavelli or a Finlay, among -moderns, may illustrate the second kind. As Voltaire was sometimes -gazetteer and sometimes statesman, so Montesquieu took the statesman’s -point of view in his reflections on the decline of Rome, and that of the -philosopher in the Spirit of Laws. It is the statesman or man of the -world, who, after recounting Caesar’s failure on one occasion to comply -with the etiquette of the senate, proceeds to make the following -reflection, that ‘we never offend men more, than when we shock their -ceremonies and usages: seek to oppress them, and that is sometimes a -proof of the importance you attach to them; but shock their customs, and -that is always a mark of contempt.’<a name="FNanchor_237" id="FNanchor_237"></a><a href="#Footnote_237" class="fnanchor">237</a> It is the philosopher, feeling -for the causes of things and their order, who being led to inquire into -the spirit or meaning of Laws, understands such an inquiry to involve a -comparative investigation of the relations between laws and physical -climate, the quality of ground, situation and extent of territory, the -mode of life of the people, agricultural, hunting, or pastoral; between -laws and the freedom of the constitution, the religion, wealth, trade, -moral ideas, and manners, of the inhabitants; above all, historically, -between <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">301</a></span>laws and their origin and the order of things on which they -were first founded.</p> - -<p>In a similar way we may divide Voltaire’s historical pieces into two -main classes. Indeed, if we count the Annals of the Empire, which he -wrote to please the Duchess of Saxe-Gotha, he may rank also under the -third remaining head among the annalistic historians. This, however, is -too unsatisfactory a piece of work for us to care either to classify or -to remember it. The subject was not of his own selection, he knew -comparatively little about it, his materials were extremely scanty and -imperfect, and he composed it at a time when his whole mind was -violently perturbed by his recent quarrel with Frederick, and torn by -anxiety where he should find a home in rest and freedom. It was the only -work he ever wrote, for which he perhaps had no heart, and the least -observant reader will notice how vast a difference this made in the -temper of its composition. Indeed, Voltaire was not born to be a simple -chronicler. The realistic and practical leanings of his intellect -naturally gave him a distaste for the collection of mere uninterpreted -and unapplied facts. His clear comprehensiveness, the product of a -vigorous imagination with strong sense, as naturally impelled him to -group circumstances, and to introduce the widest possible generality -among them. He has one of the peculiar gifts of the historian, as -distinguished from the gazetteer, of throwing rapid glances over a wide -field on the suggestion of a minor fact as he passes by it, and of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">302</a></span> -converting what to others would be the mere unconsidered trifles of -narrative into something possessed of its due measure of vitality and -significance. He fills his pages with reflections that are usually not -brought from very far depths, but which are almost always lively, just, -and in real matter. Perhaps this is not an unmixed good, for it is not -unconnected with an extraordinary evenness and light facility of style, -which tends to draw the reader somewhat too rapidly and too smoothly -over ground that had been rugged enough to the actual travellers. It -tends therefore tacitly to plant a false impression about the tardiness, -difficulty, peril, and infinitely varied possibilities of the social -movements which are history’s object and material. Perhaps a reader has -a better idea of the true manner in which events march, from Comines or -Clarendon, than from all the elegance and manifold graces of Voltaire, -and we sometimes feel inclined to repeat De Maistre’s angry demand for -that grave and unhasting dignity which is the life of history.</p> - -<p>We have already noticed one of the differences between Voltaire and -Rousseau, which arose from the predominance of sentiment over reason in -the latter. In the present connection another fact well worth noticing -is that Rousseau was entirely wanting in either taste or serious regard -for history. The past seems to have been to him a kind of blurred -tablet, confused and indecipherable, interposed between the vision of -men and the only thought or knowledge<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">303</a></span> which it is good for them to -possess. Voltaire’s reading of this tablet was inadequate enough, in -many respects it was even a grave distortion of the truth; but with that -sound sense in which Rousseau was so absolutely deficient, he felt how -irrational it was, in the first place, to shut our eyes deliberately to -the course and meaning of all the foregone action of the race, and, in -the second, to leave unattacked and unturned the strong position which -the traditional parables of the past and their undisturbed -interpretation conferred upon the champions of orthodoxy and absolutism. -Rousseau, being a sentimentalist, appears to have discerned nothing of -this. His ideas all involved a breach with the past, as Voltaire’s did, -but Voltaire deserves credit for perceiving that, to make this -effective, you must at least find out as well as you can what the past -was.</p> - -<p>For his four works in the class of political history he had the best -attainable authorities and material, and no one was ever more diligent -in putting them to the best possible use.<a name="FNanchor_238" id="FNanchor_238"></a><a href="#Footnote_238" class="fnanchor">238</a> His acute sense, -strengthened by contact with the world and its most active personages, -made him what we may almost call prematurely scientific in his demand -for adequate evidence and proof. It is rather striking, for example, to -find him <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">304</a></span>anticipating more recent objections to the trustworthiness of -Tacitus, pointing out the extraordinary improbabilities in his account -of Tiberius, Nero, and the others. There is all the difference, he says, -between a faithful historian equally free from adulation and hatred, and -‘a malicious wit who poisons everything through the medium of a concise -and energetic style.’ Are we to believe, he asks elsewhere, on the story -of a man who lived long after Tiberius, that this emperor, nearly eighty -years old, who had up to that time been decent almost to austerity, yet -passed all his time in debaucheries hitherto unknown, and so monstrous -as to need new names for them?<a name="FNanchor_239" id="FNanchor_239"></a><a href="#Footnote_239" class="fnanchor">239</a> And in the same way he questions the -alleged atrocities of Nero and Caligula, as well as the motives imputed -to Domitian by Tacitus for the frequency with which he sent to inquire -after the health of Agricola. These historic doubts sprang from none of -the political judgment or feeling which propounds them in more modern -times, but purely from scientific incredulity. ‘History,’ he once wrote, -‘is after all nothing but a parcel of tricks that we play the -dead.’<a name="FNanchor_240" id="FNanchor_240"></a><a href="#Footnote_240" class="fnanchor">240</a> He did not hold this slightly splenetic theory, in which -assuredly there is a painful truth, to absolve him from the duty of -doing what he could to belie it, and to make history as correct and as -faithfully representative of actual occurrences, as careful inquiry -<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">305</a></span>from those most likely to know the characters of the most prominent -actors could make it. In the composition of the Siècle de Louis XV., he -had of course the advantage of knowing all these leaders of the public -activity personally and at first hand, while if he had not that -advantage to the same extent in the Siècle de Louis XIV., he at least -mixed on intimate terms with many who had been intimate with the court -of the great monarch. For the history of Russia he was amply provided -with documents and authentic narratives from the Russian court, at whose -solicitation he undertook a work which was the first full introduction -of that hitherto barbarous and unknown country to the literature of -civilised Europe. His letters to Schouvalof, the imperial chamberlain, -attest the unremitting industry with which he sought for every kind of -information that might be useful to him. ‘The enlightened spirit which -now reigns among the principal nations of Europe, requires that we -should go to the bottom, where in former times a historian barely -thought it worth while to skim the surface. People wish to know how a -nation grew together; what was its population before the epoch of which -you treat; the difference in the number of the regular army then and in -former times; the nature and growth of its commerce; what arts have -sprung up within the country, and what have been introduced from -elsewhere and been perfected there; what used to be the ordinary average -revenue of the state, and what it is now; the birth and extension of -its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">306</a></span> navy; the proportion in numbers between its nobles and its -ecclesiastics and monks, and between the latter and the cultivators of -the soil, etc.’<a name="FNanchor_241" id="FNanchor_241"></a><a href="#Footnote_241" class="fnanchor">241</a> Even importunities of this kind continued over a -space of some years, and the copious responses which they brought, never -consoled Voltaire for not having made the journey to the Russian capital -in his proper person. ‘I should have learnt more from you in a few hours -of conversation,’ he wrote to Schouvalof, ‘than all the compilers in the -world will ever teach me.’<a name="FNanchor_242" id="FNanchor_242"></a><a href="#Footnote_242" class="fnanchor">242</a> In writing the History of Charles XII. -of Sweden, one of the most delightful of his books, the art of which is -none the less because it is so little ostentatious and striking and -seems so easy, he had procured a large quantity of material from -Fabrice, who knew the Swedish king during his detention at Bender and -subsequently, and met Voltaire in London. This material was supplemented -in later years by information picked up at Lunéville from the ex-Polish -king Stanislas, who was indebted to Charles for his sovereignty, that -true δῶρον ἄδωρον. ‘As for the portraits of men,’ Voltaire -declared, ‘they are nearly all the creations of fancy; ‘tis a monstrous -piece of charlatanry to pretend to paint a personage with whom you have -never lived.’<a name="FNanchor_243" id="FNanchor_243"></a><a href="#Footnote_243" class="fnanchor">243</a> Napoleon, in the memorable campaign of 1812, coming -to various places which Voltaire had occasion to describe in his History -of Charles XII., found his account weak and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">307</a></span>inaccurate, and threw it -aside in favour of Adlerfeldt. This was to be expected from the very -merit of the book; for how should a picture, painted in large for the -general instruction of the world, satisfy the minute requirements of -strategical topography? It was precisely Voltaire’s object to separate -history from geography, statistics, anecdote, biography, tactics, and to -invest it with an independent character and quality apart from all -these.</p> - -<p>It is another of the distinctions of his new method of writing history -that, with the exception of the book on Charles XII., he throws persons -and personal interests into a second place, as being no more than -instruments or convenient names for critical turning-points in the large -movements of peoples. In the narration of the rise of Russia to a place -among civilised nations, the character of Peter the Great inevitably -comes into marked prominence, because when a population lies on the -stagnant level of barbarism, the first man who summons them to undertake -the task of national elevation constitutes an element of paramount -importance in their annals. In proportion, however, as they rise to the -fulfilment of this surpassing work, the importance of the heroic -individual diminishes; as the national self-consciousness and collective -powers become greater, the figure of the individual shows less.</p> - -<p>Voltaire was always conscious, though not so clearly as writers are now, -of the great historical principle that besides the prominent men of a -generation there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">308</a></span> is a something at work underneath, a moving current on -whose flood they are borne. He never fixed this current by any of the -names which now fall so glibly from our lips,—tendency of the times, -tenor of public opinion, spirit of the age, and the like, by which we -give a collective name to groups of sentiments and forces, all making in -what seems to be a single direction. But although unnamed, this singular -and invisible concurrence of circumstance was yet a reality to him. The -age was something besides its heroes, and something besides its noisiest -and most resounding occurrences. His divisions of the great epochs of -humanity are undoubtedly open to much criticism, because the principles -on which he drew the dividing lines have lost their force in new -generations. It was to be expected that they would do so; and his four -great epochs<a name="FNanchor_244" id="FNanchor_244"></a><a href="#Footnote_244" class="fnanchor">244</a> were not likely to remain the four great epochs of a -posterity, which has partially learnt the lesson that he had not learnt -at all, that perfection in the fine arts is not the highest mark of an -age in which humanity may glory. Nevertheless, we are bound to recognise -that a new way of regarding human action, as well as a new way of -composing history, was being introduced by a writer whose first -paragraph declared that he proposed to himself a greater object than an -account of the life of Lewis XIV.; that he designed to paint for the -instruction of posterity, not the actions of a single man, but the -spirit of men; and that while all periods must be <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">309</a></span>alike to one who only -desires to fill his memory with facts, discrimination among them cannot -be dispensed with for one who thinks.</p> - -<p>Hence also the propriety of discrimination among the various kinds of -fact which are at the historian’s disposal, and in this order Voltaire’s -whole soul revolted against the reigning practice and prescription. ‘I -would rather have details,’ he wrote to one of his intimates so early in -his career as 1735, {about Racine and Despréaux, Molière, Bossuet, -Descartes, than I would about the battle of Steinkirk. There is nothing -left but the names of men who led battalions and squadrons. There is no -return to the human race from a hundred engagements; but the great men I -have spoken of prepared pure and everlasting pleasures for mortals still -unborn. A canal-sluice, a picture by Poussin, a fine tragedy, a truth -established, are all of them things a thousand times more precious than -the whole mass of annals of the court, and than all the narratives of -campaigns.’<a name="FNanchor_245" id="FNanchor_245"></a><a href="#Footnote_245" class="fnanchor">245</a> From this and from a multitude of other passages, as -well as from his actual compositions, we perceive that the activity of a -court and the manœuvres of an army were no longer in Voltaire’s eyes the -fit substance of history. One reason for this might be his lively sense -of the impossibility of knowing the character and motives of people with -whom one has not lived, or the real cause of even the most momentous -intrigues and negotiations in which one has not taken a personal share. -A still <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">310</a></span></p> - -<p>deeper reason would be his most rational conviction that these matters -are only of moment to us for their larger results and unmistakable -outcome, and from the profoundly true and important principle that the -progress of intellectual enlightenment, material prosperity, and moral -elevation is not only a feature in the history of a nation, but does -itself constitute that history, while all records of other transactions -in the course of its annals, achievements in diplomacy, feats of arms, -revolutions in policy, have no true historic value, except for the light -they shed upon this economic, intellectual, and moral progress, and are -not worth studying except in that light. We may see the immediate -effects of Voltaire’s influence most markedly of all in Gibbon, but in a -less important shape in the general account of the middle ages which -Robertson contributed to his History of Charles V. (1769), and which -remained for many years the most instructive piece that our literature -possessed upon the character and spirit of the feudal system and other -features of the middle ages. Adam Ferguson’s Essay on the History of -Civil Society (1767) bears traces of the same influence. In both of -these cases much also must be added for the kindred authority of -Montesquieu. One has some hesitation in adding Hume to the list in the -present connection, because his history, the composition of which -extended from 1752 to 1763, ought perhaps to be counted rather the -direct and independent outcome of the French philosophic spirit, than of -the French historic spirit<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">311</a></span> which itself proceeded from the philosophy; -and because, moreover, Hume, as a historian, has some of Voltaire’s most -serious defects, without that breadth and size which constituted his -greatest merit, though it is needless to point out how many merits Hume -had of his own. It is worth remarking that in some pages which he wrote -on Hume’s History,<a name="FNanchor_246" id="FNanchor_246"></a><a href="#Footnote_246" class="fnanchor">246</a> Voltaire gave it a joyful welcome, as might be -expected, and particularly to those parts which we now esteem most -lightly, such as the contemptuous account of Cromwell.</p> - -<p>To return, however, to the point from which we have digressed. One very -direct consequence of the historical principle we have described, and of -the way in which it was illustrated in the histories of Lewis XIV. and -Lewis XV., and most of all in the Essay on Manners, was the degradation -of war from the highest to the lowest place among the objects of the -historian’s regard. War began for the first time to be systematically -considered and treated as a mere instrument and means, and not as one of -the most serious of social ends. We can never honour Voltaire too long -nor too deeply for the vehemence and sincerity of his abhorrence of the -military spirit. Nowhere do we feel more distinctly that he marked the -end of the mediæval temper, than in his noble protests against the glory -of bloodshed. The great orators of the church to the very last donned -the robes of their most sumptuous rhetoric, when they were called to -<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">312</a></span>consecrate the virtues of the victorious soldier. The pages of the Old -Testament supplied them with a hundred baleful heroes to whom they might -liken their warrior, and a hundred cruel and bloody tropes with which -they might decorate the funeral oration. So long as the atrocities of -the Hebrew chiefs and people, their treacheries and slaughters, were -held sacred and celebrated with unction, it was not likely that the -voice of the peacemaker could make itself heard.</p> - -<p>Voltaire not only held up these demoralising records to the odium they -deserve; he directly taxed the clergy with their failure to discharge -the very highest part of their duty. Of the five or six thousand sermons -of Massillon, he asked, are there a couple where you could pick out a -word or two against the scourge and crime of war? Bourdaloue preached -against impurity, but what sermon did he ever direct against the murder, -rapine, brigandage, and universal rage, which desolate the world? -‘Miserable physicians of souls, you declaim for five quarters of an hour -against the mere pricks of a pin, and say no word on the curse which -tears us into a thousand pieces! Philosophers and moralists, burn your -books: so long as the caprice of a handful of men will cause the -massacring in all loyalty of thousands of our brothers, the part of the -human race which is devoted to heroism will contain all that is most -frightful in human nature. What concern to me are humanity, benevolence, -modesty, temperance, gentleness, wisdom, piety, so long as half an ounce -of lead shatters my body, and I die at twenty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">313</a></span> in torments unspeakable, -surrounded by five or six thousand dead or dying, while my eyes, opening -for the last time, see the town I was born in delivered to fire and -sword, and the last sounds that reach my ears are the shrieks of women -and children expiring in the ruins—and the whole for the pretended -interests of a man that we do not know?’<a name="FNanchor_247" id="FNanchor_247"></a><a href="#Footnote_247" class="fnanchor">247</a> His rebuke to Montesquieu -is still more distinctively modern. The author of the Esprit des Lois -had said that among societies it sometimes happens that natural defence -possibly involves the necessity of attack, when a nation perceives that -a longer peace would place another nation in a position to destroy -it.<a name="FNanchor_248" id="FNanchor_248"></a><a href="#Footnote_248" class="fnanchor">248</a> ‘If ever there was a war evidently unjust,’ Voltaire replies, -‘it is that which you propose; it is to go and kill your neighbour for -fear your neighbour should be in a condition to attack you; that is to -say, you must run the risk of ruining your country, in the hope of -ruining without reason some other country.... If your neighbour grows -too powerful during a time of peace, what hinders you from growing -powerful like him? If he has made alliances, make alliances on your -side. If, having less religion, he has all the more manufacturers and -soldiers for it, imitate him in so sage an economy. If he drills his -sailors better, drill yours too: all that is perfectly just. But to -expose your people to the most horrible misery, in the idea, which is so -often chimerical, of crushing your dear brother, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">314</a></span>the most serene -bordering prince—! ‘twas never for a president of a pacific order to -give you such a piece of counsel.’<a name="FNanchor_249" id="FNanchor_249"></a><a href="#Footnote_249" class="fnanchor">249</a> The book in which this sound -view of justice and expediency in the dealings of nations with one -another was pressed upon the attention of France, was published in 1764, -five years before the birth of the man who turned the tide back, and -made the international policy of France a synonym both for iniquity and -folly. On the 15th of August 1769 Voltaire concluded his letter to -D’Alembert with his usual vivacity: ‘Adieu; my compliments to the devil, -for it is he who governs the world.’<a name="FNanchor_250" id="FNanchor_250"></a><a href="#Footnote_250" class="fnanchor">250</a> If he had known that, while he -was writing, Napoleon Bonaparte had come into the world, and could at -the same time have foreseen the new-comer’s destiny, he might have said -the same thing more seriously. Voltaire never played the sentimentalist. -He knew that there are complexities of affairs which only the sword can -cut. But he was the first influential writer—for the abbé Saint-Pierre, -so undeservedly laughed at for his dreams of perpetual peace, had no -influence to speak of—who deliberately placed war among retrograde -agencies, and deliberately dwelt upon peaceful industry as the true life -of nations.<a name="FNanchor_251" id="FNanchor_251"></a><a href="#Footnote_251" class="fnanchor">251</a></p> - -<p>Diplomacy and its complex subterranean processes, which have occupied so -extremely disproportionate a space in written history, and which are in -acted <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">315</a></span>history responsible for so much evil, were in the same way -informally relegated to the region of inhuman occupations. Its methods -were the tortuous and depressing methods of the same past, which had -made the many the playthings and unhappy instruments of the few, and had -never interrupted the triumphant manœuvres of craft and subtlety by a -whisper for the claims of humanity and justice. Voltaire scarcely ever -speaks of negotiations between contending powers without a shrewd -thrust, half contemptuous and half angry. The plain where some -negotiations took place in the struggles among the descendants of -Charles the Great is still called the Field of Lies; a name, he says, -that might well be common to most spots where men have negotiated.<a name="FNanchor_252" id="FNanchor_252"></a><a href="#Footnote_252" class="fnanchor">252</a> -And this represents his general tone in speaking of a branch of activity -which may interest the professional diplomatist in all its details, but -which, as he thought, can only concern the historical student in its -results. Here Voltaire represented a marked tendency, which waxes -stronger as societies grow more penetrated with popular forces, to -divest diplomacy of a professional quality, and to throw the adjustment -of the relations between nations as entirely as possible into the hands -of plain men of firm and upright character, and full knowledge of the -special matters at issue.</p> - -<p>It is, however, when we come to the ground idea of the Essay on -Manners,<a name="FNanchor_253" id="FNanchor_253"></a><a href="#Footnote_253" class="fnanchor">253</a> that we feel the full breath <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">316</a></span>of the modern spirit, and -perceive that at length we are nearing the wide expanse of the sea. -There we emerge absolutely from the narrow conception of universal -history, with which Bossuet had familiarised men’s minds in the -Discourse on Universal History. This famous piece, which has had at -least as much praise as it merits, if we are to consider reason as well -as eloquence, was fundamentally and in substance no more than a bit of -theological commonplace splendidly decorated. Bossuet indeed spoke of -‘the concatenation of human affairs,’ but only in the same sentence with -‘the sequence of the counsels of God.’ The gorgeous rhetorician of the -church was not likely to rise philosophically into the larger air of -universal history, properly so called. His eloquent discourse is a -vindication of divine foresight, by means of an intensely narrow survey -of such sets of facts as might be thought not inconsistent with the -deity’s fixed purpose to make one final and decisive revelation to men. -No one who looks upon the vast assemblage of stupendous human -circumstances, from the first origin of man upon the earth, as merely -the ordained antecedent of what, seen from the long procession of all -the ages, figures in so diminutive a consummation as the Catholic -church, is likely to obtain a very effective hold of that broad sequence -and many-linked chain of events, to which Bossuet gave a right name, -<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">317</a></span>but whose real meaning he never was even near seizing. His merit is -that he did in a small and rhetorical way, what Montesquieu and Voltaire -afterwards did in a truly comprehensive and philosophical way; he -pressed forward general ideas in connection with the recorded movements -of the chief races of mankind. For a teacher of history to leave the -bare chronicler’s road so far as to declare, for example, the general -principle, inadequate and overstated as it is, that ‘religion and civil -government are the two points on which human things revolve,’ even this -was a clear step in advance—and to dismiss the long series of emperors -from Augustus to Alexander Severus in two or three pages was to show a -rare sense of large historic proportion. Again, Bossuet’s expressions of -‘the concatenation of the universe,’ of the interdependence of the parts -of so vast a whole, of there coming no great change without having its -causes in foregoing centuries, and of the true object of history being -to observe in connection with each epoch those secret dispositions of -events which prepared the way for great changes, as well as the -momentous conjunctures which more immediately brought them to pass—all -these phrases seem to point to a true and philosophic survey. But they -end in themselves, and lead nowhither. The chain is an arbitrary and -one-sided collection of facts. The writer does not cautiously follow and -feel after the successive links, but forges and chooses and arranges -them after a pattern of his own, which was fixed independently of them.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">318</a></span> -A scientific term or two is not enough to disguise the purely -theological essence of the treatise.</p> - -<p>Bossuet’s Discourse is moreover constructed wholly on the theory that a -special revelation was delivered to the Jews, and in tracing their -course we have fast hold of the chain by which it has pleased heaven to -communicate to earth all the truths we possess as to the highest things. -Such a conception stifles a modern reader. The first pages of the Essay -on Manners, sometimes placed separately as the Philosophy of History, -prove that we have escaped from the cave. The chosen people fell into -rank with other peoples, that equally supposed themselves to be chosen -by their own peculiar gods. They lose the towering pre-eminence in -virtue and light and divine favour with which their own records and -Bossuet’s interpretation had so splendidly invested them. We find that -their pretensions were not unique, but universal among nations in such a -stage; that their virtues were not singular, though some of their vices -seem so. In a word, if some of Voltaire’s details are crude and -rudimentary, at least he has the merit of showing to his unaccustomed -readers what vast epochs of time, what uncounted multitudes of men, what -varied movements of the human spirit, surround the little speck of -Judaism.</p> - -<p>The bulk of the Essay was composed in 1740, but it is probable that this -preliminary examination of other oriental nations, their practices, -institutions, and religious ideas, was suggested by <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">319</a></span>Montesquieu’s -memorable book, which appeared in 1748, some years before the -publication of the Essay on Manners. It is in point of execution much -less satisfactory than what follows, for Voltaire’s knowledge of Greek -and Hebrew was inadequate, and he fell into various errors which his -adversaries happily possessed scholarship enough to expose. In the -modern provinces of the book, which constitute the important part of it, -he was much more entirely at home in his subject. Here his familiarity -with detail, considering the vast quantity of his other employments, is -extremely surprising, and perhaps in no other book of equal generality -have there been discovered so few serious inaccuracies, though none have -encountered more hostile critics.</p> - -<p>Prejudice, alas, spares truth and light no more when it narrows the -vision of a free-thinker, than when it distorts the faculty of the -devout. Being a reaction against Bossuet’s unreasonable exaltation of -the Jews and their history, Voltaire’s conception of the place due to -them partook of the inevitable fault of all reactions, and left out of -sight considerations which it is eminently unscientific not to remember. -‘You never find,’ he says, ‘a generous action in the annals of the -Hebrews; they knew neither hospitality nor liberality nor clemency. -Their sovereign bliss is to practise usury with foreigners, and this -spirit of usury is so rooted in their hearts, that it is the continual -object of the figures they employ in the eloquence which is peculiar to -them. Their glory is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">320</a></span> to deliver to fire and slaughter the small -villages of which they may be able to take possession. They assassinate -their masters when they are slaves, and they never know how to pardon -when they are victorious; they are the enemies of the human race.’<a name="FNanchor_254" id="FNanchor_254"></a><a href="#Footnote_254" class="fnanchor">254</a> -This is as great an exaggeration on one side, as Bossuet’s exaltation of -them and their deeds was on the other side. We ought to admit what -abominable traits the character and history of this race unfortunately -present, without forgetting how much is owing to them for preserving in -its sublimest shape, and investing with the most deeply impressive -images and associations, that idea of monotheism which, if destined to -be superseded by other ideas more commensurate with the limits of human -intelligence, must still be counted the germ of much that is purest and -loftiest and most inspiring among the ideals of western civilisation.</p> - -<p>The same kind of extreme prejudice which drove Voltaire into maintaining -of the Jews, not that they were a people whom we should do very ill -either to imitate or admire, but nothing less than that they were the -enemies of the human race, found vent in such assertions as that if any -one could have restored the Empire to its strength, or at all events -retarded its fall, that man was the Emperor Julian.<a name="FNanchor_255" id="FNanchor_255"></a><a href="#Footnote_255" class="fnanchor">255</a> A historian may -justly contend, if he thinks that the evidence warrants him, that Julian -belongs to the type of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">321</a></span>virtuous reactionists, just as we may say it of -Wesley or the chiefs of the Tractarians. But to make such an assertion -as that the repression of Christianity after the middle of the fourth -century, even supposing it to have been possible of achievement, could -have given back to the rapidly declining empire a strength of which all -the roots were lifeless, was to falsify history for the sake of exalting -the name of an apostate. A Roman aristocrat, blind to the real operation -and comparative value of the forces at work, might be pardoned for -holding Christianity guilty of the general dissolution around him; but -it was a strange phantasy for a philosopher of the eighteenth century to -suppose that the Christian system, in the shape which it had assumed by -Julian’s time, did not offer principles of firmer association, than the -mere rites of a paganism which was spontaneously decaying with a -rapidity that increased day by day.<a name="FNanchor_256" id="FNanchor_256"></a><a href="#Footnote_256" class="fnanchor">256</a> There is no stronger -illustration of the twist which polemical fury may give to the most -acute intelligence, than this belief of Voltaire’s, that an organisation -which had attracted to itself every able and statesmanlike intellect of -the time, could do less for the regeneration of the Empire than the -initiated disciple of Platonist theurgy.</p> - -<p>His account of the history of the church is composed in the same vein, -and we may see where Gibbon, who was a reader of Voltaire, drew the -<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">322</a></span>inspiration of the solemn sneer with which he sapped solemn creed.<a name="FNanchor_257" id="FNanchor_257"></a><a href="#Footnote_257" class="fnanchor">257</a> -‘So many frauds, so many errors, so many disgusting absurdities,’ says -Voltaire, ‘with which we have been inundated for seventeen hundred -years, have been unable to do any harm to our religion. It is -unquestionably divine, since seventeen centuries of imposture and -imbecility have not destroyed it.’<a name="FNanchor_258" id="FNanchor_258"></a><a href="#Footnote_258" class="fnanchor">258</a> Voltaire thought as ill as -possible of the century to which he belonged; we cannot therefore charge -him with the inconsistency which marks some of his most prominent -disciples, who while they accepted such an account of the vileness of -the church as he had given them, did not scruple to believe that, as if -by miracle, seventeen centuries of steady depravation were <i>per saltum</i> -to be followed by an eighteenth and other centuries of boundless virtue -and enlightenment. Still it is wonderful that he should have been able -to appreciate the admirable character of the best sovereign of the -thirteenth century, Lewis IX.,<a name="FNanchor_259" id="FNanchor_259"></a><a href="#Footnote_259" class="fnanchor">259</a> and to describe his motives and his -achievements so generously, and yet should never have thought of the -education and surrounding spiritual conditions by which such a character -had been formed. If the power of Catholicism for evil was so great and -decisive, it would have been reasonable to suppose that it had some -share also in moulding to good those who came forth from it the very -flower of humanity. But <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">323</a></span>Voltaire did not know how much a man is the -product of a system operating on, and with, the individual -predisposition, or he would not have chidden St. Lewis for remaining on -the level of the prejudice of his time, instead of changing the spirit -of his age.<a name="FNanchor_260" id="FNanchor_260"></a><a href="#Footnote_260" class="fnanchor">260</a> How should St. Lewis have risen from the prejudice of -his age, when it was exactly that prejudice which had formed him, and of -which he represented the worthy side?</p> - -<p>Even without this inconsistency, the fundamental error is bad enough. We -get very wearied of the persistent identification of the church -throughout the dark ages with fraud and imposture and sinister -self-seeking, when we have once learnt, what is undoubtedly the most -important principle in the study of those times, that it was the -churchmen who kept the flickering light of civilisation alive, amid the -raging storms of uncontrolled passion and violence. The truth is that -Voltaire never realised civilisation as an organism, which if not -surrounded with the proper conditions of life will perish, and which -will prosper and wax stronger exactly in proportion as it is nourished. -That the light was more than once very near sinking in the west under -the waves of barbarism, as it has actually sunk in the eastern portions -of the Empire, seems to have been an all-important fact which he either -never saw, or which, if he saw it, never impressed him as assuredly it -ought to have done.</p> - -<p>This is the more curious as he was able to perceive, in a way in which -it were much to be wished <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">324</a></span>that more recent historians might show an -equal discernment, that we ought to use the terms of civilisation, with -all their complex and accumulated associations, in an extremely modified -sense in speaking of the centuries between the fifth and the thirteenth, -just as it is the gravest mistake to suppose that, because you can -express the results of the various contests of those times in terms of -philosophy, therefore the actors in any one of them were both conscious -of its most general bearings, and were animated by large and -philosophical inclinations. For example, after he has told us how -William the Conqueror sent to the Pope Harold’s battle-standard and a -small portion of the small treasure that an English king might possess -in those times, he proceeds to reduce the transaction to what he -conceived to be its true proportions, in the following manner: ‘Thus,’ -he says, ‘a barbarian, the son of a harlot, the murderer of a legitimate -king, shares the plunder of this king with another barbarian; for if you -take away the names of duke of Normandy, king of England, and pope, all -is reduced to the action of a Norman brigand and a Lombard receiver of -plunder.<a name="FNanchor_261" id="FNanchor_261"></a><a href="#Footnote_261" class="fnanchor">261</a> This being the case, the secular possessors of power being -so rude, petty, and barbarous, their contests being ‘those of bears and -wolves,’ their rapacity and violence being tempered by few of those -ideas of justice which form the bonds of society in its more advanced -stages, it ought to have struck even the most ardent enemy of -ecclesiastical <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">325</a></span>pretensions as a thing in the highest degree -unphilosophical, to pour all the ill epithets of usurpation upon the -virtuous efforts of the great churchmen, who were least touched by the -spirit of violence, to take away as much power as they could from -barbarous princes and nobles, who were most impregnated with that and -all other dark spirits. The smaller the difference between the least -moral and the most moral orders in a community, the more desirable it is -that the order with even a small advantage should acquire as much power -as possible; for the reason that so near an approach to equality in -morals is most likely to occur when the average is low, and when -therefore the need to prevent it from falling any lower is most urgent. -Granting that the ecclesiastics were only slightly the superiors of the -barbarous laymen, this is all the better ground for rejoicing that they -succeeded in converting their ascendancy of moral idea into an -ascendancy of political fact.</p> - -<p>In short, Voltaire’s great panorama, magnificent as it is and most -royally planned, is not drawn in lines and with colour that explain the -story or lay bare the principles of its progress. The plan is imposed -from without, just as in Bossuet’s case, not carefully sought from -within the facts themselves. What is meant then by the assertion that -Voltaire’s Essay is one of the foundations of modern history? If he -gives no explanation of the course of history, none to himself probably, -and none to us assuredly, what is his merit? This, that he has fully -placed before us the history<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">326</a></span> which is to be explained; that he has -presented the long external succession of facts in their true magnitude -and in a definite connection; that he did not write a history of France, -or of the papacy, or of the Mahometan power, or of the crusades, but -that he saw the advantage, as we see the unavoidable necessity, of -comprehending in a single idea and surveying in a single work the -various activities, the rise and fall of power, the transference from -one to another of political predominance, the contributions to the art -of living, among the societies which were once united in a single -empire. The history of each of these societies, England, France, Spain, -Italy, the Byzantine Empire, is followed in relation to the history of -Europe, which is indeed composed of these co-ordinate parts. The -movement of communities since the dissolution of the Roman Empire is -exhibited in a collective form, and that it should be exhibited and -accepted in this form was obviously a preliminary step to an organic -treatment of the multiplied laws of social physics.</p> - -<p>‘There are some events,’ he wrote in a note to his best poem, ‘which -have effects, and others which have none. It is with the chain of events -as it is with a genealogical tree, where we perceive branches that -become extinct at the first generation, and others that continue the -race. Many events remain without any filiation. It is thus that in every -machine there are effects necessary to the movement, while others are -indifferent, following the operation of the first, and leading to -nothing. The wheels of a vehicle serve to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">327</a></span> make it go; but whether they -raise a little more or a little less dust, the journey is accomplished -equally. Such is the general order of the world, that the links of the -chain are not deranged by a little more or a little less of -irregularity.’<a name="FNanchor_262" id="FNanchor_262"></a><a href="#Footnote_262" class="fnanchor">262</a> The figures in this passage serve adequately to -describe his own treatment. We see in the Essay the lines of the -genealogical tree, but we do not learn the laws of the transmission of -qualities from one stock to another; we see the links of the chain, but -not the conditions which fastened each to the other; conditions, indeed, -only to be grasped through a scientific study of human nature which -Voltaire had never made; and finally we see the towering car drawn -slowly along a devious road by sweat and strain of millions, but we know -not why it went by this road rather than another. In a word, the inner -machinery of societies and of their movement remains as far from our -sight as it ever was. The study of those economic and material forces -which have so profound an influence upon social transformations, was in -its infancy, and the Economists, who really saw that there are definite -laws regulating the play of these forces, unfortunately mixed up with -their speculations a number of chimerical fancies, which Voltaire was -too acute to accept, but not patient enough to sift.<a name="FNanchor_263" id="FNanchor_263"></a><a href="#Footnote_263" class="fnanchor">263</a> In this -respect he is as <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">328</a></span>defective as Gibbon, in whose book, so justly famous -for its splendid breadth of conception and industrious elaboration of -detail, we have much of that meagre philosophy which consisted in the -exposure of falsehood, but little of the true science which shows us the -numerous organs of society in connection with their actual play and -function. Neither Gibbon nor Voltaire made any contribution, nor seems -to have been aware of the importance of contributing, to that study of -the fundamental conditions of the social union, which Aristotle -commenced, and which both Bodin in the sixteenth century and Montesquieu -in the eighteenth had so meritoriously continued.<a name="FNanchor_264" id="FNanchor_264"></a><a href="#Footnote_264" class="fnanchor">264</a> Nevertheless, it -was much to lead men to study the history of modern Europe as a whole, -and we may say of Voltaire in connection with history what he said of -Corneille in connection with tragedy—‘It is so great a merit to have -opened the career, and inventors are so much above other men, that -posterity pardons their greatest faults.’<a name="FNanchor_265" id="FNanchor_265"></a><a href="#Footnote_265" class="fnanchor">265</a></p> - -<hr /> - -<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">329</a></span></p> - -<h2>CHAPTER VII.</h2> - -<h5>FERNEY.</h5> - -<p>Voltaire, as we have seen, took possession of Ferney in 1758, and he -lived here almost without a break for something like twenty years. His -estate was a feudal seigniory in the district of Gex, on the very -frontier of Switzerland, but in France, though enjoying immunity from -French taxation. He built a new manor-house, and in his capacity of lord -of the manor replaced the dilapidated little church of the estate by a -new one, very small, very plain, and about which, notwithstanding its -famous inscription of which he so often boasted,—<i>Deo erexit -Voltaire</i>,—much more noise has been made, than so simple and natural a -proceeding at all calls for.<a name="FNanchor_266" id="FNanchor_266"></a><a href="#Footnote_266" class="fnanchor">266</a> Madame Denis kept house for him, and -according to the Paris gossips of the time, on an extravagant scale, -which often produced ruptures between the two. Guests were incessant -<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">330</a></span>and the hospitality ungrudging.<a name="FNanchor_267" id="FNanchor_267"></a><a href="#Footnote_267" class="fnanchor">267</a> He complained during the Seven -Years’ War of the embarrassment of being a Frenchman, when he had to -entertain daily at dinner Russians, English, and Germans.<a name="FNanchor_268" id="FNanchor_268"></a><a href="#Footnote_268" class="fnanchor">268</a> He -protests that he is weary of being hotel-keeper in general for all -Europe, and so weary was he at one time of this noisy and costly post, -that the establishment was partially suspended for upwards of a year. -One of the most generous of Voltaire’s many generous acts was his -reception into his house of a child who had no other claim on him than -that of being the great-grand-daughter of the uncle of Corneille. A -soldier ought to succour the niece of his general, he said. He took the -liveliest interest in the little maid’s education, though she appears to -have been a sulky pupil, and eventually he married her with due dower to -one Dupuits. The bustle and expense of his establishment became greater -than ever, and in the spring of 1768 Paris was as much electrified by -news of a revolution at Ferney, as she has been since by some -revolutions in her own streets. Madame Denis and the two Dupuits had -suddenly made their way to Paris, and for a year and a half Voltaire was -left in peace, part of which he employed sensibly in having his house -cleaned from cellar to garret,—a bit of news <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">331</a></span>which is handed down to -our times, since, according to Grimm, the domestic arrangements of the -manor-house at Ferney interested at that moment more or less every court -in Europe.<a name="FNanchor_269" id="FNanchor_269"></a><a href="#Footnote_269" class="fnanchor">269</a> In the autumn of 1769 Madame Denis returned, and with -her the old stir and extravagance were resumed, for Voltaire was one of -the best-humoured of men to his family and friends, and could deny his -niece nothing. We have more than one description of this too immortal -niece. They are all equally unflattering. Her homeliness of appearance -amounted to the ugliness that is bitter. She was destitute of wit, and -had a vulgar soul. Born to be the insipid gossip of a bourgeois circle, -says one charitable writer, but having by chance the first man in the -nation for an uncle, she learnt to chatter about literature and the -theatre, as a parrot learns.<a name="FNanchor_270" id="FNanchor_270"></a><a href="#Footnote_270" class="fnanchor">270</a> She wrote a comedy; but the players, -out of respect for Voltaire, declined to act in it. She wrote a tragedy; -but the one favour, which the repeated entreaties of years could never -wring from Voltaire, was that he would read it. She had histrionic as -well as dramatic ambition, and here worked a miracle, for her -representation of Mérope once drew floods of tears from some English -ladies.<a name="FNanchor_271" id="FNanchor_271"></a><a href="#Footnote_271" class="fnanchor">271</a> Her affectation of intellect had not cooled the reality of -simple sensation, and if she loved art, she was said not to despise -gallantry. At any rate, though she was only sixteen years <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">332</a></span>younger than -her uncle,<a name="FNanchor_272" id="FNanchor_272"></a><a href="#Footnote_272" class="fnanchor">272</a> she needed continual festivities and crowds of guests.</p> - -<p>Ferney was rather a difficult spot for a woman with a passion for the -hum of cities. For five months in the year, says Voltaire, my deserts -are, on the admission of Russians, worse than Siberia itself; we see -thirty leagues of mountain, snow, and precipices: it is Naples in -summer, Lapland in winter.<a name="FNanchor_273" id="FNanchor_273"></a><a href="#Footnote_273" class="fnanchor">273</a> One year he marks with word of -bitterness snow falling thick in the middle of May. Four feet of snow in -the courtyard constituted a normal winter state. He commemorates with -enthusiasm how one day, through these four feet of snow, he saw porters -bringing him a hamper of Champagne from a friend; for the more generous -sort of Burgundy with which he ordinarily recruited himself had fallen -short, and he had been reduced to the humble vintage of Beaujolais.</p> - -<p>Yet in the midst of a thousand discomforts and hardships we never hear -him wishing to be back in Paris. It remained to him the accursed city, -as it had been before his journey to England. He always thought with -horror of its cabal, intrigue, frivolity, and sovereign indifference to -the ruin of the kingdom and the shedding of innocent blood. There can be -no doubt that this wise exile prolonged his days. He was constantly -complaining of illness, and he passed <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">333</a></span>months at a time in bed, which -may in truth have been the best possible preservative of life for one of -his temperament. Yet in spite of this avoidance of society, this passion -for his study, the man of ordinary capacity, with no more than an -ordinary working day, may marvel how amid so many distractions the -master of the house contrived to write so many scores of pieces, large -and small, and so many hundreds of letters, grave and gay. Of these -letters nearly seven thousand are already in print, and M. Beuchot, most -carefully informed of all Voltaire’s editors, thinks there are likely to -be quite as many more still in undiscovered existence. Ferney was the -centre of the most universal and varied correspondence that any one man -has ever carried on. Frederick the Great was not the only crowned head -with whom Voltaire interchanged royal communication. Catharine II. of -Russia, of Anhalt-Zerbst by birth, was the helpful patroness of Diderot -and D’Alembert, and was always eager to hear some word from the -patriarch of their encyclopædic church, only praying him not to think -her too importunate. Christian VII. of Denmark apologises for not being -able at a stroke to remove all the obstacles that lie in the way of the -civil liberty of his subjects. Gustavus III. of Sweden is elated by the -thought that Voltaire sometimes casts a glance on what is going on in -the North, and protests that this is their greatest encouragement to do -as well as they can in all ways.<a name="FNanchor_274" id="FNanchor_274"></a><a href="#Footnote_274" class="fnanchor">274</a> Joseph II. would fain have <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">334</a></span>called -at Ferney while travelling incognito through France, but fear of his -mother’s displeasure held him back, the high and devout nature of Maria -Theresa always finding Voltaire’s mockery of sacred things deeply -repugnant, as we may easily believe.</p> - -<p>Beside sovereigns who wrote to him as to an equal, every young aspirant -to literary distinction, however unknown and obscure, sought a criticism -from Ferney. Twenty years before he settled down here, Voltaire had been -consulted by Vauvenargues, and had replied with words of painstaking and -generous counsel. It was always the same with him. No young author ever -solicited advice in vain, and he was never sparing either of trouble or -praise. The Marquis of Chastellux sent him a copy of his Félicité -Publique, and was raised to the seventh heaven by a letter of thanks, in -which Voltaire tells him: ‘I covered the margin of my copy with notes, -as I always do when a book charms and instructs me; I even took the -liberty of not always sharing the author’s opinion. I am very old and -very feeble, but such reading makes me young again.’ And the letter -contains a large number of points where he thinks the author in -error.<a name="FNanchor_275" id="FNanchor_275"></a><a href="#Footnote_275" class="fnanchor">275</a></p> - -<p>Besides kings and the writers of books, plain men also besought his -dictum on high matters. ‘A burgomaster of Middleburg,’ he informs Madame -du Deffand, ‘whom I do not know, wrote to me a little <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">335</a></span>while since, to -ask me in confidence whether there is a God or not; whether, in case -there be one, he takes any heed of us; whether matter is eternal; -whether it can think; whether the soul is immortal; and begging me to -answer by return of post.’<a name="FNanchor_276" id="FNanchor_276"></a><a href="#Footnote_276" class="fnanchor">276</a></p> - -<p>One may suspect that a little colouring is added here by the master -hand, but the substantial facts are probable enough. He corresponded -with cardinals, marshals of France, and bishops, and he corresponded -with Helvétius and with Diderot, who, greatly to the indignation of the -business-like patriarch, had a bad habit of leaving letters to answer -themselves.<a name="FNanchor_277" id="FNanchor_277"></a><a href="#Footnote_277" class="fnanchor">277</a></p> - -<p>If two cavalry officers fell to disputing over the mess-table as to the -propriety of using some bit of old French, it was to Ferney that the -reference was instantly made.<a name="FNanchor_278" id="FNanchor_278"></a><a href="#Footnote_278" class="fnanchor">278</a></p> - -<p>We get an idea of the kind of imperial authority which attached to -Voltaire’s judgment, from the eagerness with which Turgot sought, -without revealing his name, an opinion from Ferney as to the worth of a -translation with which he lightened the heavy burden of his intendance -at Limoges, a translation of the Eclogues and Fourth Æneid into French -metric verse. ‘They say,’ wrote Turgot, ‘that he is so busy with his -Encyclopaedia as neither to speak nor to write to any one.’ If Turgot -could have seen Voltaire’s correspondence for 1770, he would have found -out how far this rumour was from the truth,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">336</a></span> and in fact he did get an -answer to his own letter; but it can hardly have been very much more -satisfactory than silence would have been, for Voltaire, while profuse -in praise of the fidelity and spirit of the translation, unfortunately -did not detect that it was meant for anything more ambitious than simple -prose with enthusiasm in it.<a name="FNanchor_279" id="FNanchor_279"></a><a href="#Footnote_279" class="fnanchor">279</a> As Turgot especially valued in the -patriarch his ’superb ear,’ the blow was as sharp as it well could be. -He was little concerned or surprised on learning the fallacious -reasoning of the poet in political economy. ‘Reasoning,’ he adds, ‘has -never been Voltaire’s strong point.’<a name="FNanchor_280" id="FNanchor_280"></a><a href="#Footnote_280" class="fnanchor">280</a> And that was true in matters -of abstract science, but he was an unrivalled populariser of the results -of other people’s reasoning, from Newton’s Principia down to Middleton’s -Free Enquiry, and this popularisation was what the conditions of the -time caused to be most ardently demanded. The proof of the demand we may -see in the extraordinary respect and curiosity, or dislike and alarm, -with which Voltaire for the twenty crowning years of his life was -regarded throughout the whole of civilised Europe.</p> - -<p>It is impossible to read the multitudinous volumes of Voltaire’s -correspondence, and they are being added to every two or three years, -with entire satisfaction. They are wittier than any other letters in the -world. For lightness, swiftness, grace, spontaneity, you can find no -second to them, at however long an interval. But they abound in many -things which are disagreeable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">337</a></span> in the letters of an old man who had -so true an interest in the spread of virtue, knowledge, and the other -conditions of human dignity. These, however, may be passed over as the -innocent and unconscious unseemliness of a very gay nature living in a -very free age. It is less easy to banish the unpleasant impressions with -which we find him playing the equivocal part of being all things to all -men. One would have been pleased to have a little more stiffness, a -little less pliancy of phrase. We would not go through the world -insisting on grim Puritanic earnestness at every moment of a man’s life, -but Voltaire’s lively complaisance with all sorts of unworthy people is -something worse than unedifying. One can hardly help sympathising with -D’Alembert’s remonstrance. ‘You have rather spoilt the people who -persecute us. ’Tis true you have had greater need than anybody else to -keep them quiet, and that you have been obliged to offer a candle to -Lucifer to save yourself from Beelzebub, but Lucifer has only grown the -prouder, without Beelzebub growing the less malignant.’<a name="FNanchor_281" id="FNanchor_281"></a><a href="#Footnote_281" class="fnanchor">281</a> The truth -probably is that Voltaire did not always take—much thought of Lucifer -or Beelzebub. For one thing, he was, as we have said more than once, -intensely sympathetic by temperament, and in writing to a friend, or -even an acquaintance only, he was for the moment animated by a lively -good will and anxiety to be in harmony with his correspondent. There was -nothing false in these purring pleasantries, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">338</a></span>with which he amused all -correspondents alike. They came as naturally from his mobile and genial -constitution, as an equality of prosaic moroseness comes from persons of -fundamentally different constitutions. For another thing, the old -fashion of his youth never dropped away from him, and the elaborate -courteousness and friendly ardour of manner, which he had learnt among -the aristocratic friends of the days of the Regency and afterwards at -Paris and Versailles, did not desert him in the solitudes of the Jura. -He was to the last a man of quality, as well as a crusher of the -Infamous, and to the last he kept up the tone of one who had been a -gentleman of the chamber to one king, and court-chamberlain to another. -Voltaire’s temperament and earliest surroundings fully explain what was -a more public, as well as more serious, falling away from the rigorous -integrity which men are now accustomed to demand from the leaders of -unpopular causes. His sins in this order are nearly as numerous as his -public acts. Rousseau, perhaps we may say without breach of charity, as -much from vanity as principle, prefixed his name to all that he wrote, -and he paid the penalty in a life of wandering and persecution. Voltaire -in his later days as invariably sheltered himself behind the anonymous, -and not only disclaimed works of which it was notorious that he was the -author, but insisted that his friends should impute them to this or that -dead name. Nobody was deceived. While he got unwelcome credit for a -multitude of pieces that were not his own, assuredly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">339</a></span> nothing really his -ever failed to be set down to its true author. We can only say that this -was the evil practice of the time, and that Voltaire was here little -worse than Turgot and many another man of general virtuousness, to whom -the ferocity of authority would not even allow freedom enough to plead -for tolerance, much less to utter uncertified opinion. ‘Time,’ said -D’Alembert, apologising for some whiff of orthodoxy which Voltaire -scented in one or two articles in the Encyclopaedia, ‘will make people -distinguish what we thought from what we said.’<a name="FNanchor_282" id="FNanchor_282"></a><a href="#Footnote_282" class="fnanchor">282</a> Condorcet, as we -know, deliberately defended these deceptions, which did not deceive, -while they did protect. He contended that if you rob a man of his -natural right of publishing his opinions, then you lose your own right -to hear the truth from the man’s lips.<a name="FNanchor_283" id="FNanchor_283"></a><a href="#Footnote_283" class="fnanchor">283</a> Undoubtedly all laws admit -that duress introduces new conditions into the determination of what is -right and wrong in action, or at least that it mitigates pains and -penalties, and the position of every claimant for free speech was in -those days emphatically a position of duress. The choice lay between -disavowal on the one hand, and on the other abstention from proclaiming -truths by which only society could gain the freedom it so much needed; -between strict anonymity and leaving the darkness unbroken. And we must -remember that disingenuous tricks to conceal authorship were not -assuredly so unpardonable, when resorted to as protectives <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">340</a></span>against -imprisonment, confiscation, and possible peril of life, as they are now -among ourselves, when they serve no more defensible purpose than -sheltering men who have not the courage of their opinions, against one -or two paltry social deprivations. The monstrous proceedings against La -Barre, and the ease with which in this and numerous other cases the -jurisprudence of the tribunals lent itself to the cruelty of fanatics, -no doubt excited in Voltaire a very genuine alarm for his own safety, -and probably with good reason. We know that he could not venture to -visit Italy, in consequence of his just fear lest the Inquisition should -throw their redoubtable foe into prison, and the parliaments of Toulouse -and Abbeville had perpetrated juridical murders as iniquitous as any of -the proceedings of the Holy Office. And though it is easy and right for -the young, who live in a time when you are not imprisoned or hung or -decapitated for holding unpopular opinions, to call out for manliness to -the uttermost in these things, one must make allowance for an occasional -fit of timorousness in a man of eighty, whom nature had never cut out -for a martyr. Yet, more than once, these fits committed Voltaire to acts -which were as great a scandal to the devout as to the atheists. That he -should rebuild the ruinous little chapel of his estate was not much more -remarked, than it would be for a Protestant landlord to subscribe to -repair the Catholic church on an Irish property containing only Catholic -tenants. The gorgeous ceremony with which in his quality of lord he -commemorated<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">341</a></span> its opening, made everybody laugh, not excepting the chief -performer, for he actually took the opportunity of lifting up his voice -in the new temple and preaching a sermon against theft. The bishop of -Annecy in Savoy, his diocesan, was furious at this mockery, and urged -the minister at Paris to banish Voltaire from France. In order to avert -the blow, Voltaire tried to make a nominal peace with the church by -confessing, and participating in the solemnity of an Easter communion -(1768). The bishop wrote him a long letter of unctuous impertinences, to -which Voltaire replied by asking very tartly why the discharge of so -ordinary a duty called for this insolent congratulation. The -philosophers of Paris were bitterly scandalised, and some of them wrote -to the patriarch of the sect to remonstrate. Even D’Alembert, his own -familiar friend, could not refrain from protest.<a name="FNanchor_284" id="FNanchor_284"></a><a href="#Footnote_284" class="fnanchor">284</a> Voltaire could -give no better reasons for his strange lapse than we may hear given -every day in our own country, by men who practise hypocritical -compliances for the sake of a little ignoble ease, and thus perpetuate -the yoke. He owed an example to his parish, as if the example of -feigning a belief which he repudiates could be a good example for one to -set in any parish. It was very well to shirk these observances in Paris, -because there in the tide of business one finds an excuse or is not -missed, but in the country no such excuse offers itself. One must stand -well with the curé, be he knave or dunce. One must respect the two -hundred and fifty <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">342</a></span>timorous consciences around one. And so forth, down -that well-worn list of pleas by which men make anxiety about the -consciences of others a substantial reason for treachery to their own. -Voltaire, besides all these, honestly added the one true reason, that he -did not mean to be burnt alive, and that the only way of making sure -against such a fate was to close the lips of spies and informers.<a name="FNanchor_285" id="FNanchor_285"></a><a href="#Footnote_285" class="fnanchor">285</a> -The bishop knew perfectly well that the squire, who had made his Easter -communion in so remarkable a manner in 1768, was the author of the -Philosophical Dictionary, of which a bran-new edition, amended and -revised, made its appearance in 1769; and he appears to have forbidden -the priest of Ferney to confess or administer the eucharist to the chief -of the flock. Voltaire was at once seized with a fever, and summoned the -priest to administer ghostly comfort. The priest pleaded the horrible -rumours of the world as to the damnable books of which the sick man was -alleged to be the author. Voltaire replied by warning him very -peremptorily that in refusing to administer the viaticum he was -infringing the law, and the consequence was that he did duly receive the -viaticum, after which he signed a solemn act in the presence of a -notary, declaring that he pardons his various calumniators; that ‘if any -indiscretion prejudicial to the religion of the State should have -escaped him,’ he seeks forgiveness from God and the State; and finally -he forgave the bishop of Annecy, who had calumniated him to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">343</a></span> the king, -and whose malicious designs had come to nought. The priest and notary -afterwards falsified this amazing declaration so as to appease the -bishop, and came to Voltaire praying him not to betray them. ‘I prove to -them,’ he says, ‘that they will be damned, I give them something to -drink, and they go away delighted.’<a name="FNanchor_286" id="FNanchor_286"></a><a href="#Footnote_286" class="fnanchor">286</a> A younger philosopher of his -school remarks with his accustomed gravity on this most singular -transaction, that the satisfaction of forcing his priest to administer -by fear of the secular judges, and of insulting the bishop of Annecy in -a juridical manner, cannot excuse such a proceeding in the eyes of the -free and firm man, who weighs calmly the claims of truth and the -requirements of prudence, when laws contrary to natural justice render -truth dangerous and prudence indispensable.<a name="FNanchor_287" id="FNanchor_287"></a><a href="#Footnote_287" class="fnanchor">287</a> To which reflection we -may perhaps add another, suggested by the cruel experience of the church -in France within five and twenty years from Voltaire’s impious -communion, that if any order, secular or spiritual, constrains its -adversaries under penalties to the commission of base acts, then if the -chances of time should ever transfer the power to the other side, that -order has only itself to blame for whatever wrong may mark the -retaliation. There is no more dangerous policy in affairs of state than -to strip your opponent of self-respect, and this the descendants of the -persecutors found out to their extreme cost, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">344</a></span>when in 1793 they had to -deal with the descendants of the persecuted.</p> - -<p>One other curious piece of sportiveness in his dealings with the church -deserves to be noticed. In the year 1770 the post of temporal father of -the order of Capucins for the district of Gex became vacant. Voltaire -applied for it, and the general at Rome, perhaps listening to a word -from Ganganelli, or else from the Duchess of Choiseul, sent to Ferney -the letters patent conferring upon its patriarch this strange dignity, -and also affiliating him to the order. What were Voltaire’s motives in -so odd a transaction, it is not very hard to divine. Probably, he -thought even this humble office would be some protection against -persecution. Then it gave him an opportunity of harassing his enemy, the -bishop of Annecy. Thirdly, it amused that whimsical element of farce and -mischief which was always so irrepressible in him, from the early days -when he is said to have nearly damned his own play by appearing on the -stage as the high-priest’s train-bearer, and burlesquing that august -person’s solemn gait. Voltaire filled his letters with infinite -pleasantries about the new Capucin, and seemed as much pleased at the -idea of wearing the cord of Saint Francis, as he had been with the gold -key of a Prussian chamberlain.<a name="FNanchor_288" id="FNanchor_288"></a><a href="#Footnote_288" class="fnanchor">288</a> One of his first enjoyments was to -write letters to his episcopal foe, signed with a cross and his name: ‘✠ -<i>Voltaire, Capucin indigne.</i>’<a name="FNanchor_289" id="FNanchor_289"></a><a href="#Footnote_289" class="fnanchor">289</a> A <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">345</a></span>story is told by Grimm of a visitor -arriving at Ferney, and being greeted by the patriarch with the news -that he would find his host a changed man. ‘One grows a bigot in one’s -old age; I have a habit of having some pious work read to me when I sit -down at table.’ And in fact, some one began to read a sermon of -Massillon, Voltaire throwing in exclamations on the beauty, eloquence, -imagination of the preacher. Suddenly after three or four pages, he -called out ‘Off with Massillon!’ and launched forth during the rest of -the meal with his usual verve and fanciful extravagance of -imagination.<a name="FNanchor_290" id="FNanchor_290"></a><a href="#Footnote_290" class="fnanchor">290</a> It is profoundly unedifying, but not the less -characteristic.</p> - -<p>Voltaire, there can be little doubt, never designed a social revolution, -being in this the representative of the method of Hobbes. His single -object was to reinstate the understanding in its full rights, to -emancipate thought, to extend knowledge, to erect the standard of -critical common sense. He either could not see, or else, as one -sometimes thinks, he closes his eyes and refuses for his part to see, -that it was impossible to revolutionise the spiritual basis of belief -without touching the social forms, which were inseparably connected with -the old basis by the strong bonds of time and a thousand fibres of -ancient association and common interest. Rousseau began where Voltaire -left off. He informs us that in the days when his character was forming, -nothing which Voltaire wrote escaped, him, and that the Philosophical -Letters, that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">346</a></span>is the Letters on the English, though assuredly not the -writer’s best work, were what first attracted him to study, and -implanted a taste which never afterwards became extinct. The -correspondence between Voltaire and the prince of Prussia, afterwards -the great Frederick, inspired Rousseau with a passionate desire to learn -how to compose with elegance, and to imitate the colouring of so fine an -author.<a name="FNanchor_291" id="FNanchor_291"></a><a href="#Footnote_291" class="fnanchor">291</a> Thus Voltaire, who was eighteen years his elder, gave this -extraordinary genius his first productive impulse. But a sensibility of -temperament, to which perhaps there is no parallel in the list of -prominent men, impelled Rousseau to think, or rather to feel, about the -concrete wrongs and miseries of men and women, and not the abstract -rights of their intelligence. Hence the two great revolutionary schools, -the school which appealed to sentiment, and the school which appealed to -intelligence. The Voltarian principles of the strictest political -moderation and of literary common sense, negative, merely emancipatory, -found their political outcome, as French historians early pointed out, -in the Constituent Assembly, which was the creation of the upper and -middle class, while the spirit of Rousseau, ardent, generous, passionate -for the relief of the suffering, overwhelmed by the crowding forms of -manhood chronically degraded and womanhood systematically polluted, came -to life and power in the Convention and the sections of the Commune of -Paris which overawed the Convention. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">347</a></span></p> - -<p>‘It will not do,’ wrote D’Alembert to Voltaire as early as 1762, ‘to -speak too loudly against Jean Jacques or his book, for he is rather a -king in the Halles.’<a name="FNanchor_292" id="FNanchor_292"></a><a href="#Footnote_292" class="fnanchor">292</a> This must have been a new word in the ears of -the old man, who had grown up in the habit of thinking of public opinion -as the opinion, not of markets where the common people bought and sold, -but of the galleries of Versailles. Except for its theology, the age of -Lewis XIV. always remained the great age to Voltaire, the age of pomp -and literary glory, and it was too difficult a feat to cling on one side -to the Grand Monarch, and to stretch out a hand on the other to the -Social Contract. It was too difficult for the man who had been embraced -by Ninon de l’Enclos, who was the correspondent of the greatest -sovereigns in Europe, and the intimate of some of the greatest nobles in -France, to feel much sympathy with writings that made their author king -of the Halles. Frederick offered Rousseau shelter, and so did Voltaire; -but each of them disliked his work as warmly as the other. They did not -understand one who, if he wrote with an eloquence that touched all -hearts, repulsed friends and provoked enemies like a madman or a savage. -The very language of Rousseau was to Voltaire as an unknown tongue, for -it was the language of reason clothing the births of passionate -sensation. Emile only wearied him, though there were perhaps fifty pages -of it which he would have had bound in morocco.<a name="FNanchor_293" id="FNanchor_293"></a><a href="#Footnote_293" class="fnanchor">293</a> It is a stale -<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">348</a></span>romance, he cries, while the Social Contract is only remarkable for -some insults rudely thrown at kings by a citizen of Geneva, and for four -insipid pages against the Christian religion, which are simply -plagiarised from Bayle’s centos.<a name="FNanchor_294" id="FNanchor_294"></a><a href="#Footnote_294" class="fnanchor">294</a> The author is a monster of -ingratitude and insolence, the arch-scoundrel and chief of charlatans, -the lineal descendant of the dog of Diogenes the cynic, and other evil -things not readily to be named in a polite age. Partly no doubt this -extreme irritation was due to the insults with which Jean Jacques had -repulsed his offers of shelter and assistance, had repudiated Voltaire’s -attempts to defend him, and had held up Voltaire himself as a proper -object for the persecutions of Geneva. But there was a still deeper root -of discrepancy, which we have already pointed out. Rousseau’s -exaggerated tone was an offence to Voltaire’s more just and reasonable -spirit, and the feigned austerity of a man whose life and manners he -knew, assumed in his eyes a disagreeable shade of hypocrisy.<a name="FNanchor_295" id="FNanchor_295"></a><a href="#Footnote_295" class="fnanchor">295</a> -Besides these things, he was clearly apprehensive of the storms which -Rousseau’s extraordinary hardihood had the very natural effect of -raising in the circles of authority, though it is true that the most -acute observers of the time thought that they noticed a very perceptible -increase of Voltaire’s own hardihood, as a consequence of the example -which the other set him.</p> - -<p>The rivalry between the schools of Rousseau and Voltaire represents the -dead-lock to which social <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">349</a></span>thought had come; a dead-lock of which the -catastrophe of the Revolution was both expression and result. At the -time of Voltaire’s death there was not a single institution in France -with force enough to be worth a month’s purchase. The monarchy was -decrepit; the aristocracy was as feeble and impotent as it was arrogant; -the bourgeoisie was not without aspiration, but it lacked courage and it -possessed no tradition; and the church was demoralised, first by the -direct attack of Voltaire and the not less powerful indirect attack of -the Encyclopædia, and second by the memory of its own cruelty and -selfishness in the generation just closing. But Voltaire’s theory, so -far as he ever put it into its most general form, was that the temporal -order was safe and firm, and that it would endure until criticism had -transformed thought and prepared the way for a régime of enlightenment -and humanity. Rousseau, on the contrary, directed all the engines of -passion against the whole temporal fabric, and was so little careful of -freedom of thought, so little confident in the plenary efficacy of -rational persuasion, as to insist upon the extermination of atheists by -law. The position of each was at once irrefragable and impossible. It -was impossible to effect a stable reconstitution of the social order -until men had been accustomed to use their minds freely, and had -gradually thrown off the demoralising burden of superstition. But then -the existing social order had become intolerable, and its forces were -practically extinct, and consequently such<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">350</a></span> an attack as Rousseau’s was -inevitable, and was at the same time and for the same reasons -irresistible. To overthrow the power of the church only was to do -nothing in a society perishing from material decay and political -emasculation. Yet to regenerate such a society without the aid of moral -and spiritual forces, with whose activity the existence of a dominant -ecclesiastical power was absolutely incompatible, was one of the wildest -feats that ever passionate sophist attempted.</p> - -<p>If, however, it must be admitted that each of these two famous -destroyers was attempting an equally desperate task, it is the -contention of these pages that Voltaire was the more right and -far-sighted of the two in his perception of the conditions of the -problem. We have now for various adequate reasons acquired the habit of -looking upon the church and speaking of it, as an organisation outside -of society, or at least as a separate organisation and independent -integer within it. The truth is that in a Catholic country like France -before the Revolution, the church more than the secular order actually -was the society, as it had been, though to a far wider degree, -throughout Europe in the days of Hildebrand and Innocent. That is to -say, it furnished the strongest of the ideas, sentiments, hopes, and -associations which bound men together in a single community. The -monarchy, the nobles, the old historic French tradition, the various -bodies and processes of law, were swept away by the Revolution, -virtually never to return, in spite of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">351</a></span> transient appearances to the -contrary. The church was swept away also, but only for a year or two; -and so little effectual was the Revolution, which was in fact Rousseau’s -Revolution, in permanently modifying its position, that those Frenchmen -at the present day who most soberly judge the future of their country -and look deepest into its state, clearly perceive that the battle to be -fought in the order of ideas is a battle between the new moral and -social ideas of the workmen, and the old moral and social ideas which -Catholicism has implanted in the breasts of the peasants, and on which -the middle class privately and unconsciously lean for the support of -their own consciences, though they may have put away Catholic dogma. We -may see here, once more, the help which Protestantism gave to the -dissolution of the old society, by the increased room it gave, apart -from the specific influence of a more democratic dogma, for that gradual -intellectual expansion throughout a community, which for those who have -faith in the reasoning faculty is the one sure secret of social advance. -The subjection of the spiritual power to the temporal, which has -commonly followed the establishment of the Protestant communion, has -very likely retarded the final disappearance of many ideas which foster -anti-social tendencies; but the subjection of the spiritual power in -such a set of circumstances has the effect of softening shocks. -Protestantism in the sixteenth century, if it could have been accepted -in France, would have been a more edifying dissolvent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">352</a></span> than Voltairism -was in the eighteenth; but it is certain that the loosening of -theological ideas and the organisation connected with them and upholding -them, was the first process towards making truly social ideas possible, -and their future realisation a thing which good men might hope for. -Napoleon, the great organ of political reaction, knew what he was about -in paying writers for years to denigrate the memory of Voltaire, whose -very name he abhorred.<a name="FNanchor_296" id="FNanchor_296"></a><a href="#Footnote_296" class="fnanchor">296</a></p> - -<p>In saying, however, that Rousseau’s attack was inevitable, we have -perhaps said that it was indispensable; for where a society is not able -to resist an assault upon its fundamental conditions, we may be -tolerably sure that the time has arrived when either these conditions -must be dispersed, or else the society must fall into rapid dissolution. -We may refute Rousseau’s sophisms as often and as conclusively as we -please, and may dwell as forcibly as we know how upon the untold -penalties which France has paid, and is still doomed to pay, for -whatever benefits he may have bestowed on her. But, after all this, the -benefits remain, and they may be briefly set down as two in number. In -the first place he spoke words that can never be unspoken, and kindled a -hope that can never be extinguished; he first inflamed men with a -righteous conviction that the evils of the existing order of things -reduced civilisation to a nullity for the great majority of mankind, and -that it cannot for ever be tolerable that the mass should wear away -<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">353</a></span>their lives in unbroken toil without hope or aim, in order that the few -may live selfish and vacuous days. Rousseau presented this sentiment in -a shape which made it the ‘negation of society;’ but it was much to -induce thinkers to ask themselves, and the bondsmen of society to ask -their masters, whether the last word of social philosophy had been -uttered, and the last experiment in the relations of men to one another -decisively tried and irrevocably accepted. Second, by his fervid -eloquence and the burning conviction which he kindled in the breasts of -great numbers of men, he inspired energy enough in France to awaken her -from the torpor as of death which was stealing so rapidly over her. -Nobody was more keenly aware of the presence of this breath of decay in -the air than Voltaire was. It had seized such hold of the vital parts of -the old order, that, but for the fiery spirit and unquenchable ardour of -the men who read Rousseau as men of old had read the gospel, but for the -spirit and ardour which animated the Convention, and made it alike in -the tasks of peace and the tasks of war one of the most effective and -formidable assemblies that the world has ever beheld, we do not see what -there was to stop France from sinking lower and lower into impotence, -until at last the powers who vainly threatened the republic with -partition, might in the course of time actually have consummated the -threat against the monarchy. This may seem impossible to us who live -after the Revolution and after Napoleon; but we must remember the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">354</a></span> -designs of partitioning Prussia in the middle of the century, the -accomplishment of a partition of the Italian possessions of the house of -Austria in 1735, and the partition of Poland; and why was France to be -eternal, any more than the Byzantine empire, or the power of the house -of Austria, or the power of Spain, had been eternal? It was the fire -kindled by Rousseau’s passion that saved her; for even of the -Constituent, which was Voltairean, the very soul was Mirabeau, who was -Rousseauite.</p> - -<p>It will be seen that in one sense Rousseau was a far more original -personage than his first chief and inspirer. He contributed new ideas, -of extremely equivocal and perilous character, but still new, to the -multitudinous discussions which were throwing all the social elements -into confusion. These ideas might indeed have been found substantially -in the writings of previous thinkers like Montaigne and Locke; but -Rousseau’s passion invested them with a quality which was virtually to -constitute them a fresh and original force. Voltaire contributed -initiative and a temperament, which made his propagation of ideas that -were not new, as important a fact in social if not in intellectual -history, as if he had been possessed of superlative gifts in -speculation. This has also to be remembered when we think of comparing -him with Diderot, who, while his equal in industry, was greatly his -superior both in fresh simplicity of imagination, and in grasp and -breadth of positive knowledge. Whoever will take the trouble to turn<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">355</a></span> -over some of the thirty-five volumes of the Encyclopædia, may easily see -how that gigantic undertaking (1751-1765), in which Voltaire always took -the most ardent and practical interest,<a name="FNanchor_297" id="FNanchor_297"></a><a href="#Footnote_297" class="fnanchor">297</a> assisted the movement that -Voltaire had commenced. It seemed to gather up into a single great -reservoir all that men knew, and this fact of mere mechanical -collocation was a sort of substitute for a philosophic synthesis. As -Comte says, it furnished a provisional rallying-point for efforts the -most divergent, without requiring the sacrifice of any points of -essential independence, in such a way as to secure for a body of -incoherent speculation an external look of system.<a name="FNanchor_298" id="FNanchor_298"></a><a href="#Footnote_298" class="fnanchor">298</a> This enterprise, -the history of which is a microcosm of the whole battle between the two -sides in France, enabled the various opponents of theological -absolutism, the Voltaireans, Rousseauites, atheists, and all other sorts -and conditions of protesting men, to confront the church and its -doctrine with a similar semblance of organic unity and completeness. The -Encyclopædia was not simply negative and critical. It was an unexampled -manual of information, and was the means of spreading over the country -some knowledge of that active scientific culture, which was producing -such abundant and astonishing discoveries. The two streams of dissolvent -influences, negative criticism on <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">356</a></span>the one hand, and positive knowledge -and scientific method on the other, were led into a single channel of -multiplied volume and force. There was no real nor logical connection -between the two elements, and while one of them has daily grown less -serviceable, the other has daily grown more absorbingly powerful, so as -now to be itself the effective indirect substitute for that direct -negative criticism, with which the Encyclopædic design had once thrown -it into alliance.</p> - -<p>Diderot, the third chief of the attack, does even fuller justice than -Rousseau to Voltaire’s share in stimulating thought and opening the mind -of France; and in spite of the extravagance of its first clause, there -is a glimpse of true discrimination in the characteristic -sentence—‘Were I to call him the greatest man nature has produced, I -might find people to agree with me; but if I say that she has never yet -produced, and is never likely to produce again, a man so extraordinary, -only his enemies will contradict me.’