In Egypt the
emblematical
worship of animals succeeded to
the doctrines of Thaut.
the doctrines of Thaut.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v26 to v30 - Tur to Zor and Index
He sends his
commands into America and the East Indies; yet can he not
take away one privilege from the republic of Lucca. The Em-
peror is King of the Romans; but his whole right and preroga-
tive consists in holding the Pope's stirrup, and the basin for him
to dip his hands at mass.
The English serve their monarch on the knee; but then they
depose him, imprison him, behead him.
Men who are vowed to poverty, obtain, by the very virtue
of that vow, an estate of two hundred thousand crowns yearly
revenue; and by means of their humility, become absolute sov-
ereigns.
At Rome they rigorously condemn pluralities of benefices,
while at the same instant they will issue bulls to enable some
German to hold half a dozen bishoprics at once.
It is, say
they, because the German bishops have no church cures. The
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15467
chancellor of France is the second person in the State, and yet
he is never permitted to eat at the king's table; at least it has
never happened hitherto: while a colonel, who is scarce a gentle-
man, enjoys that honor. An intendant's lady is a queen in her
,
husband's province, and at court no more than a simple country
madam.
Men convicted of the heinous sin of nonconformity are pub.
licly burnt: whilst the second Eclogue of Virgil, in which is that
warm declaration of love which Corydon makes the beauteous
Alexis, “Formosum pastor Corydon ardebat Alexin,” is gravely
expounded in every college; and pupils are asked to note that
though Corydon was fair and Amyntas swarthy, yet still Amyntas
had the preference.
Should a poor, harmless philosopher, who never dreamed of
doing the least harm to any one, take it into his head that the
earth moves, that light comes from the sun, that matter might
have other properties than those we are acquainted with, imme-
diately the hue and cry is raised against him; he is an impious
disturber of the public peace: though his persecutors have trans-
lated and published, in usum Delphini, Lucretius, and Cicero's
(Tusculan Questions, which are two complete bodies of irre-
ligion.
Our courts of justice have rejected the belief in evil spirits,
and witches are subjects of laughter: but Gaufredy and Grand-
ier were both burnt for witchcraft; and lately, by a majority of
voices, a monk was condemned to the stake by one of our Parlia-
ments for having bewitched a young damsel of eighteen years by
breathing upon her.
The skeptical philosophy of Bayle was persecuted even in
Holland. La Motte le Vayer, a still greater skeptic, though not
near so good a philosopher, was preceptor to Louis XIV. and his
brother. Gourville was hanged in effigy at Paris, whilst he was
the ambassador of France in Germany.
The famous atheist Spinoza lived and died in peace. Vanini,
whose only crime was writing against Aristotle, was burnt for an
atheist; in this character he has the honor to fill a considerable
space in the history of the republic of letters, as well as in all
the dictionaries, – those enormous archives of lies, with a small
mixture of truth. Do but open those books, you will find it
recorded that Vanini not only taught atheism in his writings, but
also that twelve professors of the same creed had actually set
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VOLTAIRE
out from Naples to make proselytes for their gospel. Then open
Vanini's books, and you will be astonished to find that they con-
tain so many proofs of the existence of a Deity. See here what
he says in his Amphitheatrum,' a work condemned upon hear-
say because it is wholly unknown: «God is his own sole prin-
ciple and boundary, without end, without beginning, having no
need of either; and the father of all beginning and of every end:
he exists forever, but in no space of time; there is no duration, a
parte ante, – that is to say, which is past,- nor futurity, which
will come hereafter: he is present everywhere, without occupying
any place; immovable, yet without stopping, and rapid without
motion: he is all, but without inclusion of all; he is in every-
thing, but without being excluded from other beings; good with-
out quality; and whilst he produces all the various changes in
nature, he is himself unvaried and immutable: his will is his
power; he is simplicity itself: there is no such thing as mere
possibility; all in him is real: he is the first, the middle, and the
last act; in one word, he is all: yet he is above all kings, with-
out them, within them, beyond them, eternally before them, yet
present with them. ” After such a confession of his faith was
Vanini denounced as an atheist! On what grounds? The simple
deposition of a fellow called Francon. In vain did his works
bear witness for him. A single enemy robbed him at one stroke
of life and reputation.
The little book called the Cymballum Mundi' - a cold imita-
tion of Lucian, without the slightest, the most distant relation to
Christianity — has in like manner been condemned to the flames:
yet Rabelais has been printed cum privilegio, and the Turkish
Spy' and even the Persian Letters' suffered to pass unmolested,
– particularly the latter, that ingenious, diverting, and daring per.
formance which contains an entire letter in defense of suicide;
another in which are the words, “If we suppose such a thing as
religion”; another where it is said in express terms, that the bish-
ops have properly no other function but that of dispensing with
the laws; another which calls the Pope a magician who endeavors
to persuade us that three and one are the same, and that the
bread we eat is not bread. The Abbé de St. Pierre, a man possi-
bly deceived but ever upright, and whose works Cardinal Du Bois
used to call the “Dreams of a Good Citizen,” - this Abbé de
St. Pierre, I say, was excluded from the French Academy, nemine
contradicente, for having in a political work advocated boards of
## p. 15469 (#419) ##########################################
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15469
are
council in place of secretaries of State, and for saying that the
finances had been shamefully managed towards the close of that
glorious reign. The author of the Persian Letters' made men-
tion of Louis XIV. only to tell the world that the King was a
magician who undertook to persuade his subjects that paper was
gold and silver; who preferred the Turkish to all other forms
of government; who held a man that handed him a napkin in
higher esteem than one who had won him battles; who had given
a pension to a runaway who had fled a matter of two leagues
from the field of battle without once looking behind him, and
a considerable position to another who had run four leagues;
who was miserably poor, although his finances are inexhaustible.
What did this same author say of Louis XIV. , the protector of
the French Academy? for on the reputation of this book he was
admitted into their number. We may add to this, what crowns
the inconsistency, that this body received him amongst them
chiefly for having made them ridiculous; for of all the books
in which authors have laughed at their company, in none
they worse handled than in the Persian Letters. ' Listen: «The
members who compose this body have nothing to do but to prate
everlastingly; panegyric flows naturally out of that babbling of
theirs, which is truly world without end,” etc. After being treated
in this manner, they praised him for his skill in drawing a strong
likeness.
Were I disposed to treat the contrarieties of the republic of
letters, I must write the history of all the literati, and of all the
wits who have ever existed. Or had I a mind to consider the
inconsistencies of society, I must write a history of the human
race. An Asiatic traveling in Europe might take us all for
pagans. The very days of our week pay tribute to Mars, Mer-
cury, Jupiter, and Venus; the marriage of Cupid and Psyche is
painted in a palace belonging to the Pope! If this Asiatic at-
tended our opera, he could not doubt that it was a festival in
honor of the heathen gods. Were he to study our manners, he
would be still more astonished. Spain excludes all foreigners
from the smallest commerce, directly or indirectly, with her
American settlements, whilst those very Americans carry on,
through Spanish factors, a trade to the amount of fifty millions
per annum; so that Spain could never grow rich were it not for
the violation of that law, which still stands though perpetually
trampled upon. Another government encourages an India com-
pany, while its theologians declare its dividends criminal before
## p. 15470 (#420) ##########################################
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VOLTAIRE
God. Our Asiatic would behold the seats of judges, the com-
mand of armies, the places of counselors of State, bought with
money: nor could he comprehend the assertion of the patents
entitling them to hold these places, that these have been granted
without caballing, fee, or reward, and purely on the score of merit,
whilst the valuable consideration given is plainly disclosed in their
letters of provision! What would he think to see our players at
the same instant paid by the sovereign and excommunicated by
the clergy ? Suppose he were to ask why a lieutenant-general –
who is only a roturier, a man of the common class, though he
may have won battles should, in the estimation of the court, be
ranked with a peasant, whilst an echevin or city sheriff is held as
noble as the Montmorencies? Why, when all regular shows are
prohibited in the week consecrated to edification, should mounte-
banks be tolerated whose language is offensive to the least deli-
cate ear? In short, he would see our laws in direct opposition to
our customs. Yet were we to travel into Asia, we should come
upon like inconsistencies.
Men are everywhere fools: they make laws much as we re-
pair breaches in walls. In one place the elder brothers contrive
to leave the younger mere beggars; in others they share alike.
At one time the Church authorizes duels, at another she anathe-
matizes them. The partisans and enemies of Aristotle have been
excommunicated each in turn; as have the wearers of long hair
or short hair. In the known world no law has been discovered
able to redress a very silly piece of folly, which is gaming. The
laws of play are the only ones which admit of neither exception,
relaxation, imposition, nor variation. An ex-lackey, if he plays
at lansquenet with a king, and happens to win, is paid without
the least hesitation; in every other respect the law is a sword,
with which the stronger cuts the weaker in pieces.
Yet the world gets on as if it were constituted in the wisest
manner imaginable! Irregularity is a part of ourselves. Our
political world is much like our globe: though ugly enough, it
manages to get on. It would be folly to wish that all the
mountains, seas, and rivers were drawn in regular geometrical
figures: it would be a still greater folly to expect consummate
wisdom from men; as if one should suggest giving wings to
dogs, or horns to eagles. Indeed, these pretended oppositions
that we call contradictions are necessary ingredients in the
composition of man; who like the rest of nature is what he has
to be.
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15471
ON READING
From the Philosophical Dictionary
)
T"
HERE is this good in a large library, that it frightens the be-
holder! Two hundred thousand volumes are enough to
discourage a man tempted to print a book. But unfortu-
nately he very soon says to himself, "Most of those books are
not read, and perhaps mine will be! ” He compares himself to
the drop of water that complained of being confounded and lost
in the ocean; a génie took pity on it, and made an oyster swal-
low it. It became one of the finest pearls in the ocean, and in
time the chief ornament of the great Mogul's throne. Those who
are mere compilers, imitators, commentators, pickers of phrases,
critics by the week,- in short, those on whom no génie will take
pity,- will forever remain the drop of water.
Our man, then, is working in his garret in hopes of becoming
the pearl.
