No More Learning

Everybody called on him. Benjamin Franklin brought to him his
grandson, asking for the boy the old man's blessing: “God and Lib-
erty, Voltaire said, in placing his hand over the head of the great
American's grandson.
(


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15455
All this was too much excitement for a man who was over eighty-
three years old. It finally told on him. He had to take to his bed;
and he died on the 30th of May, not quite four months after leaving
Ferney.
As a writer, it is somewhat difficult to-day to assign to Voltaire
his exact rank. He was primarily a man of action. He wrote with
a purpose. He wished to effect a transformation of the public mind;
and the high value of what he wrote, its adaptation to the end he
had in view, is shown by the results which were achieved by him.
His greatest gifts were clearness of statement and vividness of illus-
tration. His many-sidedness has never been surpassed. It must be
recognized, however, that he succeeded in prose work better than in
1
!
verse.
His complete works are perhaps more bulky than those of any
other writer. This is what made him say, "A man does not ride to
immortality with a load of one hundred volumes. ” Some of the
editions of his works indeed number as many as ninety-two volumes.
The most authoritative ones, though, — those of Kehl (1784-89), of
Benchot (Paris: 1829-1839), and Moland (Paris: 1875–1884), — number
respectively seventy-two, seventy-two, and fifty-two volumes.
Poetry fills many of these. There are first his dramatic works:
about twenty tragedies and a dozen comedies. Strange to say, witty
as he was, he never wrote an entertaining comedy.
But he was
highly gifted in tragedy. In Brutus,' in Zaïre,' in Alzire,' in Ma-
homet,' in Mérope,' in “Tancrède,' are to be found pathetic scenes
which justify the great applause with which they were received.
Voltaire, however, cannot be considered one of the great dramatists
of the world. He lacked power of concentration; he lacked the art
of forgetting himself and living out, in his mind, the life of his char-
acters: so that his dramas always present to us something artificial.
And besides, he did not dare to free himself from the tyranny of the
rules of classical tragedy as they had been stated in the preceding
century.
His epic poem, the “Henriade,' is a fine piece of narrative, but
on the whole somewhat cold. Still, for fully a hundred years it was
considered in France a great epic. Every educated Frenchman could
recite from memory hundreds of its lines. The people were
ried away by the generous sentiments of the work, which appealed
a good deal less to posterity after the victory for which Voltaire had
fought had been finally secured by the triumph of the French Revo-
lution.
In light verse Voltaire excelled, and his philosophical poems also
deserve high esteem. Among the latter must be especially mentioned
the (Discourses upon Man’; the Poem on the Disaster at Lisbon,'
car-


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15456
VOLTAIRE
on the occasion of an earthquake which destroyed thousands of lives;
and the Poem on Natural Law,' a eulogy on Natural Religion.
Once at least, unhappily, Voltaire put his powers of verse compo-
sition to a use wholly unworthy of his genius, and even disgraceful.
This was in his poem on Joan of Arc, — a scurrilous and decidedly dull
production, in which, in trying to ridicule the idea that the pseudo
mystics of his time entertained of the heroic Maid of Orléans, he
allowed himself to befoul even the chaste heroine of patriotism her-
self.
His chief glory as a writer, though, rests upon his prose works, of
which this first must be said: that every line in them may be quoted
as a model of perfect, clear, lucid, quick French style. His clearness
of thought, and, thanks to his knowledge of the exi. -t value of words,
his precision of statement, cannot be surpassed.
In historical writing, his three master works — the History of
Charles XII. , King of Sweden, The Age of Louis XIV. ,' and the
(Essay on Manners'-effected a revolution. They taught readers that
other things were worth knowing of our ancestors' lives besides wars,
battles, sieges, diplomatic negotiations, and feuds of royalty. He
called their attention to the lives of the common people, and to the
philosophical meaning of historical events. He thus made history a
vehicle of his ideas relating to the improvement in the condition of
mankind.
He did the same thing in his tales, which are delightful reading
when they are not too licentious, as is sometimes the case. Of
course Candide' is no fit reading, except for people whose taste
and morals have been strengthened against the danger of corruption.
Others, like (Zadig,' (Micromégas,' (The Man with Forty Coins,'
Jeannot and Colin,' are little gems that are unsurpassed in their
kind.
For his views of philosophy and sociology the reader must turn
to the Philosophical Letters and the Philosophical Dictionary
There, as well as in hundreds of shorter productions, which are col-
lected in his works under the comprehensive title of Miscellanies,'
the real Voltaire appears, more than anywhere else. There we dis-
cover the weapons which he so effectively used for the performance
of his life work. A great deal of what is found in these collections
would no doubt, in an age like ours, have appeared in daily, weekly,
or monthly periodicals. But there was no free press, or any press
at all deserving of the name, in France in the eighteenth century.
There was — Voltaire knew it by his own experience no freedom
of utterance, under penalty of imprisonment in the Bastille. This
is why most of these works, whatever their size, were published
under assumed names and as separate publications. Combined with