<a name="FNanchor_299" id="FNanchor_299"></a><a href="#Footnote_299" class="fnanchor">299</a> This panegyric was specially -disinterested, because Voltaire’s last years had been not least -remarkable for his bitter antipathy to the dogmatic atheism and dogmatic -materialism of that school, with which Diderot was most intimate -personally, and with whose doctrines, if he did not at all times seem -entirely to share them, he had at any rate a warmer sympathy than with -any other system of that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">357</a></span>negative epoch, when every chief thinker was -so vague positively, so weak constructively, and only the subalterns, -like D’Holbach and Helvétius, presumed to push on to conclusions.</p> - -<p>The story of Voltaire’s many long-sustained and unflagging endeavours to -procure whatever redress might be possible for the victims of legal -injustice, has been very often told, and mere commemoration of these -justly renowned achievements may suffice here. ‘The worst of the worthy -sort of people,’ he once said, ‘is that they are such cowards. A man -groans over wrong, he shuts his lips, he takes his supper, he -forgets.’<a name="FNanchor_300" id="FNanchor_300"></a><a href="#Footnote_300" class="fnanchor">300</a> Voltaire was not of that temper. He was not only an -extremely humane man; extraordinary vividness of imagination, lack of -which is at the root of so much cruelty, and unparalleled sympathetic -quality, thinness of which explains so much appalling indifference, -animated him to a perseverance in protecting the helpless, which -entitles him to a place by the side of Howard and the noblest -philanthropists. There were three years in which the chief business of -his life was to procure the rehabilitation of the name of the -unfortunate Calas, and the payment of a money recompense to his family. -He agitated the whole world with indignation and pity by means of -narratives, pleas, short statements and long statements, passionate -appeals and argumentative appeals. Powerful ministers, fine ladies, -lawyers, men of letters, were all constrained<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">358</a></span> -by his importunate solicitations to lend an ear to the cause of reason -and tolerance, and to lift up an arm in its vindication. The same -tremendous enginery was again brought into play in the case of Sirven. -In the case of La Barre and his comrade D’Etallonde, his tenacity was -still more amazing and heroic. For twelve years he persevered in the -attempt to have the memory of La Barre rehabilitated. One of the -judicial authorities concerned in that atrocious exploit, struck with -horror at the thought of being held up to the execration of Europe by -that terrible avenger, conveyed some menace to Voltaire of what might -befall him. Voltaire replied to him by a Chinese anecdote. ‘I forbid -you,’ said a tyrannical emperor to the chief of the tribunal of history, -‘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.’<a name="FNanchor_301" id="FNanchor_301"></a><a href="#Footnote_301" class="fnanchor">301</a> There was a something inexorable as -doom about Voltaire’s unrelenting perseverance in getting wrong -definitely stamped and transfixed. If he did not succeed in obtaining -justice for the memory of La Barre, and in procuring for D’Etallonde -free pardon, at least he never abandoned the endeavour, and he was just -as ardent and unwearied in the twelfth year, as he had been while his -indignation was freshly kindled. He was more successful in the case of -Lally. Count Lally had failed to save India from the English, had been -taken prisoner, and had then in a magnanimous way <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">359</a></span>asked his captors to -allow him to go to Paris to clear himself from various charges, which -the too numerous enemies he had made were spreading against his -character and administration. The French people, infuriated at the loss -of their possessions in India and Canada, were crying for a victim, and -Lally, after a process tainted with every kind of illegality, was -condemned to death by the parliament of Paris (1766) on the vague charge -of abuse of authority, exactions, and vexations.<a name="FNanchor_302" id="FNanchor_302"></a><a href="#Footnote_302" class="fnanchor">302</a> The murdered man’s -son, known in the days of the Revolution as Lally Tollendal, was joined -by Voltaire in the honourable 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>The death of Lally is the parallel in French history to the execution of -Byng in the history of England, and, oddly enough, Voltaire was very -actively occupied in trying to avert that crime of our government, as -well as the crimes of his own. He had known Byng when he was in -England.<a name="FNanchor_303" id="FNanchor_303"></a><a href="#Footnote_303" class="fnanchor">303</a> Some one told him that a letter from Richelieu, who had -been Byng’s opponent at Minorca, would be useful, and Voltaire instantly -urged the Duke to allow him to forward a letter he had, stating -Richelieu’s conviction of his defeated enemy’s bravery and good -judgment. Voltaire insists that this letter turned four votes on the -<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">360</a></span>court-martial.<a name="FNanchor_304" id="FNanchor_304"></a><a href="#Footnote_304" class="fnanchor">304</a> He informs a correspondent, moreover, of the fact -that Byng had instructed his executor to express his deep obligation -both to Voltaire and Richelieu.<a name="FNanchor_305" id="FNanchor_305"></a><a href="#Footnote_305" class="fnanchor">305</a> Humanity is erroneously counted -among commonplace virtues. If it deserved such a place, there would be -less urgent need than, alas, there is, for its daily exercise among us. -In its pale shape of kindly sentiment and bland pity it is common -enough, and is always the portion of the cultivated. But humanity armed, -aggressive, and alert, never slumbering and never wearying, moving like -ancient hero over the land to slay monsters, is the rarest of virtues, -and Voltaire is one of its master-types.</p> - -<p>His interest in public transactions in his latest years was keener than -ever. That fruit of Polish anarchy, the war between Russia and Turkey -which broke out in 1768, excited his imagination to a pitch of great -heat, and the despatch in the spring of 1770 of a squadron from -Cronstadt, for the so-called liberation of Greece, made him weep for -joy. He implored Frederick not to leave to Catherine alone the burden of -so glorious a task. Superstition had had seven crusades; was it not a -noble thing to undertake one crusade to drive the barbarous Turks from -the land of Socrates and Plato, Sophocles and Euripides? Frederick -replied very sensibly that Dantzic was more to him than the Piræus, and -that he is a little indifferent about the modern Greeks, who, if ever -the arts <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">361</a></span>should revive among them, would be jealous to find that a Gaul -by his Henriade had surpassed their Homer; that this same Gaul had -beaten Sophocles, equalled Thucydides, and left far behind him Plato, -Aristotle, and the whole school of the Porch;<a name="FNanchor_306" id="FNanchor_306"></a><a href="#Footnote_306" class="fnanchor">306</a>—which was, perhaps, -not quite so sensibly said.</p> - -<p>The successes of Russia against Turkey in 1770 roused the anxiety of -Austria and Prussia, and the solution of what we know as the Eastern -question was indefinitely postponed by the device of partitioning Poland -(Aug. 5, 1772), the alternative to the acquisition of the whole of that -country by Russia, the least civilised of the three powers. Of this -memorable transaction Voltaire heartily approved, and he gave thanks -that he had lived to see ‘such glorious events.’<a name="FNanchor_307" id="FNanchor_307"></a><a href="#Footnote_307" class="fnanchor">307</a> He insisted, -decidedly against the king’s will, that Frederick had devised the -scheme, for he found it full of genius, and to all seeming he discerned -none of the execration which the event he had just witnessed was -destined to raise in his own country in years to come. His friendship -with two of the chief actors may have biassed his judgment; but Voltaire -seldom allowed, indeed by the conditions of his temperament he was -unable to allow, personal considerations of this kind to obscure his -penetrating sight. He may well have thought the partition of Poland -desirable, for the reasons which a statesman of to-day may find -adequate: the country’s hopeless political anarchy, its crushing -material misery, the oppressive power of the church, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">362</a></span>the inevitable and -standing peril to Europe of the existence of such a centre of -conflagration. It is worth remarking that Rousseau was much more keenly -alive to the gravity of the event, that he protested against what had -been done, and that his influence has been one of the main causes of the -illogical sympathy of democratic Europe for one of the most pestilent of -aristocratic governments.</p> - -<p>The accession of Turgot to power in 1774 stirred an ardent sympathy in -Voltaire. Like the rest of the school, he looked upon this as the advent -of the political messiah,<a name="FNanchor_308" id="FNanchor_308"></a><a href="#Footnote_308" class="fnanchor">308</a> and he shared the extreme hopes of that -great and virtuous man’s most sanguine lieutenants. He declared that a -new heaven and a new earth had opened to him.<a name="FNanchor_309" id="FNanchor_309"></a><a href="#Footnote_309" class="fnanchor">309</a> His sallies against -the economists were forgotten, and he now entered into the famous -controversy of the free trade in grain with all his usual fire. His -fervour went too far for the sage minister, who prayed him to be -somewhat less eager in alarming uninformed prejudice. Still he insisted -on hoping all things.</p> - -<div class="poem2"> -<div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Contemple la brillante aurore</span> -<span class="i0">Qui t’annonce enfin les beaux jours.</span> -<span class="i0">Un nouveau monde est près d’éclore;</span> -<span class="i0">Até disparaît pour toujours.</span> -<span class="i0">Vois l’auguste philosophie,</span> -<span class="i0">Chez toi si long temps poursuivie,</span> -<span class="i0">Dicter ses triomphantes lois.</span> -<span class="i0 padt05"><span class="gesperrt">*****</span></span> -<span class="i0"><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">363</a></span>Je lui dis: ‘Ange tutélaire,</span> -<span class="i0">Quels dieux répandent ces bienfaits?’</span> -<span class="i0">‘C’est un seul homme.’<a name="FNanchor_310" id="FNanchor_310"></a><a href="#Footnote_310" class="fnanchor">310</a></span> -</div></div> - -<p>When it proved that one man alone, ‘qui ne chercha le vrai, que pour -faire le bien,’<a name="FNanchor_311" id="FNanchor_311"></a><a href="#Footnote_311" class="fnanchor">311</a> was no match for the mountain torrent of ignorance, -prejudice, selfishness, and usage, and Turgot fell from power (May -1776), Voltaire sunk into a despair for his country, from which he never -arose. ‘I am as one dashed to the ground. Never can we console ourselves -for having seen the golden age dawn and perish. My eyes see only death -in front of me, now that M. Turgot is gone. It has fallen like a -thunderbolt on my brain and my heart alike. The rest of my days can -never be other than pure bitterness.’<a name="FNanchor_312" id="FNanchor_312"></a><a href="#Footnote_312" class="fnanchor">312</a></p> - -<p>The visit to Paris was perhaps a falsification of this prophecy for a -moment. In 1778, yielding either to the solicitations of his niece, or -to a momentary desire to enjoy the triumph of his renown at its centre, -he returned to the great city which he had not seen for nearly thirty -years. His reception has been described over and over again. It is one -of the historic events of the century. No great captain returning from a -prolonged campaign of difficulty and hazard crowned by the most glorious -victory, ever received a more splendid and far-resounding greeting. It -was the last great commotion in Paris under the old régime. The <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">364</a></span>next -great commotion which the historian has to chronicle is the -ever-memorable fourteenth day of July, eleven years later, when the -Bastille fell, and a new order began for France, and new questions began -for all Europe.</p> - -<p>The agitation of so much loud triumph and incessant acclamation proved -more violent than Voltaire’s feeble health could resist, and he died, -probably from an over-dose of laudanum, on the thirtieth of May 1778. -His last writing was a line of rejoicing to the young Lally, that their -efforts had been successful in procuring justice for the memory of one -who had been put to death unjustly. How far Voltaire realised the -nearness of vast changes we cannot tell. There is at least one -remarkable prophecy of his, in the well-known letter to -Chauvelin:—‘Everything that I see appears the throwing broadcast of the -seed of a revolution, which must inevitably come one day, but which I -shall not have the pleasure of witnessing. The French always come late -to things, but they do come at last. Light extends so from neighbour to -neighbour, that there will be a splendid outburst on the first occasion, -and then there will be a rare commotion. The young are very happy; they -will see fine things.’<a name="FNanchor_313" id="FNanchor_313"></a><a href="#Footnote_313" class="fnanchor">313</a> A less sanguine tone marks the close of the -apologue in which Reason and Truth, her daughter, take a triumphant -journey in France and elsewhere, about the time of the accession of -Turgot. ‘Ah, well,’ says Reason, ‘let us enjoy these glorious <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">365</a></span>days; let -us rest here, if they last; and if storms come on, let us go back to our -well.’<a name="FNanchor_314" id="FNanchor_314"></a><a href="#Footnote_314" class="fnanchor">314</a> Whether this meant much or little none can know. It would be -shallow to believe that such men as Voltaire, with faculty quickened and -outlook widened in the high air to which their fame raises them, really -discerned no more than we, who have only their uttered words for -authority, can perceive that they discerned. Great position often -invests men with a second sight whose visions they lock up in silence, -content with the work of the day.</p> - -<h2>FOOTNOTES:</h2> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1" id="Footnote_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1"><span class="label">1</span></a> <i>Œuvres,</i> xxxv. p. 214.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2" id="Footnote_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2"><span class="label">2</span></a> See Comte’s <i>Philosophic Positive</i>, v. 520.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3" id="Footnote_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3"><span class="label">3</span></a> Vauban and Boisguillebert are both to be found in <i>Les -Economistes Financiers du XVIIIième Siècle</i>, published by Guillaumin, -1851.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4" id="Footnote_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4"><span class="label">4</span></a> ‘Je ne sais si, à tout prendre, et malgré les vices -éclatants de quelques uns de ses membres, il y eut jamais dans le monde -un clergé plus remarquable que le clergé catholique de France au moment -où la Révolution l’a surpris, plus éclairé, plus national, moins -retranché dans les seules vertus privées, mieux pourvu de vertus -publiques et en meme temps de plus de foi: la persécution l’a bien -montré’—De Tocqueville, <i>Ancien Régime</i>, liv. ii. c. 11.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5" id="Footnote_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5"><span class="label">5</span></a> Rem. sur les Pensées de M. Pascal. <i>Œuvres</i>, xliii. p. -68.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6" id="Footnote_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6"><span class="label">6</span></a> <i>Novum Organum</i>, § 67.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7" id="Footnote_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7"><span class="label">7</span></a> Some fault has been found with this passage by one or two -private critics, as being not entirely just to the eminent thinker to -whom it refers, and to whom my own obligations, direct and indirect, are -so numerous, notwithstanding my final inability to follow him in his -ideas of social reconstruction, that the idea of adding to the sum of -misrepresentation of which Comte and his doctrines have been the -victims, is particularly disagreeable to me. Here, therefore, is one -passage in which Comte seems to speak rather more warmly of Voltaire -than the words in the text imply: ‘Toutefois, l’indispensable nécessité -mentale et sociale d’une telle élaboration provisoire laissera toujours, -dans l’ensemble de l’histoire humaine, une place importante à ses -principaux coopérateurs, et surtout à leur type le plus éminent, auquel -la postérité la plus lointaine assurera une position vraiment unique; -parceque jamais un pareil office n’avait pu jusqu’alors échoir, et -pourra désormais encore moins appartenir à un esprit de cette nature, -chez lequel la plus admirable combinaison qui ait existé jusqu’ici entre -les diverses qualités secondaires de l’intelligence présentait si -souvent la séduisante apparence de la force et du génie’ (<i>Phil. Pos.</i> -v. 518). Against this we have to place the highly significant fact that -Voltaire only appears in the calendar as a dramatic poet, as well as the -whole tenour and spirit of Comte’s teaching, namely, as he puts it in -one place, that ‘<i>une pure critique ne peut jamais mériter beaucoup -d’estime’ </i>(<i>Politique Positive</i>, iii. 547).</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8" id="Footnote_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8"><span class="label">8</span></a> J. B. Rousseau’s <i>Moïsade.</i></p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9" id="Footnote_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9"><span class="label">9</span></a> <i>Œuvres,</i> lxii. p. 45.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10" id="Footnote_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10"><span class="label">10</span></a> Dictionnaire Philosophique,<i>s.v. Œuvres</i>, lii. p. 378.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11" id="Footnote_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11"><span class="label">11</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, i. 513.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12" id="Footnote_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12"><span class="label">12</span></a> <i>Œuvres,</i> lxii. pp. 86 and 89.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13" id="Footnote_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13"><span class="label">13</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> lxii. p. 107.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14" id="Footnote_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14"><span class="label">14</span></a> A.R.O.V.E.T., <i>L(e). I(eune).</i></p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15" id="Footnote_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15"><span class="label">15</span></a> Chevalier appears to have been a title given by courtesy -to the cadets of certain great families.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16" id="Footnote_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16"><span class="label">16</span></a> <i>Œuvres,</i> iv. 18.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17" id="Footnote_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17"><span class="label">17</span></a> <i>Histoire de l’ancien Gouvernement de la France</i>(1727).</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18" id="Footnote_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18"><span class="label">18</span></a> Buckle’s <i>Hist. of Civilisation</i>, i. 657-664.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19" id="Footnote_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19"><span class="label">19</span></a> Sainte-Beuve, <i>Causeries</i>, v. 111.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20" id="Footnote_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20"><span class="label">20</span></a> <i>Œdipe</i>, iv. sc. 1.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21" id="Footnote_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21"><span class="label">21</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> ii. v.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22" id="Footnote_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22"><span class="label">22</span></a> Le Pour et le Contre, ou Epître à Uranie. <i>Œuvres</i>, xv. -pp. 399, 403.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23" id="Footnote_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23"><span class="label">23</span></a> Condorcet, <i>Vie de Voltaire. Œuvres</i>, iv. 20.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24" id="Footnote_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24"><span class="label">24</span></a> Condorcet, <i>Vie de Voltaire. Œuvres,</i> iv. 20.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25" id="Footnote_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25"><span class="label">25</span></a> Correspondence, 1725. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxii. pp. 140-49.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26" id="Footnote_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26"><span class="label">26</span></a> Lettres sur les Anglais, xv. <i>Œuvres</i>, xxxv. p. 114. Cf. -also Letter xxiv. (pp. 197-202).</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27" id="Footnote_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27"><span class="label">27</span></a> Lord Stanhope’s <i>Hist. of England</i>, ii. 231 (ed. 1858).</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28" id="Footnote_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28"><span class="label">28</span></a> Lettres sur les Anglais, ix. <i>Œuvres</i>, xxxv. p. 73.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29" id="Footnote_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29"><span class="label">29</span></a> Correspondence, 1732. <i>Œuvres,</i> lxii. p. 253.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_30" id="Footnote_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30"><span class="label">30</span></a> Martin’s <i>Hist. de France</i>, vol. xiv. 265-67.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_31" id="Footnote_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31"><span class="label">31</span></a> Philosophie de Newton, Pt. i. c. i. <i>Œuvres</i>, xli. p. 46.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_32" id="Footnote_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32"><span class="label">32</span></a> Lettres sur les Anglais, xv. <i>Œuvres</i>, xxxv. pp. 115-20.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_33" id="Footnote_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33"><span class="label">33</span></a> Philos. de Newton, Pt. i. c. ix. <i>(Œuvres</i>, xli. p. 108.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_34" id="Footnote_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34"><span class="label">34</span></a> D’Alembert.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_35" id="Footnote_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35"><span class="label">35</span></a> Dictionnaire Philosophique, s.v. Locke. <i>Œuvres</i>, lvi. p. -447.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_36" id="Footnote_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36"><span class="label">36</span></a> Corr. 1736. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxiii. p. 29.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_37" id="Footnote_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37"><span class="label">37</span></a> <i>Soirées de St. Petersbourg, 6ième Fentretien</i>, i. 403.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_38" id="Footnote_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38"><span class="label">38</span></a> Corr. 1737; lxiii. p. 154.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_39" id="Footnote_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39"><span class="label">39</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> p. 248. Cf. also lxii. p. 276.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_40" id="Footnote_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40"><span class="label">40</span></a> Lettres sur les Anglais, xiv. <i>Œuvres</i>, xxxv. pp. 102-5.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_41" id="Footnote_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41"><span class="label">41</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, vol. xliii. p. 77.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_42" id="Footnote_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42"><span class="label">42</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> p. 20.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_43" id="Footnote_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43"><span class="label">43</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, vol. xliii. p. 26.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_44" id="Footnote_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44"><span class="label">44</span></a> Corr. 1737. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxiii. p. 248.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_45" id="Footnote_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45"><span class="label">45</span></a> Lettres sur les Anglais, xiii. <i>Œuvres</i>, xxxv. p. 95.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_46" id="Footnote_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46"><span class="label">46</span></a> Lettres, etc. x. <i>Œuvres</i>, xxxv. p. 81.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_47" id="Footnote_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47"><span class="label">47</span></a> De Tocqueville’s <i>Ancien Régime</i>, liv. ii. c. 9, p. 137 -(ed. 1866).</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_48" id="Footnote_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48"><span class="label">48</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, xxxv. p. 80.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_49" id="Footnote_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49"><span class="label">49</span></a> The reader of <i>Zadig</i> will remember the ‘<i>homme comme -moi</i>,’ and his ill luck at Babylon. <i>Œuvres</i>, lix. pp. 153-59.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_50" id="Footnote_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50"><span class="label">50</span></a> Lettres sur les Anglais, xi. <i>Œuvres</i>, xxxv. p. 85.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_51" id="Footnote_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51"><span class="label">51</span></a> Lett. Ang. xxi.; xxxv. pp. 172, etc.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_52" id="Footnote_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52"><span class="label">52</span></a> Lettres sur les Anglais, i.; xxxv. p. 31.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_53" id="Footnote_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_53"><span class="label">53</span></a> Lett. Ang. vi.; xxxv. p. 62.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_54" id="Footnote_54"></a><a href="#FNanchor_54"><span class="label">54</span></a> Lett. Ang. vii. pp. 62-65.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_55" id="Footnote_55"></a><a href="#FNanchor_55"><span class="label">55</span></a> Lett. Ang. ii.; xxxv. p. 42.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_56" id="Footnote_56"></a><a href="#FNanchor_56"><span class="label">56</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, xxxv. p. 185.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_57" id="Footnote_57"></a><a href="#FNanchor_57"><span class="label">57</span></a> Ess. sur la Poésie Epique. <i>Œuvres</i>, xiii. p. 445, and -pp. 513-26.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_58" id="Footnote_58"></a><a href="#FNanchor_58"><span class="label">58</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, xxxv. p. 155.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_59" id="Footnote_59"></a><a href="#FNanchor_59"><span class="label">59</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, xxxv. p. 159.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_60" id="Footnote_60"></a><a href="#FNanchor_60"><span class="label">60</span></a> Corr. 1736. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxiii. p. 4. <i>Ib.</i> 60.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_61" id="Footnote_61"></a><a href="#FNanchor_61"><span class="label">61</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, xxxv. pp. 189, 190.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_62" id="Footnote_62"></a><a href="#FNanchor_62"><span class="label">62</span></a> For Berkeley, see Corr. 1736 (<i>Œuv</i>. lxiii. pp. 130, 164, -etc.), and for the other two, see Le Philosophe Ignorant <i>Œuvres</i>, -xliv. p. 69 and p. 47).</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_63" id="Footnote_63"></a><a href="#FNanchor_63"><span class="label">63</span></a> <i>Œuv.</i> xliv. p. 47.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_64" id="Footnote_64"></a><a href="#FNanchor_64"><span class="label">64</span></a> The <i>De Veritate</i> was published in 1624.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_65" id="Footnote_65"></a><a href="#FNanchor_65"><span class="label">65</span></a> See the list from 1725 to 1728 in Leland’s <i>View of the -Deistical Writers</i>, i. 132-144.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_66" id="Footnote_66"></a><a href="#FNanchor_66"><span class="label">66</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, lvii. pp. 107-114.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_67" id="Footnote_67"></a><a href="#FNanchor_67"><span class="label">67</span></a> Corr. 1736-37. <i>Œuv.</i> lxiii. p. 60, p. 86, and p. 112.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_68" id="Footnote_68"></a><a href="#FNanchor_68"><span class="label">68</span></a> Examen Important de Milord Bolingbrocke. <i>Œuv.</i> xliv. p. -89.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_69" id="Footnote_69"></a><a href="#FNanchor_69"><span class="label">69</span></a> See Lechler’s <i>Geschichte des Englischen Deismus</i>, p. -396.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_70" id="Footnote_70"></a><a href="#FNanchor_70"><span class="label">70</span></a> <i>Reflections. Works</i>, i. 419 (ed. 1842).</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_71" id="Footnote_71"></a><a href="#FNanchor_71"><span class="label">71</span></a> <i>Encyclopédic Nouvelle</i> de Jean Reynaud et Pierre Leroux, -s.v. Voltaire, p. 736. De Maistre audaciously denies that Voltaire ever -did more than dip into Locke. <i>Soirées</i>, vi.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_72" id="Footnote_72"></a><a href="#FNanchor_72"><span class="label">72</span></a> Villemain’s <i>Cours de Lit. Française</i>, i. p. 111. See also -De Maistre, <i>Soirées de St. Petersbourg</i>, vi. p. 424. On the other hand, -see Lanfrey’s <i>L’Eglise et les Philosophes du 18ième Siècle</i>, pp. 99, -108, etc.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_73" id="Footnote_73"></a><a href="#FNanchor_73"><span class="label">73</span></a> Madame de Grafigny. Cf. Desnoiresterres, <i>Voltaire au -Château de Cirey</i>, p. 246, etc.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_74" id="Footnote_74"></a><a href="#FNanchor_74"><span class="label">74</span></a> Desnoiresterres, p. 257.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_75" id="Footnote_75"></a><a href="#FNanchor_75"><span class="label">75</span></a> Condorcet, <i>Vie de Voltaire</i>, p. 61. A graceful and -dignified letter in this kind is that to Formey, May 12, 1752. <i>Œuv.</i> -lxv. p. 64.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_76" id="Footnote_76"></a><a href="#FNanchor_76"><span class="label">76</span></a> Grimm, <i>Correspondance Littéraire</i>, v. p. 5.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_77" id="Footnote_77"></a><a href="#FNanchor_77"><span class="label">77</span></a> <i>Œuv.</i> lxv. p. 395.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_78" id="Footnote_78"></a><a href="#FNanchor_78"><span class="label">78</span></a> Correspondence. Also, Essai sur la Poésie Epique, c. vi. -<i>Œuvres</i>, xiii. p. 481.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_79" id="Footnote_79"></a><a href="#FNanchor_79"><span class="label">79</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, lxv. p. 91.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_80" id="Footnote_80"></a><a href="#FNanchor_80"><span class="label">80</span></a> Corr. with the Abbé Moussinot, 1737, and afterwards. -<i>Œuvres</i>, lxiii. pp. 122, 160, 176, etc.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_81" id="Footnote_81"></a><a href="#FNanchor_81"><span class="label">81</span></a> Corr. 1752. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxv. p. 115.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_82" id="Footnote_82"></a><a href="#FNanchor_82"><span class="label">82</span></a> <i>Vie de Voltaire</i>, p. 37.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_83" id="Footnote_83"></a><a href="#FNanchor_83"><span class="label">83</span></a> Desnoiresterres, p. 323.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_84" id="Footnote_84"></a><a href="#FNanchor_84"><span class="label">84</span></a> Foisset’s <i>Correspond. de Voltaire avec De Brosses, etc.</i>, -published in 1836.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_85" id="Footnote_85"></a><a href="#FNanchor_85"><span class="label">85</span></a> Quoted in Desnoiresterres, p. 239.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_86" id="Footnote_86"></a><a href="#FNanchor_86"><span class="label">86</span></a> Desnoiresterres, p. 242.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_87" id="Footnote_87"></a><a href="#FNanchor_87"><span class="label">87</span></a> Epître à Mdme. la Marquise du Châtelet, sur la Calomnie. -<i>Œuvres</i>, xvii. p. 85.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_88" id="Footnote_88"></a><a href="#FNanchor_88"><span class="label">88</span></a> See Whewell’s <i>Hist. Induc. Sci</i>. bk. vi. c. v.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_89" id="Footnote_89"></a><a href="#FNanchor_89"><span class="label">89</span></a> Desnoiresterres, pp. 313-21.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_90" id="Footnote_90"></a><a href="#FNanchor_90"><span class="label">90</span></a> Exposition du Livre des Institutions Physiques. <i>Œuvres </i>, -xlii. pp. 196-206.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_91" id="Footnote_91"></a><a href="#FNanchor_91"><span class="label">91</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, xlii. p. 207, etc.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_92" id="Footnote_92"></a><a href="#FNanchor_92"><span class="label">92</span></a> Corr. 1737. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxiii. p. 182.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_93" id="Footnote_93"></a><a href="#FNanchor_93"><span class="label">93</span></a> Condorcet, <i>Vie de Voltaire</i>, p. 43.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_94" id="Footnote_94"></a><a href="#FNanchor_94"><span class="label">94</span></a> Corr. 1737. <i>Œuvres</i>, lvi. p. 428.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_95" id="Footnote_95"></a><a href="#FNanchor_95"><span class="label">95</span></a> Dict. Phil. s.v. <i>Œuvres</i>, lvi. p. 428.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_96" id="Footnote_96"></a><a href="#FNanchor_96"><span class="label">96</span></a> Dict. Phil. s.v. <i>Œuvres,</i> lvi. p. 430.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_97" id="Footnote_97"></a><a href="#FNanchor_97"><span class="label">97</span></a> Corr. 1758. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxxv. p. 50.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_98" id="Footnote_98"></a><a href="#FNanchor_98"><span class="label">98</span></a> Temple du Goût. <i>Œuvres</i>, xv. p. 99.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_99" id="Footnote_99"></a><a href="#FNanchor_99"><span class="label">99</span></a> Corr. 1743. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxiv. p. 119.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_100" id="Footnote_100"></a><a href="#FNanchor_100"><span class="label">100</span></a> <i>Œuvres de Vauvenargues</i>, ii. 252.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_101" id="Footnote_101"></a><a href="#FNanchor_101"><span class="label">101</span></a> <i>Temple du Goût. Œuvres</i>, xv. p. 100.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_102" id="Footnote_102"></a><a href="#FNanchor_102"><span class="label">102</span></a> In some readings given before popular audiences in Paris -in 1850, it was found that Voltaire was only partially effective. ‘Trop -d’artifice,’ says Ste. Beuve, ‘trop d’art nuit auprès des esprits neufs; -trop de simplicité nuit aussi; ils ne s’en étonnent pas, et ils ont -jusqu’à un certain point besoin d’être étonnés.’ (<i>Causeries</i>, i. 289.)</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_103" id="Footnote_103"></a><a href="#FNanchor_103"><span class="label">103</span></a> Temple du Goût. <i>Œuvres</i>; xv. p. 95.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_104" id="Footnote_104"></a><a href="#FNanchor_104"><span class="label">104</span></a> Corr. 1732. <i>Œuvres,</i> Ixii. p. 218.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_105" id="Footnote_105"></a><a href="#FNanchor_105"><span class="label">105</span></a> The dates of the most famous of his tragedies are these: -<i>Œdipe</i>, 1718; <i>Brutus</i>, 1730; <i>Zaïre</i>, 1732; <i>Mort de César</i>, 1735; -<i>Alzire</i>, 1736; <i>Mahomet</i>, 1741; <i>Mérope</i>, 1743; <i>Sémiramis</i>, 1748; -<i>Tancrède</i>, 1760.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_106" id="Footnote_106"></a><a href="#FNanchor_106"><span class="label">106</span></a> Hettnerr, for instance: <i>Literaturgeschichte des 18ten -Jahrhunderts,</i> ii. 227.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_107" id="Footnote_107"></a><a href="#FNanchor_107"><span class="label">107</span></a> <i>Zaïire</i>, act i. sc. 1</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_108" id="Footnote_108"></a><a href="#FNanchor_108"><span class="label">108</span></a> <i>Essay on Hum. Und</i>. iv. 19, § 3.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_109" id="Footnote_109"></a><a href="#FNanchor_109"><span class="label">109</span></a> Discours sur la Tragédie, à Milord Bolingbrocke. -<i>Œuvres</i>, ii. p. 337. See also the preface to Œdipe. <i>Ib.</i> p. 73.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_110" id="Footnote_110"></a><a href="#FNanchor_110"><span class="label">110</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, ii. p. 339.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_111" id="Footnote_111"></a><a href="#FNanchor_111"><span class="label">111</span></a> Lett. sur les Anglais, xix. <i>Œuvres</i>, xxxv. p. 151.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_112" id="Footnote_112"></a><a href="#FNanchor_112"><span class="label">112</span></a> Introduction to Semiramis. <i>Œuvres</i>, v. p. 194. See also -Du Théâtre Anglais (1761). <i>Ib.</i> x. p. 88. Lettre à l’Acad. Franç. -(1778), iv. p. 186.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_113" id="Footnote_113"></a><a href="#FNanchor_113"><span class="label">113</span></a> <i>Voltaire: sechs Vorträge</i>. Von D. F. Strauss; p. 74. -The same idea is found in a speech of Wilhelm Meister, bk. iii. ch. 8.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_114" id="Footnote_114"></a><a href="#FNanchor_114"><span class="label">114</span></a> <i>Mém. de Marmontel</i>, liv. vii. ii. 245. For Diderot’s -criticism, see his <i>Mémoires et Œuvr. Inédites</i>, i. 234 (1830). For -D’Alembert’s, cf. Voltaire’s <i>Œuv.</i> lxxv. p. 118.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_115" id="Footnote_115"></a><a href="#FNanchor_115"><span class="label">115</span></a> <i>Decline and Fall</i>, c. 52, note 83.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_116" id="Footnote_116"></a><a href="#FNanchor_116"><span class="label">116</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, vols. x. and xi.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_117" id="Footnote_117"></a><a href="#FNanchor_117"><span class="label">117</span></a> Desnoiresterres, p. 342.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_118" id="Footnote_118"></a><a href="#FNanchor_118"><span class="label">118</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, ix. p. 382.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_119" id="Footnote_119"></a><a href="#FNanchor_119"><span class="label">119</span></a> <i>Soirées</i>, 4ième entretien.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_120" id="Footnote_120"></a><a href="#FNanchor_120"><span class="label">120</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, v. p. 189.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_121" id="Footnote_121"></a><a href="#FNanchor_121"><span class="label">121</span></a> Strauss, p. 79.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_122" id="Footnote_122"></a><a href="#FNanchor_122"><span class="label">122</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, xviii. p. 250.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_123" id="Footnote_123"></a><a href="#FNanchor_123"><span class="label">123</span></a> Commenced soon after 1730; published surreptitiously in -1755; published by Voltaire himself in 1762.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_124" id="Footnote_124"></a><a href="#FNanchor_124"><span class="label">124</span></a> <i>Vie de Voltaire</i>, p. 89.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_125" id="Footnote_125"></a><a href="#FNanchor_125"><span class="label">125</span></a> <i>Vie de Voltaire</i>, p. 88. On the same subject of -chastity, of Condorcet’s Works, vi. p. 264, and pp. 523-26; also a -passage in his correspondence, i. p. 221.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_126" id="Footnote_126"></a><a href="#FNanchor_126"><span class="label">126</span></a> Essai sur la Poésie Epique. <i>Œuvres</i>, xiii. p. 474</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_127" id="Footnote_127"></a><a href="#FNanchor_127"><span class="label">127</span></a> <i> Œuvres</i>, ii. p. 591.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_128" id="Footnote_128"></a><a href="#FNanchor_128"><span class="label">128</span></a> Burton’s <i>Life of David Hume</i>, ii. 440.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_129" id="Footnote_129"></a><a href="#FNanchor_129"><span class="label">129</span></a> Henriade, x. 485-491.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_130" id="Footnote_130"></a><a href="#FNanchor_130"><span class="label">130</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, lxxv. p.266.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_131" id="Footnote_131"></a><a href="#FNanchor_131"><span class="label">131</span></a> <i>Vie de Voltaire</i> p.60.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_132" id="Footnote_132"></a><a href="#FNanchor_132"><span class="label">132</span></a> See the late C. Bartholmess’s <i>Histoire Philosophique de -l’Académie de Prusse</i>, bk. ii.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_133" id="Footnote_133"></a><a href="#FNanchor_133"><span class="label">133</span></a> <i>Histoire Philosophique de l’Academie de Prusse</i>, bk. i. -230.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_134" id="Footnote_134"></a><a href="#FNanchor_134"><span class="label">134</span></a> Corr. 1750. <i>Œuvres,</i> 1xiv. p. 447.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_135" id="Footnote_135"></a><a href="#FNanchor_135"><span class="label">135</span></a> Jablonski.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_136" id="Footnote_136"></a><a href="#FNanchor_136"><span class="label">136</span></a> <i>Œuvres,</i> lxxv. p. 224.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_137" id="Footnote_137"></a><a href="#FNanchor_137"><span class="label">137</span></a> Corr. 1750. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxiv. p. 443.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_138" id="Footnote_138"></a><a href="#FNanchor_138"><span class="label">138</span></a> Carlyle’s <i>History of Frederick</i>, bk. xiii. ch. 5.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_139" id="Footnote_139"></a><a href="#FNanchor_139"><span class="label">139</span></a> <i>Œuvres de Voltaire</i>, lxxiii. p. 456.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_140" id="Footnote_140"></a><a href="#FNanchor_140"><span class="label">140</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> p. 813.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_141" id="Footnote_141"></a><a href="#FNanchor_141"><span class="label">141</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> p. 807.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_142" id="Footnote_142"></a><a href="#FNanchor_142"><span class="label">142</span></a> For Voltaire’s admirably expressed remonstrance, see -Corr. Oct. 1757. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxiii. p. 768.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_143" id="Footnote_143"></a><a href="#FNanchor_143"><span class="label">143</span></a> Martin’s <i>Hist, de France</i>, xv. p. 468.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_144" id="Footnote_144"></a><a href="#FNanchor_144"><span class="label">144</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, lxxv. p. 207 and p. 210.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_145" id="Footnote_145"></a><a href="#FNanchor_145"><span class="label">145</span></a> Goethe.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_146" id="Footnote_146"></a><a href="#FNanchor_146"><span class="label">146</span></a> Bartholmess, ii. 111.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_147" id="Footnote_147"></a><a href="#FNanchor_147"><span class="label">147</span></a> See Bartholmess, i. 168.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_148" id="Footnote_148"></a><a href="#FNanchor_148"><span class="label">148</span></a> <i>Œuvres de Voltaire</i>, lxxiii. p. 836.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_149" id="Footnote_149"></a><a href="#FNanchor_149"><span class="label">149</span></a> Corr. 1751. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxiv. p. 524.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_150" id="Footnote_150"></a><a href="#FNanchor_150"><span class="label">150</span></a> Corr. 1751. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxiv. p. 453.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_151" id="Footnote_151"></a><a href="#FNanchor_151"><span class="label">151</span></a> See Whewell’s <i>Hist. Ind, Sci</i>. bk. VII. ch. 4, § 7.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_152" id="Footnote_152"></a><a href="#FNanchor_152"><span class="label">152</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, lxiv. p. 53.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_153" id="Footnote_153"></a><a href="#FNanchor_153"><span class="label">153</span></a> See Comte’s <i>Phil. Pos</i>. i. 525-529.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_154" id="Footnote_154"></a><a href="#FNanchor_154"><span class="label">154</span></a> It may be worth mentioning that there actually existed in -the sixteenth century a French physician, who changed his real name of -Sans-Malice into Akakia, and left descendants so called. See M. Jal’s -<i>Dictionnaire Critique de Biographie et d’Histoire, </i> p. 19 (1869).</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_155" id="Footnote_155"></a><a href="#FNanchor_155"><span class="label">155</span></a> Corr. 1752. <i>Œuvres,</i> lxv. p. 138.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_156" id="Footnote_156"></a><a href="#FNanchor_156"><span class="label">156</span></a> Desnoiresterres, 394.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_157" id="Footnote_157"></a><a href="#FNanchor_157"><span class="label">157</span></a> Desnoiresterres, <i>Voltaire et Fréderic</i>, cc. 9 and 10. -Carlyle’s <i>Frederick</i>, bk. xvi. ch. 12.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_158" id="Footnote_158"></a><a href="#FNanchor_158"><span class="label">158</span></a> See Desnoiresterres, <i>Voltaire et Frédéric</i>, pp. 124-153, -including a facsimile of the fraudulently altered agreement. Also -Carlyle’s <i>Frederick</i>, bk. xvi. ch. 7.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_159" id="Footnote_159"></a><a href="#FNanchor_159"><span class="label">159</span></a> Carlyle’s <i>Frederick</i>, bk. xiii. ch. 5.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_160" id="Footnote_160"></a><a href="#FNanchor_160"><span class="label">160</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, lxxiii. p. 830 (1760).</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_161" id="Footnote_161"></a><a href="#FNanchor_161"><span class="label">161</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, lxxiii. pp. 835-837.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_162" id="Footnote_162"></a><a href="#FNanchor_162"><span class="label">162</span></a> Printed in vol. i. of the Baudouin edition, as <i>Mémoires -pour servir à la vie de M. Voltaire</i>, p. 212.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_163" id="Footnote_163"></a><a href="#FNanchor_163"><span class="label">163</span></a> Corr. 1758. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxxv. p. 80.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_164" id="Footnote_164"></a><a href="#FNanchor_164"><span class="label">164</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> p. 31.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_165" id="Footnote_165"></a><a href="#FNanchor_165"><span class="label">165</span></a> Corr. lxv. p. 23. Cf. also p. 83.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_166" id="Footnote_166"></a><a href="#FNanchor_166"><span class="label">166</span></a> Corr. lxv. p. 15.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_167" id="Footnote_167"></a><a href="#FNanchor_167"><span class="label">167</span></a> Corr. 1743. <i>Œuv.</i> lviii. p. 131. A very long and careful -list of the oppressions practised on writers in this reign is given in -Mr. Buckle’s <i>Hist. of Civilisation</i>, i. 675-681.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_168" id="Footnote_168"></a><a href="#FNanchor_168"><span class="label">168</span></a> Foisset’s <i>Corres. de Voltaire avec de Brasses</i>, etc., p. -318. Also Corr. 1757. <i>Œuvres,</i> Ixvi. pp. I-50 passim.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_169" id="Footnote_169"></a><a href="#FNanchor_169"><span class="label">169</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, Ixxv. p. 61.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_170" id="Footnote_170"></a><a href="#FNanchor_170"><span class="label">170</span></a> <i>Mémoires</i>, i. ch. in. p. 55.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_171" id="Footnote_171"></a><a href="#FNanchor_171"><span class="label">171</span></a> See for instance a letter to Mdlle. de Voland: <i>Mémoires, -Correspondance, et Ouv. inédites</i>, i. 99.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_172" id="Footnote_172"></a><a href="#FNanchor_172"><span class="label">172</span></a> 1 L’Auteur arrivant à sa terre. <i>Œuv.</i> xvii. 194.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_173" id="Footnote_173"></a><a href="#FNanchor_173"><span class="label">173</span></a> 2 Corr. 1757. <i>Œuv.</i> lxvi. p. 38.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_174" id="Footnote_174"></a><a href="#FNanchor_174"><span class="label">174</span></a> 3 <i>Ib.</i> p. 32.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_175" id="Footnote_175"></a><a href="#FNanchor_175"><span class="label">175</span></a> Corr. <i>Œuv.</i> lxxv. p. 249.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_176" id="Footnote_176"></a><a href="#FNanchor_176"><span class="label">176</span></a> 1 It was to the last-named book, one may suppose, that -Voltaire referred, when he asked how it was that Locke, after having so -profoundly traced the development of the human understanding, could so -degrade his own understanding in another work. (Diet Phil. s.v. Platon. -<i>(Œuv.</i> lvii. p. 369.)</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_177" id="Footnote_177"></a><a href="#FNanchor_177"><span class="label">177</span></a> 2 See Collins’s Apology for Free Debate and Liberty of -Writing, prefixed to the <i>Grounds and Reasons of Christianity</i>.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_178" id="Footnote_178"></a><a href="#FNanchor_178"><span class="label">178</span></a> Corr. 1768. <i>Œuv.</i> lxx. p. 140.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_179" id="Footnote_179"></a><a href="#FNanchor_179"><span class="label">179</span></a> The reader will find an account of them in M. Lanfrey’s -<i>L’Eglise et les Philosophes du 18ième Siècle</i>, pp. 131-135.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_180" id="Footnote_180"></a><a href="#FNanchor_180"><span class="label">180</span></a> Corr. <i>(Euv.</i> lxvi. p. 100.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_181" id="Footnote_181"></a><a href="#FNanchor_181"><span class="label">181</span></a> For the composition of this body see Voltaire’s Histoire -du Parlement de Paris. <i>Œuv.</i> xxxiv. Or in Martin s <i>Hist, de France,</i> -iv. 295; xii. 280; and xii. 53.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_182" id="Footnote_182"></a><a href="#FNanchor_182"><span class="label">182</span></a> Sikcle de Louis xv. c. 36. <i>Œuvres,</i> xxix. p. 3.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_183" id="Footnote_183"></a><a href="#FNanchor_183"><span class="label">183</span></a> Corr. <i>Œuv.</i> lxxv. p. 145.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_184" id="Footnote_184"></a><a href="#FNanchor_184"><span class="label">184</span></a> Corr. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxvii. p. 166.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_185" id="Footnote_185"></a><a href="#FNanchor_185"><span class="label">185</span></a> Mém. de Morellet, ch. iii. p. 62.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_186" id="Footnote_186"></a><a href="#FNanchor_186"><span class="label">186</span></a> Martin’s <i>Hist. de France</i>, xvi. p. 139.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_187" id="Footnote_187"></a><a href="#FNanchor_187"><span class="label">187</span></a> Relation de la Mort du Chevalier de la Barre, 1766; Le -Cri du Sang Innocent, 1775, <i>Œuv.</i> xxxix. p. 99.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_188" id="Footnote_188"></a><a href="#FNanchor_188"><span class="label">188</span></a> Corr. July 16, 1766. <i>Œuv.</i> Ixxv. p. 357.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_189" id="Footnote_189"></a><a href="#FNanchor_189"><span class="label">189</span></a> Corr. <i>Œuv.</i> Ixxv. p. 359.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_190" id="Footnote_190"></a><a href="#FNanchor_190"><span class="label">190</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> p. 361.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_191" id="Footnote_191"></a><a href="#FNanchor_191"><span class="label">191</span></a> Grimm, <i>Corr. Lit</i>. v. p. 133.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_192" id="Footnote_192"></a><a href="#FNanchor_192"><span class="label">192</span></a> Corr. 1774. <i>Œm.</i> lxxv. p. 627.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_193" id="Footnote_193"></a><a href="#FNanchor_193"><span class="label">193</span></a> <i>11</i>. p. 696.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_194" id="Footnote_194"></a><a href="#FNanchor_194"><span class="label">194</span></a> <i>Hist. de la Civilisation en Europe</i>, 14ième leçon, p. -405. Cf. also De Tocqueville’s <i>Ancien Régime</i>, liv. iii. ch. I.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_195" id="Footnote_195"></a><a href="#FNanchor_195"><span class="label">195</span></a> Corr. 1757-58. <i>Œuv.</i> lxvi. pp. 92, 102, 112, 185, etc.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_196" id="Footnote_196"></a><a href="#FNanchor_196"><span class="label">196</span></a> 1 Corr. <i>Œuv.</i> lxvii. p. 174; also lxxv. p. 170.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_197" id="Footnote_197"></a><a href="#FNanchor_197"><span class="label">197</span></a> 2 See ante, p. 19.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_198" id="Footnote_198"></a><a href="#FNanchor_198"><span class="label">198</span></a> 3 Chant i. v. 306.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_199" id="Footnote_199"></a><a href="#FNanchor_199"><span class="label">199</span></a> La Voix du Sage et du Peuple (1750). <i>Œuv.</i> xxxviii. p. -53.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_200" id="Footnote_200"></a><a href="#FNanchor_200"><span class="label">200</span></a> De Maistre, <i>Soirtées de St. Pétersbourg</i>, 4ième.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_201" id="Footnote_201"></a><a href="#FNanchor_201"><span class="label">201</span></a> <i>Œuvres,</i> xxxv. p. 37.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_202" id="Footnote_202"></a><a href="#FNanchor_202"><span class="label">202</span></a> Corr. 1773. <i>Œuvres,</i> lxxv. p. 614.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_203" id="Footnote_203"></a><a href="#FNanchor_203"><span class="label">203</span></a> Cf. Dict. Phil. s.v. Eglise. <i>Œuv.</i> pp. 221-248.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_204" id="Footnote_204"></a><a href="#FNanchor_204"><span class="label">204</span></a> Dieu et les Hommes, c. xiv. <i>Œuvres,</i> xlv. p. 318.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_205" id="Footnote_205"></a><a href="#FNanchor_205"><span class="label">205</span></a> Dict. Phil. s.v. Resurrection. <i>Œuvres</i>, lviii. p. 67.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_206" id="Footnote_206"></a><a href="#FNanchor_206"><span class="label">206</span></a> See, for instance, Tylor’s <i>Primitive Culture</i>, i. 32, -ii. 131, etc.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_207" id="Footnote_207"></a><a href="#FNanchor_207"><span class="label">207</span></a> Corr. 1770. <i>Œuvres,</i> lxxv. pp. 522, 526, etc. This -active spite prevented the accession of De Brosses to a seat in the -academy.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_208" id="Footnote_208"></a><a href="#FNanchor_208"><span class="label">208</span></a> Diet. Phil. s. v. Dieu. <i>Œuvres</i>, liv. p. 20.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_209" id="Footnote_209"></a><a href="#FNanchor_209"><span class="label">209</span></a> Dieu et les Hommes, c. iii. <i>Œuvres</i>, xlv. p. 270.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_210" id="Footnote_210"></a><a href="#FNanchor_210"><span class="label">210</span></a> Dict. Phil. s. v. Polythéisme. <i>Œuvres,</i> lvii. p. 391.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_211" id="Footnote_211"></a><a href="#FNanchor_211"><span class="label">211</span></a> Corr. 1761. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxvii. p. 186.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_212" id="Footnote_212"></a><a href="#FNanchor_212"><span class="label">212</span></a> Corr. 1758. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxvi. p. 200.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_213" id="Footnote_213"></a><a href="#FNanchor_213"><span class="label">213</span></a> <i>Nat. Hist. of Religion</i>, sect. iii.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_214" id="Footnote_214"></a><a href="#FNanchor_214"><span class="label">214</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> sect. iv.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_215" id="Footnote_215"></a><a href="#FNanchor_215"><span class="label">215</span></a> <i>Soirées de St. Pétersbourg,</i> vi. p. 403.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_216" id="Footnote_216"></a><a href="#FNanchor_216"><span class="label">216</span></a> Ante, ch. iii.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_217" id="Footnote_217"></a><a href="#FNanchor_217"><span class="label">217</span></a> See Milman’s <i>Hist. of Latin Christianity</i>, bk. ii. chap. -ii. and iii.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_218" id="Footnote_218"></a><a href="#FNanchor_218"><span class="label">218</span></a> Corr. 1761. <i> Œuvres,</i> lxvii. p. 74.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_219" id="Footnote_219"></a><a href="#FNanchor_219"><span class="label">219</span></a> Finlay’s <i>Greece under the Romans</i> (B.C. 146-A.D. 716), -pp. 146, 147.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_220" id="Footnote_220"></a><a href="#FNanchor_220"><span class="label">220</span></a> Poëme sur le Desastre de Lisbonne. <i>Œuvres,</i> xv. p. 53.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_221" id="Footnote_221"></a><a href="#FNanchor_221"><span class="label">221</span></a> Phil. de Newton. <i> Œuv</i>. xli. p. 46. See also the whole -chapter.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_222" id="Footnote_222"></a><a href="#FNanchor_222"><span class="label">222</span></a> A Mdme. du Châtelet sur la Philosophic de Newton (1738). -<i>Œuv.</i> xvii. p. 113.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_223" id="Footnote_223"></a><a href="#FNanchor_223"><span class="label">223</span></a> Ode sur le Fanatisme. <i>Œuvres</i>, xvi. p. 331.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_224" id="Footnote_224"></a><a href="#FNanchor_224"><span class="label">224</span></a> <i>Œuvres,</i> xv. pp. 39-62.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_225" id="Footnote_225"></a><a href="#FNanchor_225"><span class="label">225</span></a> Aristotle’s definition of εὐτραπελία, or wit, as -ὕβρις πεπαιδευμένη marks one of Voltaire’s chief talents with -entire accuracy.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_226" id="Footnote_226"></a><a href="#FNanchor_226"><span class="label">226</span></a> <i> Œuvres</i>, xv. p. 58.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_227" id="Footnote_227"></a><a href="#FNanchor_227"><span class="label">227</span></a> Corr. 1765. <i> Œuvres</i>, lxxv. p. 311.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_228" id="Footnote_228"></a><a href="#FNanchor_228"><span class="label">228</span></a> Lettres Ang. xiv. <i>Œuvres</i>, xxxv. p. 108.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_229" id="Footnote_229"></a><a href="#FNanchor_229"><span class="label">229</span></a> Corr. 1736. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxiii. p. 31.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_230" id="Footnote_230"></a><a href="#FNanchor_230"><span class="label">230</span></a> Dict. Phil. s. v. Locke. <i>Œvres</i>, lvi. p. 338.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_231" id="Footnote_231"></a><a href="#FNanchor_231"><span class="label">231</span></a> Holberg, quoted in Sainte-Beuve’s <i>Nouveaux Lundis</i>, ix. -26.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_232" id="Footnote_232"></a><a href="#FNanchor_232"><span class="label">232</span></a> Quinet’s <i>La Révolution</i>, i. 168.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_233" id="Footnote_233"></a><a href="#FNanchor_233"><span class="label">233</span></a> Essai sur les Mœurs, c. ii. <i>Œuvres</i>, xx. p. 344. See -also c. clxxxii. <i>Œuv.</i> xxiv. p. 162.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_234" id="Footnote_234"></a><a href="#FNanchor_234"><span class="label">234</span></a> Essai sur les Mœurs, pp. 1, 2.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_235" id="Footnote_235"></a><a href="#FNanchor_235"><span class="label">235</span></a> Essai sur les Mœurs, p. 9.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_236" id="Footnote_236"></a><a href="#FNanchor_236"><span class="label">236</span></a> <i>On the Study of History</i>, Letter i. ad finem.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_237" id="Footnote_237"></a><a href="#FNanchor_237"><span class="label">237</span></a> <i>Grandeur et Décadence des Romains</i>, c. xi.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_238" id="Footnote_238"></a><a href="#FNanchor_238"><span class="label">238</span></a> The dates of the publication of Voltaire’s historical -works are these:—<i>Charles XII</i>., 1731; <i>Siécle de Louis XIV</i>., 1752 (a -portion of it in 1739); <i>Annales de l’Empire</i>, 1753-54; <i>Essai sur les -Mœurs</i>, 1757 (surreptitiously in 1754); <i>Histoire de Russie</i>, Pt. I. in -1759, Pt. II. in 1763; <i>Precis du Siecle de Louis XV</i>., 1768; <i>Histoire -du Parlement de Paris</i>, 1769.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_239" id="Footnote_239"></a><a href="#FNanchor_239"><span class="label">239</span></a> Le Pyrrhonisme de l’Histoire, cc. xii. xiii. <i>Œuvres</i>, -xxxvi, p. 346; also p. 428.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_240" id="Footnote_240"></a><a href="#FNanchor_240"><span class="label">240</span></a> Corr. <i>Œuvres</i>, Ixvi. p. 17.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_241" id="Footnote_241"></a><a href="#FNanchor_241"><span class="label">241</span></a> Corr. 1757. <i>Œuvres,</i> Ixvi. p. 61.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_242" id="Footnote_242"></a><a href="#FNanchor_242"><span class="label">242</span></a> Corr. 1761. <i>Œuv.</i> lxvii. p. 228.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_243" id="Footnote_243"></a><a href="#FNanchor_243"><span class="label">243</span></a> <i>Œuvres,</i> xx. p. 10</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_244" id="Footnote_244"></a><a href="#FNanchor_244"><span class="label">244</span></a> Siècle de Louis XIV., c. i. <i>Œuvres</i>, xxv. p. 283.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_245" id="Footnote_245"></a><a href="#FNanchor_245"><span class="label">245</span></a> Corr. 1735. <i>Œuvres</i>, Ixii. pp. 455, 456.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_246" id="Footnote_246"></a><a href="#FNanchor_246"><span class="label">246</span></a> <i>Œuvres,</i> xxxvi. pp. 428-434 (1768).</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_247" id="Footnote_247"></a><a href="#FNanchor_247"><span class="label">247</span></a> Diet. Phil. s.v. Guerre. <i>Œuvres</i>, lv. pp. 488, 489.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_248" id="Footnote_248"></a><a href="#FNanchor_248"><span class="label">248</span></a> <i>Esprit des Lois</i>, x. ii.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_249" id="Footnote_249"></a><a href="#FNanchor_249"><span class="label">249</span></a> <i>Œuvres,</i> lv. p. 490.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_250" id="Footnote_250"></a><a href="#FNanchor_250"><span class="label">250</span></a> Corr. <i>Œuvres,</i> lxxv. p. 460.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_251" id="Footnote_251"></a><a href="#FNanchor_251"><span class="label">251</span></a> See a letter of the king of Prussia in Voltaire’s -<i>Works</i>, lxxiv. p. 144, etc.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_252" id="Footnote_252"></a><a href="#FNanchor_252"><span class="label">252</span></a> C. xxiii. <i>Œuvres,</i> xxi. p. 9.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_253" id="Footnote_253"></a><a href="#FNanchor_253"><span class="label">253</span></a> <i>Mœurs</i>, like ἤθη is untranslatable by any -single English word. The full title is <i>Essai sur les Mœurs et l’Esprit -des Nations, et sur les principaux faits de l’Histoire depuís -Charlemagne jusqu’ à Louis XIII</i>.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_254" id="Footnote_254"></a><a href="#FNanchor_254"><span class="label">254</span></a> C. vi. <i>Œuvres</i>, xx. p. 396.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_255" id="Footnote_255"></a><a href="#FNanchor_255"><span class="label">255</span></a> C. xi. <i>Œuvres</i>, xx. p. 455.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_256" id="Footnote_256"></a><a href="#FNanchor_256"><span class="label">256</span></a> See on this interesting subject Finlay’s <i>Greece under -the Romans</i> (B.C. 146-A.D. 716), pp. 156, 157.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_257" id="Footnote_257"></a><a href="#FNanchor_257"><span class="label">257</span></a> <i>Childe Harold</i>, iii. 106 and 107.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_258" id="Footnote_258"></a><a href="#FNanchor_258"><span class="label">258</span></a> C. ix. <i>Œuvres</i>, xx. p. 445.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_259" id="Footnote_259"></a><a href="#FNanchor_259"><span class="label">259</span></a> C. lviii. <i>Œuvres</i>, xxi. pp. 328-341.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_260" id="Footnote_260"></a><a href="#FNanchor_260"><span class="label">260</span></a> Quelques petites Hardiesses, etc. <i>Œuvres</i>, xxxvi. p. -445.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_261" id="Footnote_261"></a><a href="#FNanchor_261"><span class="label">261</span></a> C. xlii. <i>Œuvres</i>, xxi. p. 143.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_262" id="Footnote_262"></a><a href="#FNanchor_262"><span class="label">262</span></a> Notes sur le Désastre de Lisbonne. <i>Œuvres</i>, xv. p. 57.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_263" id="Footnote_263"></a><a href="#FNanchor_263"><span class="label">263</span></a> He ridiculed some of these in one of his most humane and -otherwise excellent pieces, L’Homme aux Quarante Ecus (1767). <i>Œuv.</i> -lix. p. 395.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_264" id="Footnote_264"></a><a href="#FNanchor_264"><span class="label">264</span></a> <i>The Republic</i>, 1577. <i>Esprit des Lois</i>, 1748.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_265" id="Footnote_265"></a><a href="#FNanchor_265"><span class="label">265</span></a> <i>Œuv.</i> lxvii. p. 94.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_266" id="Footnote_266"></a><a href="#FNanchor_266"><span class="label">266</span></a> A drawing of Voltaire’s château at Ferney is given in -Blancheton’s <i>Vues Pittoresques des Châteaux de France</i> (Paris, 1826), -Part II. The château is still standing, and the prospect from the -terrace repays a visit, apart from the interest of association. The -church is now a receptacle for wine-casks.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_267" id="Footnote_267"></a><a href="#FNanchor_267"><span class="label">267</span></a> The reader who is curious as to the most indifferent -details, will find what he seeks in a singular monument of painstaking -spleen, entitled <i>Ménage et Finances de Voltaire</i>, by M. Nicolardot -(Paris, 1854).</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_268" id="Footnote_268"></a><a href="#FNanchor_268"><span class="label">268</span></a> Corr. 1761. <i>Œuv.</i> lxvii. p. 190.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_269" id="Footnote_269"></a><a href="#FNanchor_269"><span class="label">269</span></a> <i>Corr. Lit.</i> vi. p. 272; v. p. 385.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_270" id="Footnote_270"></a><a href="#FNanchor_270"><span class="label">270</span></a> Grimm, <i>Corr. Lit.</i> v. p. 393.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_271" id="Footnote_271"></a><a href="#FNanchor_271"><span class="label">271</span></a> Corr. 1761. <i>Œuv.</i> lxxv. p. 158.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_272" id="Footnote_272"></a><a href="#FNanchor_272"><span class="label">272</span></a> Born 1710; lost her first husband 1744; married one -Vivier in 1779; died 1790.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_273" id="Footnote_273"></a><a href="#FNanchor_273"><span class="label">273</span></a> Corr. 1770. <i>Œuv.</i> lxx. p. 175.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_274" id="Footnote_274"></a><a href="#FNanchor_274"><span class="label">274</span></a> Corr. 1771-72. <i>Œuv.</i> lxxiv. pp. 733 and 737.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_275" id="Footnote_275"></a><a href="#FNanchor_275"><span class="label">275</span></a> Corr. 1772. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxxi. p. 496. The marked copy is -still in existence, along with the rest of Voltaire’s books, at St. -Petersburg; see Lavergne’s <i>Economistes du 18ième Siècle</i>, p. 285.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_276" id="Footnote_276"></a><a href="#FNanchor_276"><span class="label">276</span></a> Corr. 1761. <i>CEuvres</i>, Ixvii. p. 166.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_277" id="Footnote_277"></a><a href="#FNanchor_277"><span class="label">277</span></a> <i>(Euvres,</i> Ixxv. pp. 64, 69, etc.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_278" id="Footnote_278"></a><a href="#FNanchor_278"><span class="label">278</span></a> Corr. 1770. <i>(Euvres,</i> Ixxi, p. 18.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_279" id="Footnote_279"></a><a href="#FNanchor_279"><span class="label">279</span></a> <i>Œuvres de Turgot</i>, ii. pp. 814-825.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_280" id="Footnote_280"></a><a href="#FNanchor_280"><span class="label">280</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> p. 824.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_281" id="Footnote_281"></a><a href="#FNanchor_281"><span class="label">281</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, lxxv. p. 331.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_282" id="Footnote_282"></a><a href="#FNanchor_282"><span class="label">282</span></a> <i>Œuvres,</i> lxxv. p. 33.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_283" id="Footnote_283"></a><a href="#FNanchor_283"><span class="label">283</span></a> <i>Œuvres de Condorcet</i>, iv. pp. 33, 34, and vi. pp. -187-189.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_284" id="Footnote_284"></a><a href="#FNanchor_284"><span class="label">284</span></a> Corr. 1768. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxxv. p. 426.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_285" id="Footnote_285"></a><a href="#FNanchor_285"><span class="label">285</span></a> Corr. 1768. <i>(Euvres,</i> Ixx. pp. 198-199.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_286" id="Footnote_286"></a><a href="#FNanchor_286"><span class="label">286</span></a> Corr. 1769. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxx. pp. 434, 435; lxxv. p. 452. -Grimm’s <i>Corr. Lit.</i> vi. p. 231.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_287" id="Footnote_287"></a><a href="#FNanchor_287"><span class="label">287</span></a> Condorcet, <i>Vie de Voltaire</i>, p. 126.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_288" id="Footnote_288"></a><a href="#FNanchor_288"><span class="label">288</span></a> Corr. <i>Œuvres,</i> Ixxi. pp. 25, 27, 30, etc.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_289" id="Footnote_289"></a><a href="#FNanchor_289"><span class="label">289</span></a> Grimm, <i>Corr. Lit</i>. vi. p. 358.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_290" id="Footnote_290"></a><a href="#FNanchor_290"><span class="label">290</span></a> Grimm, <i>Corr. Lit</i>. vi. p. 358.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_291" id="Footnote_291"></a><a href="#FNanchor_291"><span class="label">291</span></a> <i>Confessions</i>, pt. i. liv. v. Date of 1736.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_292" id="Footnote_292"></a><a href="#FNanchor_292"><span class="label">292</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, lxxv. p. 182.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_293" id="Footnote_293"></a><a href="#FNanchor_293"><span class="label">293</span></a> Corr. 1762. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxxv. p. 188.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_294" id="Footnote_294"></a><a href="#FNanchor_294"><span class="label">294</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, lxvii. p. 432.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_295" id="Footnote_295"></a><a href="#FNanchor_295"><span class="label">295</span></a> Condorcet, p. 170.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_296" id="Footnote_296"></a><a href="#FNanchor_296"><span class="label">296</span></a> Lamartine’s <i>Girondins</i>, iv. v.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_297" id="Footnote_297"></a><a href="#FNanchor_297"><span class="label">297</span></a> See his correspondence with D’Alembert (<i>Œuvres</i>, lxxv.) -until 1760, the date of D’Alembert’s separation from Diderot and the -Encyclopædia.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_298" id="Footnote_298"></a><a href="#FNanchor_298"><span class="label">298</span></a> <i>Phil. Pos.</i> v. 520.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_299" id="Footnote_299"></a><a href="#FNanchor_299"><span class="label">299</span></a> <i>Essais sur les règnes de Claude et Néron</i>, vol. vi. pp. -256, 290, and 191 (Ed. 1819).</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_300" id="Footnote_300"></a><a href="#FNanchor_300"><span class="label">300</span></a> Corr. 1766. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxxv. p. 364.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_301" id="Footnote_301"></a><a href="#FNanchor_301"><span class="label">301</span></a> Condorcet, p. 124.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_302" id="Footnote_302"></a><a href="#FNanchor_302"><span class="label">302</span></a> Martin’s <i>Hist. de France</i>, xv. pp. 569-572.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_303" id="Footnote_303"></a><a href="#FNanchor_303"><span class="label">303</span></a> Corr. 1757. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxvi. p. 51.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_304" id="Footnote_304"></a><a href="#FNanchor_304"><span class="label">304</span></a> Corr. 1756. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxv. p. 568; lxvi. pp. 1, 19, 20, -40.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_305" id="Footnote_305"></a><a href="#FNanchor_305"><span class="label">305</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, lxvi. p. 51.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_306" id="Footnote_306"></a><a href="#FNanchor_306"><span class="label">306</span></a> Corr. 1772. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxxiv. p. 36.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_307" id="Footnote_307"></a><a href="#FNanchor_307"><span class="label">307</span></a> <i>Ib.</i> p. 93, etc.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_308" id="Footnote_308"></a><a href="#FNanchor_308"><span class="label">308</span></a> See Morellet, i. pp. 147, 159, etc.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_309" id="Footnote_309"></a><a href="#FNanchor_309"><span class="label">309</span></a> <i>Œuvres</i>, lxxv. p. 641.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_310" id="Footnote_310"></a><a href="#FNanchor_310"><span class="label">310</span></a> Ode sur le Passé et le Présent (1775). <i>Œuvres</i>, xvi. p. -415.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_311" id="Footnote_311"></a><a href="#FNanchor_311"><span class="label">311</span></a> Eptîre à un Homme (1776). <i>Œuvres</i>, xvii. p. 327.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_312" id="Footnote_312"></a><a href="#FNanchor_312"><span class="label">312</span></a> Corr. 1776. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxxii. pp. 403, 409, 412, etc.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_313" id="Footnote_313"></a><a href="#FNanchor_313"><span class="label">313</span></a> April 2, 1764. <i>Œuvres</i>, lxviii. p. 220.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_314" id="Footnote_314"></a><a href="#FNanchor_314"><span class="label">314</span></a> Eloge historique de la Raison (<i>or</i> Voyage de la Raison). -<i>Œuvres</i>, lx. p. 478.</p></div> - -<p>THE END.</p> - -<p><i>Printed by</i> R. & R. 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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: Voltaire - -Author: John Morley - -Release Date: September 23, 2012 [EBook #40846] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ASCII - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VOLTAIRE *** - - - - -Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Turgut Dincer and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net - - - - - - - - - -VOLTAIRE - -BY JOHN MORLEY - -LONDON MACMILLAN AND CO. 1886 - -_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, _Edinburgh_. - - - - -NOTE. - - -The edition to which the references are made in the following pages is -that published by Baudouin in 1826, in seventy-five volumes. This -edition is to be distinguished from that known as the first Baudouin -edition, published 1824-34, in ninety-seven volumes. The extent of the -difference between them, which is entirely in favour of the more -voluminous form, may be seen in M. Querard's _Bibliographie -Voltairienne_ (p. 107). The large number of complete and elaborate -editions of Voltaire's works, which were undertaken and executed in the -years between the overthrow of the Empire and the overthrow of the -Monarchy in 1830, is one of the most striking facts in the history of -books. - -1872. - - - - -CONTENTS. - - - CHAPTER I. - - PRELIMINARY. - - PAGE - - Importance of Voltaire's name 1 - - Catholicism, Calvinism, and the Renaissance 1 - - Voltairism the Renaissance of the eighteenth century 4 - - His power the result of his sincerity, penetration, and - courage 6 - - Different tempers proper for different eras 11 - - Voltaire's freedom from intellectual cowardice 12 - - And from worldly indifference to truth and justice 13 - - Reason and humanity only a single word to him 15 - - His position towards the purely literary life 17 - - Enervating regrets that the movement had not a less - violent leader 19 - - The share of chance in providing leaders 20 - - Combination of favourable circumstances in Voltaire's - case 22 - - Occasion and necessity of the movement 24 - - Age of Lewis XIV. entirely loyal to its own ideas 25 - - Subsequent discredit of these ideas 26 - - Preparation for abandonment of the old system by - Descartes and Bayle 29 - - Voltaire continues the work, not wholly to the disadvantage - of the old system 31 - - No ascetic element in the Voltairean revolt 33 - - Why primarily an intellectual movement 34 - - The hostile memory of Christians for it 37 - - Comte's estimate of it 37 - - The estimate of culture 40 - - Some pleas on the other side 40 - - - CHAPTER II. - - ENGLISH INFLUENCES. - - Significance of the journey to England 44 - - His birth and youthful history 45 - - Ninon de l'Enclos, Chaulieu, and the Regency 46 - - Manner of life from 1716 49 - - Affront from the Chevalier de Rohan 53 - - Leaves France 54 - - Had previously been no more than a vague _esprit fort_ 56 - - Le Pour et le Contre 57 - - Freethinking a reality in England 58 - - Condorcet's account of the effect of England upon Voltaire 59 - - Social and political consequence of men of letters 59 - - Evil effect of this in France 60 - - Freedom of speech 61 - - Newton's discoveries 65 - - Their true influence on Voltaire 67 - - Locke 67 - - Profound effect of Lockian common-sense on Voltaire 70 - - Contrast between social condition of England and France 73 - - Voltaire's imperfect appreciation of the value and working - of a popular government 76 - - Confounds two distinct conceptions of civil liberty 79 - - A confusion shared by most of his countrymen 79 - - The Church of England 82 - - The Quakers 84 - - Voltaire's diligence in study of English literature 86 - - And in mastering one side of the deistical controversy 88 - - Through the influence of the deists on Voltaire, the genius - of Protestantism entered France 91 - - Limited consistency of Voltaire's philosophy 93 - - English deism contrasted with that of Leibnitz and with - the atheism of D'Holbach 95 - - - CHAPTER III. - - LITERATURE. - - Most just way of criticising character 98 - - Some traits in Voltaire 99 - - Acquaintance with the Marquise du Chatelet 101 - - Her character 103 - - Voltaire's placableness 105 - - His money transactions 107 - - The life at Cirey 111 - - His attempts in physical science 116 - - Literature his true calling 117 - - Qualities of his style 119 - - Significance of literature as a profession 125 - - Voltaire's dramatic art 126 - - Not deliberately art with a purpose 126 - - His plays a prolongation of the tradition of the great age - of Lewis XIV. 129 - - His criticism on Hamlet 132 - - Merits of the French classic drama 134 - - Voltaire compared with Corneille and Racine 136 - - His ideas of dramatic renovation 140 - - His Roman subjects 141 - - His enlargement of dramatic themes 143 - - Failure in comedy 144 - - Arising from want of deep humour 145 - - The Pucelle: offends two modern sentiments 147 - - Its true significance 148 - - Peculiarity of the licence of the eighteenth century 149 - - Sophisms by which it was defended 149 - - Contempt for the middle ages 152 - - The Henriade 153 - - - CHAPTER IV. - - BERLIN. - - Death of Madame du Chatelet 158 - - Voltaire and the court 158 - - He goes to Berlin 161 - - Character of literary activity in Prussia 161 - - The two movements of which Voltaire and the king were - chiefs 162 - - Character of Frederick the Great 166 - - Breaking up of the European state-system in 1740 171 - - The first shock in 1733 172 - - Frederick raises international relations into the region of - real matter 174 - - The situation defined 175 - - Two conceptions of progress 177 - - From which of them the result of the Seven Years' War - is seen to be truly progressive 180 - - The Jesuits 181 - - Their repulse after the humiliation of Austria 182 - - Frederick's probable unconsciousness of the ultimate bearings - of his policy 184 - - His type of monarchy 186 - - He sprang doubly from the critical school 188 - - Other statesmen affected by this school 188 - - Injustice of stamping Voltaire's influence as merely - destructive 191 - - Frederick the Great and France 193 - - Voltaire's life at Berlin 194 - - Maupertuis 196 - - Collision between him and Voltaire 198 - - The Diatribe of Doctor Akakia 199 - - Voltaire's departure from Berlin 201 - - The Frankfort episode 202 - - Unfortunate revelations in the Hirschel affair 206 - - Relations between Frederick and Voltaire henceforth 207 - - Voltaire fears to return to Paris 210 - - Geneva 211 - - The critical school not specially insensible to the picturesque 212 - - Voltaire buys Ferney (1758) 215 - - - CHAPTER V. - - RELIGION. - - (1) _Conditions of the Voltairean attack_. - - Two elements underlying Voltaire's enmity to Christianity 216 - - Failure of Catholicism as a social force 217 - - Utility of Protestantism in softening the transition 218 - - Compared with repression of free debate in France 219 - - Voltaire did not assail modern theosophies 221 - - The good inextricably bound up with the bad in the old - system 224 - - Jesuits and Jansenists 225 - - Voltaire declared the latter to be the worst foes 227 - - Morellet's Manual for Inquisitors 228 - - A reflex of the criminal jurisprudence of the time 229 - - Cases of Rochette, Calas, and Sirven 229 - - Of La Barre 230 - - Fervour of Voltaire's indignation 232 - - Protests against cynical acquiescence 233 - - Disappointment of the philosophers, and their courage 235 - - The reactionary fanaticism a proof of the truth of Voltaire's - allegations 237 - - Necessity of transforming spiritual basis of thought 238 - - Voltaire's abstention from the temporal sphere 239 - - His chief defect as leader of the attack 241 - - Crippling his historic imagination 243 - - The just historic calm impossible, until Voltaire had - pressed a previous question 245 - - - (2) _His method_. - - His instruments purely literary and dialectical 248 - - Leaves metaphysics of religion, and fastens on alleged - records 250 - - The other side fell back on the least worthy parts of their - system 251 - - Hence the narrow and literal character of Voltaire's - objections 252 - - His attack essentially the attack of the English deists 255 - - Rationalistic questions in scriptural and ecclesiastical - records 257 - - In doctrine 258 - - Argument from comparison with other myths 259 - - His neglect of primitive religions 260 - - His conviction that monotheism is the first religious - form 261 - - Difficulties which he thus passed over 264 - - Hume's view 266 - - Voltaire did not assail the general ideas of Christianity 267 - - Such as the idea of evil inherent in matter 270 - - And the idea of a deity as then conceived 271 - - Hence the acerbity of the debate 273 - - And the want of permanence in Voltaire's writings compared - with Bossuet or Pascal 274 - - His criticism on Dante 275 - - - (3) _His approximation to a solution_. - - Voltairean deism 276 - - Never accepted by the mass of men 278 - - Nor is it likely to be accepted by them 279 - - Voltaire's imperfect adherence to the deistical idea 280 - - Reasons for this 282 - - Does not accept belief in the immortality of the soul 286 - - Asserts less than Rousseau, and denies less than - Diderot 287 - - A popular movement begun by Bayle's Dictionary 288 - - Compromising method of Rousseau 290 - - Voltaire's view of an atheistical society 291 - - His belief in the social sufficiency of an analytic spirit 292 - - Synthesis necessary, but more than one is possible 293 - - - CHAPTER VI. - - HISTORY. - - Extraordinary activity in historical composition in the - eighteenth century 295 - - Explanation of it 296 - - Circumstances under which Voltaire thought about the - philosophy of history 297 - - The three historical styles 299 - - Voltaire's histories of two kinds 301 - - Rousseau's disregard for history 302 - - Voltaire's acute sense 303 - - His diligence in seeking authentic materials 305 - - Throws persons and personal interests into the second place 307 - - Changed view of the true subject matter of history 308 - - War always an object of Voltaire's antipathy 311 - - His distrust of diplomacy 315 - - Bossuet's Discourse on Universal History 316 - - Introduction to the Essay on Manners 318 - - Irrational disparagement of the Jews 319 - - Panegyric on the Emperor Julian 320 - - False view of the history of the church 322 - - Avoids the error of expressing barbarous activity in terms - of civilisation 323 - - Real merit of Voltaire's panorama 325 - - He was not alive to the necessity of scientifically studying - the conditions of the social union 326 - - - CHAPTER VII. - - FERNEY. - - His life at Ferney 329 - - Madame Denis 329 - - His vast correspondence 333 - - Consulted by Vauvenargues, Chastellux, Turgot, and - others 334 - - Complaisance of his letters 336 - - Sophistical defence of the practice of denying authorship 339 - - Voltaire's just alarm for his own safety 340 - - His Easter communion of 1768 341 - - Further proceedings with the Bishop of Annecy 342 - - Voltaire made temporal father of the Capucins of Gex 344 - - Voltaire's influence on Rousseau 345 - - Difference between their respective schools 347 - - Their rivalry represents the social dead-lock of the time 348 - - Voltaire the more far-sighted of the two 350 - - Two signal effects of Rousseau's teaching 352 - - Diderot and the Encyclopaedia 354 - - Voltaire's constant efforts to secure redress for the victims - of wrong 357 - - Calas, Sirven, La Barre 357 - - Count Lally 358 - - Admiral Byng 359 - - His interest in the pretended liberation of Greece 360 - - In the partition of Poland 361 - - In the accession of Turgot to power 362 - - Visit to Paris and death 363 - - -=ta men gar sophronon ethe sphodra men eulabe kai dikaia kai soteria, -drimutetos de kai tinos itamotetos oxeias kai praktikes endeitai.... -ta d' andreia ge au pros men to dikaion kai eulabes ekeinon -epideestera, to d' en tais praxesi diapherontos ischei. panta de kalos -gignesthai ta peri tas poleis, toutoin me paragenomenoin amphoin, -adunaton.