It is true that in that immense collection of books there are
about one hundred and ninety-nine thousand that will never be
read, at least never read through; but one may need to consult
some of them once in his life. And it is a great advantage to
the seeker to find without delay, under his hand, in the palace
of kings, the volume and the page he is looking for. The library
is one of the noblest of institutions. There has never been an
expense more magnificent and more useful.
The public library of the French king is the finest in the
world; less indeed as to number and rarity of volumes, than in
the facility and politeness with which the librarians lend them
to all the learned. That collection is unquestionably the most
precious monument there is in France.
Let not that astonishing multitude of books daunt the stu-
dent. Paris contains seven hundred thousand people; one cannot
live with them all, and must make choice of three or four
friends, - and we ought not to complain more of a superfluity of
books than of men.
A man who wishes to know something of his own being, and
who has no time to lose, is much puzzled. He feels that he
ought at once to read Hobbes and Spinoza; Bayle, who has writ-
ten against them; Leibnitz, who has opposed Bayle; Clarke, who
has disputed the theories of Leibnitz; Malebranche, who differs
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VOLTAIRE
with all of them; Locke, who is supposed to have confounded
Malebranche; Stillingfleet, who thinks he has vanquished Locke;
Cudworth, who sets himself up above all because no one can un-
derstand him! One would die of old age before he could go
through a hundredth part of the metaphysical romance !
THE IGNORANT PHILOSOPHER
From the Philosophical Dictionary)
W"
I am
can
HO art thou ? Whence art thou ? What is thy business
here? What will become of thee ? — These are questions
which confront us all, but which not a man of us can
answer. I ask the plants what power occasions their growth;
and how the same soil produces fruits so different. Insensible
and mute, these leave me to my ignorance. I interrogate that
crowd of animals endowed with motion, able to communicate,
who enjoy my very sensations; who possess some ideas, some
memory, all the passions. They know even less than I what
they are, why they are, what they shall be.
a weak
animal: I come into the world without knowledge, strength, or
instinct. I cannot even crawl to my mother's breast, as
other animals. I acquire a few ideas, as I acquire a little
strength, when my organs begin to develop. This strength in-
creases to a certain degree, and then daily decreases. So the
power of conceiving ideas increases to a certain degree, and then
insensibly disappears. What is the nature of that crescent force ?
I know not; and those who have spent their lives in search of
this unsearchable cause know no more than I. What is that
other power which creates images in my brain ? which preserves
them in my memory? Those who spend their lives in seeking
for this knowledge have sought it in vain. We are as ignorant
of first principles as we were in our cradles. Have I learned
anything from the books of the past two thousand years? Some-
times a desire arises in us to understand in what manner we
think. I have interrogated my reason, imploring it to explain.
The question confounds it. I have tried to discover if the same
springs of action which enable me to digest or to walk are those
whereby I develop ideas. I cannot conceive how or wherefore
these ideas flee, when hunger makes my body languish, and how
they spring up again when I have eaten I have observed so
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15473
>
-
great a difference in my thinking when I am well fed or ill fed,
that I have believed there was a substance in me which reasoned,
and another substance which digested. But on endeavoring to
prove to myself that we are two, I have been sure that I am
only one; and the contradiction confuses me.
I have asked some of my fellow-creatures who with great
industry cultivate the earth, our common source of life, if they
felt themselves to be double beings; if they had discovered in
their philosophy that they possessed an immortal substance that
was yet formed of nothing, existed without extent, acted on their
nerves without touching them, and actually preceded their crea-
tion. They thought I was laughing at them, and went about
their business with not so much as a reply. Seeing then that
an immense number of men had not the least idea of the diffi-
culties that distressed me, nor perplexed themselves with what
was said in the schools,- of Being in the abstract, of matter and
spirit, etc. , -observing too that they often diverted themselves
with my eagerness to learn, I suspected it to be unnecessary that
we should know these things. I concluded that nature gives
to every being what is proper for him; and I came to think
that those things which we could not obtain were not designed
Notwithstanding this depressing conclusion, however, I
cannot suppress the desire of being instructed; and my disap-
pointed curiosity is ever insatiable.
We must renounce common-sense, or else concede that we
know nothing save by experience; and certainly if it be by ex-
perience alone - by a series of trials and through long reflection
- that we acquire some feeble and slight ideas of body, of space,
of time, of infinity, even of God, it is not likely that the author
of our nature placed these ideas in the brain of every foetus, in
order that only a small number of men should afterwards make
use of them.
Having no ideas, then, save by experience, it is not possible
that we should ever know what matter is. We touch and we
see the properties of that substance. But even the word sub-
stance, that which is beneath, hints to us that this thing beneath
will be unknown to us forever. Whatever we discover of its ap-
pearance, this substance, this foundation, will ever elude us. For
the same reason we shall never of ourselves know what spirit is.
The word originally signified breath, and by its use we express
vaguely and grossly that which inspires thinking. But if, even
XXVI–968
for us.
.
## p. 15474 (#424) ##########################################
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VOLTAIRE
-
by a miracle, - which is not to be expected, - we should achieve
some slight idea of the substance of this spirit, we should be
no further advanced; and we could never imagine how this sub-
stance received sentiments and thoughts. We know that we
possess a modicum of intelligence; but how do we acquire it?
It is a secret of Nature which she has not divulged to any
mortal.
I find at this time, in this period, - which is the dawn of
reason, that some of the hydra heads of fanaticism are again
springing up. Their poison however is apparently less mortal, ,
their jaws less voracious, than of yore. Less blood is spilled for
the sake of dogma than was long wasted on account of plenary
indulgences sold at market. But fanaticism still lives. Every
man who searches for truth incurs the danger of persecution.
Are we then to remain idle in mental darkness ? Or must we
light a flambeau at which envy and calumny may rekindle their
torches ? For my own part, I would no more conceal truth in
the face of these monsters than I would go without food for fear
of being poisoned.
CLIMATE
From the Philosophical Dictionary
I
T is certain that the sun and the atmosphere stamp themselves
on all the productions of nature, from man to mushrooms.
In the grand age of Louis XIV. , the ingenious Fontenelle
remarked:
It might be suggested that the torrid and the two frigid
zones are not well suited to the sciences. Down to the present
day, these have not traveled beyond Egypt and Mauritania on
the one side, nor on the other beyond Sweden. Perhaps it is not
mere chance that their range is between Mount Atlas and the
Baltic Sea. But whether these are the limits appointed to them
by nature, or whether we may hope to see great authors among
Laplanders or negroes, is not disclosed. ”
Chardin, one of the few travelers who reason and investi-
gate, goes still further than Fontenelle, when speaking of Persia.
« The temperature of warm climates,” he says, "enervates the
mind as well as the body, and dissipates that fire which the
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15475
are
arts,»
imagination requires for invention. In such climates men
incapable of the long study and intense application necessary to
the production of first-rate works in the liberal and mechanic
etc. But Chardin did not recollect that Sadi and Lokman
were Persians, nor that Archimedes belonged to Sicily, where
the heat is greater than in three-fourths of Persia. He forgot
that Pythagoras once taught geometry to the Brahmins. The
Abbé Dubos supported and developed the opinion of Chardin. A
century and a half earlier, Bodin made this idea the foundation
of a system in his Republic and in his Method of History:
he asserts that climate determines the principle both of the
government and the religion of nations. Diodorus of Sicily held
the same opinion long before Bodin. The author of the Spirit
of Laws' without quoting authorities, carried this idea farther
than Chardin and Bodin. Certain classes believed him to have
first suggested it, and imputed it to him as a crime.
This was
quite in character with the classes referred to. There are men
everywhere who possess more zeal than understanding.
We might ask these believers in climatic influences, why the
emperor Julian, in his “Misopogon,' says that what pleased him
in the Parisians was the gravity of their characters and the
severity of their manners; and why these Parisians, without the
slightest change of climate, are now like playful children whom
the government punishes and smiles upon at the same moment,
and who themselves at the next moment also smile, and sing
lampoons upon their masters. Why are the Egyptians, who are
described as still more grave than the Parisians, at present the
most lazy, frivolous, and cowardly of peoples, after having con-
quered the whole world for their pleasure, under a king called
Sesostris ? Why are there no longer Anacreons, Aristotles, or
Zeuxises, at Athens ? Whence comes it that Rome, instead of
its Ciceros, Catos, and Livys, breeds citizens who dare not speak
their minds, and a brutalized populace whose supreme happiness
consists in having oil cheap and in gazing at processions ?
Cicero, in his letters, is occasionally very jocose concerning
the English. He desires his brother Quintus, Cæsar's lieutenant,
to inform him whether he finds any great philosophers among
them in his expedition to Britain. How little he suspected that
that country would one day produce mathematicians beyond his
comprehension ! Yet the climate has not altered, and the sky of
London is as cloudy now as it was then.
## p. 15476 (#426) ##########################################
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VOLTAIRE
and usages.
.
Everything changes, both in bodies and minds, by time. Per-
haps the Americans will in some future period cross the sea to
instruct Europeans in the arts.
Climate has some influence, gov-
ernment a hundred times more; religion and government com-
bined, more still.
Certainly climate influences religion in respect to ceremonies
A legislator could have experienced no difficulty in
inducing the Indians to bathe in the Ganges at certain appear-
ances of the moon. Bathing is a high gratification to them.
Had a like purification been proposed to the people who inhabit
the banks of the Dwina, near Archangel, the proposer would
have been stoned. Forbid pork to an Arab, who, after eating
this meat (miserable and disgusting in Arabia), would be afflicted
with leprosy, he will obey you with joy; prohibit it to a West-
phalian, and he will be tempted to knock you down. Abstinence
from wine is a good precept of religion in Arabia, where orange,
citron, and lemon waters are necessary to health. Mahomet
would not have forbidden wine in Switzerland, especially before
going into battle.