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VOLTAIRE
15457
Voltaire's masterly strategy in the Calas and other similar affairs;
and with what we know of his wonderful eloquence in conversation,
they show that under another system of government Voltaire would
have been wonderful as a journalist, parliamentary orator, and polit-
ical leader. But he might not have achieved such great results for
mankind as he did, having to fight for freedom when freedom was
not yet in existence.
No one who wishes to know Voltaire should fail to acquaint him-
self with his correspondence. As a letter-writer he is unsurpassed,
and his correspondence covers a period of over sixty years, of the
most interesting in the history of mankind. We possess over ten
thousand letters, written either by or to him; and this represents,
very likely, only a small part of the epistolary activity of this ex-
traordinary man.
Adoljihre Whu
THE IRREPRESSIBLE KING
From the History of Charles XII. , King of Sweden)
T°
COMPLETE the misfortunes of Sweden, her King persisted in
remaining at Demotica, and still lived on the hope of aid
from Turkey which he was never to receive.
Ibrahim-Molla, the haughty vizier who decreed the war against
the Muscovites, against the wish of the sultan's favorite, was suf-
focated between two doors. The place of vizier had become so
dangerous that no one dared fill it; it remained vacant for six
months: at last the favorite, Ali Coumourgi, took the title. Then
all the hopes of the King of Sweden were dashed: he knew
Coumourgi the better because that schemer had served him when
their interests accorded with his own.
He had been eleven months at Demotica, buried in idleness
and neglect; this extreme inertia, following the most violent exer-
tions, had at last given him the malady that he feigned. All
Europe believed him dead; the council of regency at Stockholm
heard no news of him. The senate came in a body to entreat
his sister, Princess Ulrica Eleonora, to assume the regency during
his prolonged absence. She accepted it; but when she saw that
the senate would constrain her to make peace with the Czar
Peter the Great, and with the King of Denmark, who were
XXV1-967


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VOLTAIRE
a
attacking Sweden on all sides, she, rightly thinking that her
brother would never consent, resigned her office, and sent to
Turkey a detailed account of the affair.
The King received the packet from his sister at Demotica.
His inborn spirit of despotism made him forget that formerly
Sweden had been free, and that the senate had governed the
realm conjointly with the kings. He regarded this body as a
troop of servants who aspired to rule the house in their master's
absence; and wrote them that if they pretended to govern, he
would send them one of his boots to convey his orders!
To forestall therefore these supposed attempts to defy his
authority in Sweden, and to defend his country, -as he hoped
nothing further from the Ottoman Porte, and could count only
on himself,- he informed the grand vizier that he wished to
depart, and to return home by way of Germany.
M. Désaleurs, the French ambassador, who had taken the
affairs of Sweden in hand, made the request in his own person.
“Very good,” said the vizier to Count Désaleurs: did I not
rightly say that before the year was out, the King of Sweden
would ask leave to depart? Tell him to go or stay, as he
chooses; but let him come to a decision, and fix the day of his
departure, lest he plunge us a second time into the embarrass-
ment he caused us at Bender. ”
Count Désaleurs softened this harsh message to the King.
The day was set; but Charles wished, before leaving Turkey,
to display the pomp of a great king, although he lived in the
squalor of a fugitive. He gave to Grothusen the title of ambas-
sador extraordinary, and sent him to take leave in due form at
Constantinople, followed by eighty persons all superbly attired.
The secret springs which he touched to obtain the money for
this outlay were more humiliating than the embassy was mag-
nificent. Count Désaleurs lent the King forty thousand pieces;
Grothusen had agents in Constantinople, who borrowed of a Jew
at fifty per cent. interest a thousand pieces, a hundred thousand
pieces of an English merchant, a thousand francs of a Turk.
Thus were brought together the means of playing before the
divan the brilliant comedy of the Swedish embassy. Grothusen
received all the honors that the Porte is wont to show ambassa-
dors extraordinary on their day of audience. The purpose of all
this performance was to obtain money from the grand vizier;.
but that minister was inexorable.