=--_Politicus_, 311 A. - -=Poteron tous andreious tharrhaleous legeis, e allo ti? Kai itas ge, -ephe, eph' ha hoi polloi phobountas ienai.=--_Protagoras_, 349 E. - - - - -CHAPTER I. - -PRELIMINARY. - - -When the right sense of historical proportion is more fully developed in -men's minds, the name of Voltaire will stand out like the names of the -great decisive movements in the European advance, like the Revival of -Learning, or the Reformation. The existence, character, and career of -this extraordinary person constituted in themselves a new and prodigious -era. The peculiarities of his individual genius changed the mind and -spiritual conformation of France, and in a less degree of the whole of -the West, with as far-spreading and invincible an effect as if the work -had been wholly done, as it was actually aided, by the sweep of -deep-lying collective forces. A new type of belief, and of its shadow, -disbelief, was stamped by the impression of his character and work into -the intelligence and feeling of his own and the following times. We may -think of Voltairism in France somewhat as we think of Catholicism or the -Renaissance or Calvinism. It was one of the cardinal liberations of the -growing race, one of the emphatic manifestations of some portion of the -minds of men, which an immediately foregoing system and creed had either -ignored or outraged. - -Christianity originally and generically at once awoke and satisfied a -spiritual craving for a higher, purer, less torn and fragmentary being, -than is permitted to sons of men on the troubled and corrupt earth. It -disclosed to them a gracious, benevolent, and all-powerful being, who -would one day redress all wrongs and recompense all pain, and who asked -no more from them meanwhile than that they should prove their love of -him whom they had not seen, by love of their brothers whom they had -seen. Its great glory was to have raised the moral dignity and -self-respect of the many to a level which had hitherto been reached only -by a few. Calvin, again, like some stern and austere step-son of the -Christian God, jealous of the divine benignity and abused -open-handedness of his father's house, with word of merciless power set -free all those souls that were more anxious to look the tremendous facts -of necessity and evil and punishment full in the face, than to reconcile -them with any theory of the infinite mercy and loving-kindness of a -supreme creator. Men who had been enervated or helplessly perplexed by a -creed that had sunk into ignoble optimism and self-indulgence, became -conscious of new fibre in their moral structure, when they realised life -as a long wrestling with unseen and invincible forces of grace, -election, and fore-destiny, the agencies of a being whose ways and -dealings, whose contradictory attributes of unjust justice and loving -vindictiveness, it was not for man, who is a worm and the son of a worm, -to reconcile with the puny logic of human words, or the shallow -consistency of human ideas. Catholicism was a movement of mysticism, and -so in darker regions was the Calvinism which in so many important -societies displaced it. Each did much to raise the measure of worth and -purify the spiritual self-respect of mankind, and each also discouraged -and depressed the liberal play of intelligence, the cheerful energizing -of reason, the bright and many-sided workings of fancy and imagination. -Human nature, happily for us, ever presses against this system or that, -and forces ways of escape for itself into freedom and light. The -scientific reason urgently seeks instruments and a voice; the creative -imagination unconsciously takes form to itself in manifold ways, of all -of which the emotions can give good account to the understanding. Hence -the glorious suffusion of light which the ardent desire of men brought -over the face of Europe in the latter half of the fifteenth century. -Before Luther and Calvin in their separate ways brought into splendid -prominence their new ideas of moral order, more than two generations of -men had almost ceased to care whether there be any moral order or not, -and had plunged with the delight of enchantment among ideas of grace and -beauty, whose forms were old on the earth, but which were full of -seemingly inexhaustible novelty and freshness to men, who had once -begun to receive and to understand all the ever-living gifts of Grecian -art and architecture and letters. If the Reformation, the great revival -of northern Europe, was the enfranchisement of the individual from -bondage to a collective religious tradition that had lost its virtue, -the Renaissance, the earlier revival of southern Europe, was the -admission to participate in the noblest collective tradition of free -intellect which the achievements of the race could then hand down. - -Voltairism may stand for the name of the Renaissance of the eighteenth -century, for that name takes in all the serious haltings and -shortcomings of this strange movement, as well as all its terrible fire, -swiftness, sincerity, and strength. The rays from Voltaire's burning and -far-shining spirit no sooner struck upon the genius of the time, seated -dark and dead like the black stone of Memnon's statue, than the clang of -the breaking chord was heard through Europe, and men awoke in new day -and more spacious air. The sentimentalist has proclaimed him a mere -mocker. To the critic of the schools, ever ready with compendious label, -he is the revolutionary destructive. To each alike of the countless -orthodox sects his name is the symbol for the prevailing of the gates of -hell. Erudition figures him as shallow and a trifler; culture condemns -him for pushing his hatred of spiritual falsehood much too seriously; -Christian charity feels constrained to unmask a demon from the depths of -the pit. The plain men of the earth, who are apt to measure the merits -of a philosopher by the strength of his sympathy with existing sources -of comfort, would generally approve the saying of Dr. Johnson, that he -would sooner sign a sentence for Rousseau's transportation than that of -any felon who had gone from the Old Bailey these many years, and that -the difference between him and Voltaire was so slight, that 'it would be -difficult to settle the proportion of iniquity between them.' Those of -all schools and professions who have the temperament which mistakes -strong expression for strong judgment, and violent phrase for grounded -conviction, have been stimulated by antipathy against Voltaire to a -degree that in any of them with latent turns for humour must now and -then have even stirred a kind of reacting sympathy. The rank vocabulary -of malice and hate, that noisome fringe of the history of opinion, has -received many of its most fulminant terms from critics of Voltaire, -along with some from Voltaire himself, who unwisely did not always -refuse to follow an adversary's bad example. - -Yet Voltaire was the very eye of eighteenth-century 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 fourscore volumes which he -wrote are the monument, as they were in some sort 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. His works as much as those of any man -that ever lived and thought are truly his own. It is not given, we all -know, even to the most original and daring of leaders to be without -precursors, and Voltaire's march was prepared for him before he was -born, as it is for all mortals. Yet he impressed on all he said, on good -words and bad alike, a marked autochthonic quality, as of the -self-raised spontaneous products of some miraculous soil, from which -prodigies and portents spring. Many of his ideas were in the air, and -did not belong to him peculiarly; but so strangely rapid and perfect was -his assimilation of them, so vigorous and minutely penetrative was the -quality of his understanding, so firm and independent his initiative, -that even these were instantly stamped with the express image of his -personality. In a word, Voltaire's work from first to last was alert -with unquenchable life. Some of it, much of it, has ceased to be alive -for us now in all that belongs to its deeper significance, yet we -recognise that none of it was ever the dreary still-birth of a mind of -hearsays. There is no mechanical transmission of untested bits of -current coin. In the realm of mere letters, Voltaire is one of the -little band of great monarchs, and in style he remains of the supreme -potentates. But literary variety and perfection, however admirable, like -all purely literary qualities, are a fragile and secondary good which -the world is very willing to let die, where it has not been truly -begotten and engendered of living forces. - -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. -Fontenelle was both brilliant and far-sighted, but he was cold, and one -of those who love ease and a safe hearth, and carefully shun the din, -turmoil, and danger, of the great battle. 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. - -This is the temper which, when the times are auspicious, and the -fortunes of the fight do not hurry the combatant to dungeon or stake, -raises him into a force instead of leaving him the empty shadow of a -literary name. There is something in our nature which leads men to -listen coolly to the most eager hints and pregnant innuendoes of -scepticism, on the lips of teachers who still in their own persons keep -adroitly away from the fiery darts of the officially orthodox. The same -something, perhaps a moral relish for veritable proofs of honesty, -perhaps a quality of animal temperament, drives men to grasp even a -crudity with fervour, when they see it wielded like a battle-axe against -spiritual oppression. A man is always so much more than his words, as we -feel every day of our lives; what he says has its momentum indefinitely -multiplied, or reduced to nullity, by the impression that the hearer for -good reasons or bad happens to have formed of the spirit and moral size -of the speaker. There are things enough to be said of Voltaire's moral -size, and no attempt is made in these pages to dissemble in how much he -was condemnable. It is at least certain that he hated tyranny, that he -refused to lay up his hatred privily in his heart, and insisted on -giving his abhorrence a voice, and tempering for his just rage a fine -sword, very fatal to those who laid burdens too hard to be borne upon -the conscience and life of men. Voltaire's contemporaries felt this. -They were stirred to the quick by the sight and sound and thorough -directness of those ringing blows. The strange and sinister method of -assault upon religion which we of a later day watch with wondering eyes, -and which consists in wearing the shield and device of a faith, and -industriously shouting the cry of a church, the more effectually to -reduce the faith to a vague futility, and its outward ordering to a -piece of ingeniously reticulated pretence; this method of attack might -make even the champions of prevailing beliefs long for the shrewd -thrusts, the flashing scorn, the relentless fire, the downright -grapples, with which the hated Voltaire pushed on his work of 'crushing -the Infamous.' If he was bitter, he was still direct. If he was often a -mocker in form, he was always serious in meaning and laborious in -matter. If he was unflinching against theology, he always paid religion -respect enough to treat it as the most important of all subjects. The -contest was real, and not our present pantomimic stage-play, in which -muffled phantoms of debate are made to gesticulate inexpressible things -in portentously significant silence. The battle was demoralized by its -virulence. True; but is this worse than to have it demoralized by -cowardice of heart and understanding, when each controversial -man-at-arms is eager to have it thought that he wears the colours of the -other side, when the theologian would fain pass for rationalist, and the -free-thinker for a person with his own orthodoxies if you only knew -them, and when philosophic candour and intelligence are supposed to have -hit their final climax in the doctrine that everything is both true and -false at the same time? - -A man like Montaigne, as has been said, could slumber tranquilly on the -pillow of doubt, content to live his life, leaving many questions open. -Such men's meditations, when composed in the genial literary form proper -to them, are naturally the delight of people with whom the world goes -fairly well materially, who have sensibility enough to be aware that -there are unseen lands of knowledge and truth beyond the present, and -destinies beyond their own; but whose sensibility is not intense and -ardent enough to make wholly unendurable to them unscrutinizing -acquiescence in half-thoughts and faint guesses, and pale unshapen -embryos of social sympathy. There are conjunctures when this mingling of -apprehension and ease, of aspiration and content, of timorous adventure -and reflective indolence, is the natural mood of even high natures. The -great tides of circumstance swell so tardily, that whole generations -that might have produced their share of skilful and intrepid mariners, -wait in vain for the full flood on which the race is borne to new -shores. - -Nor assuredly is it well for men that every age should mark either a -revolution, or the slow inward agitation that prepares the revolution, -or that doubters and destroyers should divide between them all -admiration and gratitude and sympathy. The violent activity of a century -of great change may end in a victory, but it is always a sacrifice. The -victory may more than recompense its cost. The sacrifice may repay -itself a thousand-fold. It does not always repay itself, as the too -neglected list of good causes lost, and noble effort wasted, so -abundantly shows. Nor in any case is sacrifice ever an end. Faith and -order and steady strong movement are the conditions which everything -wise is directed to perfect and consolidate. But for this process of -perfection we need first the meditative, doubting, critical type, and -next, the dogmatic destroyer. 'In counsel it is good to see dangers,' -Bacon said; 'and in execution not to see them, except they be very -great,' There are, as history instructs us, eras of counsel and eras of -execution; the hour when those do best who walk most warily, feeling -with patience and sagacity and painstaking for the new ways, and then -the hour of march and stout-hearted engagement. - -Voltaire, if he adroitly or sagely preserved his buckler, felt that the -day was come to throw away the scabbard; that it was time to trust -firmly to the free understanding of men for guidance in the voyage after -truth, and to the instincts of uncorrupted benevolence in men for the -upholding of social justice. His was one of the robust and incisive -constitutions, to which doubt figures as a sickness, and where -intellectual apprehension is an impossibility. The old-fashioned -nomenclature puts him down among sceptics, because those who had the -official right to affix these labels could think of no more contemptuous -name, and could not suppose the most audacious soul capable of advancing -even under the leadership of Satan himself beyond a stray doubt or so. -He had perhaps as little of the sceptic in his constitution as Bossuet -or Butler, and was much less capable of becoming one than De Maistre or -Paley. This was a prime secret of his power, for the mere critic and -propounder of unanswered doubts never leads more than a handful of men -after him. Voltaire boldly put the great question, and he boldly -answered it. He asked whether the sacred records were historically -true, the Christian doctrine divinely inspired and spiritually -exhaustive, and the Christian church a holy and beneficent organization. -He answered these questions for himself and for others beyond -possibility of misconception. The records were saturated with fable and -absurdity, the doctrine imperfect at its best, and a dark and tyrannical -superstition at its worst, and the church was the arch-curse and infamy. -Say what we will of these answers, they were free from any taint of -scepticism. Our lofty new idea of rational freedom as freedom from -conviction, and of emancipation of understanding as emancipation from -the duty of settling whether important propositions are true or false, -had not dawned on Voltaire. - -He had just as little part or lot in the complaisant spirit of the man -of the world, who from the depths of his mediocrity and ease presumes to -promulgate the law of progress, and as dictator to fix its speed. Who -does not know this temper of the man of the world, that worst enemy of -the world? His inexhaustible patience of abuses that only torment -others; his apologetic word for beliefs that may perhaps not be so -precisely true as one might wish, and institutions that are not -altogether so useful as some might think possible; his cordiality -towards progress and improvement in a general way, and his coldness or -antipathy to each progressive proposal in particular; his pygmy hope -that life will one day become somewhat better, punily shivering by the -side of his gigantic conviction that it might well be infinitely worse. -To Voltaire, far different from this, an irrational prejudice was not -the object of a polite coldness, but a real evil to be combated and -overthrown at every hazard. Cruelty was not to him as a disagreeable -dream of the imagination, from thought of which he could save himself by -arousing to sense of his own comfort, but a vivid flame burning into his -thoughts and destroying peace. Wrong-doing and injustice were not simple -words on his lips; they went as knives to the heart; he suffered with -the victim, and consumed with an active rage against the oppressor. - -Nor was the coarse cruelty of the inquisitor or the politician, who -wrought iniquity by aid of the arm of flesh, the only kind of injury to -the world which stirred his passion. 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 usage. The system which threw obstacles into the way of -publishing an exposition of Newton's discoveries and ideas was as -mischievous and hateful to him, as the darker bigotry which broke Calas -on the wheel because he was a Protestant. To check the energetic -discovery and wide propagation of scientific truth, he rightly held to -be at least as destructive in the long run to the common weal, as the -unjust extermination of human life; for it is the possession of ever -more and more truth that makes life ever better worth having and better -worth preserving. And must we not admit that he was right, and that no -age nor school of men nor individual has ever been mortally afraid, as -every good man is afraid, of inflicting any wrong on his fellow, and has -not also been afraid of extinguishing a single ray from the great sun of -knowledge? - -It is well enough to say that in unscientific ages, like the twelfth -century for instance, the burner of books and the tormentor of those who -wrote them, did not feel either that he was doing an injustice to man or -a mischief to truth. It is hard to deny that St. Bernard was a good man, -nor is it needful that we should deny it; for good motives, owing to our -great blindness and slow enlightenment, have made grievous havoc in the -world. But the conception of justice towards heretics did not exist, any -more than it existed in the mind of a low type of white man towards a -black man, or than the conception of pity exists in the mind of a -sportsman towards his prey. These were ages of social cruelty, as they -were ages of intellectual repression. The debt of each to his neighbour -was as little felt, as the debt of all to the common faculties and -intelligence. Men owed nothing to man, but everything to the gods. All -the social feeling and intellectual effort and human energizing which -had made the high idea of God possible and real, seemed to have -expended themselves in a creation which instantly swallowed them up and -obliterated their recollection. The intelligence which by its active -straining upwards to the light had opened the way for the one God, -became itself forthwith identified with the chief of the devils. He who -used his reason was the child of this demon. Where it is a duty to -worship the sun, it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of -heat. The times when such was the universal idea of the rights of the -understanding, were also the times when human life was cheapest, and the -tiny bowl of a man's happiness was spilt upon the ground with least -compunction. - -The companionship between these two ideas of disrespect for the rights -of man, and disrespect for reason or the highest distinction of man, has -been an inseparable companionship. The converse is unhappily only true -with a modification, for there have been too many men with an honourable -respect for a demonstration and a proper hospitality towards a -probability, who look on the rights of man, without disrespect indeed, -but also without fervour. To Voltaire reason and humanity were but a -single word, and love of truth and passion for justice but one emotion. -None of the famous men who have fought that they themselves might think -freely and speak truly, have ever seen more clearly that the fundamental -aim of the contest was that others might live happily. Who has not been -touched by that admirable word of his, of the three years in which he -laboured without remission for justice to the widow and descendants of -Calas: '_During that time not a smile escaped me without my reproaching -myself for it, as for a crime_.' Or by his sincere avowal that of all -the words of enthusiasm and admiration which were so prodigally bestowed -upon him on the occasion of his last famous visit to Paris in 1778, none -went to his heart like that of a woman of the people, who in reply to -one asking the name of him whom the crowd followed, gave answer, '_Do -you not know that he is the preserver of the Calas?_' - -The same kind of feeling, though manifested in ways of much less -unequivocal nobleness, was at the bottom of his many efforts to make -himself of consequence in important political business. We know how many -contemptuous sarcasms have been inspired by his anxiety at various times -to perform diplomatic feats of intervention between the French -government and Frederick the Second. In 1742, after his visit to the -Prussian king at Aix-la-Chapelle, he is supposed to have hinted to -Cardinal Fleury that to have written epic and drama does not disqualify -a man for serving his king and country on the busy fields of affairs. -The following year, after Fleury's death, when French fortunes in the -war of the Austrian succession were near their lowest, Voltaire's own -idea that he might be useful from his intimacy with Frederick, seems to -have been shared by Amelot, the secretary of state, and at all events he -aspired to do some sort of active, if radically futile, diplomatic work. -In later times when the tide had turned, and Frederick's star was -clouded over with disaster, we again find Voltaire the eager -intermediary with Choiseul, pleasantly comparing himself to the mouse of -the fable, busily striving to free the lion from the meshes of the -hunter's net. - -The man of letters, usually unable to conceive loftier services to -mankind or more attractive aims to persons of capacity than the -composition of books, has treated these pretensions of Voltaire with a -supercilious kind of censure, which teaches us nothing about Voltaire, -while it implies a particularly shallow idea alike of the position of -the mere literary life in the scale of things, and of the conditions -under which the best literary work is done. 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 of his to come into -the closest contact with the practical affairs of the world. He who has -never left the life of a recluse, drawing an income from the funds and -living in a remote garden, constructing past, present, and future, out -of his own consciousness, is not qualified either to lead mankind -safely, or to think on the course of human affairs correctly. Every page -of Voltaire has the bracing air of the life of the world in it, and the -instinct which led him to seek the society of the conspicuous actors on -the great scene was essentially a right one. The book-writer takes good -advantage of his opportunity to assure men expressly or by implication -that he is their true king, and that the sacred bard is a mightier man -than his hero. Voltaire knew better. Though himself perhaps the most -puissant man of letters that ever lived, he rated literature as it ought -to be rated below action, not because written speech is less of a force, -but because the speculation and criticism of the literature that -substantially influences the world, make far less demand than the actual -conduct of great affairs on qualities which are not rare in detail, but -are amazingly rare in combination,--on temper, foresight, solidity, -daring,--on strength, in a word, strength of intelligence and strength of -character. Gibbon rightly amended his phrase, when he described Boethius -not as stooping, but rather as rising, from his life of placid -meditation to an active share in the imperial business. That he held -this sound opinion is quite as plausible an explanation of Voltaire's -anxiety to know persons of station and importance, as the current theory -that he was of sycophantic nature. Why, he asks, are the ancient -historians so full of light? 'It is because the writer had to do with -public business; it is because he could be magistrate, priest, soldier; -and because if he could not rise to the highest functions of the state, -he had at least to make himself worthy of them. I admit,' he concludes, -'that we must not expect such an advantage with us, for our own -constitution happens to be against it;' but he was deeply sensible what -an advantage it was that they thus lost.[1] - -In short, on all sides, whatever men do and think was real and alive to -Voltaire. Whatever had the quality of interesting any imaginable -temperament, had the quality of interesting him. There was no subject -which any set of men have ever cared about, which, if he once had -mention of it, Voltaire did not care about likewise. And it was just -because he was so thoroughly alive himself, that he filled the whole era -with life. The more closely one studies the various movements of that -time, the more clear it becomes that, if he was not the original centre -and first fountain of them all, at any rate he made many channels ready -and gave the sign. He was the initial principle of fermentation -throughout that vast commotion. We may deplore, if we think fit, as -Erasmus deplored in the case of Luther, that the great change was not -allowed to work itself out slowly, calmly, and without violence and -disruption. These graceful regrets are powerless, and on the whole they -are very enervating. Let us make our account with the actual, rather -than seek excuses for self-indulgence in pensive preference of something -that might have been. Practically in these great circles of affairs, -what only might have been is as though it could not be; and to know this -may well suffice for us. It is not in human power to choose the kind of -men who rise from time to time to the supreme control of momentous -changes. The force which decides this immensely important matter is as -though it were chance. We cannot decisively pronounce any circumstance -whatever an accident, yet history abounds with circumstances which in -our present ignorance of the causes of things are as if they were -accidents. - -In this respect history is neither better nor worse than the latest -explanation of the origin and order of the world of organised matter. -Here too we are landed in the final resort at what is neither more nor -less than an accident. Natural selection, or the survival of the fittest -in the universal struggle for existence, is now held by the most -competent inquirers to be the principal method to which we owe the -extinction, preservation, and distribution of organic forms on the -earth. But the appearance both of the forms that conquer and of those -that perish still remains a secret, and to science an accident and a -secret are virtually and provisionally the same thing. In a word, there -is an unknown element at the bottom of the varieties of creation, -whether we agree to call that element a volition of a supernatural -being, or an undiscovered set of facts in embryology. So in history the -Roman or Italo-Hellenic empire, rising when it did, was the salvation of -the West, and yet the appearance at the moment when anarchy threatened -rapidly to dissolve the Roman state, of a man with the power of -conceiving the best design for the new structure, seems to partake as -much of the nature of chance, as the non-appearance of men with similar -vision and power in equally momentous crises, earlier and later. The -rise of a great constructive chief like Charlemagne in the eighth -century can hardly be enough to persuade us that the occasion invariably -brings the leader whom its conditions require, when we remember that as -concerns their demands the conditions of the end of the eighth century -were not radically different from those of the beginning of the sixth, -yet that in the earlier epoch there arose no successor to continue the -work of Theodoric. We have only to examine the origin and fundamental -circumstances of the types of civilisation which rule western -communities and guide their advance, to discern in those original -circumstances a something inscrutable, a certain element of what is as -though it were fortuitous. No science can as yet tell us how such a -variation from previously existing creatures as man had its origin; nor, -any more than this, can history explain the law by which the most -striking variations in intellectual and spiritual quality within the -human order have had their origin. The appearance of the one as of the -other is a fact which cannot be further resolved. It is hard to think in -imagination of the globe as unpeopled by man, or peopled, as it may at -some remote day come to be, by beings of capacity superior enough to -extinguish man. It is hard also to think of the scene which western -Europe and all the vast space which the light of western Europe -irradiates, might have offered at this moment, if nature or the unknown -forces had not produced a Luther, a Calvin, or a Voltaire. - -It was one of the happy chances of circumstance that there arose in -France on the death of Lewis XIV. a man with all Voltaire's peculiar -gifts of intelligence, who added to them an incessant activity in their -use, and who besides this enjoyed such length of days as to make his -intellectual powers effective to the very fullest extent possible. This -combination of physical and mental conditions so amazingly favourable to -the spread of the Voltairean ideas, was a circumstance independent of -the state of the surrounding atmosphere, and was what in the phraseology -of praescientific times might well have been called providential. If -Voltaire had seen all that he saw, and yet been indolent; or if he had -been as clear-sighted and as active as he was, and yet had only lived -fifty years, instead of eighty-four, Voltairism would never have struck -root.[2] As it was, with his genius, his industry, his longevity, and -the conditions of the time being what they were, that far-spreading -movement of destruction was inevitable. - -Once more, we cannot choose. Those whom temperament or culture has made -the partisans of calm order, cannot attune progress to the stately and -harmonious march which would best please them, and which they are -perhaps right in thinking would lead with most security to the goal. - -Such a liberation of the human mind as Voltairism can only be effected -by the movement of many spirits, and they are only the few who are moved -by moderate, reflective, and scientific trains of argument. The many -need an extreme type. They are struck by what is flashing and colossal, -for they follow imagination and sympathy, and not the exactly -disciplined intelligence. They know their own wants, and have dumb -feeling of their own better aspirations. Their thoughts move in the -obscurity of things quick but unborn, and by instinct they push upwards -in whatever direction the darkness seems breaking. They are not critics -nor analysts, but when the time is ripening they never fail to know the -word of freedom and of truth, with whatever imperfections it may chance -to be spoken. No prophet all false has ever yet caught the ear of a -series of generations. No prophet all false has succeeded in separating -a nation into two clear divisions. Voltaire has in effect for a century -so divided the most emancipated of western nations. This is beyond the -power of the mere mocker, who perishes like the flash of lightning; he -does not abide as a centre of solar heat. - -There are more kinds of Voltaireans than one, but no one who has marched -ever so short a way out of the great camp of old ideas is directly or -indirectly out of the debt and out of the hand of the first liberator, -however little willing he may be to recognise one or the other. -Attention has been called by every writer on Voltaire to the immense -number of the editions of his works, a number probably unparalleled in -the case of any author within the same limits of time. Besides being one -of the most voluminous book-writers, he is one of the cheapest. We can -buy one of Voltaire's books for a few half-pence, and the keepers of the -cheap stalls in the cheap quarters of London and Paris will tell you -that this is not from lack of demand, but the contrary. So clearly does -that light burn for many even now, which scientifically speaking ought -to be extinct, and for many indeed is long ago extinct and superseded. -The reasons for this vitality are that Voltaire was himself thoroughly -alive when he did his work, and that the movement which that work began -is still unexhausted. - -How shall we attempt to characterise this movement? The historian of the -Christian church usually opens his narrative with an account of the -depravation of human nature and the corruption of society which preceded -the new religion. The Reformation in like manner is only to be -understood after we have perceived the enormous mass of superstition, -injustice, and wilful ignorance, by which the theological idea had -become so incrusted as to be wholly incompetent to guide society, -because it was equally repugnant to the intellectual perceptions and the -moral sense, the knowledge and the feelings, of the best and most -active-minded persons of the time. The same sort of consideration -explains and vindicates the enormous power of Voltaire. France had -outgrown the system that had brought her through the middle ages. The -further development of her national life was fatally hindered by the -tight bonds of an old order, which clung with the hardy tenacity of a -thriving parasite, diverting from the roots all their sustenance, eating -into the tissue, and feeding on the juices of the living tree. The -picture has often been painted, and we need not try to paint it once -more in detail here. The whole power and ordering of the nation were -with the sworn and chartered foes of light, who had every interest that -a desire to cling to authority and wealth can give, in keeping the -understanding subject. - -And, what was more important, there had been no sign made in the nation -itself of a consciousness of the immense realms of knowledge that lay -immediately in front of it, and still less of any desire or intention to -win lasting possession of them. That intellectual curiosity which was so -soon to produce such amazing fruits was as yet unstirred. An era of -extraordinary activity had just come to a close, and the creative and -artistic genius of France had risen to the highest mark it attained -until the opening of our own century. The grand age of Lewis XIV. had -been an age of magnificent literature and unsurpassed eloquence. But, in -spite of the potent seed which Descartes had sown, it had been the age -of authority, protection, and patronage. Consequently all those subjects -for which there was no patronage, that is to say the subjects which -could add nothing to the splendour and dignity of the church and the -pageantry of the court, were virtually repressed. This ought not to -blind us to the real loftiness and magnanimity of the best or earlier -part of the age of Lewis XIV. It has been said that the best title of -Lewis XIV. to the recollection of posterity is the protection he -extended to Moliere; and one reason why this was so meritorious is that -Moliere's work had a markedly critical character, in reference both to -the devout and to the courtier. The fact of this, undoubtedly the most -durable work of that time, containing critical quality, is not of -importance in reference to the generally fixed or positive aspect of the -age. For Moliere is only critical by accident. There is nothing -organically negative about him, and his plays are the pure dramatic -presentation of a peculiar civilisation. He is no more a destructive -agency because he drew hypocrites and coxcombs, than Bossuet was -destructive or critical because he inveighed against sin and the excess -of human vainglory. The epoch was one of entire loyalty to itself and -its ideas. Voltaire himself perceived and admired these traits to the -full. The greatest of all overthrowers, he always understood that it is -towards such ages as these, the too short ages of conviction and -self-sufficience, that our endeavour works. We fight that others may -enjoy; and many generations struggle and debate, that one generation may -hold something for proven. - -The glories of the age of Lewis XIV. were the climax of a set of ideas -that instantly afterwards lost alike their grace, their usefulness, and -the firmness of their hold on the intelligence of men. A dignified and -venerable hierarchy, an august and powerful monarch, a court of gay and -luxurious nobles, all lost their grace, because the eyes of men were -suddenly caught and appalled by the awful phantom, which was yet so -real, of a perishing nation. Turn from Bossuet's orations to -Boisguillebert's _Detail de la France_; from the pulpit rhetorician's -courtly reminders that even majesty must die, to Vauban's pity for the -misery of the common people;[3] from Corneille and Racine to La -Bruyere's picture of 'certain wild animals, male and female, scattered -over the fields, black, livid, all burnt by the sun, bound to the earth -that they dig and work with unconquerable pertinacity; they have a sort -of articulate voice, and when they rise on their feet, they show a human -face, and, in fact, are men.' The contrast had existed for generations. -The material misery caused by the wars of the great Lewis deepened the -dark side, and the lustre of genius consecrated to the glorification of -traditional authority and the order of the hour heightened the -brightness of the bright side, until the old contrast was suddenly seen -by a few startled eyes, and the new and deepest problem, destined to -strain our civilisation to a degree that not many have even now -conceived, came slowly into pale outline. - -There is no reason to think that Voltaire ever saw this gaunt and -tremendous spectacle. Rousseau was its first voice. Since him the -reorganisation of the relations of men has never faded from the sight -either of statesmen or philosophers, with vision keen enough to admit to -their eyes even what they dreaded and execrated in their hearts. -Voltaire's task was different and preparatory. It was to make popular -the genius and authority of reason. The foundations of the social fabric -were in such a condition that the touch of reason was fatal to the whole -structure, which instantly began to crumble. Authority and use oppose a -steadfast and invincible resistance to reason, so long as the -institutions which they protect are of fair practicable service to a -society. But after the death of Lewis XIV., not only the grace and pomp, -but also the social utility of spiritual and political absolutism passed -obviously away. Spiritual absolutism was unable to maintain even a -decent semblance of unity and theological order. Political absolutism by -its material costliness, its augmenting tendency to repress the -application of individual energy and thought to public concerns, and its -pursuit of a policy in Europe which was futile and essentially -meaningless as to its ends, and disastrous and incapable in its choice -of means, was rapidly exhausting the resources of national well-being -and viciously severing the very tap-root of national life. To bring -reason into an atmosphere so charged, was, as the old figure goes, to -admit air to the chamber of the mummy. And reason was exactly what -Voltaire brought; too narrow, if we will, too contentious, too derisive, -too unmitigatedly reasonable, but still reason. And who shall measure -the consequence of this difference in the history of two great nations; -that in France absolutism in church and state fell before the sinewy -genius of stark reason, while in England it fell before a respect for -social convenience, protesting against monopolies, benevolences, -ship-money? That in France speculation had penetrated over the whole -field of social inquiry, before a single step had been taken towards -application, while in England social principles were applied, before -they received any kind of speculative vindication? That in France the -first effective enemy of the principles of despotism was Voltaire, poet, -philosopher, historian, critic; in England, a band of homely squires? - -Traditional authority, it is true, had been partially and fatally -undermined in France before the time of Voltaire, by one of the most -daring of thinkers, and one of the most acute and sceptical of scholars, -as well as by writers so acutely careless as Montaigne, and apologists -so dangerously rational as Pascal, who gave a rank and consistency to -doubt even in showing that its seas were black and shoreless. -Descartes's Discourse on Method had been published in 1637, and Bayle's -Thoughts on the Comet, first of the series of critical onslaughts on -prejudice and authority in matters of belief, had been published in -1682. The metaphysician and the critic had each pressed forward on the -path of examination, and had each insisted on finding grounds for -belief, or else showing the absence of such grounds with a fatal -distinctness that made belief impossible. Descartes was constructive, -and was bent on reconciling the acceptance of a certain set of ideas as -to the relations between man and the universe, and as to the mode and -composition of the universe, with the logical reason. Bayle, whose -antecedents and environment were Protestant, was careless to replace, -but careful to have evidence for whatever was allowed to remain. No -parallel nor hint of equality is here intended between the rare genius -of Descartes and the relatively lower quality of Bayle. The one, however -high a place we may give to the regeneration of thought effected by -Bacon in England, or to that wrought by the brilliant group of physical -experimentalists in Italy, still marks a new epoch in the development of -the human mind, for he had decisively separated knowledge from theology, -and systematically constituted science. The other has a place only in -the history of criticism. But, although in widely different ways, and -with vast difference in intellectual stature, they both had touched the -prevailing notions of French society with a fatal breath. - -The blast that finally dispersed and destroyed them came not from -Descartes and Bayle, but directly from Voltaire and indirectly from -England. In the seventeenth century the surrounding conditions were not -ripe. Social needs had not begun to press. The organs of authority were -still too vigorous, and performed their functions with something more -than the mechanical half-heartedness of the next century. Long -familiarity with sceptical ideas as enemies must go before their -reception as friends and deliverers. They have perhaps never gained an -effective hold in any community, until they have found allies in the -hostile camp of official orthodoxy, and so long as that orthodoxy was -able to afford them a vigorous social resistance. Voltaire's universal -talents made one of the most powerful instruments for conveying these -bold and inquisitive notions among many sorts and conditions of men, -including both the multitude of common readers and playgoers in the -towns, and the narrower multitude of nobles and sovereigns. More than -this, the brilliance and variety of his gifts attracted, stimulated, and -directed the majority of the men of letters of his time, and imparted to -them a measure of his own singular skill in conveying the principles of -rationalistic thought. - -The effect of all this was to turn a vast number of personages who were -officially inimical to free criticism, to be at heart abettors and -fellow-conspirators in the great plot. That fact, combined with the -independent causes of the incompetency of the holders of authority to -deal with the crying social necessities of the time, left the walls of -the citadel undermined and undefended, and a few of the sacred birds -that were still found faithful cackled to no purpose. It has often been -said that in the early times of Christianity its influence gave all that -was truest and brightest in colour to the compositions of those who were -least or not at all affected by its dogma. It is more certain that -Voltaire by the extraordinary force of his personality gave a peculiar -tone and life even to those who adhered most staunchly to the ancient -ordering. The champions of authority were driven to defend their cause -by the unusual weapons of rationality; and if Voltaire had never -written, authority would never, for instance, have found such a soldier -on her side as that most able and eminent of reactionaries, Joseph de -Maistre. In reply to the favourite assertion of the apologists of -Catholicism, that whatever good side its assailants may present is the -product of the very teaching which they repudiate, one can only say that -there would be at least as much justice in maintaining that the marked -improvement which took place in the character and aims of the priesthood -between the Regency and the Revolution,[4] was an obligation -unconsciously incurred to those just and liberal ideas which Voltaire -had helped so powerfully to spread. De Maistre compares Reason putting -away Revelation to a child who should beat its nurse. The same figure -would serve just as well to describe the thanklessness of Belief to the -Disbelief which has purged and exalted it. - -One of the most striking features of the revolution wrought by Voltaire -is that it was the one great revolt in history which contained no -element of asceticism, and achieved all its victories without resort to -an instrument so potent, inflexible, and easy, but so gravely dangerous. -Such revolts are always reactions against surrounding corruption and -darkness. They are the energetic protests of the purer capacities and -aspirations of human nature; and as is the inevitable consequence of -vehement action of this sort, they seem for a while to insist on nothing -less than the extirpation of those antagonistic parts which are seen to -have brought life into such debasement. With this stern anger and -resolve in their hearts, men have no mind to refine, explain, or -moderate, and they are forced by one of the strangest instincts of our -constitution into some system of mortification, which may seem to clear -the soul of the taint of surrounding grossness. In such exalted mood, -there is no refuge but in withdrawal from the common life into recesses -of private conscience, and in severest purification of all desires. -There are not many types of good men even in the least ascetic or least -reactionary epochs, to whom this mood, and its passion for simplicity, -self-applied rigour, minute discipline, firm regulation, and veritable -continence of life, do not now and again recur, in the midst of days -that march normally on a more spacious and expansive theory. - -There was, however, no tinge of ascetic principle in Voltairism. Pascal -had remarked that relaxed opinions are naturally so pleasing to men, -that it is wonderful they should ever be displeasing. To which Voltaire -had thus retorted: 'On the contrary, does not experience prove that -influence over men's minds is only gained by offering them the -difficult, nay the impossible, to perform or believe? Offer only things -that are reasonable, and all the world will answer, We knew as much as -that. But enjoin things that are hard, impracticable; paint the deity as -ever armed with the thunder; make blood run before the altars; and you -will win the multitude's ear, and everybody will say of you, He must be -right, or he would not so boldly proclaim things so marvellous.'[5] -Voltaire's ascendency sprung from no appeal to those parts of human -nature in which ascetic practice has its foundation. On the contrary, -full exercise and play for every part was the key of all his teaching, -direct and indirect. He had not Greek serenity and composure of spirit, -but he had Greek exultation in every known form of intellectual -activity, and this audacious curiosity he made general. - -Let us remember that Voltairism was primarily and directly altogether an -intellectual movement, for this reason, that it was primarily and -directly a reaction against the subordination of the intellectual to the -moral side of men, carried to an excess that was at length fraught with -fatal mischief. Are our opinions true, provably answering to the facts -of the case, consistent with one another; is our intelligence radiant -with genuine light and knowledge; and are we bent more than all else on -testing and improving and diffusing this knowledge and the instruments -for acquiring it? The system to which this was the powerful -counter-formula, even in its least dark shapes, always reserved a large -class of most important facts from the searching glare of that scrutiny -which Voltairism taught men to direct upon every proposition that was -presented to them. - -For many centuries truth had been conceived as of the nature of a Real -Universal, of which men had full possession by the revelation of a -supreme divinity. All truth was organically one; and the relations of -men to something supernatural, their relations to one another, the -relations of outward matter, were all comprehended in a single -synthesis, within which, and subject to which, all intellectual movement -proceeded. An advancing spirit of inquiry dissolved this synthesis; and -the philosophers, as distinguished from the steadfast and single -students of science, ceasing to take it for granted as an indisputable -starting-point that truth was an assured possession, went off on two -different lines. Men of one cast of mind fell into doubt whether truth -was a reality after all, and the discovery of it accessible to mankind. -Thinkers of a different cast accepted this doctrine of the impotence of -the human understanding to discover knowledge and prove truth, but they -proceeded to the retrograde inference that therefore the ancient -tradition of knowledge actually contains that approved truth, which had -just been pronounced unattainable. This oblique mode of regaining a -position of which they had been by their own act dispossessed, was -impossible for so keen and direct a spirit as Voltaire's. However filled -his mind may have been with the false notions of the Tribe, of the -Market, and above all of the Cave, at all events it was more free than -most, certainly than most of those subalterns of the schools, from the -Idols of the Theatre, and from either kind of that twofold excess, 'one -sort of which too hastily constitutes sciences positive and hierarchic, -while the other presents scepticism and the pursuit of a vague inquiry -that has no limit.'[6] - -The consequence of this peculiarity, call it a destructive and blind -narrowness, or call it a wise and justly-measured openness of mind, as -we may choose, has been that Voltaire has been condemned with unsparing -severity by three of the most influential schools of modern opinion. -Every one who has a system to defend is the enemy of the famous man who -destroyed the reigning system of his day, with engines that seem to -point with uncomfortable directness against all other systems. Every one -who thinks that we have turned over the last leaf of the book of -knowledge, whatever the inscription that he may find written upon it, -naturally detests the whole spirit and impulse of one who felt all his -life that he and his generation were the first band of men who had -shaken off their chains, and ascended to the light of the sun and the -contemplation of some portion of an inexhaustible universe of realities. -Hence, the partisans of the Christian religion, in any of its forms, -have dealt unrelenting contempt and hatred to the foe who did more than -any one else to reduce their churches, once so majestically triumphant, -to their present level, where they are forced under various guises and -with much obsolete pretension to plead for the tolerance of rational -men, on the comparatively modest ground of social fitness. Their -hostility, we may agree, is not very astonishing, when we reflect on the -provocation. - -Many of those, however, who have least hope of any future revival of the -ancient creed, and who least regret its fall, are even less hostile to -the Jesuits than they are to Voltaire. Comte, for example, who -elaborated a doctrine with a corresponding system of life deduced from -it, and the central principle of whose method of social action and -movement is to destroy by replacing, has adjudged an emphatically -secondary place to Voltaire's claims on our good-will.[7] Nor ought -this seriously to surprise us, when we consider that Voltaire trusted to -the individual to replace for himself, by the motion of his own -faculties, the old collective tradition of action and belief; and that -he showed himself too keenly alive to the curses of that empire of -prejudice, authority, social fixity, which he devoted his life to -overthrowing, to lend any help to the restoration of a similar reign -with changed watchwords. He is perhaps the one great Frenchman who has -known how to abide in patient contentment with an all but purely -critical reserve, leaving reconstruction, its form, its modes, its -epoch, for the fulness of time and maturity of effort to disclose. It -has been the fatal quality of the genius of his countrymen, from -Descartes down to Comte, to decline to rest on an uncompleted -interpretation of experience, and to insist on a hasty supplement of -unconcluded analysis by what is virtually an a priori synthesis. -Voltaire deserves no special praise for this abstention from a -premature reconstruction; for it probably was not so much the result of -deliberate persuasion that we must wait on the time, as of an inability -to conceive of need for a cultus and a firm ordering of our knowledge, -as prime demands of human nature and essential conditions of stable -progress. Whatever value we may set on this sage reserve, the fact that -Voltaire had no scheme for replacing the scheme which he destroyed, -accounts very amply for the disparagement of him by those who think -almost any fabric of common and ordered belief better for men, than the -seeming chaos of intricate and multitudinous growths which now -overspread the field of European opinion. And does it not involve us in -a defective conception of the way in which human progress accomplishes -itself, to place in our calendar of benefactors, supposing us to compose -a calendar, only those who have built up truth, to the exclusion of -those who have with pain and labour helped to demolish impudent error? -Has Jericho always fallen without the blasts from the seven trumpets? It -is sufficiently demonstrated from history that false opinions vanish -spontaneously, without a direct blow struck; that a system of belief, -corroborated in the breasts of the multitude by all the authority of a -long tradition, sanctified to the powerful few by dignity or emolument, -entrenched with a strength that seems inexpugnable among the ordinances -and institutions and unwritten uses of a great community, will -straightway succumb from inherent want of life and courage? - -There is a third kind of opinion, that is as little merciful in its own -way as either of the two others, and this is the scientific or cultured -opinion. Objections from this region express themselves in many forms, -some of them calm and suggestive, others a little empty and a little -brutal. They all seem to come to something of this kind: that Voltaire's -assault on religion, being conducted without any smallest spark of the -religious spirit, was therefore necessarily unjust to the object of his -attack, and did the further mischief of engendering in all on whom his -influence was poured out a bitterness and moral temerity which is the -worst blight that can fall upon the character either of a man or a -generation: that while truth is relative and conditional, and while -belief is only to be understood by those who have calmly done justice to -the history of its origin and growth, Voltaire carelessly, -unphilosophically, and maliciously, handled what had once possessed a -relative truth, as if it had always been absolutely false, and what had -sprung from the views and aspirations of the best men, as if it had had -its root in the base artifices of the worst: that what ought to have -gone on, and would have gone on, as a process of soft autumnal -dissolution, was converted by the infection of Voltaire into a stained -scene of passion and battle: that assuming to possess and to furnish men -with a broad criticism of life, he left out of life its deepest, -holiest, and most exalting elements, as well as narrowed and depraved -criticism, from its right rank as the high art of stating and collating -ideas, down to an acrid trick of debate, a thing of proofs, arguments, -and rancorous polemic. - -It is certain that there is much truth in this particular strain of -objection to Voltaire's power and his use of it, or else it would not -have found mouthpieces, as it has done, among some of the finest spirits -of the modern time. But it is the natural tendency of the hour rather to -exaggerate what weight there really is in such criticism, which, though -claiming to be the criticism of temperance and moderation and -relativity, does not as a matter of fact escape the fatal law of excess -and absoluteness even in its very moderation and relativity. In -estimating an innovator's method, all depends on the time and the enemy; -and it may sometimes happen that the time is so out of joint and the -enemy so strong, so unscrupulous, so imminently pernicious, as to leave -no alternative between finally succumbing, and waging a war of -deliverance for which coming generations have to bear the burdens in -feuds and bitterness; between abridging somewhat of the richness and -fulness of life, and allowing it all to be gradually choked up by dust -and enwrapped in night. For let us not forget that what Catholicism was -accomplishing in France in the first half of the eighteenth century, was -really not anything less momentous than the slow strangling of French -civilisation. Though Voltaire's spirit may be little edifying to us, who -after all partake of the freedom which he did so much to win, yet it is -only just to remember what was the spirit of his foe, and that in so -pestilent a presence a man of direct vision may well be eager to use -such weapons as he finds to his hand. Let the scientific spirit move -people to speak as it lists about Voltaire's want of respect for things -held sacred, for the good deeds of holy men, for the sentiment and faith -of thousands of the most worthy among his fellows. Still there are times -when it may be very questionable whether, in the region of belief, one -with power and with fervid honesty ought to spare the abominable city of -the plain, just because it happens to shelter five righteous. There are -times when the inhumanity of a system stands out so red and foul, when -the burden of its iniquity weighs so heavy, and the contagion of its -hypocrisy is so laden with mortal plague, that no awe of dilettante -condemnation nor minute scruple as to the historic or the relative can -stay the hand of the man whose direct sight and moral energy have -pierced the veil of use, and revealed the shrine of the infamous thing. -The most noble of the holy men said long ago that 'the servant of the -Lord must not strive, but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, -in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves.' The history of -the churches is in one of its most conspicuous aspects the history of a -prolonged outrage upon these words by arrogant and blasphemous persons, -pretending to draw a sacred spirit from the very saint who uttered them. -We may well deplore that Voltaire's attack, and every other attack of -the same sort, did not take the fair shape prescribed by the apostle to -the servant of the Lord, of gentleness, patience, and the instruction -of a sweet and firm example. But the partisans of the creed in whose -name more human blood has been violently shed than in any other cause -whatever, these, I say, can hardly find much ground of serious reproach -in a few score epigrams. Voltaire had no calm breadth of wisdom. It may -be so. There are moments which need not this calm breadth of wisdom, but -a two-edged sword, and when the deliverers of mankind are they who 'come -to send fire on the earth.' - - - - -CHAPTER II. - -ENGLISH INFLUENCES. - - -Voltairism may be said to have begun from the flight of its founder from -Paris to London. This, to borrow a name from the most memorable instance -of outward change marking inward revolution, was the decisive hegira, -from which the philosophy of destruction in a formal shape may be held -seriously to date. Voltaire landed in England in the middle of May, -1726. He was in the thirty-third year of his age, that earlier -climacteric, when the men with vision first feel conscious of a past, -and reflectively mark its shadow. It is then that they either press -forward eagerly with new impulse in the way of their high calling, -knowing the limitations of circumstance and hour, or else fainting draw -back their hand from the plough, and ignobly leave to another or to none -the accomplishment of the work. The narrowness of the cribbed deck that -we are doomed to tread, amid the vast space of an eternal sea with fair -shores dimly seen and never neared, oppresses the soul with a burden -that sorely tries its strength, when the fixed limits first define -themselves before it. Those are the strongest who do not tremble -beneath this gray ghostly light, but make it the precursor of an -industrious day. - -The past on which Voltaire had to look back was full of turmoil, -contention, impatience, and restless production. Francois Marie Arouet -was born in 1694, so feeble in constitution that, as in the case of -Fontenelle, whose hundred years surpassed even Voltaire's lengthy span, -his life was long despaired of. His father was a notary of good repute -for integrity and skill, and was entrusted with the management of their -affairs by several of the highest families in France. His mother is -supposed to have had some of the intellectual alertness which penetrated -the character of her son, but she died when he was seven years old, and -he remained alone with his father until 1704, when he was sent to -school. His instructors at the College Louis-le-Grand were the Jesuits, -whose wise devotion to intellectual education in the broadest sense that -was then possible, is a partial set-off against their mischievous -influence on morals and politics. The hardihood of the young Arouet's -temper broke out even from the first, and we need not inquire minutely -what were the precise subjects of education of a child, whom his tutor -took an early opportunity of pointing out as the future coryphaeus of -deism in France. He used to say in after life that he had learnt nothing -worth learning. A lad who could launch infidel epigrams at 'his -Jansenist of a brother,' and declaim a poem in which so important a hero -as Moses figures as an impostor,[8] was of that originality of mental -turn on whose freedom the inevitably mechanical instruction of the -school cannot be expected to make any deep or decisive impression. The -young of this independent humour begin their education where those of -less energetic nerve hardly leave off, with character ready made. - -Between a youth of bold, vivacious, imaginative disposition, and a -father of the temperament proper to a notary with many responsibilities, -there could be no sympathy, and the two were not long in coming to open -quarrel without terms. The son was taken out by his godfather, the abbe -Chateauneuf, into that gay world which presently became the infamous -world of the regency, where extraordinary sprightliness and facility in -verse gained him welcome and patronage. We need waste no words on the -corruption and intellectual trifling of the society into which Voltaire -was thus launched. For shallowness and levity, concealed by literary -artifice and play of frivolous wit which only makes the scene more -dreary or detestable, it has never been surpassed. There was brightness -in it, compared with the heavy brutality and things obscene of the court -of Lewis XV., but after all we seem to see over the brightness a sort of -foul glare, like the iridescence of putrefaction. Ninon de l'Enclos, a -friend of his mother's, was perhaps the one free and honest soul with -whom the young Arouet had to do. Now extremely old, she still preserved -both her wit and her fine probity of intellect. She had always kept her -heart free of cant, from the time when she had ridiculed, as the -Jansenists of love, the pedantical women and platonic gallants of the -Hotel Rambouillet, down to her rejection of Madame de Maintenon's offer -of an invitation to the court, on condition of her joining the band of -the devout. The veteran Aspasia, now over eighty, was struck by the -brilliance and dazzling promise of the young versifier, and left him a -legacy for the purchase of books. - -The rest of the society into which Voltaire was taken was saturated with -a spirit of reaction against the austere bigotry of the court, and bad -and miserable as such austerity is, the rebellion against it is always -worse and more miserable still. The licence seems not to have been of -the most joyous sort, as indeed licence protesting and defiant is not -apt to be. The abbe Chaulieu, a versifier of sprightly fancy, grace, and -natural ease, was the dissolute Anacreon of the people of quality who -during the best part of the reign of Lewis XIV. had failed to sympathise -with its nobility and stateliness, and during the worst part revolted -against its gloom. Voltaire at twenty was his intimate and his professed -disciple.[9] To this intimacy we may perhaps trace that remarkable -continuity of tradition between Voltaire and the grand age, which -distinguishes him from the school of famous men who were called -Voltaireans, and of whom the special mark was that they had absolutely -broken with the whole past of French history and literature. Princes, -dukes, and marquises were of Chaulieu's band. The despair and fury of -the elder Arouet at such companions and such follies reproduce once more -a very old story in the records of youthful genius. Genius and fine -friends reconcile no prudent notary to a son's hatred for law and the -desk. Orgies with the Duke of Sully, and rhyming bouts with Chaulieu, -have sunk into small size for us, who know that they were but the -mischievous and unbecoming prologue of a life of incessant and generous -labour, but we may well believe that such enormities bulked big in the -vision of the father, as portents of degradation and ruin. We have a -glimpse of the son's temper towards the profession to which his father -had tried so hard to bind him, in the ironical definition, thrown out -long afterwards, of an _avocat_ as a man who, not having money enough to -buy one of those brilliant offices on which the universe has its eyes -fixed, studies for three years the laws of Theodosius and Justinian so -as to know the custom of Paris, and who at length having got -matriculated has the right of pleading for money, if he has a loud -voice.[10] The young Arouet did actually himself get matriculated and -acquire this right, but his voice proved so loud that his pleadings were -destined to fill wider courts than those of Paris. - -Arouet the elder persuaded Chateauneuf's brother, who was a diplomatist, -to take into his company the law-student who had made verse instead of -studying the laws of Theodosius. So the youth went to the Hague. Here he -straightway fell into new misadventure by conceiving an undying passion, -that lasted several weeks, for a young countrywoman whom he found in -Holland. Stolen interviews, letters, tears, and the other accustomed -circumstances of a juvenile passion on which the gods frown, were all -discovered. The ambassador sent the refractory boy back to his father, -with full details and documents, with results on the relations of the -pair that need not be described. - -In the autumn of 1715 Lewis XIV. died, and the Regent D'Orleans reigned -in his stead. There presently appeared some pungent lines, entitled _Les -j'ai vu_, in which the writer recounted a number of evil things which he -had seen in the state--a thousand prisons crowded with brave citizens and -faithful subjects, the people groaning under rigorous bondage, the -magistrates harassing every town with ruinous taxes and unrighteous -edicts; _j'ai vu, c'est dire tout, le Jesuite adore_. The last line ran -that all these ills the writer had seen, yet was but twenty years -old.[11] Voltaire was twenty-two, but the authorities knew him for a -verse-writer of biting turn, so they treated the discrepancy of age as a -piece of mere prosopopoeia, and laid him up in the Bastille (1716). As a -matter of fact, he had no hand in the offence. Even amid these sombre -shades, where he was kept for nearly a year, his spirit was blithe and -its fire unquenchable. The custom of Paris and the Codes were as -little handled as ever; and he divided his time between the study of the -two great epics of Greece and Rome, and the preparation of what he -designed to be the great epic of France. He also gave the finishing -strokes to his tragedy of OEdipe, which was represented in the course of -the following year with definite success, and was the opening of a -brilliant dramatic career, that perhaps to a mortal of more ordinary -mould might alone have sufficed for the glory of a life. - -The next six years he divided between a lively society, mostly of the -great, the assiduous composition of new plays, and the completion of the -Henriade. His fibre was gradually strengthening. By the end of this -period, the recklessness of the boyish disciple of Chaulieu had wholly -spent itself; and although Voltaire's manner of life was assuredly not -regular nor decorously ordered, now nor for many years to come, if -measured by the rigid standard on which an improved society properly -insists, yet it was always a life of vigorous industry and clear -purposes. For a brief time his passion for the Marechale de Villars -broke the tenacity of his diligence, and he always looked back on this -interruption of his work with the kind of remorse that might afflict a -saint for a grave spiritual backsliding. He was often at the country -seats of Sully, Villars, and elsewhere, throwing off thousands of -trifling verses, arranging theatricals, enlivening festivals, and always -corresponding indefatigably; for now and throughout his life his good -sense and good will, his business-like quality and his liking for his -friends, both united to raise him above the idle pretences and -self-indulgence of those who neglect the chief instrument of social -intercourse and friendly continuity. He preferred the country to the -town. 'I was born,' he says to one, 'to be a faun or creature of the -woods; I am not made to live in a town.' To another, 'I fancy myself in -hell, when I am in the accursed city of Paris.'[12] The only -recommendation of the accursed city was that a solitude was attainable -in it, as in other crowded spots, which enabled him to work better there -than in the small and exacting throng of country-houses. 'I fear -Fontainebleau, Villars, and Sully, both for my health and for Henry IV; -I should do no work, I should over-eat, and I should lose in pleasures -and in complaisance to others an amount of precious time that I ought to -be using for a necessary and creditable task.'[13] - -Yet there was even at this period much of that marvellous hurrying to -and fro in France and out of it, which continued to mark the longer -portion of Voltaire's life, and fills it with such a busy air of turmoil -and confusion, explaining many things, when we think of the stability of -life and permanence of outward place of the next bright spirit that -shone upon Europe. Goethe never saw London, Paris, nor Vienna, and made -no journey save the famous visit to Italy, and the march at Valmy. -Voltaire moved hither and thither over the face of Europe like the wind, -and it is not until he has passed through half of his life that we can -begin to think of his home. Every association that belongs to his name -recalls tumult and haste and shrill contention with men and -circumstance. We have, however, to remember that these constant -movements were the price which Voltaire paid for the vigour and freedom -of his speech, in days when the party of superstition possessed the ear -of the temporal power, and resorted without sparing to the most violent -means of obliterating every hardy word and crushing every independent -writer. The greater number of Voltaire's ceaseless changes of place were -flights from injustice, and the recollection of this may well soothe the -disturbance of spirit of the most fastidious zealot for calm and orderly -living. They were for the most part retreats before packs of wolves. - -In 1722 the elder Arouet died, to the last relentlessly set against a -son, not any less stubborn than himself, and unfortunately a great deal -more poetical. About the same time the name of Arouet falls away, and -the poet is known henceforth by that ever famous symbol for so much, -Voltaire; a name for which various explanations, none of them -satisfactory, have been offered, the latest and perhaps the least -improbable resolving it into a fanciful anagram.[14] - -Industrious as he was, and eager as he was for rural delights and -laborious solitude, Voltaire was still pre-eminently social. His letters -disclose in him, who really possessed all arts, the art of one who knew -how to be graciously respectful to the social superiors who took him for -a companion, without forgetting what was due to his own respect for -himself. We are all princes or poets, he exclaimed jubilantly on the -occasion of one of those nights and suppers of the gods. Such -gay-hearted freedom was not always well taken, and in time Voltaire's -eyes were opened to the terms on which he really stood. '_Who is the -young man who talks so loud?_' called out some Chevalier Rohan, at one -of these sprightly gatherings at the house of the Duke of Sully.[15] -'_My lord_,' the young man replied promptly, '_he is one who does not -carry about a great name, but wins respect for the name he has._' A few -days afterwards the high-spirited patrician magnanimously took an -opportunity of having a caning inflicted by the hands of his lackeys on -the poet who had thrown away this lesson upon him. Voltaire, who had at -all events that substitute for true physical courage which springs up in -an intensely irritable and susceptive temperament, forthwith applied -himself to practise with the small-sword. He did his best to sting his -enemy to fight, but the chevalier either feared the swordsman, or else -despised an antagonist of the middle class; and by the influence of the -Rohan family the poet once more found himself in the Bastille, then the -house of correction at the disposal and for the use of the nobles, the -court, and the clergy. Here for six months Voltaire, then only -representing a very humble and unknown quantity in men's minds, chafed -and fretted. The pacific Fleury, as is the wont of the pacific when in -power, cared less to punish the wrong-doer than to avoid disturbance, -knowing that disturbance was most effectually avoided by not meddling -with the person most able to resent. The multitude, however, when the -day of reckoning came, remembered all these things, and the first act of -their passion was to raze to the ground the fortress into which nearly -every distinguished champion of the freedom of human intelligence among -them had at one time or another been tyrannically thrown. - -On his release Voltaire was ordered to leave Paris. A clandestine visit -to the city showed him that there was no hope of redress from authority, -which was in the hands of men whose pride of rank prevented them from so -much as even perceiving, much more from repairing, such grievance as a -mere bourgeois could have: as if, to borrow Condorcet's bitter phrase, a -descendant of the conquering Franks, like De Rohan, could have lost the -ancient right of life and death over a descendant of the Gauls.[16] And -this was no ironic taunt; for while Voltaire was in the Bastille, that -astounding book of the Count of Boulainvilliers was in the press, in -which it was shown that the feudal system is the master-work of the -human mind, and that the advance of the royal authority and the increase -of the liberties of the people were equally unjust usurpations of the -rights of the conquering Franks.[17] - -Voltaire was no patient victim of the practice which corresponded to -this trim historic theory. In a tumult of just indignation he quitted -France, and sought refuge with that stout and free people, who had by -the execution of one king, the deposition of another, and the definite -subjugation of the hierarchy, won a full liberty of thought and speech -and person. A modern historian has drawn up a list of the men of mark -who made the same invigorating pilgrimage. 'During the two generations -which elapsed between the death of Lewis XIV. and the outbreak of the -Revolution, there was hardly a Frenchman of eminence who did not either -visit England or learn English; while many of them did both.'[18] Among -those who actually came to England and mixed in its society besides -Voltaire, were Buffon, Brissot, Helvetius, Gournay, Jussieu, Lafayette, -Montesquieu, Maupertuis, Morellet, Mirabeau, Roland and Madame Roland, -Rousseau. We who live after Wordsworth, Shelley, Byron, Scott, have -begun to forget the brilliant group of the Queen Anne men. They belong -to a self-complacent time, and we to a time of doubt and unsatisfied -aspiration, and the two spirits are unsympathetic. Yet they were -assuredly a band, from Newton and Locke down to Pope, of whom, taking -them for all the qualities which they united, in science, correct -judgment, love of letters, and taste, England has as good reason to be -proud as of any set of contemporary writers in her history. - -Up to this moment Voltaire had been a poet, and his mind had not moved -beyond the region of poetic creation. He had beaten every one once and -for all on the ground of light and graceful lyric verse, 'a kind of -poetry,' says a French critic whose word in such a matter we can hardly -refuse to take, 'in which Voltaire is at once with us the only master -and the only writer supportable, for he is the only one whom we can -read.'[19] He had produced three tragedies. His epic was completed, -though undergoing ceaseless labour of the file. Two lines in his first -play had served to mark him for no friend to the hierophants: - - Nos pretres ne sont point ce qu'un vain peuple pense; - Notre credulite fait toute leur science.[20] - -And the words of Araspe in the same play had breathed the full spirit of -the future liberator: - - Ne nous fions qu'a nous; voyons tout par nos yeux: - Ce sont la nos trepieds, nos oracles, nos dieux.[21] - -Such expressions, however, were no more than the vague and casual word -of the _esprit fort_, the friend of Chaulieu, and the rhymer of a -dissolute circle, where religion only became tinged with doubt, because -conduct had already become penetrated with licence. More important than -such stray words was the Epistle to Uranie (1722), that truly masculine -and terse protest against the popular creed, its mean and fatuous and -contradictory idea of an omnipotent God, who gave us guilty hearts so as -to have the right of punishing us, and planted in us a love of pleasure -so as to torment us the more effectually by appalling ills that an -eternal miracle prevents from ever ending; who drowned the fathers in -the deluge and then died for the children; who exacts an account of -their ignorance from a hundred peoples whom he has himself plunged -helplessly into this ignorance: - - Je ne reconnais point a cette indigne image - Le dieu que je dois adorer; - Je croirais le deshonorer - Par une telle insulte et par un tel hommage.[22] - -Though called The For and Against, the poet hardly tries to maintain any -proportion between the two sides of the argument. The verses were -addressed to a lady in a state of uncertainty as to belief, of whom -there were probably more among Voltaire's friends of quality than he can -have cared to cure or convert. Scepticism was at this time not much more -than an interesting fashion. - -The dilettante believer is indeed not a strong spirit, but the weakest, -and the facts of life were by this time far too serious for Voltaire, -for that truth to have missed his keen-seeing eye. It is not hard to -suppose that impatient weariness of the poor life that was lived around -him, had as large a share as resentment of an injustice, in driving him -to a land where men did not merely mouth idle words of making reason -their oracle, their tripod, their god, but where they had actually -systematised the rejection of Christianity, and had thrown themselves -with grave faith on the disciplined intelligence and its lessons. -Voltaire left a country where freedom of thinking was only an empty -watchword, the name for a dissipated fashion. It was considered -free-thinking if a man allowed himself to regard the existence of the -Five Propositions in Jansenius's book as a thing indifferent to the -happiness of the human race.[23] He found in England that it was a -far-spreading reality, moulding not only the theological ideas, but the -literature, manners, politics, and philosophy, of a great society. -Voltaire left France a poet, he returned to it a sage. Before his -flight, though we do not know to what extent he may have read such -history as was then accessible, he had been actively productive only in -the sphere of the imaginative faculties, and in criticism of the form -and regulation proper to be imposed upon them. When he returned, while -his poetic power had ripened, he had tasted of the fruit of the tree of -scientific reason, and, what was not any less important, he had become -alive to the central truth of the social destination of all art and all -knowledge. - -In a word, he was transformed from the penman into the captain and -man-at-arms. 'The example of England,' says Condorcet, 'showed him that -truth is not made to remain a secret in the hands of a few philosophers, -and a limited number of men of the world, instructed, or rather -indoctrinated, by the philosophers; smiling with them at the errors of -which the people are the victims, but at the same time making themselves -the champions of these very errors, when their rank or position gives -them a real or chimerical interest in them, and quite ready to permit -the proscription, or even persecution, of their teachers, if they -venture to say what in secret they themselves actually think. From the -moment of his return, Voltaire felt himself called to destroy the -prejudices of every kind, of which his country was the slave.'[24] - -It is not difficult to perceive the sorts of fact which would most -strike the exile's attention, though it would be rash to suppose that -things struck him in exact proportion to their real weight and the depth -of their importance, or that he detected the connection subsisting among -them at their roots. Perhaps the first circumstance to press its -unfamiliarity upon him was the social and political consequence of the -men of letters in England, and the recognition given to the power of the -pen. The patronage of men of genius in the reign of Anne and part of the -reign of the first George had been profuse and splendid. The poet who -had been thrown into prison for resenting a whipping from a nobleman's -lackeys, found himself in a land where Newton and Locke were rewarded -with lucrative posts in the administration of the country, where Prior -and Gay acted in important embassies, and where Addison was a Secretary -of State. The author of OEdipe and the Henriade had to hang ignobly -about in the crowd at Versailles at the marriage of Lewis XV. to gain a -paltry pittance from the queen's privy purse,[25] while in England -Hughes and Rowe and Ambrose Philips and Congreve were all enjoying amply -endowed sinecures. The familiar intercourse between the ministers and -the brilliant literary group of that age has been often painted. At the -time of Voltaire's exile it had just come to an end with the accession -to supreme power of Walpole, who neither knew anything nor cared -anything about the literature of his own time. But the usage was still -new, and the men who had profited and given profit by it were alive, and -were the central figures in the circles among which Voltaire was -introduced by Bolingbroke. Newton died in 1727, and Voltaire saw his -death mourned as a public calamity, and surrounded with a pomp and -circumstance in the eye of the country that could not have been -surpassed if he had been, not a geometer, but a king who was the -benefactor of his people.[26] The author of Gulliver's Travels was -still a dignitary in the state church, and there was still a large -association of outward power and dignity with literary merit. - -In so far as we consider literature to be one of the purely decorative -arts, there can be no harm in this patronage of its most successful, -that is its most pleasing, professors by the political minister; but the -more closely literature approaches to being an organ of serious things, -a truly spiritual power, the more danger there is likely to be in making -it a path to temporal station or emolument. The practical instinct, -which on some of its sides seems like a miraculously implanted -substitute for scientific intelligence in English politics, has led us -almost too far in preserving this important separation of the new church -from the functions and rewards of the state. The misfortunes of France -since the Revolution have been due to no one circumstance so markedly as -to the predominance which the man of letters has acquired in that -country; and this fatal predominance was first founded, though assuredly -not of set design, by Voltaire. - -Not less amazing than the high honour paid to intellectual eminence was -the refugee from the city of the Bastille likely to find the freedom -with which public events and public personages were handled by any one -who could pay a printer. The licence of this time in press and theatre -has only been once or twice equalled since, and it has never been -surpassed. From Bolingbroke and Swift down to the author of The Golden -Rump,[27] every writer who chose to consider himself in opposition -treated the minister with a violence and ferocity, which neither -irritated nor daunted that sage head, but which would in France have -crowded the lowest dungeons of the Bastille with victims of Fleury's -anger and fright. Such license was as natural in a country that had -within ninety years gone through a violent civil war, a revolutionary -change of government and line, and a half-suppressed dispute of -succession, as it would have been astonishing in France, where the -continuity of outward order had never been more than superficially -ruffled, even in the most turbulent times of the factious wars of the -League and the Fronde. No new idea of the relations between ruler and -subject had ever penetrated into France, as it had done so deeply in the -neighbouring country. No serious popular issues had been so much as -stated. As Voltaire wrote, in the detestable times of Charles IX. and -Henry III. it was only a question whether the people should be the slave -of the Guises, while as for the last war, it deserved only hisses and -contempt; for what was De Retz but a rebel without a purpose and a -stirrer of sedition without a name, and what was the parliament but a -body which knew neither what it meant nor what it did not mean?[28] The -apologies of Jesuit writers for the assassination of tyrants deserve an -important place in the history of the doctrine of divine right; but -they were theoretical essays in casuistry for the initiated few, and -certainly conveyed no general principles of popular right to the many. - -Protestantism, on the other hand, loosened the conception of authority -and of the respect proper for authority, to a degree which has never -been realised in the most anarchic movements in France, whose anarchy -has ever sprung less from a disrespect for authority as such, than from -a passionate and uncompromising resolve in this or that group that the -authority shall be in one set of hands and not another. Voltairism has -proved itself as little capable as Catholicism of inspiring any piece -that may match with Milton's Areopagitica, the noblest defence that was -ever made of the noblest of causes. We know not whether Voltaire ever -thought much as to the history and foundation of that freedom of speech, -which even in its abuse struck him as so wonderful a circumstance in a -country that still preserved a stable and orderly society. He was -probably content to admire the phenomenon of a liberty so marvellous, -without searching very far for its antecedents. The mere spectacle of -such free, vigorous, many-sided, and truly social and public activity of -intellect as was visible in England at this time, was in itself enough -to fix the gaze of one who was so intensely conscious of his own energy -of intellect, and so bitterly rebellious against the system which -fastened a gag between his lips. - -If we would realise the impression of this scene of free speech on -Voltaire's ardent spirit, we need only remember that, when in time he -returned to his own country, he had to wait long and use many arts and -suffer harassing persecution, before he could publish what he had to say -on Newton and Locke, and in other less important respects had to -suppress much of what he had most at heart to say. 'One must disguise at -Paris,' he wrote long after his return, 'what I could not say too -strongly at London;' and he vaunts his hardihood in upholding Newton -against Rene Descartes, while he confesses that an unfortunate but -necessary circumspection forced him to try to make Locke obscure.