Religions have always turned upon two pivots, — forms or
ceremonies, and faith: forms and ceremonies depend much on
climate; faith not at all. A doctrine will be received with equal
readiness under the equator or at the pole; it will be equally
rejected at Batavia and the Orcades; while it will be maintained
unguibus et rostro — with tooth and nail - at Salamanca. This de-
pends not on sun and atmosphere, but solely upon opinion, that
fickle empress of the world. Certain libations of wine will be
naturally enjoined in a country abounding in vineyards; and it
would never occur to the legislative mind to institute sacred mys-
teries which could not be celebrated without wine, in such a coun-
try as Norway. The burning of incense is expressly commanded
in a court where beasts are killed in honor of the divinity, and
for the priests' supper. This slaughter-house, called a temple,
would be a place of abominable infection were it not contin-
ually purified; and without the use of aromatics, the religion of
the ancients would have introduced the plague. The interior was
even festooned with flowers to sweeten the air. But the cow is
not a sacrificial animal in the burning territory of the Indian
peninsula, because, while it supplies the indispensable milk, it is
very rare in arid and barren districts; and because its flesh, being
dry and tough, and yielding but little nourishment, would afford
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15477
the Brahmins but sorry cheer. On the other hand, the creature
comes to be considered sacred, by reason of its rarity and utility.
The temple of Jupiter Ammon, where the heat is excessive, will
be entered only with bare feet. To perform his devotions at
Copenhagen, a man requires his feet to be warm and well cov-
ered.
It is not thus with doctrine. Polytheism has been believed in
.
all climates; and it is as easy for a Crim Tartar as for an inhab-
itant of Mecca to acknowledge one only incommunicable God,
neither begotten nor begetting. It is by doctrine, more than
by rites, that a religion extends from one climate to another.
The doctrine of the unity of God passed rapidly from Medina to
Mount Caucasus. Climate, then, yields to opinion.
In Egypt the emblematical worship of animals succeeded to
the doctrines of Thaut. The gods of the Romans afterwards
shared Egypt with the dogs, the cats, and the crocodiles. To the
Roman religion succeeded Christianity; that was completely ban-
ished by Mahometanism, which will perhaps be superseded by
some new religion. In all these changes climate has effected
nothing: government has done everything. We are here consid-
ering only second causes, without raising our unhallowed eyes to
a directing Providence. The Christian religion, which received
its birth in Syria, and grew up to fuller stature in Alexandria,
inhabits now those countries where Tenbat and Irminsul, Freya,
and Odin, were formerly adored.
There are some nations whose religion is the result of neither
climate nor government. What cause detached North Germany,
Denmark, most of Switzerland, Holland, England, Scotland, and
Ireland, from the Roman communion ? Poverty. Indulgences and
deliverances from purgatory for the souls of those whose bodies
had no money, were sold too dear. The prelates and monks
absorbed the whole revenue of a province. People adopted a
cheaper religion. In short, after numerous civil wars, it was
concluded that the papal faith was good for the nobles, and the
reformed faith for citizens. Time will show whether the religion
of the Greeks or of the Turks will prevail on the coasts of the
Euxine and Ægean Seas.
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LUXURY
From the Philosophical Dictionary)
>
IN
»
N THE country of the barefoot, could luxury be imputed to the
first man who made himself a pair of shoes ? Was he not
rather a model of sense and industry? So of the man who
contrived the first shirt.
As to the man who had it washed and ironed, I set him down
as an absolute genius, abundant in resources, and qualified to
govern a State.
Naturally, however, a society unused to clean
shirts looked upon him as an effeminate coxcomb, who was likely
to corrupt the simplicity of the nation.
The other day a Norwegian was berating a Dutchman for
luxury. “ "Where now," said he, "are the happy times when an
Amsterdam merchant, setting out for the Indies, left a quarter of
smoked beef in his kitchen, and found it untouched on his re-
turn? Where are your wooden spoons and iron forks? Is it not
shameful for a sensible Dutchman to sleep in a bed of damask ? ”
«Go to Batavia,” replied the Amsterdammer; "bring home, as
I have done, ten tons of gold: and then see if you too do not
prefer to be well clothed, well fed, and well lodged. ”
Since this conversation, twenty volumes have been written
about luxury, which has neither increased nor diminished.
For the space of two thousand years, both in verse and prose,
this pleasant vice has been attacked — and cherished. Recall the
Romans.
When early in their history these banditti pillaged
their neighbors' harvests, when to profit their own wretched vil-
lages they burned the poor hamlets of the Volsci and Samnites,
they were, we are told, disinterested and virtuous men. Natur-
ally they did not carry away gold, silver, and jewels, because the
towns which they sacked and plundered had none; nor did their
woods and swamps produce partridges or pheasants: yet posterity,
forsooth, extols their temperance! When they had systematically
robbed every country from the Adriatic to the Euphrates, and
had developed sense enough to enjoy the fruits of their rapine;
when they cultivated the arts and tasted all the pleasures of life,
and communicated them to the conquered nations,— then, we
are told, they ceased to be wise and good!
The moral seems to be that a robber ought not to eat the
dinner he has taken, nor wear the habit he has stolen, nor orna-
ment his fingers with plundered rings: all these, it is said, should
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15479
.
be thrown into the river, that the thief may live like the honest
man. But what morality ought to say is, Never rob, it is your
duty not to rob. Condemn the brigands when they plunder;
but do not treat them as fools or madmen for enjoying their
plunder. If English sailors win prize money for the capture of
Pondicherry or Havana, can they be blamed for pleasuring in
London in compensation for the hardships they have undergone
in Asia or America ? Certain censors admonish men to bury,
as it were, the riches that come from war, or agriculture, or
commerce and industry in general. They cite Lacedæmonia:
why not cite the republic of San Marino ? What benefits did
Sparta afford Greece ? Did she produce a Demosthenes, a Sopho-
a
cles, an Apelles, or a Phidias? The luxury of Athens formed
great men. Sparta certainly produced great captains, though
fewer even of these than did other cities. But granting that a
small republic like Lacedæmonia may maintain its poverty, men
uniformly die, whether in poverty or comfort. The savage of
Canada subsists and attains old age, not less than the English
landlord with fifty thousand guineas a year. But who would ever
compare the country of the Iroquois to England ?
Let the republic of Ragusa and the canton of Zug enact
sumptuary laws: they are quite right. The poor must not exceed
their means; but I have somewhere read that, with some harm,
luxury on the whole does great good.
If by luxury you mean excess, let us at once admit that ex-
cess is pernicious,- in abstinence as well as in gluttony, in parsi.
mony as in profusion. In my own village, where the soil is
meagre, the imposts heavy, and the prohibition against a man's
exporting the corn he has himself sown and reaped, intolerable,
there is hardly a cultivator who is not well clothed, and who has
not sufficient warmth and food. Should this cultivator plow in
his best clothes, and with his hair dressed and powdered, he
would display the most absurd luxury; but were a rich citizen of
Paris or London to appear at the play in the dress of this peas-
ant, he would exhibit the grossest, the most ridiculous parsimony.
«Some certain mean in all things may be found,
To mark our virtues' and our vices' bound. ”
On the invention of scissors, what was not said of those who
pared their nails, and cut off the hair that was hanging down
over their eyes? They were doubtless regarded as prodigals and
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VOLTAIRE
coxcombs, buying an extravagant instrument fit only to spoil the
work of the Creator. What a sin to pare the horn which God
himself made to grow at our finger-ends! It was an insult to
Divinity! With shirts and socks it was far worse. With what
wrath and indignation did the old counselors, who had never
worn socks, exclaim against the young magistrates who encour-
aged so fatal a luxury!
PASSAGES FROM THE PAMPHLETS
LO
OVE truth, but pardon error. The mortal who goes astray
is still a man and thy brother. Be wise for thyself alone;
compassionate for him. Achieve thine own welfare by bless-
ing others.
TAKE revenge upon a rival by surpassing him.
To DESIRE all is the mark of a fool. Excess is his portion.
Moderation is the treasure of the wise: he knows how to control
his tastes, his labors, his pleasures.
Work is often the father of pleasure. I pity the man over-
whelmed with the weight of his own leisure. Happiness is a
good that nature sells us.
ONE day some mice said to one another, How charming
"
is this world! What an empire is ours! This palace so superb
was built for us; from all eternity God made for us these large
holes. Do you see those fat hams under that dim ceiling? they
were created there for us by Nature's hands; those mountains
of lard, inexhaustible aliment, will be ours till the end of time.
Yes, we are, great God, if our sages tell us the truth, the master-
piece, the end, the aim, of all thy works! Cats are dangerous
and prompt to devour, but it is to instruct and correct us! ”
MIRACLES are good; but to relieve a brother, to draw a
friend from the depths of misery, to pardon the virtues of our
enemies – these are greater miracles.
The secret of wearying your reader is to tell him everything.
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15481
The true virtue then is beneficence”; a new word in the
French language, but the whole universe ought to cherish the
idea.
Souls communicate with souls, and can measure one another
without need of an intermediate body. It is only the greatness
or the worth of a soul that ought to frighten or intimidate
a
us. To fear or to respect the body and its accessories - force,
beauty, royalty, rank, office-- is pure imbecility. Men are born
equal and die equal. Let us respect the virtue, the merit of
their souls, and pity the imperfections of these souls.
DOUBTLESS we should by prudence avoid the evil which that
physical force [of rulers] can do us, as we should guard ourselves
against a crowned bull, an enthroned monkey, a savage dog, let
loose upon us.
Let us beware of such. Let us even endeavor,
if possible, to moderate them, to soften them; but this sentiment
is very different from the esteem and respect which we owe to
souls.
Having it clearly in your heart that all men are equal, and
in your head that the exterior distinguishes them, you can get
on very well in the world.
BELIEVE that in his eternal wisdom the Most High has, with
his own hand, engraved at the bottom of thy heart natural reli-
gion. Believe that the native candor of thy soul will not be the
object of God's eternal hate. Believe that before his throne, in
all times and in all places, the heart of the just person is pre-
cious. Believe that a modest bonze, a charitable dervish, finds
favor in his eyes sooner than a pitiless Jansenist or an ambitious
pontiff. God judges us according to our virtues, not our sacri-
fices.
AFTER all, 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
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VOLTAIRE
One who has many witnesses of his death can die with cour-
age.
I ENVY the beasts two things,-their ignorance of evil to come,
and their ignorance of what is said about them.
Does not experience prove that influence over men's minds
is gained only 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
marvelous. »
A sure means of not yielding to the desire to kill yourself is
to have always something to do.
OPINION rules the world, and wise men rule opinion.
All nature is nothing but mathematics.
TO MAKE a good book, one must have a prodigious length of
time and the patience of a saint.
The human race would be too unhappy if it vere as common
to commit atrocious things as it is to believe them.
Most men die without having lived.