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15459
Grothusen proposed to borrow a million from the Porte: the
vizier answered dryly that his master knew how to give when
he pleased, and that it was beneath his dignity to lend; that the
King would be abundantly furnished with whatever was neces-
sary for his journey, in a manner worthy of the giver; perhaps
the Porte would even make him some present in uncoined gold,
but he must not count upon it.
At last, on the ist of October, 1714, the King of Sweden
started on his journey: a grand chamberlain with six Turkish
officers came to escort him from the castle of Demirtash, where
he had passed several days; he was presented in the name of
the Sultan with a large tent of scarlet embroidered in gold, a
sabre with precious stones set in the hilt, and eight perfect Arab
steeds, with superb saddles and spurs of massive silver. Let
history condescend to observe that the Arab groom in charge
related their genealogy to the King: this is a long-established
custom with these people, who seem to pay far more attention
to the high breeding of horses than of men; and perhaps not
altogether without reason, since animals that receive care and are
without mixture never degenerate.
Sixty chariots filled with all sorts of provisions, and three
hundred horses, formed the procession. The Turks, to show
greater regard for their guest, made him advance by brief
stages; but this respectful rate of speed exasperated the King.
He rose during the journey at three o'clock in the morning,
according to his custom; as soon as he was dressed he himself
awoke the chamberlain and the officers, and ordered the march
resumed in complete darkness. Turkish conventionality was dis-
turbed by this new way of traveling; but the King enjoyed the
discomfort of the Turks, and said that he was avenging in a
measure the affair of Bender.
Arrived on the borders of Germany, the King of Sweden
learned that the Emperor had ordered him to be received with
suitable magnificence in all lands under his authority; the towns
and villages where the sergeants had marked out his route in
advance made preparations to receive him. All these people
looked forward with impatience to seeing the extraordinary man
whose victories and misfortunes, whose least actions and very
repose, had made such a stir in Europe and in Asia. But Charles
had no wish to wade through all this pomp, nor to furnish a spec-
tacle as the prisoner of Bender; he had even determined never


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VOLTAIRE
to re-enter Stockholm without bringing better fortunes. “I have
left,” he remarked to his intimates, “my dressing-gown and slip-
pers at Stockholm; I wish to buy no others till I return there. "
When he reached Tergowitz on the Transylvanian frontier,
after bidding farewell to his Turkish escort he assembled his
suite in a barn; and told them all to take no trouble for his per-
son, but to make their way to Stralsund in Pomerania, on the
Baltic Sea, about three hundred leagues from the place where
they were.
He took with him only Düring, and gayly left all his suite
plunged in astonishment, terror, and sadness. He used a black
perruque for a disguise, as he always wore his own hair, put on
a hat embroidered with gold, a rough gray coat and a blue cloak,
took the name of a German officer, and made a rapid journey on
horseback with his traveling companion.
He avoided in his route as far as possible the soil of his
enemies, open and secret, going by way of Hungary, Moravia,
Austria, Bavaria, Würtemberg, the Palatinate, Westphalia, and
Mecklenburg; thus making almost the circuit of Germany, and pro-
longing his journey by half. At the end of the first day, having
galloped without respite, young Düring, who, unlike the King of
Sweden, was not inured to such excessive fatigue, fainted in dis-
mounting. The King, unwilling to waste a moment on the road,
asked Düring, when he came to his senses, how much money
he had. Diring replying that he had about a thousand pieces in
gold, the King said, "Give me half: I see clearly that you are
in no state to follow me, and that I must finish the journey
alone. ” Düring besought him to condescend to take at least
three hours' rest, assuring him that he himself could then mount
again and follow his Majesty. The faithful fellow entreated him
to think of the risk he must run; but the King, inexorable, made
him hand over the five hundred pieces, and demanded his horses.
Then the terrified Düring devised an innocent stratagem: he
drew aside the master of the stables, and indicating the King of
Sweden, “That man,” said he, “is my cousin; we are traveling
together on the same business: he sees that I am ill, and will
not wait for me three hours; give him, I pray you, the worst
horse in your stable, and find me some chaise or post-carriage. ”
He put two ducats into the master's hand, and all his requests
were fulfilled to the letter. A lame and balky horse was given
to the King. Thus mounted, he set off alone, at ten o'clock at
»