[29] -Judge the light which would come into such a mind as his, when he first -saw the discussion and propagation of truth freed from these vile and -demoralising affronts. The very conception of truth was a new one, as a -goddess not to be shielded behind the shades of hierophantic mystery, -but rather to be sought in the free tumult and joyous strife of many -voices, there vindicating her own majesty and marking her own children. - -Penetrating deeper, Voltaire found not only a new idea of truth as a -something rude, robust, and self-sufficient, but also what was to him a -new order of truths, the triumphs of slow-footed induction and the -positive reason. France was the hotbed of systems of the physical -universe. The provisional and suspensive attitude was intolerable to her -impetuous genius, and the gaps which scientific investigation was -unable to fill, were straightway hidden behind an artificial screen of -metaphysical phantasies. The Aristotelian system died harder in France -than anywhere else, for so late as 1693, while Oxford and Cambridge and -London were actually embracing the Newtonian principles, even the -Cartesian system was forbidden to be taught by decrees of the Sorbonne -and of the Council of the King.[30] When the Cartesian physics once got -a foothold, they kept it as firmly as the system which they had found so -much difficulty in displacing. It is easy to believe that Voltaire's -positive intelligence would hold aloof by a certain instinct from -physical explanations which were unverified and incapable of being -verified, and which were imbrangled with theology and metaphysics. - -We can readily conceive, again, the sensation of freshness and delight -with which a mind so essentially real, and so fundamentally serious, -paradoxical as this may sound in connection with the name of the -greatest mocker that has ever lived, would exchange the poetised -astronomy of Fontenelle, excellently constituted as Fontenelle was in a -great many ways, for the sure and scientific discoveries of a Newton. -Voltaire, in whatever subject, never failed to see through rhetoric, and -for rhetoric as the substitute for clear reasoning he always had an -aversion as deep as it was wholesome. Nobody ever loved grace and form -in style more sincerely than Voltaire, but he has shown in a great many -ways that nobody ever valued grace and form more truly at their worth, -compared with correctness of argument and precision and solidity of -conclusion. Descartes, Fontenelle had said, 'essaying a bold flight, -insisted on placing himself at the source of all, on making himself -master of the first principles of things by a certain number of clear -and fundamental ideas, having thus only to descend to the phenomena of -nature as necessary consequences; Newton, more timid or more modest, -began his advance by resting on phenomena in order to ascend to the -unknown principles, resolved to admit them, however the combination of -the results might present them. The one starts from what he understands -clearly to discover the cause of what he sees: the other starts from -what he sees, to discover its cause, whether clear or obscure.' Caution -and reserve and sound method had achieved a generalisation more vast and -amazing than the boldest flight, or most resolute reasoning downwards -from a clearly held conception to phenomena, could possibly have -achieved. This splendid and unrivalled discovery was probably expounded -to Voltaire by Dr. Samuel Clarke, with whom he tells us that he had -several conferences in 1726,[31] and who was one of the ablest of the -Newtonians. He had no doubt learnt the theory of vortices from the -Jesuits, and clear exposition was the only thing needed to convert him -to the new theory, which shines by its own light, and must, in an -unbiassed intelligence with the humblest scientific quality, have -extinguished every artificial explanation. One of the truest signs of -the soundness of Voltaire's intellectual activity was that his glad -reception of the Newtonian doctrine of attraction did not blind him to -the signal service and splendid genius of Descartes. That loud-shouting -yet feeble-footed enthusiasm, which can only make sure of itself by -disparaging the object of a counter-enthusiasm, had no place in an -intellect so emphatically sincere and self-penetrative. He prefaces his -account of the system of attraction by a hearty and loyal appreciation -of the propounder of the system of vortices.[32] - -The acquisition of the special theory of attraction was in itself less -important for Voltaire, than the irresistible impulse which it would -give to the innate rationality or positivity of his own mind. It fitted -him to encounter with proper freedom not only vortices, but that -tremendous apparatus of monads, sufficient reason, and pre-established -harmony, with which Leibnitz then overawed European philosophy. 'O -Metaphysics!' he cried, 'we have, then, got as far as they had in the -time of the earliest Druids!'[33] - -Locke's essay impelled him further in the same path of patient and -cautious interrogation of experience; for the same method which -established gravitation presided over the birth of the experiential -psychology. Newton instead of elaborating a system of vortices, or -another, out of his own consciousness, industriously and patiently -waited on the phenomena. Locke, too, instead of inventing a romance of -the soul, to use Voltaire's phrase, sagaciously set himself to watch the -phenomena of thought, and 'reduced metaphysics to being the experimental -physics of the soul.'[34] Malebranche, then the reigning philosopher in -France, 'astonished the reason of those whom he delighted by his style. -People trusted him in what they did not understand, because he began by -being right in what they did understand; he seduced people by being -delightful, as Descartes seduced them by being daring, while Locke was -nothing more than sage.'[35] 'After all,' Voltaire once wrote, 'we must -admit that anybody who has read Locke, or rather who is his own Locke, -must find the Platos mere fine talkers, and nothing more. In point of -philosophy, a chapter of Locke or Clarke is, compared with the babble of -antiquity, what Newton's optics are compared with those of -Descartes.'[36] It is curious to observe that De Maistre, who thought -more meanly of Plato than Voltaire did, and hardly less meanly than he -thought of Voltaire himself, cried out that in the study of philosophy -contempt for Locke is the beginning of knowledge.[37] Voltaire, on the -other hand, is enchanted to hear that his niece reads the great English -philosopher, like a good father who sheds tears of joy that his -children are turning out well.[38] Augustus published an edict _de -coercendo intra fines imperio_, and like him, Locke has fixed the empire -of knowledge in order to strengthen it.[39] Locke, he says elsewhere, -traced the development of the human reason, as a good anatomist explains -the machinery of the human body: instead of defining all at once what we -do not understand, he examines by degrees what we want to understand: he -sometimes has the courage to speak positively, but sometimes also he has -the courage to doubt.[40] This is a perfectly appreciative account. -Locke perceived the hopelessness of defining things as they are in -themselves, and the necessity before all else of understanding the reach -of the human intelligence; the impossibility of attaining knowledge -absolute and transcendent; and the limitations of our thinking and -knowing faculties within the bounds of an experience that must always be -relative. The doubt which Voltaire praised in Locke had nothing to do -with that shivering mood which receives overmuch poetic praise in our -day, as the honest doubt that has more faith than half your creeds. -There was no question of the sentimental juvenilities of children crying -for light. It was by no means religious doubt, but philosophic; and it -affected only the possibilities of ontological knowledge, leaving -the grounds of faith on the one hand, and practical conduct on the -other, exactly where they were. His intense feeling for actualities -would draw Voltaire irresistibly to the writer who, in his judgment, -closed the gates of the dreamland of metaphysics, and banished the -vaulting ambition of a priori certainties, which led nowhere and assured -nothing. Voltaire's keen practical instinct may well have revealed to -him that men were most likely to attribute to the great social problem -of the improvement of mankind its right supremacy, when they had ceased -to concentrate intellectual effort on the insoluble; and Locke went a -long way towards showing how insoluble those questions were, on which, -as it chanced, the most strenuous efforts of the intellect of Europe -since the decline of theology had been concentrated. - -That he should have acquired more scientific views either upon the -origin of ideas, or the question whether the soul always thinks, or upon -the reason why an apple falls to the ground, or why the planets remain -in their orbits, was on the whole very much less important for Voltaire, -than a profound and very vital sentiment which was raised to supreme -prominence in his mind, by the spectacle of these vast continents of -knowledge newly discovered by the adventurous yet sure explorers of -English thought. This sentiment was a noble faith, none the less firm -because it was so passionate, in the ability of the relative and -practical understanding to reach truth; a deep-rooted reverence for it, -as a majestic power bearing munificent and unnumbered gifts to mankind. -Hence the vivacity of the annotations which about this time (1728) -Voltaire affixed to Pascal's famous Thoughts, and which were regarded at -that time as the audacious carpings of a shallow poet against a profound -philosopher. They were in truth the protest of a lively common sense -against a strained, morbid, and often sophistical, misrepresentation of -human nature and human circumstance. Voltaire shot a penetrative ray -through the clouds of doubt, out of which Pascal had made an apology for -mysticism. Even if there were no direct allusions to Locke, as there -are, we should know from whom the writer had learnt the art of insisting -on the relativity of propositions, reducing them to definable terms,[41] -and being very careful against those slippery unobserved transitions -from metaphor to reality, and from a term used in its common sense to -the same term in a transcendental sense, by which Pascal brought the -seeming contradictions of life, and its supposed pettiness, into a light -as oppressively glaring as it was artificial. 'These pretended -oppositions that you call contradictions are necessary ingredients in -the composition of man, who is, like the rest of nature, what he is -bound to be.'[42] And where is the wise man who would be full of despair -because he cannot find out the exact constitution of his thought, -because he only knows a few attributes of matter, because God has not -disclosed to him all his secrets? He might as well despair because he -has not got four feet and two wings.[43] This sage strain was the -restoration to men of their self-respect, the revival of that -intelligence which Pascal had so humiliated and thrust under foot. It -was what he had seen in England of the positive feats which reason had -achieved, that filled Voltaire with exultation in its power, and -confidence in the prospects of the race which possessed such an -instrument. '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.'[44] - -From this there flowed that other vehement current in his soul, of -energetic hatred toward the black clouds of prejudice, of mean -self-love, of sinister preference of class or order, of indolence, -obstinacy, wanton fancy, and all the other unhappy leanings of human -nature, and vexed and fatal conjunctures of circumstance, which -interpose between humanity and the beneficent sunbeams of its own -intelligence, that central light of the universe. Hence, again, by a -sufficiently visible chain of thought, his marked disesteem for -far-sounding names of brutal conquerors, and his cold regard for those -outward and material circumstances in the state of nations, which strike -the sense, but do not touch the inward reason. 'Not long ago,' he writes -once, 'a distinguished company were discussing the trite and frivolous -question, who was the greatest man, Caesar, Alexander, Tamerlane, or -Cromwell. Somebody answered that it was undoubtedly Isaac Newton. This -person was right; for if true greatness consists in having received from -heaven a powerful understanding and in using it to enlighten oneself and -all others, then such an one as Newton, who is hardly to be met with -once in ten centuries, is in truth the great man.... It is to him who -masters our minds by the force of truth, not to those who enslave men by -violence; it is to him who understands the universe, not to those who -disfigure it, that we owe our reverence.'[45] This may seem trite to us, -as the question which suggested it seemed to Voltaire, but we need only -reflect, first, how new this was, even as an idea, in the France which -Voltaire had quitted, and, second, how in spite of the nominal -acceptance of the idea, in the England of our own time there is, with an -immense majority not only of the general vulgar but of the special -vulgar who presume to teach in press and pulpit, no name of slight at -once so disdainful and so sure of transfixing as the name of thinker. - -The discovery of the New World did not fire the imagination and stir the -thought of Europe more intensely, than the vision of these new worlds of -knowledge kindled the ardour of the receptive spirit which had just come -into contact with them. But besides the speculative aspects of what he -saw in England, Voltaire was deeply penetrated by the social differences -between a country that had been effectively, if only partially, -transformed from feudalism, and his own, where feudalism had only been -transformed into a system more repressive than itself, and more unfit to -conduct a nation to the free and industrious developments of new -civilisation. It is a remarkable thing that though Voltaire's habitual -companions or patrons had belonged to the privileged class, he had been -sufficiently struck by the evils incident to the privileged system to -notice the absence of such evils in England, and to make a clear -attempt, though an insufficient one, to understand the secret of the -English immunity from them. One of the worst curses of France was the -taille or capitation-tax, and the way in which it was levied and -assessed. In England, Voltaire noticed, the peasant has not his feet -bruised in wooden shoes, he eats white bread, is decently clad, is not -terrified to increase the number of his stock, or to roof his dwelling -with tiles, lest his tax should be raised next year. Again, he placed -his finger on one of the circumstances that did most to spoil the growth -of a compact and well-knit society in France, when he pointed to the -large number of farmers in England with five or six hundred pounds -sterling a year, who do not think it beneath them to cultivate the earth -which has made them rich, and on which they live in active freedom.[46] -The profoundest modern investigator of the conditions of French society -in the eighteenth century has indicated the eagerness of every man who -got a little capital to quit the country and buy a place in a town, as -doing more harm to the progress of the agriculture and commerce of -France than even the taille itself and the trade corporations.[47] - -Voltaire perceived the astonishing fact that in this country a man -because he is a noble or a priest was not exempt from paying certain -taxes, and that the Commons who regulated the taxes, though second to -the Lords in rank, were above them in legislative influence.[48] His -acute sight also revealed to him the importance of the mixture of ranks -and classes in common pursuits, and he records with admiration instances -of the younger sons of peers of the realm following trade. 'Whoever -arrives in Paris from the depths of a remote province with money to -spend and a name in _ac_ or _ille_, can talk about a man like me, a man -of my quality,'[49] and hold a merchant in sovereign contempt. The -merchant again so constantly hears his business spoken of with disdain -that he is fool enough to blush for it; yet I am not sure which is the -more useful to a state, a thickly-bepowdered lord who knows exactly what -time the king rises and what time he goes to bed, and gives himself -mighty airs of greatness while he plays the part of a slave in a -minister's ante-room; or the merchant who enriches his country, gives -orders from his counting-house at Surat or Cairo, and contributes to -the happiness of the globe.[50] It is easy to conceive the fury which -these contrasts drawn from English observation would excite among the -personages in France who happened to get the worst side in them, and -there was assuredly nothing surprising in the decree of the Parliament -of Paris (1734), which condemned the Letters on the English to be -publicly burnt, as scandalous and contrary alike to good manners and the -respect due to principalities and powers. - -The English reader of the Letters is naturally struck by the absence of -any adequate account of our political liberties and free constitutional -forms. There is a good chapter on Bacon, one on inoculation, and several -on the Quakers, but on the civil constitution hardly a word of large -appreciativeness. Not only this, but there is no sign that Voltaire -either set any due or special value on the popular forms of the -Hanoverian time, or clearly understood that the liberty, which was so -amazing and so precious to him in the region of speculative and literary -activity, was the direct fruit of that general spirit of freedom, which -is naturally engendered in a people accustomed to take an active part in -the conduct of its own affairs. Liberty in spirituals was adorable to -him, but for liberty in temporals he never seems to have had more than a -very distant and verbal kind of respect; just because, with all his -unmatched keenness of sight, he failed to discover that the English -sturdiness in the matter of civil rights was the very root and cause, -not only of that material prosperity which struck him so much, and of -the slightness and movableness of the line which divided the aristocracy -from the commercial classes, but also of the fact that a Newton and a -Locke were inwardly emboldened to give free play to their intelligence -without fear of being punished for their conclusions, and of the only -less important fact that whatever conclusions speculative genius might -establish would be given to the world without interposition from any -court or university or official tribunal. Voltaire undoubtedly admired -the English for their parliament, because the material and superficial -advantages that delighted him were evidently due to the system, which -happened to be parliamentary. What we miss is any consciousness that -these advantages would not have been what they were, if they had been -conferred by an absolute sovereign; any recognition that political -activity throughout a nation works in a thousand indirect but most -potent ways, and is not more to be prized for this, than for its direct -and most palpable consequences. In one place, indeed, he mentions that -the honour paid to men of letters is due to the form of government, but -his language betrays a wholly inadequate and incorrect notion of the -true operation of the form of government. 'There are in London,' he -says, 'about eight hundred people with the right of speaking in public, -and maintaining the interests of the nation. Some five or six thousand -pretend to the same honour in their turn. All the rest set themselves up -to judge these, and everybody can print what he thinks. So all the -nation is bound to instruct itself. All talk is about the governments of -Athens and Rome, and it becomes necessary to read the authors who have -discussed them. That naturally leads to love of polite learning.'[51] -This is to confound a very trivial accident of popular governments with -their essence. If culture thrives under them--a very doubtful -position--it is not because voters wish to understand the historical -allusions of candidates, but because the general stir and life of public -activity tends to commove the whole system. Political freedom does not -produce men of genius, but its atmosphere is more favourable than any -other to their making the best of their genius in the service of -mankind. - -Voltaire, in this as in too much besides, was content with a keen and -rapid glance at the surface. The reader may remember his story of -meeting a boatman one day on the Thames, who seeing that he was a -Frenchman, with a too characteristic kind of courtesy, took the -opportunity of bawling out, with the added emphasis of a round oath, -that he would rather be a boatman on the Thames than an archbishop in -France. The next day Voltaire saw his man in prison with irons on and -praying an alms from the passers-by, and so asked him whether he still -thought as scurvily of an archbishop in France. 'Ah, sir,' cried the -man, 'what an abominable government! I have been carried off by force to -go and serve in one of the king's ships in Norway. They take me from my -wife and my children, and lay me up in prison with irons on my legs -until the time for going on board, for fear I should run away.' A -countryman of Voltaire's confessed that he felt a splenetic joy that a -people who were constantly taunting the French with their servitude, -were in sooth just as much slaves themselves; but for my own part, says -Voltaire, I felt a humaner sentiment, I was afflicted at there being no -liberty on the earth.[52] - -This is well enough as a comment on the abomination of impressment; yet -we feel that there is behind it, and not here only but generally in -Voltaire, a sort of confusion between two very distinct conceptions, -that both in his day and ever since have been equally designated by the -common name of civil liberty. The first of these ideas is a mere -privative, undoubtedly of sovereign importance, but still a privative, -and implies absence, more or less complete, of arbitrary control from -without, of interference with individual action by authority, of any -pretension on the part of any organised body to hinder any member of the -society from doing or abstaining from doing what may seem right in his -own eyes, provided he pays a corresponding respect to the freedom of his -fellows. Freedom in this sense Voltaire fully understood, and valued as -profoundly as it deserves to be valued. Political liberty, however, has -not only a meaning of abstention, but a meaning of participation. If in -one sense it is a sheer negative, and a doctrine of rights, in another -sense it is thoroughly positive, and a gospel of duties. The liberty -which has really made England what it so delighted and stimulated and -inflamed Voltaire to find her, has been quite as much of the second kind -as of the first; that liberty which consists in a national habit of -independent and watchful interest in the transaction of the national -affairs by the persons most concerned in them; in a general -consciousness of the duty of having some opinion on the business of the -state; in a recognition on the part of the government that the balance -of this opinion is necessary as a sanction to any policy, to which the -effective force of the state is applied. It is true that this public -participation in public concerns has sometimes been very dark and blind, -as it has often been in the highest degree enlightened, but for good or -for evil it has been the root of the matter. - -The great Frenchmen, who have been most characteristically French, while -valuing all and envying many of the best products of our liberty, may be -said generally to have failed entirely to detect that the salt of -English character, in days when it had more robustness than we can see -just now, sprung from the double circumstance of every man being at -liberty to have, and being inclined to take the trouble to have, an -opinion about the method and doings of his government; and of so many -men being called upon in high capacity or low, in an important function -or an obscure one, to take an independent and free share in controlling -or initiating the doings of their government. Take Montesquieu, for -example. He came to England just when Voltaire quitted it, and studied -carefully those political facts which his countryman had so neglected. -Yet he saw no deeper into the spirit of our institutions than to fix on -the constitutional balance of powers as the great secret of our freedom -and order. And Montesquieu, in spite of this, was wiser than most of his -contemporaries, for he at least saw the worth of constitutional freedom, -if he failed to see other ingredients of still more importance. French -statesmen and publicists have been systematically blind to the great -truth that there is no royal road to national well-being, and that -nations will deliberately put away happiness from themselves, unless -such happiness comes to them in a given way. The Physiocrats, who were -with all their shortcomings the most nearly scientific social thinkers -France possessed, could rise to no higher conception of a national life -than the supreme authority of a wise and benevolent monarch, giving good -gifts to his subjects. Turgot, with all the breadth and sagacity of his -genius, when five-and-forty years after our present date he came into -power, austerely clung to the same disastrous idea of passing reasoned -laws, in the shape of the beneficial edicts of an absolute power. -Voltaire, in the same way, never rose above the simple political -conception of an eastern tale, a good-tempered despot with a sage -vizier. In politics, then, he failed to carry away from England the very -essence and principle of our institutions, with which it was so much -more important that his countrymen should be familiarised than that they -should follow inoculation. - -It may at first sight be astonishing to find that, while Voltaire was -impressed only in a vague and general way with the free variety of -theological opinion which Protestantism had secured for England, the -sect which made a sort of mark on his mind was that which conceived the -idea that Christianity has after all something to do with the type and -example of Christ. We know how laughable and monstrous the Quaker scheme -has appeared to people who have been steeped from their youth upwards in -elaborate systems of abstruse metaphysical dogma, mystic ceremonies, -hierarchic ordering, and profuse condemnation of rival creeds. -Voltaire's imagination was struck by a sect who professed to regard the -religion of Christ as a simple and austere discipline of life, who -repudiated ritual, and held war for the worst of anti-christian -practices. The forms and doctrines of the established church of the -country he would be likely to take merely for so much of the common form -of the national institutions. He would simply regard it as the English -way of narrowing the mind and consolidating the social order. Gibbon's -famous sentence was not yet written, which described all religions as -equally true in the eyes of the people, equally false in the eyes of -the philosopher, and equally useful in the eyes of the magistrate. But -the idea was the idea of the century, and Voltaire would justly look -upon the Anglican profession as a temporarily useful and statesmanlike -settlement. He praised its clergy for the superior regularity of their -manners. 'That indefinable being, who is neither ecclesiastic nor -secular, in a word, who is called _abbe_, is an unknown species in -England; the clergy here are all prigs, and nearly all pedants. When -they learn that in France young men notorious for their debauchery, and -raised to preferment by the intrigues of women, pursue their amours -publicly, amuse themselves by the composition of gallant verses, give -everyday prolonged and luxurious suppers, and rise from them to implore -the enlightenment of the holy spirit, boldly calling themselves the -successors of the apostles--why, then our English thank God that they are -Protestants.'[53] - -If, however, in face of a young and lively French graduate, bawling -theology in the schools in the morning and in the evening singing tender -songs with the ladies, an Anglican divine is a very Cato, this Cato is a -downright gallant before a Scotch presbyterian, who assumes a grave step -and a sour mien, preaches from the nose, and gives the name of harlot of -Babylon to all churches in which some of the ecclesiastics are so -fortunate as to receive an income of fifty thousand livres a year. -However, each man takes whatever road to heaven he pleases. If there -were one religion in England, they would have to fear its despotism; if -there were only two, they would cut one another's throats; but there are -thirty; so they live peaceably and happily together.[54] - -In the Quakers Voltaire saw something quite different from the purely -political pretensions and internecine quarrels of doctrine of the -ordinary worldly sects. It is impossible to say how much of the -kindliness with which he speaks of them is due to real admiration of -their simple, dignified, and pacific life, and how much to a mischievous -desire to make their praise a handle for the dispraise of overweening -competitors. On the whole there is a sincerity and heartiness of -interest in his long account of this sect, which persuades one that he -was moved by a genuine sympathy with a religion that could enjoin the -humane and peaceful and spiritual precepts of Christ, while putting away -baptism, ceremonial communion, and hierophantic orders. The nobility of -the social theories of the Society of Friends would naturally stir -Voltaire even more deeply than their abstention from practices that were -in his eyes degrading superstitions. He felt that the repugnance to -lower the majesty of their deity, by taking his name upon their lips as -solemn ratification of their words, had the effect of elevating the -dignity of man, by making his bare word fully credible without this -solemn ratification. Their refusal to comply with the deferential usages -of social intercourse, though nominally based on the sinfulness of -signs of homage to any mere mortal, insinuated a consciousness of -equality and self-respect in that mere mortal who was careful to make no -bows and to keep his hat on in every presence. Above all, Voltaire, who -was nowhere more veritably modern or better entitled to our veneration -than by reason of his steadfast hatred of war, revered a sect so far -removed from the brutality of the military regime as to hold peace for a -first principle of the Christian faith and religious practice. The -reason why we do not go to war, his Quaker says, is not that we are -afraid of death, but because we are not wolves, nor tigers, nor dogs, -but Christian men. 'Our God, who has bidden us love our enemies and -suffer evil without complaint, assuredly has no mind that we should -cross the sea to go and cut the throats of our brothers, because -murderers in red clothes and hats two feet high enlist citizens, making -a noise with two little sticks on an ass's skin tightly stretched. And -when, after victories won, all London blazes with illuminations, the sky -is aflame with rockets, and the air resounds with the din of bells, -organs, cannon, we mourn in silence over the slaughter that causes all -the public joy.'[55] - -Voltaire, let us add, was no dilettante traveller constructing views and -deducing theories of national life out of his own uninstructed -consciousness. No German could have worked more diligently at the facts, -and we may say here, once for all, that if it is often necessary to -condemn him for superficiality, this lack of depth seldom at any time -proceeds from want of painstaking. His unrivalled brilliance of -expression blinds us to the extreme and conscientious industry that -provided matter. The most illustrious exile that our free land has -received from France in our own times, and assuredly far more of a giant -in the order of imagination than Voltaire, never had intellectual -curiosity enough to learn the language of the country that had given him -twenty years of shelter. Voltaire, in the few months of his exile here -acquired such an astonishing mastery over English as to be able to read -and relish an esoteric book like Hudibras, and to compass the enormously -difficult feat of rendering portions of it into good French verse.[56] He -composed an essay on epic poetry in the English tongue, and he wrote one -act of Brutus in English. - -He read Shakespeare, and made an elaborate study of his method. He -declares that Milton does as much honour to England as the great Newton, -and he took especial pains not only to master and appreciate the secret -of Milton's poetic power, but even to ascertain the minutest -circumstances of his life.[57] He studied Dryden, 'an author who would -have a glory without blemish, if he had only written the tenth part of -his works.'[58] He found Addison the first Englishman who had written a -reasonable tragedy, and Addison's character of Cato one of the finest -creations of any stage.[59] Wycherley, Vanbrugh, and Congreve he -esteemed more highly than most of their countrymen do now. An act of a -play of Lillo's was the base of the fourth act of Mahomet. Rochester, -Waller, Prior, and Pope, he read carefully and admired as heartily as -they deserved. Long after he had left England behind, he places Pope and -Addison on a level for variety of genius with Machiavel and Leibnitz and -Fontenelle;[60] and Pope he evidently for a long while kept habitually -by his elbow. Swift he placed before Rabelais, calling him Rabelais in -his senses, and, as usual, giving good reasons for his preference; for -Swift, he says justly, has not the gaiety of Rabelais, but he has all -the finesse, the sense, the variety, the fine taste, in which the priest -of Meudon was wanting.[61] In philosophy, besides Locke, there is -evidence that he read something of Hobbes, and something of Berkeley, -and something of Cudworth.[62] Always, however, 'harassed, wearied, -ashamed of having sought so many truths and found so many chimeras, I -returned to Locke; like a prodigal son returning to his father, I threw -myself into the arms of that modest man, who never pretends to know what -he does not know, who in truth has no enormous possessions, but whose -substance is well assured.'[63] - -Nor did Voltaire limit himself to the study of science, philosophy, and -poetry. He plunged into the field of theology, and mastered that famous -deistical controversy, of which the seed had been sown in the first half -of the seventeenth century by Lord Herbert of Cherbury, the -correspondent of Descartes and the earliest of the English metaphysical -thinkers.[64] Lord Herbert's object was to disengage from revelation -both our conceptions of the one supreme power, and the sanctions of good -and bad conduct. Toland, whom we know also that Voltaire read, aimed at -disengaging Christianity from mystery, and discrediting the canon of the -New Testament. In 1724 Collins published his Discourse on the Grounds -and Reasons of the Christian Religion, of which we are told that few -books ever made a greater noise than this did at its first publication. -The press teemed with vindications, replies, and rejoinders to Collins's -arguments during the whole of Voltaire's residence in England.[65] His -position was one which no modern free-thinker would dream of making a -central point of attack, and which hardly any modern apologist would -take the pains to reply to. He maintained that Jesus Christ and the -apostles trusted to the prophecies of the Old Testament for their -credentials, and then he showed, or tried to show, in various ways, -that these prophecies would not bear the weight which was thus laid upon -them. We may be sure that Voltaire's alert curiosity would interest him -profoundly in the lively polemical ferment which this notable contention -of Collins's stirred up. - -Woolston's discourses, written to prove that the miracles of the New -Testament are as mythical and allegorical as the prophecies of the old, -appeared at the same time, and had an enormous sale. Voltaire was much -struck by this writer's coarse and hardy way of dealing with the -miraculous legends, and the article on Miracles in the Philosophical -Dictionary shows how carefully he had read Woolston's book.[66] We find -references to Shaftesbury and Chubb in Voltaire's letters and elsewhere, -though they are not the references of an admirer,[67] and Bolingbroke -was one of the most influential and intimate of his friends. It is not -too much to say that Bolingbroke was the direct progenitor of Voltaire's -opinions in religion, and that nearly every one of the positive articles -in Voltaire's rather moderately sized creed was held and inculcated by -that brilliant and disordered genius. He did not always accept -Bolingbroke's optimism, but even as late in the century as 1767 Voltaire -thought it worth while to borrow his name for a volume of compendious -attack on the popular religion.[68] Bolingbroke's tone was peculiarly -light and peculiarly well-bred. His infidelity was strictly infidelity -for the upper classes;[69] ingenious, full of literature, and elegantly -supercilious. He made no pretence to theological criticism in any sense -that can be gravely admitted, but looked at the claims of revelation -with the eye of a polished man of the world, and met its arguments with -those general considerations of airy probability which go so far with -men who insist on having plausible opinions on all subjects, while they -will not take pains to work to the bottom of any. - -Villemain's observation that there is not one of Voltaire's writings -that does not bear the mark of his sojourn in England, is specially true -of what he wrote against theology. It was the English onslaught which -sowed in him the seed of the idea, and eventually supplied him with the -argumentative instruments, of a systematic and reasoned attack upon that -mass of doctrinal superstition and social abuse, which it had hitherto -been the fashion for even the strongest spirits in his own country to do -no more than touch with a cool sneer or a flippant insinuation, directed -to the private ear of a sympathiser. Who, born within the last forty -years, cried Burke, has read one word of Collins, and Toland, and Chubb, -and Morgan, and that whole race who called themselves Freethinkers? Who -now reads Bolingbroke? Who ever read him through?[70] This was very -well, but hundreds of thousands of persons born within those last forty -years had read Voltaire, and Voltaire had drawn from the armoury of -these dead and unread Freethinkers the weapons which he made sharp with -the mockery of his own spirit. He stood on the platform which they had -constructed, to stretch forth his hand against the shrine and the image -before which so many credulous generations had bowed down. It was in -this most transformed shape among others that at length, late and -changed, but directly of descent, the free and protesting genius of the -Reformation made its decisive entry into France. - -It is easy to cite proofs of the repudiation by Protestant bodies of the -Protestant principle, to multiply instances of the narrow rigidity of -their dogma, and the intolerance of their discipline. This method -supplies an excellent answer as against Protestants who tax Catholics -with the crime of persecution, or the crime of opposing intellectual -independence. It cannot, however, touch the fact that Protestantism was -indirectly the means of creating and dispersing an atmosphere of -rationalism, in which there speedily sprang up philosophical, -theological, and political influences, all of them entirely antagonistic -to the old order of thought and institution. The whole intellectual -temperature underwent a permanent change, that was silently mortal to -the most flourishing tenets of all sorts. It is futile to ask for a -precise logical chain of relations between the beginning of a movement -and its end; and there is no more direct and logical connection between -the right of private judgment and an experiential doctrine of -psychology, than there is between experiential psychology and deism. -Nobody now thinks that the effect is homogeneous with its cause, or that -there is any objective resemblance between a blade of wheat and the -moisture and warmth which fill and expand it. All we can see is that the -proclamation of the rights of free judgment would tend to substitute -reason for authority, and evidence for tradition, as the arbiters of -opinion; and that the political expression of this change in the civil -wars of the middle of the seventeenth century would naturally deepen the -influence of the new principle, and produce the Lockian rationalism of -the end of that century, which almost instantaneously extended from the -region of metaphysics into the region of theology. - -The historian of every kind of opinion, and the student of the great -chiefs of intellectual movements, habitually do violence to actual -circumstances, by imparting too systematic a connection to the various -parts of belief, and by assuming an unreal degree of conscious logical -continuity among the notions of individual thinkers. Critics fill in the -frame with a completeness and exactitude that had no counterpart in the -man's own judgments, and they identify him with a multitude of -deductions from his premisses, which may be fairly drawn, but which -never at all entered into his mind, and formed no part of his character. -The philosophy of the majority of men is nothing more shaped and -incorporate than a little group of potential and partially incoherent -tendencies. To stiffen these into a system of definite formulas is the -most deceptive, as it is the most common, of critical processes. A few -persons, with an exceptional turn for philosophy, consciously embody -their metaphysical principles with a certain detail in all the rest of -their thinking. With most people, however, even people of superior -capacity, the relation between their ground-system, such as a critic -might supply them with, and their manifestations of intellectual -activity, is of an extremely indirect and general kind. - -Hence the untrustworthiness of those critical schemata, so attractive -for their compact order, which first make Voltaire a Lockian -sensationalist, and then trace his deism to his sensationalism. We have -already seen that he was a deist before he came to England, just as Lord -Herbert of Cherbury was a deist, who wrote before Locke was born. It was -not the metaphysical revolution of Locke which led to deism, but the -sort of way in which he thought about metaphysics, a way which was -immediately applied to theology by other people, whether assailants or -defenders of the current opinions. Locke's was 'common-sense thinking,' -and the fashion spread. The air was thick with common-sense objections -to Christianity, as it was with common-sense ideas as to the way in -which we come to have ideas. There was no temperament to which such an -atmosphere could be so congenial as Voltaire's, of whom we cannot too -often repeat, considering the vulgar reputation he has for violence and -excess, that he was in thought the very genius of good sense, whether or -no we fully admit M. Cousin's qualification of it as superficial good -sense. It has been said that he always speaks of Descartes, Leibnitz, -and Spinoza, like a man to whom nature has refused the metaphysical -sense.[71] At any rate he could never agree with them, and he never -tried to find truth by the roads which they had made. It is true, -however, that he shows no sign of special fitness for metaphysics, any -more than he did for physical science. The metaphysics of Locke lay -undeveloped in his mind, just as the theory of evolution lies in so many -minds at the present time. There is a faint informal reference of other -theories to this central and half-seen standard. When metaphysical -subjects came before him, he felt that he had this for a sheet-anchor, -and he did not greatly care to keep proving it again and again by -continued criticism or examination. The upshot of his acquaintance with -Locke was a systematic adherence to common-sense modes of thinking; and -he always betrayed the faults and shortcomings to which such modes -inevitably lead, when they are brought, to the exclusion of -complementary ideas, to the practical subjects that comprehend more than -prudence, self-interest, and sobriety. The subject that does beyond any -other comprehend more than these elements is religion, and the -substantial vices of Voltaire's objections to religion first arose from -his familiarity with the English form of deism, and his instinctive -feeling for its method. - -The deism of Leibnitz was a positive belief, and made the existence of a -supreme power an actual and living object of conviction. The mark of -this belief has remained on German speculation throughout its course, -down to our own day. English deism, on the contrary, was only a -particular way of repudiating Christianity. There was as little of God -in it as could well be. Its theory was that God had given each man the -light of reason in his own breast; that by this reason every scheme of -belief must be tried, and accepted or rejected; and that the Christian -scheme being so tried was in various ways found wanting. The formula of -some book of the eighteenth century, that God created nature and nature -created the world, must be allowed to have reduced theistic conception -to something like the shadow of smoke. The English eighteenth-century -formula was, theistically, nearly as void. The Being who set the reason -of each individual on a kind of judicial bench within the forum of his -own conscience, and left him and it together to settle belief and -conduct between them, was a tolerably remote and unreal sort of -personage. His spiritual force, according to such a doctrine, became -very much as if it had no existence. - -It was not to be expected that a sovereign dwelling in such amazingly -remote lands as this would continue long with undisputed authority, when -all the negative forces of the time had reached their full momentum. In -England the reaction against this strange absentee government of the -universe took the form which might have been anticipated from the deep -hold that Protestantism had won, and the spirituality which had been -engendered by Protestant reference to the relations between the -individual conscience and the mystic operations of faith. Deism became a -reality with a God in it in the great Evangelical revival, terrible and -inevitable, which has so deeply coloured religious feeling and warped -intellectual growth in England ever since. In France, thought took a -very different and much simpler turn. Or perhaps it would be more -correct to say that it took no turn at all, but carried the godless -deism of the English school to its fair conclusion, and dismissed a -deity who only reigned and did not govern. The whole movement had a -single origin. There is not one of the arguments of the French -philosophers in the eighteenth century, says a very competent authority, -which cannot be found in the English school of the beginning of the -century.[72] Voltaire, who carried the English way of thinking about the -supernatural power into France, lived to see a band of trenchant and -energetic disciples develop principles which he had planted, into a -system of dogmatic atheism. The time came when he was spoken of -contemptuously as retrograde and superstitious: '_Voltaire est bigot, il -est deiste_.' - - - - -CHAPTER III. - -LITERATURE. - - -On the whole, the critic's task is perhaps less to classify a type of -character as good or bad, as worthy of so much praise or so much -censure, than to mark the material out of which a man has his life to -make, and the kind of use and form to which he puts his material. To -begin with, the bald division of men into sheep and goats is in one -sense so easy as not to be worth performing, and in another sense it is -so hard as only to be possible for some being with supernatural insight. -And even were the qualities employed in the task of a rarer kind than -they are, the utility of the performance is always extremely slight, -compared with that other kind of criticism which dwells less on the -final balance of good or evil, than on the first innate conditions of -temperament, the fixed limitations of opportunity, and the complex -interplay of the two with that character, which is first their creature -and then their master. It is less the concern of criticism to pronounce -its man absolutely rich or absolutely poor, than to count up his talents -and the usury of his own which he added to them. Assuredly there ought -to be little condonation of the foibles, and none at all of the moral -obliquities, of the dead, because this would mean the demoralisation of -the living. But it is seriously to overrate the power of bald words and -written opinion, to suppose that a critic's censure of conduct which a -thousand other agents, from the child's hornbook up to the obvious and -pressing dictates of social convenience, are daily and hourly -prescribing, can be other than a work of supererogation, which fixes the -mind on platitudes, instead of leading it on in search of special and -distinctive traits. - -It would be easy to pour overflowing vials of condemnation on many sides -of Voltaire's character and career. No man possessed of so much good -sense ever fell so constantly into the kinds of error against which good -sense particularly warns men. There is no more wearisome or pitiful leaf -in the biographies of the great, than the tale of Voltaire's quarrels -with ignoble creatures; with a wrecked soul, like J. B. Rousseau (whom -the reader will not confound with Jean Jacques); with a thievish -bookseller, like Jore; with a calumnious journalist, like Desfontaines; -with a rapacious knave like Hirschel; and all the other tormentors in -the Voltairean history, whose names recall vulgar, dishonest, and -indignant pertinacity on the one side, and wasteful, undignified fury on -the other. That lesson in the art of life which concerns a man's -dealings with those who have shown patent moral inferiority, was never -mastered by Voltaire. Instead of the silence, composure, and austere -oblivion, which it is of the essence of strength to oppose to unworthy -natures, he habitually confronted the dusty creeping things that beset -his march, as if they stood valiant and erect; and the more unworthy -they were, the more vehement and strenuous and shrill was his contention -with them. The ignominy of such strife is clear. One thing only may -perhaps be said. His intense susceptibility to vulgar calumny flowed -from the same quality in his nature which made unbearable to him the -presence of superstition and injustice, those mightier calumnies on -humanity. The irritated protests against the small foes of his person -were as the dregs of potent wine, and were the lower part of that -passionate sensibility which made him the assailant of the giant -oppressors of the human mind. This reflection does not make any less -tedious to us the damnable iteration of petty quarrel and fretting -complaint which fills such a space in his correspondence and in his -biographies, nor does it lessen our regret at the havoc which this fatal -defect of his qualities made with his contentedness. We think of his -consolation to a person as susceptible as himself: 'There have always -been Frerons in literature; but they say there must be caterpillars for -nightingales to eat, that they may sing the better:' and we wish that -our nightingale had devoured its portion with something less of tumult. -But it may do something to prevent us from giving a prominence, that is -both unfair and extremely misleading, to mere shadow, as if that had -been the whole substance. Alas, why after all should men, from Moses -downwards, be so cheerfully ready to contemplate the hinder parts of -their divinities? - -The period of twenty years between Voltaire's departure from England and -his departure for Berlin, although often pronounced the happiest time of -his life, is very thickly set with these humiliating incidents. To us, -however, they are dead, because though vivid enough to Voltaire--and it -is strange how constantly it happens that the minor circumstance of life -is more real and ever-present to a man than his essential and abiding -work in it--they were but transitory and accidental. Just as it does -little good to the understanding to spend much time over tenth-rate -literature, so it is little edifying to the character to rake among the -private obscurities of even first-rate men, and it is surely a good rule -to keep ourselves as much as we can in contact with what is great. - -The chief personal fact of this time was the connection which Voltaire -formed with the Marquise du Chatelet, and which lasted from 1733 to -1749. She was to him that important and peculiar influence which, in one -shape or another, some woman seems to have been to nearly every foremost -man. In Voltaire's case this influence was not the rich and tender -inspiration with which women have so many a time sweetened the lives and -glorified the thought of illustrious workers, nor was he bound to her -by those bonds of passion which have often the effect of exalting the -strength and widening the range of the whole of the nature that is -susceptive of passion. Their inner relations hardly depended on anything -more extraordinary or more delicate than the sentiment of a masculine -friendship. Voltaire found in the divine Emily a strong and active head, -a keen and generous admiration for his own genius, and an eagerness to -surround him with the external conditions most favourable to that steady -industry which was always a thing so near his own heart. They are two -great men, one of whom wears petticoats, said Voltaire of her and of -Frederick. It is impossible to tell what share vanity had in the -beginning of a connection, which probably owed its long continuance more -to use and habit than to any deep-rooted sentiment. Vanity was one of -the most strongly marked of Voltaire's traits, and to this side of him -relations with a woman of quality who adored his genius were no doubt -extremely gratifying. Yet one ought to do him the justice to say that -his vanity was only skin-deep. It had nothing in common with the greedy -egotism which reduces the whole broad universe to a mere microcosm of -pygmy self. The vanity which discloses a real flaw in character is a -loud and tyrannical claim for acknowledgment of literary supremacy, and -with it the mean vices of envy, jealousy, and detraction are usually in -company. Voltaire's vanity was something very different from this -truculent kind of self-assertion. It had a source in his intensely -sympathetic quality, and was a gay and eager asking of assurance from -others that his work gave them pleasure. Let us be very careful to -remember that it never stood in the way of self-knowledge,--the great -test of the difference between the vanity that is harmless, and the -vanity that is fatuous and destructive. - -It has been rather the fashion to laugh at the Marquise du Chatelet, for -no better reasons perhaps than that she, being a woman, studied Newton, -and had relations called tender with a man so little associated in -common opinion with tenderness as Voltaire. The first reason is -disgraceful, and the second is perhaps childish. Everything goes to show -that Madame du Chatelet possessed a hardy originality of character, of -which society is so little likely to have an excess that we can hardly -ever be thankful enough for it. There is probably nothing which would -lead to so rapid and marked an improvement in the world, as a large -increase of the number of women in it with the will and the capacity to -master Newton as thoroughly as she did. And her long and sedulous -affection for a man of genius of Voltaire's exceptional quality, -entitles her to the not too common praise of recognising and revering -intellectual greatness as it deserves. Her friendship for him was not -the semi-servile and feebly intelligent solicitude which superior men -have too often the wretched weakness to seek in their female companions, -but an imperial sympathy. She was unamiable, it is true, and possessed -neither the delicacy which a more fastidious age requires in a woman, -nor the sense of honour which we now demand in a man. These defects, -however, were not genuinely personal, but lay in the manners of the -time. It was not so with all her faults. To the weak and dependent she -was overbearing, harsh, mean, and even cruel. A fatuous caprice would -often destroy the domestic peace and pleasure of a week. But nothing was -suffered to impede the labour of a day. The industry of the house was -incessant. - -It is said, and it was said first by one who lived with them for some -time, and has left a graphic account of the interior of Cirey, that she -made Voltaire's life a little hard to him.[73] There were many -occasional storms and short sullen fits even in these high regions of -science and the finer tastes. Yet such stormful scenes, with great -actors as with small, are perhaps more painful in description than they -were in reality; and Voltaire was less discomposed by the lively -impetuosity of a companion like Madame du Chatelet, than he would have -been by the orderly calm of a more precise and perfectly well-regulated -person. A man follows the conditions of his temperament, and Voltaire's -unresting animation and fire might make him feel a certain joy of life -and freedom in the occasional contentiousness of a slightly shrewish -temper. We cannot think of him as ever shrinking, ever craving for -repose, as some men do as for a very necessity of existence. The health -of your friend, wrote Madame du Chatelet to D'Argental in 1739, is in so -deplorable a state that the only hope I have left of restoring it is in -the turmoil of a journey[74]. A tolerably frequent agitation was a -condition of even such health as he had, to one of Voltaire's nervous -and feverish habit. - -Let it be said that his restlessness never took a form which involved a -sacrifice of the happiness of other people. It was never tyrannical and -exigent. There are many, too many, instances of his angry impatience -with persons against whom he thought he had cause of offence. There is -not a single instance in which any shadow of implacableness lurked for -an enemy who had repented or fallen into misfortune; and if his -resentment was constantly aflame against the ignoble, it instantly -expired and changed into warm-hearted pity, when the ignoble became -either penitent or miserable. There are many tales of the readiness with -which his anger was appeased. Any one will suffice as a type. On some -occasion when Voltaire was harassed by a storm of libels, and happened -to be on good terms with the police, a distributor of the libels was -arrested. The father, an old man of eighty, hastened to Voltaire to pray -for pardon. All Voltaire's fury instantly vanished at the first appeal; -he wept with the old man, embraced him, consoled him, and straightway -ran to procure the liberation of the offender[75]. An eye-witness -related to Grimm how he happened to be present at Ferney when Voltaire -received Rousseau's Lettres de la Montagne, and read the apostrophe -relating to himself. His face seemed to take fire, his eyes sparkled -with fury, his whole frame trembled, and he cried in terrible tones--'The -miscreant! the monster! I must have him cudgelled--yes, I will have him -cudgelled in his mountains at the knees of his nurse.' 'Pray, calm -yourself,' said the bystander, 'for I know that Rousseau means to pay -you a visit, and will very shortly be at Ferney.' 'Ah, only let him -come,' replied Voltaire. 'But how will you receive him?' 'Receive him -... I will give him supper, put him in my own bed, and say, There is a -good supper; this is the best bed in the house; do me the pleasure to -accept one and the other, and to make yourself happy here[76].' One does -not understand the terrible man, without remembering always how much of -the hot generosity of the child he kept in his nature to the last. When -the very Jesuits were suppressed with circumstances of extreme -harshness, he pitied even them, and took one of their number permanently -into his household[77]. - -The most important part of a man's private conduct after that which -concerns his relations with women and his family, is generally that -which concerns his way of dealing with money, because money in its -acquisition and its dispersion is the outward and visible sign of the -absence or of the presence of so many inward and spiritual graces. As -has often been said, it is the measure of some of the most important of -a man's virtues, his honesty, his industry, his generosity, his -self-denial, and most of the other elements in keeping the difficult -balance between his care for himself and his care for other people. -Voltaire perceived very early in life that to be needy was to be -dependent; that the rich and poor are as hammer and anvil; that the -chronicles of genius demonstrate that it is not by genius that men -either make a fortune or live happy lives. He made up his mind from the -beginning that the author of the French epic would not share the poverty -and straitened lives of Tasso and Milton, and that he for his part would -at any rate be hammer and not anvil.[78] I was so wearied, he wrote in -1752, of the humiliations that dishonour letters, that to stay my -disgust I resolved to make what scoundrels call a great fortune.[79] He -used to give his books away to the printers. He had a small fortune from -his father; he is said to have made two thousand pounds by the English -subscriptions to the Henriade; and he did not hide his talent in the -ground, but resorted skilfully to all sorts of speculations in stocks, -army contracts, and other authorised means of converting one livre into -two while you sleep. He lent large sums of money, presumably at handsome -interest, to the Duke of Richelieu and others, and though the interest -may have been handsome, the trouble of procuring it was often -desperate.[80] Yet after much experience Voltaire came to the conclusion -that though he had sometimes lost money by bankers, by the devout, by -the people of the Old Testament, who would have had many scruples about -a larded capon, who would rather die than not be idle on the sabbath, -and not be thieving on the Sunday, yet he had lost nothing by the great -except his time.[81] - -It is easy to point a sneer at a high priest of humanity jobbing in the -funds. Only let us remember that Voltaire never made any pretence of -being a high priest of humanity; that his transactions were -substantially very like those of any banker or merchant of to-day; and -that for a man who was preaching new opinions it was extremely prudent -to place himself out of the necessity of pleasing booksellers or the pit -of the theatre on the one hand, and on the other to supply himself with -ready means of frequent flight from the ceaseless persecutions of -authority. Envious scribes in his lifetime taunted him with avarice, and -the evil association still clings to his memory now that he is dead. -One can only say that good and high-minded men, who never shrank from -withstanding him when in fault, men like Condorcet for example, heard -such talk with disdain, and set it down to the disgraceful readiness of -men to credit anything that relieves them from having to admire[82]. The -people who dislike prudence in matters of money in those whose -distinction is intellectual or spiritual, resemble a sentimental lover -who should lose his illusions at sight of his mistress eating a hearty -meal. Is their lot, then, cast in the ethereal fluid of the interstellar -spaces? - -At all events Voltaire had two important gifts which do not commonly -belong to the avaricious; he was a generous helper alike of those who -had, and those who had not, a claim upon him, and he knew how to bear -serious losses with unbroken composure. Michel, the receiver-general, -became bankrupt, and Voltaire lost a considerable sum of money in -consequence. His fluency of invective and complaint, which was simply -boundless when any obscure scribbler earned a guinea by a calumny upon -him, went no farther on the occasion of this very substantial injury -than a single splenetic phrase, and a harmless quatrain: - - Michel au nom de l'Eternel, - Mit jadis le diable en deroute; - Mais, apres cette banqueroute, - Que le diable emporte Michel! - -It has been fairly asked whether a genuine miser would content himself -with a stanza upon the man who had robbed him.[83] His correspondence -with the Duchess of Saxe-Gotha shows him declining to accept the -thousand louis, which she had sent as a fee for the composition of the -Annales de l'Empire. - -Much has been made of the bargaining which he carried on with Frederick, -as to the terms on which he would consent to go to Berlin. But then the -Prussian king was not one with whom it was wise to be too nice in such -affairs. He was the thriftiest of men, and as a king is a person who -lives on other people's money, such thrift was in his case the most -princely of virtues. Haggling is not graceful, but it need not imply -avarice in either of the parties to it. The truth is that there was in -Voltaire a curious admixture of splendid generosity with virulent -tenacity about half-pence. The famous quarrel with the President de -Brosses about the fourteen cords of firewood is a worse affair. -Voltaire, who leased Tourney from him, insisted that De Brosses had made -him a present of the fourteen cords. De Brosses, no doubt truly, -declared that he had only ordered the wood to be delivered on Voltaire's -account. On this despicable matter a long correspondence was carried on, -in which Voltaire is seen at his very worst; insolent, undignified, -low-minded, and untruthful.[84] The case happily stands alone in his -biography. As a rule, he is a steady practitioner of the Aristotelian -=megaloprepeia=, or virtue of magnificent expenditure. - -The truly important feature of the life which Voltaire led at Cirey was -its unremitting diligence. Like a Homeric goddess, the divine Emily -poured a cloud round her hero. There is a sort of moral climate in a -household, an impalpable, unseizable, indefinable set of influences, -which predispose the inmates to industry and self-control, or else relax -fibre and slacken purpose. At Cirey there was an almost monastic rule. -Madame Grafigny says that though Voltaire felt himself bound by -politeness to pay her a visit from time to time in her apartment, he -usually avoided sitting down, apologetically protesting how frightful a -thing is the quantity of time people waste in talking, and that waste of -time is the most fatal kind of extravagance of which one can be -guilty[85]. He seems to have usually passed the whole day at his desk, -or in making physical experiments in his chamber. The only occasion on -which people met was at the supper at nine in the evening. Until then -the privacy of the chamber alike of the hostess, who was analysing -Leibnitz or translating Newton, and of the unofficial host, who was -compiling material for the Siecle de Louis XIV., or polishing and -repolishing Mahomet, or investigating the circumstances of the -propagation of fire, was sacredly inviolable. - -The rigour of the rule did not forbid theatrical performances, when any -company, even a company of marionettes, came into the neighbourhood of -the desolate Champagne chateau. Sometimes after supper Voltaire would -exhibit a magic lantern, with explanatory comments after the showman's -manner, in which he would convulse his friends at the expense of his -enemies.[86] But after the evening's amusement was over, the Marquise -would retire to work in her chamber until the morning, and, when morning -came, a couple of hours' sleep was the only division between the tasks -of the night and the tasks of the day. Two splenetic women have left us -a couple of spiteful pictures of Madame du Chatelet, but neither of her -detractors could rise to any higher conception of intellectual effort -than the fine turn of phrase, the ingenious image, the keen thrust of -cruel satire, with which the polished idle of that day whiled away -dreary and worthless years. The translator of Newton's Principia was not -of this company, and she was wholly indifferent to the raillery, -sarcasm, and hate of women whom she justly held her inferiors. It is -much the fashion to admire the women of this time, because they contrive -to hide behind a veil of witty words the coldness and hollowness of -lives which had neither the sweetness of the old industrious domesticity -of women, nor the noble largeness of some of those in whom the -Revolution kindled a pure fire of patriotism in after days. Madame du -Chatelet, with all her faults, was a far loftier character than the -malicious gossips who laughed at her. 'Everything that occupies society -was within her power, _except slander_. She was never heard to hold up -anybody to laughter. When she was informed that certain people were bent -on not doing her justice, she would reply that she wished to ignore it.' -This was surely better than a talent for barbing epigrams, and she led a -worthier life at Cirey than in that Paris which Voltaire described so -bitterly. - - La, tous les soirs, la troupe vagabonde, - D'un peuple oisif, appele le beau monde, - Va promener de reduit en reduit - L'inquietude et l'ennui qui la suit. - La sont en foule antiques mijaurees, - Jeunes oisons et begueules titrees, - Disant des riens d'un ton de perroquet, - Lorgnant des sots, et trichant au piquet. - Blondins y sont, beaucoup plus femmes qu'elles, - Profondement remplis de bagatelles, - D'un air hautain, d'une bruyante voix, - Chantant, dansant, minaudant a la fois. - Si par hasard quelque personne honnete, - D'un sens plus droit et d'un gout plus heureux, - Des bons ecrits ayant meuble sa tete, - Leur fait l'affront de penser a leurs yeux; - Tout aussitot leur brillante cohue, - D'etonnement et de colere emue, - Bruyant essaim de frelons envieux, - Pique et poursuit cette abeille charmante[87]. - -It was not the fault of Madame du Chatelet that the life of Cirey was -not the undisturbed type of Voltaire's existence during the fifteen -years of their companionship. Many pages might be filled with a mere -list of the movements from place to place to which Voltaire resorted, -partly from reasonable fear of the grip of a jealous and watchful -government, partly from eagerness to bring the hand of the government -upon his enemies, and most of all from the uncontrollable restlessness -of his own nature. Amsterdam, the Hague, Brussels, Berlin, the little -court of Luneville, and the great world of Paris, too frequently -withdrew him from the solitary castle at Cirey, though he never failed -to declare on his return, and with perfect sincerity, that he was never -so happy anywhere else. If it was true that the Marquise made her poet's -life a little hard to him, it is impossible to read her correspondence -without perceiving that he, too, though for no lack of sensibility and -good feeling, often made life extremely hard for her. Besides their -moral difference, there was a marked discrepancy in intellectual -temperament, which did not fail to lead to outward manifestations. -Voltaire was sometimes a little weary of Newton and exact science, while -the Marquise was naturally of the rather narrow turn for arid truths -which too often distinguishes clever women inadequately disciplined by -contact with affairs. She and Voltaire both competed for a prize offered -by the Academy for essays on the propagation of fire (1737). Neither of -them was successful, for the famous Euler was a competitor. The second -and third prizes were given to two obscurer persons, because their -essays were Cartesian, that is to say, they were scientifically -orthodox. The two philosophers of Cirey also took part, and on different -sides, in the obstinate physico-mathematical controversy which Leibnitz -had first raised towards the close of the seventeenth century, as to the -measure of moving forces[88]. The Marquise, under circumstances of -equivocal glory and with much angry buzzing, with which one has now no -concern[89], published her analysis of Leibnitz in 1740, and sided with -him against Newton and Descartes. In the notice which Voltaire wrote of -his friend's book he gave a marvellously simple and intelligible account -of the issue of the special controversy of _vis viva_[90], but he -remained Newtonian, and in 1741 presented a paper to the Academy of -Sciences, disputing the Leibnitzian view[91]. - -Voltaire was not merely one of those 'paper philosophers,' whose -intrusion into the fields of physical science its professional followers -are justly wont to resent. He was an active experimenter, and more than -one letter remains, containing instructions to his agent in Paris to -forward him retorts, air-pumps, and other instruments, with the wise -hint in one place, a hint by no means of a miser, 'In the matter of -buying things, my friend, you should always prefer the good and sound -even if a little dear, to what is only middling but cheaper[92].' His -correspondence for some years proves the diligence and sincerity of his -interest in science. Yet it is tolerably clear that the man who did so -much to familiarise France with the most illustrious of physicists, was -himself devoid of true scientific aptitude. After long and persevering -labour in this region, Voltaire consulted Clairaut on the progress he -had made. The latter, with a loyal frankness which Voltaire knew how to -appreciate, answered that even with the most stubborn labour he was not -likely to attain to anything beyond mediocrity in science, and that he -would be only throwing away time which he owed to poetry and -philosophy.[93] The advice was taken; for, as we have already said, -Voltaire's self-love was never fatuous, and the independent search of -physical truth was given up. There is plainly no reason to regret the -pains which Voltaire took in this kind of inquiry, not because the study -of the sciences extends the range of poetic study and enriches verse -with fresh images, but because the number of sorts of knowledge in which -a man feels at home and is intelligently cognisant of their scope and -issues, even if he be wholly incompetent to assist in the progress of -discovery, increases that intellectual confidence and self-respect of -understanding, which so fortifies and stimulates him in his own special -order of work. We cannot precisely contend that this encyclopaedic -quality is an indispensable condition of such self-respect in every kind -of temper. It certainly was so with Voltaire. 'After all, my dear -friend,' he wrote to Cideville, 'it is right to give every possible -form to our soul. It is a flame that God has intrusted to us, we are -bound to feed it with all that we find most precious. We should -introduce into our existence all imaginable modes, and open every door -of the soul to all sorts of knowledge and all sorts of feelings. So long -as it does not all go in pell-mell there is plenty of room for -everything.[94] - -To us, who can be wise after the event, it is clear that if ever man was -called not to science, nor to poetry, nor to theology, nor to -metaphysics, but to literature, the art, so hard to define, of showing -the ideas of all subjects in the double light of the practical and the -spiritual reason, that man was Voltaire. He has himself dwelt on the -vagueness of this much-abused term, without contributing anything more -satisfactory towards a better account of it than a crude hint that -literature, not being a special art, may be considered a kind of larger -grammar of knowledge.[95] Although, however, it is true that literature -is not a particular art, it is not the less true that there is a mental -constitution particularly fitted for its successful practice. Literature -is essentially an art of form, as distinguished from those exercises of -intellectual energy which bring new stores of matter to the stock of -acquired knowledge, and give new forces to emotion and original and -definite articulation to passion. It is a misleading classification to -call the work of Shakespeare and Moliere, Shelley and Hugo, literary, -just as it would be an equally inaccurate, though more glaring piece of -classification, to count the work of Newton or Locke literature. To take -another case from Voltaire, it would not be enough to describe Bayle's -Dictionary as a literary compilation; it would not even be enough to -describe it as a work of immense learning, because the distinguishing -and superior mark of this book is a profound dialectic. It forms men of -letters and is above them.[96] - -What is it then that literature brings to us, that earns its title to -high place, though far from a highest place, among the great humanizing -arts? Is it not that this is the master organon for giving men the two -precious qualities of breadth of interest and balance of judgment; -multiplicity of sympathies and steadiness of sight? Unhappily, -literature has too often been identified with the smirks and -affectations of mere elegant dispersiveness, with the hollow niceties of -the virtuoso, a thing of madrigals. It is not in any sense of this sort -that we can think of Voltaire as specially the born minister of -literature. What we mean is that while he had not the loftier endowments -of the highest poetic conception, subtle speculative penetration, or -triumphant scientific power, he possessed a superb combination of wide -and sincere curiosity, an intelligence of vigorous and exact -receptivity, a native inclination to candour and justice, and a -pre-eminent mastery over a wide range in the art of expression. -Literature being concerned to impose form, to diffuse the light by which -common men are able to see the great host of ideas and facts that do not -shine in the brightness of their own atmosphere, it is clear what -striking gifts Voltaire had in this way. He had a great deal of -knowledge, and he was ever on the alert both to increase and broaden his -stock, and, what was still better, to impart of it to everybody else. He -did not think it beneath him to write on Hemistichs for the -Encyclopaedia. 'Tis not a very brilliant task, he said, but perhaps the -article will be useful to men of letters and amateurs; 'one should -disdain nothing, and I will do the word Comma, if you choose.'[97] He -was very catholic in taste, being able to love Racine without ignoring -the lofty stature of Shakespeare. And he was free from the weakness -which so often attends on catholicity, when it is not supported by true -strength and independence of understanding; he did not shut his eyes to -the shortcomings of the great. While loving Moliere, he was aware of the -incompleteness of his dramatic construction, as well as of the egregious -farce to which that famous writer too often descends.[98] His respect -for the sublimity and pathos of Corneille did not hinder him from noting -both his violence and his frigid argumentation.[99] Does the reader -remember that admirable saying of his to Vauvenargues; '_It is the part -of a man like you to have preferences, but no exclusions_?'[100] To this -fine principle Voltaire was usually thoroughly true, as every great -mind, if only endowed with adequate culture, must necessarily be. - - Nul auteur avec lui n'a tort, - Quand il a trouve l'art de plaire; - Il le critique sans colere, - Il l'applaudit avec transport.[101] - -Thirdly, that circumfusion of bright light which is the highest aim of -speech, was easy to Voltaire, in whatever order of subject he happened -to treat. His style is like a translucent stream of purest mountain -water, moving with swift and animated flow under flashing sunbeams. -'Voltaire,' said an enemy, 'is the very first man in the world at -writing down what other people have thought,' What was meant for a -spiteful censure, was in fact a truly honourable distinction. - -The secret is incommunicable. No spectrum analysis can decompose for us -that enchanting ray. It is rather, after all, the piercing metallic -light of electricity than a glowing beam of the sun. We can detect some -of the external qualities of this striking style. We seize its dazzling -simplicity, its almost primitive closeness to the letter, its sharpness -and precision, above all, its admirable brevity. We see that no writer -ever used so few words to produce such pregnant effects.[102] Those -whom brevity only makes thin and slight, may look with despair on pages -where the nimbleness of the sentence is in proportion to the firmness of -the thought. We find no bastard attempts to reproduce in words deep and -complex effects, which can only be adequately presented in colour or in -the combinations of musical sound. Nobody has ever known better the true -limitations of the material in which he worked, or the scope and -possibilities of his art. Voltaire's alexandrines, his witty stories, -his mock-heroic, his exposition of Newton, his histories, his dialectic, -all bear the same mark, the same natural, precise, and condensed mode of -expression, the same absolutely faultless knowledge of what is proper -and permitted in every given kind of written work. At first there seems -something paradoxical in dwelling on the brevity of an author whose -works are to be counted by scores of volumes. But this is no real -objection. A writer may be insufferably prolix in the limits of a single -volume, and Voltaire was quite right in saying that there are four times -too many words in the one volume of D'Holbach's System of Nature. He -maintains too that Rabelais might advantageously be reduced to -one-eighth, and Bayle to a quarter, and there is hardly a book that is -not curtailed in the perfecting hands of the divine muses.[103] So -conversely an author may not waste a word in a hundred volumes. Style is -independent of quantity, and the world suffers so grievously from the -mass of books that have been written, not because they are many, but -because such vast proportion of their pages say nothing while they -purport to say so much. - -No study, however, of this outward ease and swift compendiousness of -speech will teach us the secret that was beneath it in Voltaire, an eye -and a hand that never erred in hitting the exact mark of appropriateness -in every order of prose and verse. Perhaps no such vision for the -befitting in expression has ever existed. He is the most trenchant -writer in the world, yet there is not a sentence of strained emphasis or -overwrought antithesis; he is the wittiest, yet there is not a line of -bad buffoonery. And this intense sense of the appropriate was by nature -and cultivation become so entirely a fixed condition of Voltaire's mind -that it shows spontaneous and without an effort in his work. Nobody is -more free from the ostentatious correctness of the literary precisian, -and nobody preserves so much purity and so much dignity of language with -so little formality of demeanour. It is interesting to notice the -absence from his writings of that intensely elaborated kind of -simplicity in which some of the best authors of a later time express the -final outcome of many thoughts. - -The strain that society has undergone since Voltaire's day has taught -men to qualify their propositions. It has forced them to follow truth -slowly along paths steep and devious. New notes have been struck in -human feeling, and all thought has now been touched by complexities that -were then unseen. Hence, as all good writers aim at simplicity and -directness, we have seen the growth of a new style, in which the rays of -many side-lights are concentrated in some single phrase. That Voltaire -does not use these focalising words and turns of composition only means -that to him thought was less complex than it is to a more subjective -generation. Though the literature which possesses Milton and Burke need -not fear comparison with the graver masters of French speech, we have no -one to place exactly by the side of Voltaire. But, then, no more has -France. There are many pages of Swift which are more like one side of -Voltaire than anything else that we have, and Voltaire probably drew the -idea of his famous stories from the creator of Gulliver, just as Swift -got the idea of the Tale of a Tub from Fontenelle's History of Mero and -Enegu (that is, of Rome and Geneva). Swift has correctness, invention, -irony, and a trick of being effectively literal and serious in absurd -situations, just as Voltaire has; but then Swift is often truculent and -often brutally gross, both in thought and in phrase. Voltaire is never -either brutal or truculent. Even amid the licence of the Pucelle and of -his romances, he never forgets what is due to the French tongue. What -always charmed him in Racine and Boileau, he tells us, was that they -said what they intended to say, and that their thoughts have never cost -anything to the harmony or the purity of the language[104]. Voltaire -ranged over far wider ground than the two poets ever attempted to do, -and trod in many slippery places, yet he is entitled to the same praise -as that which he gave to them. - -Unhappily, one of the many evil effects which have alloyed the -revolution that Voltaire did so much to set in motion, has been both in -his country and ours that purity and harmony of language, in spite of -the examples of the great masters who have lived since, have on the -whole declined. In both countries familiarity and slang have actually -asserted a place in literature on some pretence that they are real; an -assumed vulgarity tries to pass for native homeliness, and, as though a -giant were more impressive for having a humped back, some men of true -genius seem only to make sure of fame by straining themselves into -grotesques. In a word, the reaction against a spurious dignity of style -has carried men too far, because the reaction against the dignified -elements in the old order went too far. Style, after all, as one has -always to remember, can never be anything but the reflex of ideas and -habits of mind, and when respect for one's own personal dignity as a -ruling and unique element in character gave way to sentimental love of -the human race, often real, and often a pretence, old self-respecting -modes of expression went out of fashion. And all this has been defended -by a sort of argument that might just as appropriately have been used by -Diogenes, vindicating the filthiness of his tub against a doctrine of -clean linen. - -To follow letters, it is important to observe, meant then, or at least -after Voltaire's influence rose to its height, it meant distinctly to -enter the ranks of the Opposition. In our own time the profession of -letters is placed with other polite avocations, and those who follow it -for the most part accept the traditional social ideas of the time, just -as clergymen, lawyers, and physicians accept them. The modern man of -letters corresponds to the ancient sophist, whose office it was to -confirm, adorn, and propagate the current prejudice. To be a man of -letters in France in the middle of the eighteenth century was to be the -official enemy of the current prejudices and their sophistical defenders -in the church and the parliaments. Parents heard of a son's design to go -to Paris and write books, or to mix with those who wrote books, with the -same dismay with which a respectable Athenian heard of a son following -Socrates. The hyper-hellenistic collegian need not accuse us of -instituting a general parallel between Socrates and Voltaire. The only -point on which we are insisting is that each was the leader of the -assault against the sophists of his day, though their tactics and -implements of war were sufficiently unlike. To the later assailant the -conditions of the time made the pen the most effective instrument. The -clergy had the pulpit and the confessional, and their enemies had the -press. - -It was during the period of his connection with Madame du Chatelet, that -is in the active literary years between his return from England and his -removal to Berlin, that Voltaire's dramatic talent was most -productive.[105] He is usually considered to hold the same place -relatively to Corneille and Racine that Euripides held relatively to -AEschylus and Sophocles. It is not easy to see what is the exact point of -analogy on which the critics agree, beyond the corresponding place in -the order of chronological succession, and such parallels are not really -very full of instruction. If we are to draw any parallel at all, it must -be between the Greek and Racine. The differences between Euripides and -his predecessors are not those between Voltaire and his predecessors. -There may be one common peculiarity. Each made the drama an instrument -for the expression not merely of passion, but of speculative and -philosophical matter, and this in each case of a sceptical kind in -reference to the accepted traditions of the time. But apart from the -vast superiority of the Greek in depth and passion and dramatic -invention, in Voltaire this philosophising is very much more indirect, -insinuatory, and furtive, than in the marked sententiousness of -Euripides. There are critics, indeed, who insist that all Voltaire's -poetic work is a series of pamphlets in disguise, and that he ought to -be classified, in that jargon which makes an uncouth compound pass -muster for a new critical nicety, as a tendency-poet.[106] - -To accept this would simply be to leave out of account the very best of -Voltaire's plays, including Merope, Semiramis, Tancrede, in which the -most ingenious of men and critics would be at a loss to find any -tendency of the pamphleteering kind. Voltaire's ever-present sense of -congruity prevented him from putting the harangue of the pulpit or the -discourse of the academic doctor upon the tragic stage. If the clergy -found in 'Mahomet,' for instance, a covert attack on their own religion, -it was much more because the poet was suspected of unbelief, than -because the poem contained infidel doctrine. Indeed, nothing shows so -clearly as the strange affright at this and some other pieces of -Voltaire's, that the purport and effect of poetry must depend nearly as -much upon the mind of the audience as upon the lines themselves. His -plays may be said to have led to scepticism, only because there was -sceptical predisposition in the mind which his public brought to them; -and under other circumstances, if for instance it had been produced in -the time of Lewis XIV., the exposure of Mahomet would have been counted -a glorification of the rival creed. Indeed, Pope Benedict XIV. did by -and by accept Voltaire's dedication of the play, whether in good faith -or no we cannot tell, on the express ground that it was an indirect -homage to Christianity. Men with a sense of artistic propriety far -inferior to Voltaire's, are yet fully alive to the monstrosity of -disguising a pamphleteer's polemic in the form of a pretended drama. - -In choice of subject Voltaire, we may believe, was secretly guided by -his wish to relax the oppressive hold of religious prejudice. Religion, -we cannot too fully realise, was the absorbing burden of the time. There -was no sort of knowledge, from geometry onwards, on which it did not -weigh. Whatever work Voltaire set himself to, he was confronted in it by -the Infamous. Thus in accordance with the narrow theory of his time, he -held Mahomet to be a deliberate and conscious impostor, and in -presenting the founder of one great religion in this odious shape, he -was doubtless suggesting that the same account might be true of the -founder of another. But the suggestion was entirely outside of the play -itself, and we who have fully settled these questions for ourselves, may -read 'Mahomet' without suspecting the shade of a reference from Mecca to -Jerusalem, though hardly without contemning the feebleness of view which -could see nothing but sensuality, ambition, and crime, in the career of -the fierce eastern reformer. The sentiments of exalted deism which are -put into the mouth of the noble Zopire were perhaps meant to teach -people that the greatest devotion of character may go with the most -unflinching rejection of a pretended revelation from the gods. This -again is a gloss from without, and by no means involves Voltaire in the -offence of art with a moral purpose. - -Zaire was the first play in which French characters appeared upon the -tragic stage. The heroine, the daughter of Lusignan, has been brought -up, unconscious of her descent, in the Mahometan faith and usage. -Consider the philosophy of these lines which are given to her: - - La coutume, la loi plia mes premiers ans - A la religion des heureux musulmans. - Je le vois trop; les soins qu'on prend de notre enfance - Ferment nos sentimens, nos moeurs, notre croyance. - J'eusse ete pres du Gange esclave des faux dieux, - Chretienne dans Paris, musulmane en ces lieux. - L'instruction fait tout; et la main de nos peres - Grave en nos faibles coeurs ces premiers caracteres, - Que l'exemple et le temps nous viennent retracer, - Et que peut-etre en nous Dieu seul peut effacer.