Who ought to be the king's favorite? The people.
I Know no great men except those who have rendered great
services to the human race.
Yes, without doubt, peace is of more value than truth; that is
to say, we must not vex our neighbor by arguments: but it is
necessary to seek the soul's peace in truth, and to tread under
foot the monstrous errors which would perturb it, and render it
the prey of knaves.
CONTROVERSY never convinced any man; men can be influenced
by making them think for themselves, by seeming to doubt with
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15483
them, by leading them as if by the hand, without their perceiving
it. A good book lent to them, which they read at leisure, pro-
duces upon them surer effects, because they do not then blush to
be subjugated by the superior reason of an antagonist.
WE ARE in this world only to do good in it.
The more you know, the less sure you are.
COUNTRY LIFE
From the Correspondence)
TO MADAME DU DEFFAND
I
OWE life and health to the course I have taken. If I dared
I would believe myself wise, so happy am I. I have lived
only since the day I chose my retreat; every other kind of
life would now be insupportable to me. Paris is necessary to
you; to me it would be deadly: every one must remain in his
element. I am very sorry that mine is incompatible with yours,
and it is assuredly my only affliction. You wished also to try the
country: it is not suitable to you. The taste for proprietorship
and labor is absolutely necessary when you live in the country.
I have very extensive possessions, which I cultivate. I make
more account of your drawing-room than of my grain-fields and
my pastures; but it was my destiny to end my career between
drills, cows, and Genevese.
To DUPONT
VAST rustic house, with wagons loaded with the spoils of the
A
lars of oak which sustain the whole frame are placed at
equal distances upon pedestals of stone; long stables are seen on
the right and on the left. Fifty cows, properly fastened, occupy
one side, with their calves; the horses and oxen are on the other
side: their fodder falls into their racks from immense mows above.
The floors where the grain is threshed are in the middle; and
you know that all the animals lodged in their several places in
this great edifice have a lively sense that the forage, the hay, the
## p. 15484 (#434) ##########################################
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VOLTAIRE
oats, which it contains, belong to them of right. To the south
of these beautiful monuments of agriculture are the poultry-yards
and sheepfolds; to the north are the presses, store-rooms, fruit-
houses; to the east are the abodes of the manager and thirty
servants; toward the west extend large meadows, pastured and
fertilized by all the animals, companions of the labor of man.
The trees of the orchard, loaded with fruits, small and great, are
still another source of wealth. Four or five hundred beehives
are set up near a little stream which waters this orchard. The
bees give to the possessor a considerable harvest of honey and
wax, without his troubling himself with all the fables which are
told of that industrious creature; without endeavoring in vain to
learn whether that nation lives under the rule of a pretended
queen who presents her subjects with sixty to eighty thousand
children. There are some avenues of mulberry-trees as far as
the eye can reach, the leaves of which nourish those precious
worms which are not less useful than the bees. A part of this
vast inclosure is formed by an impenetrable rampart of haw-
thorn, neatly clipped, which rejoices the senses of smell and
sight.
VOLTAIRE TO ROUSSEAU
From the “Correspondence)
I
HAVE received, monsieur, your new book against the human
race; I thank you for it. You will please men
to whom
you tell truths which concern them, but you will not correct
them. One could not paint in stronger colors the horrors of
human society, from which our ignorance and our weakness ex-
pect so many consolations, No one has ever employed so much
intellect in the attempt to prove us beasts. A desire seizes us to
walk on four paws, when we read your work. Nevertheless, as it
is more than sixty years since I lost the habit, I feel, unfortu-
nately, that it is impossible for me to resume it; and I leave that
natural mode of walking to those who are more worthy of it than
Nor can I embark to go among the savages of Can-
ada: first because the maladies with which I am afflicted detain
me near the greatest physician in Europe, and I should not find
the same succor among the Missouris; secondly because war has
you and I.
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VOLTAIRE
15485
broken out in that country, and the example of our nation has
rendered the savages almost as wicked as we are. I limit myself
to be a peaceful savage in the solitude which I have chosen in
your country, where you ought to be.
I agree with you that literature and the sciences have some.
times been the cause of much evil. The enemies of Tasso ren-
dered his life a tissue of misfortunes; those of Galileo made him
groan in prison at the age of seventy years for having known
the motion of the earth, and what was more shameful, they com-
pelled him to retract. No sooner had your friends begun the
Dictionnaire Encyclopédique than those who presumed to be
their rivals called them deists, atheists, and even Jansenists.
If I dared to reckon myself among those whose labors have
been recompensed by persecution alone, I should show you men
in a rage to destroy me, from the day that I gave the tragedy of
'Edipe”; I should show you a library of ridiculous calumnies
printed against me; an ex-Jesuit priest, whom I saved from capi-
tal punishment, paying me by defamatory libels for the service
which I had rendered him; I should show you a man still more
culpable, printing my own work upon the Age of Louis XIV. ,'
with notes, in which the most brutal ignorance poured forth the
most infamous impostures;
I should show you society in-
fested with this kind of men, unknown to all antiquity, who, not
being able to embrace an honest calling, whether that of workman
or of lackey, and knowing unfortunately how to read and write,
become courtiers of literature, live upon our works, steal manu-
scripts, disfigure them, and sell them;
I should paint you
ingratitude, imposture, and rapine pursuing me for forty years,
even to the foot of the Alps, even to the brink of my tomb.
But what shall I conclude from all these tribulations ? That I
ought not to complain; that Pope, Descartes, Bayle, Camoens,
and a hundred others, have experienced the same injustice and
greater; that this destiny is that of almost all those whom the
love of letters has too powerfully influenced.
Confess, monsieur, that these are trifling private misfortunes,
which the community scarcely perceives. What does it matter
to the human race that some hornets pillage the honey of some
bees? Men of letters make a great noise about all these little
quarrels; the rest of the world does not know them, or laughs at
them.
.
.
## p. 15486 (#436) ##########################################
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VOLTAIRE
Of all the bitternesses spread over human life, these are the
least fatal. The thorns attached to literature and to the reputa-
tion which it gives are flowers compared with other evils, which
in all times have overwhelmed the earth. Admit that neither
Cicero, nor Varro, nor Lucretius, nor Virgil, nor Horace, had the
least share in the proscriptions. Marius was an ignorant man;
the barbarous Sylla, the debauched Antony, the imbecile Lepidus,
read little of Plato and Socrates; and as to that tyrant without
courage, Octavius Cepias, surnamed so unworthily Augustus, he
was merely a detestable assassin while he was deprived of the
society of men of letters.
Confess that Petrarch and Boccaccio did not cause the intes-
tine troubles of Italy; confess that the badinage of Marot did not
cause the massacre of St. Bartholomew, nor the tragedy of The
Cid the troubles of the Fronde. Great crimes have seldom been
committed except by celebrated ignoramuses. That which makes,
and will always make, of this world a vale of tears, is the insa-
tiable cupidity and the indomitable pride of men, from Thomas
Kouli-kan who did not know how to read, to a clerk of the tax
office who knows only how to cipher. Literature nourishes the
soul, rectifies it, consoles it: it was of service to you, monsieur,
at the time when you wrote against it. You are like Achilles
who inveighed against glory, and like Father Malebranche whose
brilliant imagination wrote against imagination.
If any one ought to complain of literature, it is myself, since
at all times and in all places it has served to persecute me: but
we must love it, despite the abuse which is made of it, as we
must love society, the agreeableness of which is corrupted by so
many wicked men; as we must love our country, whatever injust-
ice we suffer in it; as we must love and serve the Supreme
Being, notwithstanding the superstitions and fanaticism which so
often dishonor his worship.
M. Chappuis informs me that your health is very bad: you
should come to re-establish it in your native air, to enjoy liberty,
to drink with me the milk of our cows, and browse our herbs.
I am very philosophically, and with the most tender esteem, etc.
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15487
THE DRAMA
From a Letter to an Italian Nobleman
Thea
He theatre is the chef-d'oeuvre of society. Men in general
are compelled to labor at the mechanic arts, and their time
is happily occupied; while men of rank and wealth have
the misfortune to be abandoned to themselves, to the ennui insep-
arable from idleness, to gaming more fatal than ennui, to petty
factions more dangerous than play and idleness.
What is the true drama ? It is the art of teaching virtue and
good manners by action and dialogue. How cold in comparison
is the eloquence of monologue! Have we retained a single phrase
of thirty or forty thousand moral discourses? And do we not
know by heart admirable sentences placed with art in interesting
dialogues ? «Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto. ”
It is this which makes one of the great merits of Terence; it
is that of our own good tragedies, of our good comedies. They
have not excited a profitless admiration; they have often corrected
men. I have seen a prince pardon an injury after a representa-
tion of the clemency of Augustus. A princess, who had despised
her mother, went away to throw herself at her feet after wit-
nessing the scene in which Rhodope asks her mother's forgive-
ness. A man well known sought reconciliation with his wife
after seeing Préjudice à la Mode. ' I saw the proudest man in
the world become modest after the comedy of the Glorieux. '
And I could cite more than six sons of distinguished families
whom the comedy of the Prodigal Son reformed. If our bank-
ers are no longer coarse, if the people of the court are vain dan-
dies no longer, if doctors have abjured the robe, the cap, and
consultations in Latin, if some pedants have become men,- to
what are
we indebted for it ? To the theatre,- to the theatre
alone.
What pity ought we not, then, to have for those who wage
war upon this first of the literary arts; who imagine that we
ought to judge the theatre of to-day by the trestles of our ages
of ignorance; and who confound Sophocles, Menander, Varius, and
Terence, with Tabarin and Punch! But how much more to be
pitied are they who admit Punch and Tabarin, while rejecting
Polyeucte,' 'Athalie,' Zaïre,' and 'Alzire'! Such are the incon-
sistencies into which the human mind falls every day.
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VOLTAIRE
Let us pardon the deaf who speak against music, the blind
who hate beauty: such persons are less enemies of society, less
conspirators to destroy its consolation and its charm, than the
unfortunate beings to whom nature has denied certain organs.
I have had the pleasure of seeing at my country-house
'Alzire performed,- that tragedy wherein Christianity and the
rights of man triumph equally. I have seen Mérope's maternal
love bringing tears without the aid of the love of gallantry.