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15461
night, in utter darkness, with wind, snow, and rain beating on
him. Düring, having slept several hours, began the journey in a
carriage drawn by vigorous horses. At the end of a few miles
he overtook the King traveling on foot to the next post, his steed
having refused to move further.
He was forced to take a seat in Düring's carriage, where he
slept on the straw. Afterwards they continued their journey,
racing their horses by day, and sleeping on a cart at night, with-
out stopping anywhere.
After sixteen days of rapid travel, not without danger of
arrest more than once, they at last arrived at the gates of the
town of Stralsund, an hour after midnight.
The King called to the sentinel that he was a courier dis-
patched from Turkey by the King of Sweden; and that he must
speak at once with General Düker, the governor of the place.
The sentinel replied that it was late; the governor had retired,
and he must wait till daybreak.
The King rejoined that he came on important business, and
declared that if they did not wake Düker without delay, they
would all be punished next morning. The sergeant finally woke
the governor. Düker thought that one of the King's generals
might have arrived: the gates were thrown open, the courier was
brought to his room.
Düker, half asleep, asked him for news of the King. Charles,
taking him by the arm, replied, “Well, well, Düker, have my
most faithful subjects forgotten me ? ” The general recognized
him: he could not believe his eyes; he threw himself from the
bed, embracing the knees of his master, and shedding tears of
joy. Instantly the news spread through the town: everybody got
up; the governor's house was surrounded with soldiers, the streets
filled with residents asking each other, "Is the King really here? ”
Windows were illuminated; wine ran in the streets by the light
of a thousand torches; there was an incessant noise of artillery.
Meanwhile the King was conducted to his room. For sixteen
days he had not slept in a bed; his legs were so badly swollen
from extreme fatigue that his boots had to be cut off. He had
neither underwear nor overgarments; a wardrobe was improvised
from the most suitable materials the town afforded. After a few
hours' sleep he rose, only to review his troops, and visit the forti.
fications. The same day he sent orders everywhere to renew
more hotly than ever the war against all his enemies.