[107] - -This of course implied the doctrine of Pope's Universal Prayer, and -contains an idea that was always the favourite weapon for smiting the -over-confident votaries of a single supernatural revelation. Locke had -asked whether 'the current opinions and licensed guides of every country -are sufficient evidence and security to every man to venture his great -concernments on? Or, can these be the certain and infallible oracle and -standards of truth which teach one thing in Christendom, and another in -Turkey? Or shall a poor countryman be eternally happy for having the -chance to be born in Italy? Or a day-labourer be unavoidably lost -because he had the ill-luck to be born in England?[108] This was exactly -the kind of reasoning to which Zaire's lines pointed; and Voltaire was -never weary of arguing that the divine lay outside of the multitudinous -variety of creeds that were never more than local accidents. Neither, -however, in Zaire nor anywhere else is the law of perfect dramatic -fitness violated for the sake of a lesson in heterodoxy. With Voltaire -tragedy is, as all art ought to be, a manner of disinterested -presentation. This is not the noblest energy of the human intelligence, -but it is truly art, and Voltaire did not forget it. It would be -entirely unprofitable to enter into any comparison of the relative -merits of Voltaire's tragedies, and those either of the modern romantic -school in his own country, or of the master dramatists of our own. Every -form of composition must be judged in its own order, and the order in -which Voltaire chose to work was the French classic, with its appointed -conditions and fixed laws, its three unities, its stately alexandrines, -and all the other essentials of that special dramatic form. Here is one -of the many points at which we feel that Voltaire is trying to prolong -in literature, if not in thought, the impressive tradition of the grand -age. At the same moment, strangely enough, he was giving that stir to -the opinion of his time, which was the prime agent in definitely -breaking the hold of that tradition. It is no infidelity to the glorious -and incomparable genius of Shakespeare, nor does it involve any -blindness to the fine creation, fresh fancy, and noble thought and -imagery of our less superb men, yet to admit that there is in these -limits of construction a concentration and regularity, and in these too -contemned alexandrines a just and swelling cadence, that confer a high -degree of pleasure of the highest kind, and that demand intellectual -quality only less rare than that other priceless and unattainable -quality of having the lips touched with divine fire. It is said, -however, that such quality does not produce acting plays, but only -dramatic poems: this is really laughable if we remember first, that the -finest actors in the world have been trained in the recitation of these -alexandrines, and second, that as large and as delighted an audience -used until within some twenty years ago to crowd to a tragedy of -Corneille or Racine, seen repeatedly before, as to a bran-new -vaudeville, never to be seen again. - -'We insist,' said Voltaire, 'that the rhyme shall cost nothing to the -ideas; that it shall neither be trivial nor too far-fetched; we exact -rigorously in a verse the same purity, the same precision, as in prose. -We do not permit the smallest licence; we require an author to carry -without a break all chains, and yet that he should appear ever -free.'[109] He admitted that sometimes they failed in reaching the -tragic, through excessive fear of passing its limits. He does justice, -if something less than English justice, to the singular merits of our -stage in the way of action.[110] Shakespeare, he says, 'had a genius -full of force and fertility, of all that is natural and all that is -sublime.' It is even the merit of Shakespeare--'those grand and terrible -pieces that abound in his most monstrous farces'--that has been the -undoing of the English stage.[111] - -Even the famous criticism on Hamlet has been a good deal misrepresented. -Voltaire is vindicating the employment of the machinery of ghosts, and -he dwells on the fitness and fine dramatic effect of the ghost in -Shakespeare's play. 'I am very far,' he goes on to say, 'from justifying -the tragedy of Hamlet in everything: it is a rude and barbarous -piece.... Hamlet goes mad in the second act, and his mistress goes mad -in the third; the prince slays the father of his mistress, pretending to -kill a rat, and the heroine throws herself into the river. They dig her -grave on the stage; the gravediggers jest in a way worthy of them, with -skulls in their hands; Hamlet answers their odious grossnesses by -extravagances no less disgusting. Meanwhile one of the characters -conquers Poland. Hamlet, his mother, and his stepfather drink together -on the stage; they sing at table, they wrangle, they fight, they kill; -one might suppose such a work to be the fruit of the imagination of a -drunken savage. But in the midst of all these rude irregularities, -which to this day make the English theatre so absurd and so barbarous, -there are to be found in Hamlet by a yet greater incongruity sublime -strokes worthy of the loftiest geniuses. It seems as if nature had taken -a delight in collecting within the brain of Shakespeare all that we can -imagine of what is greatest and most powerful, with all that rudeness -without wit can contain of what is lowest and most detestable.'[112] - -If one were to retort upon this that anybody with a true sense of poetry -would sacrifice all the plays that Voltaire ever wrote, his -eight-and-twenty tragedies, and half-score of comedies, for the -soliloquy in Hamlet, or King Henry at Towton Fight, or 'Roses, their -sharp spines being gone,' there would be truth in such a retort, but it -would be that brutal truth, which is always very near being the most -subtle kind of lie. Nature wrought a miracle for us by producing -Shakespeare, as she did afterwards in an extremely different way for -France by producing Voltaire. Miracles, however, have necessarily a very -demoralising effect. A prodigy of loaves and fishes, by slackening the -motives to honest industry, must in the end multiply paupers. The -prodigy of such amazing results from such glorious carelessness as -Shakespeare's, has plunged hundreds of men of talent into a carelessness -most inglorious, and made our acting stage a mock. It is quite true -that the academic rule is better fitted for mediocrity than for genius; -but we may perhaps trust genius to make a way for itself. It is -mediocrity that needs laws and prescriptions for its most effective -fertilisation, and the enormous majority even of those who can do good -work are still mediocre. We have preferred the methods of lawless -genius, and are left with rampant lawlessness and no genius. The very -essence of the old French tragedy was painstaking, and painstaking has -had its unfailing and exceeding great reward. When people whose taste -has been trained in the traditions of romantic and naturalistic art, or -even not trained at all except in indolence and presumption, yawn over -the French alexandrines, let them remember that Goethe at any rate -thought it worth while to translate Mahomet and Tancrede. - -An eminent German writer on Voltaire has recently declared the secret of -the French classic dramaturgy to be that the drama was a diversion of -the court. 'The personages have to speak not as befits their true -feelings, their character, and the situation, but as is seemly in the -presence of a king and a court; not truth, nature, and beauty, but -etiquette, is the highest law of the dramatic art.'[113] This may -partially explain how it was that a return to some features of the -classic form, its dignity, elevation, and severity, came to take place -in France, but no explanation can be at all satisfactory which reduces -so distinct and genuine a manner of dramatic expression to a mere -outside accident. Corneille, Racine, Voltaire, treated their tragic -subjects as they did, with rigorous concentration of action, stately -consistency of motive, and in a solemn and balanced measure, because -these conditions answered to intellectual qualities of their own, an -affinity in themselves for elegance, clearness, elevation, and a certain -purified and weighty wisdom. It is true that they do not unseal those -deep-hidden fountains of thought and feeling and music, which flow so -freely at the waving of Shakespeare's wand. We are not swiftly carried -from a scene of clowns up to some sublime pinnacle of the seventh -heaven, whence we see the dark abysses that lie about the path of human -action, as well as all its sweet and shadowed places. Only let us not -unjustly suppose that we are deciding the merits of the old French -dramaturgy, its severe structure and stately measure, by answering the -question, which no English nor German writer can ever seriously put, as -to the relative depth and vision in poetic things of Shakespeare and -Voltaire. Nor can we be expected to be deeply moved by a form of art -that is so unfamiliar to us. It is not a question whether we ought to be -so deeply moved. The too susceptible Marmontel describes how on the -occasion of a visit to Ferney, Voltaire took him into his study and -placed a manuscript into his hands. It was Tancrede, which was just -finished. Marmontel eagerly read it, and he tells us how he returned to -the author, his face all bathed in tears. 'Your tears,' said Voltaire, -'tell me all that it most concerns me to know.'[114] The most -supercilious critic may find this very Tancrede worth reading, when he -remembers that Gibbon thought it splendid and interesting,[115] and that -Goethe found it worth translating. One could hardly be convicted now of -want of sensibility, if all Voltaire's tragedy together failed to bathe -one's face in tears, but this is a very bad reason for denying that it -has other merits than pathos. - -We cannot, indeed, compare the author of Zaire and Tancrede with the -great author of Cinna and Polyeucte, any more than in another kind we -can compare Gray with Milton. Voltaire is the very genius of -correctness, elegance, and grace, and if the reader would know what this -correctness means, he will find a most wholesome exercise in reading -Voltiare's notes on some of the most celebrated of Corneille's -plays.[116] But in masculine energy and in poetic weightiness, as well -as in organ-like richness of music, Voltaire must be surely pronounced -inferior to his superb predecessor. There is a certain thinness -pervading the whole of his work for the stage, the conception of -character, the dramatic structure, and the measure alike. Undoubtedly we -may frequently come upon weighty and noble lines, of fine music and -lofty sense. But there is on the whole what strikes one as a fatal -excess of facility, and a fatal defect of poetic saliency. The fluent -ease of the verse destroys the impression of strength. 'Your friend,' -wrote Madame du Chatelet once of her friend, 'has had a slight bout of -illness, and you know that when he is ill, he can do nothing but write -verses.'[117] We do not know whether the Marquise meant alexandrines, or -those graceful verses of society of which Voltaire was so incomparable a -master. It is certain that he wrote Zaire in three weeks and Olympic in -six days, though with respect to the latter we may well agree with the -friend who told the author that he should not have rested on the seventh -day. However that may be, there is a quality about his tragic verse -which to one fresh from the sonorous majesty and dignified beauty of -Polyeucte, or even the fine gravity of Tartufe, vibrates too lightly in -the ear. Least of all may we compare him to Racine, whose two great -tragedies of Iphigenie and Athalie Voltaire himself declared to mark the -nearest approach ever made to dramatic perfection.[118] There is none of -the mixed austerity and tenderness, height and sweetness, grace and -firmness, that blend together with such invisible art and unique -contrivance in the poet whose verses taught Fenelon and Massillon how to -make music in their prose. To this Voltaire could only have access from -without, for he lacked the famous master's internal depth, seriousness, -and veneration of soul. We know how little this approach from without -can avail, and how vainly a man follows the harmonious grace of a style, -when he lacks the impalpable graces of spirit that made the style live. -It is only when grave thoughts and benignant aspirations and purifying -images move with even habit through the mind, that a man masters the -noblest expression. De Maistre, to whom Voltaire's name was the symbol -for all that is accursed, admitted the nobleness of his work in tragedy, -but he instantly took back the grudged praise by saying that even here -he only resembles his two great rivals as a clever hypocrite resembles a -saint.[119] Malignantly expressed, there is in this some truth. - -It was one of the elements in the plan of dramatic reform that sprang up -in Voltaire's mind during his residence in England, that the subjects of -tragedy should be more masculine, and that love should cease to be an -obligatory ingredient. "It is nearly always the same piece, the same -knot, formed by jealousy and a breach, and untied by a marriage; it is a -perpetual coquetry, a simple comedy in which princes are actors, and in -which occasionally blood is spilt for form's sake."[120] This he counted -a mistake, for, as he justly said, the heart is but lightly touched by a -lover's woes, while it is profoundly softened by the anguish of a mother -just about to lose her son. Thus in Merope we have maternal sentiment -made the spring of what is probably the best of Voltaire's tragedies, -abounding in a just vehemence, compact, full of feeling at once exalted -and natural, and moving with a sustained energy that is not a too common -mark of his work. It was the same conviction of the propriety of making -tragedy a means of expressing other emotions than that which is so apt -to degenerate into an insipidity, which dictated the composition and -novel treatment of the Roman subjects, Brutus and La Mort de Cesar. Here -the French drama first became in some degree truly political. His -predecessors when they handled a historic theme did so, not from the -historic or social point of view, but as the illustration, or rather the -suggestion, of some central human passion. In the Cinna of Corneille the -political bearings, the moral of benevolent despotism which Bonaparte -found in it, were purely incidental, and were distinctly subordinate to -the portrayal of character and the movement of feeling. In Brutus the -whole action lies in the region of great public affairs, and of the -passions which these affairs stir in noble characters, without any -admixture of purely private tenderness. In La Mort de Cesar we are -equally in the heroics of public action. Rome Sauvee, of which the -subject is the conspiracy of Catiline, and the hero the most eloquent of -consuls or men--a part that Voltaire was very fond of filling in private -representations, and with distinguished success--is extremely loose and -spasmodic in structure, and the speeches sound strained even when put -into Cicero's mouth. But here also private insipidities are banished, -though perhaps it is only in favour of public insipidities. It is -impossible to tell what share, if any, these plays had in spreading that -curious feeling about Roman freedom and its most renowned defenders, -which is so striking a feature in some of the great episodes of the -Revolution. We cannot suspect Voltaire of any design to stir political -feeling. He was now essentially aristocratic and courtly in his -predilection, without the smallest active wish for an approach to -political revolution, if indeed the conception of a change of that kind -ever presented itself to him. He was indefatigable in admiring and -praising English freedom, but, as has already been said, it was not the -laudation of a lover of popular government, but the envy of a man of -letters whose life was tormented by censors of the press and the -lieutenant of police. Perhaps the only approach to a public purpose in -this fancy for his Roman subjects was a lurking idea of arousing in the -nobles, for whom we must remember that his dramatic work was above all -designed, not a passion for freedom from the authority of monarchic -government, but a passion of a more general kind for energetic -patriotism. Voltaire's letters abound with expressions of the writer's -belief that he was the witness of an epoch of decay in his own country. -He had in truth far too keen and practical and trained an eye not to see -how public spirit, political sagacity, national ambition, and even -valour had declined in the great orders of France since the age of the -Grand Monarch, and how much his country had fallen back in the race of -civilisation and power. We should be guilty of a very transparent -exaggeration of the facts, if any attempt were made to paint Voltaire in -the attitude and colours of one transcendentally aspiring to regenerate -his countrymen. But there is no difficulty in believing that a man who -had lived in England, and knew so much of Prussia, should have seen the -fatal enervation which had come upon France, and that with Voltaire's -feeling for the stage, he should have dreamt, by means of a more austere -subject and more masculine treatment, of reviving the love of wisdom and -glory and devotion in connection with country. In a word, the lesson of -La Mort de Cesar or of Brutus was not a specific admonition to slay -tyrants, or to execute stern judgments on sons, but a general example of -self-sacrificing patriotism and devoted public honour. - -It is often said that Voltaire's Romans are mere creatures of parade and -declamation, like the figures of David's paintings,[121] and it is very -likely that the theatre infected the French people with that mischievous -idea of the Romans, as a nation of declaimers about freedom and the -death of tyrants. The true Roman was no doubt very much more like one of -our narrow, hard, and able Scotchmen in India, than the lofty talkers -who delighted the parterre of Paris or Versailles. Unluckily for truth -of historical conception, Cicero was, after Virgil, the most potent of -Roman memories, and a man of words became with modern writers the -favourite type of a people of action. All this, however, is beside the -question. Voltaire would have laughed at the idea of any obligation to -present either Romans or other personages on the stage with realistic -fidelity. The tragic drama with him was the highest of the imaginative -and idealistic arts. If he had sought a parallel to it in the plastic -arts he would have found one, not in painting, which by reason of the -greater flexibility of its material demands a more exact verisimilitude, -but in sculpture. Considered as statuesque figures endowed with speech, -Brutus, Caesar, and the rest are noble and impressive. We may protest as -vigorously as we know how against any assimilation of the great art of -action with the great art of repose. But we can only criticise the -individual productions of a given theory, provided we for the moment -accept the conditions which the theory lays down. All art rests upon -convention, and if we choose to repudiate any particular set of -conventions, we have no more right to criticise the works of those who -submit to them than one would have to criticise sculpture, because -marble or bronze is not like flesh and blood. Within the conditions of -the French classic drama Voltaire's Romans are high and stately figures. - -Voltaire's innovations extended beyond the introduction of more -masculine treatment. Before his time romantic subjects had been regarded -with disfavour, and Corneille's Bajazet was considered a bold -experiment. Racine was more strictly classic, and dramatists went on -handling the same ancient fables, 'Thebes, or Pelops' line, or the tale -of 'Troy divine,' just as the Greeks had done, or just as the painters -in the Catholic times had never wearied of painting the two eternal -figures of human mother and divine child. Voltaire treated the classic -subjects as others treated them, and if OEdipe misses the depth, -delicate reserve and fateful gloom of the Greeks, Merope at any rate -breathes a fine and tragic spirit. But his restless mind pressed forward -into subjects which Racine would have shuddered at, and every quarter of -the universe became in turn a portion of the Voltairean stage. -L'Orphelin de la Chine introduces us to China and Genghis-Khan, Mahomet -to Arabia and its prophet, Tancrede to Sicily; in Zulime we are among -Moors, in Alzire with Peruvians. This revolutionary enlargement of -subject was significant of a general and very important enlargement of -interest which marked the time, and led presently to those contrasts -between the condition of France and the imaginary felicity and nobleness -of wilder countries, which did so much to breed an irresistible longing -for change. Voltaire's high-minded Scythians, generous Peruvians, and -the rest, prepared the way along with other influences for that curious -cosmopolitanism, that striking eagerness to believe in the equal -virtuousness and devotion inherent in human nature, independently of the -religious or social form accidentally imposed upon them, which found its -ultimate outcome, first in an ardent passion for social equality, and a -depreciation of the special sanctity of the current religion, and next -in the ill-fated emancipating and proselytising aims of the Revolution, -and in orators of the human race. - -It has usually been thought surprising that Voltaire, consummate wit as -he was, should have been so markedly unsuccessful in comedy. Certainly -no one with so right a sense of the value of time as Voltaire himself -had, will in our day waste many hours over his productions in this -order. There are a dozen of them more or less, and we can only hope that -they were the most rapid of his writings. Lines of extraordinary -vivacity are not wanting, and at their best they offer a certain -bustling sprightliness that might have been diverting in actual -representation. But the keynote seems to be struck in farce, rather than -in comedy; the intrigue, if not quite as slight as in Moliere, is too -forced; and the characters are nearly all excessively mediocre in -conception. In one of the comedies, Le Depositaire, the poet presented -the aged patroness of his youth, but the necessity of respecting current -ideas of the becoming prevented him from making a great character out of -even so striking a figure as Ninon de l'Enclos. La Prude is a version of -Wycherly's Plaindealer, and is in respect of force, animation, and the -genuine spirit of comedy, very inferior to its admirable original. -L'Indiscret is a sparkling and unconsidered trifle, L'Ecossaise is only -a stinging attack on Freron, and L'Enfant Prodigue, though greater pains -were taken with it, has none of the glow of dramatic feeling. The -liveliest of all is La Femme qui a Raison, a short comedy of situation, -which for one reading is entertaining in the closet, and must be -excellent on the stage. It is very slight, however, and as usual verges -on farce. - -This inferiority of Voltaire's ought not to astonish any one who has -reflected how much concentrated feeling and what profundity of vision go -to the production of great comedy, and how in the mind of the dramatist, -as in the movement of human life, comedy lies close to portentous -tragedy. The author of the Bourgeois Gentilhomme and L'Avare was also -the creator of the Misanthrope, that inscrutable piece, where, without -plot, fable, or intrigue, we see a section of the polished life of the -time, men and women paying visits, making and receiving compliments, -discoursing upon affairs with easy lightness, flitting backwards and -forwards with a thousand petty hurries, and among these one strange, -rough, hoarse, half-sombre figure, moving solitarily with a chilling -reality in the midst of frolicking shadows. Voltaire entered too eagerly -into the interests of the world, was by temperament too exclusively -sympathetic and receptive and social, to place himself even in -imagination thus outside of the common circle. Without capacity for -this, there is no comedy of the first order. Without serious -consciousness of contrasts, no humour that endures. Shakespeare, -Moliere, and even Aristophanes, each of them unsurpassed writers of mere -farce, were each of them, though with vast difference of degree, master -of a tragic breadth of vision. Voltaire had moods of petulant spleen, -but who feels that he ever saw, much less brooded over, the dark -cavernous regions of human nature? Without this we may have brilliant -pleasantry of surprise, inimitable caricature, excellent comedy of -society, but of the veritable comedy of human character and life, -nothing. - -In dazzling and irresistible caricature Voltaire has no equal. There is -no deep humour, as in Don Quixote, or Tristram Shandy, which Voltaire -did not care for,[122] or Richter's Siebenkaes, which he would not have -cared for any more than De Stael did. He was too purely intellectual, -too argumentative, too geometrical, and cared too much for illustrating -a principle. But in Candide, Zadig, L'Ingenu, wit is as high as mere wit -can go. They are better than Hudibras, because the motive is broader and -more intellectual. Rapidity of play, infallible accuracy of stroke, -perfect copiousness, and above all a fresh and unflagging spontaneity, -combine with a surprising invention, to give these stories a singular -quality, of which we most effectively observe the real brilliance, by -comparing them with the too numerous imitations that their success has -unhappily invited since. - -It is impossible to omit from the most cursory study of Voltaire's work, -that too famous poem which was his favourite amusement during some of -the best years of his life, which was the delight of all who could by -any means get the high favour of sight or hearing of so much as a canto -of it, and which is now always spoken of, when it happens to be spoken -of at all, with extreme abhorrence.[123] The Pucelle offends two modern -sentiments, the love of modesty, and the love of the heroic personages -of history. The moral sense and the historic sense have both been -sharpened in some respects since Voltaire, and a poem which not only -abounds in immodesty, and centres the whole action in an indecency of -conception, but also fastens this gross chaplet round the memory of a -great deliverer of the poet's own country, seems to offer a double -outrage to an age when relish for licentious verse has gone out of -fashion, and reverence for the heroic dead has come in. Still the fact -that the greatest man of his time should have written one of the most -unseemly poems that exist in any tongue, is worth trying to understand. -Voltaire, let us remember, had no special turn, like Gibbon or Bayle, -least of all like the unclean Swift, for extracting a malodorous -diversion out of grossness or sensuality. His writings betray no -irresistible passion for flying to an indelicacy, nor any of the vapid -lasciviousness of some more modern French writers. The Pucelle is at -least the wit of a rational man, and not the prying beastliness of a -satyr. It is wit worse than poorly employed, but it is purity itself -compared with some of the nameless abominations with which Diderot -besmirched his imagination. The Persian Letters contain what we should -now account passages of extreme licentiousness, yet Montesquieu was -assuredly no libertine. Voltaire's life again was never indecent or -immoderate from the point of view of the manners of the time. A man of -grave character and untarnished life, like Condorcet, did not scruple to -defend a poem, in which it is hard for us to see anything but a most -indecorous burlesque of a most heroic subject. He insists that books -which divert the imagination without heating or seducing it, which by -gay and pleasurable images fill up those moments of exhaustion that are -useless alike for labour and meditation, have the effect of inclining -men to gentleness and indulgence. "It was not such books as the Pucelle -that Gerard or Clement used to read, or that the satellites of Cromwell -carried at the saddle-bow."[124] - -The fact is that in amusing himself by the Pucelle, Voltaire was only -giving literary expression to a kind of view which had already in the -society of the time found for itself a thoroughly practical expression. -The people among whom he lived had systematised that freedom from law or -restraint in the relations of the sexes, of which his poem is so vivid a -representation. The Duke of Richelieu was the irresistible Lovelace of -his time, and it was deemed an honour, an honour to which Madame du -Chatelet among so many others has a title, to have yielded to his -fascination. A long and profoundly unedifying chronicle might be drawn -up of the memorable gallantries of that time, and for our purpose it -might fitly close with the amour with Saint Lambert that led to Madame -du Chatelet's death. Of course, these countless gallantries in the most -licentious persons of the day, such as Richelieu or Saxe, were neither -more nor less than an outbreak of sheer dissoluteness, such as took -place among English people of quality in the time of the Restoration. -The idle and luxurious, whose imagination is uncontrolled by the -discipline of labour and purpose, and to whom the indulgence of their -own inclinations is the first and single law of life, are always ready -to profit by any relaxation of restraint, which the moral conditions of -the moment may permit. - -The peculiarity of the licence of France in the middle of the eighteenth -century is, that it was looked upon with complacency by the great -intellectual leaders of opinion. It took its place in the progressive -formula. What austerity was to other forward movements, licence was to -this. It is not difficult to perceive how so extraordinary a -circumstance came to pass. Chastity was the supreme virtue in the eyes -of the church, the mystic key to Christian holiness. Continence was one -of the most sacred of the pretensions by which the organised preachers -of superstition claimed the reverence of men and women. It was -identified, therefore, in a particular manner with that Infamous, -against which the main assault of the time was directed. So men -contended, more or less expressly, first, that continence was no -commanding chief among virtues, then that it was a very superficial and -easily practised virtue, finally that it was no virtue at all, but if -sometimes a convenience, generally an impediment to free human -happiness. These disastrous sophisms show the peril of having morality -made an appendage of a set of theological mysteries, because the -mysteries are sure in time to be dragged into the open air of reason, -and moral truth crumbles away with the false dogmas with which it had -got mixed. - -'If,' says Condorcet, 'we may treat as useful the design to make -superstition ridiculous in the eyes of men given to pleasures, and -destined, by the very want of self-control which makes pleasures -attractive to them, to become one day the unfortunate victims or the -mischievous instruments of that vile tyrant of humanity; if the -affectation of austerity in manners, if the excessive value attached to -purity, only serves the hypocrites who by putting on the easy mask of -chastity can dispense with all virtues, and cover with a sacred veil the -vices most pernicious to society, hardness of heart and intolerance; if -by accustoming men to treat as so many crimes faults from which -honourable and conscientious persons are not exempt, we extend over the -purest souls the power of that dangerous caste, which to rule and -disturb the earth, has constituted itself exclusively the interpreter of -heavenly justice;--then we shall see in the author of the Pucelle no more -than a foe to hypocrisy and superstition.'[125] - -It helps us to realise the infinite vileness of a system, like that of -the Church in the last century, which could engender in men of essential -nobleness of character like Condorcet, an antipathy so violent as to -shut the eyes of their understanding to the radical sophistry of such -pleading as this. Let one reflection out of many, serve to crush the -whole of it. The key to effective life is unity of life, and unity of -life means as much as anything else the unity of our human relations. -Our identity does by no means consist in a historic continuity of -tissues, but in an organic moral coherency of relation. It is this, -which alone, if we consider the passing shortness of our days, makes -life a whole, instead of a parcel of thrums bound together by an -accident. Is not every incentive and every concession to vagrant -appetite a force that enwraps a man in gratification of self, and severs -him from duty to others, and so a force of dissolution and dispersion? -It might be necessary to pull down the Church, but the worst church that -has ever prostituted the name and the idea of religion cannot be so -disastrous to society, as a gospel that systematically relaxes -self-control as being an unmeaning curtailment of happiness. The -apologists for the Pucelle exhibit the doctrine of individualism in one -of its worst issues. 'Your proof that this is really the best of all -possible worlds is excellent,' says Candide for his famous last word, -'but we must cultivate our garden.' The same principle of exclusive -self-regard, applied to the gratification of sense, passed for a -satisfactory defence of libertinage. In the first form it destroys a -state, in the second it destroys the family. - -It is easier to account for Voltaire's contempt for the mediaeval -superstition about purity, than his want of respect for a deliverer of -France. The explanation lies in the conviction which had such power in -Voltaire's own mind and with which he impregnated to such a degree the -minds of others, that the action of illiterate and unpolished times can -have no life in it. His view of progress was a progress of art and -knowledge, and heroic action which was dumb, or which was not expressed -in terms of intellect, was to the eighteenth century, and to Voltaire at -least as much as to any other of its leaders, mere barbaric energy. In -the order of taste, for instance, he can find only words of cool and -limited praise for Homer, while for the polish and elegance of Virgil -his admiration is supreme. The first was the bard of a rude time, while -round the second cluster all the associations of a refined and lettered -age. A self-devotion that was only articulate in the jargon of mystery -and hallucination, and that was surrounded with rude and irrational -circumstance, with ignorance, brutality, visions, miracle, was encircled -by no halo in the eyes of a poet who found no nobleness where he did not -find a definite intelligence, and who rested all his hopes and interests -on the long distance set by time and civilisation between ourselves and -such conditions and associations as belong to the name of Joan of Arc. -The foremost men of the eighteenth century despised Joan of Arc, -whenever they had occasion to think of her, for the same reason which -made them despise Gothic architecture. 'When,' says Voltaire in one -place, 'the arts began to revive, they revived as Goths and Vandals; -what unhappily remains to us of the architecture and sculpture of these -times is a fantastic compound of rudeness and filigree.'[126] Just so, -even Turgot, while protesting how dear to every sensible heart were the -Gothic buildings destined to the use of the poor and the orphan, -complained of the outrage done by their rude architecture to the -delicacy of our sight.[127] Characters like Joan of Arc ranked in the -same rude and fantastic order, and respect for them meant that respect -for the middle age which was treason to the new time. Men despised her, -just as they despised the majesty and beauty of the great church at -Rheims where she brought her work to a climax, or the lofty grace and -symmetry of the church of St. Ouen, within sight of which her life came -to its terrible end. - -Henry the Fourth was a hero with Voltaire, for no better reason than -that he was the first great tolerant, the earliest historic indifferent. -The Henriade is only important because it helped to popularise the type -of its hero's character, and so to promote the rapidly-growing tendency -in public opinion towards a still wider version of the policy of the -Edict of Nantes. The reign of Lewis XIV. had thrown all previous -monarchs into obscurity, and the French king who showed a warmer and -more generous interest in the happiness of his subjects than any they -ever had, was forgotten, until Voltaire brought him into fame. It was -just, however, because Henry's exploits were so glorious, and at the -same time so near in point of time, that he made an indifferent hero for -an epic poem. 'He should never choose for an epic poem history,' said -Hume very truly, 'the truth of which is well known; for no fiction can -come up to the interest of the actual story and incidents of the -singular life of Henry IV.'[128] These general considerations, however, -as to the propriety of the subject are hardly worth entering upon. How -could any true epic come out of that age, or find fountains in that -critical, realistic, and polemical soul? To fuse a long narrative of -heroic adventure in animated, picturesque, above all, in sincere verse, -is an achievement reserved for men with a steadier glow, a firmer, -simpler, more exuberant and more natural poetic feeling, than was -possible in that time of mean shifts, purposeless public action, and -pitiful sacrifice of private self-respect. Virgil was stirred by the -greatness of the newly-united empire, Tasso by the heroic march of -Christendom against pagan oppressors, Milton by the noble ardour of our -war for public rights. What long and glowing inspiration was possible to -a would-be courtier, thrust into the Bastille for wanting to fight a -noble who had had him caned by lackeys? Besides, an epic, of all forms -of poetic composition, most demands concentrated depth, and Voltaire was -too widely curious and vivacious on the intellectual side to be capable -of this emotional concentration. - -But it is superfluous to give reasons why Voltaire's epic should not be -a great poem. The Henriade itself is there, the most indisputable of -arguments. Of poems whose names are known out of literary histories and -academic catalogues, it is perhaps the least worth reading in any -language by any one but a professional student of letters. It is less -worth reading than Lucan's Pharsalia, because it is more deliberately -artificial and gratuitously unspontaneous. Paradise Regained, which it -is too ready a fashion among us to pronounce dull, still contains at -least three pieces of superb and unsurpassed description, never fails in -grave majestic verse, and is at the worst free from all the dreary -apparatus of phantom and impersonation and mystic vision, which have -never jarred so profoundly with sense of poetic fitness, as when -associated with so political and matter-of-fact a hero as Henry the -Fourth. The reader has no illusion in such transactions as Saint Lewis -taking Henry into heaven and hell, Sleep hearing from her secret caves, -the Winds at sight of him falling into Silence, and Dreams, children of -Hope, flying to cover the hero with olive and laurel. How can we -overcome our repugnance to that strange admixture of real and unreal -matter which presents us with a highly-coloured picture of the Temple of -Love, where in the forecourt sits Joy, with Mystery, Desire, -Complaisance, on the soft turf by her side, while in the inner sanctuary -haunt Jealousy, Suspicion, Malice, Fury; while the next canto describes - - L'eglise toujours une et partout etendue, - Libre, mais sous un chef, adorant en tout lieu, - Dans le bonheur des saints, la grandeur de son Dieu. - Le Christ, de nos peches victime renaissante, - De ses elus cheris nourriture vivante, - Descend sur les autels a ses yeux eperdus, - Et lui decouvre un Dieu sous un pain qui n'est plus.[129] - -Voltaire congratulated himself in his preface that he had come -sufficiently near theological exactitude, and to this qualification, -which is so new for poetry, the critic may add elegance and flow; but -neither elegance nor theological exactitude reconciles us to an epic -that has neither a stroke of sublimity nor a touch of pathos, that -presents no grandeur in character, and no hurrying force and movement in -action. Frederick the Great used to speak of Voltaire as the French -Virgil, but then Frederick's father had never permitted him to learn -Latin, and if he ever read Virgil at all, it must have been in some of -the jingling French translations. Even so, with the episodes of Dido and -of Nisus and Euryalus in our minds, we may wonder how so monstrous a -parallel could have occurred even to Frederick, who was no critic, -between two poets who have hardly a quality in common. If the reader -wishes to realise how nearly insipid even Voltaire's genius could become -when working in unsuitable forms, he may turn from any canto of the -Henriade to any page of Lucretius or the Paradise Lost. A French critic -quotes the famous reviewer's sentence, concluding an analysis of some -epic, to the effect that on the whole, when all is summed up, the given -epic was 'one of the best that had appeared in the course of the current -year;' and insists that Voltaire's piece will not at any rate perish in -the oblivion of poetic annuals like these. If not, the only reason lies -in that unfortunate tenderness for the bad work of famous men, which -makes of so much reading time worse than wasted. 'The unwise,' said -Candide, 'value every word in an author of repute.' - - - - -CHAPTER IV. - -BERLIN. - - -The Marquise du Chatelet died under circumstances that were tragical -enough to herself, but which disgust the grave, while they give a -grotesque amusement to those who look with cynical eye upon what they -choose to treat as the great human comedy. In 1749 the friendship of -sixteen years thus came to its end, and Voltaire was left without the -tie that, in spite of too frequent breaking away from it, had brought -him much happiness and good help so far on the road. He was now free, -disastrously free as the event proved, to accept the invitations with -which he had so long been pressed to take up his residence with the king -who may dispute with him the claim to be held the most extraordinary man -of that century. - -Neither credit nor peace followed Voltaire in his own land. Lewis XV., -perhaps the most worthless of all the creatures that monarchy has ever -corrupted, always disliked him. The whole influence of the court and the -official world had been uniformly exerted against him. Many years went -by before he could even win a seat in the academy, a distinction, it -may be added, to which Diderot, hardly second to Voltaire in originality -and power, never attained to the end of his days. Madame de Pompadour, -the protectress of Quesnay, was Voltaire's first friend at court. He -said of her long afterwards that in the bottom of her heart she belonged -to the philosophers, and did as much as she could to protect them.[130] -She had known him in her obscurer and more reputable days, and she -charged him with the composition of a court-piece (1745), to celebrate -the marriage of the dauphin. The task was satisfactorily performed, and -honours which had been refused to the author of Zaire, Alzire, and the -Henriade, were at once given to the writer of the Princess of Navarre, -which Voltaire himself ranked as a mere farce of the fair. He was made -gentleman of the chamber and historiographer of France. He disarmed the -devout by the Pope's acceptance of Mahomet, and by a letter which he -wrote to Father Latour, head of his former school, protesting his -affection for religion and his esteem for the Jesuits. Condorcet most -righteously pronounces that, in spite of the art with which he handles -his expressions in this letter, it would undoubtedly have been far -better to give up the academy than to write it.[131] It answered its -purpose, and Voltaire was admitted of the forty (May 1746). This -distinction, however, was far from securing for him the tranquillity -which he had hoped from it, and worse libels tormented him than before. -The court sun ceased to shine. Madame de Pompadour gave to Crebillon a -preference which Voltaire resented with more agitation than any -preference of Madame Pompadour's ought to have stirred in the breast of -a strong man. - -We cannot, however, too constantly remember not to ask from Voltaire the -heroic. He was far too sympathetic, too generously eager to please, too -susceptible to opinion. Of that stern and cold stuff which supports a -man in firm march and straight course, giving him the ample content of -self-respect, he probably had less than any one of equal prominence has -ever had. Instead of writing his tragedy as well as he knew how, and -then leaving it to its destiny, he wrote it as well as he knew how, and -then went in disguise to the cafe of the critics to find out what his -inferiors had to say about his work. Instead of composing his -court-piece, and taking such reward as offered, or disdaining such -ignoble tasks--and nobody knew better than he how ignoble they were--he -sought to catch some crumb of praise by fawningly asking of the vilest -of men, _Trajan est-il content?_ Make what allowance we will for -difference of time and circumstance, such an attitude to such a man, -whether in Seneca towards Nero, or Voltaire towards Lewis XV., is a -baseness that we ought never to pardon and never to extenuate. Whether -or no there be in the human breast that natural religion of goodness and -virtue which was the sheet-anchor of Voltaire's faith, there is at least -a something in the hearts of good men which sets a fast gulf between -them and those who are to the very depths of their souls irredeemably -saturated with corruption. - -We may permit ourselves to hope that it was the consciousness of the -humiliation of such relations as these, rather than the fact that they -did not answer their own paltry purpose, that made Voltaire resolve a -second time to shake the dust of his own country from off his feet In -July 1750 he reached Potsdam, and was installed with sumptuous honour in -the court of Frederick the Great, twenty-four years since he had -installed himself with Mr. Falkener, the English merchant at Wandsworth. -Diderot was busy with the first volume of the Encyclopaedia, and Rousseau -had just abandoned his second child in the hospital for foundlings. If -the visit to London did everything for Voltaire, the visit to Berlin did -nothing. There was no Prussia, as there was an England. To travel from -the dominion of George II. to the dominion of his famous nephew, was to -go from the full light of the eighteenth century back to the dimness of -the fifteenth. An academy of sciences, by the influence of -Sophie-Charlotte, and under the guidance of Leibnitz, had been founded -at Berlin at the beginning of the eighteenth century; but Frederick -William had an angry contempt for every kind of activity except drill -and the preaching of orthodox theology, and during his reign the academy -languished in obscurity.[132] - -The accession of Frederick II. was the signal for its reconstitution, -and the revival of its activity under the direction of Maupertuis. To -the sciences of experiment and observation, which had been its original -objects, was added a department of speculative philosophy. The court was -materialist, sceptical, Voltairean, all at the same time; but the -academy as a body was theologically orthodox, and it was wholly and -purely metaphysical in its philosophy. We may partly understand the -distance at which Berlin was then behind Paris, when we read -D'Alembert's just remonstrances with Frederick against giving as -subjects for prize-essays such metaphysical problems as 'The search for -a primary and permanent force, at once substance and cause.'[133] - -Whatever activity existed outside of the court and the academy was -divided between the dialectic of Protestant scholasticism, and Wolf's -exposition and development of Leibnitz. In literature proper there arose -with the accession of Frederick a small group of essentially secondary -critics, of whom Sulzer was the best, without the vivid and radiant -force of either Voltaire or Diderot, and without the deep inspiration -and invention of those who were to follow them, and to place Germany -finally on a level with England and France. Lessing, the founder of the -modern German literature, was at this time a youth of twenty-two, and by -a striking turn of chance was employed by Voltaire in putting into -German his pleadings in the infamous Hirschel case. It was not then -worth while for a stranger to learn the language in which Lessing had -not yet written, and Voltaire, who was a master of English and Italian, -never knew more German than was needed to curse a postilion.[134] -Leibnitz wrote everything of importance in Latin or French, the Berlin -academy conducted its transactions first in Latin, next and for many -years to come in French, and one of its earliest presidents, a man of -special competence,[135] pronounced German to be a noble but frightfully -barbarised tongue. The famous Wolf had done his best to make the tongue -of his country literate, but even his influence was unequal to the task. - -Society was in its foundations not removed from the mediaeval. The -soldiers with whom Frederick won Zorndorf and Leuthen, like the Russians -and Austrians whom he defeated on those bloody days, were not more nor -less than serfs. Instead of philosophers like Newton and Locke, he had -to find the pride and safety of his country in swift rushing troopers -like Winterfield and Ziethen. A daring cavalry-charge in season was for -the moment more to Prussia than any theory why it is that an apple -falls, and a new method of drill much more urgent than a new origin for -ideas. She was concerned not with the speculative problem of the causes -why the earth keeps its place in the planetary system, but with the -practical problem how Prussia was to make her place in the system of -Europe. Prussia was then far more behind France in all thought and all -arts, save the soldier's, than England was in front of France. - -Voltaire had nothing to learn at Berlin, and may we not add, as the king -was a rooted Voltairean long before this, he had nothing to teach there? -The sternest barrack in Europe was not a field in which the apostle of -free and refined intelligence could sow seed with good hope of harvest. -Voltaire at this time, we have to recollect, was in the public mind only -a poet, and perhaps was regarded, if not altogether by Frederick, -certainly by those who surrounded him, as much in the same order of -being with Frederick's flute, fitted by miracle with a greater number of -stops. 'I don't give you any news of literature,' D'Alembert wrote from -Potsdam in 1763, 'for I don't know any, and you know how barren -literature is in this country, where no one except the king concerns -himself with it.'[136] There is no particular disgrace to Berlin or its -king in this. Their task was very definite, and it was only a pleasant -error of Frederick's rather fantastic youth to suppose that this task -lay in the direction of polite letters. The singer of the Henriade was -naturally of different quality and turn of mind from a hero who had at -least as hard an enterprise in his hand as that of Henry IV. Voltaire -and Frederick were the two leaders of the two chief movements then going -on, in the great work of the transformation of the old Europe into the -new. But the movements were in different matter, demanded vastly -different methods, and, as is so often the case, the scope of each was -hardly visible to the pursuer of the other. Voltaire's work was to -quicken the activity and proclaim the freedom of human intelligence, and -to destroy the supremacy of an old spiritual order. Frederick's work was -to shake down the old political order. The sum of their efforts was the -definite commencement of that revolution in the thought and the -political conformation of the West, of which the momentous local -revolution in France must, if we take a sufficiently wide survey before -and after, be counted a secondary phase. The conditions of the order -which was established after the confusion of the fall of the Roman power -before the inroads of the barbarians, and which constituted the Europe -of the early and middle ages, are now tolerably well understood, and the -historic continuity or identity of that order is typified in two -institutions, which by the middle of the eighteenth century had reached -very different stages of decay, and possessed very different powers of -resisting attack. One was the German Empire, and the other was the Holy -Catholic Church. Frederick dealt a definite blow to the first, and -Voltaire did the same to the second. - -Those who read history and biography with a sturdy and childish -pre-conception that the critical achievements in the long course of the -world's progress must of necessity have fallen to the lot of the salt of -the earth, will find it hard to associate the beginning of the great -overt side of modern movement with the two men who versified and -wrangled together for some two and a half years in the middle of the -eighteenth century at Berlin. It is hard to think of the old state, with -all its memories of simple enthusiasm and wild valour and rude -aspiration after some better order, finally disappearing into the chaos -for which it was more than ripe, under the impulse of an arch cynic. And -it is hard, too, to think that the civilising religion which was founded -by a Jew, and first seized by Jews, noblest and holiest of their race, -got its first and severest blow from one who was not above using a Jew -to cheat Christians out of their money. But the fact remains of the vast -work which this amazing pair had to do, and did. - -The character of the founder of the greatness of Prussia, if indeed we -may call founder one rather than another member of that active, clear, -and far-sighted line, can have no attraction for those who require as an -indispensable condition of fealty that their hero shall have either -purity, or sensibility, or generosity, or high honour, or manly respect -for human nature. Frederick's rapidity and firmness of will, his -administrative capacity, his military talent, were marvellous and -admirable enough; but on the moral side of character, in his relations -to men and women, in his feeling for the unseen, in his ideas of truth -and beauty, he belonged to a type which is not altogether uncommon. In -his youth he had much of a sort of shallow sensibility, which more -sympathetic usage might possibly have established and to some small -extent even deepened, but which the curiously rough treatment that his -pacific tastes and frivolous predilections provoked his father to -inflict, turned in time into the most bitter and profound kind of -cynicism that the world knows. No cynic is so hard and insensible as the -man who has once had sensibility, perhaps because the consciousness that -he was in earlier days open to more generous impressions persuades him -that the fault of any change in his own view of things must needs lie in -the world's villainy, which he has now happily for himself had time to -find out. Sensibility of a true sort, springing from natural fountains -of simple and unselfish feeling, can neither be corrupted nor dried up. -But at its best, Frederick's sensibility was of the literary and -aesthetic kind, rather than the humane and social. It concerned taste -and expression, and had little root in the recognition as at first-hand -of those facts of experience, of beauty and tenderness and cruelty and -endurance, which are the natural objects that permanently quicken a -sensitive nature. In a word, Frederick's was the conventional -sensibility of the French literature of the time; a harmless thing -enough in the poor souls that only poured themselves out in bad romance -and worse verse, but terrible when it helped to fill with contempt for -mankind an absolute monarch, with the most perfect military machine in -Europe at his command. Frederick is constantly spoken of as a man -typical of his century. In truth he was throughout his life in -ostentatious opposition to his century on its most remarkable side. -There has never been any epoch whose foremost men had such faith and -hope in the virtues of humanity. There has never been any prominent man -who despised humanity so bitterly and unaffectedly as Frederick despised -it. - -We know what to think of a man who writes a touching and pathetic letter -condoling with a friend on the loss of his wife, and on the same day -makes an epigram on the dead woman[137]; who never found so much -pleasure in a friendly act as when he could make it the means of hurting -the recipient; whose practical pleasantries were always spiteful and -sneering and cruel. As we read of his tricks on D'Argens or Poellnitz, we -feel how right Voltaire was in borrowing a nickname for him from a -mischievous brute whom he kept in his garden. He presented D'Argens with -a house; when D'Argens went to take possession he found the walls -adorned with pictures of all the most indecent and humiliating episodes -of his own life. This was a type of Frederick's delicacy towards some of -those whom he honoured with his friendship. It is true that, except -Voltaire and Maupertuis, most of the French philosophers whom Frederick -seduced into coming to live at Berlin were not too good for the -corporal's horse-play of which they were the victims. But then we know, -further, what to think of a man whose self-respect fails to proscribe -gross and unworthy companions. He is either a lover of parasites, which -Frederick certainly was not, or else the most execrable cynic, the cynic -who delights in any folly or depravity that assures him how right he is -in despising 'that damned race.' - -Frederick need not have summoned the least worthy French freethinkers, -men like D'Argens and La Mettrie and De Prades, in their own way as -little attractive in life and in doctrine as any monk or Geneva -preacher, to warrant him in thinking meanly of mankind. If any one wants -to know what manner of spirit this great temporal deliverer of Europe -was of, he may find what he seeks in the single episode of the -negotiations at Klein-Schnellendorf in 1741. There, although he had made -and was still bound by a solemn treaty of alliance with France, he -entered into secret engagements with the Hungarian Queen, to be veiled -by adroitly pretended hostilities. Even if, as an illustrious apologist -of the Prussian King is reduced to plead, this is in a certain fashion -defensible, on the ground that France and Austria were both playing with -cogged dice, and therefore the other dicer of the party was in -self-defence driven to show himself their superior in these excellent -artifices, there still seems a gratuitous infamy in hinting to the -Austrian general, as Frederick did, how he might assault with advantage -the French enemy, Frederick's own ally at the moment.[138] This was the -author of the plea for political morality, called the Anti-Machiavel, -whose publication Voltaire had superintended the year before, and, for -that matter, had done his best to prevent. Still, as Frederick so -graciously said of his new guest and old friend: 'He has all the tricks -of a monkey; but I shall make no sign, for I need him in my study of -French style. One may learn good things from a scoundrel: I want to know -his French; what is his morality to me?' And so a royal statesman may -have the manners of the coarsest corporal, and the morality of the -grossest cynic, and still have both the eye to discern, and the hand to -control, the forces of a great forward movement. - -Frederick had the signal honour of accepting his position, and taking up -with an almost perfect fortitude the burden which it laid upon him. 'We -are not masters of our own lot,' he wrote to Voltaire, immediately after -his accession to the throne; 'the whirlwind of circumstances carries us -away, and we must suffer ourselves to be carried away.'[139] And what he -said in this hour of exaltation he did not deny nearly twenty years -later, when his fortunes seemed absolutely desperate. 'If I had been -born a private person,' he wrote to him in 1759, 'I would give up -everything for love of peace; but a man is bound to take on the spirit -of his position.'[140] 'Philosophy teaches us to do our duty, to serve -our country faithfully at the price of our blood and our case, to -sacrifice for it our whole existence.'[141] Men are also called upon by -their country to abstain from sacrificing their existence, and if -Frederick's sense of duty to his subjects had been as perfect as it was -exceptionally near being so, he would not have carried a phial of poison -round his neck.[142] Still on the whole he devoted himself to his career -with a temper that was as entirely calculated for the overthrow of a -tottering system, as Voltaire's own. It is difficult to tell whether -Frederick's steady attention to letters and men of letters, and his -praiseworthy endeavours to make Berlin a true academic centre, were due -to a real and disinterested love of knowledge, and a sense of its worth -to the spirit of man, or still more to weak literary vanity, and a -futile idea of universal fame so far as his own productions went, and a -purely utilitarian purpose so far as his patronage of the national -academy was concerned. One thing is certain, that the philosophy which -he learnt from French masters, which Voltaire brought in his proper -person to Berlin, and to which Frederick to the end of his days was -always adding illustrative commentaries, never made any impression on -Germany. The teaching of Leibnitz and Wolf stood like a fortified wall -in the face of the French invasion, and whatever effective share French -speculation had upon Germany, was through the influence of Descartes -upon Leibnitz. - -The dissolution of the outer framework of the European state-system, for -which Frederick's seizure of Silesia was the first clear signal, -followed as it was by the indispensable suppression of the mischievous -independence, so called, of barbaric and feudal Poland, where bishops -and nobles held a people in the most oppressive bondage, can only -concern us here slightly, because it was for the time only indirectly -connected with the characteristic work of Voltaire's life. But, though -indirect, the connection may be seen at our distance of time to have -been marked and unmistakable. The old order and principles of Europe -were to receive a new impress, and the decaying system of the middle age -to be replaced by a polity of revolution, which should finally change -the relations of nations, the types of European government, and the -ideas of spiritual control. - -In 1733 the war of the Polish succession between Austria and Russia on -the one hand, and France and Spain on the other, had given the first -great shock to the house of Austria, which was compelled to renounce the -pretensions and territory of the Empire in Italy, or nearly all of them, -in favour of the Spanish Bourbons, as well as to surrender Lorraine to -Stanislas, with reversion to the crown of France. We may notice in -passing that it was at Stanislas' court of Luneville that Voltaire and -the Marquise du Chatelet passed their last days together. The wars of -the Polish succession were remarkable for another circumstance. They -were the first occasion of the decisive interference of Russia in -Western affairs, an only less important disturbance of Europe than the -first great interference of Prussia a few years later. The falling to -pieces of the old Europe was as inevitable as, more than twelve -centuries before, had been the dissolution of that yet older Europe -whose heart had been not Vienna but Rome. Russia and Prussia were not -the only novel elements. There was a third from over the sea, the -American colonies of France and England. - -Roman Europe had been a vast imperial state, with slavery for a base. -Then, after the feudal organisation had run its course, there was a long -and chaotic transition of dynastic and territorial wars, frightfully -wasteful of humanity and worse than unfruitful to progress. In vain do -historians, intent on vindicating the foregone conclusions of the -optimism which a distorted notion about final causes demands or -engenders in them, try to show these hateful contests as parts of a -harmonious scheme of things, in which many diverse forces move in a -mysterious way to a common and happy end. As if any good use, for -instance, were served by the transfer, for one of the chief results of -the war of the Polish succession, of the Italian provinces of the Empire -of the Spanish Bourbons. As if any good or permanent use were served by -the wars which ended in the Peace of Utrecht, when victorious England -conceded, and with much wisdom conceded, the precise point which she had -for so many years been disputing. From the Peace of Westphalia to the -beginning of the Seven Years' War, it is not too much to say that there -was a century of purely artificial strife on the continent of Europe, -of wars as factious, as merely personal, as unmeaning, as the civil war -of the Fronde was all of these things. In speaking roundly of this -period, we leave out of account the first Silesian War, because the -issue between Prussia and Austria was not decisively fought out until -the final death-struggle from 1756 to 1763. It was the entry of -Frederick the Great upon the scene, that instantly raised international -relations into the region of real matter and changed a strife of -dynasties, houses, persons, into a vital competition between old forces -and principles and new. The aimless and bloody commotions which had -raged over Europe, and ground men's lives to dust in the red mill of -battle, came for a time to an end, and their place was taken by a -tremendous conflict, on whose issue hung not merely the triumph of a -dynasty, but the question of the type to which future civilisation was -to conform. - -In the preliminary war which followed immediately upon the death of -Charles VI. in 1740, and which had its beginning in Frederick's invasion -of Silesia, circumstances partially marched in the usual tradition, with -France and Austria playing opposite sides in an accustomed game. Before -the opening of the Seven Years' War the cardinal change of policy and -alliances had taken place. We are not concerned with the court intrigues -that brought the change about, with the intricate manoeuvres of the -Jesuits, or the wounded vanity of Bernis, whose verses Frederick laughed -at, or the pique of Pompadour, whom Frederick declined to count an -acquaintance. When conflicting forces of tidal magnitude are at work, as -they were in the middle of the last century, the play of mere personal -aims and ambitions is necessarily of secondary importance; because we -may always count upon there being at least one great power that clearly -discerns its own vital interest, and is sure therefore to press with -steady energy in its own special direction. That power was Austria. One -force of this kind is enough to secure a universal adjustment of all the -others in their natural places. - -The situation was apparently very complex. There were in the middle of -the century two great pairs of opposed interests, the interests of -France and England on the ocean and in America, and the interests of -Austria and Prussia in Central Europe. The contest was in each of the -two cases much more than a superficial affair of dynasties or division -of territory, to meet the requirements of the metaphysical diplomacy of -the balance of power. It was a re-opening in far vaster proportions of -those profound issues of new religion and old which had only been dammed -up, and not permanently settled, by the great Peace of Westphalia in -1648. In vaster proportions, not merely because the new struggle between -the Catholic and Protestant powers extended into the new world, but -because the forces contained in these two creeds had been widened and -developed, and a multitude of indirect consequences, entirely apart from -theology and church discipline, depended upon the triumph of Great -Britain and Prussia. The Governments of France and Austria represented -the feudal and military idea, not in the strength of that idea while it -was still alive, but in the narrow and oppressive form of its decay. No -social growth was possible under its shadow, for one of its essential -conditions was discouragement, active and passive, of commercial -industry, the main pathway then open to an advancing people. Again, both -France and Austria represented the old type of monarchy, as -distinguished alike from the aristocratic oligarchy of England, and the -new type of monarchy which Prussia introduced into Europe, frugal, -encouraging industry, active in supervision, indefatigable in improving -the laws. Let us not omit above all things the splendid religious -toleration, of which Prussia set so extraordinarily early an example to -Europe. The Protestants whom episcopal tyranny drove from Salzburg found -warm hospitality among their northern brethren. While the professors of -the reformed faith were denied civil status in France, and subjected to -persecution of a mediaeval bloodiness, one Christian was counted exactly -as another in Prussia. While England was revelling in the infliction of -atrocious penal laws on her Catholic citizens, Prussia extended even to -the abhorred Jesuit the shelter which was denied him in Spain and at -Rome. The transfer of territory from Austria to Prussia meant the -extension of toleration in that territory. Silesia, for instance, no -sooner became Prussian, than the University of Breslau, whose advantages -had hitherto been rigidly confined to Catholics, was at once -compulsorily opened to Protestants and Catholics alike. In criticising -Frederick's despotism let us recognise how much enlightenment, how much -of what is truly modern, was to be found in the manner in which this -despotic power was exercised, long before the same enlightened -principles were accepted in other countries. - -We cannot understand the issues of the Seven Years' War, nor indeed of -the eighteenth century on any of its more important sides, without -tolerably distinct ideas about the ages before and behind it, about the -sixteenth century and the twentieth; without ideas as to the conditions -of the break-up of the Catholic and the feudal organisation, and, next, -as to the attitude proper to be assumed, and the methods to be followed, -in dealing with the more or less anarchic circumstances in which their -break-up and its sequels leave us. There are two ways of regarding these -questions. You may say, as Comte says, that the ultimate type of -society, perfected on a basis of positive knowledge, will in the -essential features of its constitution correspond to the ancient or -mediaeval constitution which it replaces; because that gave the fullest -possible satisfaction to those elements of human nature which are -deepest and permanent, and to those social needs which must always press -upon us; that anything which either seriously retards the dissolution of -the old, or draws men aside from the road which leads on to the same -organisation transformed, must therefore be an impediment in the way of -the new society, and a peril to civilisation. Hence, they say, the -mischievousness of Protestantism, Voltairism, and all the minor -manifestations of the critical spirit, because they inspire their -followers with a contempt, as mistaken towards the past as it is -pernicious to the future, for those fundamental principles of social -stability and individual happiness, to which alone we have to look for -the establishment of a better order; because they give to the unguided -individual judgment the force and authority that can only come with -safety from organisation and tradition, that is from a certain definite -form of shaping and expressing the common judgment; and because, -moreover, they tend directly and indirectly to detach effort from social -aims and the promotion of the common weal, to the attainment of mean and -unwholesome individual ambitions. From this point of view, we should -have to regard the acquisition of colonies, for instance, which was one -of the chief objects of Lord Chatham's policy, as the mischievous -transfer, in the interests of commercial cupidity, of an activity, -hopefulness, and power, that ought to have been devoted to the solution -of the growing social difficulties of Europe; and that ought to have -been bent from a profoundly mean egotism, in the nation and the traders -whose interest was the key of the policy, into a generous feeling for -the public order. - -There is, however, another and a very different way of looking at all -this. You cannot be sure, it is said, that the method of social advance -is to be a return upon the old framework and the old lines; to be sure -of this implies an impatient confidence that social forms have all been -exhausted, or else an unsupported assumption that the present transitory -form is so full of danger to the stability of civilisation, as to make -the acceptance of almost any firm order better than the prolonged -endurance of a social state which, on that theory, ought hardly to be -accounted much better than the social state of Bedouin Arabs. Is it not -far better and safer to refrain from committing ourselves to a given -type of social reconstruction, and to work forward patiently upon the -only principle that can be received with entire assurance; namely, that -faithful cultivation of the intelligence, and open-minded investigation -of all that the intelligence may present to us, is the only certain -method of not missing the surest and quickest road to the manifold -improvements of which the fundamental qualities of human nature, as well -as the relations of man in society, are susceptible? There is no good -ground for supposing that this steadfast regard to the fruitfulness and -variety of the individual intelligence tends specially to lead to the -concentration of energy upon individual aims. For what lesson does free -intelligence teach us more constantly or more impressively than that man -standing alone is impotent, that every unsocial act or sentiment tends -to overthrow that collectivity of effort to which we owe all, and, most -important of all, that this collectivity is most effectively secured by -the just culture of the impulses and affections? No degree nor kind of -organisation could lead us further than this, and ought it not to be the -prime object and chief hope of those who think about society, that this -truth shall stand rooted in every one's own reason? If it does not so -stand, you have no security for your spiritual organisation, and if it -does, then you have no necessity. It is to the spread of this -conviction, by the ever-pressing consciousness of urgent social -circumstances, that we must look to suffuse industrial and egotistic -energy with a truly moral and social sentiment. - -This is the point of view from which we may justly regard the violent -change that was the result of the Seven Years' War, as a truly -progressive step. We cannot be as reasonably sure that the old -conditions of men's relations in society are in whatever new shape -destined to return, as we are sure that it was a good thing to prevent a -feudal and jesuitical government like Austria from retaining a purely -obstructive power in Europe, and a jesuitical government like France -from establishing the same obstructive kind of power in America. The -advantages of the final acquisition of America by Protestantism, and the -decisive consolidation of Prussia, were not without alloy. History does -not present us with these clean balances. It is not at all difficult to -see the injurious elements in this victory of the northern powers, and -nobody would be less willing than the present writer to accept either -the Prussian polity of Frederick, or the commercial polity of England -and her western colonies, as offering final types of wholesome social -states But the alternative was the triumph of a far worse polity than -either, the polity of the Society of Jesus. - -Even those who claim our respect for the Jesuits as having in the -beginning of their course served the very useful purpose of honestly -administering that spiritual power which had fallen from the hands of -the Popes, who had mischievously entered the ranks and followed the -methods of temporal princes, do not deny that within a couple of -generations they became a dangerous obstacle to the continuity of -European progress. Indeed, it is clear that they grew into the very -worst element that has ever appeared in the whole course of European -history, because their influence rested on a systematic compromise with -moral corruption. They had barely seized the spiritual power in the -Catholic countries when it was perceived that as an engine of moral -control their supposed power was no power at all; and that the only -condition on which they could retain the honour and the political -authority which were needful to them was that they should connive at -moral depravity. They had the education of the country in their hands, -and from the confessor's closet they pulled the wires which moved -courts. There was no counter-force, for the mass of the people was dumb, -ignorant, and fettered. Say what we will of the need for a spiritual -power, the influence of the Jesuits by the middle of the eighteenth -century was cutting off the very root of civilisation. This was the -veritably Infamous. And this was the influence which the alliance of -England and Prussia, a thing accidental enough to all appearance, -successfully and decisively checked, because the triumph of the two -northern powers was naturally the means of discrediting the Jesuit -intrigues in the court of Versailles and elsewhere, and stripping them -of those associations of political and material success, which had -hitherto stood to them in the stead of true spiritual credit. - -The peace of 1763 had important territorial consequences. By the treaty -of Paris between France, England, and Spain, Great Britain was assured -of her possessions on the other side of the Atlantic. By the treaty of -Hubertsburg between Austria, Prussia, and Saxony, Prussia was assured of -her position as an independent power in Europe. These things were much. -But the decisive repulse of the great Jesuit organisation was yet more. -It was the most important side of the same facts. The immediate -occasions of this repulse varied in different countries, and had their -origin in different sets of superficial circumstance, but the debility -of the courts of Austria and France was the only condition on which such -occasions could be seized. The very next year, after the treaties of -Paris and Hubertsburg, the Society of Jesus was suppressed in France, -and its property confiscated. Three years later it was expelled from -Spain. Within ten years from the peace of 1763 it was abolished by the -virtuous Clement XIV. In Canada, where the order had been extremely -powerful,[143] their authority vanished, and with it the probability of -establishing in the northern half of the new world those ideas of -political absolutism and theological casuistry which were undoing the -old. Whatever the accidents which hurried the catastrophe, there were -two general causes which really produced it, the revolution in ideas, -and the revolution in the seat of material power. If this be a true -description of the crisis, we can see sufficiently plainly to what an -extent Voltaire and Frederick, while they appeared to themselves to be -fellow-workers only in the culture of the muses, were in fact -unconsciously co-operating in a far mightier task. When the war was -drawing to an end, and Frederick was likely to escape from the -calamities which had so nearly overwhelmed him and his kingdom in -irretrievable ruin, we find Voltaire writing to D'Alembert thus: 'As for -Luc' (the nickname borrowed for the king of Prussia from an ape with a -trick of biting), 'though I ought to be full of resentment against him, -yet I confess to you that in my quality of thinking creature and -Frenchman, I am heartily content that a certain most devout house has -not swallowed Germany up, and that the Jesuits don't confess at Berlin. -Superstition is monstrously powerful towards the Danube.' To which his -correspondent replied that he quite agreed that the triumph of Frederick -was a blessing for France and for philosophy. 'These Austrians are -insolent capucins, whom I would fain see annihilated with the -superstition they protect.'[144] Here was precisely the issue. - -It would be a great mistake to suppose that Frederick consciously and -formally recognised the ultimate ends of his policy. Such deliberate -marking out of the final destination of their work, imputed to rulers, -churchmen, poets, is mostly a figment invented by philosophers. -Frederick thought nothing at all about the conformation of the European -societies in the twentieth century. It was enough for him to make a -strong and independent Prussia, without any far-reaching vision, or -indeed without any vision at all, of the effect which a strong and -independent Prussia would finally have upon the readjustment of ideas -and social forces in western civilisation. We are led to a false notion -of history, and of all the conditions of political action and the -development of nations, by attributing to statesmen deep and -far-reaching sight of consequences, which only completed knowledge and -some ingenuity enable those who live after to fit into a harmonious -scheme. 'Fate, for whose wisdom I entertain all imaginable reverence, -often finds in chance, by which it works, an instrument not over -manageable.'[145] And the great ruler, knowing this, is content to -abstain from playing fate's part, feeling his way slowly to the next -step. His compass is only true for a very short distance, and his chart -has marks for no long course. To make Prussia strong was the aim of -Frederick's life. Hence, although the real destiny of his policy was to -destroy the house of Austria, he did not scruple in 1741 to offer to -assist Maria Theresa with his best help against all the other invaders -of the famous Pragmatic Sanction, which they had solemnly sworn to -uphold. Afterwards, and before the outbreak of the Seven Years' War, he -sought the alliance of France, but happily for Europe, not until after -Kaunitz and Maria Theresa had already secured that blind and misguided -power, thus driving him into an alliance with Great Britain. And so -chance did the work of fate after all. - -It may be said that such a view of the operation of the great forces of -the world is destructive of all especial respect and gratitude towards -the eminent men, of whom chance and fate have made mere instruments. -What becomes of hero-worship, if your hero after all only half knew -whither he sought to go, and if those achievements which have done such -powerful service were not consciously directed towards the serviceable -end? We can only answer that it is not the office of history to purvey -heroes, nor always to join appreciation of a set of complex effects with -veneration for this or that performer. For this veneration, if it is to -be an intelligent mood, implies insight into the inmost privacy of aim -and motive, and this insight, in the case of those whom circumstance -raises on a towering pedestal, we can hardly ever count with assurance -on finding faithful and authentic. History is perhaps not less -interesting for not being distorted into a new hagiographa. - -It is equally unwarranted to put into Frederick's mind conscious ideas -as to the type of monarchy proper for Europe in the epoch of passage -from old systems. Once more, he thought of his own country, and his own -country only, in all those wise measures of internal government which -have been so unjustly and so childishly thrust by historians into the -second place behind his exploits as a soldier, as if the civil activity -of the period between 1763, when peace was made, and 1786, when he died, -was not fully as remarkable in itself, and fully as momentous in its -results, as the military activity of the period between 1763 and 1740. -There is in men of the highest governing capacity, like Richelieu, or -Cromwell, or Frederick, an instinct for good order and regular -administration. They insist upon it for its own sake, independently of -its effects either on the happiness of subjects, or on the fundamental -policy and march of things. If Frederick had acceded to the supreme -power in a highly civilised country, he would have been equally bent on -imposing his own will and forcing the administration into the exact -grooves prescribed by himself, and the result would have been as -pestilent there as it was beneficial in a backward and semi-barbarous -country such as Prussia was in his time. This good internal ordering was -no more than a part of the same simple design which shaped his external -policy. He had to make a nation, and its material independence in the -face of Austria and Russia was not more a part of this process than -giving it the great elements of internal well-being, equal laws, just -administration, financial thrift, and stimulus and encouragement to -industry. Such an achievement as the restoration of the germs of order -and prosperity, which Frederick so rapidly brought about after the -appalling ruin that seven years of disastrous war had effected, is -unmatched in the history of human government. Well might he pride -himself, as we know that he did, on replacing this social chaos by -order, more than on Eossbach or Leuthen. Above all, he never forgot the -truth which every statesman ought to have burning in letters of fire -before his eyes; _I am the procurator of the poor_. - -It commits us to no general theory of government to recognise the merits -of Frederick's internal administration. They constitute a special case, -to be judged by its own conditions. We may safely go so far as to say -that in whatever degree the social state of a nation calls for active -government, whether, as the people of the American Union boast of -themselves, they need no government, or whether, as is the case in Great -Britain, the wretched lives of the poor beneath the combined cupidity -and heartless want of thought of the rich cry aloud for justice, in this -degree it is good that the statesmen called to govern should be in that -capacity of Frederick's type, conceding all freedom to thought, but -energetic in the use of power as trustees for the whole nation against -special classes. To meet completely the demands of their office they -should have, what Frederick neither had nor could under the -circumstances of his advent and the time be expected to have, a firm -conviction that the highest ultimate end of all kingship is to enable -nations to dispense with that organ of national life, and to fit them -for a spontaneous initiative and free control in the conduct of their -own affairs. - -Let us be careful to remember that, if Frederick was a great ruler in -the positive sense, he sprang from the critical school. The traditions -of his house were strictly Protestant, his tutors were Calvinistic -refugees, and his personal predilections had from his earliest youth -been enthusiastically Voltairean. May we not count it one of the claims -of the critical philosophy to a place among the leading progressive -influences in western history, that it tended to produce statesmen of -this positive type? I do not know of any period of corresponding length -that can produce such a group of active, wise, and truly positive -statesmen as existed in Europe between 1760 and 1780. Besides Frederick, -we have Turgot in France, Pombal in Portugal, Charles III and D'Aranda -in Spain. If Charles III was faithful to the old creed, the three -greatest, at any rate, of these extraordinary men drew inspiration from -the centre of the critical school. D'Aranda had mixed much with the -Voltairean circle while in Paris. Pombal, in spite of the taint of some -cruelty, in so many respects one of the most powerful and resolute -ministers that has ever held office in Europe, had been for some time in -England, and was a warm admirer of Voltaire, whose works he caused to be -translated into Portuguese. The famous school of Italian publicists, -whose speculations bore such admirable fruit in the humane legislation -of Leopold of Tuscany, and had so large a share in that code with which -the name of the ever hateful Bonaparte has become fraudulently -associated, these excellent thinkers found their oracles in that -critical philosophy, of which we are so unjustly bidden to think only in -connection with shallow and reckless destruction. The application of -reason to the amelioration of the social condition was the device of the -great rulers of this time, and the father and inspirer of this device -was that Voltaire who is habitually presented to us a mere mocker. - -Psychologues like Sulzer might declare that the scourge of right -thinking was to be found in 'those philosophers who, more used to -sallies of wit than to deep reasoning, assume that they have overthrown -by a single smart trope truths only to be known by combining a multitude -of observations, so delicate and difficult that we cannot grasp them -without the aid of the firmest attention.'[146] How many of these -so-called truths were anything but sophistical propositions, the -products of intellectual ingenuity run riot, without the smallest -bearing either on positive science or social well-being? And is it not -rather an abuse of men's willingness to take the profundity of -metaphysics on trust, that any one who has formulated a metaphysical -proposition, with due technicality of sounding words, has a claim to -arrest the serious attention of every busy passer-by, and to throw on -this innocent and laudable person the burden of disproof? If Duns Scotus -or St. Thomas Aquinas had risen from the dead, Voltaire would very -properly have declined a bout of school dialectic with those famous -shades, because he was living in the century of the Encyclopaedia, when -the exploration of things and the improvement of institutions had taken -the place of subtle manipulation of unverified words, important as that -process had once been in the intellectual development of Europe. He was -equally wise in declining to throw more than a trope or sprightly sally -in the direction of people who dealt only in the multiplication of -metaphysical abracadabras. It was his task to fix the eyes of men upon -action. In the sight of Lutheran or Wolfian conjurors with words this -was egregious shallowness. Strangely enough they thought it the climax -of philosophic profundity to reconcile their natural spiritualism with -the supernatural spiritualism of the scriptures, and rationalistic -theism with the historic theism of revelation.