Such subjects move the rudest soul, as they do the most refined;
and if the common people were in the habit of witnessing such
spectacles of human worth, there would be fewer souls gross
and obdurate. It was such exhibitions that made the Athenians
a superior nation.
commands into America and the East Indies; yet can he not
take away one privilege from the republic of Lucca. The Em-
peror is King of the Romans; but his whole right and preroga-
tive consists in holding the Pope's stirrup, and the basin for him
to dip his hands at mass.
The English serve their monarch on the knee; but then they
depose him, imprison him, behead him.
Men who are vowed to poverty, obtain, by the very virtue
of that vow, an estate of two hundred thousand crowns yearly
revenue; and by means of their humility, become absolute sov-
ereigns.
At Rome they rigorously condemn pluralities of benefices,
while at the same instant they will issue bulls to enable some
German to hold half a dozen bishoprics at once.
It is, say
they, because the German bishops have no church cures. The
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15467
chancellor of France is the second person in the State, and yet
he is never permitted to eat at the king's table; at least it has
never happened hitherto: while a colonel, who is scarce a gentle-
man, enjoys that honor. An intendant's lady is a queen in her
,
husband's province, and at court no more than a simple country
madam.
Men convicted of the heinous sin of nonconformity are pub.
licly burnt: whilst the second Eclogue of Virgil, in which is that
warm declaration of love which Corydon makes the beauteous
Alexis, “Formosum pastor Corydon ardebat Alexin,” is gravely
expounded in every college; and pupils are asked to note that
though Corydon was fair and Amyntas swarthy, yet still Amyntas
had the preference.
Should a poor, harmless philosopher, who never dreamed of
doing the least harm to any one, take it into his head that the
earth moves, that light comes from the sun, that matter might
have other properties than those we are acquainted with, imme-
diately the hue and cry is raised against him; he is an impious
disturber of the public peace: though his persecutors have trans-
lated and published, in usum Delphini, Lucretius, and Cicero's
(Tusculan Questions, which are two complete bodies of irre-
ligion.
Our courts of justice have rejected the belief in evil spirits,
and witches are subjects of laughter: but Gaufredy and Grand-
ier were both burnt for witchcraft; and lately, by a majority of
voices, a monk was condemned to the stake by one of our Parlia-
ments for having bewitched a young damsel of eighteen years by
breathing upon her.
The skeptical philosophy of Bayle was persecuted even in
Holland. La Motte le Vayer, a still greater skeptic, though not
near so good a philosopher, was preceptor to Louis XIV. and his
brother. Gourville was hanged in effigy at Paris, whilst he was
the ambassador of France in Germany.
The famous atheist Spinoza lived and died in peace. Vanini,
whose only crime was writing against Aristotle, was burnt for an
atheist; in this character he has the honor to fill a considerable
space in the history of the republic of letters, as well as in all
the dictionaries, – those enormous archives of lies, with a small
mixture of truth. Do but open those books, you will find it
recorded that Vanini not only taught atheism in his writings, but
also that twelve professors of the same creed had actually set
## p. 15468 (#418) ##########################################
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VOLTAIRE
out from Naples to make proselytes for their gospel. Then open
Vanini's books, and you will be astonished to find that they con-
tain so many proofs of the existence of a Deity. See here what
he says in his Amphitheatrum,' a work condemned upon hear-
say because it is wholly unknown: «God is his own sole prin-
ciple and boundary, without end, without beginning, having no
need of either; and the father of all beginning and of every end:
he exists forever, but in no space of time; there is no duration, a
parte ante, – that is to say, which is past,- nor futurity, which
will come hereafter: he is present everywhere, without occupying
any place; immovable, yet without stopping, and rapid without
motion: he is all, but without inclusion of all; he is in every-
thing, but without being excluded from other beings; good with-
out quality; and whilst he produces all the various changes in
nature, he is himself unvaried and immutable: his will is his
power; he is simplicity itself: there is no such thing as mere
possibility; all in him is real: he is the first, the middle, and the
last act; in one word, he is all: yet he is above all kings, with-
out them, within them, beyond them, eternally before them, yet
present with them. ” After such a confession of his faith was
Vanini denounced as an atheist! On what grounds? The simple
deposition of a fellow called Francon. In vain did his works
bear witness for him. A single enemy robbed him at one stroke
of life and reputation.
The little book called the Cymballum Mundi' - a cold imita-
tion of Lucian, without the slightest, the most distant relation to
Christianity — has in like manner been condemned to the flames:
yet Rabelais has been printed cum privilegio, and the Turkish
Spy' and even the Persian Letters' suffered to pass unmolested,
– particularly the latter, that ingenious, diverting, and daring per.
formance which contains an entire letter in defense of suicide;
another in which are the words, “If we suppose such a thing as
religion”; another where it is said in express terms, that the bish-
ops have properly no other function but that of dispensing with
the laws; another which calls the Pope a magician who endeavors
to persuade us that three and one are the same, and that the
bread we eat is not bread. The Abbé de St. Pierre, a man possi-
bly deceived but ever upright, and whose works Cardinal Du Bois
used to call the “Dreams of a Good Citizen,” - this Abbé de
St. Pierre, I say, was excluded from the French Academy, nemine
contradicente, for having in a political work advocated boards of
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15469
are
council in place of secretaries of State, and for saying that the
finances had been shamefully managed towards the close of that
glorious reign. The author of the Persian Letters' made men-
tion of Louis XIV. only to tell the world that the King was a
magician who undertook to persuade his subjects that paper was
gold and silver; who preferred the Turkish to all other forms
of government; who held a man that handed him a napkin in
higher esteem than one who had won him battles; who had given
a pension to a runaway who had fled a matter of two leagues
from the field of battle without once looking behind him, and
a considerable position to another who had run four leagues;
who was miserably poor, although his finances are inexhaustible.
What did this same author say of Louis XIV. , the protector of
the French Academy? for on the reputation of this book he was
admitted into their number. We may add to this, what crowns
the inconsistency, that this body received him amongst them
chiefly for having made them ridiculous; for of all the books
in which authors have laughed at their company, in none
they worse handled than in the Persian Letters. ' Listen: «The
members who compose this body have nothing to do but to prate
everlastingly; panegyric flows naturally out of that babbling of
theirs, which is truly world without end,” etc. After being treated
in this manner, they praised him for his skill in drawing a strong
likeness.
Were I disposed to treat the contrarieties of the republic of
letters, I must write the history of all the literati, and of all the
wits who have ever existed. Or had I a mind to consider the
inconsistencies of society, I must write a history of the human
race. An Asiatic traveling in Europe might take us all for
pagans. The very days of our week pay tribute to Mars, Mer-
cury, Jupiter, and Venus; the marriage of Cupid and Psyche is
painted in a palace belonging to the Pope! If this Asiatic at-
tended our opera, he could not doubt that it was a festival in
honor of the heathen gods. Were he to study our manners, he
would be still more astonished. Spain excludes all foreigners
from the smallest commerce, directly or indirectly, with her
American settlements, whilst those very Americans carry on,
through Spanish factors, a trade to the amount of fifty millions
per annum; so that Spain could never grow rich were it not for
the violation of that law, which still stands though perpetually
trampled upon. Another government encourages an India com-
pany, while its theologians declare its dividends criminal before
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VOLTAIRE
God. Our Asiatic would behold the seats of judges, the com-
mand of armies, the places of counselors of State, bought with
money: nor could he comprehend the assertion of the patents
entitling them to hold these places, that these have been granted
without caballing, fee, or reward, and purely on the score of merit,
whilst the valuable consideration given is plainly disclosed in their
letters of provision! What would he think to see our players at
the same instant paid by the sovereign and excommunicated by
the clergy ? Suppose he were to ask why a lieutenant-general –
who is only a roturier, a man of the common class, though he
may have won battles should, in the estimation of the court, be
ranked with a peasant, whilst an echevin or city sheriff is held as
noble as the Montmorencies? Why, when all regular shows are
prohibited in the week consecrated to edification, should mounte-
banks be tolerated whose language is offensive to the least deli-
cate ear? In short, he would see our laws in direct opposition to
our customs. Yet were we to travel into Asia, we should come
upon like inconsistencies.
Men are everywhere fools: they make laws much as we re-
pair breaches in walls. In one place the elder brothers contrive
to leave the younger mere beggars; in others they share alike.
At one time the Church authorizes duels, at another she anathe-
matizes them. The partisans and enemies of Aristotle have been
excommunicated each in turn; as have the wearers of long hair
or short hair. In the known world no law has been discovered
able to redress a very silly piece of folly, which is gaming. The
laws of play are the only ones which admit of neither exception,
relaxation, imposition, nor variation. An ex-lackey, if he plays
at lansquenet with a king, and happens to win, is paid without
the least hesitation; in every other respect the law is a sword,
with which the stronger cuts the weaker in pieces.
Yet the world gets on as if it were constituted in the wisest
manner imaginable! Irregularity is a part of ourselves. Our
political world is much like our globe: though ugly enough, it
manages to get on. It would be folly to wish that all the
mountains, seas, and rivers were drawn in regular geometrical
figures: it would be a still greater folly to expect consummate
wisdom from men; as if one should suggest giving wings to
dogs, or horns to eagles. Indeed, these pretended oppositions
that we call contradictions are necessary ingredients in the
composition of man; who like the rest of nature is what he has
to be.
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15471
ON READING
From the Philosophical Dictionary
)
T"
HERE is this good in a large library, that it frightens the be-
holder! Two hundred thousand volumes are enough to
discourage a man tempted to print a book. But unfortu-
nately he very soon says to himself, "Most of those books are
not read, and perhaps mine will be! ” He compares himself to
the drop of water that complained of being confounded and lost
in the ocean; a génie took pity on it, and made an oyster swal-
low it. It became one of the finest pearls in the ocean, and in
time the chief ornament of the great Mogul's throne. Those who
are mere compilers, imitators, commentators, pickers of phrases,
critics by the week,- in short, those on whom no génie will take
pity,- will forever remain the drop of water.
Our man, then, is working in his garret in hopes of becoming
the pearl.
It is true that in that immense collection of books there are
about one hundred and ninety-nine thousand that will never be
read, at least never read through; but one may need to consult
some of them once in his life. And it is a great advantage to
the seeker to find without delay, under his hand, in the palace
of kings, the volume and the page he is looking for. The library
is one of the noblest of institutions. There has never been an
expense more magnificent and more useful.