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VOLTAIRE
WAR
From the (Philosophical Dictionary)
A"
LL animals wage perpetual war; every species is born to
devour another. Not one, not even sheep or doves, that
does not swallow a prodigious number of invisible creat-
ures. Males make war for the females, like Menelaus and Paris.
Air, earth, water, are fields of carnage. God having given reason
to men, this reason might teach them not to emulate the brutes,
particularly when nature has provided them neither with arms
to kill their fellows nor with a desire for their blood.
Yet murderous war is so much the dreadful lot of man, that
with two or three exceptions, all ancient histories represent them
full-armed against one another. Among the Canadian Indians
man and warrior are synonymous; and we have seen in our
hemisphere, that thief and soldier are the same thing. Mani-
chæans! behold your excuse! From the little that he may have
seen in army hospitals, or in the few villages memorable for
some glorious victory, its warmest apologist will admit that war
always brings pestilence and famine in its train.
Truly, that is a noble art which desolates countries, destroys
habitations, and causes the death of from forty to a hundred
thousand men a year!
In historic times this invention was first
cultivated by nations who convened assemblies for their common
good. For instance, the Diet of the Greeks declared to the Diet
of Phrygia and neighboring nations their intention to depart on
a thousand fishers' barks, for the extermination of these rivals.
The assembled Roman people thought it to their interest to
destroy the people of Veii or the Volscians. And afterwards, all
the Romans, becoming exasperated against all the Carthaginians,
fought them interminably on land and sea.
It is a little different at present. A genealogist proves to a
prince that he descends in a right line from a count whose par-
ents three or four hundred years ago made a family compact
with a house the recollection of which, even, is lost. This house
had distant pretensions to a province whose last ruler died sud-
denly. Both the prince and his council at once perceive his
legal right. In vain does this province, hundreds of leagues dis-
tant, protest that it knows him not, and has no desire to know
him; that to govern it he must at least have its consent; - these
objections reach only as far as the ears of this ruler by divine


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15463
right. He assembles a host of needy adventurers, dresses them
in coarse blue cloth, borders their hats with a broad white bind-
ing, instructs them how to wheel to the right and to the left,
and marches them to glory. Other princes hearing of this ad-
venture come to take part in it, each according to his power, and
cover the country with more mercenary murderers than Zenghis
Khan, Tamerlane, or Bajazet employed in their train. People at
a distance hear that fighting is going on, and that by joining the
ranks they may earn five or six sous a day. They divide them-
selves into bands, like reapers, and offer their services to whoever
will hire them. These hordes fall upon one another, not only
without having the least interest in the affray, but without know-
ing the reason of it. There appear, therefore, five or six bel-
ligerent powers, sometimes three against three, sometimes two
against four, and sometimes one against five,- all equally detest-
ing one another, - supporting and attacking by turns; all agreed
in a single point only, that of doing as much harm as possible.
The most amazing part of this infernal enterprise is that each
murderous chief causes his colors to be blessed, and solemnly
invokes God, before he goes to exterminate his neighbors! If it
is his luck to kill only two or three thousand men, he does not
return thanks for it; but when he has destroyed say ten thou-
sand by fire and sword, and to make a good job leveled some
town with the ground, then they sing a hosanna in four parts,
composed in a language unknown to the fighters, and full of bar-
barity. The same pæan serves for marriages and births, as well
as for murders; which is unpardonable, particularly in a nation
famous for song-writing. Natural religion has a thousand times
prevented men from committing crime. A well-trained mind
is not inclined to brutality; a tender mind is appalled by it,
remembering that God is just. But conventional religion encour-
ages whatever cruelties are practiced in droves,— conspiracies,
seditions, pillages, ambuscades, surprisals of towns, robberies, and
murder. Men march gayly to crime, each under the banner of
his saint.
A certain number of dishonest apologists is everywhere paid
to celebrate these murderous deeds: some are dressed in a long
black close coat, with a short cloak; others have a shirt above a
gown; some wear two variegated streamers over their shirts.
All of them talk a long time, and quote what was done of old in
Palestine, as applicable to a combat in Veteravia. The rest of