[147] Voltaire repudiated -the supernatural and pseudo-historic half of this hybrid combination, -and in doing so he showed a far profounder logic than the cloudiest and -most sonorous of his theologico-metaphysical critics. We may call him -negative and destructive on this account if we please, yet surely the -abnegation of barren and inconsistent speculation, and of fruitless -effort to seize a vain abstract universality, was a very meritorious -trait in a man who did not stop here, but by every means, by poetry, by -history, by biography, and by the manifestation of all his vivid -personal interests, drew every one who was within the sphere of his -attraction to the consideration of social action as the first fact for -the firm attention of the leaders of mankind. - -It may be said that even from this side Voltaire was destructive only, -and undoubtedly, owing to the circumstances of the time, the destructive -side seemed to predominate in his social influence. To say this, -however, is not to bring an end to the matter. The truth is that no -negative thinking can stop at the negative point. To teach men to hate -superstition and injustice is a sure, if an indirect, way of teaching -them to seek after their opposites. Voltaire could only shake -obscurantist institutions by appealing to man's love of light, and the -love of light, once stirred, leads far. He appealed to reason, and it -was reason in Frederick and the others, which had quickened and -strengthened the love of good order, that produced the striking -reforming spirit which moved through the eighteenth century, until the -reaction against French revolutionary violence arrested its progress. It -is one of the most difficult questions in all history to determine -whether the change from the old order to the new has been damaged or -advanced by that most memorable arrest of the work of social renovation -in the hands of sovereign and traditional governments, administered by -wise statesmen with due regard to traditional spirit; and how far the -passionate efforts of those classes, whose only tradition is a tradition -of squalor and despair, have driven the possessors of superior material -power back into obstructive trepidation. The question is more than -difficult, it is in our generation insoluble, because the movement is -wholly incomplete. But whether the French outbreak from 1789 to 1794 may -prove to have been the starting-point of a new society, or only to have -been a detrimental interruption and parent of interruptions to stable -movement forwards, we have in either case to admit that there was a most -vigorous attempt made in all the chief countries in Europe, between the -middle of the century and the fall of the French monarchy, to improve -government and to perfect administration; that Frederick of Prussia was -the author of the most permanently successful of these endeavours; and -that Frederick learnt to break loose from dark usage, to prefer equity -of administration, to abandon religious superstition, and to insist on -tolerance, from the only effective moral and intellectual masters he -ever had, first the French Calvinists, and then the French critical -school, with Voltaire for chief. It is true, as we shall presently see, -that an important change in the spirit of French writers was marked by -the Encyclopaedia, which was so much besides being critical. But then -this famous work only commenced in the year when Voltaire reached -Berlin, and Frederick's character had received its final shape long -before that time. - -With the exception of Voltaire, D'Alembert was the only really eminent -Frenchman whose work ever struck Frederick, and we are even conscious, -in comparing his letters to these two eminent men, of a certain -seriousness and deferential respect towards the later friend, which -never marked his relations with Voltaire after the early days of -youthful enthusiasm. Frederick's admiration for France, indeed, has been -somewhat overstated by French writers, and by those of our own country -who have taken their word for granted. 'Your nation,' Frederick once -wrote to Voltaire, 'is the most inconsequent in all Europe. It abounds -in bright intelligence, but has no consistency in its ideas. This is how -it appears through all its history. There is really an indelible -character imprinted on it. The only exception in a long succession of -reigns is to be found in a few years of Lewis XIV. The reign of Henry -IV. was neither tranquil enough nor long enough for us to take that into -account. During the administration of Richelieu we observe some -consistency of design and some nerve in execution; but in truth they are -uncommonly short epochs of wisdom in so long a chronicle of madnesses. -Again, France has been able to produce men like Descartes or -Malebranche, but no Leibnitz, no Lockes, no Newtons. On the other hand, -for taste, you surpass all other nations, and I will surely range myself -under your standards in all that regards delicacy of discernment and the -judicious and scrupulous choice between real beauties and those which -are only apparent. That is a great point in polite letters, but it is -not everything.'[148] Frederick, however, could never endure the least -hint that he was not a perfect Frenchman in the order of polite letters. -The article on Prussia in the Encyclopaedia was full of the most -flattering eulogies of his work as a soldier and an administrator, and -even contained handsome praise for his writings; but Diderot, the author -of this part of the article, delicately suggested that a year or two in -the Faubourg St. Honore would perhaps have dispersed the few grains of -Berlin sand which hindered the perfect purity of note of that admirable -flute. Frederick, who had hitherto been an ardent reader of the -Encyclopaedia, never opened another volume. - -We can understand Voltaire's character without wading through the slough -of mean scandals which sprung up like gross fungi during his stay at -Berlin. Who need remember that Frederick spoke of his illustrious guest -as an orange of which, when one has squeezed the juice, one throws away -the skin? Or how Voltaire retorted by speaking of his illustrious host, -whose royal verses he had to correct, as a man sending his dirty linen -to him to wash? or, still worse, as a compound of Julius Caesar and the -abbe Cotin? Nor need we examine into stories, suspicious products of -Berlin malice, how Frederick stopped his guest's supply of sugar and -chocolate, and how Voltaire put his host's candle-ends into his pocket. -It is enough to know that the king and the poet gradually lost their -illusions, and forgot that life was both too short and too valuable to -waste in vain efforts of making believe that an illusion is other than -it is. Voltaire took a childish delight in his gold key and his star, -and in supping as an intimate with a king who had won five battles. His -life was at once free and occupied, the two conditions of happy -existence. He worked diligently at his Siecle de Louis XIV., and -diverted himself with operas, comedies, and great entertainments among -affable queens, charming princesses, and handsome maids of honour. Yet -he could not forget the saying, which had been so faithfully carried to -him, of the orange-skin. He declared that he was like the man who fell -from the top of a high tower, and finding himself softly supported in -the air, cried out, _Good, if it only lasts._[149] Or he was like a -husband striving hard to persuade himself of the fidelity of a suspected -wife. He had fits of violent nostalgia. 'I am writing to you by the side -of a stove, with drooping head and heavy heart, looking on to the River -Spree, because the Spree falls into the Elbe, the Elbe into the sea, and -the sea receives the Seine, and our Paris house is near the River Seine, -and I say, Why am I in this palace, in this cabinet looking into this -Spree, and not in our own chimney-corner?... How my happiness is -poisoned, how short is life! What wretchedness to seek happiness far -from you; and what remorse, if one finds it away from you.'[150] This -was to Madame Denis, his niece; but a Christmas in the Berlin barrack -made even a plain coquette in Paris attractive and homely. We may -imagine with what tender regrets he would look back upon the old days at -Cirey. - -Even in respect of the very mischief from which he had fled, the -detraction and caballing of the envious, he was hardly any better off at -Berlin than he had been at Paris. D'Argental, one of the wisest of his -friends, had forewarned him of this, and that he had fled from enemies -whom at any rate he never saw, only to find other enemies with whom he -had to live day after day. This was exactly what came to pass. Voltaire -often compared the system of life at Berlin and Potsdam to that of a -convent, half military, half literary. The vices of conventual life came -with its other features, and among them jealousy, envy, and malice. The -tale-bearer, that constant parasite of such societies, had exquisite -opportunities, and for a susceptible creature like Voltaire, the result -was wholly fatal. The nights and suppers of the gods became, in his own -phrase, suppers of Damocles. Alexander the Great was transformed into -the tyrant Dionysius. The famous Diatribe of Doctor Akakia, in the -autumn of 1752, brought matters to a climax, because its publication was -supposed to show marked defiance of the king's wishes. - -Maupertuis had been one of the earliest and most strenuous Newtonians -in France, and had at his own personal risk helped to corroborate the -truth of the new system. In 1735 the zeal for experimental science, -which was so remarkable a trait in this century of many-sided -intellectual activity, induced the academy of sciences to despatch an -expedition to take the actual measure of a degree of meridian below the -equator, and the curious and indefatigable De la Condamine, one of the -most ardent men of that ardent time, with two other inquirers went to -Peru. In 1736 Maupertuis and Clairaut under the same auspices started -for the north pole, where, after undergoing the severest hardships, they -succeeded in measuring their degree, and verifying by observation -Newton's demonstration of the oblate figure of the earth, a verification -that was further completed by La Caille's voyage to the Cape of Good -Hope in 1750.[151] Maupertuis commemorated his share in this excellent -work by having a portrait of himself executed, in which the palm of a -hand gently flattens the north pole. He was extremely courageous and -extremely vain. His costume was eccentric and affected, his temper more -jealous and arbitrary than comports with the magnanimity of -philosophers, and his manner more gloomily solemn than the conditions of -human life can ever justify. With all his absurdities, he was a man of -real abilities, and of a solidity of character beyond that of any of his -countrymen at Frederick's court. I would rather live with him, -Frederick wrote to the princess Wilhelmina, than with Voltaire; 'his -character is surer,' which in itself was saying little. But then, the -moment he came into collision with Voltaire, his absurdities became the -most important thing about him, because it was precisely these which -Voltaire was sure to drag into unsparing prominence. In old days they -had been good friends, and a letter still remains, mournfully testifying -to the shallowness of men's sight into the roots of their relations with -others, for it closes by bidding Maupertuis be sure that Voltaire will -love him all the days of his life.[152] The causes of their collision -were obvious enough. As Frederick said, Of two Frenchmen in the same -court, one must perish. Maupertuis, from the heights of the exact -sciences, probably despised Voltaire as a scribbler, while Voltaire, -with a heart flowing over with gay vivacity, assuredly counted -Maupertuis arbitrary, ridiculously solemn, and something of an impostor. -The compliances of society, he said of the president of the Berlin -academy, are not problems that he is fond of solving. Maupertuis acted -to Koenig, in the matter of an academic or discoverer's quarrel, in a way -that struck Voltaire, and all men since, as tyrannical, unjust, and -childish, all in one. He unhappily wrote a book which gave Voltaire such -an excuse for punishing the author's injustice to Koenig, as even -Voltaire's spleen could hardly have hoped for, and the result was the -wittiest and most pitiless of all the purely personal satires in the -world. The temptation was certainly irresistible. - -Maupertuis, as has been said, was courageous and venturesome, and this -venturesomeness being uncorrected by the severe discipline of a large -body of accurate positive knowledge, such as Clairaut and Lagrange -possessed, led him into some worse than equivocal speculation. He was in -the depths of the metaphysical stage, and developed physical theories -out of abstract terms. Of some of these theories the worst that could be -said was they were wholly unproved. He advanced the hypothesis, for -instance, that all the animal species sprang from some first creature, -prototype of all creatures since. Others of his theories were right in -idea, but wrong in form, and without even an attempt at verification. -The famous principle of the minimum of action, for example, in spite of -the truth at the bottom of it, was valueless and confused, until -Lagrange connected it with fundamental dynamic principles, generalised -it, and cleared the unsupported metaphysical notions out of it.[153] All -this, however, was wise and Newtonic compared with the ideas promulgated -in the Philosophic Letters, on which the wicked Akakia so swiftly -pounced. Here were notions which it needed more audacity to broach, than -to face the frosts and snows of Lapland; strange theories that in a -certain state of exaltation of the soul one may foresee the future; that -if the expiration of vital force could only be prevented, the body -might be kept alive for hundreds of years; that by careful dissection of -the brains of giants, Patagonian and other, we should ascertain -something of the composition of the mind; that a Latin town if it were -established, and this was not an original idea, would be an excellent -means of teaching the Latin language. Voltaire knew exactly what kind of -malicious gravity and feigned respect would surround this amazing -performance and its author with inextinguishable laughter, and his -thousand turns and tropes cut deep into Maupertuis like sharpened -swords. - -Voltaire was not by scientific training competent to criticise -Maupertuis. This is true; but then Voltaire had what in such cases -dispensed with special competence, a preternatural gift of detecting an -impostor, and we must add that here as in every other case his anger was -set aflame not by intellectual vapidity, but by what he counted gross -wrong. Maupertuis had acted with despotic injustice towards Koenig, and -Voltaire resolved to punish him. This is perhaps the only side of that -world-famous and truly wretched fray which it is worth our while to -remember, besides its illustration of the general moral that active -interest in public affairs is the only sure safeguard against the -inhuman egotism, otherwise so nearly inevitable and in any wise so -revolting, of men of letters and men of science. - -Frederick took the side of the president of his academy, and had Doctor -Akakia publicly burnt within earshot of its author's quarters.[154] -Voltaire had long been preparing for the end by depositing his funds in -the hands of the Duke of Wuertemberg, and by other steps, which had come -to the king's ears, and had by no means smoothed matters. He sees now -that the orange has been squeezed, and that it is his business to think -of saving the skin. He drew up for his own instruction, he said, a -pocket-dictionary of terms in use with kings: _My friend_ means _my -slave_; _my dear friend_ means that _you are more than indifferent to me;_ -understand by _I will make you happy_, _I will endure you, as long as I -have need of you_; _sup with me to-night_ means _I will make fun of you -to-night._[155] Voltaire, though he had been, and always was, the most -graceful of courtiers, kept to his point, and loudly gave Frederick to -understand that in literary disputes he recognised no kings. An act of -tyranny had been committed towards Koenig, who was his friend, and -nothing would induce him to admit either that it was anything else, or -that it was other than just to have held up the tyrant to the laughter -of Europe. - -Frederick was profoundly irritated, and the terms in which he writes of -his French Virgil as an ape who ought to be flogged for his tricks, a -man worse than many who have been broken on the wheel, a creature who -may deserve a statue for his poetry but who certainly deserves chains -for his conduct, seem to imply a quite special mortification and -resentment. He had no doubt a deep and haughty contempt for all these -angers of celestial minds. The cabals of men of letters, he wrote to -Voltaire, seemed to him the lowest depth of degradation.[156] And he -would fain have flung a handful of dust on the furious creatures. After -three months of vain effort to achieve the impossible, Voltaire being -only moderately compliant, the king in March 1753 gave him leave to -depart, though with a sort of nominal understanding for politeness' sake -that there was to be a speedy return. - -Voltaire, however, was not a man in whose breast the flame of resentment -ever flickered away in politeness, until his adversary had humbled -himself. Though no one ever so systematically convinced himself each day -for thirty years that he was on the very point of death, no one was less -careful to measure the things that were worth doing from the point of -view of a conventional _memento mori_. Nobody spoke about dying so much, -nor thought about it so little. The first use he made of his liberty was -to shoot yet another bolt at Maupertuis from Leipzig, more piercing than -any that had gone before. Frederick now in his turn abandoned the forms -of politeness, and the renowned episode of Frankfort took place. -Voltaire, on reaching Frankfort, was required by the Prussian resident -in the free city to surrender his court decorations, and, more -important than these, a certain volume of royal verse containing the -Palladium, a poem of indecencies which were probably worse than those of -the Pucelle, because an indecent German is usually worse than an -indecent Frenchman. The poems, however, were what was far worse than -indecent in Frederick's eyes; they were impolitic, for they contained -bitter sarcasm on sovereigns whom he might be glad to have, and one of -whom he did actually have, on his side in the day of approaching storm. -Various delays and unlucky mishaps occurred, and Voltaire underwent a -kind of imprisonment for some five weeks (May 31 to July 7, 1753), under -extremely mortifying and humiliating circumstances. There was on the one -part an honest, punctual, methodic, rather dull Prussian subordinate, -anxious above all other things in the world, not excepting respect for -genius and respect for law, to obey the injunctions of his master from -Berlin. On the other part Voltaire, whom we know; excitable as a demon, -burning with fury against enemies who were out of his reach now that he -had spent all his ammunition of satire upon them, only half -understanding what was said to him in a strange tongue, mad with fear -lest Frederick meant to detain him after all. It would need the singer -of the battle of the frogs and mice to do justice to this five-weeks' -tragi-comedy. A bookseller with whom he had had feuds years before, -injudiciously came either to pay his respects, or to demand some trivial -arears of money; the furious poet and philosopher rushed up to his -visitor and inflicted a stinging box on the ear, while Collini, his -Italian secretary, hastily offered this intrepid consolation to Van -Duren, 'Sir, you have received a box on the ear from one of the greatest -men in the world.' A clerk came to settle this affair or that, and -Voltaire rushed towards him with click of pistol, the friendly Collini -again interfering to better purpose by striking up the hand that had -written Merope and was on the point of despatching a clerk. We need not -go into the minute circumstances of the Frankfort outrage. Freytag, the -subordinate, clearly overstrained his instructions, and his excess of -zeal in detaining and harassing Voltaire can only be laid indirectly to -Frederick's charge. But Frederick is responsible, as every principal is, -who launches an agent in a lawless and tyrannic course. The German -Varnhagen has undoubtedly shown that Voltaire's account, witty and -diverting as it is, is not free from many misrepresentations, and some -tolerably deliberate lies. French writers have as undoubtedly shown that -the detention of a French citizen by a Prussian agent in a free town of -the Empire was a distinct and outrageous illegality.[157] We, who are -fortunately not committed by the exigencies of patriotism to close our -eyes to either half of the facts, may with facile impartiality admit -both halves. Voltaire, though fundamentally a man of exceptional truth, -was by no means incapable of an untruth when his imagination was hot, -and Frederick was by no means incapable of an outrage upon law, when law -stood between him and his purpose. Frederick's subordinates had no right -to detain Voltaire at all, and they had no right to allow themselves to -be provoked by his impatience into the infliction of even small outrages -upon him and his obnoxious niece. On the other hand, if Voltaire had -been a sort of Benjamin Franklin, if he had possessed a well-regulated -mind, a cool and gentle temper, a nice sense of the expedient, then the -most grotesque scene of a life in which there was too much of grotesque, -would not have been acted as it was, to the supreme delight of those -miserable souls who love to contemplate the follies of the wise. - -Any reader who takes the trouble to read the documents affecting this -preposterous brawl at Frankfort between a thoroughly subordinate German -and the most insubordinate Frenchman that ever lived,--this adventure, as -its victim called it, of Cimbrians and Sicambrians,--will be rather -struck by the extreme care with which Frederick impresses on the persons -concerned the propriety of having Voltaire's written and signed word for -such parts of the transaction as needed official commemoration. In one -place he expressly insists that a given memorandum should be written by -Voltaire's own hand from top to bottom. This precaution, which seems so -strange in a king who had won five battles, dealing with the author of a -score of tragedies, an epic, and many other fine things, sprang in truth -from no desire to cast a wanton slight on Voltaire's honour, but from -the painful knowledge that the author of the fine things was not above -tampering with papers and denying patent superscriptions. Voltaire's -visit had not been of long duration, before the unfortunate lawsuit with -Abraham Hirschel occurred. Of this transaction we need only say this -much, that Voltaire employed the Jew in some illegal jobbing in Saxon -securities; that he gave him bills on a Paris banker, holding diamonds -from the Jew as pledge of honest Christian dealing; that his suspicions -were aroused, that he protested his bills, then agreed to buy the -jewels, then quarrelled over the price, and finally plunged into a suit, -of which the issues were practically two, whether Hirschel had any -rights on one of the Paris bills, and whether the jewels were fairly -charged. Voltaire got his bill back, and the jewels were to be duly -valued; but the proceedings disclosed two facts of considerable -seriousness for all who should have dealings with him: first, that he -had interpolated matter to his own advantage in a document already -signed by his adversary, thus making the Jew to have signed what he had -signed not; and second, that when very hard pushed he would not swerve -from a false oath, any more than his great enemy the apostle Peter had -done.[158] Frederick had remembered all this, just as every negotiator -who had to deal with Frederick remembered that the great king was not -above such infamies as Klein-Schnellendorf, nor such meanness as -filching away with his foot a letter that had slipped unseen from an -ambassador's pocket.[159] - -And so there was an end, if not of correspondence, yet of that -friendship, which after all had always belonged rather to the spoken -order than to the deep unspeakable. There was now cynical, hoarse-voiced -contempt on the one side, and fierce, reverberating, shrill fury on the -other. The spectacle and the sound are distressing to those who crave -dignity and admission of the serious in the relations of men with one -another, as well as some sense of the myriad indefinable relations which -encompass us unawares, giving colour and perspective to our more -definable bonds. One would rather that even in their estrangement there -had been some grace and firmness and self-control, and that at least the -long-cherished illusion had faded away worthily, as when one bids -farewell to a friend whom a perverse will carries from us over unknown -seas until a far day, and we know not if we shall see his face any more. -It jars on us that the moon which has climbed into the night and moved -like sound of music over heath and woodland, should finally set in a -gray swamp amid the harsh croaking of amphibians. But the intimacy -between Frederick and Voltaire had perhaps been always most like the -theatre moon. - -We may know what strange admixture of distrust, contempt, and -tormenting reminiscence, mingled with the admiration of these two men -for one another's genius, from the bitterness which occasionally springs -up in the midst of their most graceful and amiable letters of a later -date. For instance, this is Voltaire to Frederick; 'You have already -done me ill enough; you put me wrong for ever with the king of France; -you made me lose my offices and pensions; you used me shamefully at -Frankfort, me and an innocent woman who was dragged through the mud and -thrown into gaol; and now, while honouring me with letters, you mar the -sweetness of this consolation by bitter reproaches.... The greatest harm -that your works have done, is in the excuse they have given to the -enemies of philosophy throughout Europe to say, "These philosophers -cannot live in peace, and they cannot live together. Here is a king who -does not believe in Jesus Christ; he invites to his court a man who does -not believe in Jesus Christ, and he uses him ill; there is no humanity -in these pretended philosophers, and God punishes them by means of one -another." ... Your admirable and solid wisdom is spoiled by the -unfortunate pleasure you have always had in seeing the humiliation of -other men, and in saying and writing stinging things to them; a pleasure -most unworthy of you, and all the more so as you are raised above them -by your rank and by your unique talents.'[160] To which the king answers -that he is fully aware how many faults he has, and what great faults -they are, that he does not treat himself very gently, and that in -dealing with himself he pardons nothing. As for Voltaire's conduct, it -would not have been endured by any other philosopher. 'If you had not -had to do with a man madly enamoured of your fine genius, you would not -have got off so well with anybody else. Consider all that as done with, -and never let me hear again of that wearisome niece, who has not so much -merit as her uncle, with which to cover her defects. People talk of the -servant of Moliere, but nobody will ever speak of the niece of -Voltaire.' - -The poet had talked, after his usual manner, of being old and worn out, -and tottering on the brink of the grave. 'Why, you are only sixty-two,' -said Frederick, 'and your soul is full of that fire which animates and -sustains the body. You will bury me and half the present generation. You -will have the delight of making a spiteful couplet on my tomb.'[161] -Voltaire did not make a couplet, but he wrote a prose lampoon on the -king's private life, which is one of the bitterest libels that malice -ever prompted, and from which the greater part of Europe has been -content to borrow its idea of the character of Frederick.[162] This was -vengeance enough even for Voltaire. We may add that while Voltaire -constantly declared that he could never forget the outrages which the -king of Prussia had inflicted on him, neither did he forget to draw his -pension from the king of Prussia even in times when Frederick was most -urgently pressed.[163] It may be said that he was ready to return -favours; 'If things go on as they are going now,' he wrote with sportive -malice, 'I reckon on having to allow a pension to the king of -Prussia.'[164] - -It was not surprising that Voltaire did not return to Paris. His -correspondence during his residence at Berlin attests in every page of -it how bitterly he resented the cabals of ignoble men of letters, and -the insolence of ignoble men of authority. 'If I had been in Paris this -Lent,' he wrote in 1752, 'I should have been hissed in town, and made -sport of at court, and the Siecle de Louis XIV. would have been -denounced, as smacking of heresy, as audacious, and full of ill -significance. I should have had to go to defend myself in the ante-room -of the lieutenant of police. The officers would say, as they saw me -pass, _There is a man who belongs to us_.... No, my friend, _qui bene -latuit, bene vixit_.'[165] With most just anger, he contrasted German -liberality with the tyrannical suspicion of his own government. The -emperor, he says, made no difficulty in permitting the publication of a -book in which Leopold was called a coward. Holland gave free circulation -to statements that the Dutch are ingrates and that their trade is -perishing. He was allowed to print under the eyes of the king of Prussia -that the Great Elector abased himself uselessly before Lewis XIV., and -resisted him as uselessly. It was only in France where permission was -refused for an eulogy of Lewis XIV. and of France, and that, because he -had been neither base enough nor foolish enough to disfigure his eulogy -either by shameful silences or cowardly misrepresentations.[166] The -imprisonment, nine years before this, of Lenglet Dufresnoy, an old man -of seventy, for no worse offence than publishing a supplement to De -Thou's history, had made a deep impression on Voltaire.[167] He would -have been something lower than human if he had forgotten the treatment -which he had himself received at the hands of the most feeble and -incompetent government that ever was endured by a civilised people. - -So he found his way to Geneva, then and until 1798 an independent -republic or municipality. There (1755) he made himself two hermitages, -one for summer, called the Delices, a short distance from the spot where -the Arve falls into the Rhone, and the other near Lausanne (Monrion) for -winter. Here, he says, I see from my bed this glorious lake, which -bathes a hundred gardens at the foot of my terrace; which forms on right -and left a stream of a dozen leagues, and a calm sea in front of my -windows; and which waters the fields of Savoy, crowned with the Alps in -the distance.[168] You write to me, replied D'Alembert, from your bed, -whence you command ten leagues of the lake, and I answer you from my -hole, whence I command a patch of sky three ells long.[169] To poor -D'Alembert the name of the famous lake was fraught with evil -associations, for he had just published his too veracious article on -Geneva in the Encyclopaedia, in which he paid the clergy of that city the -unwelcome compliment, that they were the most logical of all -Protestants, for they were Socinians; and he was now suffering the -penalty of men who stir up angry hives. - -The enjoyment which Voltaire had then and for twenty years to come in -his noble landscape, and which he so often commemorates in his letters, -is a proof that may be added to others, of the injustice of the common -idea that the Voltairean school of the eighteenth century were specially -insensible to the picturesque. Morellet, for instance, records his -delight and wonder at the Alps and the descent into Italy, in terms -quite as warm, if much less profuse, as those of the most impressible -modern tourist.[170] Diderot had a strong spontaneous feeling for -nature, as he shows not only in his truly remarkable criticisms on the -paintings of twenty years, but also in his most private correspondence, -where he demonstrates in terms too plain, simple, and homely, to be -suspected of insincerity, the meditative delight with which the -solitary contemplation of fine landscape inspired him. He has no -peculiar felicity in describing natural features in words, or in -reproducing the inner harmonies with which the soft lines of distant -hills, or the richness of deep embosoming woodlands, or the swift -procession of clouds driven by fierce or cheerful winds, compose and -strengthen the sympathising spirit. But he was as susceptible to them as -men of more sonorous word.[171] And Voltaire finds the liveliest -pleasure in the natural sights and objects around him, though they never -quickened in him those brooding moods of egotistic introspection and -deep questioning contemplation in which Jean Jacques, Bernardin de St. -Pierre, and Senancour, found a sort of refuge from their own desperate -impotency of will and of material activity. Voltaire never felt this -impotency. As the very apostle of action, how should he have felt it? It -pleased him in the first few months of his settlement in new scenes, and -at other times, to borrow some of Frederick's talk about the bestial -folly of the human race, and the absurdity of troubling oneself about -it; but what was a sincere cynicism in the king, was in Voltaire only a -bit of cant, the passing affectation of an hour. The dramatist whose -imagination had produced so long a series of dramas of situation, the -historian who had been attracted by such labours as those of Charles -XII. of Sweden and Peter the Great of Russia, as well as by the -achievements of the illustrious men who adorned the age of Lewis XIV., -proved himself of far too objective and positive a temperament to be -capable of that self-conscious despair of action, that paralysing lack -of confidence in will, which drove men of other humour and other -experience forlorn into the hermit's caves of a new Thebaid. Voltaire's -ostentatious enjoyment of his landscape and his garden was only the -expansion of a seafarer, who after a stormful voyage finds himself in a -fair haven. His lines to Liberty[172] give us the keynote to his mood at -this time. He did not suppose that he had got all, but he knew that he -had got somewhat. - - Je ne vante point d'avoir en cet asile - Rencontre le parfait bonheur: - Il n'est point retire dans le fond d'un bocage; - Il est encore moins chez les rois; - Il n'est pas meme chez le sage; - De cette courte vie il n'est point le partage; - Il y faut renoncer; mais on peut quelquefois - Embrasser au moins son image. - -''Tis a fine thing, is tranquillity,' he wrote; 'yes, but ennui is of -its acquaintance and belongs to the family. To repulse this ugly -relation, I have set up a theatre.'[173] Besides the theatre, guests -were frequent and multitudinous. He speaks of sometimes having a crowd -of fifty persons at table.[174] Besides Les Delices and Lausanne, he -purchased from the President de Brosses a life-interest in Tourney, and -in the same year(1758) he bought the lordship of Ferney, close by. He -was thus a citizen of Geneva, of Berne, and of France, 'for philosophers -ought to have two or three holes underground against the hounds who -chase them.' If the dogs of France should hunt him, he could take -shelter in Geneva. If the dogs of Geneva began to bay, he could run into -France. By and by this consideration of safety grew less absorbing, and -all was abandoned except Ferney; a name that will always remain -associated with those vigorous and terrible assaults upon the Infamous, -which first definitely opened when Voltaire became the lord of this -little domain. - - - - -CHAPTER V. - -RELIGION. - - -I - -In examining the Voltairean attack upon religion we have to remember -that it was in the first instance prompted, and throughout its course -stimulated and embittered, by antipathy to the external organisation of -the religion. It was not merely disbelief in a creed, but exasperation -against a church. Two distinct elements lay at the bottom of Voltaire's -enmity to the peculiar form of monotheism which he found supreme around -him. One of them was the intellectual element of repugnance to a system -of belief that rested on miracles and mysteries irreconcilable with -reason, and was so intimately associated with some of the most odious -types of character and most atrocious actions in the Old Testament, -which undoubtedly contains so many of both. The other was the moral -element of anger against the expounders of this system, their -intolerance of light and hatred of knowledge, their fierce yet -profoundly contemptible struggles with one another, the scandals of -their casuistry, their besotted cruelty. Of these two elements, the -second was, no doubt, if not the earlier in time, at least the stronger -in intensity. It was because he perceived the fruit to be so deadly, -that Voltaire laid the axe to the root of the tree. It is easy to say -that these poisonous Jesuitries and black Jansenisms were no fruit of -the tree, but the produce of a mere graft, which could have been lopped -off without touching the sacred trunk. Voltaire thought otherwise, and -whether he was right or wrong, it is only just to him to keep constantly -before us the egregious failure of Catholicism in his day as a social -force. This is a fact as to which there can be no dispute among persons -with knowledge enough and mental freedom enough to be competent to have -an opinion, and Voltairism can only be fairly weighed if we regard it as -being in the first instance no outbreak of reckless speculative -intelligence, but a righteous social protest against a system socially -pestilent. It was the revival of the worst parts of this system in the -cruelty and obscurantism which broke out after the middle of the -century, that converted Voltaire into an active assailant of belief. But -for that he would pretty certainly have remained tranquilly in the phase -of deism of which some of his early verses are the expression. -Philosophy is truly, as Callicles says in the Gorgias, a most charming -accomplishment for a man to follow at the right age, but to carry -philosophy too far is the undoing of humanity. - -Voltaire no doubt deliberately set himself to overthrow the Catholic -theology, as well as the ecclesi astical system which was bound up with -it, and he did so for the very sufficient reason that it has always been -impossible for men to become indulgent in act, while they remained -fanatical in belief. They will not cease to be persecutors, he said, -until they have ceased to be absurd.[175] The object was to secure -tolerance, and tolerance could only be expected as the product of -indifference, and indifference could be spread most surely by throwing -the fullest light of reason and common sense on the mystical foundations -of revealed religion. To stop short at the inculcation of charity and -indulgence was to surrender the cause; for how should the mere homilies -of a secular moralist soften those whom the direct injunctions of a -deity and his inspired apostles, their own acknowledged masters, failed -to make charitable? It was essential that the superstitions in which -intolerance had its root should be proved detestable and ridiculous. -When men had learnt to laugh at superstition, then they would perceive -how abominable is the oppressive fanaticism which is its champion. - -It is hardly possible to deny the service which Protestantism rendered -in preventing the revolution from Catholicism to scientific modes of -thought from being that violent, abrupt, and irreconcilable breach, -which we now observe in France and Italy, when we remember that the -cause of toleration was systematically defended in England by men who as -systematically defended the cause of Christianity. The Liberty of -Prophesying, in which the expediency of tolerance was based on the -difficulty of being sure that we are right, was written by one of the -most devout and orthodox divines; while the famous Letters on Toleration -(1689), in which the truly remarkable step is taken of confining the -functions of civil government to men's civil interests and the things of -this world, were the work of the same Locke who vindicated the -Reasonableness of Christianity.[176] The English Deists pressed home in -a very effectual way the deduction of universal freedom of speech from -the first maxims of Protestantism, and their inference was practically -admitted.[177] Hence there was no inseparable association between -adherence to the old religious ideas and the prohibition of free speech -in spirituals, and on the other hand there was no obligation on the part -of those who claimed free speech to attack a church which did not refuse -their claim. - -In France the strictly repressive policy of the church in the eighteenth -century, sometimes bloody and cruel as in the persecution of the -Protestants, sometimes minutely vexatious as in the persecution of the -men of letters, but always stubborn and lynx-eyed, had the natural -effect of making it a point of honour with most of those who valued -liberty to hurl themselves upon the religious system, of which rigorous -intolerance was so prominent a characteristic. The Protestant dilution -of the theological spirit seems thus to be in the long run a more -effective preparation for decisive abandonment of it, than its virulent -dissolution in the biting acids of Voltairism, because within limits the -slower these great transformations are in accomplishing themselves, the -better it is for many of the most precious and most tender parts of -human character. Our present contention is that the attitude of the -religionists left no alternative. It is best that creeds, like men who -have done the work of the day, should die the slow deaths of nature, yet -it is counted lawful to raise an armed hand upon the brigand who seeks -the life of another. - -Voltaire to the end of his course contended that the church only was to -blame for the storm which overtook her teaching in the later years, when -his own courageous attack had inspired a host of others, less brilliant -but not any less embittered, to throw themselves on the reeling enemy. -The cause of the inundation of Europe by the literature of negativism -and repudiation was to be sought first of all in the fierce theological -disputes which revolted the best of the laity. Of this violent revulsion -of feeling Voltaire himself was the great organ. He furnished its -justification, and nourished its fire, and invested it with a splendid -lustre. Even when with the timidity of extreme age he seemed to -deprecate the growing ferocity of the attack, he still taunted the -clerical party with their own folly in allowing a mean and egotistic -virulence to override every consideration of true wisdom and policy. -'Now,' he wrote in 1768, 'a revolution has been accomplished in the -human mind, that nothing again can ever arrest. They would have -prevented this revolution, if they had been sage and moderate. The -quarrels of Jansenists and Molinists have done more harm to the -Christian religion than could have been done by four emperors like -Julian one after another.'[178] - -It cannot be too often repeated that the Christianity which Voltaire -assailed was not that of the Sermon on the Mount, for there was not a -man then alive more keenly sensible than he was of the generous humanity -which is there enjoined with a force that so strangely touches the -heart, nor one who was on the whole, in spite of constitutional -infirmities and words which were far worse than his deeds, more ardent -and persevering in its practice. Still less was he the enemy of a form -of Christian profession which now fascinates many fine and subtle minds, -and which starting from the assumption that there are certain inborn -cravings in the human heart, constant, profound, and inextinguishable, -discerns in the long religious tradition an adequate proof that the -mystic faith in the incarnation, and in the spiritual facts which pour -like rays from that awful centre, are the highest satisfaction which a -divine will has as yet been pleased to establish for all these -yearnings of the race of men. This graceful development of belief, -emancipated from dogma and reducing so many substantial bodies to pale -shades, so many articles once held as solid realities to the strange -tenuity of dreams, was not the Christianity of Voltaire's time, any more -than it was that of the Holy Office. There was nothing resembling the -present popularity of a treatment which gives generals so immense a -preponderance over particulars--somewhat to the neglect of the old saying -about the snare that lies hidden in generals, many persons being -tolerably indifferent about the _dolus_ so long as they can make sure of -the _latet_. He attacked a definite theology, not a theosophy. We may, -indeed, imagine the kind of questions which he would have asked of one -pressing such a doctrine on his acceptance; how he would have sought the -grounds for calling aspirations universal, which the numerical majority -of the human race appear to have been without, and the grounds for -making subjective yearnings the test and the measure of the truth of -definite objective records; how he would have prayed to be instructed of -these cravings, whether they spring up spontaneously, or are the -products of spiritual self-indulgence, and also of the precise manner in -which they come to be satisfied and soothed by the momentary appearance -of a humane figure far off upon the earth; how he would have paused to -consider the intelligibility of so overwhelming a wonder as the -incarnation having been wrought, for the benefit of so infinitesimally -small a fragment of mankind. We can imagine this and much else, but -Voltaire would never have stirred a finger to attack a mysticism which -is not aggressive, and can hardly be other than negatively hurtful. - -If any one had maintained against Voltaire that the aspirations after a -future life, the longing for some token that the deity watches over his -creatures and is moved by a tender solicitude for them, and the other -spiritual desires alleged to be instinctive in men, constitute as -trustworthy and firm a guide to truth as the logical reason, we may be -sure that he would have forgiven what he must have considered an -enervating abnegation of intelligence, for the sake of the humane, if -not very actively improving, course of life to which this kind of -pietism is wont to lead. He might possibly have entertained a little -contempt for them, but it would have been quiet contempt and unspoken. -There is no case of Voltaire mocking at any set of men who lived good -lives. He did not mock the English Quakers. He doubtless attacked many -of the beliefs which good men hold sacred, but if good men take up their -abode under the same roof which shelters the children of darkness and -wrong, it is not the fault of Voltaire if they are hit by the smooth -stones shot from his sling against their unworthy comrades. The object -of his assault was that amalgam of metaphysical subtleties, degrading -legends, false miracles, and narrow depraving conceptions of divine -government which made the starting-point and vantage-ground of those -ecclesiastical oppressors, whom he habitually and justly designated the -enemies of the human race. The evil and the good, the old purity and the -superadded corruptions, were all so inextricably bound up in the -Catholicism of the eighteenth century, that it was impossible to a deal -a blow to the one without risk of harm to the other. The method was -desperate, but then the enemy was a true Chimaera, a monster sodden in -black corruption, with whom in the breast of a humane man there could be -no terms. - -The popes during the Voltairean period were above the average in virtue -and intelligence, but their power was entirely overshadowed by that -wonderful order which had assumed all effective spiritual supremacy for -something like two centuries. Nor was this order the only retrogressive -influence. The eighteenth century was the century not only of the Sacre -Coeur, but of the miracles of the dead abbe Paris, transactions in which -Jansenist emulated Jesuit in dragging men and women into the deepest -slough of superstition. A Roman augur fresh from the inspection of the -sacrificial entrails would have had a right to despise the priests who -invented an object for the adoration of men in the diseased and hideous -visions of Mary Alacoque. The man who sells rain to savages may almost -be held to add to the self-respect of the race, if you contrast him with -the convulsionnaires and the fanatics who were transported by their -revolting performances.[179] - -France is the country where reactions are most rapid and most violent. -Nowhere else can the reformer count so surely on seeing the completion -of his reform followed so instantly by the triumph of its adversaries. -The expulsion of the Jesuits, under circumstances of marked and -uncompromising harshness, was not consummated, before the tide of -religious bigotry flowed in from the opposite shore, and swelled to a -portentous height. The exultation of the philosophers at the coming fall -of their old foes, was instantly checked by the yet worse things which -befell them and their principles at the hands of new enemies. The reign -of the Jansenists was speedily pronounced more hateful than the reign of -the Jesuits. Various accommodations were possible with heaven, so long -as the Jesuits had credit, but the Jansenists were pitiless.[180] - -The parliament or supreme judicial tribunal of Paris[181] was Jansenist, -mainly out of political hatred of the Jesuits, partly from a hostility, -very easily explained, to every manifestation of ultramontane feeling -and influence, partly from a professional jealousy of the clergy, but -partly also because the austere predestinarian dogma, and the -metaphysical theology which brought it into supreme prominence, seem -often to have had an unexplained affinity for serious minds trained in -legal ideas and their application. The Jesuits had systematically -abstained as far as was possible from purely speculative theology. -Suarez is pronounced one of the greatest writers in speculative ethics -and jurisprudence; but in the technical metaphysics of theology the -Jesuits with all their literary industry did not greatly care to -exercise themselves. Their task was social and practical, and as -confessors, directors, preachers, and instructors, they had naturally -paid less attention to abstract thought than to the arts of eloquence, -address, and pliancy. Then, too, in doctrine they had uniformily clung -to the softer, more amiable, more worldly, less repulsive, -interpretation of the eternally embarrassing claims of grace, election, -free-will. The Augustinian, Calvinistic, or Jansenist view of the -impotence of will and the saving importance of grace is the answer of -souls eager to feel immediate individual contact with a Supreme Being. -The Jesuits and their power represented extremely different sentiments, -fundamentally religious, but still fundamentally social also, the desire -of men for sympathetic and considerate guidance in conduct, and their -craving for such a unity of the external ordering of the faith as should -leave them undistracted to live their lives. The former concentrated -feelings upon the relations of men directly and immediately with a -Supreme Being; the latter upon their relations with this Being only -mediately, through their relations with one another, and with the church -to which a measure of divinity had been attributed. Hence the decline of -the Jesuits assumed the form of a depravation of morals, while the -Jansenists held more and more tightly to a narrow and bigoted -correctness of belief. The parliament was willing to resist a Molinist -archbishop and his satellites, when they refused burial to all who -should die without having received a certificate of conformity to the -famous bull Unigenitus, which proscribed Jansenist opinion.[182] But -none the less for this was it bent on suppressing the common enemy, who -despised the bull and the Five propositions, Molina and Jansenius, -archbishop Beaumont and Quesnel, all equally. Voltaire's natural -sagacity made him alive to the fact, which perhaps remains as true now -as then, that the professional and middle classes are a worse enemy of -liberal opinion and are more intolerant than the remnants of the old -aristocratic orders. He says to D'Alembert, 'You are right in declaring -yourself the enemy of the great and their flatterers; still, the great -protect one upon occasion, they despise the Infamous, and they will not -persecute philosophers; but as for your pedants of Paris, who have -bought their office, as for those insolent bourgeois, half fanatics, -half imbecile, they can do nothing but mischief.'[183] He had not learnt -to look away from both classes, professional and aristocratic alike, to -that third estate where the voice of the reformer has always found the -first response. Still what he said was true as against the lawyers, -whose vision perhaps never extends beyond the improvement of that mere -surface of order with which their profession is concerned. The -Parliament of Paris was the eager ally of the bigots of the court in -1757, in fulminating deadly edicts against the Encyclopaedia and all -concerned in its production or circulation. In 1762, the year of the -publication of Emile and the Contrat Social, not all the influence of -Rousseau's powerful protectors could prevent the launching of a decree -of arrest against him. Bloodier measures were not wanting. - -In 1762 Morellet had published under the title of a Manual for -Inquisitors a selection of the most cruel and revolting portions of the -procedure of the Holy Office, drawn from the Directorium Inquisitorium -of Eymeric, a grand inquisitor of the fourteenth century. The -cold-blooded cruelties of the regulations, which were thus brought into -the light of the eighteenth century, created the most profound sensation -among the rapidly increasing adherents of tolerance and humanity. -Voltaire was intensely stirred by this resuscitation of horrors that he -mistook for dead. It made the same impression upon him, he said, as the -bleeding body of Caesar made upon the men of Rome.[184] But he soon -found that it was an error to impute a special cruelty to the spiritual -power. Malesherbes, in giving Morellet the requisite permission to print -his Manual, had amazed his friend by telling him, that though he might -suppose he was giving to the world a collection of extraordinary facts -and unheard of processes, yet in truth the jurisprudence of Eymeric and -his inquisition was as nearly as possible identical with the criminal -jurisprudence of France at that very moment.[185] This was very soon to -be proved. - -The bigots, infuriated by the blows which were destroying the Jesuits, -hunted out against heretical enemies some forgotten portions of this -terrible jurisprudence. A protestant pastor, Rochette, was hung for -exercising his functions in Languedoc. The Catholics on the occasion of -the arrest of Rochette were summoned by sound of tocsin, and three young -Protestants, who were brothers, fearing massacre in the midst of the -agitation, took up their arms: for this offence they were convicted of -rebellion, and had their heads struck off.[186] It became painfully -clear how great a mistake it was to suppose the clergy touched with some -special curse of cruelty. Then, as usually, for good or for evil, they -were on about the same moral level with an immense number of laymen, and -were not much more than the incarnation of the average darkness of the -hour. If Eymeric's procedure only copied the ordinary criminal -jurisprudence, the bigotry of the ecclesiastics was accurately reflected -in the bigotry of the secular tribunals. The Protestant Calas was broken -on the wheel (1762), because his son had been found dead, and some one -chose to say that the father had killed him, to prevent him from turning -Catholic. There was not the smallest fragment of evidence, direct or -indirect, for a single link in the chain of circumstances on which the -unfortunate man's guilt depended; while there were many facts which made -the theory of his guilt the most improbable that could have been brought -forward. The widow and the children of Calas were put to the torture, -and eventually fled to Geneva to take refuge with Voltaire. During the -same year the same tribunal, the parliament of Toulouse, did its best to -repeat this atrocity in the case of Sirven. Sirven was a Protestant, and -his daughter had been with perfect legality snatched away from him, and -shut up in a convent, there to be better instructed in the faith. She -ran away, and was found at the bottom of a well. Sirven was accused of -murdering his daughter, and he only escaped the wheel by prompt flight. -His wife perished of misery amid the snows of the Cevennes, and he -joined the wretched family of Calas at Geneva, where the same generous -man furnished shelter and protection. - -In the north of France the fire of intolerance burnt at least as hotly -as in the south. At Abbeville a crucifix was found to have been -mutilated in the night. Two lads of eighteen, to one of whom Frederick -gave shelter in Prussia, were accused under cover of the sacrilege, and -La Barre was condemned by the tribunal of Amiens, at the instance of the -bishop, to have tongue and right hand cut off, and then be burnt alive; -a sentence that was presently commuted by the Parliament of Paris to -decapitation (1766). There was no proof whatever that either of the two -youths was in any way concerned in the outrage. The bishop of the -diocese had issued monitory proclamations, and conducted a solemn -procession to the insulted crucifix. The imagination of the town was -kindled, and the sacrilege became the universal talk of a people growing -more and more excited. Rumour ran that a new sect was being formed, -which was for breaking all the crucifixes, which threw the host on the -ground and cut it with knives. There were women who declared that they -had seen these things. All the horrible stories were revived which had -been believed against the Jews in the middle ages. A citizen took -advantage of this fierce agitation to gratify a private grudge against a -relative of La Barre. He set inquiries on foot among the lowest persons -for proof that the youth had been concerned in the original crime. By -one means or another he got together material enough to support an -indictment. Proceedings once begun, a crowd of informers rose up. It was -deposed that La Barre and D'Etallonde had passed within thirty yards of -the sacred procession without removing their hats, that La Barre had -spoken irreverently of the Virgin Mary, that he had been heard to sing -unseemly songs and recite ribald litanies. This testimony, given with a -vagueness that ought to have proved it legally valueless, was the fruit -of the episcopal monitory, which as at Toulouse in the case of Calas, -virtually incited the dregs of the people to bring accusations against -their superiors, and menaced a man with the pains of hell if he should -refuse to put his neighbour in peril of his life. The tribunal, as -excited as the witnesses and the rest of the public, relied on a royal -ordinance of 1682, directed against sacrilege and superstition and -designed to put down sorcery. In the sentence inflicting so bloody a -punishment, the offence was described as consisting in singing -abominable songs against the Virgin Mary.[187] To exact such a penalty -for such a delinquency was to make human life a mere plaything for the -ignorant passion of the populace and the intellectual confusion of the -tribunals. These atrocities kindled in Voltaire a blaze of anger and -pity, that remains among the things of which humanity has most reason to -be proud. Everybody who has read much of the French writing of the -middle of the eighteenth century, is conscious from time to time of a -sound of mocking and sardonic laughter in it. This laugh of the -eighteenth century has been too often misunderstood as the expression of -a cynical hardness of heart, proving the hollowness of the humanitarian -pretensions in the midst of which it is heard. It was in truth something -very different; it was the form in which men sought a little relief from -the monotony of the abominations which oppressed them, and from whose -taint they had such difficulty to escape. This refrain, that after all a -man can do nothing better than laugh, apparently so shallow and inhuman, -in reality so penetrated with melancholy, we may count most certainly -on finding at the close of the narration of some more than usually -iniquitous or imbecile exploit of those in authority. It was when the -thought of the political and social and intellectual degradation of -their country became too vivid to be endured, that men like Voltaire and -D'Alembert would abruptly turn away from it, and in the bitterness of -their impotence cry that there was nothing for it but to take the world -and all that befalls therein in merriment. It was the grimacing of a man -who jests when he is perishing of hunger, or is shrinking under knife or -cautery. Thus D'Alembert having given Voltaire an account of the -execution of the unfortunate La Barre, in words that show how intensely -his own narrative was afflicting him, suddenly concludes by saying that -he will add no more on this auto-da-fe, so honourable to the French -nation, for it made him ill-humoured, and he meant only to mock at -whatever might happen.[188] But Voltaire could not rest thus. The -thought of so hateful a crime, perpetrated by a tribunal of justice, -clothed him in the shirt of Nessus. All aflame, he wrote to D'Alembert -with noble impetuosity: - -"This is no longer a time for jesting: witty things do not go well with -massacres. What? These Busirises in wigs destroy in the midst of -horrible tortures children of sixteen! And that in face of the verdict -of ten upright and humane judges! And the victim suffers it! People talk -about it for a moment, and the next they are hastening to the comic -opera; and barbarity, become the more insolent for our silence, will -to-morrow cut throats juridically at pleasure. Here Calas broken on the -wheel, there Sirven condemned to be hung, further off a gag thrust into -the mouth of a lieutenant-general, a fortnight after that five youths -condemned to the flames for extravagances that deserved nothing worse -than Saint Lazare. Is this the country of philosophy and pleasure? It is -the country rather of the Saint Bartholomew massacre. Why, the -Inquisition would not have ventured to do what these Jansenist judges -have done."[189] When he had received D'Alembert's letter, ending as we -have seen, his remonstrance waxed vehement: 'What, you would be content -to laugh? We ought rather to resolve to seek vengeance, or at any rate -to leave a coimtry where day after day such horrors are committed.... -No, once more, I cannot bear that you should finish your letter by -saying, I mean to laugh. Ah, my friend, is it a time for laughing? -Did men laugh when they saw Phalaris's bull being made red-hot?'[190] - -This revival in the tribunals of Paris and the provincial towns alike, -of the ignorant fanaticism and the unscientific jurisprudence of the -most unenlightened times, was the more bitter and insupportable from the -new light which shone around such horrors. Beccaria's treatise on -Offences and Penalties had just been translated into French by Morellet, -and furnished a strange commentary upon the atrocities of Toulouse and -Abbeville. It seemed, men said, as if at every striking vindication of -the rights of humanity the genius of cruelty broke its chains, and, to -prove the futility of all such vindications, inspired new acts of -barbarism and violence.[191] The philosophic group had yielded to a -premature exultation, and in their inexperience supposed that they who -planted the tree should see the gathering-in of the fruit. The reign of -reason was believed to be close at hand, and this belief made the -visible recrudescence of fanatical unreason signally insupportable. It -is a high honour to Voltaire and his disciples that the trial did not -prove too strong for their faith, and that when they saw how far too -sanguine they had been, they were more astonished than they were -discouraged, and their energy redoubled with the demands made upon it. -The meaner partisans of an orthodoxy which can only make wholly sure of -itself by injustice to adversaries, have always loved to paint the -Voltairean school in the character 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.[192] -At the very last Voltaire seems to have seen something of the vast space -which every ray of light has to traverse before it reaches the eye of -the common understanding. 'I now perceive,' he wrote the year before his -death, 'that we must still wait three or four hundred years. One day it -cannot but be that good men 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 from time to time -they will make an auto-da-fe'[193] To speak thus was to recognise the -true character of the revolution, and the many elements which go to the -transformation of an old society. To speak thus, too, was to mark the -true character of the sincere lover of human progress, the soul of -steadfast patience and strong hope, mingled with many a pang for the -far-off and slow-coming good. - -It was a natural thing to identify the Jesuits with the strongest part -of the old society, because their organisation was both the strongest -and most striking of its external supports. Their suppression, though -not to be dispensed with except on the condition of an ultimate -overthrow of morality and an extinction of intellectual light, had one -effect which the statesmen of the time could hardly be expected to see, -and which has not been enough considered. Just as the papacy by the -fourteenth century had become more and more exclusively a temporal -power, so the Jesuits by the middle of the eighteenth had become more -and more a commercial power. They were a powerful trading corporation, -and it was as merchants, rather than as casuists and directors of -conscience, that they finally came into collision with secular authority -in France, Portugal, and Spain. Now since the revival of the order it -has been exclusively engaged in the contest for spiritual supremacy, and -for as much of temporal power as has seemed essential to its security. -This, however, is only one of the evils which counterbalance the -advantages of every progressive measure; for, alas, when the statesman -believes most confidently that he has advanced by a league, a very few -years show him or others that his league was after all no more than an -ell or two. - -The reactionary outburst of fanaticism for which the humiliation of the -Jesuits was a signal, only showed how well founded the Voltairean -allegations as to the depraving effects of the existing system of -religion had really been. It was the verification of all that Voltaire -ever said against the system, and demonstrated both the virulence and -the tenacity of the influences which Catholicism in the days of its -degradation had exerted over the character of the nation. It was most -illogical to expect a people who had been bred in the Catholic tradition -suddenly to welcome its enemies. If Catholicism had trained men up to -the temper which seeks the light and loves it, how should it have -deserved animosity? Nearly all lovers of improvement are apt in the -heat of a generous enthusiasm to forget that if all the world were ready -to embrace their cause, their improvement could hardly be needed. It is -one of the hardest conditions of things that the more numerous and -resolute the enemies of reform, then the more unmistakably urgent the -necessity for it. It was just because the cruelty, persecution, and -darkness, in the last ten years of the reign of Lewis XV. were things -possible, that the onslaught upon Catholicism was justifiable and -praiseworthy. They showed the depth and strength of the forces of the -old society, and they foreshadowed the violence which marked its -dissolution. If people had remembered in 1789 how few years separated -them from the wide-spread fanaticism which darkened the last days of -Voltaire, they might have calculated better how few years separated them -from the Napoleonic Concordat. - -No permanent transformation of a society, we may be sure, can ever take -place until a transformation has been accomplished in the spiritual -basis of thought. Voltaire may have distinctly seen this and formulated -it to himself, or not; in any case, he steered his own course exactly as -he would have done if he had seen it. As M. Guizot expresses it, the -separation between the spiritual and temporal orders was never real in -Europe except in the eighteenth century, when for the first time the -spiritual order developed itself entirely apart from the temporal -order.[194] Thus Voltaire acquiesced without murmur or reproach in the -conditions of political absolutism, and the disgrace and ruin which the -nullity of the government brought upon his country in the Seven Years' -War, keenly as he felt it, yet provoked no thought of temporal changes. -His correspondence in that fatal time is marked by a startling apathy -about public events, and even Rossbach seems not to move him to seek its -causes. If we compare his joyful enthusiasm at the accession of Turgot -to power in 1774, we can have no doubt that this strange numbness of -feeling was only the silence of a wise man despairing of saying or -seeing anything useful, and not the criminal folly of a bad citizen to -whom the welfare of his country is not dear. The disasters of France -were as serious to him as to any one else, as may be plainly seen under -the assumed philosophy with which his vivacious spirit loved to veil -real feeling; but the impossibility of doing anything, even of taking a -part in the process with which we English are so familiar as the forming -of public opinion, drove him for consolation to the field where he was -certain of doing efficient work.[195] Writing in 1761, a year of -crushing national loss, he says to one of the oldest and most intimate -of his correspondents: 'There is nothing to laugh at in all this. I am -struck to the heart. Our only resource is in the promptest and most -humiliating peace. I always fancy, when some overwhelming disaster -arrives, that the French will be serious for six weeks. I have not yet -been able to disabuse myself of this notion.'[196] Voltaire was -penetrated by the spirit of action, and he perceived and regretted that -the organisation of France did not permit of the effective action of -private individuals in the field of politics.[197] There are lines in -the Henriade extolling the freedom of England,[198] and he sometimes -indulges in the commonplaces of a literary republicanism; but turning to -the portion of his works which his editors have classified as political, -we scarcely find much beyond the documents, and they are important and -interesting enough, still not truly political, that relate to the -various affairs of Calas, La Barre, and others, in which he exposed the -atrocities of the tribunals. So far as they come into the region of -politics at all, it is only to assail the overt and direct injustice -done to society by the institutions, privileges, and pretensions of the -church. He constantly attacks in a great variety of forms the material -mischief inflicted on society by the vast numbers of monks, mendicant or -other; their unproductive lives, the burden of their maintenance -weighing upon more industrious subjects, the restriction of population -occasioned by their celibacy. The direct refusal of the clergy in 1750 -to consent to pay their share of the taxes like other citizens, though -owning as much as a fifth of all the property in the realm, moved him to -insist in a vigorous pamphlet that the distinction in a kingdom between -spiritual and temporal powers is a relic of barbarism; that it is -monstrous to permit a body of men to say, Let those pay who work, we -ought not to pay because we are idle; that superstition inevitably tends -to make bad citizens, and therefore princes ought to protect philosophy -which destroys superstition.[199] - -Voltaire's task, however, was never directly political, but spiritual, -to shake the foundations of that religious system which professed to be -founded on the revelation of Christ. Was he not right? If we find -ourselves walking amid a generation of cruel and 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. - -It is necessary to admit from the point of view of impartial criticism, -that Voltaire had one defect of character, of extreme importance in a -leader of this memorable and direct attack. With all his enthusiasm for -things noble and lofty, generous and compassionate, he missed the -peculiar emotion of holiness, the soul and life alike of the words of -Christ and Saint Paul, that indefinable secret of the long hold of -mystic superstition over so many high natures, otherwise entirely -prepared for the brightness of the rational day. From this impalpable -essence which magically surrounds us with the mysterious and subtle -atmosphere of the unseen, changing distances and proportions, adding new -faculties of sight and purpose, extinguishing the flames of disorderly -passion in a flood of truly divine aspiration, we have to confess that -the virtue went out in the presence of Voltaire. To admire Voltaire, -cried a man who detested him, is the sign of a corrupt heart, and if -anybody is drawn to his works, then be very sure that God does not love -such an one.[200] The truth of which that is so vehement a paraphrase -amounts to this, that Voltaire has said no word, nor even shown an -indirect appreciation of any word said by another, which stirs or -expands the emotional susceptibility, indefinite exultation, and -far-swelling inner harmony, which De Maistre and others have known as -the love of God, and for which a better name, as covering most varieties -of form and manifestation, is holiness, deepest of all the words that -defy definition. Through the affronts which his reason received from -certain pretensions both in the writers and in some of those whose -actions they commemorated, this sublime trait in the Bible, in both -portions of it, was unhappily lost to Voltaire. He had no ear for the -finer vibrations of the spiritual voice. This had no concern in the fact -that he hated and despised, and was eager that others should hate and -despise, the religious forms that ruled France in his day. The -Christianity which he assailed was as little touched as Voltairism -itself with that spirit of holiness which poured itself round the lives -and words of the two founders, the great master and the great apostle. -The more deeply imbued a man was with this spirit, the more ardently -would he crave the demolition of that Infamous in belief and in -practice, which poisoned the stream of holiness in its springs, and shed -pestilence along its banks, and choked its issues in barrenness and -corruption. - -The point where the failure of this quality in Voltaire was especially a -source of weakness to his attack, is to be found in the crippling of his -historic imagination, and the inability which this inflicted upon him of -conceiving the true meaning and lowest roots of the Catholic legend. The -middle age between himself and the polytheism of the Empire was a -parched desert to him and to all his school, just as to the Protestant -the interval between the apostles and Luther is a long night of unclean -things. He saw only a besotted people led in chains by a crafty -priesthood; he heard only the unending repetition of records that were -fictitious, and dogmas that drew a curtain of darkness over the -understanding. Men spoke to him of the mild beams of Christian charity, -and where they pointed he saw only the yellow glare of the stake; they -talked of the gentle solace of Christian faith, and he heard only the -shrieks of the thousands and tens of thousands whom faithful Christian -persecutors had racked, strangled, gibbeted, burnt, broken on the -wheel. Through the steam of innocent blood which Christians for the -honour of their belief had spilt in every quarter of the known world, -the blood of Jews, Moors, Indians, and all the vast holocausts of -heretical sects and people in eastern and western Europe, he saw only -dismal tracts of intellectual darkness, and heard only the humming of -the doctors, as they served forth to congregations of poor men hungering -for spiritual sustenance the draff of theological superstition. - -This vehement and blinding antipathy arose partly from the intense force -with which the existing aspect of Catholicism recalled all that was -worst, and shut out all that was best in its former history. One cannot -fairly expect the man who is in the grip of a decrepit tyrant, to do -absolutely full justice to the seemly deeds and gracious promises of his -tormentor's youth. But partly also this blindness arose from the fact -that Voltaire measured the achievements of Catholicism by the magnitude -of its pretensions. He took its supernatural claims seriously, and his -intelligence was exasperated beyond control by the amazing disproportion -and incongruity between these claims and the most conspicuous of the -actual results. Those who have parted company with a religion, as -Voltaire had parted company with Christianity, can only be counted upon -to award the well-earned praise to its better part, after they have -planted themselves stably on the assumption that the given religion is a -human and natural force like another. - -The just historic calm on which our modern prides himself, is only -possible in proportion to the mature completeness with which he takes -for granted, and believes that those to whom he speaks will take for -granted, the absence of supernatural intervention in the processes of -religious action and development. He is absolutely undisturbed by the -thought of that claim, which was omnipotent until Voltaire came to do -deadly battle with it, of Christianity to be a crowning miracle of -divine favour, which should raise men to be only a little lower than the -angels, and should be the instrument for pouring out upon them an -ever-flowing stream of special and extraordinary grace. It is not until -the idea has dropped out of our minds of the great fathers of the church -as saints, that we are free to perceive what services they rendered as -statesmen, and it is only when men have ceased to dispute whether -Christianity was a revelation, that they have eyes to see what services -it has rendered as a system. But in Voltaire's time, if Catholicism was -justified historically, it was believed dogmatically, and therefore was -to be attacked dogmatically also. The surrender of the written legend -has never hindered its champions from taking ground which implied some -esoteric revelation, that proves to be some special interpretation of -the written legend. So long as the thinker is busy disproving the -position that a man who happens to live on a certain part of the globe -is a being of such singular and exceptional consequence in the universe -as to be held worthy by supreme heavenly powers of receiving a -miraculous message and the promise of this and that unspeakable -privilege in indescribable worlds to come, so long he is not likely to -weigh very fairly the effects of the belief in such power, messages, and -privileges, on the education and advancement of this world. The modern -historic justice which is done to Catholicism is due to the -establishment of a series of convictions that civilisation is a -structure which man by his own right arm has raised for himself, that it -has been exposed to many an era of storm and stress, and to manifold -influences which have been perpetually destroying portions of the great -edifice, adding fresh parts, modifying the old, by an interminable -succession of changes, resounding and volcanic, or still and -imperceptible; that the danger of destruction was never so terrible as -in the days of the dissolution of the old Roman society; that in this -prolonged crisis the Christian church emerged, first by its organisation -and the ability of some of its chiefs, and next by the attraction of -legends that harmonised with the needs of a dark, confused, and -terror-stricken time; that the many barbarous and absurd articles of -belief incorporated in the Christian profession by the sophists of the -East, received from time to time humane modification in the hands of the -wiser churchmen of the West, whose practical judgment was perpetually -softening down the crude, savage, unilluminated doctrines which had -naturally sprung up in the dismal age when the Catholic system acquired -substance and shape. A just recognition of all these things is only -easy to one whose expectations from humanity are moderate, who perceives -how tardy and difficult is the accomplishment of each smallest step in -the long process, and how helpful are even the simplest beliefs of rude -times in transforming men from vagrant animals into beings with a -consciousness of fixed common relations towards some object of common -worship, and so planting the first germs of social consolidation and -growth. - -Voltaire was, from the circumstances in which he was placed, too busy -proving the purely human origin of Catholicism to have a mind free to -examine how much, if we suppose it to be of purely human origin, it has -done for those who accepted it. Perhaps we ought rather to praise than -blame him for abstaining from planting himself at the historic point of -view, before settling the previous question whether the historic point -of view is permitted in considering the religious movements of Europe. -Until Voltaire and others had divested the current religion of its -supernatural pretensions, it was impossible for any thinker, who -declines to try to take the second step before he has already taken the -first, to survey the operations of such a religion as a merely secular -force. This surely is a field of thought where no serious inquirer could -content himself with a mere working hypothesis. If the supernatural -claims of Catholicism are well founded, then the historic method of -treating it is either a frivolous diversion or else a grave and -mischievous heresy. The issue being of this moment, everybody who -studies the philosophy of history with effect must have made up his mind -in one way or the other. Voltaire had made up his mind very definitely, -and the conclusion to which, for adequate or inadequate reasons, he came -in this matter was one of the most influential agencies in preparing -men's minds for the construction and general reception of a sounder -historical philosophy than was within his own reach. That he did not see -the deduction from his work is a limitation of vision that he shares -with most of the men to whom it has fallen to overthrow old sytems, and -clear the ground on which the next generation has raised new. - - -II. - -Having said thus much on the general causes and conditions of Voltaire's -attack, we may next briefly examine his method. A brief examination -suffices, because, like all his contemporaries, he was so very -imperfectly acquainted with the principles of scientific criticism, and -because his weapons, though sharp and deadly enough for their purpose, -are now likely to become more and more thoroughly antiquated. In -criticism he was, as has often been remarked, the direct descendant of -Bayle. That is, his instruments were purely literary and dialectical. He -examined the various sacred narratives as if he had been reviewing a -contemporary historian. He delights in the minute cavils of literary -pyrrhonism, and rejoices in the artifice of imposing the significance of -the letter, where his adversaries strove for interpretation of the -spirit. As if, for instance, anything could be more childish than to -attack baptism by asking whether Christianity consists in throwing water -on the head, with a little salt in it.[201] He is perfectly content with -the exposure of a fallacy in words, without seeking to expose the root -fallacy of idea. Nothing short of the blindest partisanship can pretend -to find in this a proper or adequate method. The utmost that can be -said, and no just historian ought to forget to say it, is that it was -not more improper nor inadequate than the orthodox method of defence. -Bayle's commentary on the words, 'Compel them to come in,' would not -satisfy the modern requirements of scriptural exegesis, but it was quite -good enough to confound those who contended that the text was a direct -warrant and injunction from heaven for the bitterest persecution on -earth. But the unfair parry of unfair thrust, extenuate it as we may, -count it inevitable as we may, even reckoning up such advantages from it -as we can, and in the present case they were enormous, can never be any -pattern or masterpiece of retort; and it is folly to allow admiration -for the social merit of Voltaire's end to blind us to the logical -demerit of his means. It is deliberately to throw away the advantage of -our distance from the contest, and to sell for a momentary -self-indulgence in the spirit of party the birthright of a free and -equitable historic vision. Let men not fail to do justice to the gains -of humanity won by the emancipation of the eighteenth century; but we -shall be worse off than if they had never been transmitted, if they are -allowed to bind us to approve of every detail of the many movements by -which the final triumph was obtained. - -The key to his method of attack is given us in a sentence in one of his -letters to D'Alembert. 'It is never by means of metaphysics,' he says, -'that you will succeed in delivering men from error; you must prove the -truth by facts.'[202] In other words, the sublime abstract reasoning of -a Spinoza will do far less to dispel the narrow ideas, unfounded -beliefs, and false restrictive conceptions which cripple the human -intelligence so long as it is in bondage to a theological system, than a -direct disproval of the alleged facts on which the system professes to -rest. It is only by dealing immediately with these that you can make the -repulse of error a real question, substantially interesting to ordinary -men. Always remembering that Voltaire's intelligence was practical -rather than speculative, and, besides this, that from the time when he -commenced his attack in earnest the object which he had at heart was the -overthrow of a crushing practical institution, we may agree that in such -a humour and with such a purpose the most effective way of harassing so -active and pestilent a foe was to carry the war into the enemy's -quarters, and to use those kinds of arguments which the greatest number -of men would be likely to find cogent. We may complain that Voltaire -never rises from the ground into the region of the higher facts of -religion; and this is quite true. It would have been controversially -futile if he had done so. There was no audience in those times for the -discussion of the higher facts; and the reason of this was that the -spiritual instructors and champions themselves thrust into the front -place legends, miracles, and the whole of the peculiarly vulgar part of -the theological apparatus, which it would have been as absurd to -controvert metaphysically, as it would be to try to elevate a Gold-coast -negro from his fetish worship by the transcendental parts of Plato. - -It nearly always happens that the defenders of a decaying system, when -they find themselves surrounded by the wholly uncongenial atmosphere of -rationalistic method, fall back, not on the noblest, but on the -ignoblest parts of their system. Distressed by the light, they shrink -hurriedly into darkest recesses of the familiar caves, partly because -they have a sense of especial security in a region that they know so -well, and partly because they have misgivings lest the surrender of -articles or practices in which they only half believe, should by too -stringent process of logical compulsion lead to the destruction of -others in which they believe with all their hearts. Such tactics may or -may not be politic, but we can at least be quite certain that they tend -neither to elevation of religion, nor discovery of truth, nor profit and -sincerity of discussion. If a set of doctrines be attacked from many -quarters in an unworthy manner, and taken at their worst instead of at -their best, we may be quite sure that this is as much due to the -defenders as to the assailants. It was not Voltaire's fault that the -controversy turned on issues which a more modern opponent would not care -to dispute. He is constantly flippant and trivial, and constantly -manifests gross irreverence, but it was the writers whom he was -combating, writers like Sanchez or the stercorists, who had opened -frivolous and unbecoming questions that could hardly be exposed with -gravity. He was making war on an institution, and it was not his concern -to fight on ground which his adversary had never thought, and was too -blind and demoralised to be able to think, of taking up. It was not his -fault that the upholders of the creed he attacked, made a stand upon the -letter of sacred documents, upon prophecy and miracle and special -intervention, upon the virtues of relics and the liquefaction of the -blood of Saint Januarius. The same wise man who forbade us to answer a -fool according to his folly, also enjoined upon us to answer a fool -according to his folly, and the moral commentator agrees that each -prescription is as sage as its contradictory. - -If truth means anything, it was worth while to put to rout the -distortions of truth with which the church lowered the understanding of -its votaries. If truth means anything, then it was worth while to reply -to the allegation that the history of the Christian church is a long -witness of the goodness of heaven and the ever-present guidance of its -heavenly founder, by a record of the actual facts; of the simplicity, -equality, absence of multiplied rites, orders, and dogmas, among the -primitive members of the congregation, and of the radical differences -between the use of apostolic times and of times since; of the incurable -want of authority for all those tales of demons being cast out, pious -inscriptions in letters of gold found graven on the hearts of martyrs, -and the rest, which grow rare in proportion as we draw nearer to the -times when the evidence for them would have been preserved; of the -infamous character of many Christian heroes, from Constantine downwards, -and of the promptitude with which the Christians, as soon as ever they -had power, dyed their hands in the blood of their persecutors; of the -stupefying circumstances that after a revelation was made to the human -race by no less a prodigy than the incarnation of supreme power in a -mortal body, and the miraculous maintenance of this event and its -significance in the tradition, doctrine, discipline of the Catholic -church, yet the whole of Asia, the whole of Africa, all the possessions -of the English and Dutch in America, all the uncivilised Indian tribes, -all the southern lands, amounting to one-fifth part of the globe still -remain in the clutches of the demon, to verify that holy saying of many -being called but few chosen.