The public library of the French king is the finest in the
world; less indeed as to number and rarity of volumes, than in
the facility and politeness with which the librarians lend them
to all the learned. That collection is unquestionably the most
precious monument there is in France.
Let not that astonishing multitude of books daunt the stu-
dent. Paris contains seven hundred thousand people; one cannot
live with them all, and must make choice of three or four
friends, - and we ought not to complain more of a superfluity of
books than of men.
A man who wishes to know something of his own being, and
who has no time to lose, is much puzzled. He feels that he
ought at once to read Hobbes and Spinoza; Bayle, who has writ-
ten against them; Leibnitz, who has opposed Bayle; Clarke, who
has disputed the theories of Leibnitz; Malebranche, who differs
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VOLTAIRE
with all of them; Locke, who is supposed to have confounded
Malebranche; Stillingfleet, who thinks he has vanquished Locke;
Cudworth, who sets himself up above all because no one can un-
derstand him! One would die of old age before he could go
through a hundredth part of the metaphysical romance !
THE IGNORANT PHILOSOPHER
From the Philosophical Dictionary)
W"
I am
can
HO art thou ? Whence art thou ? What is thy business
here? What will become of thee ? — These are questions
which confront us all, but which not a man of us can
answer. I ask the plants what power occasions their growth;
and how the same soil produces fruits so different. Insensible
and mute, these leave me to my ignorance. I interrogate that
crowd of animals endowed with motion, able to communicate,
who enjoy my very sensations; who possess some ideas, some
memory, all the passions. They know even less than I what
they are, why they are, what they shall be.
a weak
animal: I come into the world without knowledge, strength, or
instinct. I cannot even crawl to my mother's breast, as
other animals. I acquire a few ideas, as I acquire a little
strength, when my organs begin to develop. This strength in-
creases to a certain degree, and then daily decreases. So the
power of conceiving ideas increases to a certain degree, and then
insensibly disappears. What is the nature of that crescent force ?
I know not; and those who have spent their lives in search of
this unsearchable cause know no more than I. What is that
other power which creates images in my brain ? which preserves
them in my memory? Those who spend their lives in seeking
for this knowledge have sought it in vain. We are as ignorant
of first principles as we were in our cradles. Have I learned
anything from the books of the past two thousand years? Some-
times a desire arises in us to understand in what manner we
think. I have interrogated my reason, imploring it to explain.
The question confounds it. I have tried to discover if the same
springs of action which enable me to digest or to walk are those
whereby I develop ideas. I cannot conceive how or wherefore
these ideas flee, when hunger makes my body languish, and how
they spring up again when I have eaten I have observed so
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15473
>
-
great a difference in my thinking when I am well fed or ill fed,
that I have believed there was a substance in me which reasoned,
and another substance which digested. But on endeavoring to
prove to myself that we are two, I have been sure that I am
only one; and the contradiction confuses me.
I have asked some of my fellow-creatures who with great
industry cultivate the earth, our common source of life, if they
felt themselves to be double beings; if they had discovered in
their philosophy that they possessed an immortal substance that
was yet formed of nothing, existed without extent, acted on their
nerves without touching them, and actually preceded their crea-
tion. They thought I was laughing at them, and went about
their business with not so much as a reply. Seeing then that
an immense number of men had not the least idea of the diffi-
culties that distressed me, nor perplexed themselves with what
was said in the schools,- of Being in the abstract, of matter and
spirit, etc. , -observing too that they often diverted themselves
with my eagerness to learn, I suspected it to be unnecessary that
we should know these things. I concluded that nature gives
to every being what is proper for him; and I came to think
that those things which we could not obtain were not designed
Notwithstanding this depressing conclusion, however, I
cannot suppress the desire of being instructed; and my disap-
pointed curiosity is ever insatiable.
We must renounce common-sense, or else concede that we
know nothing save by experience; and certainly if it be by ex-
perience alone - by a series of trials and through long reflection
- that we acquire some feeble and slight ideas of body, of space,
of time, of infinity, even of God, it is not likely that the author
of our nature placed these ideas in the brain of every foetus, in
order that only a small number of men should afterwards make
use of them.
Having no ideas, then, save by experience, it is not possible
that we should ever know what matter is. We touch and we
see the properties of that substance. But even the word sub-
stance, that which is beneath, hints to us that this thing beneath
will be unknown to us forever. Whatever we discover of its ap-
pearance, this substance, this foundation, will ever elude us. For
the same reason we shall never of ourselves know what spirit is.
The word originally signified breath, and by its use we express
vaguely and grossly that which inspires thinking. But if, even
XXVI–968
for us.
.
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-
by a miracle, - which is not to be expected, - we should achieve
some slight idea of the substance of this spirit, we should be
no further advanced; and we could never imagine how this sub-
stance received sentiments and thoughts. We know that we
possess a modicum of intelligence; but how do we acquire it?
It is a secret of Nature which she has not divulged to any
mortal.
I find at this time, in this period, - which is the dawn of
reason, that some of the hydra heads of fanaticism are again
springing up. Their poison however is apparently less mortal, ,
their jaws less voracious, than of yore. Less blood is spilled for
the sake of dogma than was long wasted on account of plenary
indulgences sold at market. But fanaticism still lives. Every
man who searches for truth incurs the danger of persecution.
Are we then to remain idle in mental darkness ? Or must we
light a flambeau at which envy and calumny may rekindle their
torches ? For my own part, I would no more conceal truth in
the face of these monsters than I would go without food for fear
of being poisoned.
CLIMATE
From the Philosophical Dictionary
I
T is certain that the sun and the atmosphere stamp themselves
on all the productions of nature, from man to mushrooms.
In the grand age of Louis XIV. , the ingenious Fontenelle
remarked:
It might be suggested that the torrid and the two frigid
zones are not well suited to the sciences. Down to the present
day, these have not traveled beyond Egypt and Mauritania on
the one side, nor on the other beyond Sweden. Perhaps it is not
mere chance that their range is between Mount Atlas and the
Baltic Sea. But whether these are the limits appointed to them
by nature, or whether we may hope to see great authors among
Laplanders or negroes, is not disclosed. ”
Chardin, one of the few travelers who reason and investi-
gate, goes still further than Fontenelle, when speaking of Persia.
« The temperature of warm climates,” he says, "enervates the
mind as well as the body, and dissipates that fire which the
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15475
are
arts,»
imagination requires for invention. In such climates men
incapable of the long study and intense application necessary to
the production of first-rate works in the liberal and mechanic
etc. But Chardin did not recollect that Sadi and Lokman
were Persians, nor that Archimedes belonged to Sicily, where
the heat is greater than in three-fourths of Persia. He forgot
that Pythagoras once taught geometry to the Brahmins. The
Abbé Dubos supported and developed the opinion of Chardin. A
century and a half earlier, Bodin made this idea the foundation
of a system in his Republic and in his Method of History:
he asserts that climate determines the principle both of the
government and the religion of nations. Diodorus of Sicily held
the same opinion long before Bodin. The author of the Spirit
of Laws' without quoting authorities, carried this idea farther
than Chardin and Bodin. Certain classes believed him to have
first suggested it, and imputed it to him as a crime.
This was
quite in character with the classes referred to. There are men
everywhere who possess more zeal than understanding.
We might ask these believers in climatic influences, why the
emperor Julian, in his “Misopogon,' says that what pleased him
in the Parisians was the gravity of their characters and the
severity of their manners; and why these Parisians, without the
slightest change of climate, are now like playful children whom
the government punishes and smiles upon at the same moment,
and who themselves at the next moment also smile, and sing
lampoons upon their masters. Why are the Egyptians, who are
described as still more grave than the Parisians, at present the
most lazy, frivolous, and cowardly of peoples, after having con-
quered the whole world for their pleasure, under a king called
Sesostris ? Why are there no longer Anacreons, Aristotles, or
Zeuxises, at Athens ? Whence comes it that Rome, instead of
its Ciceros, Catos, and Livys, breeds citizens who dare not speak
their minds, and a brutalized populace whose supreme happiness
consists in having oil cheap and in gazing at processions ?
Cicero, in his letters, is occasionally very jocose concerning
the English. He desires his brother Quintus, Cæsar's lieutenant,
to inform him whether he finds any great philosophers among
them in his expedition to Britain. How little he suspected that
that country would one day produce mathematicians beyond his
comprehension ! Yet the climate has not altered, and the sky of
London is as cloudy now as it was then.
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and usages.
.
Everything changes, both in bodies and minds, by time. Per-
haps the Americans will in some future period cross the sea to
instruct Europeans in the arts.
Climate has some influence, gov-
ernment a hundred times more; religion and government com-
bined, more still.
Certainly climate influences religion in respect to ceremonies
A legislator could have experienced no difficulty in
inducing the Indians to bathe in the Ganges at certain appear-
ances of the moon. Bathing is a high gratification to them.
Had a like purification been proposed to the people who inhabit
the banks of the Dwina, near Archangel, the proposer would
have been stoned. Forbid pork to an Arab, who, after eating
this meat (miserable and disgusting in Arabia), would be afflicted
with leprosy, he will obey you with joy; prohibit it to a West-
phalian, and he will be tempted to knock you down. Abstinence
from wine is a good precept of religion in Arabia, where orange,
citron, and lemon waters are necessary to health. Mahomet
would not have forbidden wine in Switzerland, especially before
going into battle.
Religions have always turned upon two pivots, — forms or
ceremonies, and faith: forms and ceremonies depend much on
climate; faith not at all. A doctrine will be received with equal
readiness under the equator or at the pole; it will be equally
rejected at Batavia and the Orcades; while it will be maintained
unguibus et rostro — with tooth and nail - at Salamanca. This de-
pends not on sun and atmosphere, but solely upon opinion, that
fickle empress of the world. Certain libations of wine will be
naturally enjoined in a country abounding in vineyards; and it
would never occur to the legislative mind to institute sacred mys-
teries which could not be celebrated without wine, in such a coun-
try as Norway. The burning of incense is expressly commanded
in a court where beasts are killed in honor of the divinity, and
for the priests' supper. This slaughter-house, called a temple,
would be a place of abominable infection were it not contin-
ually purified; and without the use of aromatics, the religion of
the ancients would have introduced the plague. The interior was
even festooned with flowers to sweeten the air. But the cow is
not a sacrificial animal in the burning territory of the Indian
peninsula, because, while it supplies the indispensable milk, it is
very rare in arid and barren districts; and because its flesh, being
dry and tough, and yielding but little nourishment, would afford
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the Brahmins but sorry cheer. On the other hand, the creature
comes to be considered sacred, by reason of its rarity and utility.