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VOLTAIRE
the year these people declaim against vice. They prove in three
arguments and by antitheses that ladies who lay a little carmine
on their cheeks will be the eternal objects of eternal vengeance;
that Polyeucte' and Athalie' are works of the evil one; that
a man who for two hundred crowns a day furnishes his table
with fresh sea-fish during Lent, works out his salvation; and that
a poor man who eats two and a half sous' worth of mutton will
go to perdition. Miserable physicians of souls! You exclaim for
five quarters of an hour on some prick of a pin, and say nothing
on the malady which tears us into a thousand pieces! Philoso-
phers, moralists! burn all your books, while the caprices of a
few men force that part of mankind consecrated to heroism, to
murder without question millions of our brethren! Can there be
anything more horrible in all nature? What becomes of, what
signifies to me, humanity, beneficence, modesty, temperance, mild-
ness, wisdom, and piety, whilst half a pound of lead, sent from
the distance of a hundred steps, pierces my body, and I die at
twenty years of age in inexpressible torments, in the midst of
five or six thousand dying men; whilst my eyes, opening for the
last time, see the town in which I was born destroyed by fire
and sword, and the last sounds which reach my ears are the cries
of women and children dying beneath the ruins, all for the pre-
tended interests of a man whom I never knew ?
APPEARANCES
From the Philosophical Dictionary)
AKP
RE all appearances deceitful? Have our senses been given us
only to
delude us? Is everything error ? Do we live in a
dream, surrounded by shadowy chimeras ? We see the sun
setting, when he is already below the horizon; before he has yet
risen, we see him appear.
him appear. A square tower seems to be round.
A straight stick, thrust into the water, seems to be bent.
You see your face in a mirror, and the image appears to
be behind the glass; it is, however, neither behind nor before it.
This glass, to the sight and touch so smooth and even, is in
fact an unequal congregation of projections and cavities. The
finest and fairest skin is a kind of bristled network, the openings
of which are incomparably larger than the threads, and inclose
infinite number of minute hairs. Under this network, fluids


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15465
incessantly pass, and from it there issue continual exhalations
which cover the whole surface.
What we call large is to an elephant very small; and what
we call small is to insects a world. The motion which a snail
finds swift would be slow in the eye of an eagle. This rock,
which is impenetrable by steel, is a sieve consisting of more
pores than matter, and containing a thousand avenues leading
to its centre, in which are lodged multitudes of animals, which
may, for aught we know, think themselves the masters of the
universe.
Nothing is either as it appears to be, or in the place where
we believe it to be.
Some philosophers, tired of the constant deceptions of bodies,
have in their spleen pronounced that bodies do not exist, and
that nothing is real but mind. As well might they conclude
that, appearances being false, and the nature of the soul being
as little known as that of matter, there is no reality in either
body or soul.
Perhaps it is this despair of knowing anything which has led
some Chinese philosophers to declare Nothing the beginning and
the end of all things.
This destructive philosophy was well known in Molière's time.
Doctor Macphurius represents the school: when teaching Sgana-
relle, he says, “You must not say, I am come, but It seems to
me that I am come;' for it may seem so to you, without being
really the case.
But at the present day, a comic scene is not an argument
(though it is sometimes better than an argument), and there is
often as much pleasure in seeking after truth as in laughing at
philosophy.
You do not see the network, the cavities, the threads, the
inequalities, the exhalations, of that white and delicate skin which
Animals a thousand times less than a mite discern
these objects which escape your vision; they lodge, feed, and
travel about in them, as in an extensive country, and those on
the right arm are entirely ignorant that creatures of their own
species live on the left. Were you so unfortunate as to see
what they see, this charming skin would strike you with horror.
The harmony of a concert which delights you must have on
certain classes of minute animals the effect of terrible thunder;
and perhaps it kills them. We see, touch, hear, feel things, only
you admire.


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VOLTAIRE
in the way in which they ought to be seen, touched, heard, or
felt, by ourselves.
All is in due proportion. The laws of optics, which show you
an object in the water where it is not, and break a right line,
are in entire accordance with those which make the sun appear
to you with a diameter of two feet, although he is a million
times larger than the earth. To see him in his true dimensions
would require an eye capable of collecting his rays at an angle
as great as his disk, which is impossible. Our senses, then, assist
much more than they deceive us.
Motion, time, hardness, softness, dimensions, distance, approxi-
mation, strength, weakness, appearances of whatever kind, -all is
relative. And who has created these relations ?
ON THE CONTRADICTIONS OF THIS WORLD
From the Philosophical Dictionary
)
HE
T
more one knows this world of ours, the more contradic-
tions and inconsistencies he finds. To begin with the Grand
Turk: he is under an indispensable necessity to cut off the
head of whoever displeases him, and he can at the same time
hardly preserve his own.
If from the Grand Turk we pass to St. Peter, his Holiness
confirms the election of emperors, he has kings for his vassals,
but has no more power than a Duke of Savoy. 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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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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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
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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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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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>
-
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.