[203] - -It may be said that this kind of argument really proves nothing at all -about the supernatural origin or character of the Christian revelation, -for which you must seek the responses not of ecclesiastical history but -of the human heart. And that may be a fair thing to say, but then this -contention of the new revelation being only a message to the heart has -only been heard since Voltaire thrust aside the very different -contention of his day. Those various beliefs were universally accepted -about the progress of the church, which were true in no sense whatever, -literal or spiritual, mystical or historical. People accepted traditions -and records, sacred and profane, as literal, accurate, categorical -declarations and descriptions of a long series of things done and -suffered. Moreover, the modern argument in favour of the supernatural -origin of the Christian religion, drawn from its suitableness to our -needs and its divine response to our aspirations, must be admitted by -every candid person resorting to it to be of exactly equal force in the -mouth of a Mahometan or a fire-worshipper or an astrolater. If you apply -a subjective test of this kind, it must be as good for the sincere and -satisfied votaries of one creed, as it is for those of any other. The -needs and aspirations of the Mahometan would not be satisfied by -fetishism or polytheism, nor those of the developed polytheist by -totem-worship. It would be ridiculous for so small a minority of the -race as the professors of Christianity to assume that their aspirations -are the absolute measure of those of humanity in every stage. The -argument can never carry us beyond the relativity of religious truth. - -Now the French apologist a hundred years ago dealt in the most absolute -possible matter. Christianity to him meant a set of very concrete ideas -of all sorts; any one who accepted them in the concrete and literal form -prescribed by the church would share infinite bliss, and any one who -rejected them, whether deliberately or from never having been so happy -as to hear of them, would be infinitely tormented. If this theory be -right, then Voltaire must naturally be abhorred by all persons who hold -it, as a perverse and mischievous hinderer of light. If it be wrong, and -we must observe that from its terms this is not one of the marvellously -multiplying beliefs of which we hear that they may be half wrong and -half right, then Voltaire may take rank with other useful expellers of -popular error. Everybody must admit how imperfect is all such treatment -of popular error; how little rich, how little comprehensive, how little -full. Yet the surgeon who has couched his patient's cataract has surely -done a service, even if he do not straightway carry him to enjoy the -restored faculty on some high summit of far and noble prospect. - -Voltaire's attack was essentially the attack of the English deists, as -indeed he is always willing enough to admit, pursued with far less -gravity and honest search for truth, but, it is hardly necessary to say, -with far more adroitness, rapidity, and grace of manner than any of -them, even than Bolingbroke. As we have seen, he insisted on throwing -himself upon the facts in the records that are least easily reconciled -with a general sense of probability and evidence, as gradually developed -in men by experience. He placed the various incidents of the Bible, the -interpretation of them by the church, the statement of doctrine, the -characters of prominent actors, in the full light of common experience -and of the maxims which experience has made second nature. 'I always -speak humanly,' he says mockingly, 'I always put myself in the place of -a man who, having never heard tell either of Jews or Christians, should -read these books for the first time, and not being illuminated by grace, -should be so unhappy as to trust unaided reason in the matter, until he -should be enlightened from on high.'[204] - -It is superfluous to detail the treatment to which he subjected such -mysteries of the faith as the inheritance of the curse of sin by all -following generations from the first fall of man; the appearance from -time to time, among an obscure oriental tribe, of prophets who foretold -the coming of a divine deliverer, who should wash away that fatal stain -by sacrificial expiation; the choice of this specially cruel, -treacherous, stubborn, and rebellious tribe, to be the favoured people -of a deity of spotless mercy and truth; the advent of the deliverer in -circumstances of extraordinary meanness and obscurity among a generation -that greeted his pretensions with incredulity, and finally caused him to -be put to death with ignominy, in spite of his appeal to the prophets -and to the many signs and wonders which he wrought among them; the -rising of this deliverer from the dead; the ascription to him in the -course of the next three or four centuries of claims which he never made -in person, and of propositions which he never advanced while he walked -on the earth, yet which must now be accepted by every one who would -after death escape a pitiless torment without end; the truly miraculous -preservation amid a fiery swarm of heresies, intricate, minute, subtle, -barely intelligible, but very soul-destroying, of that little fragile -thread of pure belief which can alone guide each spirit in the divinely -appointed path. Exposed to the light, which they were never meant to -endure, of ordinary principles of evidence founded on ordinary -experience, the immortal legends, the prophecies, the miracles, the -mysteries, on which the spiritual faith of Europe had hung for so many -generations, seemed to shrivel up in unlovely dissolution. The -authenticity of the texts on which the salvation of man depends, the -contradictions and inconsistencies of the documents, the incompatibility -between many acts and motives expressly approved by the holiest persons, -and the justice and mercy which are supposed to sit enthroned on high in -the bosoms, the forced constructions of prophecies and their -stultifying futility of fulfilment, the extraordinary frivolousness of -some of the occasions on which the divine power of thaumaturgy was -deliberately and solemnly exerted,--these were among the points at which -the messenger of Satan at Ferney was permitted sorely to buffet the -church. What is the date of the Apostles' Creed? What of the so-called -Athanasian Creed? How were the seven sacraments instituted one after -another? What was the difference between the synaxis and the mass? And -so forth through many hundreds of pages. - -Along with rationalistic questions in scriptural and ecclesiastical -history, are many more as to doctrine, and the assumption on which a -doctrine rests; questions as to the trinity, as to redemption by the -shedding of innocent blood, as to the daily miracle of -transubstantiation, as to the resurrection of the body, as to the -existence of an entity called soul independently of that matter which, -apart from miracle, seems an inseparable condition of its manifestation. -His arguments on all these subjects contain a strange mixture of shallow -mockery and just objection. The questions which he suggests for the -doctors as to the resurrection of the body may serve for an example. -Among them are these: - -'A Breton soldier goes to Canada. It happens by a not uncommon chance -that he falls short of food; he is forced to eat a piece of an Iroquois -whom he has killed over night. The Iroquois had fed on Jesuits for two -or three months, a great part of his body had thus become Jesuit. So -there is the body of the soldier with Iroquois, Jesuit, and whatever he -had eaten before, entering into it. How then will each resume exactly -what belongs to him?' 'In order to come to life again, to be the same -person you were, you must have a lively and present recollection; it is -memory that makes your identity. Having lost memory, how are you to be -the same man?' Again, 'considering that only certain material elements -are proper for the composition of the human body, where is earth enough -to be found to remake all the bodies needed for so many hundreds of -generations? And supposing that by a prodigious miracle the whole human -race could be resuscitated in the Valley of Jehoshaphat, where are all -the spirits meanwhile?'[205] - -Another very favourite mode of approaching the beliefs, incidents, and -personages of Jewish and Christian history was to show that they had -counterparts in some pagan fables or systems, in the books of Chinese -philosophers or Brahminical sages. The inference from this identity or -correspondence between some Judaical practices and myths, and the -practices and myths of Arabians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Hindoos, was -that they were in all cases equally the artificial creations of -impostors preying on the credu-lity of men, 'the first prophet or -diviner having been the first rogue who met the first fool.' It is -curious to observe how the modern argument from constantly extending -discoveries in comparative mythology tends to the demolition of the -special pretensions of Judaical myths of all sorts, by the very opposite -inference to that on which the Voltairean school rested. Voltaire urged -that as these myths resembled one another in this and that important -feature, therefore they were all equally spurious, false, and absurd. -The modern, on the contrary, would hold them all equally genuine, -equally free from the taint of imposture in priest or people, and -equally faithful representations of the mental states which produced and -accepted them. The weakening of the particular sanctity and objective -reality of any one form of these common primitive ways of thinking about -the action of non-human agents would be just as strong, whether we take -the new or the old view of the generation of myths, but the difference -of the effect of the two views upon the justice and fertility of -historic spirit is immeasurable. - -There is no sign, however, that Voltaire was ever seriously conscious of -the importance of a right consideration of the mental conditions of -primitive peoples. This study had been commenced in his own time by De -Brosses, the inventor of the term fetishism, and pronounced by competent -modern authorities to have been a powerful and original thinker upon the -facts of the infancy of civilisation.[206] Yet Voltaire treated the -speculations of this industrious inquirer with the same ignorant -contempt and scorn that the theological enemies of geology were once -accustomed to bestow on men who chipped bits of rock and cherished -fossils.[207] Oddly enough, Voltaire's carelessness and want of thought -on these matters left him with that very theory of the nature of the -development of cultivation, on which the theological school insists to -this day as against the scientific ethnologists. The question is whether -the earliest men were savages, or partially civilised; in other words, -whether civilisation has consisted in a certain uniform progression from -a state a little above the brutes, or whether the savage is not a being -who has degenerated from a partial degree of civilisation. The -progression theory was no doubt in a general way a characteristic -doctrine of the men of the eighteenth century, for which De Maistre, an -ardent and most ingenious advocate of the degeneration theory, reviled -them with his usual heartiness. Yet his eagerness to depress revelation -by exalting natural theology led Voltaire to the essentially theological -position that the earliest men had a clear and lofty idea of a Supreme -Being, and a ready appreciation of justice and charity in their -relations with one another, until the vile ambition of priestly and -prophetic impostors succeeded in setting upon their necks the yoke of -systems which corrupted the heart and conscience, and sophisticated a -pure and simple faith. - -He did not hold that men were conscious of the one God as they were -conscious of light, or that they had perceptions of such a being, as -they had perceptions of the ground they tilled. The idea was derived by -process of natural logic from the contemplation of astonishing natural -effects, of harvest and dearth, of fair days and tempests, of -benefactions and scourges. They saw all these things, and felt the work -of a master.[208] Just as in each community there were men who by the -force of their reason found out that triangles with the same base and of -the same height are equal, and others who in sowing and reaping and -tending their flocks perceived that the sun and moon returned pretty -nearly to the point from which they had started, and that they never -travelled beyond a certain limit to north or south, so there was a third -man who considered that men, animals, stars could not have made -themselves, and who saw that therefore a Supreme Being must exist; while -a fourth, struck by the wrongs that men inflicted on one another, -concluded that if there exists a being who made the stars, the earth, -and men, such a being must confer favour on the virtuous, and -punishments on the wicked. This idea, Voltaire declares, is so natural -and so good that it was most readily embraced.[209] The various forms of -revelations were only so many corruptions of that simple, serviceable, -and self-proving monotheism, and so were the conceptions of polytheism. -He had no notion that monotheism is a later development of the -theological spirit than polytheism. Unable to deny that the Greeks and -Romans, about whom he knew so little and talked so much, had plurality -of gods, he drew a distinction between one Supreme Being and all the -rest, and contended that you may search all their records in vain for a -single fact or a single word to counterbalance the many passages and -monuments which attest their belief of the sovereignty of the one deity -and his superiority over all the rest.[210] We do not know whether this -was a fortuitous kind of growth in his own mind, or whether it was a -scrap of recollection from the painstaking pages in which Cudworth had -worked at the establishment of that explanation of polytheism. Voltaire -too often writes on these weighty subjects, as if trusting to a memory -that snatched effectively at plausible theories, while losing much of -their evidence and all their deeper bearings. - -It would be not a little extraordinary, if we did not constantly -remember that Voltaire's strength did not lie in speculation or -systematic thought, that he saw none of the objections to this account -of things, and that he was content with so limited an observation of the -facts. If De Brosses had magnanimously suffered himself to be cheated in -the transaction of the fourteen cords of wood, Voltaire would perhaps -have read his book candidly, and if he had read it otherwise than with a -foregone resolution to despise it, he would have come upon a number of -circumstances entirely fatal to his smooth theory that many gods are -always subordinate to the one, because he would have had to consider -those states of the human mind in which there are no spiritual gods at -all, but in which every object whatever is invested with volition and -power. In one place he shows something like a recognition of the true -nature of the process. 'I have always been persuaded,' he says in a -letter to Mairan, 'that the phenomena of the heavens have been in the -main the source of the old fables. Thunder was heard on the inaccessible -summit of a mountain; therefore there must be gods dwelling on the -mountain, and launching the thunder. The sun seems to speed from east to -west, therefore he has fine coursers. The rain does not touch the head -of one who sees a rainbow, so the rainbow is a token that there will -never again be a deluge.'[211] But then Voltaire was no systematic -thinker, and thus there was no security that any given right idea which -came into his mind would either remain present to him, or would be -followed up and placed along with other ideas in a scientific order. -Apart from this, however, it is extraordinary that Voltaire's extreme -acuteness did not suggest to him the question, how it was that the -artless and clear belief in one God became more and more obscured by the -growing multitude of other gods, just in proportion as the primitive -tribes became more civilised in all the arts of life. If the nomad -progenitors of the Greeks had only one god, how was it that, as -knowledge, social feeling, love of beauty, and all the other ennobling -parts of man became more fully developed, the power of superstition -waxed greater, and temples and images were multiplied! - -Again, the theologist might, consistently with his deliberate principle -of resort to the miraculous, contend that this first conception of a -single supreme power, in the fact of the existence of which he is -entirely at one with Voltaire, was directly implanted by a supernatural -force. But Voltaire, debarred from such an explanation as this, was -driven silently to assume and imply the truly incredible position that -the rudest savages, being what we know them, urgently occupied in the -struggle for means of subsistence, leading lives purely animal, -possessed of no vocabulary for any abstract idea, should yet by one leap -of natural logic have risen to one of the very highest pinnacles of -speculation, and both felt and expressed the idea of cause in the most -general and comprehensive of all its forms. Surely this assumption, -measured by any of those standards of experience or probability to which -he professed to appeal, was as much of a miracle as those which he so -decisively repudiated. - -In one of his letters Voltaire declared that Locke was the only -reasonable metaphysician that he knew, and that next to him he placed -Hume.[212] Did he ever read, we may wonder, that masterly essay on the -Natural History of Religion, where Hume not only combats with his usual -vigour and effectiveness the idea of the belief in one omniscient, -omnipotent, and omnipresent spirit being the primary religion of men, -and shows that polytheism precedes monotheism, but also traces the -origin of all religion to its rudiment, in that 'universal tendency -among mankind to conceive all beings like themselves, and to transfer to -every object those qualities with which they are familiarly acquainted, -and of which they are intimately conscious?'[213] The greater the -knowledge we acquire of the spiritual rudiments of primitive people, the -more certainly is it established that the idea of theism as the earliest -and most elementary belief, which Voltaire had picked up from -Bolingbroke and Pope, is untenable, and that Hume has been more and more -fully warranted in saying that the only point of theology on which the -consent of mankind is nearly universal is that 'there is an invisible, -intelligent power in the world, but whether this power be supreme or -subordinate, whether confined to one being or distributed among several, -what attributes, qualities, connections, or principles of action, ought -to be ascribed to these beings, concerning all these points there is the -widest difference in the popular systems of theology.'[214] This might -be placing natural theology very low, but Hume at any rate placed it -where he did and described it as he did, because he had knowledge enough -of the condition of various nations in various parts of their history, -and was sufficiently penetrated with a cautious and scientific spirit, -to abstain from the unsupported and purely metaphysical conjectures of -men like Voltaire and Rousseau. Well might the keen-eyed De Maistre -describe him from the Catholic point of view as the most dangerous and -the guiltiest of all those pestilent writers,--the one who employed most -talent with most coolness to do most mischief.[215] - -If Voltaire had studied Hume, moreover, he might have learnt how futile -and inappropriate it is in the long run to examine a religion otherwise -than in its most fundamental and comprehensive general ideas, and how -narrow and superficial would every philosophic appreciation ultimately -find what he called refutation by facts. For his own immediate purpose, -which was to cover the church and its creed with ridicule, the method of -collecting all the ludicrous, immoral, and inconsistent circumstances in -the Scriptures and their current interpretation, was, as we have already -said, a weapon potent enough. Voltaire, however, not only did not use, -he never understood nor perceived, the fact that a religion rests for -its final base on a certain small number of ideas, or that it is only by -touching these, by loosening the firmness of their hold, by revealing -their want of coherency and consistency with other accepted ideas, that -we can expect to shake the superstructure. For example, if only the -official exponents of religion had not been so firmly bent on making -the feeblest of all their ramparts into their very citadel, it would -have been a very small thing to urge the truly singular quality of such -miracles as those of the water made wine at Cana, of the cursing of the -barren fig-tree, of the unfortunate swine who rushed violently down a -steep place and were choked. These were legends that from the right -point of view of religion were not worth defending, any more than from -the right point of view of truth they were worth attacking. The details -of the use of a supernaturally conferred power may best be let alone, -until the probability of the existence and bestowal of such power has -been discussed and decided. The important issue and matter of vital -concern turned upon the general idea of the miraculous; yet this was -what Voltaire, perhaps from an instinctive consciousness of the little -capacity he possessed for genuine speculation, postponed to the really -secondary purpose of disparaging particular cases of miraculous -performance. - -We are now touching what, before Hume, was the central defect of the -eighteenth-century attack, judged philosophically rather than -practically. The movement was a reaction against a certain set of ideas -which had been incorporated in the Christian system, as that system was -elaborated by the oriental sophisters. Yet the exact conflict between -the old ideas and the new was never conceived, much less was it -expressed, in clear comprehensive formulas. Consequently the most -general terms for the debate were neither sought nor found, and hence -the oppressive narrowness, the stifling want of free air, throughout the -controversy. The truth or falsehood which it is good for us to discover -in connection with a religion resides not in detail, but in the largest -general ideas of the subject. These draw all else along with them. Let -us take an illustration from a characteristic of the anti-christian -attack which has already been mentioned. The Voltairean school, as we -have before observed,[216] habitually derided the sacred importance -attached by the church in all ages, from Saint Paul downwards, to the -practice of continence. But there is no sign, so far as the present -writer's knowledge goes, that they ever were near perceiving the origin -of that superstition lying deep down for so many centuries in the human -mind. The sanctity of continence was only one product of the old -far-spreading conviction of all the evil and unholiness essentially -inherent in matter. This conviction, which has itself a history and -genesis well worth tracing, probably accounts for more of the peculiar -manifestations contained in Christianity than any one principle of -belief besides. From this metaphysical idea sprang the whole theory of -asceticism; it had much to do indirectly with the first establishment of -the doctrine of the divinity of Christ; it entered into the triumph of -indispensable grace.[217] The speculative origin of practices and -sentiments which the heads of the western church valued, modified, and -sagaciously used for ecclesiastical or political reasons, ought never to -be lost sight of, because their duration has depended on the -circumstance of the original speculative idea remaining deeply sunk, -though not often put into articulate form, in the minds of the faithful, -and of all others whom these practices and sentiments have influenced. -One key to the central movement of the eighteenth century is the -dispersion of this association of evil and corruption from matter. There -was energetic and triumphant progress in the discovery of the laws of -matter, in their most stupendous, overwhelming, and majestic order. -There was a steady tendency to resolve mental manifestations into -functions of matter. There was a general inclination to forget those -depressing facts connected with the decay and dissolution of matter, -which, in the dismal times when the church was founded, had been thrust -into a prominence so humiliating to human dignity. The general movement -was carried too far by extreme spirits, but on the whole it was a -salutary and much-needed protest against the limitation of knowledge -within airy cloudlands where no true knowledge was to be reached, and of -emotion within transcendental aspirations where the deep reality of -human relations faded into dim distance. - -It is only when controversy is conducted with reference to ground ideas -of this kind, that the parties to it can be sure of being on the same -plane, and, if they are not on the same plane, one of the least -mischiefs is that their arguments fly over one another's heads. -Voltaire failed, partly from want of historic knowledge, partly from -insufficient depth of nature, to see what these ground ideas were, -against which he was fighting. Thus, to take another instance, he failed -to see that the belief in the exertion of supernatural power, even on -occasions which struck him as so frivolous, and in a manner undoubtedly -incompatible with justice, was merely an incidental result of a -profoundly rooted idea of the closeness, constancy, and mixed holiness -and majesty, of the relations between man and an awful being other than -man, endowed with powers denied to us, and animated by motives -inscrutable to us. He chose, if we are not wrong in using a term that -may imply much conscious deliberation, to identify his own conception of -deity with the conception of deity in the first four centuries of the -Christian era, simply because the object of each was called by a common -name. He found that the actions attributed to the Supreme Being whom the -church revered, were unworthy of a personage endowed with the qualities -which he ascribed to a supreme power, in his own version of that -culminating conception. He was thus never on the same plane of thought -or argument, but he never was near finding this out. The God whom he -conceived was incapable, from the very nature attributed to him by his -worshippers, of the various transactions, lofty and mean, sublime and -puerile, described in the documents on which Catholicism relied, and -the tradition by which it corroborated and interpreted them. The ground -idea of the belief in the miraculous was an extremely anthropomorphic -notion of a divinity, possessed of complete power, but using it in -obedience to motives which finite understandings cannot pretend to -fathom or measure. Such a notion was the natural growth of the human -mind, amid such a set of circumstances as attended the development and -establishment of Christianity. Men sat in darkness, forlorn and without -hope, and it is not hard for us to imagine the exultation with which -some greater spirit would produce, and all others would embrace, the -idea of this misery and darkness being no more than an outer accident, -the mysterious and incomprehensible dispensation of a divine being, ever -alive to the destinies of men, but holding them in the hollow of an -unseen hand, and guiding them in ways that are not as our ways; ever -remote from corporeal vision, but operating at a multitude of points on -the spirit of each man through grace, and finally, by a consummating -miracle repeated daily some thousands of times, severing this spirit -from the probation of flesh, and prolonging its existence independently -of the body through all eternity in modes of being, none the less real -for being impossible to conceive. To Voltaire this was unspeakable -foolishness. The prodigies of grace, of the resurrection of the body, of -the incarnation of divinity, were inconsistent with the qualities which -he imputed to the creator of the universe, and hence he contented -himself with mocking at them; the real state of the case was simply that -a number of influences had drawn men aside from that conception of the -creator, with which such prodigies were not inconsistent, but were on -the contrary logically and inseparably associated. - -This failure to rise to the highest ideas involved in the great debate -explains, along with much besides, two striking facts connected with it. -It explains the intense acerbity of the conflict, and the flaming depth -of the chasm which divided and divides the two camps in France. For the -best natures are most violently irritated and outraged by mocking and -satiric attack upon the minor details, the accidents, the outside of the -objects of faith, when they would have been affected in a very different -way by a contrast between the loftiest parts of their own belief and the -loftiest parts of some other belief. Many persons who would listen to a -grave attack on the consistency, reasonableness, and elevation of the -currently ascribed attributes of the godhead, with something of the -respect due to the profound solemnity of the subject, would turn with -deaf and implacable resentment upon one who should make merry over the -swine of Gadara. - -The same circumstance, secondly, explains the absence of permanent -quality about all that Voltaire wrote upon religion. For instance, men -who sympathise with him in his aims, and even for their sake forgive him -his method, who have long ago struck the tents under which they once -found shelter in the lands of belief, to whom Catholicism has become as -extinct a thing as Mahometanism, even they will turn with better chance -of edification to the great masters and teachers of the old faith, than -to the fiery precursor of the new. And why, if not for the reason that -while he dealt mainly with the lower religious ideas, or with the higher -ideas in their lowest forms, they put these into the second place, and -move with an inspiring exultation amid the loftiest and most general -conceptions that fine imagination and a soaring reason could discover -among the spiritual treasures of their religion. They turned to the -diviner mind, and exercised themselves with the weightiest and most -universal circumstances of the destiny of mankind. This is what makes -their thought and eloquence of perpetual worth, because the -circumstances with which they deal are perpetually present, and the -elements of life and character to which they appeal perpetually -operative. The awful law of death, the impenetrable secret of the first -cause, the fierce play of passion and universal distribution of pain, -the momentariness of guilt and eternity of remorse, the anguish of -bereavement that chokes and rends, the hopeless inner desolation which -is the unbroken lot of myriads of the forlorn of the earth,--these -ghostly things ever laying siege to the soul were known to a Bossuet or -a Pascal, and resolved by a series of ideas about the unknowable power -and the government of the world, which are no longer the mighty weapons -of exorcism they once were, but they are at any rate of due magnitude -and proportion, sublime, solemn, never unworthy. We touch the hands of -those who have walked with the most high, and they tell us many moving -wonders; we look on faces that have shone in rays from the heaven of -noble thoughts; we hear solemn and melodious words from men who received -answers from oracles that to us are very mute, but the memory of whose -power is still upon us. Hence the work of these glowing mortals lives -even for those to whom their faith is dead, while the words that -Voltaire wrote on religion are lifeless as the Infamous which they so -meritoriously slew. As we have said, he never knew the deeper things of -Catholicism. This is what he wrote about the immortal Dante: 'Everybody -with a spark of good sense ought to blush at that monstrous assemblage -in hell of Dante and Virgil, of Saint Peter and Madonna Beatrice. There -are to be found among us, in the eighteenth century, people who force -themselves to admire feats of imagination as stupidly extravagant and as -barbarous as this; they have the brutality to oppose them to the -masterpieces of genius, wisdom, and eloquence, that we have in our -language. _O tempora, O judicium!_'[218] To which prodigy of criticism -we can only exclaim with the echo, _O tempora, O judicium!_ - - -III. - -Let us see shortly what was Voltaire's own solution of those facts of -life with which religion has to deal. The Catholic solution we know, and -can definitely analyse and describe; but the vagueness of Voltairean -deism defies any attempt at detailed examination. We can perceive a -supernatural existence, endowed with indefinable attributes, which are -fixed subjectively in the individual consciousness of each believer, and -which therefore can never be set forth in a scheme of general -acceptance. The Voltairean deist--and such persons exist in ample numbers -to this day--hardly ever takes the trouble to reconcile with one another -the various attributes which he imputes at various times to some great -master power of the universe. There is scarcely one of these attributes -to which, when it comes to be definitely described, he does not -encounter affronting contradiction in the real occurrences that arise -from time to time to search and try all our theories, deistical, or -other. The phenomena of moral and physical evil on the earth, and the -arrival of disasters which make no discrimination between their victims, -are constantly dealing sore blows to the conceptions which the deist -loves to erect in moments of optimistic expansion, of the clemency, -justice, and illimitable power of a being who governs the universe, and -is a something outside and independent of it. These optimist -conceptions, vague, unverified, free of definite relations with any -moral or social system, and furnishing no principle of active human -association as the Catholic idea of deity had done, constitute the -favourite religion or religiosity of those classes in all modern -countries, which have found the Voltairean kind of objection to the -Christian revelation insuperable, and which are so fortunate as to enjoy -a full measure of material prosperity. To these classes the black side -of life is strange and a matter of hearsay; and hence the awkwardness of -reconciling their complacent theory with the horror of facts is never -forced upon them. In their own happiness they love to superadd the -luxury of thankfulness to the bounty of a being to whom they owe all, -and to swell the tide of their own emotions by meditation on his -infinite and unspeakable perfections. Proof they require none, beyond -the loveliness and variety of external nature, the innocence and delight -of all young creatures, the order of the seasons bearing us their -copious fruit, the vivid intelligence and serviceable power of man, who -is the divinely appointed recipient of all these multitudinous favours. -Hence in proportion as this sort of deism stirs the soul of a man, the -more closely are his inmost thoughts reserved for contemplation of the -relations between the Supreme Being and his own individuality. It is a -creed which is specially adapted for, and has been generally seized by, -those with whom the world has gone very well, owing to their own -laudable exertion, and who are inclined to believe that the existing -ordering of society is fundamentally the best possible. It is the -superlative decoration of optimism. - -The mass of men, those who dwell in dens and whose lives are bitter, -have never, in spite even of Rousseau's teaching, accepted deism. An -opportunity for trying the experiment had occurred in the fourth -century, and the lesson should not be forgotten. Deism had been the -prevailing opinion in religion, but, as the most instructive of all the -historians of the dissolution of the Empire observes, it was generally -felt that deism did not supply the void occasioned by the absence of the -multitude of sympathetic divinities of the pagan system. Its influence -was cold and inanimate.[219] The common people are wont to crave a -revelation, or else they find atheism a rather better synthesis than any -other. They either cling to the miraculously transmitted message with -its hopes of recompense, and its daily communication of the divine voice -in prayer or sacrament, or else they make a world which moves through -space as a black monstrous ship with no steersman. The bare deistic -idea, of a being endowed at once with sovereign power and sovereign -clemency, with might that cannot be resisted and justice that cannot be -impugned, who loves man with infinite tenderness, yet sends him no word -of comfort and gives him no way of deliverance, is too hard a thing for -those who have to endure the hardships of the brutes, but yet preserve -the intelligence of men. - - Comment concevoir un Dieu, la bonte meme, - Qui prodigua ses biens a ses enfans qu'il aime, - Et qui versa sur eux les maux a pleines mains? - Quel oeil peut penetrer dans ses profonds desseins? - De l'etre tout parfait le mal ne pouvait naitre! - Il ne vient point d'autrui puisque Dieu seul est maitre: - Il existe pourtant. O tristes verites! - O melange etonnant de contrarietes! - Un Dieu vint consoler notre race affligee; - Il visita la terre et ne l'a point changee! - Un sophiste arrogant nous dit qu'il ne l'a pu; - Il le pouvait, dit l'autre, et ne l'a point voulu; - Il le voudra, sans doute; et tandis qu'on raisonne, - Des foudres souterraines engloutissent Lisbonne, - Et de trente cites dispersent les debris, - Des bords sanglans du Tage a la mer de Cadix.[220] - -A bald deism has undoubtedly been the creed of some of the purest and -most generous men that have ever trod the earth, but none the less on -that account is it in its essence a doctrine of self-complacent -individualism from which society has little to hope, and with which -there is little chance of the bulk of society ever sympathising. In -truth, one can scarcely call it a creed. It is mainly a name for a -particular mood of fine spiritual exaltation; the expression of a state -of indefinite aspiration and supreme feeling for lofty things. Are you -going to convert the new barbarians of our western world with this fair -word of emptiness? Will you sweeten the lives of suffering men, and -take its heaviness from that droning piteous chronicle of wrong and -cruelty and despair, which everlastingly saddens the compassionating ear -like moaning of a midnight sea; will you animate the stout of heart with -new fire, and the firm of hand with fresh joy of battle, by the thought -of a being without intelligible attributes, a mere abstract creation of -metaphysic, whose mercy is not as our mercy, nor his justice as our -justice, nor his fatherhood as the fatherhood of men? It was not by a -cold, a cheerless, a radically depraving conception such as this, that -the church became the refuge of humanity in the dark times of old, but -by the representation, to men sitting in bondage and confusion, of -godlike natures moving among them under figure of the most eternally -touching of human relations, a tender mother ever interceding for them, -and an elder brother laying down his life that their burdens might be -loosened. - -We have spoken of Voltairean deism, and the expression is a convenient -one to distinguish from the various forms of mystic theology, which -gloomily disclaim any pretence to be rational, the halting-place of -spirits too deeply penetrated with the rationalistic objections of -Voltaire to accept revelation, and either too timorous or too confident -to acquiesce in a neutral solution. It is unjust, however, to attribute -to Voltaire himself a perfect adherence to the deistical idea. For the -first half of his life there is no doubt that it floated in his mind, -as in so many others, in a random manner, as the true explanation of the -world. His introduction to the teaching of Newton would give a firmer -shape to such a belief. He has indeed told us that it was so. He -mentions that in the course of several interviews he had with Doctor -Samuel Clarke in 1726, this philosopher never pronounced the name of God -without a curious air of awe and self-collection, and he commemorates -the impression which the sight of this habit, and reflection upon its -significance, made upon him[221]. Still it was not a very active or -vital element of belief with him even then, but rather of the nature of -the sublimest of poetic figures. - - Oui, dans le sein de Dieu, loin de ce corps mortel, - L'esprit semble ecouter la voix l'Eternel[222]. - -Clearly this kind of expression means very little, and has no source in -the deeper seats of the writer's feeling. A considerable number of -Voltaire's deistical ejaculations, and on these occasions he threw into -them a measure of real unction, may be fairly traced to the -extraordinary polemical utility of an idea of spotless purity, entire -justice, inexhaustible mercy, as an engine of battle against men who in -the sacred name of this idea were the great practitioners of intolerance -and wrong. - - Ignorer ton etre supreme, - Grand Dieu! c'est un moindre blaspheme, - Et moins digne de ton courroux - Que de te croire impitoyable, - De nos malheurs insatiable, - Jaloux, injuste comme nous. - Lorsqu'un devot atrabilaire - Nourri de superstition, - A par cette affreuse chimere, - Corrompu sa religion, - Le voila stupide et farouche: - Le fiel decoule de sa bouche, - Le fanatisme arme son bras: - Et dans sa piete profonde - Sa rage immolerait le monde - A son Dieu, qu'il ne connait pas.[223] - -To have a conception of perfect goodness was a manifest convenience in -confronting men who were to be proved masters of badness. But when the -pressure of circumstance forced Voltaire to seek in earnest for an -explanation of the world, which he had formerly been content to take in -an easy way upon trust, then the deism, which had been barely more than -nominal at best, was transformed into a very different and far sincerer -mood. It would obviously be a gross blunder from a logical point to -confound optimism with deism, but it is clear that what shook Voltaire's -conviction of the existence of a deity was the awakening in him of a -keener sense of the calamities that afflict the race of man. Personal -misfortunes perhaps had their share. It was after the loss of Madame du -Chatelet, and after the rude dispersion of his illusions as to -Frederick, when he barely knew whither to turn for shelter or a home, -that the optimism which he had learnt in England began to lose its hold -upon him. We must do him the justice to add that he was yet more -sensible of disasters which affected others. The horrid tide of war -which devastated Europe and America, the yet more hateful tide of -persecution for opinion which swept over France, and the cruel -maladministration of justice which disgraced her tribunals, stirred all -that was best in him to the very depths. The only non-dramatic poem of -his which has strength, sincerity, and profundity of meaning enough -firmly to arrest the reader's attention, and stimulate both thought and -feeling, is that fine and powerful piece which he wrote on the occasion -of the great earthquake of Lisbon.[224] Here he threw into energetic and -passionately argumentative verse the same protest against the theory -that whatever is is best, which he afterwards urged in a very different -form in the 'refined insolence' of Candide.[225] He approaches more -nearly than a quarter of a century before he would have thought -possible, to the deep gloom of the Pascal against whose terrible -pictures he had then so warmly protested. He sees mankind imprisoned in -a circle of appalling doom, from which there is no way of escape. Unlike -Pascal, he can find no solution, and he denounces that mockery of a -solution which cries that all is well in accents stifled with -lamentation. He protests against the delusion of forcing the course of -the world's destiny into a moral formula, that shall contain the terms -of justice and mercy in their human sense. - - Aux cris demi-formes de leurs voix expirantes, - Au spectacle effrayant de leurs cendres fumantes, - Direz-vous: C'est l'effet des eternelles lois, - Qui d'un Dieu libre et bon necessitent le choix? - Direz-vous, en voyant cet amas de victimes: - Dieu s'est venge, leur mort est le prix de leurs crimes? - Quelle crime, quelle faute ont commis ces enfans - Sur le sein maternel ecrases et sanglans? - Lisbonne, qui n'est plus, eut-elle plus de vices - Que Londres, que Paris, plonges dans les delices? - Lisbonne est abimee, et l'on danse a Paris. - -He equally refuses, though not in terms, to comfort himself by the -reflection that, in default of a better, the current ragged theory of -the providential government of the universe, because it may be possible, -must be true. He can find no answer, and confesses his belief that no -answer is to be found by human effort. Whatever side we take, we can -only shudder; there is nothing that we know, nothing that we have not to -fear. Nature is mute, and we interrogate her in vain; the book of -destiny is closed to our eyes. - - L'homme, etranger a soi, de l'homme est ignore. - Que suis-je? ou suis-je? ou vais-je? et d'ou suis-je tire? - Atomes tourmentes sur cet amas de boue, - Que la mort engloutit, et dont le sort se joue, - Mais atomes pensans, atomes dont les yeux, - Guides par la pensee, ont mesure les cieux, - Au sein de l'infini nous elacons notre etre, - Sans pouvoir un moment nous voir et nous connaitre. - - * * * * * - - Le passe n'est pour nous qu'un triste souvenir; - Le present est affreux, s'il n'est point d'avenir, - Si la nuit du tombeau detruit l'etre qui pense. - -He abandons Plato and rejects Epicurus. Bayle knows more than they, as, -with the balance in his hand, he teaches men to doubt; wise enough, -great enough, to be without a system. - -In a note he adds to this glorification of Bayle, whom he styles the -advocate-general of the philosophers--the thinker in whose pages all -opinions are set forth, all the reasons which shake them and all which -uphold are equally investigated, while he abstains from giving any -conclusions.[226] Elsewhere he explains that when he describes reason as -having made immense progress in Germany, he does not refer to those who -openly embrace the system of Spinoza; but the good folk who have no -fixed principles on the nature of things, who do not know what is, but -know very well what is not, these are my true philosophers.[227] - -It would not be difficult to find a score of passages in which the -writer assumes or declares certainty on this high matter to be -attainable, and to be entirely in one direction. His opinions -undoubtedly shifted with the veering of his moods, but on the whole -these axioms of suspense mark the central point to which they constantly -tended to return, and at which they rested longest. That dark word, Shut -thine eyes and thou shalt see, opened no road for him. The saying that -the Most High may be easily known, provided one does not press for -definition, offered no treasure of spiritual acquisition to the man who -never let go, even if he did not always accurately appreciate, Locke's -injunction to us to be careful to define our terms. We cannot label -Voltaire either spiritualist or materialist. The success with which he -evades these two appellations is one of the best available tests of a -man's capacity for approaching the great problems with that care and -positive judgment, which are quite as proper to them as to practical -affairs or to physical science. - -Thus with reference to the other great open question, he habitually -insisted that the immortality of the soul can never possibly be -demonstrated, and that this is why it has been revealed to us by -religion,[228] which is perhaps Voltaire's way of saying that it is no -near concern of his. Sometimes he argued from considerations of general -probability. The brutes feel and think up to a certain point, and men -have only the advantage over them of a greater combination of ideas; the -more or less makes no difference in kind. 'Well, nobody thinks of giving -an immortal soul to a flea; why should you give one any the more to an -elephant, or a monkey, or my Champagne valet, or a village steward who -has a trifle more instinct than my valet?'[229] Again, he retorted -significantly on those who contended with a vehemence of prejudice -known in some places even to this day, that belief in the immortality of -the soul is an indispensable condition of probity; as if the first Jews -accepted that dogma, and as if there were no honest men among them, and -no instruction in virtue.[230] - - -In fine, then, we search Voltaire in vain for a positive creed, which -logic may hold in coherent bonds, or social philosophy accept as a -religious force. The old word about his faith must be pronounced true. -It remains a creed of negation. But still, be it always understood, -negation of darkness. And this inevitably leads in the direction of the -day. It was an indispensable step in the process of transition. Men, it -is constantly being said since the violent breaking-up of French -society, will never consent to live on no better base than articles of -denial and formulas of suspense, for are not the deepest parts of human -character moved by strong yearning for relationship with the unknowable? -It may be so, and if it be, the Voltairean movement was the great -instrument in leading, not merely a scanty group of speculative -intellects, but vast bodies, large nations, of common folk to perceive, -or dimly to conjecture, that this object of adoration which their eyes -strain after _is_ unknowable, and that there is no attainable external -correlative of their deep desire. Voltaire never went so far in the -direction of assertion as Rousseau, and he never went so far in the -direction of denial as Holbach. And, whatever we may say generally of -the horror of the world for the spirit that denies, all that was best -and most truly progressive in French society during the eighteenth -century, Turgot and Condorcet no less than Beaumarchais, showed itself -content to follow him in this middle path. His appreciation of religion -was wanting in a hundred vital things, just as some may say that -Luther's was, but it contained the one idea which the deepest spirit of -the time prompted men to desire, the decisive repudiation of the -religious notions of the past. We must call this negative, no doubt, but -no word should frighten us away from seeing how much positive aspiration -lay underneath. When men are in the mood of France a century and a -quarter since, when all that an old civilisation has bestowed on them of -what is best and strongest, rises up against all that the same -civilisation has bequeathed to them of what is pestilent and dangerous, -they are never nice critics. They do not decline a reinvigorating -article of faith, because it is not a system, nor do they measure a -deliverer by syllogism. The smallest chink may shine like light of the -sun to prisoners long held in black and cavernous recesses. - -When Bayle's Dictionary came out, we read, so great was the avidity to -have sight of it, that long before the doors of the Mazarin library were -open, a little crowd assembled in the early morning of each day, and -there was as great a struggle for the first access to the precious book, -as for the front row at the performance of a piece for which there is a -rage.[231] This was the beginning of an immense impulse of curiosity, -eager to fill the vacuum occasioned by the slow subsidence of the old -religion, which had once covered not only faith, but science, history, -dialectic, and philosophy, all in a single synthesis. It was this -impulse which Voltaire both represented and accelerated. In these -periods of agitation, men forgive all to one who represents without -compromise or diminution their own dominant passions. Vehemence of -character counts for more than completeness of doctrine, and they crave -a battle-cry, not a dissertation. They need to have their own sentiment -aggressively presented, and their own defects of boldness or courage at -once rebuked and supplemented by a leader whose purpose can never be -mistaken, and whose words are never nipped by the frost of intellectual -misgiving. All through the century there was slowly growing up an inner -France, full of angry disgust against the past. Its germ was the crowd -eager to read Bayle. Its outcome was the night of the Fourth of August -1789, when the civil order of society was overthrown between a sunset -and a dawn. Voltaire, as we have seen, studiously abstained from any -public word upon things political, but it was he who in the long -interval between these two events held men by a watchword to which the -political decay of the country gave such meaning, that of hatred to the -old. And there was no such steadfast symbol of the old as the church, -to him and his school a lurid beacon on a monster-haunted shore. - -Voltaire's selection of the church as the object of his attacks marks an -important difference between him and the other great revolutionary -precursor. Rousseau's Savoyard Vicar was perfectly willing to accept the -cultus of Christianity, even when he had ceased to accept its dogma. He -regarded all particular religions as so many salutary institutions, all -good so long as they were the organs for a due service of God. He -actually celebrated mass with more veneration after the acquisition of -his new principles, than he had been accustomed to do when he supposed -that the mass was an occasion of personal divine presence. This kind of -teaching was clearly to perpetuate and transfix for ever the form of -religion which each country, or any given set of men in it, might -possess. It was to stereotype belief, as it is stereotyped among the -millions in the East. Whence was reform to come, whence any ray of new -light, whence a principle of growth and activity for the intelligence of -men? How on these terms is truth to win the battle at a single point? -This was the beginning of a fatal substitution of bland emotional -complacency for robust cultivation of the reason, and firm reverence for -its lessons as the highest that we can learn. Voltaire no doubt did in -practice many a time come to terms with his adversary while he was yet -on the way with him; but, disagreeable as these temporisings are to us -who live in an easier day, they never deceived any one, nor could they -ever be mistaken for the establishment of intellectual treason as a -principle, or of philosophic indifference as a climax. As has been said, -though he writes in the midst of the old regime, in the face of the -Bastille, and with the fetters of the enemy in some sort actually upon -him, he still finds a thousand means of reaching you.[232] He is always -the representative of reason, and never of sentimentalism. He was not -above superficial compromises in matters of conduct, and these it is -hard or impossible to condone; but at any rate he is free from the -deeper and more penetrating reproach of erecting hypocrisy into a -deliberate doctrine. - -We do not know how far he ever seriously approached the question, so -much debated since the overthrow of the old order in France, whether a -society can exist without a religion? He says in one place that to -believe God and spirits corporeal is an old metaphysical error, but -absolutely not to believe in any god would be an error incompatible with -wise government. But even this much was said for the sake of introducing -a taunt against the orthodox, who by a strange contradiction had risen -up with fury against Bayle for believing it possible that a society of -atheists could hold together, while they insisted with just as much -violence that the empire of China was established on a basis of -atheism.[233] His natural sagacity would most likely have shown him -that this is one of the sterile problems, with which the obstructive -defender of things as they are tries to draw the soldier of improvement -away from his strongest posts. Whether a society can exist without -religion or not, at least its existence as a structure for whose -duration we can be anxious, must depend on the number of men in it who -deal honestly with their own understandings. And, further, is no man to -be counted to have a religion who, like Voltaire, left great questions -open, and put them aside, as all questions, that must from the -limitations of human faculty eternally remain open, well deserve to be -put aside? Must we ever call an unknown God by one name? Are there so -few tasks for one on earth, that he must strain all his soul to fix the -regimen of high heaven? - -Voltaire, there is every reason to think, did in an informal kind of way -suppose in the bottom of his heart that there is nothing in human nature -to hinder a very advanced society from holding perfectly well together, -with all its opinions in a constant state of analysis. Whatever we may -think of it, this dream of what is possible, if the activity of human -intelligence were only sufficiently stimulated and the conditions of -social union were once so adjusted as to give it fair play, -unquestionably lies at the root of the revolutionary ideas with all -those who were first stirred by Voltaire rather than by Rousseau. -Condorcet, for instance, manifestly depends with the firmest confidence -upon that possibility being realised. It is the idea of every literary -revolutionist, as distinguished from the social or economic -revolutionist, in France at the present day. The knowledge that this was -the case, added to the sound conviction that men can never live by -analysis alone, gave its fire to De Maistre's powerful attack, and its -immense force to Burke's plea for what he called prejudice. But the -indispensable synthesis need never be immovably fixed, nor can it soon -again be one and single for our civilisation; for progress consists in -gradual modifications of it, as increase of knowledge and unforeseen -changes in the current of human affairs disclose imperfections in it, -and wherever progress is a law the stages of men's advance are unequal. -Above all, it is monstrous to suppose that because a man does not accept -your synthesis, he is therefore a being without a positive creed or a -coherent body of belief capable of guiding and inspiring conduct. - -There are new solutions for him, if the old are fallen dumb. If he no -longer believes death to be a stroke from the sword of God's justice, -but the leaden footfall of an inflexible law of matter, the humility of -his awe is deepened, and the tenderness of his pity made holier, that -creatures who can love so much should have their days so shut round with -a wall of darkness. The purifying anguish of remorse will be stronger, -not weaker, when he has trained himself to look upon every wrong in -thought, every duty omitted from act, each infringement of the inner -spiritual law which humanity is constantly perfecting for its own -guidance and advantage, less as a breach of the decrees of an unseen -tribunal, than as an ungrateful infection, weakening and corrupting the -future of his brothers. And he will be less effectually raised from -inmost prostration of soul by a doubtful subjective reconciliation, so -meanly comfortable to his own individuality, than by hearing full in the -ear the sound of the cry of humanity craving sleepless succour from her -children. That swelling consciousness of height and freedom with which -the old legends of an omnipotent divine majesty fill the breast, may -still remain; for how shall the universe ever cease to be a sovereign -wonder of overwhelming power and superhuman fixedness of law? And a man -will be already in no mean paradise, if at the hour of sunset a good -hope can fall upon him like harmonies of music, that the earth shall -still be fair, and the happiness of every feeling creature still receive -a constant augmentation, and each good cause yet find worthy defenders, -when the memory of his own poor name and personality has long been -blotted out of the brief recollection of men for ever. - - - - -CHAPTER VI. - -HISTORY - - -The activity of the foremost men of the eighteenth century in the -composition of history is too remarkable a circumstance, not to deserve -some attempt at explanation. There were historians in previous ages, but -in the eighteenth century there was both in France, and afterwards in -England, a special and extraordinary development in this direction. -Partially no doubt this was due to the general movement of curiosity, -the wide spread desire for all kinds of knowledge, which was in the air. -Men were emancipating themselves from the trammels of an authority which -had not widened the limits of inquiry in the same proportion as human -faculties had strengthened, and, amid the universal expansion of -intelligent interest and the eager scrutiny of all the objects of -knowledge which the new dawn was baring to sight, it was not possible -that the order of political and social facts in former epochs should be -neglected. This, however, does not sufficiently explain why such a man -as Hume betook himself to the composition of history, or why Gibbon -found himself best able to attack Christianity by tracing some of the -most important parts of its annals, or why Voltaire, who lived so -entirely and intensely in the present, should have thought it worth -while to give so much labour to presentation of the past. It is a -striking fact, which must be something more than an accident, that the -best secular histories which remain from this period, one of them the -most striking monument in historical literature, were written by the -most marked assailants of reigning superstition. - -Was it not, indeed, to be expected that as the dark clouds of an -absorbing consciousness of the supernatural cleared away, men of -understanding would be more and more drawn towards study of human -action, and that the advance of society under purely natural and -positive conditions would immediately seize a foremost place among the -objects of experiential inquiry? It is too constantly maintained by -persons with something of a vested interest in darkness, that those who -do not worship the gods are indifferent to the happiness of men. Yet the -history of intellectual progress would seem to show that it was not -until the commencement of a rapid decline in the acceptance of terrorist -and jealous deities and incomprehensible dogmas, that serious attention -was given to some of the subjects in which a sound knowledge is among -the most indispensable conditions of the advancing welfare of men. For -instance, as soon as the hold of ancient versions of the supernatural -was loosened over the stronger spirits, by the middle of the century -there instantly took place an astonishing development of activity in -the physical sciences. The interest of historic and economic studies was -at least as pressing. Becoming aware that men had made their own world, -thinkers found the consideration of the process by which this world is -made, and the order of society established and developed, forced upon -them with an entirely new significance. The dry bones of the ancient -valley of annalists and chroniclers were made to live, and the great -work of the reconstruction of the past was begun, with an alertness and -perseverance that has not been surpassed even in an age of far purer and -juster historical intelligence. It was quite reasonable that the -conviction of each act in the universe, from the crash of an empire to -the fall of a sparrow to the ground, being due to an arbitrary and -inscrutable decree, should prevent the rise of history from the level of -annals into the region of philosophy. The decay of this theory of the -government of the universe was as reasonably the cause of a new mode of -looking at the long records of the race, and we find ourselves moving in -a day of historical masterpieces. - -Voltaire has told us the circumstances under which he was led to -approach the philosophy of history. Madame du Chatelet, whose mind would -fain have reached every kind of knowledge, but who was especially apt -for metaphysics and geometry, had conceived an aversion for history. -'What does it matter to me,' she would ask, 'a Frenchwoman living on my -estate, to know that Egil succeeded Haquin in Sweden, and that Ottoman -was the son of Ortogrul? I have read with pleasure the history of the -Greeks and the Romans; they offered me certain great pictures which -attracted me. But I have never yet been able to finish any long history -of our modern nations. I can see scarcely anything in them but -confusion; a host of minute events without connection or sequence, a -thousand battles which settled nothing. I renounced a study which -overwhelms the mind without illuminating it.' To this frank statement of -the case, to which so many thousands of persons in all epochs would so -heartily subscribe, Voltaire replied by pointing out that perhaps the -study of history would be no waste of time, if by cutting away all the -details of wars, as tedious as they are untrustworthy, all the frivolous -negotiations which have been nothing but pieces of purposeless cheating, -all the minute incidents which stifle great events, and by retaining -those which paint manners, you made of this chaos a general and -well-arranged picture; in short, if you tried to disengage from the -concourse of events the history of the human mind.[234] Not all the -faults of execution ought to blind us to the merit of this notion of the -true way of studying history, or to the admirable clearness of vision -with which Voltaire, not only in this but in all his other historical -pieces, adhered to his own two leading principles; first, that laws, -arts, manners, are the chief matter and concern of history; and second, -that 'details which lead to nothing are in history what baggage is to -an army, _impedimenta_, for we must look at things in large, for the -very reason that the human mind is small and sinks under the weight of -minutiae.' Minutiae ought to be collected by annalists, or in some kind -of dictionaries where one might find them at need.[235] In this last -point Voltaire, as might be expected, was more just than Bolingbroke, -who had said somewhat petulantly that 'he had rather take the Darius -whom Alexander conquered for the son of Hystaspes, and make as many -anachronisms as a Jewish chronologer, than sacrifice half his life to -collect all the learned lumber that fills the head of an -antiquary.'[236] The antiquary's is a vocation like another, and the -highest kind of history can only flourish on condition that the humbler -ancillary kind flourishes also, and that there are patient and -scrupulous men to mark the difference between Darius Codomannus and -Darius the son of Hystaspes. - -We may say that three kinds of men write history: the gazetteer or -annalist, the statesman, and the philosopher. The annalist's business is -to investigate and record events, and his highest merits are clearness, -accuracy, and simplicity. The political historian seeks the superficial -and immediate causes of great transactions, and he serves us by mixed -penetration and soundness of judgment. The historical philosopher is -concerned only with groups of events, the changes and movements that -transform communities, and with the trains of conditions that lead to -such movements. The majority of historians, from the illustrious Bacon -down to the compiler of a manual, illustrate the first kind. Thucydides -and Tacitus, among the ancients, a Machiavelli or a Finlay, among -moderns, may illustrate the second kind. As Voltaire was sometimes -gazetteer and sometimes statesman, so Montesquieu took the statesman's -point of view in his reflections on the decline of Rome, and that of the -philosopher in the Spirit of Laws. It is the statesman or man of the -world, who, after recounting Caesar's failure on one occasion to comply -with the etiquette of the senate, proceeds to make the following -reflection, that 'we never offend men more, than when we shock their -ceremonies and usages: seek to oppress them, and that is sometimes a -proof of the importance you attach to them; but shock their customs, and -that is always a mark of contempt.'[237] It is the philosopher, feeling -for the causes of things and their order, who being led to inquire into -the spirit or meaning of Laws, understands such an inquiry to involve a -comparative investigation of the relations between laws and physical -climate, the quality of ground, situation and extent of territory, the -mode of life of the people, agricultural, hunting, or pastoral; between -laws and the freedom of the constitution, the religion, wealth, trade, -moral ideas, and manners, of the inhabitants; above all, historically, -between laws and their origin and the order of things on which they -were first founded. - -In a similar way we may divide Voltaire's historical pieces into two -main classes. Indeed, if we count the Annals of the Empire, which he -wrote to please the Duchess of Saxe-Gotha, he may rank also under the -third remaining head among the annalistic historians. This, however, is -too unsatisfactory a piece of work for us to care either to classify or -to remember it. The subject was not of his own selection, he knew -comparatively little about it, his materials were extremely scanty and -imperfect, and he composed it at a time when his whole mind was -violently perturbed by his recent quarrel with Frederick, and torn by -anxiety where he should find a home in rest and freedom. It was the only -work he ever wrote, for which he perhaps had no heart, and the least -observant reader will notice how vast a difference this made in the -temper of its composition. Indeed, Voltaire was not born to be a simple -chronicler. The realistic and practical leanings of his intellect -naturally gave him a distaste for the collection of mere uninterpreted -and unapplied facts. His clear comprehensiveness, the product of a -vigorous imagination with strong sense, as naturally impelled him to -group circumstances, and to introduce the widest possible generality -among them. He has one of the peculiar gifts of the historian, as -distinguished from the gazetteer, of throwing rapid glances over a wide -field on the suggestion of a minor fact as he passes by it, and of -converting what to others would be the mere unconsidered trifles of -narrative into something possessed of its due measure of vitality and -significance. He fills his pages with reflections that are usually not -brought from very far depths, but which are almost always lively, just, -and in real matter. Perhaps this is not an unmixed good, for it is not -unconnected with an extraordinary evenness and light facility of style, -which tends to draw the reader somewhat too rapidly and too smoothly -over ground that had been rugged enough to the actual travellers. It -tends therefore tacitly to plant a false impression about the tardiness, -difficulty, peril, and infinitely varied possibilities of the social -movements which are history's object and material. Perhaps a reader has -a better idea of the true manner in which events march, from Comines or -Clarendon, than from all the elegance and manifold graces of Voltaire, -and we sometimes feel inclined to repeat De Maistre's angry demand for -that grave and unhasting dignity which is the life of history. - -We have already noticed one of the differences between Voltaire and -Rousseau, which arose from the predominance of sentiment over reason in -the latter. In the present connection another fact well worth noticing -is that Rousseau was entirely wanting in either taste or serious regard -for history. The past seems to have been to him a kind of blurred -tablet, confused and indecipherable, interposed between the vision of -men and the only thought or knowledge which it is good for them to -possess. Voltaire's reading of this tablet was inadequate enough, in -many respects it was even a grave distortion of the truth; but with that -sound sense in which Rousseau was so absolutely deficient, he felt how -irrational it was, in the first place, to shut our eyes deliberately to -the course and meaning of all the foregone action of the race, and, in -the second, to leave unattacked and unturned the strong position which -the traditional parables of the past and their undisturbed -interpretation conferred upon the champions of orthodoxy and absolutism. -Rousseau, being a sentimentalist, appears to have discerned nothing of -this. His ideas all involved a breach with the past, as Voltaire's did, -but Voltaire deserves credit for perceiving that, to make this -effective, you must at least find out as well as you can what the past -was. - -For his four works in the class of political history he had the best -attainable authorities and material, and no one was ever more diligent -in putting them to the best possible use.[238] His acute sense, -strengthened by contact with the world and its most active personages, -made him what we may almost call prematurely scientific in his demand -for adequate evidence and proof. It is rather striking, for example, to -find him anticipating more recent objections to the trustworthiness of -Tacitus, pointing out the extraordinary improbabilities in his account -of Tiberius, Nero, and the others. There is all the difference, he says, -between a faithful historian equally free from adulation and hatred, and -'a malicious wit who poisons everything through the medium of a concise -and energetic style.' Are we to believe, he asks elsewhere, on the story -of a man who lived long after Tiberius, that this emperor, nearly eighty -years old, who had up to that time been decent almost to austerity, yet -passed all his time in debaucheries hitherto unknown, and so monstrous -as to need new names for them?[239] And in the same way he questions the -alleged atrocities of Nero and Caligula, as well as the motives imputed -to Domitian by Tacitus for the frequency with which he sent to inquire -after the health of Agricola. These historic doubts sprang from none of -the political judgment or feeling which propounds them in more modern -times, but purely from scientific incredulity. 'History,' he once wrote, -'is after all nothing but a parcel of tricks that we play the -dead.'[240] He did not hold this slightly splenetic theory, in which -assuredly there is a painful truth, to absolve him from the duty of -doing what he could to belie it, and to make history as correct and as -faithfully representative of actual occurrences, as careful inquiry -from those most likely to know the characters of the most prominent -actors could make it. In the composition of the Siecle de Louis XV., he -had of course the advantage of knowing all these leaders of the public -activity personally and at first hand, while if he had not that -advantage to the same extent in the Siecle de Louis XIV., he at least -mixed on intimate terms with many who had been intimate with the court -of the great monarch. For the history of Russia he was amply provided -with documents and authentic narratives from the Russian court, at whose -solicitation he undertook a work which was the first full introduction -of that hitherto barbarous and unknown country to the literature of -civilised Europe. His letters to Schouvalof, the imperial chamberlain, -attest the unremitting industry with which he sought for every kind of -information that might be useful to him. 'The enlightened spirit which -now reigns among the principal nations of Europe, requires that we -should go to the bottom, where in former times a historian barely -thought it worth while to skim the surface. People wish to know how a -nation grew together; what was its population before the epoch of which -you treat; the difference in the number of the regular army then and in -former times; the nature and growth of its commerce; what arts have -sprung up within the country, and what have been introduced from -elsewhere and been perfected there; what used to be the ordinary average -revenue of the state, and what it is now; the birth and extension of -its navy; the proportion in numbers between its nobles and its -ecclesiastics and monks, and between the latter and the cultivators of -the soil, etc.'[241] Even importunities of this kind continued over a -space of some years, and the copious responses which they brought, never -consoled Voltaire for not having made the journey to the Russian capital -in his proper person. 'I should have learnt more from you in a few hours -of conversation,' he wrote to Schouvalof, 'than all the compilers in the -world will ever teach me.'[242] In writing the History of Charles XII. -of Sweden, one of the most delightful of his books, the art of which is -none the less because it is so little ostentatious and striking and -seems so easy, he had procured a large quantity of material from -Fabrice, who knew the Swedish king during his detention at Bender and -subsequently, and met Voltaire in London. This material was supplemented -in later years by information picked up at Luneville from the ex-Polish -king Stanislas, who was indebted to Charles for his sovereignty, that -true =doron adoron=. 'As for the portraits of men,' Voltaire declared, -'they are nearly all the creations of fancy; 'tis a monstrous piece of -charlatanry to pretend to paint a personage with whom you have never -lived.'[243] Napoleon, in the memorable campaign of 1812, coming to -various places which Voltaire had occasion to describe in his History -of Charles XII., found his account weak and inaccurate, and threw it -aside in favour of Adlerfeldt. This was to be expected from the very -merit of the book; for how should a picture, painted in large for the -general instruction of the world, satisfy the minute requirements of -strategical topography? It was precisely Voltaire's object to separate -history from geography, statistics, anecdote, biography, tactics, and -to invest it with an independent character and quality apart from all -these. - -It is another of the distinctions of his new method of writing history -that, with the exception of the book on Charles XII., he throws persons -and personal interests into a second place, as being no more than -instruments or convenient names for critical turning-points in the large -movements of peoples. In the narration of the rise of Russia to a place -among civilised nations, the character of Peter the Great inevitably -comes into marked prominence, because when a population lies on the -stagnant level of barbarism, the first man who summons them to undertake -the task of national elevation constitutes an element of paramount -importance in their annals. In proportion, however, as they rise to the -fulfilment of this surpassing work, the importance of the heroic -individual diminishes; as the national self-consciousness and collective -powers become greater, the figure of the individual shows less. - -Voltaire was always conscious, though not so clearly as writers are now, -of the great historical principle that besides the prominent men of a -generation there is a something at work underneath, a moving current on -whose flood they are borne. He never fixed this current by any of the -names which now fall so glibly from our lips,--tendency of the times, -tenor of public opinion, spirit of the age, and the like, by which we -give a collective name to groups of sentiments and forces, all making in -what seems to be a single direction. But although unnamed, this singular -and invisible concurrence of circumstance was yet a reality to him. The -age was something besides its heroes, and something besides its noisiest -and most resounding occurrences. His divisions of the great epochs of -humanity are undoubtedly open to much criticism, because the principles -on which he drew the dividing lines have lost their force in new -generations. It was to be expected that they would do so; and his four -great epochs[244] were not likely to remain the four great epochs of a -posterity, which has partially learnt the lesson that he had not learnt -at all, that perfection in the fine arts is not the highest mark of an -age in which humanity may glory. Nevertheless, we are bound to recognise -that a new way of regarding human action, as well as a new way of -composing history, was being introduced by a writer whose first -paragraph declared that he proposed to himself a greater object than an -account of the life of Lewis XIV.; that he designed to paint for the -instruction of posterity, not the actions of a single man, but the -spirit of men; and that while all periods must be alike to one who only -desires to fill his memory with facts, discrimination among them cannot -be dispensed with for one who thinks. - -Hence also the propriety of discrimination among the various kinds of -fact which are at the historian's disposal, and in this order Voltaire's -whole soul revolted against the reigning practice and prescription. 'I -would rather have details,' he wrote to one of his intimates so early in -his career as 1735, 'about Racine and Despreaux, Moliere, Bossuet, -Descartes, than I would about the battle of Steinkirk. There is nothing -left but the names of men who led battalions and squadrons. There is no -return to the human race from a hundred engagements; but the great men I -have spoken of prepared pure and everlasting pleasures for mortals still -unborn. A canal-sluice, a picture by Poussin, a fine tragedy, a truth -established, are all of them things a thousand times more precious than -the whole mass of annals of the court, and than all the narratives of -campaigns.'[245] From this and from a multitude of other passages, as -well as from his actual compositions, we perceive that the activity of a -court and the manoeuvres of an army were no longer in Voltaire's eyes the -fit substance of history. One reason for this might be his lively sense -of the impossibility of knowing the character and motives of people with -whom one has not lived, or the real cause of even the most momentous -intrigues and negotiations in which one has not taken a personal share. -A still deeper reason would be his most rational conviction that these -matters are only of moment to us for their larger results and -unmistakable outcome, and from the profoundly true and important -principle that the progress of intellectual enlightenment, material -prosperity, and moral elevation is not only a feature in the history of -a nation, but does itself constitute that history, while all records of -other transactions in the course of its annals, achievements in -diplomacy, feats of arms, revolutions in policy, have no true historic -value, except for the light they shed upon this economic, intellectual, -and moral progress, and are not worth studying except in that light. We -may see the immediate effects of Voltaire's influence most markedly of -all in Gibbon, but in a less important shape in the general account of -the middle ages which Robertson contributed to his History of Charles V. -(1769), and which remained for many years the most instructive piece -that our literature possessed upon the character and spirit of the -feudal system and other features of the middle ages. Adam Ferguson's -Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767) bears traces of the same -influence. In both of these cases much also must be added for the -kindred authority of Montesquieu. One has some hesitation in adding Hume -to the list in the present connection, because his history, the -composition of which extended from 1752 to 1763, ought perhaps to be -counted rather the direct and independent outcome of the French -philosophic spirit, than of the French historic spirit which itself -proceeded from the philosophy; and because, moreover, Hume, as a -historian, has some of Voltaire's most serious defects, without that -breadth and size which constituted his greatest merit, though it is -needless to point out how many merits Hume had of his own. It is worth -remarking that in some pages which he wrote on Hume's History,[246] -Voltaire gave it a joyful welcome, as might be expected, and -particularly to those parts which we now esteem most lightly, such as -the contemptuous account of Cromwell. - -To return, however, to the point from which we have digressed. One very -direct consequence of the historical principle we have described, and of -the way in which it was illustrated in the histories of Lewis XIV. and -Lewis XV., and most of all in the Essay on Manners, was the degradation -of war from the highest to the lowest place among the objects of the -historian's regard. War began for the first time to be systematically -considered and treated as a mere instrument and means, and not as one of -the most serious of social ends. We can never honour Voltaire too long -nor too deeply for the vehemence and sincerity of his abhorrence of the -military spirit. Nowhere do we feel more distinctly that he marked the -end of the mediaeval temper, than in his noble protests against the glory -of bloodshed. The great orators of the church to the very last donned -the robes of their most sumptuous rhetoric, when they were called to -consecrate the virtues of the victorious soldier. The pages of the Old -Testament supplied them with a hundred baleful heroes to whom they might -liken their warrior, and a hundred cruel and bloody tropes with which -they might decorate the funeral oration. So long as the atrocities of -the Hebrew chiefs and people, their treacheries and slaughters, were -held sacred and celebrated with unction, it was not likely that the -voice of the peacemaker could make itself heard. - -Voltaire not only held up these demoralising records to the odium they -deserve; he directly taxed the clergy with their failure to discharge -the very highest part of their duty. Of the five or six thousand sermons -of Massillon, he asked, are there a couple where you could pick out a -word or two against the scourge and crime of war? Bourdaloue preached -against impurity, but what sermon did he ever direct against the murder, -rapine, brigandage, and universal rage, which desolate the world? -'Miserable physicians of souls, you declaim for five quarters of an hour -against the mere pricks of a pin, and say no word on the curse which -tears us into a thousand pieces! Philosophers and moralists, burn your -books: so long as the caprice of a handful of men will cause the -massacring in all loyalty of thousands of our brothers, the part of the -human race which is devoted to heroism will contain all that is most -frightful in human nature. What concern to me are humanity, benevolence, -modesty, temperance, gentleness, wisdom, piety, so long as half an ounce -of lead shatters my body, and I die at twenty in torments unspeakable, -surrounded by five or six thousand dead or dying, while my eyes, opening -for the last time, see the town I was born in delivered to fire and -sword, and the last sounds that reach my ears are the shrieks of women -and children expiring in the ruins--and the whole for the pretended -interests of a man that we do not know?'[247] His rebuke to Montesquieu -is still more distinctively modern. The author of the Esprit des Lois -had said that among societies it sometimes happens that natural defence -possibly involves the necessity of attack, when a nation perceives that -a longer peace would place another nation in a position to destroy -it.[248] 'If ever there was a war evidently unjust,' Voltaire replies, -'it is that which you propose; it is to go and kill your neighbour for -fear your neighbour should be in a condition to attack you; that is to -say, you must run the risk of ruining your country, in the hope of -ruining without reason some other country.... If your neighbour grows -too powerful during a time of peace, what hinders you from growing -powerful like him? If he has made alliances, make alliances on your -side. If, having less religion, he has all the more manufacturers and -soldiers for it, imitate him in so sage an economy. If he drills his -sailors better, drill yours too: all that is perfectly just. But to -expose your people to the most horrible misery, in the idea, which is so -often chimerical, of crushing your dear brother, the most serene -bordering prince--! 'twas never for a president of a pacific order to -give you such a piece of counsel.'[249] The book in which this sound -view of justice and expediency in the dealings of nations with one -another was pressed upon the attention of France, was published in 1764, -five years before the birth of the man who turned the tide back, and -made the international policy of France a synonym both for iniquity and -folly. On the 15th of August 1769 Voltaire concluded his letter to -D'Alembert with his usual vivacity: 'Adieu; my compliments to the devil, -for it is he who governs the world.'[250] If he had known that, while he -was writing, Napoleon Bonaparte had come into the world, and could at -the same time have foreseen the new-comer's destiny, he might have said -the same thing more seriously. Voltaire never played the sentimentalist. -He knew that there are complexities of affairs which only the sword can -cut. But he was the first influential writer--for the abbe Saint-Pierre, -so undeservedly laughed at for his dreams of perpetual peace, had no -influence to speak of--who deliberately placed war among retrograde -agencies, and deliberately dwelt upon peaceful industry as the true life -of nations.[251] - -Diplomacy and its complex subterranean processes, which have occupied so -extremely disproportionate a space in written history, and which are in -acted history responsible for so much evil, were in the same way -informally relegated to the region of inhuman occupations. Its methods -were the tortuous and depressing methods of the same past, which had -made the many the playthings and unhappy instruments of the few, and had -never interrupted the triumphant manoeuvres of craft and subtlety by a -whisper for the claims of humanity and justice. Voltaire scarcely ever -speaks of negotiations between contending powers without a shrewd -thrust, half contemptuous and half angry. The plain where some -negotiations took place in the struggles among the descendants of -Charles the Great is still called the Field of Lies; a name, he says, -that might well be common to most spots where men have negotiated.