The temple of Jupiter Ammon, where the heat is excessive, will
be entered only with bare feet. To perform his devotions at
Copenhagen, a man requires his feet to be warm and well cov-
ered.
It is not thus with doctrine. Polytheism has been believed in
.
all climates; and it is as easy for a Crim Tartar as for an inhab-
itant of Mecca to acknowledge one only incommunicable God,
neither begotten nor begetting. It is by doctrine, more than
by rites, that a religion extends from one climate to another.
The doctrine of the unity of God passed rapidly from Medina to
Mount Caucasus. Climate, then, yields to opinion.
In Egypt the emblematical worship of animals succeeded to
the doctrines of Thaut. The gods of the Romans afterwards
shared Egypt with the dogs, the cats, and the crocodiles. To the
Roman religion succeeded Christianity; that was completely ban-
ished by Mahometanism, which will perhaps be superseded by
some new religion. In all these changes climate has effected
nothing: government has done everything. We are here consid-
ering only second causes, without raising our unhallowed eyes to
a directing Providence. The Christian religion, which received
its birth in Syria, and grew up to fuller stature in Alexandria,
inhabits now those countries where Tenbat and Irminsul, Freya,
and Odin, were formerly adored.
There are some nations whose religion is the result of neither
climate nor government. What cause detached North Germany,
Denmark, most of Switzerland, Holland, England, Scotland, and
Ireland, from the Roman communion ? Poverty. Indulgences and
deliverances from purgatory for the souls of those whose bodies
had no money, were sold too dear. The prelates and monks
absorbed the whole revenue of a province. People adopted a
cheaper religion. In short, after numerous civil wars, it was
concluded that the papal faith was good for the nobles, and the
reformed faith for citizens. Time will show whether the religion
of the Greeks or of the Turks will prevail on the coasts of the
Euxine and Ægean Seas.
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LUXURY
From the Philosophical Dictionary)
>
IN
»
N THE country of the barefoot, could luxury be imputed to the
first man who made himself a pair of shoes ? Was he not
rather a model of sense and industry? So of the man who
contrived the first shirt.
As to the man who had it washed and ironed, I set him down
as an absolute genius, abundant in resources, and qualified to
govern a State.
Naturally, however, a society unused to clean
shirts looked upon him as an effeminate coxcomb, who was likely
to corrupt the simplicity of the nation.
The other day a Norwegian was berating a Dutchman for
luxury. “ "Where now," said he, "are the happy times when an
Amsterdam merchant, setting out for the Indies, left a quarter of
smoked beef in his kitchen, and found it untouched on his re-
turn? Where are your wooden spoons and iron forks? Is it not
shameful for a sensible Dutchman to sleep in a bed of damask ? ”
«Go to Batavia,” replied the Amsterdammer; "bring home, as
I have done, ten tons of gold: and then see if you too do not
prefer to be well clothed, well fed, and well lodged. ”
Since this conversation, twenty volumes have been written
about luxury, which has neither increased nor diminished.
For the space of two thousand years, both in verse and prose,
this pleasant vice has been attacked — and cherished. Recall the
Romans.
When early in their history these banditti pillaged
their neighbors' harvests, when to profit their own wretched vil-
lages they burned the poor hamlets of the Volsci and Samnites,
they were, we are told, disinterested and virtuous men. Natur-
ally they did not carry away gold, silver, and jewels, because the
towns which they sacked and plundered had none; nor did their
woods and swamps produce partridges or pheasants: yet posterity,
forsooth, extols their temperance! When they had systematically
robbed every country from the Adriatic to the Euphrates, and
had developed sense enough to enjoy the fruits of their rapine;
when they cultivated the arts and tasted all the pleasures of life,
and communicated them to the conquered nations,— then, we
are told, they ceased to be wise and good!
The moral seems to be that a robber ought not to eat the
dinner he has taken, nor wear the habit he has stolen, nor orna-
ment his fingers with plundered rings: all these, it is said, should
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15479
.
be thrown into the river, that the thief may live like the honest
man. But what morality ought to say is, Never rob, it is your
duty not to rob. Condemn the brigands when they plunder;
but do not treat them as fools or madmen for enjoying their
plunder. If English sailors win prize money for the capture of
Pondicherry or Havana, can they be blamed for pleasuring in
London in compensation for the hardships they have undergone
in Asia or America ? Certain censors admonish men to bury,
as it were, the riches that come from war, or agriculture, or
commerce and industry in general. They cite Lacedæmonia:
why not cite the republic of San Marino ? What benefits did
Sparta afford Greece ? Did she produce a Demosthenes, a Sopho-
a
cles, an Apelles, or a Phidias? The luxury of Athens formed
great men. Sparta certainly produced great captains, though
fewer even of these than did other cities. But granting that a
small republic like Lacedæmonia may maintain its poverty, men
uniformly die, whether in poverty or comfort. The savage of
Canada subsists and attains old age, not less than the English
landlord with fifty thousand guineas a year. But who would ever
compare the country of the Iroquois to England ?
Let the republic of Ragusa and the canton of Zug enact
sumptuary laws: they are quite right. The poor must not exceed
their means; but I have somewhere read that, with some harm,
luxury on the whole does great good.
If by luxury you mean excess, let us at once admit that ex-
cess is pernicious,- in abstinence as well as in gluttony, in parsi.
mony as in profusion. In my own village, where the soil is
meagre, the imposts heavy, and the prohibition against a man's
exporting the corn he has himself sown and reaped, intolerable,
there is hardly a cultivator who is not well clothed, and who has
not sufficient warmth and food. Should this cultivator plow in
his best clothes, and with his hair dressed and powdered, he
would display the most absurd luxury; but were a rich citizen of
Paris or London to appear at the play in the dress of this peas-
ant, he would exhibit the grossest, the most ridiculous parsimony.
«Some certain mean in all things may be found,
To mark our virtues' and our vices' bound. ”
On the invention of scissors, what was not said of those who
pared their nails, and cut off the hair that was hanging down
over their eyes? They were doubtless regarded as prodigals and
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VOLTAIRE
coxcombs, buying an extravagant instrument fit only to spoil the
work of the Creator. What a sin to pare the horn which God
himself made to grow at our finger-ends! It was an insult to
Divinity! With shirts and socks it was far worse. With what
wrath and indignation did the old counselors, who had never
worn socks, exclaim against the young magistrates who encour-
aged so fatal a luxury!
PASSAGES FROM THE PAMPHLETS
LO
OVE truth, but pardon error. The mortal who goes astray
is still a man and thy brother. Be wise for thyself alone;
compassionate for him. Achieve thine own welfare by bless-
ing others.
TAKE revenge upon a rival by surpassing him.
To DESIRE all is the mark of a fool. Excess is his portion.
Moderation is the treasure of the wise: he knows how to control
his tastes, his labors, his pleasures.
Work is often the father of pleasure. I pity the man over-
whelmed with the weight of his own leisure. Happiness is a
good that nature sells us.
ONE day some mice said to one another, How charming
"
is this world! What an empire is ours! This palace so superb
was built for us; from all eternity God made for us these large
holes. Do you see those fat hams under that dim ceiling? they
were created there for us by Nature's hands; those mountains
of lard, inexhaustible aliment, will be ours till the end of time.
Yes, we are, great God, if our sages tell us the truth, the master-
piece, the end, the aim, of all thy works! Cats are dangerous
and prompt to devour, but it is to instruct and correct us! ”
MIRACLES are good; but to relieve a brother, to draw a
friend from the depths of misery, to pardon the virtues of our
enemies – these are greater miracles.
The secret of wearying your reader is to tell him everything.
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The true virtue then is beneficence”; a new word in the
French language, but the whole universe ought to cherish the
idea.
Souls communicate with souls, and can measure one another
without need of an intermediate body. It is only the greatness
or the worth of a soul that ought to frighten or intimidate
a
us. To fear or to respect the body and its accessories - force,
beauty, royalty, rank, office-- is pure imbecility. Men are born
equal and die equal. Let us respect the virtue, the merit of
their souls, and pity the imperfections of these souls.
DOUBTLESS we should by prudence avoid the evil which that
physical force [of rulers] can do us, as we should guard ourselves
against a crowned bull, an enthroned monkey, a savage dog, let
loose upon us.
Let us beware of such. Let us even endeavor,
if possible, to moderate them, to soften them; but this sentiment
is very different from the esteem and respect which we owe to
souls.
Having it clearly in your heart that all men are equal, and
in your head that the exterior distinguishes them, you can get
on very well in the world.
BELIEVE that in his eternal wisdom the Most High has, with
his own hand, engraved at the bottom of thy heart natural reli-
gion. Believe that the native candor of thy soul will not be the
object of God's eternal hate. Believe that before his throne, in
all times and in all places, the heart of the just person is pre-
cious. Believe that a modest bonze, a charitable dervish, finds
favor in his eyes sooner than a pitiless Jansenist or an ambitious
pontiff. God judges us according to our virtues, not our sacri-
fices.
AFTER all, 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
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One who has many witnesses of his death can die with cour-
age.
I ENVY the beasts two things,-their ignorance of evil to come,
and their ignorance of what is said about them.
Does not experience prove that influence over men's minds
is gained only 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
marvelous. »
A sure means of not yielding to the desire to kill yourself is
to have always something to do.
OPINION rules the world, and wise men rule opinion.
All nature is nothing but mathematics.
TO MAKE a good book, one must have a prodigious length of
time and the patience of a saint.
The human race would be too unhappy if it vere as common
to commit atrocious things as it is to believe them.
Most men die without having lived.
Who ought to be the king's favorite? The people.
I Know no great men except those who have rendered great
services to the human race.
Yes, without doubt, peace is of more value than truth; that is
to say, we must not vex our neighbor by arguments: but it is
necessary to seek the soul's peace in truth, and to tread under
foot the monstrous errors which would perturb it, and render it
the prey of knaves.
CONTROVERSY never convinced any man; men can be influenced
by making them think for themselves, by seeming to doubt with
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15483
them, by leading them as if by the hand, without their perceiving
it. A good book lent to them, which they read at leisure, pro-
duces upon them surer effects, because they do not then blush to
be subjugated by the superior reason of an antagonist.
WE ARE in this world only to do good in it.
The more you know, the less sure you are.
COUNTRY LIFE
From the Correspondence)
TO MADAME DU DEFFAND
I
OWE life and health to the course I have taken. If I dared
I would believe myself wise, so happy am I. I have lived
only since the day I chose my retreat; every other kind of
life would now be insupportable to me. Paris is necessary to
you; to me it would be deadly: every one must remain in his
element. I am very sorry that mine is incompatible with yours,
and it is assuredly my only affliction. You wished also to try the
country: it is not suitable to you. The taste for proprietorship
and labor is absolutely necessary when you live in the country.
I have very extensive possessions, which I cultivate. I make
more account of your drawing-room than of my grain-fields and
my pastures; but it was my destiny to end my career between
drills, cows, and Genevese.
To DUPONT
VAST rustic house, with wagons loaded with the spoils of the
A
lars of oak which sustain the whole frame are placed at
equal distances upon pedestals of stone; long stables are seen on
the right and on the left. Fifty cows, properly fastened, occupy
one side, with their calves; the horses and oxen are on the other
side: their fodder falls into their racks from immense mows above.
The floors where the grain is threshed are in the middle; and
you know that all the animals lodged in their several places in
this great edifice have a lively sense that the forage, the hay, the
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oats, which it contains, belong to them of right. To the south
of these beautiful monuments of agriculture are the poultry-yards
and sheepfolds; to the north are the presses, store-rooms, fruit-
houses; to the east are the abodes of the manager and thirty
servants; toward the west extend large meadows, pastured and
fertilized by all the animals, companions of the labor of man.
The trees of the orchard, loaded with fruits, small and great, are
still another source of wealth. Four or five hundred beehives
are set up near a little stream which waters this orchard. The
bees give to the possessor a considerable harvest of honey and
wax, without his troubling himself with all the fables which are
told of that industrious creature; without endeavoring in vain to
learn whether that nation lives under the rule of a pretended
queen who presents her subjects with sixty to eighty thousand
children. There are some avenues of mulberry-trees as far as
the eye can reach, the leaves of which nourish those precious
worms which are not less useful than the bees. A part of this
vast inclosure is formed by an impenetrable rampart of haw-
thorn, neatly clipped, which rejoices the senses of smell and
sight.
VOLTAIRE TO ROUSSEAU
From the “Correspondence)
I
HAVE received, monsieur, your new book against the human
race; I thank you for it. You will please men
to whom
you tell truths which concern them, but you will not correct
them. One could not paint in stronger colors the horrors of
human society, from which our ignorance and our weakness ex-
pect so many consolations, No one has ever employed so much
intellect in the attempt to prove us beasts. A desire seizes us to
walk on four paws, when we read your work. Nevertheless, as it
is more than sixty years since I lost the habit, I feel, unfortu-
nately, that it is impossible for me to resume it; and I leave that
natural mode of walking to those who are more worthy of it than
Nor can I embark to go among the savages of Can-
ada: first because the maladies with which I am afflicted detain
me near the greatest physician in Europe, and I should not find
the same succor among the Missouris; secondly because war has
you and I.
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VOLTAIRE
15485
broken out in that country, and the example of our nation has
rendered the savages almost as wicked as we are. I limit myself
to be a peaceful savage in the solitude which I have chosen in
your country, where you ought to be.
I agree with you that literature and the sciences have some.
times been the cause of much evil. The enemies of Tasso ren-
dered his life a tissue of misfortunes; those of Galileo made him
groan in prison at the age of seventy years for having known
the motion of the earth, and what was more shameful, they com-
pelled him to retract. No sooner had your friends begun the
Dictionnaire Encyclopédique than those who presumed to be
their rivals called them deists, atheists, and even Jansenists.
If I dared to reckon myself among those whose labors have
been recompensed by persecution alone, I should show you men
in a rage to destroy me, from the day that I gave the tragedy of
'Edipe”; I should show you a library of ridiculous calumnies
printed against me; an ex-Jesuit priest, whom I saved from capi-
tal punishment, paying me by defamatory libels for the service
which I had rendered him; I should show you a man still more
culpable, printing my own work upon the Age of Louis XIV. ,'
with notes, in which the most brutal ignorance poured forth the
most infamous impostures;
I should show you society in-
fested with this kind of men, unknown to all antiquity, who, not
being able to embrace an honest calling, whether that of workman
or of lackey, and knowing unfortunately how to read and write,
become courtiers of literature, live upon our works, steal manu-
scripts, disfigure them, and sell them;
I should paint you
ingratitude, imposture, and rapine pursuing me for forty years,
even to the foot of the Alps, even to the brink of my tomb.
But what shall I conclude from all these tribulations ? That I
ought not to complain; that Pope, Descartes, Bayle, Camoens,
and a hundred others, have experienced the same injustice and
greater; that this destiny is that of almost all those whom the
love of letters has too powerfully influenced.
Confess, monsieur, that these are trifling private misfortunes,
which the community scarcely perceives. What does it matter
to the human race that some hornets pillage the honey of some
bees? Men of letters make a great noise about all these little
quarrels; the rest of the world does not know them, or laughs at
them.
.
.
## p. 15486 (#436) ##########################################
15486
VOLTAIRE
Of all the bitternesses spread over human life, these are the
least fatal. The thorns attached to literature and to the reputa-
tion which it gives are flowers compared with other evils, which
in all times have overwhelmed the earth. Admit that neither
Cicero, nor Varro, nor Lucretius, nor Virgil, nor Horace, had the
least share in the proscriptions. Marius was an ignorant man;
the barbarous Sylla, the debauched Antony, the imbecile Lepidus,
read little of Plato and Socrates; and as to that tyrant without
courage, Octavius Cepias, surnamed so unworthily Augustus, he
was merely a detestable assassin while he was deprived of the
society of men of letters.
Confess that Petrarch and Boccaccio did not cause the intes-
tine troubles of Italy; confess that the badinage of Marot did not
cause the massacre of St. Bartholomew, nor the tragedy of The
Cid the troubles of the Fronde. Great crimes have seldom been
committed except by celebrated ignoramuses. That which makes,
and will always make, of this world a vale of tears, is the insa-
tiable cupidity and the indomitable pride of men, from Thomas
Kouli-kan who did not know how to read, to a clerk of the tax
office who knows only how to cipher. Literature nourishes the
soul, rectifies it, consoles it: it was of service to you, monsieur,
at the time when you wrote against it. You are like Achilles
who inveighed against glory, and like Father Malebranche whose
brilliant imagination wrote against imagination.
If any one ought to complain of literature, it is myself, since
at all times and in all places it has served to persecute me: but
we must love it, despite the abuse which is made of it, as we
must love society, the agreeableness of which is corrupted by so
many wicked men; as we must love our country, whatever injust-
ice we suffer in it; as we must love and serve the Supreme
Being, notwithstanding the superstitions and fanaticism which so
often dishonor his worship.
M. Chappuis informs me that your health is very bad: you
should come to re-establish it in your native air, to enjoy liberty,
to drink with me the milk of our cows, and browse our herbs.
I am very philosophically, and with the most tender esteem, etc.
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VOLTAIRE
15487
THE DRAMA
From a Letter to an Italian Nobleman
Thea
He theatre is the chef-d'oeuvre of society. Men in general
are compelled to labor at the mechanic arts, and their time
is happily occupied; while men of rank and wealth have
the misfortune to be abandoned to themselves, to the ennui insep-
arable from idleness, to gaming more fatal than ennui, to petty
factions more dangerous than play and idleness.
What is the true drama ? It is the art of teaching virtue and
good manners by action and dialogue. How cold in comparison
is the eloquence of monologue! Have we retained a single phrase
of thirty or forty thousand moral discourses? And do we not
know by heart admirable sentences placed with art in interesting
dialogues ? «Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto. ”
It is this which makes one of the great merits of Terence; it
is that of our own good tragedies, of our good comedies. They
have not excited a profitless admiration; they have often corrected
men. I have seen a prince pardon an injury after a representa-
tion of the clemency of Augustus. A princess, who had despised
her mother, went away to throw herself at her feet after wit-
nessing the scene in which Rhodope asks her mother's forgive-
ness. A man well known sought reconciliation with his wife
after seeing Préjudice à la Mode. ' I saw the proudest man in
the world become modest after the comedy of the Glorieux. '
And I could cite more than six sons of distinguished families
whom the comedy of the Prodigal Son reformed. If our bank-
ers are no longer coarse, if the people of the court are vain dan-
dies no longer, if doctors have abjured the robe, the cap, and
consultations in Latin, if some pedants have become men,- to
what are
we indebted for it ? To the theatre,- to the theatre
alone.
What pity ought we not, then, to have for those who wage
war upon this first of the literary arts; who imagine that we
ought to judge the theatre of to-day by the trestles of our ages
of ignorance; and who confound Sophocles, Menander, Varius, and
Terence, with Tabarin and Punch! But how much more to be
pitied are they who admit Punch and Tabarin, while rejecting
Polyeucte,' 'Athalie,' Zaïre,' and 'Alzire'! Such are the incon-
sistencies into which the human mind falls every day.
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VOLTAIRE
Let us pardon the deaf who speak against music, the blind
who hate beauty: such persons are less enemies of society, less
conspirators to destroy its consolation and its charm, than the
unfortunate beings to whom nature has denied certain organs.
I have had the pleasure of seeing at my country-house
'Alzire performed,- that tragedy wherein Christianity and the
rights of man triumph equally. I have seen Mérope's maternal
love bringing tears without the aid of the love of gallantry.
Such subjects move the rudest soul, as they do the most refined;
and if the common people were in the habit of witnessing such
spectacles of human worth, there would be fewer souls gross
and obdurate. It was such exhibitions that made the Athenians
a superior nation.