[252] -And this represents his general tone in speaking of a branch of activity -which may interest the professional diplomatist in all its details, but -which, as he thought, can only concern the historical student in its -results. Here Voltaire represented a marked tendency, which waxes -stronger as societies grow more penetrated with popular forces, to -divest diplomacy of a professional quality, and to throw the adjustment -of the relations between nations as entirely as possible into the hands -of plain men of firm and upright character, and full knowledge of the -special matters at issue. - -It is, however, when we come to the ground idea of the Essay on -Manners,[253] that we feel the full breath of the modern spirit, and -perceive that at length we are nearing the wide expanse of the sea. -There we emerge absolutely from the narrow conception of universal -history, with which Bossuet had familiarised men's minds in the -Discourse on Universal History. This famous piece, which has had at -least as much praise as it merits, if we are to consider reason as well -as eloquence, was fundamentally and in substance no more than a bit of -theological commonplace splendidly decorated. Bossuet indeed spoke of -'the concatenation of human affairs,' but only in the same sentence with -'the sequence of the counsels of God.' The gorgeous rhetorician of the -church was not likely to rise philosophically into the larger air of -universal history, properly so called. His eloquent discourse is a -vindication of divine foresight, by means of an intensely narrow survey -of such sets of facts as might be thought not inconsistent with the -deity's fixed purpose to make one final and decisive revelation to men. -No one who looks upon the vast assemblage of stupendous human -circumstances, from the first origin of man upon the earth, as merely -the ordained antecedent of what, seen from the long procession of all -the ages, figures in so diminutive a consummation as the Catholic -church, is likely to obtain a very effective hold of that broad sequence -and many-linked chain of events, to which Bossuet gave a right name, -but whose real meaning he never was even near seizing. His merit is -that he did in a small and rhetorical way, what Montesquieu and Voltaire -afterwards did in a truly comprehensive and philosophical way; he -pressed forward general ideas in connection with the recorded movements -of the chief races of mankind. For a teacher of history to leave the -bare chronicler's road so far as to declare, for example, the general -principle, inadequate and overstated as it is, that 'religion and civil -government are the two points on which human things revolve,' even this -was a clear step in advance--and to dismiss the long series of emperors -from Augustus to Alexander Severus in two or three pages was to show a -rare sense of large historic proportion. Again, Bossuet's expressions of -'the concatenation of the universe,' of the interdependence of the parts -of so vast a whole, of there coming no great change without having its -causes in foregoing centuries, and of the true object of history being -to observe in connection with each epoch those secret dispositions of -events which prepared the way for great changes, as well as the -momentous conjunctures which more immediately brought them to pass--all -these phrases seem to point to a true and philosophic survey. But they -end in themselves, and lead nowhither. The chain is an arbitrary and -one-sided collection of facts. The writer does not cautiously follow and -feel after the successive links, but forges and chooses and arranges -them after a pattern of his own, which was fixed independently of them. -A scientific term or two is not enough to disguise the purely -theological essence of the treatise. - -Bossuet's Discourse is moreover constructed wholly on the theory that a -special revelation was delivered to the Jews, and in tracing their -course we have fast hold of the chain by which it has pleased heaven to -communicate to earth all the truths we possess as to the highest things. -Such a conception stifles a modern reader. The first pages of the Essay -on Manners, sometimes placed separately as the Philosophy of History, -prove that we have escaped from the cave. The chosen people fell into -rank with other peoples, that equally supposed themselves to be chosen -by their own peculiar gods. They lose the towering pre-eminence in -virtue and light and divine favour with which their own records and -Bossuet's interpretation had so splendidly invested them. We find that -their pretensions were not unique, but universal among nations in such a -stage; that their virtues were not singular, though some of their vices -seem so. In a word, if some of Voltaire's details are crude and -rudimentary, at least he has the merit of showing to his unaccustomed -readers what vast epochs of time, what uncounted multitudes of men, what -varied movements of the human spirit, surround the little speck of -Judaism. - -The bulk of the Essay was composed in 1740, but it is probable that this -preliminary examination of other oriental nations, their practices, -institutions, and religious ideas, was suggested by Montesquieu's -memorable book, which appeared in 1748, some years before the -publication of the Essay on Manners. It is in point of execution much -less satisfactory than what follows, for Voltaire's knowledge of Greek -and Hebrew was inadequate, and he fell into various errors which his -adversaries happily possessed scholarship enough to expose. In the -modern provinces of the book, which constitute the important part of it, -he was much more entirely at home in his subject. Here his familiarity -with detail, considering the vast quantity of his other employments, is -extremely surprising, and perhaps in no other book of equal generality -have there been discovered so few serious inaccuracies, though none have -encountered more hostile critics. - -Prejudice, alas, spares truth and light no more when it narrows the -vision of a free-thinker, than when it distorts the faculty of the -devout. Being a reaction against Bossuet's unreasonable exaltation of -the Jews and their history, Voltaire's conception of the place due to -them partook of the inevitable fault of all reactions, and left out of -sight considerations which it is eminently unscientific not to remember. -'You never find,' he says, 'a generous action in the annals of the -Hebrews; they knew neither hospitality nor liberality nor clemency. -Their sovereign bliss is to practise usury with foreigners, and this -spirit of usury is so rooted in their hearts, that it is the continual -object of the figures they employ in the eloquence which is peculiar to -them. Their glory is to deliver to fire and slaughter the small -villages of which they may be able to take possession. They assassinate -their masters when they are slaves, and they never know how to pardon -when they are victorious; they are the enemies of the human race.'[254] -This is as great an exaggeration on one side, as Bossuet's exaltation of -them and their deeds was on the other side. We ought to admit what -abominable traits the character and history of this race unfortunately -present, without forgetting how much is owing to them for preserving in -its sublimest shape, and investing with the most deeply impressive -images and associations, that idea of monotheism which, if destined to -be superseded by other ideas more commensurate with the limits of human -intelligence, must still be counted the germ of much that is purest and -loftiest and most inspiring among the ideals of western civilisation. - -The same kind of extreme prejudice which drove Voltaire into maintaining -of the Jews, not that they were a people whom we should do very ill -either to imitate or admire, but nothing less than that they were the -enemies of the human race, found vent in such assertions as that if any -one could have restored the Empire to its strength, or at all events -retarded its fall, that man was the Emperor Julian.[255] A historian may -justly contend, if he thinks that the evidence warrants him, that Julian -belongs to the type of virtuous reactionists, just as we may say it of -Wesley or the chiefs of the Tractarians. But to make such an assertion -as that the repression of Christianity after the middle of the fourth -century, even supposing it to have been possible of achievement, could -have given back to the rapidly declining empire a strength of which all -the roots were lifeless, was to falsify history for the sake of exalting -the name of an apostate. A Roman aristocrat, blind to the real operation -and comparative value of the forces at work, might be pardoned for -holding Christianity guilty of the general dissolution around him; but -it was a strange phantasy for a philosopher of the eighteenth century to -suppose that the Christian system, in the shape which it had assumed by -Julian's time, did not offer principles of firmer association, than the -mere rites of a paganism which was spontaneously decaying with a -rapidity that increased day by day.[256] There is no stronger -illustration of the twist which polemical fury may give to the most -acute intelligence, than this belief of Voltaire's, that an organisation -which had attracted to itself every able and statesmanlike intellect of -the time, could do less for the regeneration of the Empire than the -initiated disciple of Platonist theurgy. - -His account of the history of the church is composed in the same vein, -and we may see where Gibbon, who was a reader of Voltaire, drew the -inspiration of the solemn sneer with which he sapped solemn creed.[257] -'So many frauds, so many errors, so many disgusting absurdities,' says -Voltaire, 'with which we have been inundated for seventeen hundred -years, have been unable to do any harm to our religion. It is -unquestionably divine, since seventeen centuries of imposture and -imbecility have not destroyed it.'[258] Voltaire thought as ill as -possible of the century to which he belonged; we cannot therefore charge -him with the inconsistency which marks some of his most prominent -disciples, who while they accepted such an account of the vileness of -the church as he had given them, did not scruple to believe that, as if -by miracle, seventeen centuries of steady depravation were _per saltum_ -to be followed by an eighteenth and other centuries of boundless virtue -and enlightenment. Still it is wonderful that he should have been able -to appreciate the admirable character of the best sovereign of the -thirteenth century, Lewis IX.,[259] and to describe his motives and his -achievements so generously, and yet should never have thought of the -education and surrounding spiritual conditions by which such a character -had been formed. If the power of Catholicism for evil was so great and -decisive, it would have been reasonable to suppose that it had some -share also in moulding to good those who came forth from it the very -flower of humanity. But Voltaire did not know how much a man is the -product of a system operating on, and with, the individual -predisposition, or he would not have chidden St. Lewis for remaining on -the level of the prejudice of his time, instead of changing the spirit -of his age.[260] How should St. Lewis have risen from the prejudice of -his age, when it was exactly that prejudice which had formed him, and of -which he represented the worthy side? - -Even without this inconsistency, the fundamental error is bad enough. We -get very wearied of the persistent identification of the church -throughout the dark ages with fraud and imposture and sinister -self-seeking, when we have once learnt, what is undoubtedly the most -important principle in the study of those times, that it was the -churchmen who kept the flickering light of civilisation alive, amid the -raging storms of uncontrolled passion and violence. The truth is that -Voltaire never realised civilisation as an organism, which if not -surrounded with the proper conditions of life will perish, and which -will prosper and wax stronger exactly in proportion as it is nourished. -That the light was more than once very near sinking in the west under -the waves of barbarism, as it has actually sunk in the eastern portions -of the Empire, seems to have been an all-important fact which he either -never saw, or which, if he saw it, never impressed him as assuredly it -ought to have done. - -This is the more curious as he was able to perceive, in a way in which -it were much to be wished that more recent historians might show an -equal discernment, that we ought to use the terms of civilisation, with -all their complex and accumulated associations, in an extremely modified -sense in speaking of the centuries between the fifth and the thirteenth, -just as it is the gravest mistake to suppose that, because you can -express the results of the various contests of those times in terms of -philosophy, therefore the actors in any one of them were both conscious -of its most general bearings, and were animated by large and -philosophical inclinations. For example, after he has told us how -William the Conqueror sent to the Pope Harold's battle-standard and a -small portion of the small treasure that an English king might possess -in those times, he proceeds to reduce the transaction to what he -conceived to be its true proportions, in the following manner: 'Thus,' -he says, 'a barbarian, the son of a harlot, the murderer of a legitimate -king, shares the plunder of this king with another barbarian; for if you -take away the names of duke of Normandy, king of England, and pope, all -is reduced to the action of a Norman brigand and a Lombard receiver of -plunder.[261] This being the case, the secular possessors of power being -so rude, petty, and barbarous, their contests being 'those of bears and -wolves,' their rapacity and violence being tempered by few of those -ideas of justice which form the bonds of society in its more advanced -stages, it ought to have struck even the most ardent enemy of -ecclesiastical pretensions as a thing in the highest degree -unphilosophical, to pour all the ill epithets of usurpation upon the -virtuous efforts of the great churchmen, who were least touched by the -spirit of violence, to take away as much power as they could from -barbarous princes and nobles, who were most impregnated with that and -all other dark spirits. The smaller the difference between the least -moral and the most moral orders in a community, the more desirable it is -that the order with even a small advantage should acquire as much power -as possible; for the reason that so near an approach to equality in -morals is most likely to occur when the average is low, and when -therefore the need to prevent it from falling any lower is most urgent. -Granting that the ecclesiastics were only slightly the superiors of the -barbarous laymen, this is all the better ground for rejoicing that they -succeeded in converting their ascendancy of moral idea into an -ascendancy of political fact. - -In short, Voltaire's great panorama, magnificent as it is and most -royally planned, is not drawn in lines and with colour that explain the -story or lay bare the principles of its progress. The plan is imposed -from without, just as in Bossuet's case, not carefully sought from -within the facts themselves. What is meant then by the assertion that -Voltaire's Essay is one of the foundations of modern history? If he -gives no explanation of the course of history, none to himself probably, -and none to us assuredly, what is his merit? This, that he has fully -placed before us the history which is to be explained; that he has -presented the long external succession of facts in their true magnitude -and in a definite connection; that he did not write a history of France, -or of the papacy, or of the Mahometan power, or of the crusades, but -that he saw the advantage, as we see the unavoidable necessity, of -comprehending in a single idea and surveying in a single work the -various activities, the rise and fall of power, the transference from -one to another of political predominance, the contributions to the art -of living, among the societies which were once united in a single -empire. The history of each of these societies, England, France, Spain, -Italy, the Byzantine Empire, is followed in relation to the history of -Europe, which is indeed composed of these co-ordinate parts. The -movement of communities since the dissolution of the Roman Empire is -exhibited in a collective form, and that it should be exhibited and -accepted in this form was obviously a preliminary step to an organic -treatment of the multiplied laws of social physics. - -'There are some events,' he wrote in a note to his best poem, 'which -have effects, and others which have none. It is with the chain of events -as it is with a genealogical tree, where we perceive branches that -become extinct at the first generation, and others that continue the -race. Many events remain without any filiation. It is thus that in every -machine there are effects necessary to the movement, while others are -indifferent, following the operation of the first, and leading to -nothing. The wheels of a vehicle serve to make it go; but whether they -raise a little more or a little less dust, the journey is accomplished -equally. Such is the general order of the world, that the links of the -chain are not deranged by a little more or a little less of -irregularity.'[262] The figures in this passage serve adequately to -describe his own treatment. We see in the Essay the lines of the -genealogical tree, but we do not learn the laws of the transmission of -qualities from one stock to another; we see the links of the chain, but -not the conditions which fastened each to the other; conditions, indeed, -only to be grasped through a scientific study of human nature which -Voltaire had never made; and finally we see the towering car drawn -slowly along a devious road by sweat and strain of millions, but we know -not why it went by this road rather than another. In a word, the inner -machinery of societies and of their movement remains as far from our -sight as it ever was. The study of those economic and material forces -which have so profound an influence upon social transformations, was in -its infancy, and the Economists, who really saw that there are definite -laws regulating the play of these forces, unfortunately mixed up with -their speculations a number of chimerical fancies, which Voltaire was -too acute to accept, but not patient enough to sift.[263] In this -respect he is as defective as Gibbon, in whose book, so justly famous -for its splendid breadth of conception and industrious elaboration of -detail, we have much of that meagre philosophy which consisted in the -exposure of falsehood, but little of the true science which shows us the -numerous organs of society in connection with their actual play and -function. Neither Gibbon nor Voltaire made any contribution, nor seems -to have been aware of the importance of contributing, to that study of -the fundamental conditions of the social union, which Aristotle -commenced, and which both Bodin in the sixteenth century and Montesquieu -in the eighteenth had so meritoriously continued.[264] Nevertheless, it -was much to lead men to study the history of modern Europe as a whole, -and we may say of Voltaire in connection with history what he said of -Corneille in connection with tragedy--'It is so great a merit to have -opened the career, and inventors are so much above other men, that -posterity pardons their greatest faults.'[265] - - - - -CHAPTER VII. - -FERNEY. - - -Voltaire, as we have seen, took possession of Ferney in 1758, and he -lived here almost without a break for something like twenty years. His -estate was a feudal seigniory in the district of Gex, on the very -frontier of Switzerland, but in France, though enjoying immunity from -French taxation. He built a new manor-house, and in his capacity of lord -of the manor replaced the dilapidated little church of the estate by a -new one, very small, very plain, and about which, notwithstanding its -famous inscription of which he so often boasted,--_Deo erexit -Voltaire_,--much more noise has been made, than so simple and natural a -proceeding at all calls for.[266] Madame Denis kept house for him, and -according to the Paris gossips of the time, on an extravagant scale, -which often produced ruptures between the two. Guests were incessant -and the hospitality ungrudging.[267] He complained during the Seven -Years' War of the embarrassment of being a Frenchman, when he had to -entertain daily at dinner Russians, English, and Germans.[268] He -protests that he is weary of being hotel-keeper in general for all -Europe, and so weary was he at one time of this noisy and costly post, -that the establishment was partially suspended for upwards of a year. -One of the most generous of Voltaire's many generous acts was his -reception into his house of a child who had no other claim on him than -that of being the great-grand-daughter of the uncle of Corneille. A -soldier ought to succour the niece of his general, he said. He took the -liveliest interest in the little maid's education, though she appears to -have been a sulky pupil, and eventually he married her with due dower to -one Dupuits. The bustle and expense of his establishment became greater -than ever, and in the spring of 1768 Paris was as much electrified by -news of a revolution at Ferney, as she has been since by some -revolutions in her own streets. Madame Denis and the two Dupuits had -suddenly made their way to Paris, and for a year and a half Voltaire was -left in peace, part of which he employed sensibly in having his house -cleaned from cellar to garret,--a bit of news which is handed down to -our times, since, according to Grimm, the domestic arrangements of the -manor-house at Ferney interested at that moment more or less every court -in Europe.[269] In the autumn of 1769 Madame Denis returned, and with -her the old stir and extravagance were resumed, for Voltaire was one of -the best-humoured of men to his family and friends, and could deny his -niece nothing. We have more than one description of this too immortal -niece. They are all equally unflattering. Her homeliness of appearance -amounted to the ugliness that is bitter. She was destitute of wit, and -had a vulgar soul. Born to be the insipid gossip of a bourgeois circle, -says one charitable writer, but having by chance the first man in the -nation for an uncle, she learnt to chatter about literature and the -theatre, as a parrot learns.[270] She wrote a comedy; but the players, -out of respect for Voltaire, declined to act in it. She wrote a tragedy; -but the one favour, which the repeated entreaties of years could never -wring from Voltaire, was that he would read it. She had histrionic as -well as dramatic ambition, and here worked a miracle, for her -representation of Merope once drew floods of tears from some English -ladies.[271] Her affectation of intellect had not cooled the reality of -simple sensation, and if she loved art, she was said not to despise -gallantry. At any rate, though she was only sixteen years younger than -her uncle,[272] she needed continual festivities and crowds of guests. - -Ferney was rather a difficult spot for a woman with a passion for the -hum of cities. For five months in the year, says Voltaire, my deserts -are, on the admission of Russians, worse than Siberia itself; we see -thirty leagues of mountain, snow, and precipices: it is Naples in -summer, Lapland in winter.[273] One year he marks with word of -bitterness snow falling thick in the middle of May. Four feet of snow in -the courtyard constituted a normal winter state. He commemorates with -enthusiasm how one day, through these four feet of snow, he saw porters -bringing him a hamper of Champagne from a friend; for the more generous -sort of Burgundy with which he ordinarily recruited himself had fallen -short, and he had been reduced to the humble vintage of Beaujolais. - -Yet in the midst of a thousand discomforts and hardships we never hear -him wishing to be back in Paris. It remained to him the accursed city, -as it had been before his journey to England. He always thought with -horror of its cabal, intrigue, frivolity, and sovereign indifference to -the ruin of the kingdom and the shedding of innocent blood. There can be -no doubt that this wise exile prolonged his days. He was constantly -complaining of illness, and he passed months at a time in bed, which -may in truth have been the best possible preservative of life for one of -his temperament. Yet in spite of this avoidance of society, this passion -for his study, the man of ordinary capacity, with no more than an -ordinary working day, may marvel how amid so many distractions the -master of the house contrived to write so many scores of pieces, large -and small, and so many hundreds of letters, grave and gay. Of these -letters nearly seven thousand are already in print, and M. Beuchot, most -carefully informed of all Voltaire's editors, thinks there are likely to -be quite as many more still in undiscovered existence. Ferney was the -centre of the most universal and varied correspondence that any one man -has ever carried on. Frederick the Great was not the only crowned head -with whom Voltaire interchanged royal communication. Catherine II. of -Russia, of Anhalt-Zerbst by birth, was the helpful patroness of Diderot -and D'Alembert, and was always eager to hear some word from the -patriarch of their encyclopaedic church, only praying him not to think -her too importunate. Christian VII. of Denmark apologises for not being -able at a stroke to remove all the obstacles that lie in the way of the -civil liberty of his subjects. Gustavus III. of Sweden is elated by the -thought that Voltaire sometimes casts a glance on what is going on in -the North, and protests that this is their greatest encouragement to do -as well as they can in all ways.[274] Joseph II. would fain have called -at Ferney while travelling incognito through France, but fear of his -mother's displeasure held him back, the high and devout nature of Maria -Theresa always finding Voltaire's mockery of sacred things deeply -repugnant, as we may easily believe. - -Beside sovereigns who wrote to him as to an equal, every young aspirant -to literary distinction, however unknown and obscure, sought a criticism -from Ferney. Twenty years before he settled down here, Voltaire had been -consulted by Vauvenargues, and had replied with words of painstaking and -generous counsel. It was always the same with him. No young author ever -solicited advice in vain, and he was never sparing either of trouble or -praise. The Marquis of Chastellux sent him a copy of his Felicite -Publique, and was raised to the seventh heaven by a letter of thanks, in -which Voltaire tells him: 'I covered the margin of my copy with notes, -as I always do when a book charms and instructs me; I even took the -liberty of not always sharing the author's opinion. I am very old and -very feeble, but such reading makes me young again.' And the letter -contains a large number of points where he thinks the author in -error.[275] - -Besides kings and the writers of books, plain men also besought his -dictum on high matters. 'A burgomaster of Middleburg,' he informs Madame -du Deffand, 'whom I do not know, wrote to me a little while since, to -ask me in confidence whether there is a God or not; whether, in case -there be one, he takes any heed of us; whether matter is eternal; -whether it can think; whether the soul is immortal; and begging me to -answer by return of post.'[276] - -One may suspect that a little colouring is added here by the master -hand, but the substantial facts are probable enough. He corresponded -with cardinals, marshals of France, and bishops, and he corresponded -with Helvetius and with Diderot, who, greatly to the indignation of the -business-like patriarch, had a bad habit of leaving letters to answer -themselves.[277] - -If two cavalry officers fell to disputing over the mess-table as to the -propriety of using some bit of old French, it was to Ferney that the -reference was instantly made.[278] - -We get an idea of the kind of imperial authority which attached to -Voltaire's judgment, from the eagerness with which Turgot sought, -without revealing his name, an opinion from Ferney as to the worth of a -translation with which he lightened the heavy burden of his intendance -at Limoges, a translation of the Eclogues and Fourth AEneid into French -metric verse. 'They say,' wrote Turgot, 'that he is so busy with his -Encyclopaedia as neither to speak nor to write to any one.' If Turgot -could have seen Voltaire's correspondence for 1770, he would have found -out how far this rumour was from the truth, and in fact he did get an -answer to his own letter; but it can hardly have been very much more -satisfactory than silence would have been, for Voltaire, while profuse -in praise of the fidelity and spirit of the translation, unfortunately -did not detect that it was meant for anything more ambitious than simple -prose with enthusiasm in it.[279] As Turgot especially valued in the -patriarch his 'superb ear,' the blow was as sharp as it well could be. -He was little concerned or surprised on learning the fallacious -reasoning of the poet in political economy. 'Reasoning,' he adds, 'has -never been Voltaire's strong point.'[280] And that was true in matters -of abstract science, but he was an unrivalled populariser of the results -of other people's reasoning, from Newton's Principia down to Middleton's -Free Enquiry, and this popularisation was what the conditions of the -time caused to be most ardently demanded. The proof of the demand we may -see in the extraordinary respect and curiosity, or dislike and alarm, -with which Voltaire for the twenty crowning years of his life was -regarded throughout the whole of civilised Europe. - -It is impossible to read the multitudinous volumes of Voltaire's -correspondence, and they are being added to every two or three years, -with entire satisfaction. They are wittier than any other letters in the -world. For lightness, swiftness, grace, spontaneity, you can find no -second to them, at however long an interval. But they abound in many -things which are disagreable in the letters of an old man who had -so true an interest in the spread of virtue, knowledge, and the other -conditions of human dignity. These, however, may be passed over as the -innocent and unconscious unseemliness of a very gay nature living in a -very free age. It is less easy to banish the unpleasant impressions with -which we find him playing the equivocal part of being all things to all -men. One would have been pleased to have a little more stiffness, a -little less pliancy of phrase. We would not go through the world -insisting on grim Puritanic earnestness at every moment of a man's life, -but Voltaire's lively complaisance with all sorts of unworthy people is -something worse than unedifying. One can hardly help sympathising with -D'Alembert's remonstrance. 'You have rather spoilt the people who -persecute us. 'Tis true you have had greater need than anybody else to -keep them quiet, and that you have been obliged to offer a candle to -Lucifer to save yourself from Beelzebub, but Lucifer has only grown the -prouder, without Beelzebub growing the less malignant.'[281] The truth -probably is that Voltaire did not always take--much thought of Lucifer or -Beelzebub. For one thing, he was, as we have said more than once, -intensely sympathetic by temperament, and in writing to a friend, or -even an acquaintance only, he was for the moment animated by a lively -good will and anxiety to be in harmony with his correspondent. There was -nothing false in these purring pleasantries, with which he amused all -correspondents alike. They came as naturally from his mobile and genial -constitution, as an equality of prosaic moroseness comes from persons of -fundamentally different constitutions. For another thing, the old -fashion of his youth never dropped away from him, and the elaborate -courteousness and friendly ardour of manner, which he had learnt among -the aristocratic friends of the days of the Regency and afterwards at -Paris and Versailles, did not desert him in the solitudes of the Jura. -He was to the last a man of quality, as well as a crusher of the -Infamous, and to the last he kept up the tone of one who had been a -gentleman of the chamber to one king, and court-chamberlain to another. -Voltaire's temperament and earliest surroundings fully explain what was -a more public, as well as more serious, falling away from the rigorous -integrity which men are now accustomed to demand from the leaders of -unpopular causes. His sins in this order are nearly as numerous as his -public acts. Rousseau, perhaps we may say without breach of charity, as -much from vanity as principle, prefixed his name to all that he wrote, -and he paid the penalty in a life of wandering and persecution. Voltaire -in his later days as invariably sheltered himself behind the anonymous, -and not only disclaimed works of which it was notorious that he was the -author, but insisted that his friends should impute them to this or that -dead name. Nobody was deceived. While he got unwelcome credit for a -multitude of pieces that were not his own, assuredly nothing really his -ever failed to be set down to its true author. We can only say that this -was the evil practice of the time, and that Voltaire was here little -worse than Turgot and many another man of general virtuousness, to whom -the ferocity of authority would not even allow freedom enough to plead -for tolerance, much less to utter uncertified opinion. 'Time,' said -D'Alembert, apologising for some whiff of orthodoxy which Voltaire -scented in one or two articles in the Encyclopaedia, 'will make people -distinguish what we thought from what we said.'[282] Condorcet, as we -know, deliberately defended these deceptions, which did not deceive, -while they did protect. He contended that if you rob a man of his -natural right of publishing his opinions, then you lose your own right -to hear the truth from the man's lips.[283] Undoubtedly all laws admit -that duress introduces new conditions into the determination of what is -right and wrong in action, or at least that it mitigates pains and -penalties, and the position of every claimant for free speech was in -those days emphatically a position of duress. The choice lay between -disavowal on the one hand, and on the other abstention from proclaiming -truths by which only society could gain the freedom it so much needed; -between strict anonymity and leaving the darkness unbroken. And we must -remember that disingenuous tricks to conceal authorship were not -assuredly so unpardonable, when resorted to as protectives against -imprisonment, confiscation, and possible peril of life, as they are now -among ourselves, when they serve no more defensible purpose than -sheltering men who have not the courage of their opinions, against one -or two paltry social deprivations. The monstrous proceedings against La -Barre, and the ease with which in this and numerous other cases the -jurisprudence of the tribunals lent itself to the cruelty of fanatics, -no doubt excited in Voltaire a very genuine alarm for his own safety, -and probably with good reason. We know that he could not venture to -visit Italy, in consequence of his just fear lest the Inquisition should -throw their redoubtable foe into prison, and the parliaments of Toulouse -and Abbeville had perpetrated juridical murders as iniquitous as any of -the proceedings of the Holy Office. And though it is easy and right for -the young, who live in a time when you are not imprisoned or hung or -decapitated for holding unpopular opinions, to call out for manliness to -the uttermost in these things, one must make allowance for an occasional -fit of timorousness in a man of eighty, whom nature had never cut out -for a martyr. Yet, more than once, these fits committed Voltaire to acts -which were as great a scandal to the devout as to the atheists. That he -should rebuild the ruinous little chapel of his estate was not much more -remarked, than it would be for a Protestant landlord to subscribe to -repair the Catholic church on an Irish property containing only Catholic -tenants. The gorgeous ceremony with which in his quality of lord he -commemorated its opening, made everybody laugh, not excepting the chief -performer, for he actually took the opportunity of lifting up his voice -in the new temple and preaching a sermon against theft. The bishop of -Annecy in Savoy, his diocesan, was furious at this mockery, and urged -the minister at Paris to banish Voltaire from France. In order to avert -the blow, Voltaire tried to make a nominal peace with the church by -confessing, and participating in the solemnity of an Easter communion -(1768). The bishop wrote him a long letter of unctuous impertinences, to -which Voltaire replied by asking very tartly why the discharge of so -ordinary a duty called for this insolent congratulation. The -philosophers of Paris were bitterly scandalised, and some of them wrote -to the patriarch of the sect to remonstrate. Even D'Alembert, his own -familiar friend, could not refrain from protest.[284] Voltaire could -give no better reasons for his strange lapse than we may hear given -every day in our own country, by men who practise hypocritical -compliances for the sake of a little ignoble ease, and thus perpetuate -the yoke. He owed an example to his parish, as if the example of -feigning a belief which he repudiates could be a good example for one to -set in any parish. It was very well to shirk these observances in Paris, -because there in the tide of business one finds an excuse or is not -missed, but in the country no such excuse offers itself. One must stand -well with the cure, be he knave or dunce. One must respect the two -hundred and fifty timorous consciences around one. And so forth, down -that well-worn list of pleas by which men make anxiety about the -consciences of others a substantial reason for treachery to their own. -Voltaire, besides all these, honestly added the one true reason, that he -did not mean to be burnt alive, and that the only way of making sure -against such a fate was to close the lips of spies and informers.[285] -The bishop knew perfectly well that the squire, who had made his Easter -communion in so remarkable a manner in 1768, was the author of the -Philosophical Dictionary, of which a bran-new edition, amended and -revised, made its appearance in 1769; and he appears to have forbidden -the priest of Ferney to confess or administer the eucharist to the chief -of the flock. Voltaire was at once seized with a fever, and summoned the -priest to administer ghostly comfort. The priest pleaded the horrible -rumours of the world as to the damnable books of which the sick man was -alleged to be the author. Voltaire replied by warning him very -peremptorily that in refusing to administer the viaticum he was -infringing the law, and the consequence was that he did duly receive the -viaticum, after which he signed a solemn act in the presence of a -notary, declaring that he pardons his various calumniators; that 'if any -indiscretion prejudicial to the religion of the State should have -escaped him,' he seeks forgiveness from God and the State; and finally -he forgave the bishop of Annecy, who had calumniated him to the king, -and whose malicious designs had come to nought. The priest and notary -afterwards falsified this amazing declaration so as to appease the -bishop, and came to Voltaire praying him not to betray them. 'I prove to -them,' he says, 'that they will be damned, I give them something to -drink, and they go away delighted.'[286] A younger philosopher of his -school remarks with his accustomed gravity on this most singular -transaction, that the satisfaction of forcing his priest to administer -by fear of the secular judges, and of insulting the bishop of Annecy in -a juridical manner, cannot excuse such a proceeding in the eyes of the -free and firm man, who weighs calmly the claims of truth and the -requirements of prudence, when laws contrary to natural justice render -truth dangerous and prudence indispensable.[287] To which reflection we -may perhaps add another, suggested by the cruel experience of the church -in France within five and twenty years from Voltaire's impious -communion, that if any order, secular or spiritual, constrains its -adversaries under penalties to the commission of base acts, then if the -chances of time should ever transfer the power to the other side, that -order has only itself to blame for whatever wrong may mark the -retaliation. There is no more dangerous policy in affairs of state than -to strip your opponent of self-respect, and this the descendants of the -persecutors found out to their extreme cost, when in 1793 they had to -deal with the descendants of the persecuted. - -One other curious piece of sportiveness in his dealings with the church -deserves to be noticed. In the year 1770 the post of temporal father of -the order of Capucins for the district of Gex became vacant. Voltaire -applied for it, and the general at Rome, perhaps listening to a word -from Ganganelli, or else from the Duchess of Choiseul, sent to Ferney -the letters patent conferring upon its patriarch this strange dignity, -and also affiliating him to the order. What were Voltaire's motives in -so odd a transaction, it is not very hard to divine. Probably, he -thought even this humble office would be some protection against -persecution. Then it gave him an opportunity of harassing his enemy, the -bishop of Annecy. Thirdly, it amused that whimsical element of farce and -mischief which was always so irrepressible in him, from the early days -when he is said to have nearly damned his own play by appearing on the -stage as the high-priest's train-bearer, and burlesquing that august -person's solemn gait. Voltaire filled his letters with infinite -pleasantries about the new Capucin, and seemed as much pleased at the -idea of wearing the cord of Saint Francis, as he had been with the gold -key of a Prussian chamberlain.[288] One of his first enjoyments was to -write letters to his episcopal foe, signed with a cross and his name: -'[Cross sign] _Voltaire, Capucin indigne._'[289] A story is told by -Grimm of a visitor arriving at Ferney, and being greeted by the -patriarch with the news that he would find his host a changed man. -'One grows a bigot in one's old age; I have a habit of having some -pious work read to me when I sit down at table.' And in fact, some one -began to read a sermon of Massillon, Voltaire throwing in exclamations -on the beauty, eloquence, imagination of the preacher. Suddenly after -three or four pages, he called out 'Off with Massillon!' and launched -forth during the rest of the meal with his usual verve and fanciful -extravagance of imagination.[290] It is profoundly unedifying, but not -the less characteristic. - -Voltaire, there can be little doubt, never designed a social revolution, -being in this the representative of the method of Hobbes. His single -object was to reinstate the understanding in its full rights, to -emancipate thought, to extend knowledge, to erect the standard of -critical common sense. He either could not see, or else, as one -sometimes thinks, he closes his eyes and refuses for his part to see, -that it was impossible to revolutionise the spiritual basis of belief -without touching the social forms, which were inseparably connected with -the old basis by the strong bonds of time and a thousand fibres of -ancient association and common interest. Rousseau began where Voltaire -left off. He informs us that in the days when his character was forming, -nothing which Voltaire wrote escaped, him, and that the Philosophical -Letters, that is the Letters on the English, though assuredly not the -writer's best work, were what first attracted him to study, and -implanted a taste which never afterwards became extinct. The -correspondence between Voltaire and the prince of Prussia, afterwards -the great Frederick, inspired Rousseau with a passionate desire to learn -how to compose with elegance, and to imitate the colouring of so fine an -author.[291] Thus Voltaire, who was eighteen years his elder, gave this -extraordinary genius his first productive impulse. But a sensibility of -temperament, to which perhaps there is no parallel in the list of -prominent men, impelled Rousseau to think, or rather to feel, about the -concrete wrongs and miseries of men and women, and not the abstract -rights of their intelligence. Hence the two great revolutionary schools, -the school which appealed to sentiment, and the school which appealed to -intelligence. The Voltarian principles of the strictest political -moderation and of literary common sense, negative, merely emancipatory, -found their political outcome, as French historians early pointed out, -in the Constituent Assembly, which was the creation of the upper and -middle class, while the spirit of Rousseau, ardent, generous, passionate -for the relief of the suffering, overwhelmed by the crowding forms of -manhood chronically degraded and womanhood systematically polluted, came -to life and power in the Convention and the sections of the Commune of -Paris which overawed the Convention. - -'It will not do,' wrote D'Alembert to Voltaire as early as 1762, 'to -speak too loudly against Jean Jacques or his book, for he is rather a -king in the Halles.'[292] This must have been a new word in the ears of -the old man, who had grown up in the habit of thinking of public opinion -as the opinion, not of markets where the common people bought and sold, -but of the galleries of Versailles. Except for its theology, the age of -Lewis XIV. always remained the great age to Voltaire, the age of pomp -and literary glory, and it was too difficult a feat to cling on one side -to the Grand Monarch, and to stretch out a hand on the other to the -Social Contract. It was too difficult for the man who had been embraced -by Ninon de l'Enclos, who was the correspondent of the greatest -sovereigns in Europe, and the intimate of some of the greatest nobles in -France, to feel much sympathy with writings that made their author king -of the Halles. Frederick offered Rousseau shelter, and so did Voltaire; -but each of them disliked his work as warmly as the other. They did not -understand one who, if he wrote with an eloquence that touched all -hearts, repulsed friends and provoked enemies like a madman or a savage. -The very language of Rousseau was to Voltaire as an unknown tongue, for -it was the language of reason clothing the births of passionate -sensation. Emile only wearied him, though there were perhaps fifty pages -of it which he would have had bound in morocco.[293] It is a stale -romance, he cries, while the Social Contract is only remarkable for -some insults rudely thrown at kings by a citizen of Geneva, and for four -insipid pages against the Christian religion, which are simply -plagiarised from Bayle's centos.[294] The author is a monster of -ingratitude and insolence, the arch-scoundrel and chief of charlatans, -the lineal descendant of the dog of Diogenes the cynic, and other evil -things not readily to be named in a polite age. Partly no doubt this -extreme irritation was due to the insults with which Jean Jacques had -repulsed his offers of shelter and assistance, had repudiated Voltaire's -attempts to defend him, and had held up Voltaire himself as a proper -object for the persecutions of Geneva. But there was a still deeper root -of discrepancy, which we have already pointed out. Rousseau's -exaggerated tone was an offence to Voltaire's more just and reasonable -spirit, and the feigned austerity of a man whose life and manners he -knew, assumed in his eyes a disagreeable shade of hypocrisy.[295] -Besides these things, he was clearly apprehensive of the storms which -Rousseau's extraordinary hardihood had the very natural effect of -raising in the circles of authority, though it is true that the most -acute observers of the time thought that they noticed a very perceptible -increase of Voltaire's own hardihood, as a consequence of the example -which the other set him. - -The rivalry between the schools of Rousseau and Voltaire represents the -dead-lock to which social thought had come; a dead-lock of which the -catastrophe of the Revolution was both expression and result. At the -time of Voltaire's death there was not a single institution in France -with force enough to be worth a month's purchase. The monarchy was -decrepit; the aristocracy was as feeble and impotent as it was arrogant; -the bourgeoisie was not without aspiration, but it lacked courage and it -possessed no tradition; and the church was demoralised, first by the -direct attack of Voltaire and the not less powerful indirect attack of -the Encyclopaedia, and second by the memory of its own cruelty and -selfishness in the generation just closing. But Voltaire's theory, so -far as he ever put it into its most general form, was that the temporal -order was safe and firm, and that it would endure until criticism had -transformed thought and prepared the way for a regime of enlightenment -and humanity. Rousseau, on the contrary, directed all the engines of -passion against the whole temporal fabric, and was so little careful of -freedom of thought, so little confident in the plenary efficacy of -rational persuasion, as to insist upon the extermination of atheists by -law. The position of each was at once irrefragable and impossible. It -was impossible to effect a stable reconstitution of the social order -until men had been accustomed to use their minds freely, and had -gradually thrown off the demoralising burden of superstition. But then -the existing social order had become intolerable, and its forces were -practically extinct, and consequently such an attack as Rousseau's was -inevitable, and was at the same time and for the same reasons -irresistible. To overthrow the power of the church only was to do -nothing in a society perishing from material decay and political -emasculation. Yet to regenerate such a society without the aid of moral -and spiritual forces, with whose activity the existence of a dominant -ecclesiastical power was absolutely incompatible, was one of the wildest -feats that ever passionate sophist attempted. - -If, however, it must be admitted that each of these two famous -destroyers was attempting an equally desperate task, it is the -contention of these pages that Voltaire was the more right and -far-sighted of the two in his perception of the conditions of the -problem. We have now for various adequate reasons acquired the habit of -looking upon the church and speaking of it, as an organisation outside -of society, or at least as a separate organisation and independent -integer within it. The truth is that in a Catholic country like France -before the Revolution, the church more than the secular order actually -was the society, as it had been, though to a far wider degree, -throughout Europe in the days of Hildebrand and Innocent. That is to -say, it furnished the strongest of the ideas, sentiments, hopes, and -associations which bound men together in a single community. The -monarchy, the nobles, the old historic French tradition, the various -bodies and processes of law, were swept away by the Revolution, -virtually never to return, in spite of the transient appearances to the -contrary. The church was swept away also, but only for a year or two; -and so little effectual was the Revolution, which was in fact Rousseau's -Revolution, in permanently modifying its position, that those Frenchmen -at the present day who most soberly judge the future of their country -and look deepest into its state, clearly perceive that the battle to be -fought in the order of ideas is a battle between the new moral and -social ideas of the workmen, and the old moral and social ideas which -Catholicism has implanted in the breasts of the peasants, and on which -the middle class privately and unconsciously lean for the support of -their own consciences, though they may have put away Catholic dogma. We -may see here, once more, the help which Protestantism gave to the -dissolution of the old society, by the increased room it gave, apart -from the specific influence of a more democratic dogma, for that gradual -intellectual expansion throughout a community, which for those who have -faith in the reasoning faculty is the one sure secret of social advance. -The subjection of the spiritual power to the temporal, which has -commonly followed the establishment of the Protestant communion, has -very likely retarded the final disappearance of many ideas which foster -anti-social tendencies; but the subjection of the spiritual power in -such a set of circumstances has the effect of softening shocks. -Protestantism in the sixteenth century, if it could have been accepted -in France, would have been a more edifying dissolvent than Voltairism -was in the eighteenth; but it is certain that the loosening of -theological ideas and the organisation connected with them and upholding -them, was the first process towards making truly social ideas possible, -and their future realisation a thing which good men might hope for. -Napoleon, the great organ of political reaction, knew what he was about -in paying writers for years to denigrate the memory of Voltaire, whose -very name he abhorred.[296] - -In saying, however, that Rousseau's attack was inevitable, we have -perhaps said that it was indispensable; for where a society is not able -to resist an assault upon its fundamental conditions, we may be -tolerably sure that the time has arrived when either these conditions -must be dispersed, or else the society must fall into rapid dissolution. -We may refute Rousseau's sophisms as often and as conclusively as we -please, and may dwell as forcibly as we know how upon the untold -penalties which France has paid, and is still doomed to pay, for -whatever benefits he may have bestowed on her. But, after all this, the -benefits remain, and they may be briefly set down as two in number. In -the first place he spoke words that can never be unspoken, and kindled a -hope that can never be extinguished; he first inflamed men with a -righteous conviction that the evils of the existing order of things -reduced civilisation to a nullity for the great majority of mankind, and -that it cannot for ever be tolerable that the mass should wear away -their lives in unbroken toil without hope or aim, in order that the few -may live selfish and vacuous days. Rousseau presented this sentiment in -a shape which made it the 'negation of society;' but it was much to -induce thinkers to ask themselves, and the bondsmen of society to ask -their masters, whether the last word of social philosophy had been -uttered, and the last experiment in the relations of men to one another -decisively tried and irrevocably accepted. Second, by his fervid -eloquence and the burning conviction which he kindled in the breasts of -great numbers of men, he inspired energy enough in France to awaken her -from the torpor as of death which was stealing so rapidly over her. -Nobody was more keenly aware of the presence of this breath of decay in -the air than Voltaire was. It had seized such hold of the vital parts of -the old order, that, but for the fiery spirit and unquenchable ardour of -the men who read Rousseau as men of old had read the gospel, but for the -spirit and ardour which animated the Convention, and made it alike in -the tasks of peace and the tasks of war one of the most effective and -formidable assemblies that the world has ever beheld, we do not see what -there was to stop France from sinking lower and lower into impotence, -until at last the powers who vainly threatened the republic with -partition, might in the course of time actually have consummated the -threat against the monarchy. This may seem impossible to us who live -after the Revolution and after Napoleon; but we must remember the -designs of partitioning Prussia in the middle of the century, the -accomplishment of a partition of the Italian possessions of the house of -Austria in 1735, and the partition of Poland; and why was France to be -eternal, any more than the Byzantine empire, or the power of the house -of Austria, or the power of Spain, had been eternal? It was the fire -kindled by Rousseau's passion that saved her; for even of the -Constituent, which was Voltairean, the very soul was Mirabeau, who was -Rousseauite. - -It will be seen that in one sense Rousseau was a far more original -personage than his first chief and inspirer. He contributed new ideas, -of extremely equivocal and perilous character, but still new, to the -multitudinous discussions which were throwing all the social elements -into confusion. These ideas might indeed have been found substantially -in the writings of previous thinkers like Montaigne and Locke; but -Rousseau's passion invested them with a quality which was virtually to -constitute them a fresh and original force. Voltaire contributed -initiative and a temperament, which made his propagation of ideas that -were not new, as important a fact in social if not in intellectual -history, as if he had been possessed of superlative gifts in -speculation. This has also to be remembered when we think of comparing -him with Diderot, who, while his equal in industry, was greatly his -superior both in fresh simplicity of imagination, and in grasp and -breadth of positive knowledge. Whoever will take the trouble to turn -over some of the thirty-five volumes of the Encyclopaedia, may easily see -how that gigantic undertaking (1751-1765), in which Voltaire always took -the most ardent and practical interest,[297] assisted the movement that -Voltaire had commenced. It seemed to gather up into a single great -reservoir all that men knew, and this fact of mere mechanical -collocation was a sort of substitute for a philosophic synthesis. As -Comte says, it furnished a provisional rallying-point for efforts the -most divergent, without requiring the sacrifice of any points of -essential independence, in such a way as to secure for a body of -incoherent speculation an external look of system.[298] This enterprise, -the history of which is a microcosm of the whole battle between the two -sides in France, enabled the various opponents of theological -absolutism, the Voltaireans, Rousseauites, atheists, and all other sorts -and conditions of protesting men, to confront the church and its -doctrine with a similar semblance of organic unity and completeness. The -Encyclopaedia was not simply negative and critical. It was an unexampled -manual of information, and was the means of spreading over the country -some knowledge of that active scientific culture, which was producing -such abundant and astonishing discoveries. The two streams of dissolvent -influences, negative criticism on the one hand, and positive knowledge -and scientific method on the other, were led into a single channel of -multiplied volume and force. There was no real nor logical connection -between the two elements, and while one of them has daily grown less -serviceable, the other has daily grown more absorbingly powerful, so as -now to be itself the effective indirect substitute for that direct -negative criticism, with which the Encyclopaedic design had once thrown -it into alliance. - -Diderot, the third chief of the attack, does even fuller justice than -Rousseau to Voltaire's share in stimulating thought and opening the mind -of France; and in spite of the extravagance of its first clause, there -is a glimpse of true discrimination in the characteristic sentence--'Were -I to call him the greatest man nature has produced, I might find people -to agree with me; but if I say that she has never yet produced, and is -never likely to produce again, a man so extraordinary, only his enemies -will contradict me.'[299] This panegyric was specially disinterested, -because Voltaire's last years had been not least remarkable for his -bitter antipathy to the dogmatic atheism and dogmatic materialism of -that school, with which Diderot was most intimate personally, and with -whose doctrines, if he did not at all times seem entirely to share them, -he had at any rate a warmer sympathy than with any other system of that -negative epoch, when every chief thinker was so vague positively, so -weak constructively, and only the subalterns, like D'Holbach and -Helvetius, presumed to push on to conclusions. - -The story of Voltaire's many long-sustained and unflagging endeavours to -procure whatever redress might be possible for the victims of legal -injustice, has been very often told, and mere commemoration of these -justly renowned achievements may suffice here. 'The worst of the worthy -sort of people,' he once said, 'is that they are such cowards. A man -groans over wrong, he shuts his lips, he takes his supper, he -forgets.'[300] Voltaire was not of that temper. He was not only an -extremely humane man; extraordinary vividness of imagination, lack of -which is at the root of so much cruelty, and unparalleled sympathetic -quality, thinness of which explains so much appalling indifference, -animated him to a perseverance in protecting the helpless, which -entitles him to a place by the side of Howard and the noblest -philanthropists. There were three years in which the chief business of -his life was to procure the rehabilitation of the name of the -unfortunate Calas, and the payment of a money recompense to his family. -He agitated the whole world with indignation and pity by means of -narratives, pleas, short statements and long statements, passionate -appeals and argumentative appeals. Powerful ministers, fine ladies, -lawyers, men of letters, were all constrained by his importunate -solicitations to lend an ear to the cause of reason and tolerance, and -to lift up an arm in its vindication. The same tremendous enginery was -again brought into play in the case of Sirven. In the case of La Barre -and his comrade D'Etallonde, his tenacity was still more amazing and -heroic. For twelve years he persevered in the attempt to have the memory -of La Barre rehabilitated. One of the judicial authorities concerned in -that atrocious exploit, struck with horror at the thought of being held -up to the execration of Europe by that terrible avenger, conveyed some -menace to Voltaire of what might befall him. Voltaire replied to him by -a Chinese anecdote. 'I forbid you,' said a tyrannical emperor to the -chief of the tribunal of history, '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.'[301] -There was a something inexorable as doom about Voltaire's unrelenting -perseverance in getting wrong definitely stamped and transfixed. If he -did not succeed in obtaining justice for the memory of La Barre, and in -procuring for D'Etallonde free pardon, at least he never abandoned the -endeavour, and he was just as ardent and unwearied in the twelfth year, -as he had been while his indignation was freshly kindled. He was more -successful in the case of Lally. Count Lally had failed to save India -from the English, had been taken prisoner, and had then in a magnanimous -way asked his captors to allow him to go to Paris to clear himself from -various charges, which the too numerous enemies he had made were -spreading against his character and administration. The French people, -infuriated at the loss of their possessions in India and Canada, were -crying for a victim, and Lally, after a process tainted with every kind -of illegality, was condemned to death by the parliament of Paris (1766) -on the vague charge of abuse of authority, exactions, and -vexations.[302] The murdered man's son, known in the days of the -Revolution as Lally Tollendal, was joined by Voltaire in the honourable -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. - -The death of Lally is the parallel in French history to the execution of -Byng in the history of England, and, oddly enough, Voltaire was very -actively occupied in trying to avert that crime of our government, as -well as the crimes of his own. He had known Byng when he was in -England.[303] Some one told him that a letter from Richelieu, who had -been Byng's opponent at Minorca, would be useful, and Voltaire instantly -urged the Duke to allow him to forward a letter he had, stating -Richelieu's conviction of his defeated enemy's bravery and good -judgment. Voltaire insists that this letter turned four votes on the -court-martial.[304] He informs a correspondent, moreover, of the fact -that Byng had instructed his executor to express his deep obligation -both to Voltaire and Richelieu.[305] Humanity is erroneously counted -among commonplace virtues. If it deserved such a place, there would be -less urgent need than, alas, there is, for its daily exercise among us. -In its pale shape of kindly sentiment and bland pity it is common -enough, and is always the portion of the cultivated. But humanity armed, -aggressive, and alert, never slumbering and never wearying, moving like -ancient hero over the land to slay monsters, is the rarest of virtues, -and Voltaire is one of its master-types. - -His interest in public transactions in his latest years was keener than -ever. That fruit of Polish anarchy, the war between Russia and Turkey -which broke out in 1768, excited his imagination to a pitch of great -heat, and the despatch in the spring of 1770 of a squadron from -Cronstadt, for the so-called liberation of Greece, made him weep for -joy. He implored Frederick not to leave to Catherine alone the burden of -so glorious a task. Superstition had had seven crusades; was it not a -noble thing to undertake one crusade to drive the barbarous Turks from -the land of Socrates and Plato, Sophocles and Euripides? Frederick -replied very sensibly that Dantzic was more to him than the Piraeus, and -that he is a little indifferent about the modern Greeks, who, if ever -the arts should revive among them, would be jealous to find that a Gaul -by his Henriade had surpassed their Homer; that this same Gaul had -beaten Sophocles, equalled Thucydides, and left far behind him Plato, -Aristotle, and the whole school of the Porch;[306]--which was, perhaps, -not quite so sensibly said. - -The successes of Russia against Turkey in 1770 roused the anxiety of -Austria and Prussia, and the solution of what we know as the Eastern -question was indefinitely postponed by the device of partitioning Poland -(Aug. 5, 1772), the alternative to the acquisition of the whole of that -country by Russia, the least civilised of the three powers. Of this -memorable transaction Voltaire heartily approved, and he gave thanks -that he had lived to see 'such glorious events.'[307] He insisted, -decidedly against the king's will, that Frederick had devised the -scheme, for he found it full of genius, and to all seeming he discerned -none of the execration which the event he had just witnessed was -destined to raise in his own country in years to come. His friendship -with two of the chief actors may have biassed his judgment; but Voltaire -seldom allowed, indeed by the conditions of his temperament he was -unable to allow, personal considerations of this kind to obscure his -penetrating sight. He may well have thought the partition of Poland -desirable, for the reasons which a statesman of to-day may find -adequate: the country's hopeless political anarchy, its crushing -material misery, the oppressive power of the church, the inevitable and -standing peril to Europe of the existence of such a centre of -conflagration. It is worth remarking that Rousseau was much more keenly -alive to the gravity of the event, that he protested against what had -been done, and that his influence has been one of the main causes of the -illogical sympathy of democratic Europe for one of the most pestilent of -aristocratic governments. - -The accession of Turgot to power in 1774 stirred an ardent sympathy in -Voltaire. Like the rest of the school, he looked upon this as the advent -of the political messiah,[308] and he shared the extreme hopes of that -great and virtuous man's most sanguine lieutenants. He declared that a -new heaven and a new earth had opened to him.[309] His sallies against -the economists were forgotten, and he now entered into the famous -controversy of the free trade in grain with all his usual fire. His -fervour went too far for the sage minister, who prayed him to be -somewhat less eager in alarming uninformed prejudice. Still he insisted -on hoping all things. - - Contemple la brillante aurore - Qui t'annonce enfin les beaux jours. - Un nouveau monde est pres d'eclore; - Ate disparait pour toujours. - Vois l'auguste philosophie, - Chez toi si long temps poursuivie, - Dicter ses triomphantes lois. - - * * * * * - - Je lui dis: 'Ange tutelaire, - Quels dieux repandent ces bienfaits?' - 'C'est un seul homme.'[310] - -When it proved that one man alone, 'qui ne chercha le vrai, que pour -faire le bien,'[311] was no match for the mountain torrent of ignorance, -prejudice, selfishness, and usage, and Turgot fell from power (May -1776), Voltaire sunk into a despair for his country, from which he never -arose. 'I am as one dashed to the ground. Never can we console ourselves -for having seen the golden age dawn and perish. My eyes see only death -in front of me, now that M. Turgot is gone. It has fallen like a -thunderbolt on my brain and my heart alike. The rest of my days can -never be other than pure bitterness.'[312] - -The visit to Paris was perhaps a falsification of this prophecy for a -moment. In 1778, yielding either to the solicitations of his niece, or -to a momentary desire to enjoy the triumph of his renown at its centre, -he returned to the great city which he had not seen for nearly thirty -years. His reception has been described over and over again. It is one -of the historic events of the century. No great captain returning from a -prolonged campaign of difficulty and hazard crowned by the most glorious -victory, ever received a more splendid and far-resounding greeting. It -was the last great commotion in Paris under the old regime. The next -great commotion which the historian has to chronicle is the -ever-memorable fourteenth day of July, eleven years later, when the -Bastille fell, and a new order began for France, and new questions began -for all Europe. - -The agitation of so much loud triumph and incessant acclamation proved -more violent than Voltaire's feeble health could resist, and he died, -probably from an over-dose of laudanum, on the thirtieth of May 1778. -His last writing was a line of rejoicing to the young Lally, that their -efforts had been successful in procuring justice for the memory of one -who had been put to death unjustly. How far Voltaire realised the -nearness of vast changes we cannot tell. There is at least one -remarkable prophecy of his, in the well-known letter to -Chauvelin:--'Everything that I see appears the throwing broadcast of the -seed of a revolution, which must inevitably come one day, but which I -shall not have the pleasure of witnessing. The French always come late -to things, but they do come at last. Light extends so from neighbour to -neighbour, that there will be a splendid outburst on the first occasion, -and then there will be a rare commotion. The young are very happy; they -will see fine things.'[313] A less sanguine tone marks the close of the -apologue in which Reason and Truth, her daughter, take a triumphant -journey in France and elsewhere, about the time of the accession of -Turgot. 'Ah, well,' says Reason, 'let us enjoy these glorious days; let -us rest here, if they last; and if storms come on, let us go back to our -well.'[314] Whether this meant much or little none can know. It would be -shallow to believe that such men as Voltaire, with faculty quickened and -outlook widened in the high air to which their fame raises them, really -discerned no more than we, who have only their uttered words for -authority, can perceive that they discerned. Great position often -invests men with a second sight whose visions they lock up in silence, -content with the work of the day. - - -FOOTNOTES: - -[1] _OEuvres_, xxxv. p. 214. - -[2] See Comte's _Philosophic Positive_, v. 520. - -[3] Vauban and Boisguillebert are both to be found in _Les Economistes -Financiers du XVIIIieme Siecle_, published by Guillaumin, 1851. - -[4] 'Je ne sais si, a tout prendre, et malgre les vices eclatants de -quelques uns de ses membres, il y eut jamais dans le monde un clerge -plus remarquable que le clerge catholique de France au moment ou la -Revolution l'a surpris, plus eclaire, plus national, moins retranche -dans les seules vertus privees, mieux pourvu de vertus publiques et en -meme temps de plus de foi: la persecution l'a bien montre'--De -Tocqueville, _Ancien Regime_, liv. ii. c. 11. - -[5] Rem. sur les Pensees de M. Pascal. _OEuvres_, xliii. p. 68. - -[6] _Novum Organum_, Sec. 67. - -[7] Some fault has been found with this passage by one or two private -critics, as being not entirely just to the eminent thinker to whom it -refers, and to whom my own obligations, direct and indirect, are so -numerous, notwithstanding my final inability to follow him in his ideas -of social reconstruction, that the idea of adding to the sum of -misrepresentation of which Comte and his doctrines have been the -victims, is particularly disagreeable to me. Here, therefore, is one -passage in which Comte seems to speak rather more warmly of Voltaire -than the words in the text imply: 'Toutefois, l'indispensable necessite -mentale et sociale d'une telle elaboration provisoire laissera toujours, -dans l'ensemble de l'histoire humaine, une place importante a ses -principaux cooperateurs, et surtout a leur type le plus eminent, auquel -la posterite la plus lointaine assurera une position vraiment unique; -parceque jamais un pareil office n'avait pu jusqu'alors echoir, et -pourra desormais encore moins appartenir a un esprit de cette nature, -chez lequel la plus admirable combinaison qui ait existe jusqu'ici entre -les diverses qualites secondaires de l'intelligence presentait si -souvent la seduisante apparence de la force et du genie' (_Phil. Pos._ -v. 518). Against this we have to place the highly significant fact that -Voltaire only appears in the calendar as a dramatic poet, as well as the -whole tenour and spirit of Comte's teaching, namely, as he puts it in -one place, that '_une pure critique ne peut jamais meriter beaucoup -d'estime_' (_Politique Positive_, iii. 547). - -[8] J. B. Rousseau's _Moisade_. - -[9] _OEuvres_, lxii. p. 45. - -[10] Dictionnaire Philosophique, _s.v. OEuvres_, lii. p. 378. - -[11] _OEuvres_, i. 513. - -[12] _OEuvres_, lxii. pp. 86 and 89. - -[13] _Ib._ lxii. p. 107. - -[14] A.R.O.V.E.T., L(_e_). I(_eune_). - -[15] Chevalier appears to have been a title given by courtesy to the -cadets of certain great families. - -[16] _OEuvres_, iv. 18. - -[17] _Histoire de l'ancien Gouvernement de la France_ (1727). - -[18] Buckle's _Hist. of Civilisation_, i. 657-664. - -[19] Sainte-Beuve, _Causeries_, v. 111. - -[20] _OEdipe_, iv. sc. 1. - -[21] _Ib._ ii. v. - -[22] Le Pour et le Contre, ou Epitre a Uranie. _OEuvres_, xv. pp. 399, -403. - -[23] Condorcet, _Vie de Voltaire. OEuvres_, iv. 20. - -[24] Condorcet, _Vie de Voltaire. OEuvres_, iv. 20. - -[25] Correspondence, 1725. _OEuvres_, lxii. pp. 140-49. - -[26] Lettres sur les Anglais, xv. _OEuvres_, xxxv. p. 114. Cf. also -Letter xxiv. (pp. 197-202). - -[27] Lord Stanhope's _Hist. of England_, ii. 231 (ed. 1858). - -[28] Lettres sur les Anglais, ix. _OEuvres_, xxxv. p. 73. - -[29] Correspondence, 1732. _OEuvres_, lxii. p. 253. - -[30] Martin's _Hist. de France_, vol. xiv. 265-67. - -[31] Philosophie de Newton, Pt. i. c. i. _OEuvres_, xli. p. 46. - -[32] Lettres sur les Anglais, xv. _OEuvres_, xxxv. pp. 115-20. - -[33] Philos. de Newton, Pt. i. c. ix. _OEuvres_, xli. p. 108. - -[34] D'Alembert. - -[35] Dictionnaire Philosophique, s.v. Locke. _OEuvres_, lvi. p. 447. - -[36] Corr. 1736. _OEuvres_, lxiii. p. 29. - -[37] _Soirees de St. Petersbourg, 6ieme Fentretien_, i. 403. - -[38] Corr. 1737; lxiii. p. 154. - -[39] _Ib._ p. 248. Cf. also lxii. p. 276. - -[40] Lettres sur les Anglais, xiv. _OEuvres_, xxxv. pp. 102-5. - -[41] _OEuvres_, vol. xliii. p. 77. - -[42] _Ib._ p. 20. - -[43] _OEuvres_, vol. xliii. p. 26. - -[44] Corr. 1737. _OEuvres_, lxiii. p. 248. - -[45] Lettres sur les Anglais, xiii. _OEuvres_, xxxv. p. 95. - -[46] Lettres, etc. x. _OEuvres_, xxxv. p. 81. - -[47] De Tocqueville's _Ancien Regime_, liv. ii. c. 9, p. 137 (ed. 1866). - -[48] _OEuvres_, xxxv. p. 80. - -[49] The reader of _Zadig_ will remember the '_homme comme moi_,' and -his ill luck at Babylon. _OEuvres_, lix. pp. 153-59. - -[50] Lettres sur les Anglais, xi. _OEuvres_, xxxv. p. 85. - -[51] Lett. Ang. xxi.; xxxv. pp. 172, etc. - -[52] Lettres sur les Anglais, i.; xxxv. p. 31. - -[53] Lett. Ang. vi.; xxxv. p. 62. - -[54] Lett. Ang. vii. pp. 62-65. - -[55] Lett. Ang. ii.; xxxv. p. 42. - -[56] _OEuvres_, xxxv. p. 185. - -[57] Ess. sur la Poesie Epique. _OEuvres_, xiii. p. 445, and pp. 513-26. - -[58] _OEuvres_, xxxv. p. 155. - -[59] _OEuvres_, xxxv. p. 159. - -[60] Corr. 1736. _OEuvres_, lxiii. p. 4. _Ib._ 60. - -[61] _OEuvres_, xxxv. pp. 189, 190. - -[62] For Berkeley, see Corr. 1736 _(OEuv_. lxiii. pp. 130, 164, etc.), -and for the other two, see Le Philosophe Ignorant (_OEuvres_, xliv. p. -69 and p. 47). - -[63] _OEuv._ xliv. p. 47. - -[64] The _De Veritate_ was published in 1624. - -[65] See the list from 1725 to 1728 in Leland's _View of the Deistical -Writers_, i. 132-144. - -[66] _OEuvres_, lvii. pp. 107-114. - -[67] Corr. 1736-37. _OEuv._ lxiii. p. 60, p. 86, and p. 112. - -[68] Examen Important de Milord Bolingbrocke. _OEuv._ xliv. p. 89. - -[69] See Lechler's _Geschichte des Englischen Deismus_, p. 396. - -[70] _Reflections. Works_, i. 419 (ed. 1842). - -[71] _Encyclopedic Nouvelle_ de Jean Reynaud et Pierre Leroux, s.v. -Voltaire, p. 736. De Maistre audaciously denies that Voltaire ever did -more than dip into Locke. _Soirees_, vi. - -[72] Villemain's _Cours de Lit. Francaise_, i. p. 111. See also De -Maistre, _Soirees de St. Petersbourg_, vi. p. 424. On the other hand, -see Lanfrey's _L'Eglise et les Philosophes du 18ieme Siecle_, pp. 99, -108, etc. - -[73] Madame de Grafigny. Cf. Desnoiresterres, _Voltaire au Chateau de -Cirey_, p. 246, etc. - -[74] Desnoiresterres, p. 257. - -[75] Condorcet, _Vie de Voltaire_, p. 61. A graceful and dignified -letter in this kind is that to Formey, May 12, 1752. _OEuv._ lxv. p. 64. - -[76] Grimm, _Correspondance Litteraire_, v. p. 5. - -[77] _OEuv._ lxv. p. 395. - -[78] Correspondence. Also, Essai sur la Poesie Epique, c. vi. _OEuvres_, -xiii. p. 481. - -[79] _OEuvres_, lxv. p. 91. - -[80] Corr. with the Abbe Moussinot, 1737, and afterwards. _OEuvres_, -lxiii. pp. 122, 160, 176, etc. - -[81] Corr. 1752. _OEuvres_, lxv. p. 115. - -[82] _Vie de Voltaire_, p. 37. - -[83] Desnoiresterres, p. 323. - -[84] Foisset's _Correspond. de Voltaire avec De Brosses, etc._, -published in 1836. - -[85] Quoted in Desnoiresterres, p. 239. - -[86] Desnoiresterres, p. 242. - -[87] Epitre a Mdme. la Marquise du Chatelet, sur la Calomnie. _OEuvres_, -xvii. p. 85. - -[88] See Whewell's _Hist. Induc. Sci._ bk. vi. c. v. - -[89] Desnoiresterres, pp. 313-21. - -[90] Exposition du Livre des Institutions Physiques. _OEuvres _, xlii. -pp. 196-206. - -[91] _OEuvres_, xlii. p. 207, etc. - -[92] Corr. 1737. _OEuvres_, lxiii. p. 182. - -[93] Condorcet, _Vie de Voltaire_, p. 43. - -[94] Corr. 1737. _OEuvres_, lvi. p. 428. - -[95] Dict. Phil. s.v. _OEuvres_, lvi. p. 428. - -[96] Dict. Phil. s.v. _OEuvres_, lvi. p. 430. - -[97] Corr. 1758. _OEuvres_, lxxv. p. 50. - -[98] Temple du Gout. _OEuvres_, xv. p. 99. - -[99] Corr. 1743. _OEuvres_, lxiv. p. 119. - -[100] _OEuvres de Vauvenargues_, ii. 252. - -[101] Temple du Gout. _OEuvres_, xv. p. 100. - -[102] In some readings given before popular audiences in Paris in 1850, -it was found that Voltaire was only partially effective. 'Trop -d'artifice,' says Ste. Beuve, 'trop d'art nuit aupres des esprits neufs; -trop de simplicite nuit aussi; ils ne s'en etonnent pas, et ils ont -jusqu'a un certain point besoin d'etre etonnes.' (_Causeries_, i. 289.) - -[103] Temple du Gout. _OEuvres_; xv. p. 95. - -[104] Corr. 1732. _OEuvres_, lxii. p. 218. - -[105] The dates of the most famous of his tragedies are these: _OEdipe_, -1718; _Brutus_, 1730; _Zaire_, 1732; _Mort de Cesar_, 1735; _Alzire_, -1736; _Mahomet_, 1741; _Merope_, 1743; _Semiramis_, 1748; _Tancrede_, -1760. - -[106] Hettnerr, for instance: _Literaturgeschichte des 18ten -Jahrhunderts_, ii. 227. - -[107] _Zaire_, act i. sc. 1 - -[108] _Essay on Hum. Und._ iv. 19, Sec. 3. - -[109] Discours sur la Tragedie, a Milord Bolingbrocke. _OEuvres_, ii. p. -337. See also the preface to OEdipe. _Ib._ p. 73. - -[110] _OEuvres_, ii. p. 339. - -[111] Lett. sur les Anglais, xix. _OEuvres_, xxxv. p. 151. - -[112] Introduction to Semiramis. _OEuvres_, v. p. 194. See also Du -Theatre Anglais (1761). _Ib._ x. p. 88. Lettre a l'Acad. Franc. (1778), -iv. p. 186. - -[113] _Voltaire: sechs Vortraege_. Von D. F. Strauss; p. 74. The same -idea is found in a speech of Wilhelm Meister, bk. iii. ch. 8. - -[114] _Mem. de Marmontel_, liv. vii. ii. 245. For Diderot's criticism, -see his _Memoires et OEuv. Inedites_, i. 234 (1830). For D'Alembert's, -cf. Voltaire's _OEuv._ lxxv. p. 118. - -[115] _Decline and Fall_, c. 52, note 83. - -[116] _OEuvres_, vols. x. and xi. - -[117] Desnoiresterres, p. 342. - -[118] _OEuvres_, ix. p. 382. - -[119] _Soirees_, 4ieme entretien. - -[120] _OEuvres_, v. p. 189. - -[121] Strauss, p. 79. - -[122] _OEuvres_, xviii. p. 250. - -[123] Commenced soon after 1730; published surreptitiously in 1755; -published by Voltaire himself in 1762. - -[124] _Vie de Voltaire_, p. 89. - -[125] _Vie de Voltaire_, p. 88. On the same subject of chastity, of -Condorcet's Works, vi. p. 264, and pp. 523-26; also a passage in his -correspondence, i. p. 221. - -[126] Essai sur la Poesie Epique. _OEuvres_, xiii. p. 474 - -[127] _OEuvres_, ii. p. 591. - -[128] Burton's _Life of David Hume_, ii. 440. - -[129] Henriade, x. 485-491. - -[130] _OEuvres_, lxxv. p.266. - -[131] _Vie de Voltaire_ p.60. - -[132] See the late C. Bartholmess's _Histoire Philosophique de -l'Academie de Prusse_, bk. ii. - -[133] _Histoire Philosophique de l'Academie de Prusse_, bk. i. 230. - -[134] Corr. 1750. _OEuvres_, lxiv. p. 447. - -[135] Jablonski. - -[136] _OEuvres_, lxxv. p. 224. - -[137] Corr. 1750. _OEuvres_, lxiv. p. 443. - -[138] Carlyle's _History of Frederick_, bk. xiii. ch. 5. - -[139] _OEuvres de Voltaire_, lxxiii. p. 456. - -[140] _Ib._ p. 813. - -[141] _Ib._ p. 807. - -[142] For Voltaire's admirably expressed remonstrance, see Corr. Oct. -1757. _OEuvres_, lxiii. p. 768. - -[143] Martin's _Hist. de France_, xv. p. 468. - -[144] _OEuvres_, lxxv. p. 207 and p. 210. - -[145] Goethe. - -[146] Bartholmess, ii. 111. - -[147] See Bartholmess, i. 168. - -[148] _OEuvres de Voltaire_, lxxiii. p. 836. - -[149] Corr. 1751. _OEuvres_, lxiv. p. 524. - -[150] Corr. 1751. _OEuvres_, lxiv. p. 453. - -[151] See Whewell's _Hist. Ind, Sci._ bk. VII. ch. 4, Sec. 7. - -[152] _OEuvres_, lxiv. p. 53. - -[153] See Comte's _Phil. Pos._ i. 525-529. - -[154] It may be worth mentioning that there actually existed in the -sixteenth century a French physician, who changed his real name of -Sans-Malice into Akakia, and left descendants so called. See M. Jal's -_Dictionnaire Critique de Biographie et d'Histoire_, p. 19 (1869). - -[155] Corr. 1752. _OEuvres_, lxv. p. 138. - -[156] Desnoiresterres, 394. - -[157] Desnoiresterres, _Voltaire et Frederic_, cc. 9 and 10. Carlyle's -_Frederick_, bk. xvi. ch. 12. - -[158] See Desnoiresterres, _Voltaire et Frederic_, pp. 124-153, -including a facsimile of the fraudulently altered agreement. Also -Carlyle's _Frederick_, bk. xvi. ch. 7. - -[159] Carlyle's _Frederick_, bk. xiii. ch. 5. - -[160] _OEuvres_, lxxiii. p. 830 (1760). - -[161] _OEuvres_, lxxiii. pp. 835-837. - -[162] Printed in vol. i. of the Baudouin edition, as _Memoires pour -servir a la vie de M. Voltaire_, p. 212. - -[163] Corr. 1758. _OEuvres_, lxxv. p. 80. - -[164] _Ib._ p. 31. - -[165] Corr. lxv. p. 23. Cf. also p. 83. - -[166] Corr. lxv. p. 15. - -[167] Corr. 1743. _OEuv._ lviii. p. 131. A very long and careful list of -the oppressions practised on writers in this reign is given in Mr. -Buckle's _Hist. of Civilisation_, i. 675-681. - -[168] Foisset's _Corres. de Voltaire avec de Brasses_, etc., p. 318. -Also Corr. 1757. _OEuvres_, lxvi. pp. 1-50 passim. - -[169] _OEuvres_, lxxv. p. 61. - -[170] _Memoires_, i. ch. in. p. 55. - -[171] See for instance a letter to Mdlle. de Voland: _Memoires, -Correspondance, et Ouv. inedites_, i. 99. - -[172] L'Auteur arrivant a sa terre. _OEuv._ xvii. 194. - -[173] Corr. 1757. _OEuv._ lxvi. p. 38. - -[174] _Ib._ p. 32. - -[175] Corr. _OEuv._ lxxv. p. 249. - -[176] It was to the last-named book, one may suppose, that Voltaire -referred, when he asked how it was that Locke, after having so -profoundly traced the development of the human understanding, could so -degrade his own understanding in another work. (Diet Phil. s.v. Platon. -_OEuv._ lvii. p. 369.) - -[177] See Collins's Apology for Free Debate and Liberty of Writing, -prefixed to the _Grounds and Reasons of Christianity_. - -[178] Corr. 1768. _OEuv._ lxx. p. 140. - -[179] The reader will find an account of them in M. Lanfrey's _L'Eglise -et les Philosophes du 18ieme Siecle_, pp. 131-135. - -[180] Corr. _OEuv._ lxvi. p. 100. - -[181] For the composition of this body see Voltaire's Histoire du -Parlement de Paris. _OEuv._ xxxiv. Or in Martin s _Hist, de France_, iv. -295; xii. 280; and xii. 53. - -[182] Siecle de Louis xv. c. 36. _OEuvres_, xxix. p. 3. - -[183] Corr. _OEuv._ lxxv. p. 145. - -[184] Corr. _OEuvres_, lxvii. p. 166. - -[185] Mem. de Morellet, ch. iii. p. 62. - -[186] Martin's _Hist. de France_, xvi. p. 139. - -[187] Relation de la Mort du Chevalier de la Barre, 1766; Le Cri du Sang -Innocent, 1775, _OEuv._ xxxix. p. 99. - -[188] Corr. July 16, 1766. _OEuv._ lxxv. p. 357. - -[189] Corr. _OEuv._ lxxv. p. 359. - -[190] _Ib._ p. 361. - -[191] Grimm, _Corr. Lit._ v. p. 133. - -[192] Corr. 1774. _OEuv._ lxxv. p. 627. - -[193] _Ib._ p. 696. - -[194] _Hist. de la Civilisation en Europe_, 14ieme lecon, p. 405. Cf. -also De Tocqueville's _Ancien Regime_, liv. iii. ch. I. - -[195] Corr. 1757-58. _OEuv._ lxvi. pp. 92, 102, 112, 185, etc. - -[196] Corr. _OEuv._ lxvii. p. 174; also lxxv. p. 170. - -[197] See ante, p. 19. - -[198] Chant i. v. 306. - -[199] La Voix du Sage et du Peuple (1750). _OEuv._ xxxviii. p. 53. - -[200] De Maistre, _Soirees de St. Petersbourg_, 4ieme. - -[201] _OEuvres_, xxxv. p. 37. - -[202] Corr. 1773. _OEuvres_, lxxv. p. 614. - -[203] Cf. Dict. Phil. s.v. Eglise. _OEuv._ pp. 221-248. - -[204] Dieu et les Hommes, c. xiv. _OEuvres_, xlv. p. 318. - -[205] Dict. Phil. s.v. Resurrection. _OEuvres_, lviii. p. 67. - -[206] See, for instance, Tylor's _Primitive Culture_, i. 32, ii. 131, -etc. - -[207] Corr. 1770. _OEuvres_, lxxv. pp. 522, 526, etc. This active spite -prevented the accession of De Brosses to a seat in the academy. - -[208] Diet. Phil. s. v. Dieu. _OEuvres_, liv. p. 20. - -[209] Dieu et les Hommes, c. iii. _OEuvres_, xlv. p. 270. - -[210] Dict. Phil. s. v. Polytheisme. _OEuvres_, lvii. p. 391. - -[211] Corr. 1761. _OEuvres_, lxvii. p. 186. - -[212] Corr. 1758. _OEuvres_, lxvi. p. 200. - -[213] _Nat. Hist. of Religion_, sect. iii. - -[214] _Ib._ sect. iv. - -[215] _Soirees de St. Petersbourg_, vi. p. 403. - -[216] Ante, ch. iii. - -[217] See Milman's _Hist. of Latin Christianity_, bk. ii. chap. ii. and -iii. - -[218] Corr. 1761. _OEuvres_, lxvii. p. 74. - -[219] Finlay's _Greece under the Romans_ (B.C. 146-A.D. 716), pp. 146, -147. - -[220] Poeme sur le Desastre de Lisbonne. _OEuvres_, xv. p. 53. - -[221] Phil. de Newton. _OEuv._ xli. p. 46. See also the whole chapter. - -[222] A Mdme. du Chatelet sur la Philosophic de Newton (1738). _OEuv._ -xvii. p. 113. - -[223] Ode sur le Fanatisme. _OEuvres_, xvi. p. 331. - -[224] _OEuvres_, xv. pp. 39-62. - -[225] Aristotle's definition of =eutrapelia=, or wit, as =hubris -pepaideumene= marks one of Voltaire's chief talents with entire -accuracy. - -[226] _OEuvres_, xv. p. 58. - -[227] Corr. 1765. _OEuvres_, lxxv. p. 311. - -[228] Lettres Ang. xiv. _OEuvres_, xxxv. p. 108. - -[229] Corr. 1736. _OEuvres_, lxiii. p. 31. - -[230] Dict. Phil. s. v. Locke. _OEuvres_, lvi. p. 338. - -[231] Holberg, quoted in Sainte-Beuve's _Nouveaux Lundis_, ix. 26. - -[232] Quinet's _La Revolution_, i. 168. - -[233] Essai sur les Moeurs, c. ii. _OEuvres_, xx. p. 344. See also c. -clxxxii. _OEuv._ xxiv. p. 162. - -[234] Essai sur les Moeurs, pp. 1, 2. - -[235] Essai sur les Moeurs, p. 9. - -[236] _On the Study of History_, Letter i. ad finem. - -[237] _Grandeur et Decadence des Romains_, c. xi. - -[238] The dates of the publication of Voltaire's historical works are -these:--_Charles XII._, 1731; _Siecle de Louis XIV_., 1752 (a portion of -it in 1739); _Annales de l'Empire_, 1753-54; _Essai sur les Moeurs_, 1757 -(surreptitiously in 1754); _Histoire de Russie_, Pt. I. in 1759, Pt. II. -in 1763; _Precis du Siecle de Louis XV._, 1768; _Histoire du Parlement -de Paris_, 1769. - -[239] Le Pyrrhonisme de l'Histoire, cc. xii. xiii. _OEuvres_, xxxvi, p. -346; also p. 428. - -[240] Corr. _OEuvres_, lxvi. p. 17. - -[241] Corr. 1757. _OEuvres_, lxvi. p. 61. - -[242] Corr. 1761. _OEuv._ lxvii. p. 228. - -[243] _OEuvres_, xx. p. 10 - -[244] Siecle de Louis XIV., c. i. _OEuvres_, xxv. p. 283. - -[245] Corr. 1735. _OEuvres_, lxii. pp. 455, 456. - -[246] _OEuvres_, xxxvi. pp. 428-434 (1768). - -[247] Diet. Phil. s.v. Guerre. _OEuvres_, lv. pp. 488, 489. - -[248] _Esprit des Lois_, x. ii. - -[249] _OEuvres_, lv. p. 490. - -[250] Corr. _OEuvres_, lxxv. p. 460. - -[251] See a letter of the king of Prussia in Voltaire's _Works_, lxxiv. -p. 144, etc. - -[252] C. xxiii. _OEuvres_, xxi. p. 9. - -[253] _Moeurs_, like =ethe= is untranslatable by any single English -word. The full title is _Essai sur les Moeurs et l'Esprit des Nations, -et sur les principaux faits de l'Histoire depuis Charlemagne jusqu' a -Louis XIII._ - -[254] C. vi. _OEuvres_, xx. p. 396. - -[255] C. xi. _OEuvres_, xx. p. 455. - -[256] See on this interesting subject Finlay's _Greece under the Romans_ -(B.C. 146-A.D. 716), pp. 156, 157. - -[257] _Childe Harold_, iii. 106 and 107. - -[258] C. ix. _OEuvres_, xx. p. 445. - -[259] C. lviii. _OEuvres_, xxi. pp. 328-341. - -[260] Quelques petites Hardiesses, etc. _OEuvres_, xxxvi. p. 445. - -[261] C. xlii. _OEuvres_, xxi. p. 143. - -[262] Notes sur le Desastre de Lisbonne. _OEuvres_, xv. p. 57. - -[263] He ridiculed some of these in one of his most humane and otherwise -excellent pieces, L'Homme aux Quarante Ecus (1767). _OEuv._ lix. p. 395. - -[264] _The Republic_, 1577. _Esprit des Lois_, 1748. - -[265] _OEuv._ lxvii. p. 94. - -[266] A drawing of Voltaire's chateau at Ferney is given in Blancheton's -_Vues Pittoresques des Chateaux de France_ (Paris, 1826), Part II. The -chateau is still standing, and the prospect from the terrace repays a -visit, apart from the interest of association. The church is now a -receptacle for wine-casks. - -[267] The reader who is curious as to the most indifferent details, will -find what he seeks in a singular monument of painstaking spleen, -entitled _Menage et Finances de Voltaire_, by M. Nicolardot (Paris, -1854). - -[268] Corr. 1761. _OEuv._ lxvii. p. 190. - -[269] _Corr. Lit._ vi. p. 272; v. p. 385. - -[270] Grimm, _Corr. Lit._ v. p. 393. - -[271] Corr. 1761. _OEuv._ lxxv. p. 158. - -[272] Born 1710; lost her first husband 1744; married one Vivier in -1779; died 1790. - -[273] Corr. 1770. _OEuv._ lxx. p. 175. - -[274] Corr. 1771-72. _OEuv._ lxxiv. pp. 733 and 737. - -[275] Corr. 1772. _OEuvres_, lxxi. p. 496. The marked copy is still in -existence, along with the rest of Voltaire's books, at St. Petersburg; -see Lavergne's _Economistes du 18ieme Siecle_, p. 285. - -[276] Corr. 1761. _OEuvres_, lxvii. p. 166. - -[277] _OEuvres_, lxxv. pp. 64, 69, etc. - -[278] Corr. 1770. _OEuvres_, lxxi, p. 18. - -[279] _OEuvres de Turgot_, ii. pp. 814-825. - -[280] _Ib._ p. 824. - -[281] _OEuvres_, lxxv. p. 331. - -[282] _OEuvres_, lxxv. p. 33. - -[283] _OEuvres de Condorcet_, iv. pp. 33, 34, and vi. pp. 187-189. - -[284] Corr. 1768. _OEuvres_, lxxv. p. 426. - -[285] Corr. 1768. _OEuvres_, lxx. pp. 198-199. - -[286] Corr. 1769. _OEuvres_, lxx. pp. 434, 435; lxxv. p. 452. Grimm's -_Corr. Lit._ vi. p. 231. - -[287] Condorcet, _Vie de Voltaire_, p. 126. - -[288] Corr. _OEuvres_, lxxi. pp. 25, 27, 30, etc. - -[289] Grimm, _Corr. Lit._ vi. p. 358. - -[290] Grimm, _Corr. Lit._ vi. p. 358. - -[291] _Confessions_, pt. i. liv. v. Date of 1736. - -[292] _OEuvres_, lxxv. p. 182. - -[293] Corr. 1762. _OEuvres_, lxxv. p. 188. - -[294] _OEuvres_, lxvii. p. 432. - -[295] Condorcet, p. 170. - -[296] Lamartine's _Girondins_, iv. v. - -[297] See his correspondence with D'Alembert (_OEuvres_, lxxv.) until -1760, the date of D'Alembert's separation from Diderot and the -Encyclopaedia. - -[298] _Phil. Pos._ v. 520. - -[299] _Essais sur les regnes de Claude et Neron_, vol. vi. pp. 256, 290, -and 191 (Ed. 1819). - -[300] Corr. 1766. _OEuvres_, lxxv. p. 364. - -[301] Condorcet, p. 124. - -[302] Martin's _Hist. de France_, xv. pp. 569-572. - -[303] Corr. 1757. _OEuvres_, lxvi. p. 51. - -[304] Corr. 1756. _OEuvres_, lxv. p. 568; lxvi. pp. 1, 19, 20, 40. - -[305] _OEuvres_, lxvi. p. 51. - -[306] Corr. 1772. _OEuvres_, lxxiv. p. 36. - -[307] _Ib._ p. 93, etc. - -[308] See Morellet, i. pp. 147, 159, etc. - -[309] _OEuvres_, lxxv. p. 641. - -[310] Ode sur le Passe et le Present (1775). _OEuvres_, xvi. p. 415. - -[311] Epitre a un Homme (1776). _OEuvres_, xvii. p. 327. - -[312] Corr. 1776. _OEuvres_, lxxii. pp. 403, 409, 412, etc. - -[313] April 2, 1764. _OEuvres_, lxviii. p. 220. - -[314] Eloge historique de la Raison (_or_ Voyage de la Raison). -_OEuvres_, lx. p. 478. - - -THE END. - -_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, _Edinburgh_. - - - - -Transcriber's Note - -In this version, Greek text has been transliterated and enclosed in -equal signs, e.g. =megaloprepeia=. Underscores have been used to -indicate _italics_. 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